Part 18 (1/2)
The explosions were singularly simultaneous--so remarkable in fact that it seemed to the master that his rifle, fired in the air, had given a DOUBLE report. A light wreath of smoke lay between him and his opponent.
He was unhurt--so evidently was his adversary, for the voice rose again.
”Advance! . . . Hallo there! Stop!”
He looked up quickly to see McKinstry stagger and then fall heavily to the ground.
With an exclamation of horror, the first and only terrible emotion he had felt, he ran to the fallen man, as Harrison reached his side at the same moment.
”For G.o.d's sake,” he said wildly, throwing himself on his knees beside McKinstry, ”what has happened? For I swear to you, I never aimed at you!
I fired in the air. Speak! Tell him, you,” he turned with a despairing appeal to Harrison, ”you must have seen it all--tell him it was not me!”
A half wondering, half incredulous smile pa.s.sed quickly over Harrison's face. ”In course you didn't MEAN it,” he said dryly, ”but let that slide. Get up and get away from yer, while you kin,” he added impatiently, with a significant glance at one or two men who lingered after the sudden and general dispersion of the crowd at McKinstry's fall. ”Get--will ye!”
”Never!” said the young man pa.s.sionately, ”until he knows that it was not my hand that fired that shot.”
McKinstry painfully struggled to his elbow. ”It took me yere,” he said with a slow deliberation, as if answering some previous question, and pointing to his hip, ”and it kinder let me down when I started forward at the second call.”
”But it was not I who did it, McKinstry, I swear it. Hear me! For G.o.d's sake, say you believe me.”
McKinstry turned his drowsy troubled eyes upon the master as if he were vaguely recalling something. ”Stand back thar a minit, will ye,” he said to Harrison, with a languid wave of his crippled hand; ”I want ter speak to this yer man.”
Harrison drew back a few paces and the master sought to take the wounded man's hand, but he was stopped by a gesture. ”Where hev you put Cressy?”
McKinstry said slowly.
”I don't understand you,” stammered Ford.
”Where are you hidin' her from me?” repeated McKinstry with painful distinctness. ”Whar hev you run her to, that you're reckonin' to jine her arter--arter--THIS?”
”I am not hiding her! I am not going to her! I do not know where she is.
I have not seen her since we parted early this morning without a word of meeting again,” said the master rapidly, yet with a bewildered astonishment that was obvious even to the dulled faculties of his hearer.
”That war true?” asked McKinstry, laying his hand upon the master's shoulder and bringing his dull eyes to the level of the young man's.
”It is the whole truth,” said Ford fervently, ”and true also that I never raised my hand against you.”
McKinstry beckoned to Harrison and the two others who had joined him, and then sank partly back with his hand upon his side, where the slow empurpling of his red s.h.i.+rt showed the slight ooze of a deeply-seated wound.
”You fellers kin take me over to the ranch,” he said calmly, ”and let him,” pointing to Ford, ”ride your best hoss fer the doctor. I don't,”
he continued in grave explanation, ”gin'rally use a doctor, but this yer is suthin' outside the old woman's regular gait.” He paused, and then drawing the master's head down towards him, he added in his ear, ”When I get to hev a look at the size and shape o' this yer ball that's in my hip, I'll--I'll--I'll--be--a--little more kam!” A gleam of dull significance struggled into his eye. The master evidently understood him, for he rose quickly, ran to the horse, mounted him and dashed off for medical a.s.sistance, while McKinstry, closing his heavy lids, antic.i.p.ated this looked-for calm by fainting gently away.
CHAPTER XIII.
Of the various sentimental fallacies entertained by adult humanity in regard to childhood, none are more ingeniously inaccurate and gratuitously idiotic than a comfortable belief in its profound ignorance of the events in which it daily moves, and the motives and characters of the people who surround it. Yet even the occasional revelations of an enfant terrible are as nothing compared to the perilous secrets which a discreet infant daily b.u.t.tons up, or secures with a hook-and-eye, or even fastens with a safety-pin across its gentle bosom. Society can never cease to be grateful for that tact and consideration--qualities more often joined with childish intuition and perception than with matured observation--that they owe to it; and the most accomplished man or woman of the great world might take a lesson from this little audience who receive from their lips the lie they feel too palpable, with round-eyed complacency, or outwardly accept as moral and genuine the hollow sentiment they have overheard rehea.r.s.ed in private for their benefit.
It was not strange therefore that the little people of the Indian Spring school knew perhaps more of the real relations of Cressy McKinstry to her admirers than the admirers themselves. Not that this knowledge was outspoken--for children rarely gossip in the grown-up sense--or even communicable by words intelligent to the matured intellect. A whisper, a laugh that often seemed vague and unmeaning, conveyed to each other a world of secret significance, and an apparently senseless burst of merriment in which the whole cla.s.s joined and that the adult critic set down to ”animal spirits”--a quality much more rare with children than generally supposed--was only a sympathetic expression of some discovery happily oblivious to older preoccupation. The childish simplicity of Uncle Ben perhaps appealed more strongly to their sympathy, and although, for that very reason, they regarded him with no more respect than they did each other, he was at times carelessly admitted to their confidence. It was especially Rupert Filgee who extended a kind of patronizing protectorate over him--not unmixed with doubts of his sanity, in spite of the promised confidential clerks.h.i.+p he was to receive from his hands.
On the day of the events chronicled in the preceding chapter, Rupert on returning from school was somewhat surprised to find Uncle Ben perched upon the rail-fence before the humble door of the Filgee mansion and evidently awaiting him. Slowly dismounting as Rupert and Johnny approached, he beamed upon the former for some moments with arch and yet affable mystery.