And Flynn did listen. As he grasped the other's meaning, his face
cleared and his hearty laugh carried to the house where Helen was making
the acquaintance of the smaller Flynns. Six in number, bare-legged, and
astonishingly regular in gradation, they scampered like mice on her
entrance and hid behind the cotton partition that divided bedroom from
kitchen. For a while they were quiet, then Helen became aware of a
current of stealthy talk underflowing Mrs. Flynn's volubility.
"Ain't her waist small?"
"Bet you she wears stays the hull time."
"Like them mother puts on to meetin'?"
"Shore!"
"Git out; her face ain't red. Mother nearly busts when she hitches
her'n."
"Ain't that yaller hair pretty?" This sounded like a girl, though it
was hard to decide, for all wore a single sexless garment.
"Bet you it ain't all her'n. Dad says as them city gals is all took to
pieces when they go to bed." This was surely a boy, and, unfortunately
for him, the remark sailed out on a pause in his mother's comment.
"James!" she exclaimed, raising shocked hands. "Come right here."
He came slowly, suspiciously, then, divining from his parent's look the
enormity of his crime, he dived under her arm, shot out-doors, and was
lost in the wheat. After him, a cataract of bare limbs, poured the
others, all escaping but one small girl whom Helen caught, kissed, and
held thereafter in willing bondage until, after dinner, Carter drove
round to the door.
Though they had rested barely an hour after their forty-mile run, the
ponies repeated the morning's performance, to the horror of Mrs. Flynn;
then, as though realizing that they had done all that reputation
required, they settled down to a steady jog--in which respect,
colloquially, they were imitated by their human freight. A little tired,
Helen was content to sit and take silent note of the homesteads which
now occurred at regular intervals, while Carter was perfecting his plan
for the discomfiture of the warlike Bender. Slough, lake, wood-land,
farm passed in slow and silent procession. Once he roused to answer her
comment as they rattled by some Indian graves that crowned a knoll.
"To keep the coyotes from robbing the resurrection," he explained the
poplar poles that roofed in the graves.
He spoke again when the buck-board ran in among a score of curious mud
pillars. About thrice the height of a man, inscriptionless, they
loomed, weird guardians of that lonely land till he robbed their
mystery.
"Them? Mud chimneys. You see, when a Cree Indian dies his folks burn
down the cabin to keep his spirit from returning, and as mud won't burn
the chimneys stand. Small-pox cleaned out this village." Then, with
innocent gravity, he went on to tell of a stray scientist who had
written a monograph on those very chimneys. "'Monoliths' he called 'em.
Allowed that they were dedicated to a tribal god, and was used to burn
prisoners captured in war. It was a beautiful theory and made a real
nice article. Why did I let him? Well, now, 'twould have been a sin to
enlighten him, he was that blamed happy poking round them chimneys, and
the folks that read his article wouldn't know any better."
Chuckling at the remembrance, he relapsed again to his planning, and did
not speak again till they had crossed the valley of Silver Creek from
which the northern settlement took its name. Then, indicating a black
dot far off on the trail, he said:
"There comes Molyneux."
"Two in the rig," he added, a few minutes later. "A man and a woman.
That 'll be Mrs. Leslie."
Unaccustomed to the plainsman's vision, which senses rather than sees
the difference of size, color, movement that mark cattle from horses, a
single rig from a double team, Helen was dubious till, swinging out from
behind a poplar bluff, the team bore down upon them. Two persons were
in the rig: a man of the blackly handsome type, and a stylish, pretty
woman, who, as Carter turned out to drive by, waved him to stop.
"Monopolist!" she scolded, when the rigs ranged side by side. "Here I'm
just dying to meet Miss Morrill and you would have whisked her by. Now
do your duty."
"Captain Molyneux," she said, introducing her companion in turn. "A
neighbor. We just heard this morning that you were coming and I was so
glad; and I'm gladder now that I've seen you." Her glance travelled
admiringly over Helen's face and figure. "You know there are so few
women here, and they--" Her pretty nose tip-tilted. "Well, you'll see
them. Soon I shall make my call; carry you off for a few days, if your
brother will permit it. But there! I'm keeping you from him.
Good-bye. Now you may go, Mr. Carter."
A touch of merry defiance in the permission caused Helen to glance up at
her companion. Though Mrs. Leslie's glance was almost caressing
whenever it touched him, he had stared straight ahead of him while she
chatted.
"You don't like them?" the girl asked. "Why? She likes you."
His sternness vanished and he smiled down upon her. "Now, what made you
think that?"
"I didn't think; I felt it."
"Funny things, feelings, ain't they? I mind one that took me fishing
when I ought to have been keeping school. 'Twas a beautiful day.
Indian-summer back East. You know 't: still, silent, broody, warm;
first touch of gold in the leafage. I just _felt_ that I had to go
fishing. But when dad produced a peeled hickory switch that night he
told me: 'Son, feelings is treacherous things. This will teach you the
difference between thinking and knowing.' It did--for a while."
"But you don't like them?" she persisted, refusing to be side-tracked.
Then she blushed under his look of grave surprise, realizing that she
had broken one of the unwritten canons of frontier etiquette. "I beg
your pardon," she said, hastily. "I didn't mean to--"
His smile wiped out the offence. Stretching his whip, he said, "There's
your house."
Helen cried aloud. Nestling under the eaves of green forest, it faced
on a lake that lay a scant quarter-mile to the south. North, west, and
south, trim clump poplar dotted its rolling land and rose in the fields
of grain. Here nature, greatest of landscape-gardeners, had planned her
best, setting a watered garden within a fence of forest. Just for a
second the house flashed out between two green bluffs, a neat log
building, lime-washed in settler style, then it was snatched again from
her shining eyes.
But Carter had seen a figure standing at the door. "Clear grit!" he
mentally ejaculated. "Blamed if he ain't up and dressed to save her
feelings." Then, aloud, he gave her necessary warnings. "Now you
mustn't expect too much. He's doing fine, but no doubt pulled down a
bit since you saw him."
Two hours later Carter stepped out from his own cabin. He and Morrill
had "homesteaded" halves of the same section, and as he strode south the
latter's lamp beamed a yellow welcome through the soft night. Already he
had refused an invitation to supper, deeming that the brother and sister
would prefer to spend their first evening alone together, and now
ignoring the lamp's message, he entered Merrill's stable, saddled the
latter's cattle pony in darkness thick as ink, led him out, and rode
quietly away.
Now of all equines, your northern cross-bred pony is the most cunning.
For three black miles Shyster behaved with propriety, then, sensing by
the slack line that his rider was preoccupied, he achieved a vicious
sideling buck. Well executed, it yet failed of its intent.
"You little devil!" Carter remonstrated, as he applied correctives in
the form of quirt and spurs. "Rest don't suit your complaint.
To-morrow you go on the mower."
"Hullo!" a voice cried from the darkness ahead. "Who's that cussing?"
It was Danvers, an English remittance-man, a typical specimen of the
tribe of Ishmael which is maintained in colonial exile on "keep-away"
allowances.
"Are you lost?" Carter asked.
"Lost? No!" There was an aggrieved note in Danvers' tone. "You
fellows seem to think that I oughtn't to be out after dark. There's Jed
Hines going about and telling people that I knocked at my own door one
night to inquire my way."
"Tut, tut," Carter sympathized. "And Jed counted such a truthful man!
You'll find it hard to live that down. But where might you be heading
for now--if it's any of my darn business?"
"Morrill's. Heard his sister had arrived. I'm going to drop in and pay
my respects."
"Humph! that's neighborly. They've had just two hours to exchange the
news of three years; they'll shorely be through by this. Keep right on,
son. In five-and-twenty minutes this trail will land you at Jed Hines's
door."
"Oh, get out!" Danvers exclaimed.
"Sir, to you?" Carter assumed a wonderful stiffness. "I'll give you
good-night."
"Oh, here!" the youth called after him. "I didn't mean to doubt you."
Carter rode on.
Ridden by a vivid memory of the jeering Hines, Danvers became desperate.
"Oh, Carter! Say, don't get mad! Do tell a fellow! How shall I get
there?"