Red Saunders Part 10

"But you wouldn't be afraid of a man, Will!"

"Well, no," admitted he. "I've never been troubled much that way.

You see, everybody has a different fear to throw a crimp in them.

Mine's rattlesnakes and these little bugs with forty million pairs of legs. I pa.s.s right out when I see one of them things. They give me a feeling as if my stummick had melted."

"Weren't the Indians terrible out there, too?" asked Miss Mattie.

"I'm sure they must have been."

"Oh, they ain't bad people if you use 'em right," said Red. "Not that I like 'em any better on the ground, than in it," he added hastily, fearful of betraying the sentiment of his country, "but I never had but one real argument, man to man. Black Wolf and I come together over a matter of who owned my cayuse, and from words we backed off and got to shooting. He raked me from knee to hip, as I was kneeling down, doing the best I could by him, and wasting ammunition because I was in a hurry. Still, I did bust his ankle.

In the middle of the fuss a stray shot hit the cayuse in the head and he croaked without a remark, so there we were, a pair of fools miles from home with nothing left to quarrel about! You could have fried an egg on a rock that day, and it always makes you thirsty to get shot anyways serious, thinking of which I hollered peace to old Black Wolf and told him I'd pull straws with him to see who took my canteen down to the creek and got some fresh water. He was agreeable and we hunched up to each other. It ain't to my credit to say it, but I was worse hurt than that Injun, so I worked him.

He got the short straw, and had to crawl a mile through cactus, while I sat comfortable on the cause of the disagreement and yelled to him that he looked like a badger, and other things that an Injun wouldn't feel was a compliment." Red leaned back and roared. "I can see him now putting his hands down so careful, and turning back every once in awhile to cuss me. Turned out that it was his cayuse, too. Feller that sold it to me had stole it from him. I oughtn't to laugh over it, but I can't help but snicker when I think how I did that Injun."

Generally speaking, Miss Mattie had a lively sense of humour, but the joke of this was lost on her. Her education had been that getting shot was far from funny.

"Why, I should have thought you would have died, Will!"

"What! For a little crack in the leg!" cried Red, with some impatience. "You people must quit easy in this country. Die nothin'. One of our boys came along and took us to camp, and we was up and doing again in no time. 'Course, Black Wolf has a game leg for good, but the worst that's stuck to me is a yank or two of rheumatism in the rainy season. I paid Wolf for his cayuse," he finished shamefacedly. "I had the laugh on him anyhow."

Miss Mattie told him she thought that was n.o.ble of him, which tribute Red took as medicine, and shifted the subject with speed, to practical affairs. He asked Miss Mattie how much money she had and how she managed to make out. Now, it was one of the canons of good manners in Fairfield not to speak of material matters--perhaps because there was so little material matter in the community, but Miss Mattie, doomed to a thousand irksome petty economies, had often longed for a sympathetic ear, to pour into it a good honest complaint of hating to do this and that. She could not exactly go this far with Cousin Will, but she could say that it was pretty hard to get along, and give some details. She felt that she knew him so very well, in those few hours! Red heard with nods of a.s.sent. He had scented the conditions at once.

"It ain't any fun, skidding on the thin ice," said he, when they had concluded the talk. "I've had to count the beans I put in the pot, and it made me hate arithmetic worse than when I went over yonder to school. Well, them days have gone by for you, Mattie."

He reached down and pulling out a green roll, slapped it on the centre table. "Blow that in, and limber up, and remember that there's more behind it."

Miss Mattie's pride rose at a leap.

"Will!" she said, "I hope you don't think I've told you this to get money from you?"

He leaned forward, put his hand on her shoulder and held her eyes with a sudden access of sternness and authority.

"And I hope, Mattie," said he, "that you don't think that I think anything of the kind?"

The cousins stared into each other's eyes for a full minute. Then Miss Mattie spoke. "No, Will," said she, "I don't believe you do."

"I shouldn't think I did," retorted Red. "What in thunder would I do with all that money? Why, good Lord, girl, I could paper your house with ten-dollar bills--now you try to fly them green kites, like I tell you."

Miss Mattie broke down, the not fully realised strain of fifteen years had made itself felt when the cord snapped. "I don't know how to thank you. I don't know what to say. Oh, William! it seems too good to be true."

"What you crying about, Mattie?" said he in sore distress. "Now hold on! Listen to me a minute! There's something I want you to do for me."

"What is it?" she asked, drying her eyes. "For dinner to-morrow,"

he replied, "let's have a roast of beef about that size,"

indicating a wash-tub.

The diversion was complete.

"Why, Will! What would we ever do with it?" said she.

"Do with it? Why, eat it!"

"But we couldn't eat all that!"

"Then throw what's left to the cats. You ain't going to fall down on me the first favour I ask?" with mock seriousness.

"You shall have the roast of beef. 'Pears to me that you're fond of your stomach, Will," said Miss Mattie, with a recovering smile.

"I have a good stomach, that's always done the right thing by me, when I've done the right thing by _it_," said Red. "And moreover, just look at the const.i.tution I have to support. But say, old lady, look at that!" pointing to the clock. "Eleven-thirty; time decent people were putting up for the night."

The words brought to an acute stage a wandering fear which had pa.s.sed through Miss Mattie's mind at intervals during the evening.

Where was she to look for sleeping accommodations for a man? She revolted against the convention, that, in her own mind, as well as the rest of Fairfield, forbade the use of her house for the purpose. Long habit of thought had made these niceties const.i.tutional. It was almost as difficult for Miss Mattie to say "I'll fix up your bed right there on the sofa" as it would have been for Red to pick a man's pocket, yet, when she thought of his instant and open generosity and what a dismal return therefor it would be to thrust him out for reasons which she divined would have no meaning for him, she heroically resolved to throw custom to the winds, and speak.

But the difficulty was cut in another fashion.

"There's a little barn in the back-yard that caught my eye," said Red, "and if you'll lend me a blanket I'll roll it out there."

"Sleep in the barn! You'll not do any such thing!" cried Miss Mattie. "You'll sleep right here on the sofa, or upstairs in my bed, just as you choose."

"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not. So help me Bob! I'd smother in here. Had the darnedest time coming on that ever was--hotels. Little white rooms with the walls coming in on you.

Worse than rattlesnakes for keeping a man awake. Reminds me of the hospital. Horse fell on me once and smashed me up so that I had to be sent to get puttied up again, and I never struck such a month as that since I was born. The doc. told me I mustn't move, but I told him I'd chuck him out of the window if he tried to stop me, and up I got. I'd have gone dead sure if they'd held me a week more. I speak for the barn, Mattie, and I speak real loud; that is, I mean to say I'm going to sleep in the barn, unless there's somebody a heap larger than you on the premises. Now, there's no use for you to talk--I'm going to do just as I say."

"Well, I think that's just dreadful!" said Miss Mattie. "I'd like to know what folks will think of me to hear I turned my own cousin out in the barn." Her voice trailed off a little at the end as the gist of what they might say if he stayed in the house, occurred to her. "Well," she continued, "if you're set, I suppose I can't object." Miss Mattie was not a good hand at playing a part.

"I'm set," said Red. "Get me a blanket." As she came in with this, he added, "Say, Mattie, could you let me have a loaf of bread?

I've got a habit of wanting something to eat in the middle of the night."

"Certainly! Don't you want some b.u.t.ter with it? Here, I'll fix it for you on a plate."

"No, don't waste dish-washing--I'll show you how to fix it." He cut the loaf of bread in half, pulled out a portion of the soft part and filled the hole with b.u.t.ter. "There we are, and nothing to bother with afterwards."

"That's a right smart notion, Will--but you'll want a knife."

In answer he drew out a leather case from his breast pocket and opened it. Within was knife, fork, spoon and two flat boxes for salt and pepper. "You see I'm fixed," said he.

"Isn't that a cute trick!" she cried admiringly. "You're ready for most anything."

"Sure," said Red. "Now, good night, old lady!" He bent down in so natural a fashion that Miss Mattie had kissed him before she knew what she was going to do.

Down to the barn, through the soft June evening, went Red, whistling a Mexican love song most melodiously.

Miss Mattie stood in the half-opened door and listened. Without was balm and starlight and the spirit of flowers, breathed out in odours. The quaint and pretty tune rose and fell, quavered, lilted along as it listed without regard for law and order. It struck Miss Mattie to the heart. Her girlhood, with its misty dreams of happiness, came back to her on the wings of music.

"Isn't that a sweet tune," she said, with a lump in her throat.

She went up into her room and sat down a moment in confusion, trying to grasp the reality of all that had happened. In the middle of the belief that these things were not so, came the regret of a sensitive mind for errors committed. She remembered with a sudden sinking, that she had not thanked him for the necklace--and the money lay even now on the parlor table, where he had cast it!

This added the physical fear of thieves. Down she went and got the money, counted out, to her unmitigated astonishment, five hundred dollars and thrust it beneath her pillow with a shiver. She wished she had thought to tell him to take care of it--but suppose the thieves were to fall on him as he slept? Red's friends would have spent their sympathy on the thieves. She rejoiced that the money was where it was. Then she tried to remember what she had said throughout the evening.

"Well, I suppose I must have acted like a ninny," she concluded.

"But isn't he just splendid!" and as Cousin Will's handsome face, with its daring, kind eyes, came to her vision she felt comforted.

"I don't believe but what he'll make every allowance for how excited I was," said she. "He seems to understand those things, for all he's such a large man. Well, it doesn't seem as if it could be true." With a half sigh Miss Mattie knelt and sent up her modest pet.i.tion to her Maker and got into her little white bed.