Her
“If it had ha’ been Her, I’d ha’ come within the breadth of a cow’s
thumb of shooting Her!”
“But who’s—‘Her’?” The Guardian thrust a peering face forward, benighted
merriment in her eyes; so did other lively girls; this was worth a
wetting.
“Um-m. If you ask me, I’ll say she’s as rank a witch as ever rode on
ragwort—I’ll say so! The wife she was talking about her jest now, when
the thunder woke us hoping she’d ridden safe home—with my slippers—posy
slippers.”
Pemrose suddenly sat up stiffly—ear-hungry.
“Your—slippers!” It was a hen-like cackle from the hay.
“Um-m.” The farmer caressed his shotgun—growling like a bear with a sore
paw.
“But who is She?” put forth the Guardian again; she felt that a lease of
the hayloft for the night—perhaps breakfast in the morning—would depend
upon the sympathy shown to a highly exasperated man, fresh from an
unpleasant “curtain” talk.
“Wal! now, I reckon she’s a stray bird, like yerselves—a stranger, or
almost so. She ha’n’t been around these parts much more’n a year—blamed
heather cat, always on the roam! The wife she calls her the Little Lone
Lady—my wife’s awful stuck on her—an’ I reckon she does come o’ grammar
folks—edicate! Other o’ the mountain people call her Magic Margot,
jollying-like—or the spell-woman, ’cause she can tell things—put over
things—that other folks can’t.” He dropped his voice to a croon of
nocturnal mystery.
“Does she—does she ride a bay horse—an umbrella in her stirrup strap, a
red handkerchief round her neck—something shiny upon her heel—at times?”
Pemrose’s breath came hotly—her hand was to her heart.
“Umph!” The sore bear nodded. “Oh! ’tisn’t the fust time I’ve heard the
midnight shog, shog, of her bay cob’s hoofs stoppin’—heard her stealin’
up into this loft, to roost. But—_never_ again, s’ ’elp me!” He brought
his unseen feet down upon the ladder, with a vehemence that started a
hayquake.
“Why! what has she done now?” It was a general chorus from the guild of
glee, excited girls, done to death with weariness, yet tickled all over
with the sensation that, much as the vacation had promised them, they
had not expected melodrama.
“Gosh! yes. She was at our house to-day, jest a while afore I met
you-uns on the valley trail.” The farmer thrust a red lantern up. “I was
out diggin’ ’mong the ‘crony hills’, pertater patch; an’ she jest came
it all over my wife with some palaver about a good offer we was going to
get for this plaguy farm, where rocks _grow_—an’ every one of ’em rooted
out means a back ache,” he mopped his face, “knowledge she didn’t have
from no nat’ral source, you understand—the Little Lone Lady. She had
some kind of a ‘fore-go’, too, ’bout a great cryin’ out there’d be ’mong
all the animals ’fore morning. An’ the wife she was so carried away with
her that I’m blessed if she didn’t give her a good fat chicken, to carry
home in her saddlebag—she allers has that saddlebag bulging, too—an’ the
pair o’ red slippers that she was workin’ with roses fer me—cut ’em down
to fit her ... she got the red felt f’om her brother who works in an
organ factory.”
So this was the load which the trail-bear had carried upon his sore head
when he felt that the valley was beyond “God bless you”! There were
smothered shrieks from the hay.
“Poor wronged man! You have all our sympathy—all our sympathy!” The
Guardian touched his hand. “Can’t you get them back? Won’t
she—disgorge?”
“Not much! Not, when she’s ridden off with ’em to her den, her little
cabin on a lonely peak, ’bout nine miles from here. She lived there
alone all last winter—when she wasn’t on the go, riding round among the
mountains—living on crumbs, the neighbors gave her.... Oh! she’s a
sleek-gabbed one, but sometimes I think she’s as cracked as she’s
sly—and keen.” He sighed.
“It’s easy to see how she comes by her ‘fore-goes’ about the weather and
so forth—a radio receiver in that bulky umbrella,” murmured Pemrose.
“Wall, anyhow, I ain’t ‘cock-bird-high’ to be caught by her chaff.” The
farmer stamped again. “The women they go an’ see her an’ come back with
tales o’ what they hear and see—my wife with a muslin mouth upon her,
all stiff and starched, tellin’ about strange water-burn, little
cloudy-bright rings an’ shapes floating up from it—some new brand o’
angels, I suppose, visiting with _her_, the Little Lone Lady.”
“Um-m. Phosphine, I guess, Daddy would say!” whispered Pemrose to the
hay.
“I didn’t see none of it when I went to ask her about Paddy’s cough—you
can hear him now underneath you.”
There was a wild burst of laughter at this give-away, mingled with the
blowing noise of a windy cougher.
“Wal! as you ain’t Her and want to spend the night here ... you ain’t
got no candles nor matches about you?” he asked suspiciously.
“No, nothing that could start a fire,” the Guardian assured him, intent
now on seeing that the girls removed their wet shoes.
“Well! good rest to ye on the hay. Mebbe there’ll be a bite o’ breakfast
comin’ to ye—for I vum ye can stand more ’n most city folks, though
there’s one among ye that looks a dainty piece—not meant for any
hard-sleddin’.” He raised the lantern, until its ray singled out Una,
yawning upon the hay. “So-o long!” He backed down the ladder—gun and
lantern. But, again, he thrust his head up and glared around. “Look
out—folks!” he began; “this ’ere hay-loft—.” But, once more, he saw red,
the red of his “rosie” slippers. “Gosh!” he gurgled, “lucky fer Her that
she warn’t you; I swear to goodness! I’d ha’ come within a grain o’
shooting Her.” The lantern gave a final flash and disappeared.
“Well! now—now that old ‘Bunch o’ Spinach’ has gone, I guess we can
settle to sleep,” gasped Lura.
“Don’t call—names,” mumbled the Guardian, who was seeing that Una got
out of damp clothing. “Aren’t we lucky not to be Her!”
It was a new flash light, mornie-blink, stealing up the ladder and
through the loft transom, some three hours later.
It fell on tired face, trailing limbs, tossing promiscuously upon the
hay.
“What’s—that?” Una sat up suddenly.
“Only the rain. Another shower! Sounds—sounds like bricks upon a tin
roof!” Pemrose yawned. “Well! ducky, didn’t we have a good night—what
was left of it—in spite of that old ‘Hayseed’ and his slippers?”
“Poor old bear! No wonder he called himself beyond God bless you!”
mumbled Dorothy. “Last night—didn’t it put the cream on
experiences—camping experiences?”
“I’ll say—so.” Pemrose echoed the boy’s slang, cuddling close to her
loft-mate, her dearest joke-fellow, Una, careful, in her tickled
laughter, not to wake fifteen slumbering girls stretched like trailing
plants around their Guardian—their queen of the meadow, raised slightly
above them, upon a mouldy dais of hay.
“Isn’t she a—dear? A dear!” Pemrose gazed at the white feather of hair
in the brown of the womanly locks, unbound. “Just the woman—I want to
be!” dreamily. “The birds, do you hear them? Pecking on the roof!” She
pinched Una. “Aren’t they loud—like scratching monkeys? Mercy!
what’s—that? A—rat?”
“A rat! Oh! don’t—don’t let me see it,” wailed Una. “And we were so
‘comfy’!”
“A rat! A hor-rid rat, with—oh! tail by the yard,” screamed Dorothy,
hopping round, in the dim light, from basement to bank of last year’s
hay.
“A rat! Oh! the only thing—the only thing I’d ever want to kill is a
rat.”
Did the sinister wish, a rebounding shell, hit Pemrose Lorry,
herself—she careering blindly, too?
Had an earthquake struck the barn—or a bomb?
Suddenly the world, the hay, went up; and she went down.
Hay was in her eyes, her ears, her mouth, down her back—she would have
made a mule seem a sorry hay-consumer.
She was clutching at it wildly with both hands—and finding it but thin
air in her grasp.
In the feeble dawn glimmer she was sinking—being plunged into a shocking
world underneath.
And where else she was to go, how far she was to travel in this awful
underworld, she did not know, for she had alighted on a horse’s
back—alighted in a huddle on a horse’s back!
And there came the scream of Dorothy from the sheep pen, amid a torrent
of frightened baas.
“It’s Paddy—the horse with the cough—and he’s trying to rub me off
against the stall!”
Even as the knowledge crashed through Pemrose’s brain she was twisting
her groping hands fiercely in Paddy’s mane—in the musty gloom of the
horse-stall.
Buried alive, she would carry on—as Dorothy was carrying on, judging by
the sheep.
She managed to slip one foot from under her, get astride upon the dark,
lunging farmhorse—a mountain in the gloom.
“Ha-a! Tha-at’s more like it!” She drew a hissing breath between her
teeth.
But if Paddy was drawing comparisons, it was between making hay while
the sun shone, greedily pulling down more of it until he was half
smothered—and getting rid of the startling burden on his back.
Snorting malignantly, he rocked up against his thrashing stall-mate,
Barney, trying to palm that grasshopper burden off on him.
Barney was all reeking excitement, too, in the close, musty quarters.
For a moment, one awful moment, the girl, jammed between their hot,
steaming sides, saw herself beneath their mangling hoofs—her life
trodden out in the stall.
She was in the lions’ den—and no mistake. For Paddy, great, clodhopping
farmhorse, failing to dislodge her thus, swung his dark haunches, lunged
with his front shoulder at the dark partition—to crush her there.
But, quick as thought—before his throbbing side could pin her, the
girl’s little bare foot, darting forward, was nestling in the hollow of
that brutish neck; five tickling, pink toes were stroking it
gently—combing it soothingly.
“Treff told me, Treff—Treff,—if ever a horse tries to rub you off, dart
your foot forward into the hollow of his neck!” By waves far subtler
than radio, she was reaching out now, imploringly to that boy pal with
the amber speck of humor in one gray eye—rider of the clouds and rider
of the plains.
Across miles of mountain and valley his mantle seemed flung to her, the
mantle of his daring, that cock-o’-pluck—so that, with her right leg
stretched out, level, across the cross brute’s shoulder and five little
toes seductively curry-combing, she was patting the other side of the
swollen neck, with a:
“Steady—boy! Steady, there! Easy—now! Who the deuce can parlez-vous a
horse? That’s me! Oh-h! five little pigs went to market.”
Was there ever the Paddy, yet, who could resist such treatment?
Two minutes later a farmer, coming in mad haste and trembling to the
barn door, beheld, in the dim dawn a girl queening it in dun trappings
of hay upon a perfectly docile farmhorse—which rolled the whites of its
eyes at him sheepishly—the great jaws grinding upon a sheaf of hay.
“Good—old—Paddy!” Patronizingly she patted the shoulder that would have
rubbed her out, rose to a standing position upon the broad back, her
up-flung hand gripping the top of the stall.
Coolly she drew herself up, crept along the dark stall-edge, dropped
from the partition into the manger and thence, with a light spring, to
the barn floor.
“Where are you—Dorothy? Oh-h! where are—_you_?” she anxiously cried.
“Baa, baa, black sheep,”
came a laughing voice.
“I’m here—gathering wool!”
“Wal! I swan to goodness there ain’t much ‘woolgathering’ about either
o’ you.” The farmer slapped his leg, with a roar. “Oh! I started at
midnight fer to tell you about that hayloft floor, jest bone-shanks,
bare poles across, widish spaces between ’em—and the hay thinned out in
places. But, land! what’s the odds?” He beamed upon Paddy’s rider. “I
vum even the Little Lone Lady will never get the better of you.”
“She’ll never ride off in my shoes, eh?” laughed Pemrose. “But she was
right about the commotion among all the animals before morning; wasn’t
she?” as she flew to extricate Dorothy.