"Hunh!" grunted the Seminole. "Paddl'um damn slow. Bime-by you hear."
And bime-by Haltren heard.
"Somebody is landing," he said.
The Indian folded his arms and stood bolt upright for a moment; then,
"Hunh!" he muttered, disgusted. "Heap squaw. Tiger will go."
Haltren did not hear him; up the palmetto-choked trail from the landing
strolled a girl, paddle poised over one shoulder, bright hair blowing.
He rose to his feet; she saw him standing in the haze of the fire and
made him a pretty gesture of recognition.
"I thought I'd call to pay my respects," she said. "How do you do? May I
sit on this soap-box?"
Smiling, she laid the paddle on the ground and held out one hand as he
stepped forward.
They shook hands very civilly.
"That was a brave thing you did," she said. "Mes compliments, monsieur."
And that was all said about the wreck.
"It's not unlike an Adirondack camp," she suggested, looking around at
the open-faced, palm-thatched shanty with its usual hangings of blankets
and wet clothing, and its smoky, tin-pan bric-a-brac.
Her blue eyes swept all in rapid review--the guns leaning against the
tree; the bunch of dead bluebill ducks hanging beyond; the improvised
table and bench outside; the enormous mottled rattlesnake skin tacked
lengthways on a live-oak.
"Are there many of those about?" she inquired.
"Very few"--he waited to control the voice which did not sound much like
his own--"very few rattlers yet. They come out later."
"That's amiable of them," she said, with a slight shrug of her
shoulders.
There was a pause.
"I hope you are well," he ventured.
"Perfectly--and thank you. I hope you are well, Jack."
"Thank you, Kathleen."
She picked up a chip of rose-colored cedar and sniffed it daintily.
"Like a lead-pencil, isn't it? Put that big log on the fire. The odor of
burning cedar must be delicious."
He lifted the great log and laid it across the coals.
"Suppose we lunch?" she proposed, looking straight at the simmering
coffee-pot.
"Would you really care to?" Then he raised his voice: "Tiger! Tiger!
Where the dickens are you?" But Tiger, half a mile away, squatted
sulkily on the lagoon's edge, fishing, and muttering to himself that
there were too many white people in the forest for him.
"He won't come," said Haltren. "You know the Seminoles hate the whites,
and consider themselves still unconquered. There is scarcely an instance
on record of a Seminole attaching himself to one of us."
"But your tame Tiger appears to follow you."
"He's an exception."
"Perhaps you are an exception, too."
He looked up with a haggard smile, then bent over the fire and poked the
ashes with a pointed palmetto stem. There were half a dozen
sweet-potatoes there, and a baked duck and an ash-cake.
"Goodness!" she said; "if you knew how hungry I am you wouldn't be so
deliberate. Where are the cups and spoons? Which is Tiger's? Well, you
may use his."
The log table was set and the duck ready before Haltren could hunt up
the jug of mineral water which Tiger had buried somewhere to keep cool.
When he came back with it from the shore he found her sitting at table
with an exaggerated air of patience.
They both laughed a little; he took his seat opposite; she poured the
coffee, and he dismembered the duck.
"You ought to be ashamed of that duck," she said. "The law is on now."
"I know it," he replied, "but necessity knows no law. I'm up here
looking for wild orange stock, and I live on what I can get. Even the
sacred, unbranded razor-back is fish for our net--with a fair chance of
a shooting-scrape between us and a prowling cracker. If you will stay to
dinner you may have roast wild boar."
"That alone is almost worth staying for, isn't it?" she asked,
innocently.
There was a trifle more color in his sunburned face.
She ate very little, though protesting that her hunger shamed her; she
sipped her coffee, blue eyes sometimes fixed on the tall palms and oaks
overhead, sometimes on him.
"What was that great, winged shadow that passed across the table?" she
exclaimed.
"A vulture; they are never far away."
"Ugh!" she shuddered; "always waiting for something to die! How can a
man live here, knowing that?"
"I don't propose to die out-doors," said Haltren, laughing.
Again the huge shadow swept between them; she shrank back with a little
gesture of repugnance. Perhaps she was thinking of her nearness to death
in the inlet.
"Are there alligators here, too?" she asked.
"Yes; they run away from you."
"And moccasin snakes?"
"Some. They don't trouble a man who keeps his eyes open."
"A nice country you live in!" she said, disdainfully.
"It is one kind of country. There is good shooting."
"Anything else?"
"Sunshine all the year round. I have a house covered with scented things
and buried in orange-trees. It is very beautiful. A little lonely at
times--one can't have Fifth Avenue and pick one's own grape-fruit from
the veranda, too."
A silence fell between them; through the late afternoon stillness they
heard the splash! splash! of leaping mullet in the lagoon. Suddenly a
crimson-throated humming-bird whirred past, hung vibrating before a
flowering creeper, then darted away.
"Spring is drifting northward," he said. "To-morrow will be Easter
Day--Pasque Florida."
She rose, saying, carelessly, "I was not thinking of to-morrow; I was
thinking of to-day," and, walking across the cleared circle, she picked
up her paddle. He followed her, and she looked around gayly, swinging
the paddle to her shoulder.
"You said you were thinking of to-day," he stammered. "It--it is our
anniversary."
She raised her eyebrows. "I am astonished that you remembered.... I
think that I ought to go. The _Dione_ will be in before long--"
"We can hear her whistle when she steams in," he said.
"Are you actually inviting me to stay?" she laughed, seating herself on
the soap-box once more.
They became very grave as he sat down on the ground at her feet, and, a
silence threatening, she hastily filled it with a description of the
yacht and Major Brent's guests. He listened, watching her intently. And
after a while, having no more to say, she pretended to hear sounds
resembling a distant yacht's whistle.
"It's the red-winged blackbirds in the reeds," he said. "Now will you
let me say something--about the past?"
"It has buried itself," she said, under her breath.
"To-morrow is Easter," he went on, slowly. "Can there be no resurrection
for dead days as there is for Easter flowers? Winter is over; Pasque
Florida will dawn on a world of blossoms. May I speak, Kathleen?"
"It is I who should speak," she said. "I meant to. It is this: forgive
me for all. I am sorry."
"I have nothing to forgive," he said. "I was a--a failure. I--I do not
understand women."
"Nor I men. They are not what I understand. I don't mean the mob I've
been bred to dance with--I understand them. But a real man--" she
laughed, drearily--"I expected a god for a husband."
"I am sorry," he said; "I am horribly sorry. I have learned many things
in four years. Kathleen, I--I don't know what to do."
"There is nothing to do, is there?"
"Your freedom--"
"I am free."
"I am afraid you will need more freedom than you have, some day."