would suddenly place two paws in front of him and bend his back down,
with every appearance of delight. Then the boy would issue commands to
Peter anent returning home, to which Peter paid not the slightest
attention. So absorbed was he in his effort to get rid of what he
evidently considered an undesirable companion, that he did not notice
the girl until he was within a few yards of her. He then gave his
entire attention to her inspection. He stood on one spot and stared
without winking, digging a big toe into the dust. His unabashed eyes
took in every detail. He was without embarrassment, and evidently gave
not a thought to the effect of this extended scrutiny on the object of
it.
"Hello, kid!" called Molly.
The boy completed his leisurely inspection. Then, "Hello," he
answered, with reserve.
"Won't you come over and see me?"
He weighed the point and drew nearer.
"Who are you?" he asked bluntly.
"My name's Molly; what's yours?"
"Dennis Moroney. They call me the Kid. What-chew doin' here?"
"I'm going to live here."
"Oh," said he, and looked her all over again. "This rifle's a
flobert," he observed.
"Is it? Let's see. What do you shoot with it? Is there much game up
here?"
"Don't snap it; it's bad for it. They's lots of game. I got a fox
squirrel the other day. He was so long. He was up a big pine, and I
hit him right through the head."
"You must be a good shot. Will you take me hunting with you some day?"
"I dunno," he replied doubtfully. "Girls ain't much good."
"Try me," urged Molly, smiling.
"I'll let you shoot her off anyway," he said magnanimously. "But you
gotter help clean her. If you don't clean her, she gets rusty and
won't shoot straight. Here's the catridges."
"What little bits of things! Will they kill anything?"
"Hoh!" replied the Kid with contempt.
"Is that your dog?" hastily inquired Molly, conscious of her error.
Peter was busily engaged in acquiring an olfactory knowledge of the
four wheels and two axles of the wagon.
"Him? Naw. He's the bigges' fool dog I ever see. He goes along
unless you tie him up. And he keeps rummagin' around, and he scares
all the game there is. _I_ can't _make_ him stay home."
A cabin door opened quickly, and a miner issued forth.
"There goes Dan Barker," said the Kid.
In twenty minutes Molly knew the history of everyone of any importance
in town. She found the child's primitive instinct of hero worship an
unerring touchstone by which to judge of each individual's influence in
this little community. He reflected the camp's opinion, and this was
exactly what she wanted to learn. She encouraged the boy to talk--not
a difficult matter, for his attentions had hitherto been quite ignored,
saving by Frosty and Peter. Frosty had proved valuable always in the
matter of skinning game or extracting refractory shells, but he had
never, even in his youngest days, been a boy. Between Peter and the
Kid was waged a perpetual war on the subject of hunting methods. The
Kid believed in stalking. Peter held the opinion that the chase was
the only noble form of the sport. The child had been lonely, strange.
Now he chatted to Molly with all the self-reliant confidence which
pertains of right to healthy boyhood, but which heretofore he had been
denied. He boasted with accustomed air. He spoke lightly of great
deeds. Molly did not laugh at him. His heart warmed to her, and he
fell in love with her on the spot. This was perhaps the most important
conquest the girl was destined to make, for there is no devotion in the
world like that of a boy of thirteen for a girl older than himself.
[Illustration: "WATCH ME HIT THAT SQUIRREL!"]
In a little time, Molly had gathered a number of men about her, and was
holding them by sheer force of charm.
"How are you?" she called pleasantly to the first.
"Purty smart," grinned the man, slouching past awkwardly. "How's
yourself?"
"Good. Come on over and see me and the Kid for awhile."
She talked to him lightly, while he lumbered along after with his slow
wits. Other men came out, to all of whom she called a greeting, and
some of whom she summoned to her. She held them easily. It became an
audience, a court. They had a good time. There was much laughter. No
one grudged the delay. Each man held his axe shouldered, expecting to
go on to work in a moment or so, but still lingering--because she
willed that he should.
After a time, the hotel began to give up its inmates. The gambler came
forth into the sunshine and lit a cigarette. Graham joined him,
casting an amused eye at the men about the wagon. Two or three others,
including the proprietor, leaned against the hitching rail watching the
animated group. Finally Cheyenne Harry sauntered carelessly forth.
His broad hat--straight-brimmed in a lop-brimmed camp--was pushed to
one side. He swaggered a little.
The girl saw him and jumped down from the wagon tongue, breaking off
suddenly in a remark she was making.
"Hi, you!" she called.
He paid no attention.
"Hi, you!" she repeated, jumping up and down with a pretty impatient
flutter of the hands. "Hi, you! Come here! You're wanted!"
He looked up surprised.
"Come here!" she repeated.
And he went.
"Now, boys," she said, when he had joined the group, "I'm going to live
with you, and if I live with you, I must have a place to live in. So I
want you to build me a shack. Will you do it?"
The men looked at one another.
"All right," went on Molly, taking their silence for consent, and
assuming a small air of proprietorship which became her well. She
specified site and size. "And you," she commanded Cheyenne Harry, "are
to boss one gang and I'll take the other. You stay here and level up,
and I'll go with some of the boys to cut the timber."
She knew Harry would not refuse because his pistol holster was empty
and all the camp knew why. And yet levelling up is a most disagreeable
job, for it is a question of pulverized rock and wood blocks, in soft
ground; and of blasting with dynamite, in hard ground.
Molly issued her orders rapidly. Axes were found, log chains exhumed
from the warehouse dust, horses harnessed. She waited long enough to
see the gang under Cheyenne Harry well started in its work; and then,
herself mounted on one of the horses, she and the other men took their
way down the ravine in search of timber. She was satisfied with having
been able to give Cheyenne Harry just the position of authority in the
little undertaking which he now held, but she confessed to a feeling of
disappointment that Billy Knapp had not been forthcoming, for he too
should have had a place in her scheme. She had observed Jack Graham
near the hotel, but she had other ideas in regard to the management of
that refractory individual.
But it so happened that, in regard to Billy, chance helped her out.
The route selected ran up the valley, and about the bend was situated
the Great Snake lode, Billy Knapp's famous claim, before the shack of
which its proprietor was at that very moment fuming savagely over the
non-arrival of certain men he had hired to build more fitting quarters
for the new company's inspection. Billy blew a big cloud from his
pipe, and swore, when he finally caught sight of a group of axemen and
horses headed in his direction.
The men saw him too. They began to laugh. "Good one on Billy Knapp,"
they agreed. "He must be pretty hot when his axe gang don't come any."
The girl overheard them.
"What's that about Billy Knapp?" she asked sharply.
"Didn't mean y' to hear, ma'am," replied the speaker. "Don' matter ez
fur's we's concerned. But Billy, he aims to put up a shack to-day,
gettin' ready for them tenderfeet that's comin' from Cheecawgo to look
over th' property; an' he hires a lot of th' boys t' put it up fer him,
an', you see, you runs off with 'most the hull outfit yere to build you
a shack. So, natural, we thinks it makes Billy hot."
"I see," said Molly. She reflected a moment. "Where is it?" she asked.
"That's it, right to the lef'. And that's Billy walkin' 'round loose."
They laughed again.
Without a word she turned the animal she was riding sharp to the left,
and began to mount the little knoll. The men followed in
consternation. Billy's patience was not noted for its evenness.
"Hullo, Billy!" she cried when she was near enough. "Good morning!"
Billy had not at first caught sight of her, and was now plainly a
little nonplussed over his unexpected guest. Clearly he could not at
this moment "cuss out" the delinquents as they deserved. He removed
his broad black hat.
"Good mo'ning! Good mo'ning!" he replied to the girl's greeting.
"Come up t' see th' wo'ks?"
"Whoa!" called Molly. The men stopped. "No," she said flatly, "I
didn't. Not to-day, that is. I'm busy. I'm hunting for good timber."
Billy looked puzzled. "Timber?" he repeated.
"Yes, timber. I'm going to have a shack built, and these boys are
going to put it up for me."
Thus she broke the news gently. Billy looked the men over one by one.
He turned a slow red.
"Huh!" he observed at last. "I thought they was goin' to wo'k fo' me!"
"Did you?" asked Molly sweetly. "Well, they're not; at least, not now."
That was categorical. Billy's wits did not respond to this sort of
emergency very quickly. He did not want to be rude; he did not care to
lose his men. Molly looked down.
"Come here and tie my shoestring," she commanded, holding out her foot,
and gripping the harness with both hands.
Billy did not remember that he had ever seen so small a foot. He
looked, fascinated.
"Well!" she said impatiently.
He raised his head and gazed plump into the imperious depths of a pair
of blue eyes. His anger melted. He approached and attempted to tie
the shoe.
None but Molly ever knew how hard that horse was kicked by the other
little shoe. Indeed, no one knew at all how it happened. Some of the
eye-witnesses theorized concerning bumblebees. Others said horseflies.
As to the main facts, there was no doubt--that he, the horse, gave a
sudden startled plunge; that she, the girl, screamed slightly and
started to fall; that he, Billy Knapp, caught her full in his arms,
held her the fraction of a second, and set her lightly back on the
again motionless animal.
Molly caught her breath and steadied herself on Billy's shoulder.
Three men officiously held the horse's head.
"My!" she gasped. "I'd like to be as strong as that!"
Billy whirled on the axe gang with a great bluster.
"Yere, you fellers!" he shouted. "What 're y' standin' around yere
for? Take them hosses up in th' brush behind my shack, an' cut th'
lady some timber!"
"Go ahead, boys," said Molly. She slid down from the horse. "I'll be
'long in a minute. I'm a little scairt."
They clambered on up the hill, grinning. A clank of chains told when
they had stopped. A moment later the ring of axes was heard. The Kid
and the rifle had disappeared in the direction of Peter's rapid and
scrambling exit. The boy and the dog hated each other apparently, and
yet they could not bear to be long apart.
The girl sat down on the ground and made Billy talk about himself,
which was the obvious thing to do. Billy was one of those expansive
sanguine individuals without much ability in what we call practical
affairs, and yet with a certain dexterity in gathering unto himself the
means with which to be impractical. Because of this, he had a good
opinion of himself, which at the same time he was much given to
doubting. Molly induced him to flatter himself, and then deftly agreed
with him.
After a time they went up through the pines to where the workmen were
felling trees. Toward noon the whole party returned to town, dragging
behind the horses a number of tree trunks chained together with steel
chains. These were slid to the site of the house, and left in the road.
The men in camp had nearly finished their job of levelling up.
Cheyenne Harry had worked hard with his own hands. In the shade of the
Little Nugget, Black Mike and Graham sat, chair tilted, contemplatively
watching the process. Through the open door could be perceived a gleam
of white that indicated Frosty; otherwise the street of the town was
empty. The prospectors were all out in the hills, preparing a suitable
showing for the inspection of the boom which they felt sure must be
close at hand.
The united forces rolled the foundation timbers in place, straining,
sweating, grunting, for it was no easy work. The sun stood straight
overhead. After a little, observing this, Molly called a halt for the
noon hour. To each man she addressed a word of thanks, and a reminder
that the job was but half over. The reminder however was unnecessary,
for, under the stimulus of concerted effort, public sentiment had
crystallized into the opinion that the housing of a "first woman" was a
public duty.
In a few moments the street was deserted, save for Cheyenne Harry and
the two men under the eaves of the Little Nugget. From the chimneys of
some of the cabins the smoke of cooking arose.
Cheyenne Harry, volatile, changeable, fickle, stood still in the middle
of the dusty road and cursed himself for a fool. He had blistered his
hands, overheated himself most uncomfortably, and made his muscles ache
with unwonted lifting. For what? For a girl who, the evening before,
had boxed his ears and stolen his gun. Fascinated by a pair of pretty
eyes and a petty display of courage, he had worked himself like a
horse. He dropped his head in a brown study, moodily digging away at
the ground with his heel, ruminating bitterly over his egregious folly.
"Thank you very much," said a soft little voice, breaking in on his
irritation like a silver bell on a moody silence.
He raised his head, and beheld Molly standing before him, looking up at
him with grave sweet eyes. There was a hint of weariness in her
drooping eyelids that appealed subtly to his own weary spirit. She
seemed, standing there in the deserted street, to typify for the moment
the aloofness of his mood.
"You've been good to me this morning," she went on in a quiet monotone,
"mighty good!"
She stepped nearer to him until her breast almost touched his.
"I want you to look up at that pine over there until I tell you you can
quit," she said as gravely as a child about to bestow a sugar plum.
Harry turned his eyes to the hill.
She stooped swiftly and drew the band of a holster and belt around his
hips. Unmindful of his promise, he looked down on her in surprise.
"Don't be mad," she pleaded. "I got Frosty to get it for me from your
shack, so I could put your gun in it. And now you'll wear it for me,
won't you? I said you couldn't have it till you told me you were
sorry. Well, you have told me you were sorry, in the best way--by
doing something. I know how it is. I've had to work. It's no fun to
be laughed at; and you'll always be as good and brave as you were this
morning, won't you?"
A rush as of something beautiful swept over him. His eyes filled and
he tried to speak, but turned away.
"Now, run along," she exclaimed gayly, giving him a little pat on the
shoulder, "and don't forget you've got a job for this afternoon!"
She stood for a moment in the middle of the road watching him.
Graham, sitting under the eaves of the Little Nugget, surveyed the
little scene with cynical eyes. He watched the girl walk toward the
saloon. She had taken off her sunbonnet and the noon sun was gilding
her hair. She was pensive and thoughtful, and looked down. He told
himself that she did this because it was a becoming pose. Graham was
the sort of man whom pretence, craftiness, guile, always roused to
arms. So long as he was antagonized, or thought he was, his bitterness
and scorn were unappeasable; but once his ascendancy was freely
acknowledged, he threw away its advantages with the utmost generosity.
He thought he saw through this girl, and so he despised her and her
tricks alike.
As she approached, Lafond arose and went inside the saloon, where he
began to inquire of Frosty in regard to dinner. The girl sat down in
the vacated chair. Beyond a curt little nod to Graham she did not
notice his presence.
Over Tom Custer an eagle was wheeling slowly to and fro, barking with
the mere delight of being on the wing. Molly fixed her eyes dreamily
on the bird, but without apparent consciousness of more than the mere
fact of its wide motion. Graham imperturbably whittled a pine stick,
and whistled at the sky.
This state of affairs continued for some time.
"How do you keep the dirt from coming through the roof?" asked Molly
suddenly, her mind, to all appearance, entirely on the work in hand.
Graham explained briefly.
"Thank you," said Molly.
After a few minutes more Graham shifted his knife into his left hand,
and began idly to stab the bench with it. Several times he opened his
mouth to speak.
"You've got him well trained," he observed finally, with a slight curl
of the lip.
"Who? What do you mean?" she cried, genuinely surprised out of the
indifference she had assumed.
"Him--Lafond. He knows when to go away. Why did you want to get rid
of him?"
"I didn't want to get rid of him. It was so I could be alone."
"That's consistent! It was nothing of the kind. It was so you could
be alone--with me."
She looked him over, flushing angrily. Then she deliberately turned
her shoulder to him.
"You are very impudent," she remarked coldly. "You seem to forget that
I don't even know you. I don't know why I sit here and listen, except
that I am comfortable, and don't care to be driven away."
"You wanted to capture me some way or another," he went on musingly,
catching a glimmer of the truth; "same as those poor fools out there in
the sun. I'd just like to know how you meant to do it and what you'd
have done to me. Would you have flattered me, or coaxed me, or what?"
The girl did not reply.
"How?" he urged, expecting an angry outburst, but profoundly
indifferent to it.
"You are cruel," she answered softly, after a pause, "and very unjust."
Her cheeks were glowing and there was a glint in her eye, but he could
not see that. "They are only kind and good, not fools."
"Of course they're good, but they are good because you fool them into
it," persisted Graham, spitefully pressing home his point. "You want
to win 'em all, just like a woman, but you're too clumsy about it.
Anybody can see through that sort of tommyrot, if he isn't a fool. So
I call them fools, and I stick to it."
"With you it's different," she replied, hesitating almost before each
word. "You ain't the same kind. I know it's foolish, but I can't help
it, and I don't think I'm so much to blame. Perhaps I _am_ trying to
make them like me. Is there so much harm in that? Nobody has ever
liked me before. I have no mother and no sisters--only Mike. I want
to be liked, and--and--I'm _sorry_ if you don't think I ought to, but
it can't be helped."
She looked out again at the eagle slowly circling over Tom Custer, with
eyes vaguely troubled. Graham could examine her closely without the
danger of detection. He did so.
There was something pathetically child-like about her after all,
something delicate in the oval of her face and the sensitive modelling
of her chin, which appealed to a man's protective instincts. Her eyes
were so wide and blue and wistful, and again so pathetically young,
like those of a little child gazing upon the shower-wet world from the
safety of a window. Graham suddenly realized that this was no
self-sufficient, capable woman whom he was so bluntly antagonizing, but
only a pinafored innocent playing with forces of which she did not know
the meaning. He began all at once to feel sorry for her. Against her
probable future in this rough camp, how small the present looked, how
little were her coquetries, her innocent wiles!
She sighed almost inaudibly. The eagle folded his wings and dropped
like a plummet from the upper air, only to swoop upward on outspread
pinions a moment later.
Graham began to be ashamed of himself. His thoughts took a new
direction. He wondered what her previous history, her education, could
have been. Her face was pure, her eyes clear. Could she have lived
always with the half-breed? Both spoke English of an excellence beyond
the common--in that country, at least. Then he began idly to watch the
sunlight running nimbly up and down a single loose tress of her hair,
as the wind lifted it and let it fall.
The girl turned and caught his eyes fairly.
"What is it?" she asked simply.
"I was wondering," he replied with equal simplicity, "whether you had
always lived with him."
"No," she replied, without pretending not to understand the purport of
his question. Then, in the same little voice, in which was a trace,
just a trace, of an infinite dreariness: "I have lived all my life at
an Indian agency. He came and took me away a little while ago. He is
good to me," she said doubtfully, "and I am glad to be away. The agent
was good to me, but there were only a few people, and I only read and
read and read, or rode and rode and rode, and knew nothing at all of
people. I got tired of it. Nobody cared for me there. Nobody cares
for me anywhere, I reckon, except Mike, and his caring for people
doesn't count so very much."
She turned upon him again that vaguely troubled gaze, which seemed to
see him, and yet to look beyond him.
"Poor little girl," said Graham, on a sudden deeply moved.
"Poor little girl!" he repeated with infinite tenderness, and took her
idle hand in both of his.
"Poor little girl!" he said for the third time. She put her other hand
before her eyes; then, releasing herself gently, she rose and glided
through the door without a word.
Once inside the portal her eyes cleared with a snap. She laughed.
XVII
BLACK MIKE MEETS AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE AND STARTS A COLLECTION
In the course of this same morning, Lafond had discovered an old
acquaintance.
He arose early, and spent some time after breakfast investigating and
criticising the premises. Frosty's administration had, it must be
confessed, been rather slack, and there were many loose ends. These
Black Mike gathered into a cat o' nine tails with which to lash his
subordinate. After he had done more for Frosty's character in sixty
minutes than that young man, unaided, could have accomplished in as
many months, he left the scene of his reorganizations behind, and
strolled about in the one narrow street of the village.
He soon saw all there was to be seen there. With a vague idea of
finding his way to the famous Great Snake Mine, he rambled out from the
double row of log cabins, around the bend, and into the lower gulch.
He had defined to himself two things very clearly--that Billy Knapp was
now easily the most important figure in the community, and that a
continuance of this importance depended entirely on his effecting a
combination of his group of claims with Eastern capital. In the Black
Hills nearly all of the promising leads are of quartz, requiring in
their development more expensive machinery than any ordinary man is
able to afford. Until the good angel arrives, they are so much
crumbling red rock or white crystal; but with the erection of a stamp
mill, within wagon distance, they become valuable. Mike had set
himself to the task of depriving Billy Knapp at once of his property
and of his prestige; but since he could not hold him up at the point of
a pistol, as might have been done had it been the question of a watch
or a scarf-pin, he did not at present see just how it was to be
accomplished. Ruminating these matters, he found himself all at once
in a canyon much grown with underbrush, full of birds, and possessing a
general air of the gentler aspects of nature.
Immediately before him stood a double cabin, its two parts connected by
a passage way. The foundations of its timbers were encircled by broad
bands of red geraniums. Behind the buildings, chained to posts, he
perceived three wild animals. One was a short, comical, and shaggy
bear; the second, an equally furry but more eager-looking raccoon; the
third, a bobcat with tasselled ears.
Mike paused and surveyed them with amusement. As he stood there the
door of the cabin opened and the owner stepped out into the sunshine.
The half-breed never forgot a face which a vital incident had impressed
on his memory; and though this old, white-haired, mild-eyed man had
passed in and out of his life in the space of one evening fifteen years
ago, Lafond recognized without difficulty the stranger whose words had
given him so powerful an impetus toward his new way of life. It was
Durand, the butterfly hunter.