The Westerners Part 16

"Yere, you fellers!" he shouted. "What 're y' standin' around yere for? Take them hosses up in th' brush behind my shack, an' cut th'

lady some timber!"

"Go ahead, boys," said Molly. She slid down from the horse. "I'll be 'long in a minute. I'm a little scairt."

They clambered on up the hill, grinning. A clank of chains told when they had stopped. A moment later the ring of axes was heard. The Kid and the rifle had disappeared in the direction of Peter's rapid and scrambling exit. The boy and the dog hated each other apparently, and yet they could not bear to be long apart.

The girl sat down on the ground and made Billy talk about himself, which was the obvious thing to do. Billy was one of those expansive sanguine individuals without much ability in what we call practical affairs, and yet with a certain dexterity in gathering unto himself the means with which to be impractical. Because of this, he had a good opinion of himself, which at the same time he was much given to doubting. Molly induced him to flatter himself, and then deftly agreed with him.

After a time they went up through the pines to where the workmen were felling trees. Toward noon the whole party returned to town, dragging behind the horses a number of tree trunks chained together with steel chains. These were slid to the site of the house, and left in the road.

The men in camp had nearly finished their job of levelling up.

Cheyenne Harry had worked hard with his own hands. In the shade of the Little Nugget, Black Mike and Graham sat, chair tilted, contemplatively watching the process. Through the open door could be perceived a gleam of white that indicated Frosty; otherwise the street of the town was empty. The prospectors were all out in the hills, preparing a suitable showing for the inspection of the boom which they felt sure must be close at hand.

The united forces rolled the foundation timbers in place, straining, sweating, grunting, for it was no easy work. The sun stood straight overhead. After a little, observing this, Molly called a halt for the noon hour. To each man she addressed a word of thanks, and a reminder that the job was but half over. The reminder however was unnecessary, for, under the stimulus of concerted effort, public sentiment had crystallized into the opinion that the housing of a "first woman" was a public duty.

In a few moments the street was deserted, save for Cheyenne Harry and the two men under the eaves of the Little Nugget. From the chimneys of some of the cabins the smoke of cooking arose.

Cheyenne Harry, volatile, changeable, fickle, stood still in the middle of the dusty road and cursed himself for a fool. He had blistered his hands, overheated himself most uncomfortably, and made his muscles ache with unwonted lifting. For what? For a girl who, the evening before, had boxed his ears and stolen his gun. Fascinated by a pair of pretty eyes and a petty display of courage, he had worked himself like a horse. He dropped his head in a brown study, moodily digging away at the ground with his heel, ruminating bitterly over his egregious folly.

"Thank you very much," said a soft little voice, breaking in on his irritation like a silver bell on a moody silence.

He raised his head, and beheld Molly standing before him, looking up at him with grave sweet eyes. There was a hint of weariness in her drooping eyelids that appealed subtly to his own weary spirit. She seemed, standing there in the deserted street, to typify for the moment the aloofness of his mood.

"You've been good to me this morning," she went on in a quiet monotone, "mighty good!"

She stepped nearer to him until her breast almost touched his.

"I want you to look up at that pine over there until I tell you you can quit," she said as gravely as a child about to bestow a sugar plum.

Harry turned his eyes to the hill.

She stooped swiftly and drew the band of a holster and belt around his hips. Unmindful of his promise, he looked down on her in surprise.

"Don't be mad," she pleaded. "I got Frosty to get it for me from your shack, so I could put your gun in it. And now you'll wear it for me, won't you? I said you couldn't have it till you told me you were sorry. Well, you have told me you were sorry, in the best way--by doing something. I know how it is. I've had to work. It's no fun to be laughed at; and you'll always be as good and brave as you were this morning, won't you?"

A rush as of something beautiful swept over him. His eyes filled and he tried to speak, but turned away.

"Now, run along," she exclaimed gayly, giving him a little pat on the shoulder, "and don't forget you've got a job for this afternoon!"

She stood for a moment in the middle of the road watching him.

Graham, sitting under the eaves of the Little Nugget, surveyed the little scene with cynical eyes. He watched the girl walk toward the saloon. She had taken off her sunbonnet and the noon sun was gilding her hair. She was pensive and thoughtful, and looked down. He told himself that she did this because it was a becoming pose. Graham was the sort of man whom pretence, craftiness, guile, always roused to arms. So long as he was antagonized, or thought he was, his bitterness and scorn were unappeasable; but once his ascendancy was freely acknowledged, he threw away its advantages with the utmost generosity.

He thought he saw through this girl, and so he despised her and her tricks alike.

As she approached, Lafond arose and went inside the saloon, where he began to inquire of Frosty in regard to dinner. The girl sat down in the vacated chair. Beyond a curt little nod to Graham she did not notice his presence.

Over Tom Custer an eagle was wheeling slowly to and fro, barking with the mere delight of being on the wing. Molly fixed her eyes dreamily on the bird, but without apparent consciousness of more than the mere fact of its wide motion. Graham imperturbably whittled a pine stick, and whistled at the sky.

This state of affairs continued for some time.

"How do you keep the dirt from coming through the roof?" asked Molly suddenly, her mind, to all appearance, entirely on the work in hand.

Graham explained briefly.

"Thank you," said Molly.

After a few minutes more Graham shifted his knife into his left hand, and began idly to stab the bench with it. Several times he opened his mouth to speak.

"You've got him well trained," he observed finally, with a slight curl of the lip.

"Who? What do you mean?" she cried, genuinely surprised out of the indifference she had a.s.sumed.

"Him--Lafond. He knows when to go away. Why did you want to get rid of him?"

"I didn't want to get rid of him. It was so I could be alone."

"That's consistent! It was nothing of the kind. It was so you could be alone--with me."

She looked him over, flushing angrily. Then she deliberately turned her shoulder to him.

"You are very impudent," she remarked coldly. "You seem to forget that I don't even know you. I don't know why I sit here and listen, except that I am comfortable, and don't care to be driven away."

"You wanted to capture me some way or another," he went on musingly, catching a glimmer of the truth; "same as those poor fools out there in the sun. I'd just like to know how you meant to do it and what you'd have done to me. Would you have flattered me, or coaxed me, or what?"

The girl did not reply.

"How?" he urged, expecting an angry outburst, but profoundly indifferent to it.

"You are cruel," she answered softly, after a pause, "and very unjust."

Her cheeks were glowing and there was a glint in her eye, but he could not see that. "They are only kind and good, not fools."

"Of course they're good, but they are good because you fool them into it," persisted Graham, spitefully pressing home his point. "You want to win 'em all, just like a woman, but you're too clumsy about it.

Anybody can see through that sort of tommyrot, if he isn't a fool. So I call them fools, and I stick to it."

"With you it's different," she replied, hesitating almost before each word. "You ain't the same kind. I know it's foolish, but I can't help it, and I don't think I'm so much to blame. Perhaps I _am_ trying to make them like me. Is there so much harm in that? n.o.body has ever liked me before. I have no mother and no sisters--only Mike. I want to be liked, and--and--I'm _sorry_ if you don't think I ought to, but it can't be helped."

She looked out again at the eagle slowly circling over Tom Custer, with eyes vaguely troubled. Graham could examine her closely without the danger of detection. He did so.

There was something pathetically child-like about her after all, something delicate in the oval of her face and the sensitive modelling of her chin, which appealed to a man's protective instincts. Her eyes were so wide and blue and wistful, and again so pathetically young, like those of a little child gazing upon the shower-wet world from the safety of a window. Graham suddenly realized that this was no self-sufficient, capable woman whom he was so bluntly antagonizing, but only a pinafored innocent playing with forces of which she did not know the meaning. He began all at once to feel sorry for her. Against her probable future in this rough camp, how small the present looked, how little were her coquetries, her innocent wiles!

She sighed almost inaudibly. The eagle folded his wings and dropped like a plummet from the upper air, only to swoop upward on outspread pinions a moment later.

Graham began to be ashamed of himself. His thoughts took a new direction. He wondered what her previous history, her education, could have been. Her face was pure, her eyes clear. Could she have lived always with the half-breed? Both spoke English of an excellence beyond the common--in that country, at least. Then he began idly to watch the sunlight running nimbly up and down a single loose tress of her hair, as the wind lifted it and let it fall.

The girl turned and caught his eyes fairly.

"What is it?" she asked simply.