The Danger Mark Part 85

"That isn't a very big wild boar," observed Scott, critically eyeing the saddle.

"It's a two-year-old," admitted Geraldine. "I only shot him because Lacy said we were out of meat."

"_You_ killed him!" exclaimed Duane.

She gave him a condescending glance; and Scott laughed.

"She and Miller save this establishment from daily famine," he said.

"You have no idea how many deer and boar it takes to keep the game within limits and ourselves and domestics decently fed. Just look at the heads up there on the walls." He waved his arm around the oak wainscoting, where, at intervals, the great furry heads of wild boar loomed in the candlelight, ears and mane on end, eyes and white sabre-like tusks gleaming. "Those are Geraldine's," he said with brotherly pride.

"I want to shoot one, too!" said Duane firmly. "Do you think I'm going to let my affianced put it all over me like that?"

"_Isn't_ it like a man?" said Geraldine, appealing to Kathleen. "They simply can't endure it if a girl ventures compet.i.tion----"

"You talk like a suffragette," observed her brother. "Duane doesn't care how many piglings you shoot; he wants to go out alone and get that old grandfather of all boars, the one which kept you on the mountain for the last three days----"

"_My_ boar!" she cried indignantly. "I won't have it! I won't let him.

Oh, Duane, _am_ I a pig to want to manage this affair when I've been after him all winter?--and he's the biggest, grayest, wiliest thing you ever saw--a perfectly enormous silvery fellow with two pairs of j.a.panese sabre-sheaths for tusks and a mane like a lion, and a double bend in his nose and----"

Shouts of laughter checked her flushed animation.

"Of course I'm not going to sneak out all alone and pot your old pig,"

said Duane; "I'll find one for myself on some other mountain----"

"But I want you to shoot with me!" she exclaimed in dismay. "I wanted you to see me stalk this boar and mark him down, and have you kill him.

Oh, Duane, that was the fun. I've been saving him, I really have. Miller knows that I had a shot once--a pretty good one--and wouldn't take it. I killed a four-year near Hurryon instead, just to save that one----"

"You're the finest little sport in the land!" said Duane, "and we are just tormenting you. Of course I'll go with you, but I'm blessed if I pull trigger on that gentleman pig----"

"You _must_! I've saved him. Scott, make him say he will! Kathleen, this is really too annoying! A girl plans and plans and pictures to herself the happiness and surprise she's going to give a man, and he's too stupid to comprehend----"

"Meaning me!" observed Duane. "But I leave it to you, Scott; a man can't do such a thing decently----"

"Oh, you silly people," laughed Kathleen; "you may never again see that boar. Denman, keeper at Northgate when Mr. Atwood owned the estate, told me that everybody had been after that boar and n.o.body ever got a shot at him. Which," she added, "does not surprise me, as there are some hundred square miles of mountain and forest on this estate, and Scott is lazy and aging very fast."

"By the way, Sis, you say you got a four-year near The Green Pa.s.s?"

She nodded, busy with her bon-bon.

"Was it exciting?" asked Duane, secretly eaten up with pride over her achievements and sportsmanship.

"No, not very." She went on with her bon-bon, then glanced up at her brother, askance, like a bad child afraid of being reported.

"Old Miller is so fussy," she said--"the old, spoilt tyrant! He is really very absurd sometimes."

"Oho!" said Scott suspiciously, "so Miller is coming to me again!"

"He--I'm afraid he is. Did you," appealing to Kathleen, "ever know a more obstinate, unreasoning old man----"

"Geraldine! What did you do!" she exclaimed.

"Yes," said Scott, annoyed, "what the deuce have you been up to now?

Miller is perfectly right; he's an old hunter and knows his business, and when he comes to me and complains that you take fool risks, he's doing his duty!"

He turned to Duane:

"That idiot girl," he said, nodding toward his abashed sister, "knocked over a boar last month, ran up to look at his tusks, and was hurled into a snowdrift by the beast, who was only creased. He went for Miller, too, and how he and my sister ever escaped without a terrible slashing before Geraldine shot the brute, n.o.body knows.... There's his head up there--the wicked-looking one over the fireplace."

"That's not good sportsmanship," said Duane gravely.

Geraldine hung her head, colouring.

"I know it; I mean to keep cool; truly, I do. But things happen so quickly----"

"Why are you afraid Miller is going to complain?" interrupted her brother.

"Scott--it wasn't anything very much--that is, I didn't think so. You'd have done it--you know it's a point of honour to track down wounded game."

She turned to Duane:

"The Green Pa.s.s feeding-ground was about a thousand yards ahead in the alders, and I made Miller wait while I crept up. There was a fine boar feeding about two hundred yards off, and I fired and he went over like a cat in a fit, and then up and off, and I after him, and Miller after me, telling me to look out."

She laughed excitedly, and made a little gesture. "That's just why I ran--to look out!--and the trail was deep and strong and not much blood-dust. I was so vexed, so distressed, because it was almost sunset and the boar seemed to be going strongly and faster than a grayhound.

And suddenly Miller shouted something about 'scrub hemlock'--I didn't know he meant for me to halt!--So I--I"--she looked anxiously at her brother--"I jumped into the scrub and kicked him up before I knew it--and he--he tore my kilts--just one or two tears, but it didn't wound me, Scott, it only just made my leg black and blue--and, anyway, I got him----"

"Oh, Lord," groaned her brother, "don't you know enough to reconnoitre a wounded boar in the scrub? _I_ don't know why he didn't rip you. Do you want to be killed by a _pig_? What's the use of being all cut and bitten to pieces, anyway?"

"No use, dear," she admitted so meekly that Duane scarcely managed to retain his gravity.

She came over and humbly slipped her arm through his as they all rose from the table.

"Don't think I'm a perfect idiot," she said under her breath; "it's only inexperience under excitement. You'll see that I've learned a lot when we go out together. Miller will admit that I'm usually prudent, because, two weeks ago, I hit a boar and he charged me, and my rifle jammed, and I went up a tree! Wasn't that prudent?"

"Perfectly," he said gravely; "only I'd feel safer if you went up a tree in the first place and remained there. What a child you are, anyway!"

"Do you know," she confided in him, "I am a regular baby sometimes. I do the silliest things in the woods. Once I gave Miller the slip and went off and built a doll's house out of snow and made three snow dolls and played with them! Isn't that the silliest thing? And another time a boar came out by the Westgate Oaks, and he was a black, hairy fellow, and so funny with his chin-whiskers all dotted with icicles that I began to say aloud:

'I swear by the beard On my chinny-chin-chin--'

And of course he was off before I could pull trigger for laughing.

Isn't that foolish?"

"Adorably," he whispered. "You are finding the little girl in the garden, Geraldine."

She looked up at him, serious, wistful.

"It's the boy who found her; I only helped. But I want to bring her home all alone."