perch on a neighboring dikelet, near a claim, where she could enjoy the
breeze, and converse without too much effort. There she looked
charming, and bothered the workers a little. All workers like to be
bothered a little. It is a wise woman who does not bother them too
much. The attention is flattering as long as it is not annoying. When
the men were below the surface of the ground she shouted down the shaft
and insisted on a ride in the bucket. Or she rambled long delicious
hours with Peter and the Kid, from whom she learned the philosophy of
hindsights and the pregnant possibilities of holes under tree roots.
These two adored her beyond all measure. The homely, bristle-whiskered
animal was always at her heels; the Kid was ever ready to waste
precious cartridges on her behalf.
They did much elaborate stalking after grouse, rabbits, and squirrels.
Most of these approaches failed, for the reason that they were too
elaborate and too eager. Wild creatures seem to be sensitive to
telepathic influences. A stolid Indian, whose fatalism does not permit
him to become much excited, can often walk directly up to a flock of
ducks, when a white man with a breech-loading gun and a desire for a
bag could not sneak within fifty rods. Instance also the well known
and uncanny knowledge of the common crow as to your possession of
firearms. His proneness to distant flight when you are armed, and his
sublime indifference to your approach when you are not, may arise not
from a recognition of the instrument, but from a reading of the desire
for his slaughter.
Be this as it may, the bagging of game was a rare enough event to throw
all three into wild excitement. Usually, a grand rush was made in the
direction of the fallen. Peter arrived first, and danced, tip-toed,
bristle-backed. Molly and the Kid were not far behind. Then came
shouts of proud joy and feminine shrieks at the gore. The story was
detailed again and again of just how the shot was made. Peter agonized
that he could not talk. Finally the grouse or squirrel was borne
proudly down to fierce-moustached Black Jack, the cook, who
expostulated and grumbled.
"G' 'way, you two!" he growled. "Git out; don't want you around!
Goin' t' bake! Vamoose! Ain't hired t' skin no squirrels or pluck no
birds. Cyan't be bothered. G' 'way, you two." Black Jack always
talked like this--in short, disconnected sentences.
Then the girl would beg prettily, while the Kid, fully aware in whom
dwelt the most effective persuasion, stood by, and Peter snuffed around
in the forbidden kitchen. And finally Black Jack would yield, with a
vast show of bad grace.
"All right, all right!" he would cry, shaking his great head. "Just
this once. Never again, mind you, never again. Cyan't be bothered.
Wouldn't do it now, only just t' get rid of that dawg. That's it.
Cyan't have no dawg around. Cyan't nohow."
He took the partridge or squirrel, still grumbling.
"Oh, thank you, _dear good_ Mr. Black Jack!" cried Molly. "And you'll
save me the wings and tail or the skin, won't you?"
At this point Black Jack always exploded violently and bundled them
out, taking a neatly avoided kick at Peter. Then he would watch them
quite out of sight, after which he would expend the utmost care in the
concoction of wonderful stews or potpies.
These clear, sunshiny, healthy days tanned Molly's skin to a golden
brown, brightened her eye and her smile, and filled her strong young
body with abounding health and vitality. Even her evenings did not in
any way cloud her spirits. They were of bad influence, but why should
she know that? She was a delicious little animal, keen, shrewd, of
good impulses, though her moral nature was quite untrained. She
possessed instincts--strong instincts--which seemed arbitrarily to
place a limit beyond which she did not dream of going; but that, she
thought, was because she did not care to go. The question of right or
wrong, consciously chosen, never entered her calculations. Her only
standard was her desire--and, perhaps a little, what Graham would think
of her--but she did not bother her head one way or the other. She was
happy, and was doing nothing she regretted. That was enough.
And yet the evenings were not good--not good at all. They were bound
to exercise a certain deleterious influence.
By habit, Molly spent her time after dark on a corner of the bar at the
Little Nugget saloon. There she received attention. The peculiarity
of her position lay in the fact that her good comradeship had
dissipated constraint. The men talked and drank and gambled about as
usual. It must be repeated that the girl was in no sense a romantic
"idol of the camp." The miners would have been well enough pleased if
she had drunk her whiskey with them as freely as they did with each
other. As she did not, they merely put the fact down to personal
idiosyncrasy, like Dave Williams' horror of cooked rabbit. Rough men
do not demand the finer virtues, and she was treated to the reverse
side of this idea. She saw what men call life. She learned the game
of faro and how men act who have won or lost at it. She gained a
knowledge of the strength of whiskey and what men say who have drunk of
it. She heard loose speech; she saw loose conduct. All this is not
nice for a young girl.
The men felt especially drawn to her because she smoked paper
cigarettes gracefully. About ten o'clock she went to bed.
These few days, between her first triumphant arrival and her
establishment in her new cabin, were the most care-free and happy of
her stay at Copper Creek. She lived thoughtlessly, conducting herself
exactly as she pleased, entertaining no regrets, conscious of no sense
of wrongdoing, and therefore of no sense of guilt. Then a little
incident stirred into wakefulness that fine-wrought conscience which is
an element of so many natures that draw their life from New England.
XX
THE EATING OF THE APPLE
One morning Molly found herself awakened very early by the sound of
whistling just outside. She opened her eyes to discover Peter, who had
occupied one end of the wagon, sitting, head and ears up, listening to
the same sound. The whistling was young, tuneless. Finally she peered
through the crack in the canvas.
Outside, on the wagon tongue, sat the Kid patiently waiting, his little
rifle across his knees, one bare foot digging away at the dust, his
lips puckered to cheerful sibilance, his wide gray eyes turning every
once in awhile to the canvas cover of the schooner. He discovered
Molly looking out. The whistle abruptly stopped.
"Come on out, Molly," said he. "I ben waiting for you a long time."
"My! it's so awful early!" yawned Molly. "What do you want to do?"
"I'm going to take you hunting," confided the Kid. "We perhaps can get
a squirrel down the gulch, or perhaps a cotton-tail. Come on, hurry
up!"
"Why, I ain't dressed yet," objected Molly.
"Well, dress!" said the Kid impatiently.
By this time she was well awake, and the glorious morning was getting
into her lungs. Her eye disappeared, and in a few minutes she emerged
fully clothed. The Kid looked her over.
"Y' ain't going that way?" he asked incredulously.
"Course not. You wait till I come back."
She stepped down on the whiffletree, her heavy waving hair falling in
masses of curls and crinkles over her shoulders.
"Oh, Lord!" cried the Kid pathetically. In the entrance stood Peter,
his head on one side. Molly laughed.
"I thought I'd got rid of _him_," complained the Kid, "and here he is!"
"Never mind," said Molly soothingly, "I can make him stand round. Come
here, Peter!"
At the pool of the lower creek Molly knelt, turning back the sleeves
from her white arms, loosening the dress from about her round young
throat. After a little she leaned back against the mosses and piled
the strands of her hair, watching the interested Kid with shining eyes.
"My, but you're purty!" he cried. She nodded to him, laughing.
They took their way down the gulch, walking soberly in the road, while
Peter skirmished unrestrained among the possibilities of the thickets
at either hand. In the judgment of the Kid, this was too near town for
the best hunting. The Kid talked.
"You never been down here, have you?"
"No," replied Molly, "I've always been up in the hills, you know; it's
more fun, I think. Do you think we'll find anything down here near the
road?"
"Not just yet; but after we get by Bugchaser's--Say, you've never seen
Bugchaser, then, have you?"
"No," laughed the girl, "I should think not. What in the world is
Bugchaser?"
"It isn't a 'what'; it's a 'him.' He's crazy. He has a 'coon, and a
bear, and a bobcat. I'd like to go up an' see 'em, but I'm scairt of
him."
"Is he dangerous?" asked Molly.
"Pop says he eats little boys. Hoh! that ain't so, of course. But
he's crazy, you know."
"What makes you think so?"
"He chases bugs with a fishnet."
"Oh!" cried Molly comprehendingly, and began to laugh.
The Kid looked at her with offended reproach.
"Well," he remarked finally, "you can do what you want; but you betcher
life I'm keepin' away from him!"
His eyes were wide with childish wonder, strangely incongruous in this
solemn, lonely little creature with his ways of early maturity and his
ridiculous cut-down clothes.
"There, there," laughed Molly soothingly. "I wonder what's up with
Peter!"
Peter was barking like a bunch of fire crackers.
"Sounds exciting!" said she. "Maybe it's a squirrel up a tree. Let's
see!"
The Kid threw his rifle into the position of a most portentous ready,
and the two entered the bushes. Peter was discovered, his hair
bristling between his shoulders, jumping eagerly around some object
which lay, invisible, on the ground. He snapped with excitement. The
Kid ran forward with a shout. Molly picked her skirts up and followed
with equal rapidity and considerably more grace. They nearly ran over
a large coiled rattlesnake.
The Kid yelled and leaped to one side. Molly stopped stock-still and
uttered a piercing scream, after which she climbed rapidly to the top
of a near-by bowlder, where she perched, her skirts daintily raised,
her eyes bright with excitement. Peter leaped madly about. The Kid
discharged rapid but ineffectual pea bullets at the reptile.
"I imagine you need a little help," said a voice so unexpected that
Molly nearly fell from the rock. The Kid gave one look at the newcomer
and fled with a howl of terror. "A most peculiar youth," observed
Durand reflectively as he advanced. "Most peculiar--seemingly obsessed
of an unwarranted terror for my person. Strange! I have never acted
in any way brusquely toward him." He picked up a stick, and, advancing
without the slightest hesitation, killed the whirring snake with a
single blow. "You may now descend," he assured her, turning with
exquisite grace to offer his hand.
He led the way out to the road. Peter followed until within sight of
the animals chained to the posts, and then he quietly disappeared in
search of the Kid. This was not cowardice on Peter's part, but he had
long since tested by experiment the futility of challenging barks.
Molly had recognized the newcomer from the Kid's description; and her
first glance assured her that her surmise as to his calling had been
true. She had been reading the _Life of Wilson_, the naturalist,
recently; and so knew of the existence of such men. To her they seemed
rather romantic.
"Oh!" cried she on catching sight of the chained animals. "Are they
tame? Are they tame enough to pet?"
The old man smiled a little at her enthusiasm. He had been looking her
over with pleasure, but without surprise. Michail Lafond, his new
friend, had mentioned his "daughter"; but never, Durand now thought, in
fitting terms. This girl was really beautiful. The little interview
became an audience to which Durand brought his exquisite court manners.
"Jacques, the little raccoon, certainly is," he replied to Molly's
question, "but the others--I do not know--they are tame enough for
me--but a stranger----. We can try, cautiously."
Molly had run forward and fallen on her knees before the 'coon. She
was delighted with his grizzled, round body, with his bright eyes, his
sharp little nose, the stripes across his back, his bare, black hands,
almost human, and above all with the clean, fresh woods-smell that is
characteristic of such an animal when not too closely confined.
Finding him quite gentle, she took him in her arms. Jacques proceeded
at once to investigate busily the recesses and folds of her dress.
"He seeks for sweetmeats," explained the old man, who was looking on.
From Jacques they proceeded to Isabeau, the lynx. Isabeau spat a
little and looked askance, but under reproof permitted a dainty pat on
the tips of his tasselled ears. Patalon, the great clown bear, was
good-natured, but rough. He desired to be rubbed here and there, he
wished affectionately to return this young lady's attentions with a
mighty hug. He smelt rank of the wild beast. Molly returned soon to
little Jacques.
"How did you get them?" she asked, tapping the end of Jacques' nose to
see him wrinkle his face.
"It is not difficult. One captures them young, when they are mere
cubs; and so, although they never will lose their wild instincts, they
become as you see them."
"But the mothers----?"
"Ah, that is the pity," replied the old man simply. "Sometimes it
becomes necessary that they die."
Molly looked on him with new wonder, this slayer of bears and wild
cats, who nevertheless appeared so gentle, whose eye was so mild. It
was indeed a marvellous world. She forgot the Kid and the hunting
party, and gave herself up to the pleasure of the moment.
From the pets they wandered to the flowers. These interested Molly
exceedingly, for she herself was struggling with the boxes of
geraniums. It was fully half an hour later when Molly finally said
farewell to her host and continued on down the gulch in the direction
taken by her little companion.
The Kid was waiting with all the heart-rending impatience of youth.
The precious time before breakfast was slipping away in futility. He
had made a sacrifice in taking this girl. Never would he do it again!
never! never! And then he saw her coming, and forgot everything except
his relief.
"Took you long enough to break away," was his only complaint as he rose
to conduct the party.
"Have we got time to hunt now? Ain't it 'most breakfast-time?"
inquired Molly dubiously. "Don't you think we'd better let it go for
this morning?"
"Lord, no! Come on! For heaven's sake don't let's waste any more
time!" cried the Kid with a gusty impatience that surprised his
companion. She did not realize the humiliated disappointment that had
this last hour seethed in the little breast. "I s'pose we might 's
well get up on the ridge," suggested the Kid, still grumbling.
They turned sharp to the left, through the thicket, where the birds
were already hushing their songs, and the early dew was quite dried
away. The Kid pushed ahead with almost feverish rapidity. Here and
there in the brush Peter scurried, head down, hind legs well drawn
together beneath his flanks. He snuffled eagerly into the holes and
forms, doing his dramatic best to create some game, if necessary.
Every once in awhile his bristly head, all alert, peered, cock-eared,
over a bush, searching the hunter's face for directions, and then
plunging away suddenly as his own judgment advised. It was most
scienceless and unsportsman-like. The Kid peered eagerly to right and
left, holding the muzzle of the little rifle conscientiously at an
angle of forty-five degrees, as he had been taught, and vainly striving
to avoid dry twigs, although Peter was making enough noise for a circus
parade. The girl followed a step or so in the rear. It was
breath-taking, this excitement. Every stir of the bushes needed
examination, every flutter of wings was a possibility, every plunge of
Peter might send a covey whirring into the pine tops, or rouse a
squirrel to angry expostulation. As they went on up the side hills,
still without result, but therefore with expectation the more
sharpened, and as Molly's cheeks became redder and redder under her
brown skin and her eyes brighter and brighter, and as she bit her under
lip more and more, and as the straight level line of her brows grew
straighter and straighter with the concentration of her thoughts, it is
to be doubted if the most enthusiastic lover of scenery could have torn
his eyes from the pretty picture even for the sake of the magnificent
sweep of country below. So at least thought Cheyenne Harry, on his way
across the ridge to his claim.
He surveyed the eager three with some slight amusement.
"Hullo!" he called suddenly.
The boy and girl started.
"Hullo!" answered Molly after a moment, when her intent hunting
expression had quite fled before her cheerful look of recognition.
"That you?"
The Kid too paused, but evidently under protest, and with the idea of
moving on again at the earliest polite moment.
"How's hunting?" inquired Harry facetiously. "Killed all the game down
below there?"
"All we've seen," replied Molly promptly; "and the hunting's very
good." She put ever so slight a stress on the word "hunting." "We're
going over the ridge now. Want to come along and help carry the game?"
Harry looked speculatively at the Kid, who was standing first on one
bare foot, then on the other. "Naw, guess not," he replied. The Kid
brightened at once. "I'm going over to the Gold King for a while.
You'd better come along with me."
"Haven't had any breakfast," objected Molly.
"Oh, that's nothing. Neither have I. I'm just out to look around.
Come ahead."
Molly did not care a snap of her fingers about the Gold King claim,
except that it belonged to Cheyenne Harry; and, owing to the rarity of
that individual's visits to his property, she had never seen it.
Besides this, she had been a good deal the last few days with Graham.
That young man had been interesting her greatly with a most condensed
and popularized account of the nebular theory, which seemed to Molly
very picturesque and intellectual. She was much taken with the idea of
thus improving herself and she gave herself great credit for the
effort, but it was so far above the usual plane of her intellectual
workings that she had to stand on tiptoe to reach it. The evening
before, she had gone to bed keyed up to wonderful resolves. To-day the
pendulum had begun ever so slowly to swing back. All the influences of
out-door life had drawn her to the earth; the clear freshness of the
early morning, the rank smell of the wild beast, the incipient
hero-worship in her admiration of the old man's supposed prowess as a
slayer of bears, the actual physical contact with the slapping clinging
brush through which she had passed. She breathed deep of the crisp
air. She broadened her chest, and stretched her muscles, and drank the
soft caressing sun warmth. She felt she would like to get down near
the grass, to breathe its earthly smell, to kiss it. It was the
gladness of just living.
And to her in a subtle manner Cheyenne Harry symbolized these things,
just as Graham symbolized that elusive intangible humiliating power of
the intellect. He was strong and bold and breezy of manner, and
elemental of thought, and primitive in his passions and the manner of
their expression. He appealed to that spirit in her which craved the
brusque conqueror.
So for the moment the idea of a scramble with him over these rough
dike-strewn ridges seemed to her the one idea in perfect tune with the
wild Western quality of the newborn day. And therefore, to the
consternation of the waiting Kid, she replied--
"Why, yes. I think it would be good fun, though I don't believe there
_is_ any Gold King claim. I believe it's just an excuse for your
loafing around, for you certainly never spent much time on it."
"It's the finest thing ever," Harry assured her with a laugh. "I'll
show you."
The Kid stood stock-still in consternation.
"Oh!" cried he, when he could get his voice, "and how about our hunt?"
"You come along with us," invited Cheyenne Harry good-naturedly. "It's
good hunting all the way."
But the Kid knew better. This heedless climbing and loud talking would
be quite different from the careful attention necessary for the
destruction of the wily "chicken" or experienced squirrel. He looked
very sad.
"Yes, come on," urged Molly; "we'll get something over in 'Teepee.'"
The Kid shook his head, unable to trust himself to speak. Cheyenne
Harry turned away a little impatiently.
"I'm sorry," continued Molly with hesitation. "I think you'd like it.
But we've had quite a hunt already, haven't we? And we can go another
time."
She joined Cheyenne Harry. Peter stood looking first at the Kid, then
at the two retreating forms. He was plainly undecided. Molly's
gingham dress fluttered for the last time before she turned the corner
of a bowlder. Peter suddenly made up his worried mind. The Kid was
left alone.
He sat down on a rock, and rested his chin in his hands, and looked
away across the valley to the peak of Tom Custer. A tiny white cloud
was sailing down the wind. He watched it until, swirling, it dissolved
into the currents of air. Far back in the forest of pines a little
breeze rustled, faint as a whisper: then it crept nearer, ever waxing
in strength, until, with a murmur as of a throng of people, it passed
overhead, and vanished with a last sigh in the distance. The Kid
listened attentively to the birth and death of the voice. A squirrel
directly above him broke into a rattling torrent of chattering rage.
The Kid sat, his chin in his hands, looking out over the valley with
unseeing eyes, his little rifle resting idly against his knee. The
moments passed by, one after the other, distinct, like the ticks of a
great clock.
A soft muzzle nosed its way gently between his wrists. He looked down.
Peter's homely, gray-whiskered face with the pathetic eyes looked up
into his own. The Kid flung both arms about the dog's coarse-furred
neck, and burst into a passion of tears.
From the top of the ridge, where she had paused a moment to take
breath, Molly saw the whole of this little scene. She suddenly felt
very irritated.
That Kid was certainly the most unreasonable of children! Why, she
spent three-quarters of her time doing nothing but amuse him. She had
got up cheerfully at an unearthly hour, walked several miles without
breakfast, followed him uncomplaining through a lot of damp grass and
underbrush, and now, because she wouldn't spend the rest of the day
with him, he sulked. Forsooth, was she to give up all her friends, her
amusements, for the sake of that boy? Molly was most impatient--with
the Kid--and she became so preoccupied in pitying herself that she
hardly answered Cheyenne Harry's remarks, and was a very poor
companion. She deceived herself perfectly; yet in the background of
her consciousness was something she did not recognize--something
uncomfortable. It was an uneasiness, a heaviness, a slight feeling of
guilt for something which she could not specify, quite indefinable, and
therefore the more annoying. It made her feel like shaking her
shoulders. There seemed no valid reason why she should not be as
light-hearted as she had been a few minutes ago, for her reason saw
nothing in her conduct to regret. And yet she was uneasy, as though
she had done something wrong and was on the point of being found out.
She could not understand it, but it was very real, and, because she
could see no reason for it, it made her angry, with a sense of
injustice.
It was the first manifestation of another phase of heredity--the New
England conscience.
XXI
LAFOND MAKES A FRIEND
Michail Lafond made much less of a stir in the life of the camp than
had his ward. He fitted in quietly.
Behind the Little Nugget was a room and a shed. Lafond took possession
of the room, and relegated Frosty to the shed. His position as
proprietor of the saloon sufficiently explained his idleness, if
anybody's idleness ever needed explanation in a mining camp. He seemed
to do nothing, merely because he was to be seen almost any hour of the
day either smoking contemplative pipes near his place or Bill Martin's,
or wandering with every appearance of leisure from claim to claim in
the Hills, or disappearing in the direction of Durand's cabin in the
lower gulch. That was a mistake. He really did a great deal.
For instance, he made himself agreeable in a cool, drawling fashion to
anybody who cared to talk to him. He kept his eyes wide open, no
matter where he went. He puffed as many speculations into his brain as
he did smoke-clouds into the air. That was not much perhaps; yet, by
the time the Chicago men came to Copper Creek, the half-breed knew just
about everybody's business in that camp. The student of character
never needs to ask blunt questions.