As the children were slowly straggling to their places the next morning,
the master waited for an opportunity to speak to Rupert. That beautiful
but scarcely amiable youth was, as usual, surrounded and impeded by a
group of his small female admirers, for whom, it is but just to add,
he had a supreme contempt. Possibly it was this healthy quality that
inclined the master towards him, and it was consequently with some
satisfaction that he overheard fragments of his openly disparaging
comments upon his worshippers.
“There!” to Clarinda Jones, “don't flop! And don't YOU,” to Octavia
Dean, “go on breathing over my head like that. If there's anything I
hate it's having a girl breathing round me. Yes, you were! I felt it in
my hair. And YOU too--you're always snoopin' and snoodgin'. Oh, yes,
you want to know WHY I've got an extry copy-book and another 'Rithmetic,
Miss Curiosity. Well, what would you give to know? Want to see if
they're PRETTY” (with infinite scorn at the adjective). “No, they ain't
PRETTY. That's all you girls think about--what's PRETTY and what's
curious! Quit now! Come! Don't ye see teacher lookin' at you? Ain't you
ashamed?”
He caught the master's beckoning eye and came forward, slightly abashed,
with a flush of irritation still on his handsome face, and his chestnut
curls slightly rumpled. One, which Octavia had covertly accented by
twisting round her forefinger, stood up like a crest on his head.
“I've told Uncle Ben that you might help him here after school hours,”
said the master, taking him aside. “You may therefore omit your writing
exercise in the morning and do it in the afternoon.”
The boy's dark eyes sparkled. “And if it would be all the same to you,
sir,” he added earnestly, “you might sorter give out in school that I
was to be kept in.”
“I'm afraid that would hardly do,” said the master, much amused. “But
why?”
Rupert's color deepened. “So ez to keep them darned girls from foolin'
round me and followin' me back here.”
“We will attend to that,” said the master smiling; a moment after he
added more seriously, “I suppose your father knows that you are to
receive money for this? And he doesn't object?”
“He! Oh no!” returned Rupert with a slight look of astonishment, and
the same general suggestion of patronizing his progenitor that he had
previously shown to his younger brother. “You needn't mind HIM.” In
reality Filgee pere, a widower of two years' standing, had tacitly
allowed the discipline of his family to devolve upon Rupert. Remembering
this, the master could only say, “Very well,” and good-naturedly dismiss
the pupil to his seat and the subject from his mind. The last laggard
had just slipped in, the master had glanced over the occupied benches
with his hand upon his warning bell, when there was a quick step on the
gravel, a flutter of skirts like the sound of alighting birds, and a
young woman lightly entered.
In the rounded, untouched, and untroubled freshness of her cheek and
chin, and the forward droop of her slender neck, she appeared a girl
of fifteen; in her developed figure and the maturer drapery of her full
skirts she seemed a woman; in her combination of naive recklessness
and perfect understanding of her person she was both. In spite of a few
school-books that jauntily swung from a strap in her gloved hand, she
bore no resemblance to a pupil; in her pretty gown of dotted muslin with
bows of blue ribbon on the skirt and corsage, and a cluster of roses
in her belt, she was as inconsistent and incongruous to the others as
a fashion-plate would have been in the dry and dog-eared pages before
them. Yet she carried it off with a demure mingling of the naivete of
youth and the aplomb of a woman, and as she swept down the narrow aisle,
burying a few small wondering heads in the overflow of her flounces,
there was no doubt of her reception in the arch smile that dimpled her
cheek. Dropping a half curtsey to the master, the only suggestion of her
equality with the others, she took her place at one of the larger desks,
and resting her elbow on the lid began to quietly remove her gloves. It
was Cressy McKinstry.
Irritated and disturbed at the girl's unceremonious entrance, the master
for the moment recognized her salutation coldly, and affected to ignore
her elaborate appearance. The situation was embarrassing. He could not
decline to receive her as she was no longer accompanied by her lover,
nor could he plead entire ignorance of her broken engagement; while
to point out the glaring inappropriateness of costume would be a fresh
interference he knew Indian Spring would scarcely tolerate. He could
only accept such explanation as she might choose to give. He rang his
bell as much to avert the directed eyes of the children as to bring the
scene to a climax.
She had removed her gloves and was standing up.
“I reckon I can go on where I left off?” she said lazily, pointing to
the books she had brought with her.
“For the present,” said the master dryly.
The first class was called. Later, when his duty brought him to her
side, he was surprised to find that she was evidently already prepared
with consecutive lessons, as if she were serenely unconscious of any
doubt of her return, and as coolly as if she had only left school
the day before. Her studies were still quite elementary, for Cressy
McKinstry had never been a brilliant scholar, but he perceived, with a
cynical doubt of its permanency, that she had bestowed unusual care upon
her present performance. There was moreover a certain defiance in it, as
if she had resolved to stop any objection to her return on the score of
deficiencies. He was obliged in self-defence to take particular note of
some rings she wore, and a large bracelet that ostentatiously glittered
on her white arm--which had already attracted the attention of her
companions, and prompted the audible comment from Johnny Filgee that
it was “truly gold.” Without meeting her eyes he contented himself with
severely restraining the glances of the children that wandered in her
direction. She had never been quite popular with the school in her
previous role of fiancee, and only Octavia Dean and one or two older
girls appreciated its mysterious fascination; while the beautiful
Rupert, secure in his avowed predilection for the middle-aged wife
of the proprietor of the Indian Spring hotel, looked upon her as a
precocious chit with more than the usual propensity to objectionable
“breathing.” Nevertheless the master was irritatingly conscious of her
presence--a presence which now had all the absurdity of her ridiculous
love-experiences superadded to it. He tried to reason with himself that
it was only a phase of frontier life, which ought to have amused him.
But it did not. The intrusion of this preposterous girl seemed to
disarrange the discipline of his life as well as of his school. The
usual vague, far-off dreams in which he was in the habit of indulging
during school-hours, dreams that were perhaps superinduced by the
remoteness of his retreat and a certain restful sympathy in his little
auditors, which had made him--the grown-up dreamer--acceptable to them
in his gentle understanding of their needs and weaknesses, now seemed to
have vanished forever.
At recess, Octavia Dean, who had drawn near Cressy and reached up
to place her arm round the older girl's waist, glanced at her with
a patronizing smile born of some rapid free-masonry, and laughingly
retired with the others. The master at his desk, and Cressy who had
halted in the aisle were left alone.
“I have had no intimation yet from your father or mother that you were
coming back to school again,” he began. “But I suppose THEY have decided
upon your return?”
An uneasy suspicion of some arrangement with her former lover had
prompted the emphasis.
The young girl looked at him with languid astonishment. “I reckon paw
and maw ain't no objection,” she said with the same easy ignoring of
parental authority that had characterized Rupert Filgee, and which
seemed to be a local peculiarity. “Maw DID offer to come yer and see
you, but I told her she needn't bother.”
She rested her two hands behind her on the edge of a desk, and leaned
against it, looking down upon the toe of her smart little shoe which was
describing a small semicircle beyond the hem of her gown. Her attitude,
which was half-defiant, half-indolent, brought out the pretty curves of
her waist and shoulders. The master noticed it and became a trifle more
austere.
“Then I am to understand that this is a permanent thing?” he asked
coldly.
“What's that?” said Cressy interrogatively.
“Am I to understand that you intend coming regularly to school?”
repeated the master curtly, “or is this merely an arrangement for a few
days--until”--
“Oh,” said Cressy comprehendingly, lifting her unabashed blue eyes
to his, “you mean THAT. Oh, THAT'S broke off. Yes,” she added
contemptuously, making a larger semicircle with her foot, “that's
over--three weeks ago.”
“And Seth Davis--does HE intend returning too?”
“He!” She broke into a light girlish laugh. “I reckon not much! S'long's
I'm here, at least.” She had just lifted herself to a sitting posture
on the desk, so that her little feet swung clear of the floor in their
saucy dance. Suddenly she brought her heels together and alighted. “So
that's all?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Kin I go now?”
“Yes.”
She laid her books one on the top of the other and lingered an instant.
“Been quite well?” she asked with indolent politeness.
“Yes--thank you.”
“You're lookin' right peart.”
She walked with a Southern girl's undulating languor to the door, opened
it, then charged suddenly upon Octavia Dean, twirled her round in a
wild waltz and bore her away; appearing a moment after on the playground
demurely walking with her arm around her companion's waist in an
ostentatious confidence at once lofty, exclusive, and exasperating to
the smaller children.
When school was dismissed that afternoon and the master had remained to
show Rupert Filgee how to prepare Uncle Ben's tasks, and had given his
final instructions to his youthful vicegerent, that irascible Adonis
unburdened himself querulously:
“Is Cressy McKinstry comin' reg'lar, Mr. Ford?”
“She is,” said the master dryly. After a pause he asked, “Why?”
Rupert's curls had descended on his eyebrows in heavy discontent. “It's
mighty rough, jest ez a feller reckons he's got quit of her and her
jackass bo', to hev her prancin' back inter school agin, and rigged out
like ez if she'd been to a fire in a milliner's shop.”
“You shouldn't allow your personal dislikes, Rupert, to provoke you to
speak of a fellow-scholar in that way--and a young lady, too,” corrected
the master dryly.
“The woods is full o' sich feller-scholars and sich young ladies, if
yer keer to go a gunning for 'em,” said Rupert with dark and slangy
significance. “Ef I'd known she was comin' back I'd”--he stopped and
brought his sunburnt fist against the seam of his trousers with a boyish
gesture, “I'd hev jist”--
“What?” said the master sharply.
“I'd hev played hookey till she left school agin! It moutn't hev bin so
long, neither,” he added with a mysterious chuckle.
“That will do,” said the master peremptorily. “For the present you'll
attend to your duty and try to make Uncle Ben see you're something more
than a foolish, prejudiced school-boy, or,” he added significantly, “he
and I may both repent our agreement. Let me have a good account of you
both when I return.”
He took his hat from its peg on the wall, and in obedience to a suddenly
formed resolution left the school-room to call upon the parents of
Cressy McKinstry. He was not quite certain what he should say, but,
after his habit, would trust to the inspiration of the moment. At the
worst he could resign a situation that now appeared to require more
tact and delicacy than seemed consistent with his position, and he was
obliged to confess to himself that he had lately suspected that his
present occupation--the temporary expedient of a poor but clever young
man of twenty--was scarcely bringing him nearer a realization of his
daily dreams. For Mr. Jack Ford was a youthful pilgrim who had sought
his fortune in California so lightly equipped that even in the matter of
kin and advisers he was deficient. That prospective fortune had already
eluded him in San Francisco, had apparently not waited for him in
Sacramento, and now seemed never to have been at Indian Spring.
Nevertheless, when he was once out of sight of the school-house he lit a
cigar, put his hands in his pockets, and strode on with the cheerfulness
of that youth to which all things are possible.
The children had already dispersed as mysteriously and completely as
they had arrived. Between him and the straggling hamlet of Indian Spring
the landscape seemed to be without sound or motion. The wooded upland or
ridge on which the schoolhouse stood, half a mile further on, began
to slope gradually towards the river, on whose banks, seen from that
distance, the town appeared to have been scattered irregularly or thrown
together hastily, as if cast ashore by some overflow--the Cosmopolitan
Hotel drifting into the Baptist church, and dragging in its tail
of wreckage two saloons and a blacksmith's shop; while the County
Court-house was stranded in solitary grandeur in a waste of gravel half
a mile away. The intervening flat was still gashed and furrowed by the
remorseless engines of earlier gold-seekers.
Mr. Ford was in little sympathy with this unsuccessful record of
frontier endeavor--the fortune HE had sought did not seem to lie in that
direction--and his eye glanced quickly beyond it to the pine-crested
hills across the river, whose primeval security was so near and yet so
inviolable, or back again to the trail he was pursuing along the ridge.
The latter prospect still retained its semi-savage character in spite
of the occasional suburban cottages of residents, and the few outlying
farms or ranches of the locality. The grounds of the cottages were yet
uncleared of underbrush; bear and catamount still prowled around the
rude fences of the ranches; the late alleged experience of the infant
Snyder was by no means improbable or unprecedented.
A light breeze was seeking the heated flat and river, and thrilling the
leaves around him with the strong vitality of the forest. The vibrating
cross-lights and tremulous chequers of shade cast by the stirred foliage
seemed to weave a fantastic net around him as he walked. The quaint
odors of certain woodland herbs known to his scholars, and religiously
kept in their desks, or left like votive offerings on the threshold of
the school-house, recalled all the primitive simplicity and delicious
wildness of the little temple he had left. Even in the mischievous
glances of evasive squirrels and the moist eyes of the contemplative
rabbits there were faint suggestions of some of his own truants. The
woods were trembling with gentle memories of the independence he had
always known here--of that sweet and grave retreat now so ridiculously
invaded.
He began to hesitate, with one of those revulsions of sentiment
characteristic of his nature: Why should he bother himself about
this girl after all? Why not make up his mind to accept her as
his predecessor had done? Why was it necessary for him to find her
inconsistent with his ideas of duty to his little flock and his mission
to them? Was he not assuming a sense of decorum that was open
to misconception? The absurdity of her school costume, and any
responsibility it incurred, rested not with him but with her parents.
What right had he to point it out to them, and above all how was he to
do it? He halted irresolutely at what he believed was his sober second
thought, but which, like most reflections that take that flattering
title, was only a reaction as impulsive and illogical as the emotion
that preceded it.
Mr. McKinstry's “snake rail” fence was already discernible in the
lighter opening of the woods, not far from where he had halted. As he
stood there in hesitation, the pretty figure and bright gown of Cressy
McKinstry suddenly emerged from a more secluded trail that intersected
his own at an acute angle a few rods ahead of him. She was not alone,
but was accompanied by a male figure whose arm she had evidently
just dislodged from her waist. He was still trying to resume his lost
vantage; she was as resolutely evading him with a certain nymph-like
agility, while the sound of her half-laughing, half-irate protest could
be faintly heard. Without being able to identify the face or figure of
her companion at that distance, he could see that it was NOT her former
betrothed, Seth Davis.
A superior smile crossed his face; he no longer hesitated, but at once
resumed his former path. For some time Cressy and her companion moved on
quietly before him. Then on reaching the rail-fence they turned abruptly
to the right, were lost for an instant in the intervening thicket, and
the next moment Cressy appeared alone, crossing the meadow in a shorter
cut towards the house, having either scaled the fence or slipped through
some familiar gap. Her companion had disappeared. Whether they had
noticed that they were observed he could not determine. He kept steadily
along the trail that followed the line of fence to the lane that
led directly to the farm-building, and pushed open the front gate as
Cressy's light dress vanished round an angle at the rear of the house.
The house of the McKinstrys rose, or rather stretched, itself before
him, in all the lazy ungainliness of Southwestern architecture. A
collection of temporary make-shifts of boards, of logs, of canvas,
prematurely decayed, and in some instances abandoned for a newer
erection, or degraded to mere outhouses--it presented with singular
frankness the nomadic and tentative disposition of its founder. It had
been repaired without being improved; its additions had seemed only
to extend its primitive ugliness over a larger space. Its roofs were
roughly shingled or rudely boarded and battened, and the rafters of
some of its “lean-to's” were simply covered with tarred canvas. As if
to settle any doubt of the impossibility of this heterogeneous mass
ever taking upon itself any picturesque combination, a small building of
corrugated iron, transported in sections from some remoter locality, had
been set up in its centre. The McKinstry ranch had long been an eyesore
to the master: even that morning he had been mutely wondering from what
convolution of that hideous chrysalis the bright butterfly Cressy had
emerged. It was with a renewal of this curiosity that he had just seen
her flutter back to it again.
A yellow dog who had observed him hesitating in doubt where he should
enter, here yawned, rose from the sunlight where he had been blinking,
approached the master with languid politeness, and then turned towards
the iron building as if showing him the way. Mr. Ford followed him
cautiously, painfully conscious that his hypocritical canine introducer
was only availing himself of an opportunity to gain ingress into the
house, and was leading him as a responsible accomplice to probable
exposure and disgrace. His expectation was quickly realized: a lazily
querulous, feminine outcry, with the words, “Yer's that darned hound
agin!” came from an adjacent room, and his exposed and abashed companion
swiftly retreated past him into the road again. Mr. Ford found himself
alone in a plainly-furnished sitting-room confronting the open door
leading to another apartment at which the figure of a woman, preceded
hastily by a thrown dishcloth, had just appeared. It was Mrs. McKinstry;
her sleeves were rolled up over her red but still shapely arms, and as
she stood there wiping them on her apron, with her elbows advanced,
and her closed hands raised alternately in the air, there was an odd
pugilistic suggestion in her attitude. It was not lessened on her sudden
discovery of the master by her retreating backwards with her hands up
and her elbows still well forward as if warily retiring to an imaginary
“corner.”
Mr. Ford at once tactfully stepped back from the doorway. “I beg your
pardon,” he said, delicately addressing the opposite wall, “but I found
the door open and I followed the dog.”
“That's just one of his pizenous tricks,” responded Mrs. McKinstry
dolefully from within. “On'y last week he let in a Chinaman, and in the
nat'ral hustlin' that follered he managed to help himself outer the pork
bar'l. There ain't no shade o' cussedness that or'nary hound ain't up
to.” Yet notwithstanding this ominous comparison she presently made
her appearance with her sleeves turned down, her black woollen
dress “tidied,” and a smile of fatigued but not unkindly welcome and
protection on her face. Dusting a chair with her apron and placing it
before the master, she continued maternally, “Now that you're here, set
ye right down and make yourself to home. My men folks are all out o'
door, but some of 'em's sure to happen in soon for suthin'; that day
ain't yet created that they don't come huntin' up Mammy McKinstry every
five minutes for this thing or that.”
The glow of a certain hard pride burned through the careworn languor of
her brown cheek. What she had said was strangely true. This raw-boned
woman before him, although scarcely middle-aged, had for years occupied
a self-imposed maternal and protecting relation, not only to her husband
and brothers, but to the three or four men, who as partners, or hired
hands, lived at the ranch. An inherited and trained sympathy with what
she called her “boys's” and her “men folk,” and their needs had
partly unsexed her. She was a fair type of a class not uncommon on the
Southwestern frontier; women who were ruder helpmeets of their rude
husbands and brothers, who had shared their privations and sufferings
with surly, masculine endurance, rather than feminine patience; women
who had sent their loved ones to hopeless adventure or terrible vendetta
as a matter of course, or with partisan fury; who had devotedly nursed
the wounded to keep alive the feud, or had received back their dead
dry-eyed and revengeful. Small wonder that Cressy McKinstry had
developed strangely under this sexless relationship. Looking at the
mother, albeit not without a certain respect, Mr. Ford found himself
contrasting her with the daughter's graceful femininity, and wondering
where in Cressy's youthful contour the possibility of the grim figure
before him was even now hidden.
“Hiram allowed to go over to the schoolhouse and see you this mornin',”
said Mrs. McKinstry, after a pause; “but I reckon ez how he had to
look up stock on the river. The cattle are that wild this time o'
year, huntin' water, and hangin' round the tules, that my men are nigh
worrited out o' their butes with 'em. Hank and Jim ain't been off
their mustangs since sun up, and Hiram, what with partrollen' the West
Boundary all night, watchin' stakes whar them low down Harrisons hev
been trespassin'--hasn't put his feet to the ground in fourteen hours.
Mebbee you noticed Hiram ez you kem along? Ef so, ye didn't remember
what kind o' shootin' irons he had with him? I see his rifle over yon.
Like ez not he'z only got his six-shooter, and them Harrisons are mean
enough to lay for him at long range. But,” she added, returning to the
less important topic, “I s'pose Cressy came all right.”
“Yes,” said the master hopelessly.
“I reckon she looked so,” continued Mrs. McKinstry, with tolerant
abstraction. “She allowed to do herself credit in one of them new store
gownds that she got at Sacramento. At least that's what some of our
men said. Late years, I ain't kept tech with the fashions myself.” She
passed her fingers explanatorily down the folds of her own coarse gown,
but without regret or apology.
“She seemed well prepared in her lessons,” said the master, abandoning
for the moment that criticism of his pupil's dress, which he saw was
utterly futile, “but am I to understand that she is coming regularly to
school--that she is now perfectly free to give her entire attention to
her studies--that--that--her--engagement is broken off?”
“Why, didn't she tell ye?” echoed Mrs. McKinstry in languid surprise.
“SHE certainly did,” said the master with slight embarrassment, “but”--
“Ef SHE said so,” interrupted Mrs. McKinstry abstractedly, “she oughter
know, and you kin tie to what she says.”
“But as I'm responsible to PARENTS and not to scholars for the
discipline of my school,” returned the young man a little stiffly, “I
thought it my duty to hear it from YOU.”
“That's so,” said Mrs. McKinstry meditatively; “then I reckon you'd
better see Hiram. That ar' Seth Davis engagement was a matter of hern
and her father's, and not in MY line. I 'spose that Hiram nat'rally
allows to set the thing square to you and inquirin' friends.”
“I hope you understand,” said the master, slightly resenting the
classification, “that my reason for inquiring about the permanency of
your daughter's attendance was simply because it might be necessary to
arrange her studies in a way more suitable to her years; perhaps even
to suggest to you that a young ladies' seminary might be more
satisfactory”--
“Sartain, sartain,” interrupted Mrs. McKinstry hurriedly, but whether
from evasion of annoying suggestion or weariness of the topic, the
master could not determine. “You'd better speak to Hiram about it.
On'y,” she hesitated slightly, “ez he's got now sorter set and pinted
towards your school, and is a trifle worrited with stock and them
Harrisons, ye might tech it lightly. He oughter be along yer now.
I can't think what keeps him.” Her eye wandered again with troubled
preoccupation to the corner where her husband's Sharps' rifle stood.
Suddenly she raised her voice as if forgetful of Mr. Ford's presence.
“O Cressy!”
“O Maw!”
The response came from the inner room. The next moment Cressy appeared
at the door with an odd half-lazy defiance in her manner, which the
master could not understand except upon the hypothesis that she had
been listening. She had already changed her elaborate toilet for a long
clinging, coarse blue gown, that accented the graceful curves of her
slight, petticoat-less figure. Nodding her head towards the master, she
said, “Howdy?” and turned to her mother, who practically ignored their
personal acquaintance. “Cressy,” she said, “Dad's gone and left his
Sharps' yer, d'ye mind takin' it along to meet him, afore he passes the
Boundary corner. Ye might tell him the teacher's yer, wantin' to see
him.”
“One moment,” said the master, as the young girl carelessly stepped to
the corner and lifted the weapon. “Let ME take it. It's all on my way
back to school and I'll meet him.”
Mrs. McKinstry looked perturbed. Cressy opened her clear eyes on the
master with evident surprise. “No, Mr. Ford,” said Mrs. McKinstry, with
her former maternal manner. “Ye'd better not mix yourself up with these
yer doin's. Ye've no call to do it, and Cressy has; it's all in the
family. But it's outer YOUR line, and them Harrison whelps go to your
school. Fancy the teacher takin' weppins betwixt and between!”
“It's fitter work for the teacher than for one of his scholars, and a
young lady at that,” said Mr. Ford gravely, as he took the rifle from
the hands of the half-amused, half-reluctant girl. “It's quite safe with
me, and I promise I shall deliver it into Mr. McKinstry's hands and none
other.”
“Perhaps it wouldn't be ez likely to be gin'rally noticed ez it would
if one of US carried it,” murmured Mrs. McKinstry in confidential
abstraction, gazing at her daughter sublimely unconscious of the
presence of a third party.
“You're quite right,” said the master composedly, throwing the
rifle over his shoulder and turning towards the door. “So I'll say
good-afternoon, and try and find your husband.”
Mrs. McKinstry constrainedly plucked at the folds of her coarse gown.
“Ye'll like a drink afore ye go,” she said, in an ill-concealed tone of
relief. “I clean forgot my manners. Cressy, fetch out that demijohn.”
“Not for me, thank you,” returned Mr. Ford smiling.
“Oh, I see--you're temperance, nat'rally,” said Mrs. McKinstry with a
tolerant sigh.
“Hardly that,” returned the master, “I follow no rule, I drink
sometimes--but not to-day.”
Mrs. McKinstry's dark face contracted. “Don't you see, Maw,” struck in
Cressy quickly. “Teacher drinks sometimes, but he don't USE whiskey.
That's all.”
Her mother's face relaxed. Cressy slipped out of the door before the
master, and preceded him to the gate. When she had reached it she turned
and looked into his face.
“What did Maw say to yer about seein' me just now?”
“I don't understand you.”
“To your seein' me and Joe Masters on the trail?”
“She said nothing.”
“Humph,” said Cressy meditatively. “What was it you told her about it?”
“Nothing.”
“Then you DIDN'T see us?”
“I saw you with some one--I don't know whom.”
“And you didn't tell Maw?”
“I did not. It was none of my business.”
He instantly saw the utter inconsistency of this speech in connection
with the reason he believed he had in coming. But it was too late
to recall it, and she was looking at him with a bright but singular
expression.
“That Joe Masters is the conceitedest fellow goin'. I told him you could
see his foolishness.”
“Ah, indeed.”
Mr. Ford pushed open the gate. As the girl still lingered he was obliged
to hold it a moment before passing through.
“Maw couldn't quite hitch on to your not drinkin'. She reckons you're
like everybody else about yer. That's where she slips up on you. And
everybody else, I kalkilate.”
“I suppose she's somewhat anxious about your father, and I dare say is
expecting me to hurry,” returned the master pointedly.
“Oh, dad's all right,” said Cressy mischievously. “You'll come across
him over yon, in the clearing. But you're looking right purty with that
gun. It kinder sets you off. You oughter wear one.”
The master smiled slightly, said “Good-by,” and took leave of the girl,
but not of her eyes, which were still following him. Even when he had
reached the end of the lane and glanced back at the rambling dwelling,
she was still leaning on the gate with one foot on the lower rail and
her chin cupped in the hollow of her hand. She made a slight gesture,
not clearly intelligible at that distance; it might have been a
mischievous imitation of the way he had thrown the gun over his
shoulder, it might have been a wafted kiss.
The master however continued his way in no very self-satisfied mood.
Although he did not regret having taken the place of Cressy as the
purveyor of lethal weapons between the belligerent parties, he knew he
was tacitly mingling in the feud between people for whom he cared little
or nothing. It was true that the Harrisons sent their children to his
school, and that in the fierce partisanship of the locality this simple
courtesy was open to misconstruction. But he was more uneasily conscious
that this mission, so far as Mrs. McKinstry was concerned, was a
miserable failure. The strange relations of the mother and daughter
perhaps explained much of the girl's conduct, but it offered no hope of
future amelioration. Would the father, “worrited by stock” and boundary
quarrels--a man in the habit of cutting Gordian knots with a bowie
knife--prove more reasonable? Was there any nearer sympathy between
father and daughter? But she had said he would meet McKinstry in the
clearing: she was right, for here he was coming forward at a gallop!