The Claim Jumpers Part 4

"Well!" said she impatiently, "why don't you say something? Why don't you take this stick? I don't want it. Men are so stupid!"

That last remark has been made many, many times, and yet it never fails of its effect, which is at once to invest the speaker with daintiness indescribable, and to thrust the man addressed into nether inferiority.

Bennington fell to its charm. He took the stake.

"Where does it belong?" he asked.

She pointed silently to a pile of stones. He deposited the stake in its proper place, and returned to find her seated on the ground, plucking a handful of the leaves of a little erect herb that grew abundantly in the hollow. These she rubbed together and held to her face inside the sunbonnet.

"Who are you, anyway?" asked Bennington abruptly, as he returned.

"D' you ever see this before?" she inquired irrelevantly, looking up with her eyes as she leaned over the handful. "Good for colds. Makes your nose feel all funny and p.r.i.c.kly."

She turned her hands over and began to drop the leaves one by one.

Bennington caught himself watching her with fascinated interest in silence. He began to find this one of her most potent charms--the faculty of translating into a grace so exquisite as almost to realize the fabled poetry of motion, the least shrug of her shoulders, the smallest crook of her finger, the slightest toss of her small, well-balanced head. She looked up.

"Want to smell?" she inquired, and held out her hands with a pretty gesture.

Not knowing what else to do, Bennington stepped forward obediently and stooped over. The two little palms held a single crushed bit of the herb in their cup. They were soft, pink little palms, all wrinkled, like crumpled rose leaves. Bennington stooped to smell the herb; instead, he kissed the palms.

The girl sprang to her feet with one indignant motion and faced him.

The eyes now flashed blue flame, and Bennington for the first time noticed what had escaped him before--that the forehead was broad and thoughtful, and that above it the hair, instead of being blonde and curly and sparkling with golden radiance, was of a peculiar wavy brown that seemed sometimes full of light and sometimes l.u.s.treless and black, according as it caught the direct rays of the sun or not. Then he appreciated his offence.

"Sir!" she exclaimed, and turned away with a haughty shoulder.

"And we've never been introduced!" she said, half to herself, but her face was now concealed, so that Bennington could not see she laughed.

She marched stiffly down the hill. Bennington turned to follow her, although the action was entirely mechanical, and he had no definite idea in doing so.

"Don't you dare, sir!" she cried.

So he did not dare.

This vexed her for a moment. Then, having gone quite out of sight, she sank down and laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks.

"I didn't think he knew enough!" she said, with a final hysterical chuckle.

This first impression of the Mountain Flower, Bennington would have been willing to acknowledge, was quite complicated enough, but he was destined to further surprises.

When he returned to the Holy Smoke camp he found Old Mizzou in earnest conversation with a peculiar-looking stranger, whose hand he was promptly requested to shake.

The stranger was a tall, scraggly individual, dressed in the usual flannel shirt and blue jeans, the latter tucked into rusty cowhide boots. Bennington was interested in him because he was so phenomenally ugly. From the collar of his shirt projected a lean, sinewy neck, on which the too-abundant skin rolled and wrinkled in a dark red, wind-roughened manner particularly disagreeable to behold. The neck supported a small head. The face was wizened and tanned to a dark mahogany colour. It was ornamented with a grizzled goatee.

The man smoked a stub pipe. His remarks were emphasized by the gestures of a huge and gnarled pair of hands.

"Mr. Lawton is from Old Mizzou, too, afore he moved to Illinoy,"

commented Davidson. One became aware, from the loving tones in which he p.r.o.nounced the two words, whence he derived his sobriquet.

Lawton expressed the opinion that Chillicothe, of that State, was the finest town on top of earth.

Bennington presumed it might be, and then opportunely bethought him of a bottle of Canadian Club, which, among other necessary articles, he had brought with him from New York. This he produced. The old Missourians brightened; Davidson went into the cabin after gla.s.ses and a corkscrew. He found the corkscrew all right, but apparently had some difficulty in regard to the gla.s.ses. They could hear him calling vociferously for Mrs. Arthur. Mrs. Arthur had gone to the spring for water. In a few moments Old Mizzou appeared in the doorway exceedingly red of face.

"Consarn them women folks!" he grumbled, depositing the tin cups on the porch. "They locks up an' conceals things most d.a.m.nable. Ain't a tumbler in th' place."

"These yar is all right," a.s.sured Lawton consolingly, picking up one of the cups and examining the bottom of it with great care.

"I reckon they'll hold the likker, anyhow," agreed Davidson.

They pa.s.sed the bottle politely to de Laney, and the latter helped himself. For his part, he was glad the tin cups had been necessary, for it enabled him to conceal the smallness of his dose. Lawton filled his own up to the brim; Davidson followed suit.

"Here's how!" observed the latter, and the two old turtlebacks drank the raw whisky down, near a half pint of it, as though it had been so much milk.

Bennington fairly gasped with astonishment. "Don't you ever take any water?" he asked.

They turned slowly. Old Mizzou looked him in the eye with glimmering reproach.

"Not, if th' whisky's good, sonny," said he impressively.

"Wall," commented Lawton, after a pause, "that is a good drink. Reckon I must be goin'."

"Stay t' grub!" urged Old Mizzou heartily.

"Folks waitin'. Remember!"

They looked at Bennington and chuckled a little, to that young man's discomfort.

"Lawton's a d.a.m.n fine fella'," said Old Mizzou with emphasis.

Bennington thought, with a shudder, of the loose-skinned, turkey-red neck, and was silent.

After supper Bennington and Old Mizzou played cribbage by the light of a kerosene lamp.

"While I was hunting claims this afternoon," said the Easterner suddenly, "I ran across a mighty pretty girl."

"Yas?" observed Old Mizzou with indifference. "What fer a gal was it?"

"She didn't look as if she belonged around here. She was a slender girl, very pretty, with a pink dress on."

"Ain't no female strangers yar-abouts. Blue eyes?"

"Yes."

"An' ha'r that sometimes looks black an' sometimes yaller-brown?"

"Yes, that's the one all right. Who is she?"

"Oh, that!" said Old Mizzou with slight interest, "that's Bill Lawton's girl. Live's down th' gulch. He's th' fella' that was yar afore grub," he explained.

For a full minute Bennington stared at the cards in his hand. The patriarch became impatient.

"Yore play, sonny," he suggested.