He fell into step beside her, and they walked up from the little cover
through the beach-grapes and out among the scrubby dunes, where in the
heated silence the perfume of sweet-bay and pines mingled with the odour
of the sea.
Everywhere the great sulphur-coloured butterflies were flying, making
gorgeous combinations with the smaller, orange butterflies and the
great, velvet-winged Palamedes swallow-tail.
Lizards frisked and raced away before them, emerald tinted, green with
sky-blue tails, grey and red; the little gophers scurried into their
burrows along the tangled hammock's edges. Over the palm-trees' feathery
crests sailed a black vulture, its palmated wing-tips spread like inky
fingers against the blue. Somewhere in the saw-grass a bittern boomed
and boomed; and the seagulls' clamour rang incessantly above the thunder
of the surf.
"I wonder," she murmured, "whether my sunburn makes me drowsy."
"It's the climate. You'll feel sleepy for a week before you are
acclimated," he said.... "Why don't you put down the puppy and let him
follow?"
She did so; and the little creature frisked and leaped and padded
joyously about among the bayberry bushes, already possessed with the
canine determination to investigate all the alluring smells in the
world, and miss none of them.
After a little while they arrived at the bungalow which Constance had
chosen. The girl pushed open the unlocked door; the puppy pranced in
like a diminutive hobby-horse, flushed a big lizard, and went into fits
of excitement till the solitary cabin rang with his treble barking.
They watched him through the doorway, laughingly; then Gray looked at
the claim notice stuck upright in the sand. Presently he walked to the
edge of the coquina quarry and looked down into it.
Thousands of dollars' worth of the shell deposit lay already exposed.
There were great strata of it; ledges, shelves, vast masses in every
direction. The quarry had been worked very little, and that little had
been accomplished stupidly. Either in the rough, or merely as lumps of
conglomerate for crushing, the coquina in sight alone was very, very
valuable. There could be no doubt of that.
Also, he understood that the strata deposited there continued at least
for half a mile to the westward, where his own bungalow marked its
probable termination.
He turned after a few minutes' inspection, and walked slowly back to
where Constance was standing by the open door. A slight constraint,
amounting almost to embarrassment, ensued for a few minutes, but the
puppy dissipated it when he leaped at a butterfly, fell on his nose with
a thump, and howled dismally until reassured by his anxious
foster-parents, who caught him up and generously passed him to each
other, petting him vigourously.
Twice Gray said good-bye to Constance Leslie and started to go on toward
his own bungalow, but the puppy invariably began a frantic series of
circles embracing them both, and he had to come back to keep the dog
from the demoralisation of utter exhaustion.
"You know," he said, "this is going to be awkward. I believe that dog
thinks we are mar--thinks we are sister and brother. Don't you?"
She replied with a slight flush on her fair face, that the dog
undoubtedly cherished some such idea.
"Take him inside," said Gray firmly. "Then I'll beat it."
So she took the puppy inside and closed the door, with a smiling nod of
adieu to Gray. But he had not gone very far when he heard her clear, far
call; and, turning, saw her beckon frantically.
Back he came at top speed.
"Oh, dear," she exclaimed. "Oh, dear! He's tearing 'round and 'round the
room moaning and whining and barking. I'm very certain he will have fits
if you don't speak to him."
Gray opened the door cautiously, and the little dog came out, projected
like a bolt from a catapult, fairly flinging his quivering little body
into Gray's arms.
The reunion was elaborate and mutually satisfying. Constance furtively
touched her brown eyes with a corner of her handkerchief.
"What on earth are we to do?" she asked, unfeignedly affected. "I would
give him to you in a minute if you think he would be contented without
me."
"We can try it."
So Constance started westward, across the dunes, and Gray went into the
bungalow with the dog. But it required only a second or two to convince
him that it wouldn't do, and he opened the door and called frantically
to Constance.
"There is no use in trying that sort of thing," he admitted, when
Constance hastened back to a touching reunion with the imprisoned dog.
"Strategy is our only hope. I'll sit here on the threshold with you, and
as soon as he goes to sleep I'll slink away."
So side by side they seated themselves on the sandy threshold of the
bungalow, and the little dog, happy and contented, curled up on the
floor of the room, tucked his blunt muzzle into his flank, and took a
series of naps with one eye always open. He was young, but suspicion had
already done its demoralising work with him, and he intended to keep at
least one eye on his best beloveds.
She in her fresh and clinging gown, with the first delicate sunmask
tinting her unaccustomed skin, sat silent and distrait, her idle fingers
linked in her lap. And, glancing askance at her now and then, the droop
of her under lip seemed to him pathetic, like that of a tired child in
trouble.
When he was not looking at her he was immersed in perplexed cogitation.
The ownership of the dog he had already settled in his mind; the
ownership of the quarry he had supposed he had settled.
Therefore, why was he so troubled about it? Why was he so worried about
her, wondering what she would do in the matter?
The only solution left seemed to lie in a recourse to the
law--unless--unless----
But he couldn't--he simply couldn't, merely for a sentimental impulse,
give up to a stranger what he honestly considered an inheritance. That
would be carrying sentimentalism too far.
And yet--and yet! He needed the inheritance desperately. Matters
financial had gone all wrong with him. How _could_ he turn his back on
offered salvation just because a youthful and pretty girl also required
a financial lift in a cold-blooded and calculating world?
And yet--and yet! He would sleep over it, of course. But he honestly saw
no prospect of changing his opinion concerning the ownership of the
quarry.
As he sat there biting a stem of sweet-bay and listening to the
cardinals piping from the forest, he looked down into the heated coquina
pit.
A snake was coiled up on one of the ledges, basking.
"Miss Leslie!"
She lifted her head and straightened her drooping shoulders, looking at
him from eyes made drowsy and beautiful by the tropic heat.
"I only wanted to say," he began gravely, "that it is not safe for you
to go into the quarry alone--in case you had any such intention."
"Why?"
"There are snakes there. Do you see that one? Well, he's harmless, I
think--a king-snake, if I am not mistaken. But it's a good place for
rattlers."
"Then you should be careful, too."
"Oh, I'm careful enough, but you might not know when to be on your
guard. This island is a snaky one. It's famous for its diamond-back
rattlers and the size of them. Their fangs are an inch long, and it
usually means death to be struck by one of them."
The girl nodded thoughtfully.
He said with a new anxiety: "As a matter of fact, you really ought not
to be down here all alone."
"I know it. But it meant a race for ownership, and I had to come at a
minute's notice."
"You should have brought a maid."
"My dear Mr. Gray, I have no maid."
"Oh, I forgot," he muttered--"but, somehow, you _look_ as though you
had been born to several."
"I am the daughter of a very poor professor."
He fidgetted with his sweet-bay twig, considering the aromatic leaves
with a troubled and concentrated scowl.
"You know," he said, "this wretched island is celebrated for its
unpleasant fauna. Scorpions and wood-ticks are numerous. The sting of
the one is horribly painful, and might be dangerous; the villainous
habits of the other might throw you into a fever."
"But what can I do?" she inquired calmly.
"There are other kinds of snakes, too," he went on with increasing
solicitude for this girl for whom, suddenly, he began to consider
himself responsible. "There's a vicious snake called a moccasin; and he
won't get out of your way or warn you. And there's a wicked little
serpent with rings of black, scarlet, and yellow around his body. He
pretends to be harmless, but if he gets your finger into his mouth he'll
chew it full of a venom which is precisely the same sort of venom as
that of the deadly East Indian cobra."
"But--what can I do?" she repeated pitifully. "If I go to St. Augustine
and leave you here in possession, it might invalidate my claim."
He was silent, knowing no more about the law than did she, and afraid to
deny her tentative assertion.
"If it lay with me," he said, "I'd call a truce until you could go to
St. Augustine and return again with the proper people to look out for
you."
"Even if you were kind enough to do that, I could not afford even a
servant under present--and unexpected--conditions."
"Why?"
"Because it has suddenly developed that I shall be obliged to engage a
lawyer. And I had not expected that."
He reddened to his hair but said nothing. After a while the girl looked
over her shoulder. The puppy slept, this time with both eyes closed.
When she turned again to Gray, he nodded his comprehension and rose to
his feet cautiously.
"I'm going to take a walk on the beach and think this thing all out," he
whispered, taking the slim, half-offered hand in adieu. "Don't go out in
the scrub after sun-down. Rattlers move then. Don't go near any swamp;
moccasins are the colour of sun-baked mud, and you can't see them. Don't
touch any pretty little snake marked scarlet, black, and yellow----"
"How absurd!" she whispered. "As though I were likely to fondle snakes!"
"I'm terribly worried about you," he insisted, retaining her hand.
"Please don't be."
"How can I help it--what with these bungalows full of scorpions and----"
"Yours is, too," she said anxiously. "You will be very careful, won't
you?"
"Yes, of course.... I'm--I'm uncertain about you. That's what is
troubling me----"
"Please don't bother about me. I've had to look out for myself for
years."
"Have you?" he said, almost tenderly. Then he drew a quick, determined
breath.
"You'll be careful, won't you?"
"Yes."
"Are you armed?"
"I have a shot-gun inside."
"That's all right. Don't open your door to any stranger.... You know I
simply hate to leave you alone this way----"
"But I have the dog," she reminded him, with a pretty flush of
gratitude.
He had retained her hand longer than the easiest convention required or
permitted. So he released it, hesitated, then with a visible effort he
turned on his heel and strode away westward across the scrub.
The sun hung low behind the tall, parti-coloured shaft of the Light
House, towering smooth and round high above the forest.
He looked up at Ibis Light, at the circling buzzards above it, then
walked on, scarcely knowing where he was going, until he walked into the
door of his own bungalow, and several large spiders scattered into
flight across the floor.
"There's no use," he said aloud to an audience of lizards clinging to
the silvery bark of the log-room. "I can't take that quarry. I can't do
it--whether it belongs to me or not. _How_ can a big, strong, lumbering
young man do a thing like that? No. No. _No!_"
He picked up a pencil and a sheet of paper:
"Oh, Lord! I really do need the money, but I can't do it."
And he wrote: