Part 4 (1/2)
”Yes, in England, or in Ireland, or anywhere round there. If I'd shot so much as a miserable pheasant on your land you'd have--you'd have _had me up before the bailey_!”
Clearly the girl's reading of English fiction had confused her ideas of British magistracy. But Sir Bryan was generous, and overlooked side issues.
”Is this your land?” he asked, gazing at the wild mountain side, and then at the flaming cheeks of the girl. She stood there like an animated bit of autumn coloring.
”Of course it's my land,” she declared.
”But I didn't know it was your land.”
”You knew it wasn't _yours_!” she cried vehemently.
Poor Sir Bryan was hopelessly bewildered. The great West was, after all, not quite like the rest of the world, if charming young ladies owned the mountain sides, danced attendance upon by bears of dangerous aspect and polished manners. He blushed violently, but he did not look in the least awkward.
”I wish you would tell me your name,” he said, feeling that if this remarkable young lady possessed anything so commonplace as a name, the knowledge of it might place him on a more equal footing with her.
”Certainly, Mr. Bryan,” she replied. ”My name is Merriman; Kathleen Merriman,” and she looked at him with great dignity but with no relenting.
”Well, Miss Merriman, I don't suppose there's any good in talking about it. My being awfully sorry doesn't help matters any. I don't see that there's anything to be done about it, but to have the carca.s.s carted off your land as soon as may be.”
”Carted off my land!” the girl cried, with kindling indignation. ”You need not trouble yourself to do anything of the kind.” Then, with a sudden change to the elegiac, she fixed her mournful gaze upon her departed friend and said, ”I shall bury him where he lies!”
In this softened mood she seemed less formidable, and Sir Bryan so far plucked up his spirit as to make a suggestion.
”Perhaps I could help you,” he said. ”If I had a shovel, or something, I think I could dig a first-rate grave.”
The fair mourner looked at him doubtfully, and then she looked at his namesake, and apparently the poetic justice of the thing appealed to her.
”There's a spade over at the house,” she said, ”and I don't know that it's any more than fair that you should bury him.”
Sir Bryan's spirits rose still higher at the hope of partial expiation of his crime; but with his rising spirits came a premonition of a good healthy appet.i.te which would soon be due, and he asked meekly: ”Would you mind, then, if I were to go back to town first, to get something to eat? A person doesn't dig so well, I suppose, on an empty stomach.”
”No, you'd better stay and get your dinner with me. It will take you pretty much all day to bury Brian. You probably never buried a bear before,” she added, as patronizingly as if she herself had been a professional grave-digger, ”and you don't know what a piece of work it's going to be.”
They started to push their way through the scrub-oaks.
”Shall I lead your horse for you?” Sir Bryan asked.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”THE VAST SEA OF THE PRAIRIE.”]
”No, thank you. Comrag will follow, all right;” and Comrag did follow, so close upon their heels, that Sir Bryan was in momentary expectation of being trampled upon.
Comrag was an unbeautiful beast, and he permitted himself startling liberties; crowding himself in between his mistress and her companion, helping himself without ceremony to a bunch of asters which Sir Bryan had in his hand, and neighing straight into the young baronet's ear as they came in sight of the house.
The ”house” was a mere hut, painted red, entirely dwarfed by an ungainly chimney of rough stone. The little hut was built against a huge boulder, which towered above the chimney itself, and looked as though it had stood there since the foundation of the earth. There was a rustic veranda along the front of this diminutive dwelling, which stood on a slight eminence; and, as Sir Bryan stepped upon the veranda, he drew a long breath of amazement and delight. Looking down over the broad, oak-clad slope of the mountain, he beheld the vast sea of the prairie, stretching for leagues upon leagues away to the low horizon. From that height the view seemed limitless, and the illusion of the sea, which always hovers over the prairies, was complete.
As his hostess came out with a long-handled spade in her hand, he cried, ”That is the most magnificent thing I ever saw!”
She did not answer immediately, but stood leaning upon the spade, and gazing forth as intently as if it had been to her too a revelation.
Then she drew a long breath and said, in a rapt tone, as though the words came to her one by one: ”Yes, it makes you feel sometimes as if your soul would get away from you.”