The Golden Woman Part 38

Besides, there was that insulted woman. She had accused me of the murder. It was quite useless to go back. It meant throwing away my life. It was not worth it. So I came here."

Buck offered no comment for a long time. Comment seemed unnecessary.

The Padre watched him with eyes striving to conceal their anxiety.

Finally, Buck put a question that seemed unnecessary.

"Why d'you tell me now?" he asked. His pipe had gone out and he pushed it into his hip-pocket.

The Padre's smile was rather drawn.

"Because of you. Because of my friend's--baby girl."

"How?"

"The child's name was Joan. Joan Rest is the daughter of Charles Stanmore--the man I am accused of murdering. This afternoon I advised her to have some one to live with her--a relative. She is sending for the only one she has. It is her aunt, Stanmore's housekeeper--the woman I insulted past forgiveness."

Not for an instant did Buck's expression change.

"Why did you advise--that?" he asked.

The Padre's eyes suddenly lit with a subdued fire, and his answer came with a pa.s.sion such as Buck had never witnessed in him before.

"Why? Why? Because you love this little Joan, daughter of my greatest friend. Because I owe it to you--to her--to face my accusers and prove my innocence."

The two men looked long and earnestly into each other's eyes. Then the Padre's voice, sharp and strident, sounded through the little room.

"Well?"

Buck rose from his seat.

"Let's eat, Padre," he said calmly. "I'm mighty hungry." Then he came a step nearer and gripped the elder man's hand. "I'm right with you, when things--get busy."

CHAPTER XXIV

BEASLEY PLAYS THE GAME

Joan lost no time in carrying out the Padre's wishes. Such was her changed mood, such was the strength of her new-born hope, such was the wonderful healing his words had administered to her young mind, that, for the time at least, her every cloud was dispersed, lost in a perfect sheen of mental calm.

The change occurred from the moment of her return home. So changed indeed was she that her rough but faithful housekeeper, dull of perception to all those things outside the narrow focus of her life in domestic service, caught a faint glimpse of it without anything approaching a proper understanding. She realized an added energy, which seriously affected her own methods of performing her duties and caused her to make a mental note that her young mistress was a.s.suming "airs" which did not fit in with her inexperience of those things amidst which she, the farm-wife, had floundered all her life. She heard her moving about the house, her joy and hope finding outlet in song such as had never echoed through the place before. And promptly she set this new phase down to the result of her a.s.sociations with the young "scallawag" Buck. She noted, too, an added care in her toilet, and this inspired the portentous belief that she was "a-carryin' on"

with the same individual. But when it came to a general "turning-out"

of the living-rooms of the house, a matter which added an immense amount of effort to her own daily duties, her protest found immediate vent in no uncertain terms.

It came while the midday dinner was in preparation. It rose to boiling-point amidst the steam from her cooking pots. Finally it bubbled over, much as might one of her own kettles.

Joan was standing in the kitchen giving her orders preparatory to departing to the camp, whither she was going to mail her letter to her aunt at Beasley's store.

"You see," she was saying, "I'll have to make some changes in the house. I'm expecting my aunt from St. Ellis to come and stay with me.

She won't be able to do with the things which have been sufficient for me. She will have my room. I shall buy new furniture for it. I shall get Beasley to order it for me from Leeson b.u.t.te. Then I shall use the little room next yours. And while we're making these changes we'll have a general housecleaning. You might begin this afternoon on the room I am going to move into."

The old woman turned with a scarlet face. It may have been the result of the heat of cooking. Then again it may have had other causes.

"An' when, may I ast, do I make bricks?" she inquired with ponderous sarcasm.

Joan stood abashed for a moment. So unexpected was the retort, so much was it at variance with her own mood that she had no answer ready, and the other was left with the field to herself.

"Now jest look right here, Miss Joan--ma'm," she cried, flourishing a cooking spoon to point her words. "I ain't a woman of many words by no means, as you might say, but what I sure says means what I mean, no more an' no less, as the sayin' is. I've kep' house all my life, an' I reckon ther's no female from St. Ellis ken show _me_. I've bin a wife an' a mother, an' raised my offsprings till they died. I did fer a man as knew wot's wot in my George D. An' if I suffered fer it, it was jest because I know'd my duty an' did it, no matter the consequences to me an' mine. I tell you right here, an' I'm a plain-spoken woman who's honest, as the sayin' is, I turn out no house, nor room, nor nothin' of an afternoon. I know my duty an' I do it. Ther's a chapter of the Bible fer every day o' my life, an' it needs digestin'

good--with my dinner. An' I don't throw it up fer n.o.body."

"But--but----" Joan began to protest, but the other brushed objection aside with an added flourish of her spoon.

"It ain't no use fer you to persuade, nor cajole, nor argify. What I says goes fer jest so long as I'm willin' to accept your ter'ble ordinary wages, which I say right here won't be fer a heap long time if things don't change some. I'm a respectable woman an' wife that was, but isn't, more's the pity, an' it ain't my way to chase around the house a-screechin' at the top o' my voice jest as though I'd come from a cirkis. You ain't got your mind on your work. You ain't got your heart in it, singin' all over the house, like--like one o' them brazen cirkis gals. No, nor wot with scallawags a-comin' around sparkin' you, an' the boys shootin' theirselves dead over you, an'

folks in the camp a-callin' of you a Jony gal, I don't guess I'll need to stay an' receive con--contamination, as you might say. That's how I'm feelin'; an' bein' a plain woman, an' a 'specterble widow of George D., who was a man every inch of him, mind you, if he had his failin's, chasin' other folks' cattle, an' not readin' their brands right, why, out it comes plump like a bad tooth you're mighty glad to be rid of, as the sayin' is."

The woman turned back to her cooking. Her manner was gravely disapproving, and she had managed to convey a sting which somehow hurt Joan far more than she was willing to admit. Her refusal to undertake the added work was merely churlish and disconcerting, but those other remarks raised a decided anger not untouched by a feeling of shame and hurt. But Joan did not give way to any of these feelings in her reply.

She did the only dignified thing possible.

"You need not wait until your dissatisfaction with me overwhelms you, Mrs. Ransford," she said promptly. "I engaged you by the month, and I shall be glad if you will leave me to-day month." Then she added with a shadow of reproach: "Really, I thought you were made of better stuff."

But her att.i.tude had a far different result to what she had expected.

She turned to go, preferring to avoid a further torrent of abuse from the harsh old woman, when the spoon flourished in the air as the widow of George D. swung round from her pots with an amazing alacrity.

"You ain't chasin' me out, Miss Joan--ma'm?" she cried aghast, her round eyes rolling in sudden distress. "Why, miss--ma'm, I never meant no harm--that I didn't. Y' see I was jest sore hearin' them sayin'

things 'bout you in the camp, an' you a-singin' made me feel you didn't care nuthin'. An' these scallawags a-comin' around a-sa.s.sin'

you, an' a-kissin' you, sort o' set my blood boilin'. No, miss--ma'm, you ain't a-goin' to chase me out! You wouldn't now, would you?" she appealed. "Jest say you won't, an' I'll have the house turned sheer upside down 'fore you know wher' you are. There, jest think of it. You may need some un to ke'p that scallawag Buck in his place. How you goin' to set about him without me around? I ain't quittin' this day month, am I, miss--ma'm?"

The old woman's abject appeal was too much for Joan's soft heart, and her smiling eyes swiftly told the waiting penitent that the sentence was rescinded. Instantly the shadow was lifted from the troubled face.

"It was your own fault, Mrs. Ransford," Joan said, struggling to conceal her amus.e.m.e.nt. "However, if you want to stay----Well, I must drive into the camp before dinner, and we'll see about the little room when I return."

"That we will, mum--miss. That we will," cried the farm-wife in cordial relief as Joan hurried out of the room.

Joan drew up at Beasley's store just as that individual was preparing to adjourn his labors for dinner. The man saw her coming from the door of his newly-completed barn, and softly whistled to himself at the sight of the slim, girlish figure sitting in the wagon behind the heavy team of horses he had so long known as the Padre's.

This was only the third time he had seen the girl abroad in the camp, and he wondered at the object of her visit now.

Whatever malice he bore her, and his malice was of a nature only to be understood by his warped mind, his admiration was none the less for it. Not a detail of her appearance escaped his quick, l.u.s.tful eyes.

Her dainty white shirt-waist was covered by the lightest of dust coats, and her pretty face was shadowed by a wide straw hat which protected it from the sun's desperate rays. Her deeply-fringed eyes shone out from the shade, and set the blood pulsing through the man's veins. He saw the perfect oval of her fair face, with its ripe, full lips and delicate, small nose, so perfect in shape, so regular in its setting under her broad open brow. Her wonderful hair, that ruddy-tinted ma.s.s of burnished gold which was her most striking feature, made him suck in a whistling breath of sensual appreciation.

Without a moment's hesitation, hat in hand he went to meet her.

As he came up his foxy eyes were alight with what he intended for a grin of amiability. Whatever his peculiarly vindictive nature he was more than ready to admit to himself the girl's charms.

"Say, Miss Golden," he cried, purposely giving her the name the popular voice had christened her, "it's real pleasant of you to get around. Guess the camp's a mighty dull show without its lady citizens.

Maybe you'll step right up into my storeroom. I got a big line of new goods in from Leeson. Y' see the saloon ain't for such as you," he laughed. "Guess it does for the boys all right. I'm building a slap-up store next--just dry goods an' notions. Things are booming right now.