Part 15 (1/2)
”Red, I s'pose, like his; not--not like yours--Split,” he added shyly, glancing at the brown fire of the curls that escaped from her hood.
But Irene was no longer listening. She was looking over to the other side of the street, where that shrinking, pitiable old figure in its threadbare neatness trembled; not daring to seek safety across the dangerously smooth street, nor daring to remain exposed here, where it ducked ridiculously every now and then to avoid the whizzing b.a.l.l.s that sang about it.
Irene breathed hard. A coward for a father, a scarecrow, a b.u.t.t for a gang of miners' boys! This, this was her father! Why, even crippled old Jim, the wood-chopper, seen in retrospect and haloed by copper-colored dreams of romantic rehabilitation--even Jim seemed regrettable.
But she did not hesitate, any more than Fedalma did. She, too, knew a daughter's duty--to a hitherto unknown, just-discovered father. A merely ordinary, every-day parent like Francis Madigan was, as a matter of course, the common enemy, and no self-respecting Madigan would waste the poetry of filial feeling upon any one so realistic.
”You wait for me here, Jack,” she said, with unhesitating reliance upon his obedience.
”Where're you going? I thought you were in a hurry to get down to the wickiups.”
She did not hear him. She had spun off the sled, and with the sure-footed speed of the hill-child she was crossing the street.
Old Trask, his short-sighted eyes blinking beneath his twitching, bushy red eyebrows, looked down as upon a miracle when a red-mittened hand caught his and he heard a confident voice--the clear voice children use to enlighten the stupidity of adults:
”I'll help you across; take my hand.”
”Eh--what?”
He leaned down, failing to recognize her. Children had no ident.i.ty to him. They were merely brats, he used to say, unless they happened to have some musical apt.i.tude. But he accepted her aid, his battered old hat rocking excitedly upon his high bony forehead, as he ducked and turned and s.h.i.+vered at the oncoming b.a.l.l.s. ”Bad boys--bad boys!” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. ”Boys are the devil!”
”Yes,” agreed Split, craftily. ”Girls are best. Your little girl, now--father--” she began softly.
”Eh--what?” he exclaimed. ”Who's your father? My respects to him.”
”I have no father,” she answered softly. A plan had sprung full-born from her quick brain. She would win this erratic father back to memory of his former life and her place in it--somewhat as did one Lucy Manette, a favorite heroine of Split's that Sissy had read about and told her of. That would be a fine thing to do--almost as fine, and requiring the center of the stage as much, as rehabilitating the Red Man.
”I have no father,” she murmured, ”if you won't be mine.”
”What? What? No!” Trask was across now and brus.h.i.+ng the snowy traces of battle from his queer old cape. ”No; I don't want any children. I had one once--a daughter.”
Split's heart beat fast.
”She was a brat, with the temper of a little fiend, and no ear--absolutely none--for music; played like an elephant.”
How terribly confirmatory!
”And what--what became of her?” whispered Split.
”She ran away two years ago and--”
”Two years!”
”I said two, didn't I?” demanded the old professor, irascibly.
Disgusted, Split turned her back on him. Why, two years ago Sissy had first called her an Indian; how right she had been! Two years ago she, Split, was making over all her dolls to Fom. Two years ago she had already discovered Jack Cody's fleet strength, his wonderful aptness at making swift sleds, in which her reckless spirit reveled, his masters.h.i.+p of other boys of his gang, and--her mastery of him.
She turned and beckoned to him. His sweet whistle rang out in answer like a vocal salute, and in a moment she was seated again in front of him, with that deft, tail-like left leg of his steering them down, down over cross-street, through teams and sleighs and unwary pedestrians; past the miners coming off s.h.i.+ft; past the lamplighter making his rounds in the crisp, clear cold of the evening; past the heavy-laden squaws, with their bowed heads, their papooses on their backs, their weary arms bearing home the spoils of a hard day's work, and the sore-eyed yellow dogs trudging, too, wearily and dejectedly at their heels, toward the rest of the wickiup and the acrid warmth of the sage-brush camp-fire.
In short, swift sentences, as they hurdled over artificially raised obstructions, or slid along the firm-packed snow, or grated on the muddy cross-streets, Princess Split told her plan--with reservations. She was not prepared to admit to so humble a wors.h.i.+per the secret of her birth, but the magnanimous self-sacrifice of a beautiful nature, the heroine concealed beneath a frivolous exterior--these she was willing Jack Cody should suspect and admire.