WHEN they did meet, the encounter was not in the least like what Ess
Lincoln had expected, and more or less planned with herself. She had
made up her mind that Steve Knight had probably been completely spoiled
by the women he had met. He was evidently a handsome man by all
accounts, and had an all-conquering way with women, and would take it
as a matter of course that she should add her share to the usual
feminine admiration. No girl likes to think she is held cheaply, and
Ess was determined she should not be. Besides which she was a good
girl, as the expression has it, and took it to be her duty to be casual
and distant to any man with the reputation she had heard this man bore.
Consequently, when she was standing talking to her uncle at the door
next morning, and he called Steve Knight over to them, saying “I’ll
just introduce ye to Steve, Ess,” she waited the meeting with a quietly
reserved air, and an odd unaccountable little flutter of her pulse.
But, to her surprise, he made no endeavour to impress her, or be
particularly nice. In fact, on going over the interview to herself
afterwards, she had to admit that he had been very much the reverse. He
had merely taken her hand in a perfunctory grasp, quietly said “Pleased
to meet you, Miss Lincoln, nice morning,” and then turning to Scottie
had remarked that the men were ready and would they be going on. “Just
gie them five minutes,” said Scottie, and Steve raising his hat said he
would tell them so, asked Ess to excuse him, and walked briskly off.
He left Ess utterly bewildered. “Well, if that’s your ladies’ man, he
strikes me as having a most unceremonious manner,” she said to Scottie,
struggling between an inclination to laugh and be angry.
Scottie was a little surprised himself, but he merely grunted and made
no remark.
Each night and morning for the rest of the week Ess was in the yard to
wish the men good evening or good-bye as they came or went, and usually
spent a few minutes chatting to one or the other of them. But she never
chatted to Steve Knight, and it was impossible for her to help noticing
that he did nothing more than raise his hat and murmur a conventional
word, and then ignore her.
No girl likes to be ignored by a man, even a wicked man, and especially
if he is good-looking as well as wicked. So Ess was annoyed, although
she would have denied it indignantly if it had been suggested to her.
She saw very little of the men that week, as they were away from dawn
to dusk, and coming in dead tired, did little more than eat their
supper and go to bed.
Ess was looking forward to the Sunday, when Scottie and all the men
would be resting at the Ridge, but it was with a sense of the most
unmistakable disappointment that she heard that Steve Knight had gone
off the night before to ride in to the township to spend the Sunday.
“He keeps a horse o’ his own,” said Scottie, “and of course he can do
what he likes wi’ his Sunday. He’s made o’ steel an’ whipcord though,
tae stand it as he does. He was warkin’ wi’ the best the whole of the
day—an’ cuttin’ down trees in that sun isna easy wark lat me assure
ye—he rides back here an’ has his supper, changes his clothes an’ his
saddle, an’ starts off for the township. An’ he’ll ride back here on
the Sunday nicht, just gettin’ here tae change again an’ eat his
breakfast and start t’ ride out tae work wi’ the rest o’ us. He’s weel
named Fly-by-Nicht.”
“What does he do there?” asked Ess.
“Oh, just drinkin’ maybe, or it micht be on some ploy wi’ a lassie.”
Ess asked no more.
She looked curiously at Steve, though, on the Monday morning when she
went out to see the men saddling up. He certainly seemed quite as fresh
as anyone there, and greeted her with a cheerful nod. “Getting hot
again, Miss Lincoln,” he said. “The night is the best time for riding
just now. It was beautifully cool on the hills last night.” He turned
and moved away without giving her a chance to reply.
“It’s rather fun in a way, Aleck,” he said to Gault that morning as
they rode together down the path to the plains. “She doesn’t quite know
what to make of me. I’ll bet anything you like that Scottie warned her
I was a bad lot, and to have nothing to do with me. I could see it in
her eye that morning I first met her. And it took the wind out of her
sails when I treated her as if I didn’t care a rap whether she existed
or not. And I suppose she thought I’d be shamefaced and afraid of her,
knowing I was in town till late.”
“She must be rather sick of being stuck up there all day alone,” said
Aleck Gault. “Blazes’ society must get rather monotonous in a week, and
she sees little enough of the rest of us, and even of Scottie.”
“I know I’m getting mighty sick of the way the rest of the gang keep
yarning about her night and day. And you’re near as bad as the rest,
Aleck, boy.”
“Me,” said Gault, laughing; “I’m getting deeper and deeper in love with
her every day. I’m more relieved than any of them that you haven’t come
poking in, old buffalo. But what are you thinking of doing about
leaving now?”
“Leave nothing,” said Steve, cheerfully. “I’m getting real interested.
One of these days I’m going to dive right into the mob of you, and talk
myself black in the face to her, in spite of you all. I’m wondering if
she’ll snub me. Think she will?”
“Not she,” said Gault; “what on earth for?”
“Bet you,” laughed Steve. “Drinks on it, Aleck. Now, wait and see.”
The opportunity came that same night. When they came to the back
paddock fence on the way home, they found Ess waiting for them on
Diamond. Whip had had little difficulty in getting the horse used to
the skirt, and after a few days he took no more notice of it than if
he’d been used to it all his life, so Whip was ready to hand him over
and see Ess mounted on the Sunday.
They rode quietly towards the Ridge, and Steve pushed his horse
alongside her. “I must compliment you on your seat on a horse, Miss
Lincoln,” he said.
He spoke rather loudly, and Ess felt a pang of anger. It sounded as if
he was showing the others what an easy way he had with girls; but she
was not one of these, and....
“I suppose I ought to say ‘Thank you,’” she answered evenly, “but I
won’t because I don’t like compliments.” She was puzzled and rather
resentful of the smile that twinkled on his face, and was quickly
suppressed, and she turned her shoulder squarely to him and commenced
speaking to Scottie.
“Looks like the drinks are on you, Aleck,” said Steve, grinning as he
dropped back beside Gault. “But I must say I liked the cool way she
turned me down.”
As she rode on, Ess had some compunctions about the way she had “turned
him down,” and wondered once or twice if she had not misjudged him. If
she had, she had been extremely rude as well as unfair. He gave her no
opportunity of making amends on the way home, so, after she and Scottie
had ridden to their own door and dismounted, she walked across with him
to where the men were unsaddling and feeding their horses.
She walked straight up to Steve, and spoke clear enough for the other
men to hear.
“I’m afraid I was horribly rude to you,” she said; “and I just wanted
to say I’m sorry.”
Steve was thoroughly astonished, and for a moment taken aback. Then he
barely bowed his head to her. “That is very kind of you, Miss Lincoln.
Kinder than I deserve, perhaps, but—thank you.”
“I feel better,” said Ess, lightly; “I hate being mean. Now, good night
all.”
She walked back to the house with Scottie, feeling curiously elated and
happy. “Did I do right?” she asked him.
“Hech, lassie,” said Scottie, smiling under his moustache. “How’s a
mere man tae follow the workin’s o’ a woman’s mind? If ye think ye did
right, then ye did. I wunnered some at your checkin’ him as ye did, for
naething I could see.”
It was more than an hour after, when they had finished supper, and Ess
had washed up and sat herself at the table where Scottie sat reading,
that she went back to the subject. They had talked of other things
between, but she picked up the conversation as if it had never been
broken—which is significant if you come to think it out.
“I put him in rather an awkward position,” she said. “But he got over
it most gracefully.”
Scottie looked at her a moment in silence. “Aye,” he said, vaguely but
satisfactorily.
“Do you know,” Ess said, “I believe he is not as black as he has been
painted.” She looked at him a little defiantly. “It’s horrid, being
stand-offish and nasty to anyone, especially meeting him every day.”
Scottie knew where she was now, but wisely attempted no argument.
“Aye,” he said again.
“So I’m just going to treat him the same as all the others,” she said.
“And if he presumes on it, I think I’ll know how to stop him. He’s a
gentleman, I believe, and won’t persist in ways a girl plainly shows
she doesn’t like.”
“An’ what if they’re ways she does like?” asked Scottie, gently.
“Well?” she asked, the note of defiance a little more marked.
“‘Well,’ I hope,” said Scottie, gravely. “He’s a good enough lad at
hairt, I believe, but he’s unstable as water wi’ wimmin folk—unstable
as water.”
Ess laughed. “Don’t be afraid, I’m not going to fall in love with him.
But I believe we’re going to be very good friends.”
Before she went to her bed that night she stood long looking out of her
window.
“I’m not going to love him,” she said again to herself.
And that again was significant.
Over in front of the men’s hut Aleck Gault and Steve sat on the rail,
after the others had gone to bed.
“You ought to pay the drinks after all, Steve,” said Gault. “She
snubbed you all right, but she made a most handsome apology for it.”
“She did so,” said Steve, emphatically. “It took some grit to do that
in front of the crowd, Aleck. I’m getting to like that girl. She’s
something out of the ordinary.”
Aleck Gault smoked on in silence. “Any objections?” said Steve.
“You’re such an ass about girls, Stevie,” said Gault, cheerfully. “I
suppose you’re going to fall in love as usual.”
“I never fell in love in my life—but once,” said Steve. “And that was
lesson enough not to again. If I thought I was going to do that now,
I’d clear out to-morrow.”
“You may not fall in love with them,” said Gault, “but they do with
you—some of them, anyway. And somehow I wouldn’t like this girl to feel
that way for any man that didn’t love her.”
“We’re gushing about love like a pair of sentimental old tabbies, or a
page out of a woman’s novelette,” said Steve, contemptuously. “Love be
blowed. The girls like a lark as well as I do, and that’s all.”
“If that’s how you feel about this one, best let her alone,” said Aleck
Gault, slowly.
“Oh, shucks,” said Steve. “Anyway, I’ll try what it’s like to be
friendly without making love.”
“Seems to me I’ve heard of something about Platonic friendship before,
and the way it ends,” said Aleck, grinning at him.
“It won’t be any Platonic friendship basis then. Tell you what, I’ll
start off by warning her that I’m an unmitigated blackguard, and that I
have an infallible weakness for falling in love with every pretty girl
I meet. And if I show any signs of the disease with her, will she
please kindly bump me over the head with a half brick and chase me off
the scenery. How’ll that do?”
“You might try it,” said Aleck Gault, reflectively. “Will you let me
come along and rub in the warning of your character?”
“Surely,” assented Steve; “and we’ll refer her to Scottie, and each
individual of the crowd for confirmation.”
“I think it’s likely you’ll be late at that,” said Aleck, drily.
“She’ll have had it already.”
And in view of what he had just said, it was unreasonable of Steve
Knight to feel annoyed because it might be so.
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