When Margaret Earle dawned upon that bunk-room the men sat up with one
accord, ran their rough, red hands through their rough, tousled hair,
smoothed their beards, took down their feet from the benches where they
were resting. That was as far as their etiquette led them. Most of them
continued to smoke their pipes, and all of them stared at her
unreservedly. Such a sight of exquisite feminine beauty had not come to
their eyes in many a long day. Even in the dim light of the smoky
lanterns, and with the dust and weariness of travel upon her, Margaret
Earle was a beautiful girl.
"That's what's the matter, father," said her mother, when the subject of
Margaret's going West to teach had first been mentioned. "She's too
beautiful. Far too beautiful to go among savages! If she were homely and
old, now, she might be safe. That would be a different matter."
Yet Margaret had prevailed, and was here in the wild country. Now,
standing on the threshold of the log cabin, she read, in the unveiled
admiration that startled from the eyes of the men, the meaning of her
mother's fears.
Yet withal it was a kindly admiration not unmixed with awe. For there
was about her beauty a touch of the spiritual which set her above the
common run of women, making men feel her purity and sweetness, and
inclining their hearts to worship rather than be bold.
The Boy had been right. Pop Wallis was asleep and out of the way. From a
little shed room at one end his snoring marked time in the silence that
the advent of the girl made in the place.
In the doorway of the kitchen offset Mom Wallis stood with her
passionless face--a face from which all emotions had long ago been
burned by cruel fires--and looked at the girl, whose expression was
vivid with her opening life all haloed in a rosy glow.
A kind of wistful contortion passed over Mom Wallis's hopeless
countenance, as if she saw before her in all its possibility of
perfection the life that she herself had lost. Perhaps it was no longer
possible for her features to show tenderness, but a glow of something
like it burned in her eyes, though she only turned away with the same
old apathetic air, and without a word went about preparing a meal for
the stranger.
Margaret looked wildly, fearfully, around the rough assemblage when she
first entered the long, low room, but instantly the boy introduced her
as "the new teacher for the Ridge School beyond the Junction," and these
were Long Bill, Big Jim, the Fiddling Boss, Jasper Kemp, Fade-away
Forbes, Stocky, Croaker, and Fudge. An inspiration fell upon the
frightened girl, and she acknowledged the introduction by a radiant
smile, followed by the offering of her small gloved hand. Each man in
dumb bewilderment instantly became her slave, and accepted the offered
hand with more or less pleasure and embarrassment. The girl proved her
right to be called tactful, and, seeing her advantage, followed it up
quickly by a few bright words. These men were of an utterly different
type from any she had ever met before, but they had in their eyes a kind
of homage which Pop Wallis had not shown and they were not repulsive to
her. Besides, the Boy was in the background, and her nerve had returned.
The Boy knew how a lady should be treated. She was quite ready to "play
up" to his lead.
It was the Boy who brought the only chair the bunk-house afforded, a
rude, home-made affair, and helped her off with her coat and hat in his
easy, friendly way, as if he had known her all his life; while the men,
to whom such gallant ways were foreign, sat awkwardly by and watched in
wonder and amaze.
Most of all they were astonished at "the Kid," that he could fall so
naturally into intimate talk with this delicate, beautiful woman. She
was another of his kind, a creature not made in the same mold as theirs.
They saw it now, and watched the fairy play with almost childish
interest. Just to hear her call him "Mr. Gardley"!--Lance Gardley, that
was what he had told them was his name the day he came among them. They
had not heard it since. The Kid! Mr. Gardley!
There it was, the difference between them! They looked at the girl half
jealously, yet proudly at the Boy. He was theirs--yes, in a way he was
theirs--had they not found him in the wilderness, sick and nigh to
death, and nursed him back to life again? He was theirs; but he knew
how to drop into her world, too, and not be ashamed. They were glad that
he could, even while it struck them with a pang that some day he would
go back to the world to which he belonged--and where they could never be
at home.
It was a marvel to watch her eat the coarse corn-bread and pork that Mom
Wallis brought her. It might have been a banquet, the pleasant way she
seemed to look at it. Just like a bird she tasted it daintily, and
smiled, showing her white teeth. There was nothing of the idea of
greediness that each man knew he himself felt after a fast. It was all
beautiful, the way she handled the two-tined fork and the old steel
knife. They watched and dropped their eyes abashed as at a lovely
sacrament. They had not felt before that eating could be an art. They
did not know what art meant.
Such strange talk, too! But the Kid seemed to understand. About the
sky--their old, common sky, with stars that they saw every night--making
such a fuss about that, with words like "wide," "infinite," "azure," and
"gems." Each man went furtively out that night before he slept and took
a new look at the sky to see if he could understand.
The Boy was planning so the night would be but brief. He knew the girl
was afraid. He kept the talk going enthusiastically, drawing in one or
two of the men now and again. Long Bill forgot himself and laughed out a
hoarse guffaw, then stopped as if he had been choked. Stocky, red in the
face, told a funny story when commanded by the Boy, and then dissolved
in mortification over his blunders. The Fiddling Boss obediently got
down his fiddle from the smoky corner beside the fireplace and played a
weird old tune or two, and then they sang. First the men, with hoarse,
quavering approach and final roar of wild sweetness; then Margaret and
the Boy in duet, and finally Margaret alone, with a few bashful chords
on the fiddle, feeling their way as accompaniment.
Mom Wallis had long ago stopped her work and was sitting huddled in the
doorway on a nail-keg with weary, folded hands and a strange wistfulness
on her apathetic face. A fine silence had settled over the group as the
girl, recognizing her power, and the pleasure she was giving, sang on.
Now and then the Boy, when he knew the song, would join in with his rich
tenor.
It was a strange night, and when she finally lay down to rest on a hard
cot with a questionable-looking blanket for covering and Mom Wallis as
her room-mate, Margaret Earle could not help wondering what her mother
and father would think now if they could see her. Would they not,
perhaps, almost prefer the water-tank and the lonely desert for her to
her present surroundings?
Nevertheless, she slept soundly after her terrible excitement, and woke
with a start of wonder in the early morning, to hear the men outside
splashing water and humming or whistling bits of the tunes she had sung
to them the night before.
Mom Wallis was standing over her, looking down with a hunger in her eyes
at the bright waves of Margaret's hair and the soft, sleep-flushed
cheeks.
"You got dretful purty hair," said Mom Wallis, wistfully.
Margaret looked up and smiled in acknowledgment of the compliment.
"You wouldn't b'lieve it, but I was young an' purty oncet. Beats all how
much it counts to be young--an' purty! But land! It don't last long.
Make the most of it while you got it."
Browning's immortal words came to Margaret's lips--
Grow old along with me,
The best is yet to be,
The last of life for which the first was made--
but she checked them just in time and could only smile mutely. How could
she speak such thoughts amid these intolerable surroundings? Then with
sudden impulse she reached up to the astonished woman and, drawing her
down, kissed her sallow cheek.
"Oh!" said Mom Wallis, starting back and laying her bony hands upon the
place where she had been kissed, as if it hurt her, while a dull red
stole up from her neck over her cheeks and high forehead to the roots of
her hay-colored hair. All at once she turned her back upon her visitor
and the tears of the years streamed down her impassive face.
"Don't mind me," she choked, after a minute. "I liked it real good, only
it kind of give me a turn." Then, after a second: "It's time t' eat. You
c'n wash outside after the men is done."
That, thought Margaret, had been the scheme of this woman's whole
life--"After the men is done!"
So, after all, the night was passed in safety, and a wonderful dawning
had come. The blue of the morning, so different from the blue of the
night sky, was, nevertheless, just as unfathomable; the air seemed
filled with straying star-beams, so sparkling was the clearness of the
light.
But now a mountain rose in the distance with heliotrope-and-purple
bounds to stand across the vision and dispel the illusion of the night
that the sky came down to the earth all around like a close-fitting
dome. There were mountains on all sides, and a slender, dark line of
mesquite set off the more delicate colorings of the plain.
Into the morning they rode, Margaret and the Boy, before Pop Wallis was
yet awake, while all the other men stood round and watched, eager,
jealous for the handshake and the parting smile. They told her they
hoped she would come again and sing for them, and each one had an
awkward word of parting. Whatever Margaret Earle might do with her
school, she had won seven loyal friends in the camp, and she rode away
amid their admiring glances, which lingered, too, on the broad shoulders
and wide sombrero of her escort riding by her side.
"Wal, that's the end o' him, I 'spose," drawled Long Bill, with a deep
sigh, as the riders passed into the valley out of their sight.
"H'm!" said Jasper Kemp, hungrily. "I reck'n _he_ thinks it's jes' th'
beginnin'!"
"Maybe so! Maybe so!" said Big Jim, dreamily.
The morning was full of wonder for the girl who had come straight from
an Eastern city. The view from the top of the mesa, or the cool, dim
entrance of a cañon where great ferns fringed and feathered its walls,
and strange caves hollowed out in the rocks far above, made real the
stories she had read of the cave-dwellers. It was a new world.
The Boy was charming. She could not have picked out among her city
acquaintances a man who would have done the honors of the desert more
delightfully than he. She had thought him handsome in the starlight and
in the lantern-light the night before, but now that the morning shone
upon him she could not keep from looking at him. His fresh color, which
no wind and weather could quite subdue, his gray-blue eyes with that
mixture of thoughtfulness and reverence and daring, his crisp, brown
curls glinting with gold in the sunlight--all made him good to look
upon. There was something about the firm set of his lips and chin that
made her feel a hidden strength about him.
When they camped a little while for lunch he showed the thoughtfulness
and care for her comfort that many an older man might not have had. Even
his talk was a mixture of boyishness and experience and he seemed to
know her thoughts before she had them fully spoken.
"I do not understand it," she said, looking him frankly in the eyes at
last. "How ever in the world did one like _you_ get landed among all
those dreadful men! Of course, in their way, some of them are not so
bad; but they are not like you, not in the least, and never could be."
They were riding out upon the plain now in the full afternoon light, and
a short time would bring them to her destination.
A sad, set look came quickly into the Boy's eyes and his face grew
almost hard.
"It's an old story. I suppose you've heard it before," he said, and his
voice tried to take on a careless note, but failed. "I didn't make good
back there"--he waved his hand sharply toward the East--"so I came out
here to begin again. But I guess I haven't made good here, either--not
in the way I meant when I came."
"You can't, you know," said Margaret. "Not here."
"Why?" He looked at her earnestly, as if he felt the answer might help
him.
"Because you have to go back where you didn't make good and pick up the
lost opportunities. You can't really make good till you do that _right
where you left off_."
"But suppose it's too late?"
"It's never too late if we're in earnest and not too proud."
There was a long silence then, while the Boy looked thoughtfully off at
the mountains, and when he spoke again it was to call attention to the
beauty of a silver cloud that floated lazily on the horizon. But
Margaret Earle had seen the look in his gray eyes and was not deceived.
A few minutes later they crossed another mesa and descended to the
enterprising little town where the girl was to begin her winter's work.
The very houses and streets seemed to rise briskly and hasten to meet
them those last few minutes of their ride.
Now that the experience was almost over, the girl realized that she had
enjoyed it intensely, and that she dreaded inexpressibly that she must
bid good-by to this friend of a few hours and face an unknown world. It
had been a wonderful day, and now it was almost done. The two looked at
each other and realized that their meeting had been an epoch in their
lives that neither would soon forget--that neither wanted to forget.