The Huntress Part 20

This reminded him that he had every reason to be angry with her--though he had temporarily forgotten the reasons. He turned his face away, frowning, blushing again, the picture of anger. It was partly directed against himself, that he should have so little self-command.

"No!" he replied stiffly.

"Then why you mak' wrinkles in your face to me?" asked Bela.

"Ah, cut it out!" he said, exasperated. "Never mind my face! What did you want to say?"

"I can't say it when I think you mad," murmured Bela.

"I'm not," said Sam. "I want to be your friend," he added. "You can't always regulate your face."

There was another silence. Bela studied his averted face with a curious wistfulness. He was very difficult to handle.

"You want to see my cache?" she asked abruptly, at last. "Where I stay?"

Sam's heart leaped up. Old Prudence shook his staff in vain. "Yes, if you like," he said breathlessly, scowling harder than ever.

She scrambled to her feet. "Stay here," she said. "I come back soon."

She disappeared around the willows without vouchsafing any further explanation. Sam lay as she left him, scowling at the water, very much confused as to his internal sensations.

As it happened before, no sooner was the intoxication of her presence removed than he began to berate himself for his weakness.

"Weak as water!" he mentally scolded himself. "Just because she's pretty, you forget every blame thing! There's a whole lot of funny business about her that needs explaining. But you swallow it whole.

What business have you got fooling with any girl, anyhow? You've got other problems to solve. For G.o.d's sake, take a brace!"

As he was communing with himself in this fashion, the graceful prow of a dugout poked itself around a bend of the little gra.s.s-fringed ca.n.a.l below. Presently followed, kneeling in the stern, Bela with her quiet face and glowing eyes, wielding a paddle with inimitable grace.

She floated toward him noiselessly, bringing the boat's nose this way and that with deft turns of the wrist. She was as harmonious against the background of brown water and green gra.s.s as a wild duck.

It was such an intimate, cosy little stream; the gra.s.sy banks seemed to embrace the canoe as they let it pa.s.s. So charming was the sight that Sam forgot his prudence and broke into a beaming smile.

She brought her little craft to a stop before him.

"Get in," she said, pointing to the bow. "Tak' care!"

It was Sam's first experience with a native craft. It looked cranky.

He let himself carefully over the bank on his stomach. Finding the floor of the dugout with his feet, he gingerly stood up. It staggered alarmingly under him, and he hastily embraced the bank again, unhappily conscious of a lack of dignity.

A great piece of the sod came away in his hands. He lost his balance and was catapulted overboard. He landed in the water in a sitting position, wearing an absurd expression of surprise. Bela, seeing what was coming, saved herself from a like fate by throwing herself forward in the canoe.

Sam's streaming head emerged from the creek with the same look of surprise on his face. The water reached to his waist. Bela looked at him, and went off into a rippling peal of laughter.

Sam blinked and scowled and dashed the water out of his eyes. His face offered a study in varying expressions. At first he tried to laugh with her, but her laughter was intolerable. Suddenly he exploded:

"Ah, cut it out! Sounds like a chicken!"

The angrier he got the harder Bela was obliged to laugh. It had an apologetic ring, but the tears rolled down her cheeks.

Sam began to think she had done it on purpose, and said so.

"No! No!" gasped Bela. She pointed across the creek. "Shallow there.

You can step in easy."

Sam, full of dignity, waded out and started home.

Bela was suddenly sobered. "Wait!" she cried. "Ain't you comin' wit'

me?"

He affected not to hear her.

"I sorry I laugh," she said, genuinely distressed. "But--but you look so fonny!" The unruly laughter threatened to escape her again. "Please come back, Sam."

"I can't come like this, can I?" he said scornfully.

"Sure!" she said. "I mak' good fire. You soon dry off."

He gradually allowed himself to be persuaded. Finally, with dignity somewhat marred by his bedraggled appearance, he took his place very gingerly in the bow. Bela bit her lips to keep the laughter in.

"I not want to laugh," she said naively. "Somesing inside mak' me.

Your face look so fonny when you sit down in the water! Laka bear when him hear a noise--oh!"

Sam glowered in silence.

She exerted herself to charm away the black looks. "See papa mus'rat,"

she said, pointing. "Sit so stiff under the leaves, think we see not'ing. Sit up wit' hands on his stomach lak little ol' man and look mad. Look lak Musq'oosis."

Meanwhile she was nosing the dugout cleverly around the gra.s.sy bends of the tiny stream and under the willows. It was like a toy boat on a fairy river. Sometimes the willows interlaced overhead, making a romantic green tunnel to be explored.

Finally, as they drew near the woods at the head of the meadow, she turned her boat into a narrow backwater starred with little lilies, and drove it forward till it grounded as snugly as a ship in its berth.

Leading the way up the gra.s.sy bank, she pushed under the willows and introduced Sam into a veritable _t.i.tania's_ bower, completely encircled by the springing bushes. This was her cache.

Her blankets lay neatly rolled within a tarpaulin. There was her grub-box with stones upon the cover to keep out four-footed prowlers.

Her spare moccasins were hanging from the branches to dry.

She made Sam sit down, in a patch of goodly sunshine, and in a jiffy had a crackling fire of dry willow blazing before him. He took off his coat and hung it to dry.

"Tak' off your shirt, too," she said. "Dry quicker."

Sam shook his head, blushing.

"Go on," she said coolly. "I guess you got ot'er shirt on, too."

The blue flannel shirt joined the coat beside the fire.

She handed him a towel to dry his hair with. Afterward she produced a comb.