THE MAN-HUNTERS
The girl's handsome face was turned toward the valley below her. She
was staring with eyes of dreaming, half regretful, yet not without a
faint light of humor, at the nestling village in the lap of the
woodlands, which crowded the heart of the valley, where the silvery
thread of river wound its way.
The wide foliage of the maple tree, beneath which she sat, sheltered
her bare head from the burning noonday sun. And here, so high up on
the shoulder of the valley, she felt there was at least air to
breathe.
The book on the ground beside her had only just been laid there; its
pages, wide open, had been turned face downward upon the dry,
grassless patch surrounding the tree trunk.
Only a few feet away another girl, slight and fair-haired, was nimbly
plying her needle upon a pile of white lawn, as to the object of which
there could be small enough doubt. She was working with the care and
obvious appreciation which most women display toward the manufacture
of delicate underclothing.
As her companion laid her book aside and turned toward the valley, the
pretty needlewoman raised a pair of gray, speculative eyes. But almost
at once they dropped again to her work. It was only for a moment,
however. She reached the end of her seam and began to fold the
material up, and, as she did so, her eyes were once more raised in the
direction of her sister, only now they were full of laughter.
"Kate," she said, in a tone in which mirth would not be denied, "do
you know, it's five years to-day since we first came to Rocky Springs?
Five years." She breathed a profound sigh, which was full of mockery.
"You were twenty-three when we came. You are twenty-eight now, and I
am twenty-two. We'll soon be old maids. The folks down there," she
went on, nodding at the village below, "will soon be speaking of us as
'them two old guys,' or 'them funny old dears, the Seton sisters.'
Isn't it awful to think of? We came out West to find husbands for
ourselves, and here we are very nearly--old maids."
Kate Seton's eyes wore a responsive twinkle, but she did not turn.
"You're a bit of a joke, Hel," she replied, in the slow musical
fashion of a deep contralto voice.
"But I'm not a joke," protested the other, with pretended severity.
"And I won't be called 'Hel,' just because my name's Helen. It--it
sounds like the way Pete and Nick swear at each other when they've
been spending their pay at Dirty O'Brien's. Besides, it doesn't alter
facts at all. It won't take much more climbing to find ourselves right
on the shelf, among the frying pans and other cooking utensils.
I'm--I'm tired of it--I--really am. It's no use talking. I'm a woman,
and I'd sooner see a pair of trousers walking around my house than
another bunch of skirts--even if they belong to my beloved sister.
Trousers go every time--with me."
Kate withdrew her gaze from the village below and looked into her
sister's pretty face with smiling, indulgent eyes.
"Well?" she said.
The other shook her fair head. Her eyes were still laughing, but their
expression did not hide the seriousness which lay behind them.
"It's not 'well' at all," she cried. She drew herself up from the
ground into a kneeling position, which left her sitting on the heels
of shoes that could never have been bought in Rocky Springs. "Now,
listen to me," she went on, holding up a warning finger. "I'm just
going to state my case right here and now, and--and you've got to
listen to me. Five years ago, Kate Seton, aged twenty-three, and her
sister, Helen Seton, were left orphans, with the sum of two thousand
dollars equally divided between them. You get that?"
Her sister nodded amusedly. "Well," the girl went on deliberately.
"Kate Seton was no ordinary sort of girl. Oh, no. She was most
_un_ordinary, as Nick would say. She was a sort of headstrong girl
with an absurd notion of woman's independence. I--I don't mean she was
masculine, or any horror like that. But she believed that when it came
to doing the things she wanted to do she could do them just as well,
and deliberately, as any man. That she could think as well as any man.
In fact, she didn't believe in the superiority of the male sex over
hers. The only superiority she did acknowledge was that a man could
ask a woman to marry, while the privilege of asking a man was denied
to Kate's sex. But even in acknowledging this she reserved to herself
an alternative. She believed that every woman had the right to make a
man ask her."
The patient Kate mildly protested. "You're making me out a perfectly
awful creature," she said, without the least umbrage. "Hadn't I better
stand up for the--arraignment?"
But her sister's mock seriousness remained quite undisturbed.
"There's no necessity," she said, airily. "Besides, you'll be tired
when I'm through. Now listen. Kate Seton is a very kind and lovable
creature--really. Only--only she suffers from--notions."
The dark-eyed Kate, with her handsome face so full of decision and
character, eyed her sister with the indulgence of a mother.
"You do talk, child," was all she said.
Helen nodded. "I like talking. It makes me feel clever."
"Ye--es. People are like that," returned the other ironically. "Go
on."
Helen folded her hands in her lap, and for a moment gazed
speculatively at the sister she knew she adored.
"Well," she went on presently. "Let us keep to the charge. Five years
ago this spirit of independence and adventure was very strong in Kate
Seton. Far, far stronger than it is now. That's by the way. Say,
anyhow, it was so strong then that when these two found themselves
alone in the world with their money, it was her idea to break through
all convention, leave her little village in New England, go out west,
and seek 'live' men and fortune on the rolling plains of Canada. The
last part of that's put in for effect."
The girl paused, watching her sister as she turned again toward the
valley below.
With a sigh of resignation Helen was forced to proceed. "That's five
years--ago," she said. Then, dropping her voice to a note of pathos,
and with the pretense of a sob: "Five long years ago two lonely girls,
orphans, set out from their conventional home in a New England
village, after having sold it out--the home, not the village--and
turned wistful faces toward the wild green plains of the western
wilderness, the home of the broncho, the gopher, and the merciless
mosquito."
"Oh, do get on," Kate's smile was good to see.
"It's emotion," said Helen, pretending to dab her eyes. "It's emotion
mussing up the whole blamed business, as Nick would say."
"Never mind Nick," cried her sister. "Anyway, I don't think he swears
nearly as much as you make out. I'll soon have to go and get the
Meeting House ready for to-morrow's service. So----"
"Ah, that's just it," broke in Helen, with a great display of triumph
in her laughing eyes. "Five years ago Kate Seton would never have said
that. She'd have said, 'bother the old Meeting House, and all the old
cats who go there to slander each other in--in the name of religion.'
That's what she'd have said. It's all different now. Gone is her love
of adventure; gone is her defiance of convention; gone is--is her
independence. What is she now? A mere farmer, a drudging female,
spinster farmer, growing cabbages and things, and getting her
manicured hands all mussed up, and freckles on her otherwise handsome
face."
"A successful--female, spinster farmer," put in Kate, in her deep,
soft voice.
Helen nodded, and there was a sort of helplessness in her admission.
"Yes," she sighed, "and that's the worst of it. We came to find
husbands--'live' husbands, and we only find--cabbages. The
man-hunters. That's what we called ourselves. It sounded--uncommon,
and so we used the expression." Suddenly she scrambled to her feet in
undignified haste, and shook a small, clenched fist in her sister's
direction. "Kate Seton," she cried, "you're a fraud. An
unmitigated--fraud. Yes, you are. Don't glare at me. 'Live' men!
Adventure! Poof! You're as tame as any village cat, and just
as--dozy."
Kate had risen, too. She was not glaring. She was laughing. Her dark,
handsome face was alight with merriment at her sister's characteristic
attack. She loved her irresponsible chatter, just as she loved the
loyal heart that beat within the girl's slight, shapely body. Now she
came over and laid a caressing hand upon the girl's shoulder. In a
moment it dropped to the slim waist about which her arm was quickly
placed.
"I wish I could get cross with you, Helen," she said happily. "But I
simply--can't. You know you get very near the mark in your funny
fashion--in some things. Say, I wonder. Do you know we have more than
our original capital in the bank? Our farm is a flourishing concern.
We employ labor. Two creatures that call themselves men, and who
possess the characters of--hogs, or tigers, or something pretty
dreadful. We can afford to buy our clothes direct from New York or
Montreal. Think of that. Isn't that due to independence? I admit the
villagy business. I seem to love Rocky Springs. It's such a whited
sepulcher, and its inhabitants are such blackguards with great big
hearts. Yes, I love even the unconventional conventions of the place.
But the spirit of adventure. Well, somehow I don't think that has
really gone."
"Just got mired--among the cabbages," said Helen, slyly. Then she
released herself from her sister's embrace and stood off at arm's
length, assuming an absurdly accusing air. "But wait a moment, Kate
Seton. This is all wrong. I'm making the charge, and you're doing all
the talking. There's no defense in the case. You've--you've just got
to listen, and--accept the sentence. Guess this isn't a court of
men--just women. Now, we're man-hunters. That's how we started, and
that's what I am--still. We've been five years at it, with what
result? I'll just tell you. I've been proposed to by everything
available in trousers in the village--generally when the 'thing' is
drunk. The only objects that haven't asked me to marry are our two
hired men, Nick and Pete, and that's only because their wages aren't
sufficient to get them drunk enough. As for you, most of the boys sort
of stand in awe of you, wouldn't dare talk marrying to you even in the
height of delirium tremens. The only men who have ever had courage to
make any display in that direction are Inspector Fyles, when his duty
brings him in the neighborhood of Rocky Springs, and a dypsomaniac
rancher and artist, to wit, Charlie Bryant. And how do you take it?
You--a man-hunter? Why, you run like a rabbit from Fyles. Courage?
Oh, dear. The mention of his name is enough to send you into
convulsions of trepidation and maidenly confusion. And all the time
you secretly admire him. As for the other, you have turned yourself
into a sort of hospital nurse and temperance reformer. You've taken
him up as a sort of hobby, until, in his lucid intervals, he takes
advantage of your reforming process to acquire the added disease of
love, which has reduced him to a condition of imbecile infatuation
with your charming self."
Kate was about to break in with a laughing protest, but Helen stayed
her with a gesture of denial.
"Wait," she cried, grandly. "Hear the whole charge. Look at your
village life, which you plead guilty to. You, a high-spirited woman of
independence and daring. You are no better than a sort of hired
cleaner to a Meeting House you have adopted, and which is otherwise
run by a lot of cut-throats and pirates, whose wives and offspring are
no better than themselves. You attend the village social functions
with as much appreciation of them as any village mother with an
unwashed but growing family. You gossip with them and scandalize as
badly as any of them, and, in your friendliness and charity toward
them, I verily believe, for two cents, you'd go among the said
unwashed offspring with a scrub-brush. What--what is coming to you,
Kate? You--a man-hunter? No--no," she went on, with a hopeless shake
of her pretty head, "'tis no use talking. The big, big spirit of early
womanhood has somehow failed you. It's failed us both. We are no
longer man-hunters. The soaring Kate, bearing her less brave sister in
her arms, has fallen. They have both tumbled to the ground. The early
seed, so full of promise, has germinated and grown--but it's come up
cabbages. And--and they're getting old. There you are, I can't help
it. I've tripped over the agricultural furrow we've ploughed, and----.
There!"
She flung out an arm dramatically, pointing down at the slight figure
of a man coming toward them, slowly toiling up the slope of the
valley.
"There he is," she cried. "Your artist-patient. Your dypsomaniac
rancher. A symbol, a symbol of the bonds which are crushing the brave
spirits of our--ahem!--young hearts."
But Kate ignored the approaching man. She had eyes only for the bright
face before her.
"You're a great child," she declared warmly. "I ought to be angry. I
ought to be just mad with you. I believe I really am. But--but the
cabbage business has broken up the storm of my feelings. Cabbage? Oh,
dear." She laughed softly. "You, with your soft, wavy hair, dressed as
though we had a New York hairdresser in the village. You, with your
great gray eyes, your charming little nose and cupid mouth. You, with
your beautiful new frock, only arrived from New York two days ago, and
which, by the way, I don't think you ought to wear sprawling upon
dusty ground. You--a cabbage! It just robs all you've said of, I won't
say truth, but--sense. There, child, you've said your say. But you
needn't worry about me. I'm not changed--really. Maybe I do many
things that seem strange to you, but--but--I know what I'm doing. Poor
old Charlie. Look at him. I often wonder what'll be the end of him."
Kate Seton sighed. It seemed as though there were a great depth of
motherly tenderness in her heart, and just now that tenderness was
directed toward the man approaching them.
But the lighter-minded Helen was less easily stirred. She smiled
amusedly in her sister's direction. Then her bright eyes glanced
swiftly down at the man.
"If all we hear is true, his end will be the penitentiary," she
declared with decision.
Kate glanced round quickly, and her eyes suddenly became quite hard.
"Penitentiary?" she questioned sharply.
Helen shrugged.
"Everybody says he's the biggest whisky smuggler in the country,
and--and his habits don't make things look much--different. Say, Kate,
O'Brien told me the other day that the police had him marked down.
They were only waiting to get him--red-handed."
The hardness abruptly died out of Kate's eyes. A faint sigh, perhaps
of relief, escaped her.
"They'll never do that," she declared firmly. "Everybody's making a
mistake about Charlie. I'm--sure. With all his failings Charlie's no
whisky-runner. He's too gentle. He's too--too honest to descend to
such a traffic."
Suddenly her eyes lit. She came close to Helen, and one firm hand
grasped the soft flesh of the girl's arm, and closed tightly upon it.
"Say, child," she went on, in a deep, thrilling tone, "do you know
what these whisky-runners risk? Do you? No. Of course you don't. They
risk life as well as liberty. They're threatened every moment of their
lives. The penalty is heavy, and when a man becomes a whisky-runner he
has no intention of being taken--alive. Think of all that, and see
where your imagination carries you. Then think of Charlie--as we know
him. An artist. A warm-hearted, gentle creature, whose only sins
are--against himself."
But the younger girl's face displayed skepticism.
"Yes--as we know him," she replied quickly. "I've thought of it while
he's been giving me lessons in painting, when I've watched him with
you, with that wonderful look of dog-like devotion in his eyes, while
hanging on every word you uttered. I've thought of it all. And always
running through my mind was the title of a book I once read--'Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.' You are sure, and I--I only wonder."
Kate's hand relaxed its hold upon her sister's arm. Her whole
expression changed with a suddenness which, had she observed it, must
have startled the other. Her eyes were cold, very cold, as she
surveyed the sister to whom she was so devoted, and who could find it
in her heart to think so harshly of one whom she regarded as a sick
and ailing creature, needing the utmost support from natures morally
stronger than his own.
"You must think as you will, Helen," she said coldly. "I know. I know
Charlie. I understand the gentle heart that guides his every action,
and I warn you you are wrong--utterly wrong. Everybody is wrong, the
police--everybody."
She turned away and moved a few steps down the slope toward the
approaching figure.