Part 14 (2/2)

The master however did not see but one thing. The girl who had only two days ago carelessly left it to him to explain a compromising situation to her mother--this girl who had precipitated him into a frontier fight to the peril of his position and her good name, was calmly eating ices with an available suitor without the least concern of the past! The connection was perhaps illogical, but it was unpleasant. It was the more awkward from the fact that he fancied that not only Rupert's beautiful eyes, but even the infant Johnny's round ones, were fixed upon him with an embarra.s.sed expression of hesitating and foreboding sympathy.

”I think Johnny believes what he says--don't you, Johnny?” he smiled with an a.s.sumption of cheerful ease, ”but I see no necessity just yet for binding Seth Davis over to keep the peace. Tell me about yourself, Rupe. I hope Uncle Ben doesn't think of changing his young tutor with his good fortune?”

”No, sir,” returned Rupert brightening; ”he promises to take me to Sacramento with him as his private secretary or confidential clerk, you know, ef--ef”--he hesitated again with very un-Rupert-like caution, ”ef things go as he wants 'em.” He stopped awkwardly and his brown eyes became clouded. ”Like ez not, Mr. Ford, he's only foolin'

me--and--HIMSELF.” The boy's eyes sought the master's curiously.

”I don't know about that,” returned Mr. Ford uneasily, with a certain recollection of Uncle Ben's triumph over his own incredulity; ”he surely hasn't shown himself a fool or a boaster so far. I consider your prospect a very fair one, and I wish you joy of it, my boy.” He ran his fingers through Rupert's curls in his old caressing fas.h.i.+on, the more tenderly perhaps that he fancied he still saw symptoms of stormy and wet weather in the boy's brown eyes. ”Run along home, both of you, and don't worry yourselves about me.”

He turned away, but had scarcely proceeded half a dozen yards before he felt a tug at his coat. Looking down he saw the diminutive Johnny.

”They'll be comin' home thith way,” he said, reaching up in a hoa.r.s.e confidential whisper.

”Who?”

”Crethy and 'im.”

But before the master could make any response to this presumably gratifying information, Johnny had rejoined his brother. The two boys waved their hands towards him with the same diffident and mysterious sympathy that left him hesitating between a smile and a frown. Then he proceeded on his way. Nevertheless, for no other reason than that he felt a sudden distaste to meeting any one, when he reached the point where the trail descended directly to the settlement, he turned into a longer and more solitary detour by the woods.

The sun was already so low that its long rays pierced the forest from beneath, and suffused the dim colonnade of straight pine shafts with a golden haze, while it left the dense intercrossed branches fifty feet above in deeper shadow. Walking in this yellow twilight, with his feet noiselessly treading down the yielding carpet of pine needles, it seemed to the master that he was pa.s.sing through the woods in a dream. There was no sound but the dull intermittent double knock of the wood-p.e.c.k.e.r, or the drowsy croak of some early roosting bird; all suggestion of the settlement, with all traces of human contiguity, were left far behind.

It was therefore with a strange and nervous sense of being softly hailed by some woodland sprite that he seemed to hear his own name faintly wafted upon the air. He turned quickly; it was Cressy, panting behind him! Even then, in her white closely gathered skirts, her bared head and graceful arching neck bent forward, her flying braids freed from the straw hat which she had swung from her arm so as not to impede her flight, there was so much of the following Maenad about her that he was for an instant startled.

He stopped; she bounded to him, and throwing her arms around his neck with a light laugh, let herself hang for a moment breathless on his breast. Then recovering her speech she said slowly:--

”I started on an Injin trot after you, just as you turned off the trail, but you'd got so far ahead while I was shaking myself clear of Uncle Ben that I had to jist lope the whole way through the woods to catch up.”

She stopped, and looking up into his troubled face caught his cheeks between her hands, and bringing his knit brows down to the level of her humid blue eyes said, ”You haven't kissed me yet. What's the matter?”

”Doesn't it strike you that I might ask that question, considering that it's three days since I've seen you, and that you left me, in a rather awkward position, to explain matters to your mother?” he said coldly.

He had formulated the sentence in his mind some moments before, but now that it was uttered, it appeared singularly weak and impotent.

”That's so,” she said with a frank laugh, burying her face in his waistcoat. ”You see, dandy boy”--his pet name--”I reckoned for that reason we'd better lie low for a day or two. Well,” she continued, untying his cravat and retying it again, ”how DID you crawl out of it?”

”Do you mean to say your mother did not tell you?” he asked indignantly.

”Why should she?” returned Cressy lazily. ”She never talks to me of these things, honey.”

”And you knew nothing about it?”

Cressy shook her head, and then winding one of her long braids around the young man's neck, offered the end of it to his mouth, and on his sternly declining it, took it in her own.

Yet even her ignorance of what had really happened did not account to the master for the indifference of her long silence, and albeit conscious of some inefficiency in his present unheroic att.i.tude, he continued sarcastically, ”May I ask WHAT you imagined would happen when you left me?”

”Well,” said Cressy confidently, ”I reckoned, chile, you could lie as well as the next man, and that, being gifted, you'd sling Maw something new and purty. Why, I ain't got no fancy, but I fixed up something against Paw's questioning ME. I made that conceited Masters promise to swear that HE was in the barn with me. Then I calculated to tell Paw that you came meandering along just before Maw popped in, and that I skedaddled to join Masters. Of course,” she added quickly, tightening her hold of the master as he made a sudden attempt at withdrawal, ”I didn't let on to Masters WHY I wanted him to promise, or that you were there.”

”Cressy,” said Ford, irritated beyond measure, ”are you mad, or do you think I am?”

The girl's face changed. She cast a half frightened, half questioning glance at his eyes and then around the darkening aisle. ”If we're going to quarrel, Jack,” she said hurriedly, ”don't let's do it BEFORE FOLKS.”

”In the name of Heaven,” he said, following her eyes indignantly, ”what do you mean?”

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