The Claim Jumpers Part 6

There was a short silence.

"Can't you think of anything you've done?" asked the voice, insinuatingly.

Bennington's conscience-stricken memory stirred. It did not seem so ridiculous, under the direct charm of the fresh young voice that came down through the summer air from above, like a dove's note from a treetop, to apologize to Lawton's girl. The incongruity now was in forcing into this Arcadian incident anything savouring of conventionality at all. It had been so idyllic, this talk of the sun fairy and the cloud; so like a pa.s.sage from an old book of legends, this dainty episode in the great, strong, Western breezes, under the great, strong, Western sky. Everything should be perfect, not to be blamed.

"Do sun fairies accept apologies?" he asked presently, in a subdued voice.

"They might."

"This particular sun fairy is offered one by a man who is sorry."

"Is it a good big one?"

"Indeed, yes."

The head appeared over the edge of the rock, inspected him gravely for a moment, and was withdrawn.

"Then it is accepted," said the voice.

"Thank you!" he replied sincerely. "And now are you going to let down your rope ladder, or whatever it is? I really want to talk to you."

"You are so persistent!" cried the petulant voice, "and so foolish! It is like a man to spoil things by questionings!"

He suddenly felt the truth of this. One can not talk every day to a sun fairy, and the experience can never be repeated. He settled back on the rock.

"Pardon me, Sun Fairy!" he cried again. "Rope ladders, indeed, to one who has but to close her eyes and she finds herself on a downy cloud near the sun. My mortality blinded me!"

"Now you are a nice boy," she approved more contentedly, "and as a reward you may ask me one question."

"All right," he agreed; and then, with instinctive tact, "What do you see up there?"

He could hear her clap her hands with delight, and he felt glad that he had followed his impulse to ask just this question instead of one more personal and more in line with his curiosity.

"Listen!" she began. "I see pines, many pines, just the tops of them, and they are all waving in the breeze. Did you ever see trees from on top? They are quite different. And out from the pines come great round hills made all of stone. I think they look like skulls. Then there are breathless descents where the pines fall away. Once in a while a little white road flashes out."

"Yes," urged Bennington, as the voice paused. "And what else do you see?"

"I see the prairie, too," she went on half dreamily. "It is brown now, but the green is beginning to shine through it just a very little. And out beyond there is a sparkle. That is the Cheyenne. And beyond that there is something white, and that is the Bad Lands."

The voice broke off with a happy little laugh.

Bennington saw the scene as though it lay actually spread out before him. There was something in the choice of the words, clearcut, decisive, and descriptive; but more in the exquisite modulations of the voice, adding here a tint, there a shade to the picture, and casting over the whole that poetic glamour which, rarely, is imitated in grosser materials by Nature herself, when, just following sunset, she suffuses the landscape with a mellow afterglow.

The head, sunbonneted, reappeared perked inquiringly sideways.

"h.e.l.lo, stranger!" it called with a nasal inflection, "how air ye? Do y' think minin' is goin' t' pan out well this yar spring?" Then she caught sight of his weapon. "What are you going to shoot?" she asked with sudden interest.

"I thought I might see a deer."

"Deer! hoh!" she cried in lofty scorn, rea.s.suming her nasal tone. "You is sh.o.r.e a tenderfoot! Don' you-all know that blastin' scares all th'

deer away from a minin' camp?"

Bennington looked confused. "No, I hadn't thought of that," he confessed stoutly enough.

"I kind of like to shoot!" said she, a little wistfully. "What sort of a gun is it?"

"A Savage smokeless," answered Bennington perfunctorily.

"One of the thirty-calibres?" inquired the sunbonnet with new interest.

"Yes," gasped Bennington, astonished at so much feminine knowledge of firearms.

"Oh! I'd like to see it. I never saw any of those. May I shoot it, just once?"

"Of course you may. More than once. Shall I come up?"

"No. I'll come down. You sit right still on that rock."

The sunbonnet disappeared, and there ensued a momentary commotion on the other side of the dike. In an instant the girl came around the corner, picking her way over the loose blocks of stone. With the finger-tips of either hand she held the pink starched skirt up, displaying a neat little foot in a heavy little shoe. Diagonally across the skirt ran two irregular brown stains. She caught him looking at them.

"Naughty, naughty!" said she, glancing down at them with a grimace.

She dropped her skirt, and stood up beside him with a pretty shake of the shoulders.

"Now let's see it," she begged.

She examined the weapon with much interest, throwing down and back the lever in a manner that showed she was accustomed at least to the old-style arm.

"How light it is!" she commented, squinting through the sights.

"Doesn't it kick awfully?"

"Not a bit. Smokeless powder, you know."

"Of course. What'll we shoot at?"

Bennington fumbled in his pockets and produced an envelope.

"How's this?" he asked.

She seized it and ran like an antelope--with the same _gliding_ motion--to a tree about thirty paces distant, on which she pinned the bit of paper. They shot. Bennington hit the paper every time. The girl missed it once. At this she looked a little vexed.

"You are either very rude or very sincere," was her comment.

"You're the best shot I ever saw----"

"Now don't dare say 'for a girl!'" she interrupted quickly. "What's the prize?"

"Was this a match?"