Part 4 (1/2)
sang to her Paris. And a coyote howled up near the trail, and the prairie got dark, with a pale green rind of light along the northwest, and I knew there would be a heavy frost before morning.
To-night after supper my soul and I sat down and did a bit of bookkeeping. d.i.n.ky-Dunk, who'd been watching me out of the corner of his eye, went to the window and said it looked like a storm. And I knew he meant that I was the Medicine Hat it was to come from, for before he'd got up from the table he'd explained to me that matrimony was like motoring because it was really traveling by means of a series of explosions. Then he tried to explain that in a few weeks the fall rush would be over and we'd have more time for getting what we deserved out of life. But I turned on him with sudden fierceness and declared I wasn't going to be merely an animal. I intended to keep my soul alive, that it was every one's duty, no matter where they were, to enn.o.ble their spirit by keeping in touch with the best that has ever been felt and thought.
When I grimly got out my mouth-organ and played the _Pilgrim's Chorus_, as well as I could remember it, d.i.n.ky-Dunk sat listening in silent wonder. He kept up the fire, and waited until I got through. Then he reached for the dish-pan and said, quite casually, ”I'm going to help you wash up to-night, Gee-Gee!” And so I put away the mouth-organ and washed up. But before I went to bed I got out my little vellum edition of Browning's _The Ring and the Book_, and read at it industriously, doggedly, determinedly, for a solid hour. What it's all about I don't know. Instead of enn.o.bling my spirit it only tired my brain and ended up in making me so mad I flung the book into the wood-box.... d.i.n.ky-Dunk has just pinned a piece of paper on my door; it is a sentence from Epictetus. And it says: ”Better it is that great souls should live in small habitations than that abject slaves should burrow in great houses!”
_Sunday the Eighteenth_
I spent an hour to-day trying to shoot a hen-hawk that's been hovering about the shack all afternoon. He's after my chickens, and as new-laid eggs are worth more than Browning to a homesteader, I got out my duck-gun. It gave me a feeling of impending evil, having that huge bird hanging about. It reminded me there was wrong and rapine in the world. I hated the brute. But I hid under one of the wagon-boxes and got him, in the end. I brought him down, a tumbling flurry of wings, like Satan's fall from Heaven. When I ran out to possess myself of his Satanic body he was only wounded, however, and was ready to show fight. Then I saw red again. I clubbed him with the gun-b.u.t.t, going at him like fury. I was moist with perspiration when I got through with him. He was a monster. I nailed him with his wings out, on the bunk-house wall, and Olie shouted and called d.i.n.ky-Dunk when they came back from rounding up the horses, which had got away on the range. d.i.n.ky-Dunk solemnly warned me not to run risks, as he might have taken an eye out, or torn my face with his claws. He said he could have stuffed and mounted my hawk, if I hadn't clubbed the poor thing almost to pieces. There's a devil in me somewhere, I told d.i.n.ky-Dunk. But he only laughed.
_Monday the Nineteenth_
To-night d.i.n.ky-Dunk and I spent a solid hour trying to decide on a name for the shack. I wanted to call it ”Crucknacoola,” which is Gaelic for ”A Little Hill of Sleep,” but d.i.n.ky-Dunk brought forward the objection that there was no hill. Then I suggested ”Barnavista,” since about all we can see from the door are the stables. Then I said ”The Builtmore,”
in a spirit of mockery, and then d.i.n.ky-Dunk in a spirit of irony suggested ”Casa Grande.” And in the end we united on ”Casa Grande.” It is marvelous how my hair grows. Olie now watches me studiously as I eat.
I can see that he is patiently patterning his table deportment after mine. There's nothing that silent rough-mannered man wouldn't do for me.
I've got so I never notice his nose, any more than I used to notice Uncle Carlton's receding chin. But I don't think Olie is getting enough to eat. All his mind seems taken up with trying to remember not to drink out of his saucer, as history sayeth George Was.h.i.+ngton himself once did!
_Tuesday the Twentieth_
I knew that old hen-hawk meant trouble for me--and the trouble came, all right. I'm afraid I can't tell about it very coherently, but this is how it began: I was alone yesterday afternoon, busy in the shack, when a Mounted Policeman rode up to the door, and, for a moment, nearly frightened the life out of me. I just stood and stared at him, for he was the first really, truly live man, outside Olie and my husband, I'd seen for so long. And he looked very das.h.i.+ng in his scarlet jacket and yellow facings. But I didn't have long to meditate on his color scheme, for he calmly announced that a ranchman named McMein had been murdered by a drunken cowboy in a wage dispute, and the murderer had been seen heading for the Cochrane Ranch. He (the M. P.) inquired if I would object to his searching the buildings.
Would I object? I most a.s.suredly did not, for little chills began to play up and down my spinal column, and I wasn't exactly in love with the idea of having an escaped murderer crawling out of a hay-stack at midnight and cutting my throat. The ranchman McMein had been killed on Sat.u.r.day, and the cowboy had been kept on the run for two days. As I was being told this I tried to remember where d.i.n.ky-Dunk had stowed away his revolver-holster and his hammerless ejector and his Colt repeater. But I made that handsome young man in the scarlet coat come right into the shack and begin his search by looking under the bed, and then going down the cellar.
I stood holding the trap-door and warned him not to break my pickle-jars. Then he came up and stood squinting thoughtfully out through the doorway.
”Have you got a gun?” he suddenly asked me.
I showed him my duck-gun with its silver mountings, and he smiled a little.
”Haven't you a rifle?” he demanded.
I explained that my husband had, and he still stood squinting out through the doorway as I poked about the shack-corners and found d.i.n.ky-Dunk's repeater. He was a very authoritative and self-a.s.sured young man. He took the rifle from me, examined the magazine and made sure it was loaded. Then he handed it back.
”I've got to search those buildings and stacks,” he told me. ”And I can only be in one place at once. If you see a man break from under cover anywhere, when I'm inside, _be so good as to shoot him_!”
He started off without another word, with his big army revolver in his hand. My teeth began to do a little fox-trot all by themselves.
”Wait! Stop!” I shouted after him. ”Don't go away!”
He stopped and asked me what was wrong. ”I--I don't want to shoot a man!
I don't want to shoot _any_ man!” I tried to explain to him.
”You probably won't have to,” was his cool response. ”But it's better to do that than have him shoot _you_, isn't it?”
Whereupon Mr. Red-Coat made straight for the hay-stacks, and I stood in the doorway, with d.i.n.ky-Dunk's rifle in my hands and my knees shaking a little.