When The Chinook Struck Fairfield

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Title:     When The Chinook Struck Fairfield
Author: Henry Wallace Phillips [More Titles by Phillips]

I

Miss Mattie sat on her little front porch, facing the setting sun. Across the road, now ankle deep in June dust, was the wreck of the Peters place: back-broken roof, crumbling chimneys, shutters hanging down like broken wings, the old house had the pathetic appeal of ship-wrecked gentility. A house without people in it, even when it is in repair, is as forlorn as a dog who has lost his master.

Up the road were more houses of the nondescript village pattern, made neither for comfort nor looks. God knows why they built such houses--perhaps it was in accordance with the old Puritan idea that any kind of physical perfection is blasphemy. Some of these were kept in paint and window glass, but there were enough poor relations to spoil the effect.

Down the road, between the arches of the weeping willows, came first the brook, with the stone bridge--this broken as to coping and threadbare in general--then on the hither side of the way some three or four neighbour's houses, and opposite, the blacksmith's shop and post-office, the latter, of course, in a store, where you could buy anything from stale groceries to shingles.

In short, Fairfield was an Eastern village whose cause had departed. A community drained of the male principle, leaving only a few queer men, the blacksmith, and some halfling boys, to give tone to the background of dozens of old maids.

An unsympathetic stranger would have felt that nothing was left to the Fairfieldians but memory, and the sooner they lost that, the better.

Take a wineglassful of raspberry vinegar, two tablespoonsful of sugar, half a cup each of boneset and rhubarb, a good full cup of the milk of human kindness, dilute in a gallon of water, and you have the flavor of Fairfield. There was just enough of each ingredient to spoil the taste of all the rest.

Miss Mattie rested her elbow on the railing, her chin in her hand, and gazed thoughtfully about her. As a matter of fact, she was the most inspiring thing in view. At a distance of fifty yards she was still a tall, slender girl. Her body retained the habit, as well as the lines of youth; a trick of gliding into unexpected, pleasing attitudes, which would have been awkward but for the suppleness of limb to which they testified, and the unconsciousness and ease of their irregularity.

Her face was a child's face in the ennobling sense of the word. The record of the years written upon it seemed a masquerade--the face of a clear-eyed girl of fourteen made up to represent her own aunt at a fancy dress party. A face drawn a trifle fine, a little ascetic, but balanced by the humour of the large, shapely mouth, and really beautiful in bone and contour. The beauty of mignonette, and doves, and gentle things.

You could see that she was thirty-five, in the blatant candor of noon, but now, blushed with the pink of the setting sun, she was still in the days of the fairy prince.

Miss Mattie's revery idled over the year upon year of respectable stupidity that represented life in Fairfield, while her eyes and soul were in the boiling gold of the sky-glory. She sighed.

A panorama of life minced before Miss Mattie's mind about as vivid and full of red corpuscles as a Greek frieze. Her affectionate nature was starved. They visited each other, the ladies of Fairfield--these women who had rolled on the floor together as babies--in their best black, or green or whatever it might be, and gloves! This, though the summer sun might be hammering down with all his might. And then they sat in a closed room and talked in a reserved fashion which was entirely the property of the call. Of course, one could have a moment's real talk by chance meeting, and there were the natural griefs of life to break the corsets of this etiquette, although in general, the griefs seemed to be long drawn out and conventional affairs, as if nature herself at last yielded to the system, conquered by the invincible conventionality and stubbornness of the ladies of Fairfield. It was the unspoken but firm belief of each of these women, that a person of their circle who had no more idea of respectability than to drop dead on the public road would never go to Heaven.

Poor Miss Mattie! Small wonder she dropped her hands, sat back and wondered, with another sigh, if it were for this she was born? She did not rebel--there was no violence in her--but she regretted exceedingly. In spite of her slenderness, it was a wide, mother-lap in which her hands rested, an obvious cradle for little children. And instinctively it would come to you as you looked at her, that there could be no more comfortable place for a tired man to come home to, than a household presided over by this slow-moving, gentle woman. There was nothing old-maidish about Miss Mattie but the tale of her years. She had had offers, such as Fairfield and vicinity could boast, and declined them with tact, and the utmost gratitude to the suitor for the compliment; but her "no" though mild was firm, for there lay within her a certain quiet valiant spirit, which would rather endure the fatigue and loneliness of old age in her little house, than to take a larger life from any but the man who was all. A commonplace in fiction; in real life sometimes quite a strain.

The sun distorted himself into a Rugby football, and hurried down as though to be through with Fairfield as soon as possible. It was a most magnificent sun-set; flaming, gorgeous, wild--beyond the management of the women of Fairfield--and Miss Mattie stared into the heart of it with a longing for something to happen. Then the thought came, "What could happen?" she sighed again, and, with eyes blinded by Heaven-shine, glanced down the village street.

She thought she saw--she rubbed her eyes and looked again--she did see, and surely never a stranger sight was beheld on Fairfield's street! Had a Royal Bengal tiger come slouching through the dust it could not have been more unusual. The spectacle was a man; a very large and mighty shouldered man, who looked about him with a bold, imperious, keep-the-change regard. There was something in the swing of him that suggested the Bengal tiger. He wore high-heeled boots outside of his trousers, a flannel shirt with a yellow silk kerchief around his neck, and on his head sat a white hat which seemed to Miss Mattie to be at least a yard in diameter. Under the hat was a remarkable head of hair. It hung below the man's shoulders in a silky mass of dark scarlet, flecked with brown gold. Miss Mattie had seen red hair, but she remembered no such color as this, nor could she recall ever having seen hair a foot-and-a-half long on a man. That hair would have made a fortune on the head of an actress, but Miss Mattie was ignorant of the possibilities of the profession.

The face of the man was a fine tan, against which eyes, teeth, and moustache came out in brisk relief. The moustache avoided the tropical tint of the upper hair and was content with a modest brown. The owner came right along, walking with a stiff, strong, straddling gait, like a man not used to that way of travelling.

Miss Mattie eyed him in some fear. He would be by her house directly, and it was hardly modest to sit aggressively on one's front porch, while a strange man went by--particularly, such a very strange man as this! Yet a thrill of curiosity held her for the moment, and then it was too late, for the man stopped and asked little Eddie Newell, who was playing placidly in the dust--all the children played placidly in Fairfield--asked Eddie, in a voice which reached Miss Mattie plainly, although the owner evidently made no attempt to raise it, if he knew where Miss Mattie Saunders lived?

Eddie had not noticed the large man's approach, and nearly fell over in a fright; but seeing, with a child's intuition, that there was no danger in this fierce-looking person, he piped up instantly.

"Y-y-yessir!--I kin tell yer where she lives--Yessir! She lives right down there in that little house--I kin go down with you jes' swell 's not! Why, there she is now, on the stoop!"

"Thankee sonny," said the big voice. "Here's for miggles," and Miss Mattie caught the sparkle of a coin as it flew into the grimy fists of Eddie.

"Much obliged!" yelled Eddie and vanished up the street.

Miss Mattie sat transfixed. Her breath came in swallows and her heart beat irregularly. Here was novelty with a vengeance! The big man turned and fastened his eyes upon her. There was no retreat. She noticed with some reassurance that his eyes were grave and kindly.

As he advanced Miss Mattie rose in agitation, unconsciously putting her hand on her throat--what could it mean?

The gate was opened and the stranger strode up the cinder walk to the porch. He stopped a whole minute and looked at her. At last.

"Well, Mattie!" he said, "don't you know me?"

A flood of the wildest hypotheses flashed through Miss Mattie's mind without enlightening her. Who was this picturesque giant who stepped out of the past with so familiar a salutation? Although the porch was a foot high, and Miss Mattie a fairly tall woman, their eyes were almost on a level, as she looked at him in wonder.

Then he laughed and showed his white teeth. "No use to bother and worry you, Mattie," said he, "you couldn't call it in ten years. Well, I'm your half-uncle Fred's boy Bill--and I hope you're a quarter as glad to see me as I am to see you."

"What!" she cried. "Not little Willy who ran away!"

"The same little Willy," he replied in a tone that made Miss Mattie laugh a little, nervously, "and what I want to know is, are you glad to see me?"

"Why, of course! But, Will--I suppose I should call you Will? I am so flustered--not expecting you--and it's been so warm to-day. Won't you come in and take a chair?" wound up Miss Mattie in desperation, and fury at herself for saying things so different from what she meant to say.

There was a twinkle in the man's eye as he replied in an injured tone:

"Why, good Lord, Mattie! I've come two thousand miles or more to see you, and you ask me to take a chair. Just as if I'd stepped in from across the way! Can't you give a man a little warmer welcome than that?"

"What shall I do?" asked poor Miss Mattie.

"Well, you might kiss me, for a start," said he.

Miss Mattie was all abroad--still one's half-cousin, who has come such a distance, and been received so very oddly, is entitled to consideration. She raised her agitated face, and for the first time in her life realised the pleasure of wearing a moustache.

Then Red Saunders, late of the Chanta Seeche Ranch, North Dakota, sat him down.

"I'm obliged to you, Mattie," he said in all seriousness. "To tell you the truth, I felt in need of a little comforting--here I've come all this distance--and, of course, I _heard_ about father and mother--but I couldn't believe it was true. Seemed as if they _must_ be waiting at the old place for me to come back, and when I saw it all gone to ruin--Well, then I set out to find somebody, and do you know, of all the family, there's only you and me left? That's all, Mattie, just us two!--whilst I was growing up out West, I kind of expected things to be standing still back here, and be just the same as I left them--hum--Well, how are you anyhow?"

"I'm well, Will, and"--laying her hand upon his, "_don't_ think I'm not glad to see you--_please_ don't. I'm so glad, Will, I can't tell you--but I'm all confused--so little happens here."

"I shouldn't guess it was the liveliest place in the world, by the look of it," said Red. "And as far as that's concerned, I kinder don't know what to say myself. There's such a heap to talk about it's hard to tell where to begin--but we've got to be friends though, Mattie--we've just _got_ to be friends. Good Lord! We're all there's left! Funny, I never thought of such a thing! Well, blast it! That's enough of such talk! I've brought you a present, Mattie." He stretched out a leg that reached beyond the limits of the front porch, and dove into his trousers pocket, bringing out a buck-skin sack. He fumbled at the knot a minute and then passed it over saying, "You untie it--your fingers are soopler than mine," Miss Mattie's fingers were shaking, but the knots finally came undone, and from the sack she brought forth a chain of rich, dull yellow lumps, fashioned into a necklace. It weighed a pound. She spread it out and looked at it astounded. "Gracious, Will! Is that _gold_?" she asked.

"That's what," he replied. "The real article, just as it came out of the ground: I dug it myself. That's the reason I'm here. I'd never got money enough to go anywheres further than a horse could carry me if I hadn't taken a fly at placer mining and hit her to beat h--er--the very mischief."

Miss Mattie looked first at the barbaric, splendid necklace and then at the barbaric, splendid man. Things grew confused before her in trying to realise that it was real. What two planets so separated in their orbits as her world and his? She had the imagination that is usually lacking in small communities, and the feeling of a fairy story come true, possessed her.

"And now, Mattie," said he, "I don't know what's manners in this part of the country, but I'll make free enough on the cousin part of it to tell you that I could look at some supper without flinching. I've walked a heap to-day, and I ain't used to walking."

Miss Mattie sprang up, herself again at the chance to offer hospitality.

"Why, you poor man!" said she. "Of course you're starved! It must be nearly eight o'clock! I almost forget about eating, living here alone. You shall have supper directly. Will you come in or sit a spell outside?"

"Reckon I'll come in," said Red. "Don't want to lose sight of you now that I've found you."

It was some time since Miss Mattie had felt that anyone had cared enough for her not to want to lose sight of her, and a delicate warm bloom went over her cheeks. She hurried into the little kitchen.

"Mattie!" called Red.

"What is it, Will?" she answered, coming to the door.

"Can I smoke in this little house?"

"Cer--tainly! Sit right down and make yourself comfortable. Don't you remember what a smoker father was?"

Red tried the different chairs with his hand. They were not a stalwart lot. Finally he spied the home-made rocker in the corner. "There's the lad for me," he said, drawing it out. "Got to be kinder careful how you throw two-hundred-fifty pounds around."

"Mercy!" cried Miss Mattie, pan in hand. "Do you weigh as much as that, Will?"

"I do," returned Red, with much satisfaction. "And there isn't over two pounds of it fat at that."

"What a great man you have grown up to be, Will!"

Red took in a deep draught of tobacco and sent the vapor clear across the little room.

"On the hay-scales, yes," he answered, with a sort of joking earnestness--"but otherwise, I don't know."

The return to the old home had touched the big man deeply, and as he leaned back in his chair there was a shade of melancholy on his face that became it well.

Miss Mattie took in the mass of him stretched out at his ease, his legs crossed, and the patrician cut of his face, to which the upturned moustache gave a cavalier touch. They were good stock, the Saunders, and the breed had not declined in the only two extant.

"He's my own cousin!" she whispered to herself, in the safety of the kitchen. "And such a splendid looking man!" She felt a pride of possession she had never known before. Nobody in Fairfield or vicinity had such a cousin as that. And Miss Mattie went on joyfully fulfilling an inherited instinct to minister to the wants of some man. She said to herself there was some satisfaction in cooking for somebody else. But alack-a-day, Miss Mattie's ideas of the wants of somebody else had suffered a Fairfield change. Nothing was done on a large scale in Fairfield. But she sat the little cakes--lucky that she had made them yesterday--and the fried mush, and the small pitcher of milk, and the cold ham, and the cold biscuit on the table with a pride in the appearance of the feast.

"Supper's ready, Will," said she.

Red responded instanter. Took a look at the board and understood. He ate the little cakes and biscuit, and said they were the durned best he ever tasted. He also took some pot-cheese under a misapprehension; swallowed it, and said to himself that he had been through worse things than that. Then, when his appetite had just begun to develop, the inroads on the provisions warned him that it was time to stop. Meanwhile they had ranged the fields of old times at random, and as Red took in Miss Mattie, pink with excitement and sparkling as to eyes, he thought, "Blast the supper! It's a square meal just to look at her. If she ain't pretty good people, I miss my guess."

It was a merry meal. He had such a way of telling things! Miss Mattie hadn't laughed so much for years, and she felt that there was no one that she had known so long and so well as Cousin Will. There was only one jarring note. Red spoke of the vigorous celebration that had been followed by the finding of gold. It was certainly well told, but Miss Mattie asked in soft horror when he had finished, "You didn't get--_intoxicated_--Will?"

"DID I?" said he, lost in memory, and not noticing the tone. "Well, I put my hand down the throat of that man's town, and turned her inside out! It was like as if Christmas and Fourth of July had happened on the same day."

"Oh, Will!" cried Miss Mattie, "I can't think of you like that--rolling in the gutter." Her voice shook and broke off. Her knowledge of the effect of stimulants was limited to Fairfield's one drunkard--old Tommy McKee, a disreputable old Irishman--but drunkenness was the worst vice in her world.

"Rolling in the gutter!" cried Red, in astonishment. "Why girl! What for would I roll in the gutter? What's the fun in that? Jiminy Christmas! I wanted to walk on the telegraph wires--there wasn't anything in that town high enough for me--what put gutters into your head?"

"I--I supposed people did that when they were--like that."

"I wouldn't waste my money on whisky, if that's all the inspiration I got out of it," replied Red.

"Well, of course I don't know about those things, but I wish you'd promise me one thing."

"Done!" cried Red. "What is it?"

"I wish you'd promise me not to touch whisky again!"

"Phew! That's a pretty big order!" He stopped and thought a minute. "If you'll make that 'never touch it when it ain't needed,' leaving when it's needed to what's my idea of the square thing on a promise, I'll go you, Mattie--there's my hand."

"Oh, I shouldn't have said anything at all, Will! I have no right. But it seemed such a pity such a splendid man--I mean--I think--. You mustn't promise me anything, Will," stammered Miss Mattie, shocked at her own daring.

"Here!" he cried, "I'm no little kid! When I promise I mean it! As for your not having any right, ain't we all there is? You've got to be mother and sister and aunt and everything to me. I ain't as young as I have been, Mattie, and I miss she-ways terrible at times. Now put out your fin like a good pardner, and here goes for no more rhinecaboos for Chantay Seeche Red--time I quit drinking, anyhow," he slipped a ring off his little finger. "Here, hold out your hand," said he, "I'll put this on for luck, and the sake of the promise--by the same token, I've got a noose on you now, and you're my property."

This, of course, was only Cousin Will's joking, but Miss Mattie noticed with a sudden hot flush, that he had chosen the engagement finger--in all ignorance, she felt sure. The last thing she could do would be to call his attention to the fact, or run the risk of hurting his feelings by transferring the ring; besides, it was a pretty ring--a rough ruby in a plain gold band--and looked very well where it was.

Then they settled down for what Red called a good medicine talk. Miss Mattie found herself boldly speaking of little fancies and notions that had remained in the inner shrine of her soul for years, shrinking from the matter-of-fact eye of Fairfield; yet this big, ferocious looking Cousin Will seemed to find them both sane and interesting, and as her self-respect went up in the arithmetical, her admiration for Cousin Will went up in the geometrical ratio. He frankly admitted weaknesses and fears that the males of Fairfield would have rejected scornfully.

Miss Mattie spoke of sleeping upstairs, because she could not rid herself of the fear of somebody coming in.

"I know just how you feel about that," said Red. "My hair used to be on its feet most of the time when we were in the hay camp at the lake beds. Gee whizz! The rattlers! We put hair ropes around--but them rattlers liked to squirm over hair ropes for exercise. One morning I woke up and there was a crawler on my chest. 'For God's sake, Pete!' says I to Antelope Pete, who was rolled up next me, 'come take my friend away!' and I didn't holler very loud, neither. Pete was chain lightning in pants, and he grabs Mr. Rattler by the tail and snaps his neck, but I felt lonesome in my inside till dinner time. You bet! I know just how you feel, exactly. I didn't have a man's sized night's rest whilst we was in that part of the country."

It struck Miss Mattie that the cases were hardly parallel. "A rattlesnake on your chest, Will!" she cried, with her hands clasped in terror.

"Oh! it wasn't as bad as it sounds--he was asleep--coiled up there to get warm--sharpish nights on the prairie in August--but darn it! Mattie!" wrinkling up his nose in disgust, "I hate the sight of the brutes!"

"But you wouldn't be afraid of a man, Will!"

"Well, no," admitted he. "I've never been troubled much that way. You see, everybody has a different fear to throw a crimp in them. Mine's rattlesnakes and these little bugs with forty million pairs of legs. I pass right out when I see one of them things. They give me a feeling as if my stummick had melted."

"Weren't the Indians terrible out there, too?" asked Miss Mattie. "I'm sure they must have been."

"Oh, they ain't bad people if you use 'em right," said Red. "Not that I like 'em any better on the ground, than in it," he added hastily, fearful of betraying the sentiment of his country, "but I never had but one real argument, man to man. Black Wolf and I come together over a matter of who owned my cayuse, and from words we backed off and got to shooting. He raked me from knee to hip, as I was kneeling down, doing the best I could by him, and wasting ammunition because I was in a hurry. Still, I did bust his ankle. In the middle of the fuss a stray shot hit the cayuse in the head and he croaked without a remark, so there we were, a pair of fools miles from home with nothing left to quarrel about! You could have fried an egg on a rock that day, and it always makes you thirsty to get shot anyways serious, thinking of which I hollered peace to old Black Wolf and told him I'd pull straws with him to see who took my canteen down to the creek and got some fresh water. He was agreeable and we hunched up to each other. It ain't to my credit to say it, but I was worse hurt than that Injun, so I worked him. He got the short straw, and had to crawl a mile through cactus, while I sat comfortable on the cause of the disagreement and yelled to him that he looked like a badger, and other things that an Injun wouldn't feel was a compliment." Red leaned back and roared. "I can see him now putting his hands down so careful, and turning back every once in awhile to cuss me. Turned out that it was his cayuse, too. Feller that sold it to me had stole it from him. I oughtn't to laugh over it, but I can't help but snicker when I think how I did that Injun."

Generally speaking, Miss Mattie had a lively sense of humour, but the joke of this was lost on her. Her education had been that getting shot was far from funny.

"Why, I should have thought you would have died, Will!"

"What! For a little crack in the leg!" cried Red, with some impatience. "You people must quit easy in this country. Die nothin'. One of our boys came along and took us to camp, and we was up and doing again in no time. 'Course, Black Wolf has a game leg for good, but the worst that's stuck to me is a yank or two of rheumatism in the rainy season. I paid Wolf for his cayuse," he finished shamefacedly. "I had the laugh on him anyhow."

Miss Mattie told him she thought that was noble of him, which tribute Red took as medicine, and shifted the subject with speed, to practical affairs. He asked Miss Mattie how much money she had and how she managed to make out. Now, it was one of the canons of good manners in Fairfield not to speak of material matters--perhaps because there was so little material matter in the community, but Miss Mattie, doomed to a thousand irksome petty economies, had often longed for a sympathetic ear, to pour into it a good honest complaint of hating to do this and that. She could not exactly go this far with Cousin Will, but she could say that it was pretty hard to get along, and give some details. She felt that she knew him so very well, in those few hours! Red heard with nods of assent. He had scented the conditions at once.

"It ain't any fun, skidding on the thin ice," said he, when they had concluded the talk. "I've had to count the beans I put in the pot, and it made me hate arithmetic worse than when I went over yonder to school. Well, them days have gone by for you, Mattie." He reached down and pulling out a green roll, slapped it on the centre table. "Blow that in, and limber up, and remember that there's more behind it."

Miss Mattie's pride rose at a leap.

"Will!" she said, "I hope you don't think I've told you this to get money from you?"

He leaned forward, put his hand on her shoulder and held her eyes with a sudden access of sternness and authority.

"And I hope, Mattie," said he, "that you don't think that I think anything of the kind?"

The cousins stared into each other's eyes for a full minute. Then Miss Mattie spoke. "No, Will," said she, "I don't believe you do."

"I shouldn't think I did," retorted Red. "What in thunder would I do with all that money? Why, good Lord, girl, I could paper your house with ten-dollar bills--now you try to fly them green kites, like I tell you."

Miss Mattie broke down, the not fully realised strain of fifteen years had made itself felt when the cord snapped. "I don't know how to thank you. I don't know what to say. Oh, William! it seems too good to be true."

"What you crying about, Mattie?" said he in sore distress. "Now hold on! Listen to me a minute! There's something I want you to do for me."

"What is it?" she asked, drying her eyes. "For dinner to-morrow," he replied, "let's have a roast of beef about that size," indicating a wash-tub.

The diversion was complete.

"Why, Will! What would we ever do with it?" said she.

"Do with it? Why, eat it!"

"But we couldn't eat all that!"

"Then throw what's left to the cats. You ain't going to fall down on me the first favour I ask?" with mock seriousness.

"You shall have the roast of beef. 'Pears to me that you're fond of your stomach, Will," said Miss Mattie, with a recovering smile.

"I have a good stomach, that's always done the right thing by me, when I've done the right thing by _it_," said Red. "And moreover, just look at the constitution I have to support. But say, old lady, look at that!" pointing to the clock. "Eleven-thirty; time decent people were putting up for the night."

The words brought to an acute stage a wandering fear which had passed through Miss Mattie's mind at intervals during the evening. Where was she to look for sleeping accommodations for a man? She revolted against the convention, that, in her own mind, as well as the rest of Fairfield, forbade the use of her house for the purpose. Long habit of thought had made these niceties constitutional. It was almost as difficult for Miss Mattie to say "I'll fix up your bed right there on the sofa" as it would have been for Red to pick a man's pocket, yet, when she thought of his instant and open generosity and what a dismal return therefor it would be to thrust him out for reasons which she divined would have no meaning for him, she heroically resolved to throw custom to the winds, and speak.

But the difficulty was cut in another fashion.

"There's a little barn in the back-yard that caught my eye," said Red, "and if you'll lend me a blanket I'll roll it out there."

"Sleep in the barn! You'll not do any such thing!" cried Miss Mattie. "You'll sleep right here on the sofa, or upstairs in my bed, just as you choose."

"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not. So help me Bob! I'd smother in here. Had the darnedest time coming on that ever was--hotels. Little white rooms with the walls coming in on you. Worse than rattlesnakes for keeping a man awake. Reminds me of the hospital. Horse fell on me once and smashed me up so that I had to be sent to get puttied up again, and I never struck such a month as that since I was born. The doc. told me I mustn't move, but I told him I'd chuck him out of the window if he tried to stop me, and up I got. I'd have gone dead sure if they'd held me a week more. I speak for the barn, Mattie, and I speak real loud; that is, I mean to say I'm going to sleep in the barn, unless there's somebody a heap larger than you on the premises. Now, there's no use for you to talk--I'm going to do just as I say."

"Well, I think that's just dreadful!" said Miss Mattie. "I'd like to know what folks will think of me to hear I turned my own cousin out in the barn." Her voice trailed off a little at the end as the gist of what they might say if he stayed in the house, occurred to her. "Well," she continued, "if you're set, I suppose I can't object." Miss Mattie was not a good hand at playing a part.

"I'm set," said Red. "Get me a blanket." As she came in with this, he added, "Say, Mattie, could you let me have a loaf of bread? I've got a habit of wanting something to eat in the middle of the night."

"Certainly! Don't you want some butter with it? Here, I'll fix it for you on a plate."

"No, don't waste dish-washing--I'll show you how to fix it." He cut the loaf of bread in half, pulled out a portion of the soft part and filled the hole with butter. "There we are, and nothing to bother with afterwards."

"That's a right smart notion, Will--but you'll want a knife."

In answer he drew out a leather case from his breast pocket and opened it. Within was knife, fork, spoon and two flat boxes for salt and pepper. "You see I'm fixed," said he.

"Isn't that a cute trick!" she cried admiringly. "You're ready for most anything."

"Sure," said Red. "Now, good night, old lady!" He bent down in so natural a fashion that Miss Mattie had kissed him before she knew what she was going to do.

Down to the barn, through the soft June evening, went Red, whistling a Mexican love song most melodiously.

Miss Mattie stood in the half-opened door and listened. Without was balm and starlight and the spirit of flowers, breathed out in odours. The quaint and pretty tune rose and fell, quavered, lilted along as it listed without regard for law and order. It struck Miss Mattie to the heart. Her girlhood, with its misty dreams of happiness, came back to her on the wings of music.

"Isn't that a sweet tune," she said, with a lump in her throat.

She went up into her room and sat down a moment in confusion, trying to grasp the reality of all that had happened. In the middle of the belief that these things were not so, came the regret of a sensitive mind for errors committed. She remembered with a sudden sinking, that she had not thanked him for the necklace--and the money lay even now on the parlor table, where he had cast it! This added the physical fear of thieves. Down she went and got the money, counted out, to her unmitigated astonishment, five hundred dollars and thrust it beneath her pillow with a shiver. She wished she had thought to tell him to take care of it--but suppose the thieves were to fall on him as he slept? Red's friends would have spent their sympathy on the thieves. She rejoiced that the money was where it was. Then she tried to remember what she had said throughout the evening.

"Well, I suppose I must have acted like a ninny," she concluded. "But isn't he just splendid!" and as Cousin Will's handsome face, with its daring, kind eyes, came to her vision she felt comforted. "I don't believe but what he'll make every allowance for how excited I was," said she. "He seems to understand those things, for all he's such a large man. Well, it doesn't seem as if it could be true." With a half sigh Miss Mattie knelt and sent up her modest petition to her Maker and got into her little white bed.

In the meantime Red's actions would have awakened suspicion. He hunted around until he found a tin can, then lit a match and rummaged the barn, amid terror-stricken squawks from the inhabitants, the hens.

"One, two, three, four," he counted. "Reckon I can last out till morning on that. Mattie, she's white people--just the nicest I ever saw, but she ain't used to providing for a full-grown man."

He stepped to the back of the barn and looked about him. "Nobody can see me from here," he said, in satisfaction. Then he scraped together a pile of chips and sticks and built a fire, filled the tin can at the brook, sat it on two stones over the fire, rolled himself a cigarette and waited. A large, yellow tom-cat came out of the brush and threw his green headlights on him, meaowing tentatively.

"Hello, pussy!" said Red. "You hungry too? Well, just wait a minute, and we'll help that feeling--like bread, pussy?" The cat gobbled the morsel greedily, came closer and begged for more. The tin can boiled over. Red popped the eggs in, puffed his cigarette to a bright coal, and looked at his watch by the light. "Gee! Ten minutes more, now!" said he. "Hardly seems to me as if I could wait." He pulled the watch out several times. "What's the matter with the damn thing? I believe it's stopped," he growled. But at last "Time!" he shouted gleefully, kicked the can over and gathered up its treasures in his handkerchief.

"Now, Mr. Cat, we're going to do some real eating," said he. "Just sit right down and make yourself at home--this is kind of fun, by Jinks!" Down went the eggs and down went the loaf of bread in generous slices, never forgetting a fair share for the cat.

"Woosh! I feel better!" cried Red, "and now for some sleep." He swung up into the hay-loft, spread the blanket on the still fragrant old hay, and rolled himself up in a trice.

"I did a good turn when I came on here," he mused. "If I have got only one relation, she's a dandy--so pretty and quiet and nice. She's a marker for all I've got, is Mattie."

The cat came up, purring and "making bread." He sniffed feline fashion at Red's face.

"Foo! Shoo! Go 'way, pussy! Settle yourself down and we'll pound our ear for another forty miles. I like you first rate when you don't walk on my face." He stretched and yawned enormously. "Yes sir! Mattie's all right," said he. "A-a-a-ll ri-" and Chantay Seeche Red was in the land of dreams. Here, back in God's country, within twenty miles of the place where he was born, the wanderer laid him down again, and in spite of raid and foray, whisky and poker-cards, wear-and-tear, hard times, and hardest test of all, sudden fortune, he was much the same impulsive, honest, generous, devil-may-care boy who had left there twenty-four years ago.

 

II

The next morning when Red awoke, arrows of gold were shooting through the holes in the old barn, and outside, the bird life, the twittering and chirping, the fluent whistle and the warble, the cackle and the pompous crow, were in full chorus.

"Where am I at, this time?" said he, as he took in the view. "Oh, I remember!" and his heart leapt. "I'm in my own home, by the Lord!"

He went down to the brook and washed, drying hands and face on the silk neckerchief, which is meant for use as well as for decoration.

In the meantime, Miss Mattie had awakened, with a sense of something delightful at hand, the meaning of which escaped her for the time. And then she remembered, and sprang out of bed like a girl. She went to the window, threw open the shutters and let the stirring morning air flow in. This had been her habit for a long time. The window faced away from the road, and no one could see who was not on Miss Mattie's own premises.

But this morning Red had wandered around. Stopping at the rose bushes he picked a bud.

"That has the real old-time smell," he said, as he held it to his nose. "Sweetbriars are good, and I don't go back on 'em, but they ain't got the fram these fellers have."

Bud in hand he walked beneath Miss Mattie's windows, and he was the first thing her eye fell upon.

Her startled exclamation made him look up before she had time to withdraw.

"Hello there!" he called joyfully. "How do you open up this day? You look pretty well!" he added with a note of admiration. Miss Mattie had the wavy hair which is never in better order than when left to its own devices. Her idea of coiffure was not the most becoming that could have been selected, as she felt that a "young" style of hair dressing was foolish for a single woman of her years. Now, with the pretty soft hair flying, her eyes still humid with sleep, and a touch of color in her face from the surprise, relieved against the fleecy shawl she had thrown about her shoulders, she was incontestably both a discreet and pretty picture. Yet Miss Mattie could not forget the bare feet and night-gown, although they were hidden from masculine eyes by wood and plaster, and she was embarrassed. Still, with all the super-sensitive fancies, Miss Mattie had a strong back-bone of New England common-sense. She answered that she felt very well indeed, and, to cover any awkwardness, inquired what he had in his hand.

"Good old rose," replied Red. "Old-time smeller--better suited to you than to me--ketch!"

At the word he tossed it, and Miss Mattie caught it dexterously. Red had an exceedingly keen eye for some things, and he noticed the certainty of the action. He hated fumblers. "A person can do things right if they've got minds that work," was one of his pet sayings. "'Taint the muscles at all--it's in the head, and I like the kind of head that's in use all the time." Therefore this small affair made an impression on him.

"Why, you could be a baseball player," said he.

"I used to play with Joe, when I was a girl," said Miss Mattie, smiling. "I always liked boy's play better than I did girl's. Joe taught me how to throw a ball, too. He said he wouldn't play with me unless I learned not to 'scoop it,' girl fashion. I suppose you will be wanting breakfast?" There was a hint of sarcasm in the doubt of the inquiry.

"That's what I do!" said Red. "You must just hustle down and get things to boiling, or I'll throw bricks through the windows. I've been up for the last two hours."

"Why! I don't believe it!" said Miss Mattie.

"No more do I, but it seems like it," replied Red. "Don't you want the fire started? Come down and open up the house."

When Miss Mattie appeared at the door, in he strode with an armful of wood, dropping it man-fashion, crash! on the floor.

"Skip out of the way!" said he. "I'll show you how to build a fire!"

The early morning had been the most desolate time to Miss Mattie. As the day warmed up the feeling of loneliness vanished, perhaps to return at evening, but not then with the same absoluteness as when she walked about the kitchen to the echo of her own footsteps in the morning.

Now the slamming and the banging which accompanied Red's energetic actions rang in her ears most cheerily. She even found a relish in the smothered oath that heralded the thrust of a splinter in his finger. It was very wicked, but it was also very much alive.

Red arose and dusted off his knees. "Now we're off!" he said as the fire began to roar. "What's next?"

"If you'd grind the coffee, Will?" she suggested.

"Sure! Where's the hand organ?"

He put the mill between his knees, and converted the beans to powder, to the tune of "Old dog Tray" through his nose, which Miss Mattie found very amusing.

She measured out the coffee, one spoonful for each cup, and one for the pot. Red watched her patiently, and when she had finished, he threw in the rest of the contents of the mill-drawer. "I like it fairly strong," said he in explanation.

"Now, Will!" protested Miss Mattie. "Look at you! That will be as bitter as boneset!"

"Thin her up with milk and she'll be all right," replied Red.

"Well, such wasteful ways I never did see. Nobody'd think you were a day over fifteen."

"I'm not," said Red stoutly, "and," catching her chin in his hand and turning her face up toward him--"Nobody'd put your score much higher than that neither, if they trusted to their eyes this morning."

The compliment hit so tender a place that Miss Mattie lacked the resolution to tear it out, besides, it was so honest that it sounded much less like a compliment than a plain statement of fact. She bent hastily over the fire. "I'm glad I look young, Will," she said softly.

"So'm I!" he assented heartily. "What's the sense in being old, anyhow? I'm as limber and good for myself as ever I was, in spite of my forty years."

"You're not _forty_ years old!" exclaimed Miss Mattie. "You're joking!"

"Nary joke--forty round trips from flying snow to roses since I hit land, Mattie--why, you were only a little girl when I left here--don't you remember? You and your folks came to see us the week before I left. I got a thrashing for taking you and Joe to the millpond, and helping you to get good and wet. The thrashing was one of the things that gave me a hankering for the West. Very liberal man with the hickory, father. Spare the clothes and spoil the skin was his motto. He used to make me strip to the waist--phee-hew! Even a light breeze rested heavy on my back when dad got through with me--say, Mattie, perhaps I oughtn't to say so, now that he's gone, but I don't think that's the proper way to use a boy, do you?"

"No, I don't," said Miss Mattie. "Your father meant well, but his way was useless and cruel."

"I've forgiven him the whole sweep," said Red. "But damn me! If I had a boy I wouldn't club the life out of him--I'd try to reason with him first, anyhow. Makes a boy as ugly as anybody else to get the hide whaled off his back for nothing--once in a while he needs it. Boy that's got any life in him gets to be too much occasionally and then a warming is healthful and nourishing. Lord! You'd think I was the father of my country to hear me talk, wouldn't you? If somebody'd write a book, 'What Red Saunders don't know about raising children' it would be full of valuable information--how's that breakfast coming on?"

"All ready--sit right down, Will."

"Go you!" cried Red, and incautiously flung himself upon one of the kitchen chairs, which collapsed instantly and dropped him to the floor.

"Mercy on us! Are you hurt?" cried Miss Mattie, rushing forward.

"Hurt?" said Red. "Try it!--Just jump up in the air and sit on the floor where you are now, and see if you get hurt! Oh, no! I'm not hurt, but I'm astonished beyond measure, like the man that tickled the mule. I'll take my breakfast right here--shouldn't wonder a bit if the floor went back on me and landed me in the cellar--no sir! I won't get up! Hand me the supplies, I know when I'm well off. If you want to eat breakfast with me come sit on the floor. I'm not going to have my spine pushed through the top of my head twice in the same day."

"Will! You are the most ridiculous person I ever did see!" said Miss Mattie, and she laughed till she cried in sheer light-heartedness. "But there's a chair you can trust--come on now."

"Well, if you'll take your solemn oath that this one has no moustache to deceive me," said Red doubtfully. "It looks husky--well, I'll try it--Hooray! She didn't give an inch. This kind of reminds me of the time Jimmy Hendricks came back from town and walked off the edge of the bluff in the dark. It just happened that Old Scotty Ferguson's cabin was underneath him. Jim took most of the roof off with him as he went in. He sat awhile to figure out what was trumps, having come a hundred and fifty feet too fast to do much thinking. Then, 'Hello!' he yells. Old Scotty was a sleeper from 'way back, but this woke him up.

"'Hello!' says he. 'Was'er matter?'

"Jim saw he wasn't more than half awake yet, so he says, 'Why, I was up on the bluff there, Scotty, and seeing it was such a short distance I thought I'd drop in!'

"'Aw ri',' grunted Scotty. 'Make y'self t' home,' and with that he rolls over.

"Jim couldn't wait for morning, and though his leg was pretty badly sprained, he made the trip all the way round the trail and woke us up to tell us how he'd gone through Ferguson's roof and the old man asked him to make himself at home. Next morning there was Scotty out in front of his cabin, his thumbs in his vest holes, looking up.

"'What's the matter, Scotty?' says I.

"'Well, I wisht you'd tell me what in the name of God went through that roof!' says he.

"I swallered a laugh cross-ways and put on a serious face. 'Must have been a rock,' says I.

"'Rock nothin'!' says he. 'If it had been a rock 'twould have stayed in the cabin, wouldn't it! Well, there ain't the first blasted thing of any shape nor description in there but the hole--you can go in and look for yourself.'

"It cost Scotty one case of rye to make us forget those circumstances."

"I should have thought the man would be killed, striking on the roof that way," said Miss Mattie.

"Oh, no! Roof was made of quaking-asp saplings, just about strong enough to break his fall. Scotty was the sleeper, though! It wasn't hardly natural the way that man could pound his ear through thick and thin. He had quite a surprising time of it once. He'd been prospecting 'round the Ruby refractory ore district and he came out at Hank Cutter's saw-mill, just at sun-down. Hank's place was full of gold rushers, so Old Scotty thought he'd sleep out-doors in peace and quiet. He discovered some big boxes, that Hank was making for ore bins for the new mill, and as the ground was kind of damp from a thunder-shower they had that day, he spreads his blanket inside the box and goes to sleep; ore bins have to be smooth and dust tight, so it wasn't a bad shanty.

"Well, there came a jar and waked him up. The box was rolling a little, and going along, going along forty mile an hour. Scotty lit a match and found he was in a kind of big tunnel but the wall was flying by so fast, he couldn't make out just what kind of a tunnel it was. Now, he'd gone to sleep in peace and quiet on a side hill, and to wake up and find himself boat-riding in a tunnel was enough to surprise anybody. First he pinched himself to see if it was Hank's pie, or a cold fact, found it was a fact, then he lit another match and leaned over and looked at the black water underneath, but this made the box tip so it scart him and he settled down in the bottom again. He didn't try to think--what was the use? No man living could have figured things out with the few facts Scotty had before him. All of a sudden the box made a rush and shot out into the air, and Scotty felt they were falling. 'God sakes!' he says to himself. 'What's next, I wonder?' Then they hit the water below with a ker-flap that nearly telescoped Scotty and sent the spray flying. After that they went along smooth again. 'Well,' says Scotty, 'I don't know where I am, nor who I am, nor what's happened, nor who's it, nor nothing about this game. So far I ain't been hurt, though, and I might just as well lie down and get a little more rest.'

"It was broad daylight when he woke up again, and a man was looking into the box. 'Hello, pardner!' he says. 'I hope you've had a pleasant journey--do you always travel this way?'

"Scotty raised up and found his craft was aground--high and dry--no water within a hundred feet of it. On one side was quite a little town.

"'Say,' says he, 'could I trouble you to tell me where I am, friend?'

"'You're at Placerville,' answers the other.

"'Placerville!' yells Scotty, 'and I went to sleep at Cutter's Mill, sixty-five miles from here!--what are you giving us, man?'

"'I'm putting it to you straight,' says the stranger. 'Take a look around you.'

"Scotty looked and there was all kinds of wreckage, from a dead beef critter to a wheel barrow.

"'What in nation's all this?' says he.

"'Washout,' says the man. 'Cloud burst up on the divide--worst we've ever had--your box is about high water mark--you see there was water enough for awhile--I reckon you're about the only thing that came through alive.'

"'Well, wouldn't that knock you?' says Scotty.

--"Whilst the rest of the folk at the mill was taking to the high ground for their lives, with the water roaring and tearing through the gulch, Scotty had peacefully gone off in his little boat, down the creek, and instead of going over the rapids, where he'd have been done, for all his luck, the box ambles through the flume they was building for the new mill. Of course there was the jounce over the tail race, but that hadn't hurt him much, and after, he rocked in the cradle of the deep, until he got beached at Placerville.

"'Come along, friend,' says Scotty to the feller, 'you and me are going to have a little drink on this, if it is the last act.' And I reckon probably they made it two, for when Scotty got back again he was in a condition that made everybody believe that he'd only guessed at the story he told. But they found out afterward it was a solemn fact. Mattie, give us some more coffee."

Thus abruptly recalled to Fairfield, Miss Mattie started up.

"Well, Will, it does seem as if that was a dangerous country to live in," said she.

"Oh, not so awful!" said Red. "Just as many people die here as they do there--this world's a dangerous place to live in, wherever you strike it, Mattie."

"That's so," said she, thoughtfully.

"And now," said Red, pushing back his chair, "it's time I got to work and left you to do the housework undisturbed."

"What are you going to do, Will?"

"First place, there's fences and things to be tinkered up, I see. I suppose a millionaire like me ought to hire those things done, but I'd have measles of the mind if I sat around doing nothing."

"I have been wanting to get the place in good order for some time," said Miss Mattie, "but what with the money I had to spend for this and that, and not being able to get Mr. Joyce to come in for a day's work when I wanted him, it's gone on, until there is a good deal of wrack to it."

"We'll wrack it t'other way round in no time--got any tools here?"

"Out in the barn is what's left of father's tools--people have borrowed 'em and forgot to return 'em, and they've rusted or been lost until I'm afraid there ain't many of 'em left."

"Well, I'll get along to-day somehow, and later on we'll stock up--want any help around the house?"

"Thank you, no, Will."

"Then I'm off."

It was almost with a feeling of terror that Miss Mattie beheld him root up the fence. Her idea of repairing was to put in a picket here and there where it was most needed; Red's was to knock it all flat first, and set it up in A1 condition afterward. So, in two hours' time he straightened up and snapped the sweat from his brow, beholding the slain pickets prone on the grass with thorough satisfaction. Yet he felt tired, for the day was already hot with a moist and soaking sea-coast heat, to which the plainsman was unaccustomed. A three-quarter-grown boy passed by, lounging on the seat of a farm waggon.

"Hey!" hailed Red. The boy stopped and turned slowly around.

"Yes, sir," he answered courteously enough.

"Want a job?" said Red.

"Well, I dunno," replied the boy. He was much astonished at the appearance of his interrogator, and he was a cautious New England boy to boot.

"_You_ don't know?" retorted Red. "Well," with some sarcasm, "d'ye suppose I could find out at the post-office?"

The boy looked at Red with a twinkle in his eye, and a comical drawing of his long mouth.

"I calc'late if you cud fin' out anyweres, 'twould be there," said he.

Red laughed. He had noticed the busy post-mistress rushing out of her store to waylay anyone likely to have information on any subject, a stream of questions proceeding from her through the door.

"Say, you got anything particular to do?"

"No, sir--leastways th'ain't no hurry about it."

"Can I buy stuff to make a fence with, around here?"

"Yes, sir--Mister Pettigrew's got all kinds of buildin' material at his store--two mile over yonder," pointing with the whip.

"You drive over there for me, and get some--just like this here--pickets and posts and whatever you call them long pieces, and I'll make it right with you."

"Yes, sir--how much will I get?"

"Oh, tell him to fill the waggon up with it, and I'll send back what I don't want--hustle, now, like a good boy; I want to get shut of this job; I liked it better before I begun."

When his Mercury had speeded on the journey at a faster gait than Red would have given him credit for, the architect strode down to the blacksmith's shop. There was a larger crowd than usual around the forge, as the advent of the stranger had gotten into the wind, and the village Vulcan was a person who not only looked the whole world in the face, but no one of the maiden ladies of Fairfield could have excelled his interest in looking the whole world as much in the inside pocket as possible. The blacksmith was emphatically a gossip, as well as a hardworking, God-fearing man.

"Say, there he comes now, Mr. Tuttle!" cried one of the loungers, and nudged the smith to look.

"Well, let him come!" retorted the smith, testily, jamming a shoe in the fire with unnecessary force; as a matter of fact, he was embarrassed. The loungers huddled together for moral support, as the big cow-man loomed through the doorway.

"Good morning, friends!" said he.

"Good morning, sir!" replied the blacksmith, rubbing his hands on his apron. "Nice day, sir?"

"For the sake of good fellowship, I'll say 'yes' to that," responded Red. "But if you want my honest opinion on the subject, it's damn hot."

"'Tis that," assented the smith, and a silence followed.

"Say, who's your crack fence-builder around here?" asked Red. "The man that can make two pickets grow where only one grew before and do it so easy that it's a pleasure to sit and look at him?"

"Hey?" inquired the smith, not precisely getting the meaning of the address.

"Why, I've got a fence to build," exclaimed Red. "And now I want some help--want it so bad, I'll produce to the extent of three a day and call it a day from now 'till six o'clock--any takers here? Make your bets while the little ball rolls."

The loungers understood the general drift of this and pricked up their ears, as did the blacksmith. "Guess one of the boys will help you," said the latter.

"Well, who's it?" asked Red, glancing at the circle of faces. Three dollars a day was enormous wages in that part of the country. Nobody knew just what to say.

"Oh, well!" cried Red, "let's everybody run--I reckon I can find something to do for the five of you--are you with me?"

"Yes, sir," they said promptly.

"Can I borrow a hammer or so off you, old man?" questioned Red of the smith.

"Certainly, sir," returned the latter heartily. "Take what you want."

"Much obliged--and the gate hinges are out of whack--Miss Saunders' place, you know--come over and take a squint at 'em in the near by-and-by, will you? May as well fix it up all at once--come on, boys!"

It was thus that the greatest enterprise that Fairfield had seen in many a day was undertaken. Miss Mattie was simply astounded as the army bore down upon the house.

"Whatever in the world is Cousin Will doing?" said she; but resting strong in the faith that it was necessarily all right, she was content to wait for dinner and an explanation. Not so the post-mistress. The agonies of unrequited curiosity the worthy woman suffered that morning until she at last summoned up her resolution and asked the smith plump out and out what it all meant, would have to be experienced to be appreciated. And the smith kept her hanging for a while, too, saying to himself in justification, that it wasn't right the way that old gal had to get into everybody's business. The smith was like some of the rest of us; he could see through a beam if it was in his own eye.

 

III

There was a great din of whacking and hammering that morning. Red worked like a horse, now that he had company. A sudden thought struck him and he went into the house.

"Mattie," said he.

"Well, Will?"

"I see a use for the rest of that nice big roast of beef I smell in the oven--let's have all these fellers stay to dinner, and give 'em one good feed--what do you say?"

"Why, I'd like to. Will--but I don't know--where'll I set them?"

"Couple of boards outside for a table--let them sit on boxes or something--got plates and things enough?"

"My, yes! Plenty of such things, Will."

"Then if it ain't too much trouble for you, we'll let it go."

"No trouble at all, Will--it will be a regular picnic."

"Boys, you'll eat with me this day," said Red.

They spread the board table beneath an old apple tree, and cleaned up for the repast in the kitchen storm-shed with an apologetic, "Sorry to trouble you, Miss Saunders," or such a matter as each went in.

Just as Miss Mattie was withdrawing the meat from the oven, there came a knock at the door.

"Goodness, gracious!" she exclaimed. "Who can that be now? Will, will you see who that is? I can't go."

"Sure!" said Red, and went to the door. There stood two women of that indefinite period between forty and sixty, very decently dressed and with some agitation visible in the way they fussily adjusted various parts of their attire.

They started at the sudden spectacle of the huge man who said pleasantly, "Howderdo, ladies!"

"Why, how do you do?" replied the taller instantly, and in a voice she had never heard before. "I hope you're well, sir?" A remark which filled her with surprise.

"Thanks--I'm able to assume the perpendicular, as you can see," responded Red with a handsome smile of welcome. "How do you find yourself?"

"I'm pretty well," said the flustered lady. "How do you do?"

"Durned if we ain't right back where we started from," mourned Red to himself. "If it's one of the customs of this country saying 'howderdo' an hour at a stretch, I pass it up." Aloud, he said, "Coming along fine--how's your father?" "Cuss me if I don't shift the cut a little, anyhow," he added mentally.

"Why, he's very well indeed!" exclaimed the lady with fervor. "How--" She got no further on the query, for the other woman interrupted in a tone of scandal. "Mary Ann Demilt! How can you talk like that! Your father's been dead this five year last August!"

The horror of the moment was broken by the appearance of Miss Mattie, crying hospitably on seeing the visitors, "Why, Mary and Pauline! How do you do?"

The shorter one--Pauline--looked up and said sharply, "We're well enough, Mattie." She was weary of the form.

"Come right in," said Miss Mattie. "You're just in time for dinner."

There was a great protest at this. They "hadn't a moment to spare," they were "just going down to the corner, and had stopped to say," etc., etc.

"You've got to help me," said Miss Mattie. "Will here has invited the boys who are working for him to stay to dinner, and it won't be any more than Christian for you to help me out."

"Ladies!" said Red. "If you don't want to starve a man who's deserving of a better fate, take off your fixings and come out to dinner. No," he continued to their protests, which he observed were growing weaker. "It's no trouble at all: there's plenty for everybody--come one, come all, this house shall fly, clean off its base as soon as I--Now for Heaven's sake, ladies, it's all settled--come on."

Whereat they laughed nervously, and took off their hats.

It was a jolly dinner party. The young fellows Red had picked up in the blacksmith's shop were not the ordinary quality of loungers. They were boys of good country parentage, with a common school education, who, unfortunately, could find nothing to do but the occasional odd job. Of course it would not take long to transform them into common n'er-do-wells, but now they were merely thoughtless boys.

The whole affair had an _al fresco_ flavor which stoppered convention. The two women visitors pitched in and had as good a time as anybody.

In the middle of the festivities a young man walked past the front fence; a stranger evidently, for-his clothes wore the cut of a city, and a cosmopolitan, up-to-date city at that. He stopped and looked at the house, hesitated a moment and then walked in, back to where the folk were eating.

"Excuse me," said he, as they looked up at him, "but isn't this Mr. Demilt's house?"

A momentary silence followed, as it was not clear whose turn it was to answer. Miss Mattie glanced around and finding Red's eye on her, replied, "No sir--Mr. Demilt's house is about a mile further up the road."

"Dear me!" said the young man ruefully. He was a spic-and-span, intelligent looking man, with less of the dandy about him than the air of a man who had never worn anything but clothes of the proper trim, and become quite used to it. Nevertheless the sweat stood out in drops on his forehead, for Fairfield's front "street" savoured of a less moral region than it really was, on a broiling summer day.

The young man sighed frankly and wiped his head. "Well, that's too bad," he said. "I'm a stranger here--would you kindly tell me where I could get some dinner?"

"What's the matter with that?" inquired Red, pointing to the roast, which still preserved an air of fallen greatness. He had liked the look of the other instantly.

The stranger looked first at Red and then at the roast. "The only thing I can see the matter with that," he answered, "is that it is a slice too thick."

"Keno!" cried Red, "you get it. Mattie, another plate and weapons to fit. Sit down, sir, and rest your fevered feet. It you don't like walking any better than I do, you've probably strewn fragments of one of the commandments all the way from where the stage dropped you to this apple tree."

"It seems to me that I did make some remarks that I never learned at my mother's knee," returned the other laughing. "And I'm exceedingly obliged for the invitation, as there doesn't seem to be a hotel here, and I am but a degree south of starvation."

"Red or black?" asked the host, with a quick glance at his guest.

The other caught the allusion. "I haven't followed the deal," he replied, "but I'll chance it on the red."

Somehow he felt instantly at home and at ease; it was a quality that Red Saunders dispersed wherever he went.

"There you are, sir," said Red, forwarding a plate full of juicy meat. "The ladies will supply the decorations."

"Do you like rice as a vegetable, sir?" inquired Miss Mattie.

"No--he doesn't," interrupted Red. "He likes it as an animal--never saw anyone who looked less like a vegetable than our friend," The young man's laugh rang out above the others.

Poor Miss Mattie was confused. "It's too bad of you, Will, to put such a meaning on my words," she said.

"The strange part of it is," spoke the young man, seeing an opportunity for a joke, and to deal courteously with his entertainers at the same time. "The peculiar fact is, that my name is Lettis."

"Lettuce?" cried Red. "Mattie, I apologise--he is a vegetable."

At which they all laughed again.

"And now," said Red, "I'm Red Saunders, late of the Chantay Seeche Ranch, Territory of Dakota--State of North Dakota, I mean, can't get used to the State business; there's a Bill and a Dick on this side of me and two Johns and a Sammy on the other. Foot of the table is Miss Mattie Saunders, next to her--just as they run--Miss Pauline Doolittle and Miss Mary Ann Demilt, who may be kin to the gentleman you're seeking."

"Mr. Thomas F. Demilt?" asked the stranger.

"He's my sister," responded Miss Mary Ann. Whereat the youths buried their faces in the plates, as Mr. Thomas F., in spite of many excellent qualities, bore a pathetic resemblance to the title.

"I mean," continued the lady hurriedly, "that I'm his brother."

"By Jimmy, ma'am!" exclaimed Red. "But yours is a strange family!"

"What Miss Demilt wishes to say," cut in Miss Doolittle with some asperity, "is that Mr. Thomas Faulkenstone Demilt is her brother." She did not add, as extreme candour would have urged, "And I have some hope--remote, alas! but there--of becoming sister to Miss Demilt myself."

"Thank you!" said Lettis. "Shall I be able to see him this afternoon?"

"Oh, mercy, yes!" said Miss Mary Ann. "Tom is home all day."

"I can thank the kind fates for that," said Lettis. "I had begun to think he was a myth," and he fell in upon the tender meat with the vigorous appetite of youth and a good digestion.

Nathaniel Lettis was by no means a fool, and he had experience in business, but the mainspring of the young fellow was frankness, and in the course of the dinner he told his errand. Mr. Demilt had written to his firm explaining the advantages of starting a straw-board factory in Fairfield. It was too small a thing for the firm to be interested in, but Lettis had a small capital which he wished to invest in an enterprise of his own handling, and it had struck him that there might be a chance for independence; therefore he had come to find out the lay of the land.

* * * * *

Red Saunders' first-glance liking of the stranger deepened as he told of his business. The cowman did not blame people who took devious ways and dealt in ambiguities, for his experience in the world, which was pretty fairly complete, had told him that craft was a necessity for weak natures; nevertheless he cared not for those who used it.

In his part of the West, a man would no more think of giving a false impression of his financial standing to alter his position in one's regard, than he would wear corsets. Money was of small consequence; its sequelae of less. Men spoke openly of how much they made; how they liked the job; how their claims were paying; such matters were neutral ground of chance conversation, as the weather is in the East. The rapid and unpredictable changes of fortune gave a tendency to make light of one's present condition. A man would say "I'm busted" without any more feeling than he would say "I have a cold." Now, in Fairfield, that is not likely lonesome in that respect, one of the principal objects in life was to conceal the poverty which would persist in sticking its gaunt elbows through the cloth of words spread over it. Red asked straight-forward questions--shrewd ones, too--seeing that the other was one of his own kind and would not resent it.

Lettis wanted nothing better than a chance to expand on the subject. It was close to his heart. He had been a subordinate about as long as a proud and masterful young fellow ought to be. Now he was quivering to try his own strength, and seeing, for his part, that his host was inspired with a genuine interest and not curiosity, he gave him all the information in his power.

"But a plant like that is going to cost some money, ain't it?" asked Red.

"Too much for me, I'm afraid," replied Lettis. "I have five thousand to put in, and I suppose I could borrow the rest, but that's saddling the business with too heavy charges right in the beginning. Still, it may not be as bad as I fancy."

Red drummed on the table, thinking. "I wouldn't mind getting into a business of some kind, as long as it was making things," he said. "I don't hanker to keep store much--suppose I go along with you, when you look up how much straw is raised and the rest of it?"

"Would you?" cried the young fellow, eagerly. "By George, sir, I wish you could see your way clear to take hold of it. Could you stand ten thousand, for instance? Excuse the question, but I'm so anxious over this----"

"Lord! What's the harm of asking facts?" said Red. Then with a gleam of genial pride, "Ten thousand wouldn't break me by a durn sight".

Lettis' boyish face fairly glowed. "It was my good angel made me stop in front of your fence," he said. "I saw you all eating in here and you looked so jolly, that I thought I'd stop, on the chance you might be the man I was looking for; now I'll go right on and see Mr. Demilt and find out what he wants to do in the matter."

"Wait for the waggon and you can ride," said Red. "Boy's gone home to see his dad about working for me this afternoon; in the meantime, it you're not too proud to take hold and help us with this dod-ratted fence, I'll be obliged to you."

"Bring on your fence! I'm ready," said Lettis.

"Come on, boys!" said Red, and the party rose from the table. Later the waggon came up.

"Well, good day, Lettis," said Red. "If you can't get quarters anywhere else, come on and help me hold the barn down."

"Do you sleep in the barn? Then I'll come back sure. Tell you how it is, Mr. Saunders. I've been stuck up in a three-by-nine office for four years--nose held to 'A to M, Western branch,' and if I'm not sick of it there's no such thing as sickness; to get out and breathe the fresh air, to see the country, to be my own master! Well, sir, it just makes me tremble to think of it. I hope you find the straw-board what you want to take up."

"I shouldn't wonder if it would be," answered Red. "We'll make a corking team to do business, Lettis, I can see that--so cautious and full of tricks, and all that."

The young man laughed and then sobered down. "Of course, I know the whole thing would look insane to most people," he said sturdily, "but I've been in business long enough to see sharp gentlemen come to grief in spite of their funny work. I don't believe a man'll come to any more harm by believing people mean well by him than he would by working on the other tack."

"Good boy!" said Red, slapping him on the back. "You stick to that and you'll get a satisfaction out of it that money couldn't buy you. Another thing, you'd never get a cent out of me in this world it you were one of these smooth young men. My eye teeth are cut, son, for all I may seem easy. The man that does me a trick has a chance for bad luck, and you can bet on that."

"Lord! I believe you!" replied Lettis, taking in the dimensions of his new friend. "Well, good-bye for the present, Mr. Saunders--thank you for the dinner and still more for the heart you have put into me."

At six o'clock the fence was not quite finished.

"If you'll stay with me until the thing's done, I'll stand another dollar all around," said Red. "I don't want it to stare me in the face to-morrow."

The eldest spoke up. "We'll stay with you, Mr. Saunders, but we don't want any money for it, do we, fellers?"

"No," they replied in chorus, well meaning what they said.

"Why, you're perfectly welcome to the cash!" said Red.

"And you're welcome to the work," retorted the boy. "We're paid plenty as it is."

"If that's the way you look at it, I'm much obliged to you," said Red, who would not have discouraged such a feeling for anything. He said to himself, "This don't seem much like the kind of people I've heard inhabited these parts. Those boys are all right. Reckon it you use people decent they'll play up to your lead, no matter what country it is."

At seven thirty the fence was done, gorgeous in a coat of fresh red paint, and the hands departed, each with a slice of Miss Mattie's chocolate cake, a thing to make the heathen gods feel contemptuous of ambrosia.

They went straight to the blacksmith's shop, where they were anxiously expected.

"Good Lord!" he said a little later, "it you fellers will talk one at a time, p'r'aps I can make out what's happened. Now, Sammy, sp'ose you do the speaking?"

Whereupon Sammy faithfully chronicled the events of the day. The boys had behaved themselves as if there was nothing out of the common happening while they were with Red, being held up by a sense of pride, but naturally, the splendid physique of the cowman, his picturesque attire, his abandoned way of scattering money around and the air of a frolic he had managed to impart to a day's hard work, all had effect on imagination, and the boys were very much excited.

"I'd like to know how many Injuns that feller's killed!" piped up the youngest. "My! he could grab hold of a man and wring his neck like a chicken."

"Aw, tst!" remonstrated the blacksmith. But the elders stood by the younker this time.

"Yes, he could, Mr. Farrel!" said they. "You ought to seen him when he rolled up his sleeves! He's got an arm on him like the hind leg of a horse, and he uses an ax like a tack-hammer. He got mad once when he pounded his thumb, and busted the post square in two with one crack."

"Well, he looks like a husky man," admitted the blacksmith. "But why didn't you boys take the extry dollar when he made the offer? He 'pears to know what he was about and looks kind of foolish to say 'no' to it."

There was a moment's silence. "We wanted to show him we were just as good as the folks he knew," explained the eldest, somewhat shame-facedly.

The blacksmith straightened himself. "Quite right, too," said he. "We _air_, when you come to that." A little pride is a wonderful tonic. Each unit of that gathering felt himself the better for the display of it.

* * * * *

In the meantime, Red was repairing the ravages of the day opposite Miss Mattie at a supper table which was bountifully spread. Miss Mattie put two and two together, and found they meant a larger sum of eatables than she had hitherto felt sufficient, and with a little pang at the thought of the inadequacy of her first offering to her cousin, provided such fatness as the land of Fairfield boasted.

They discussed the events of the day with satisfaction.

"My!" said Miss Mattie. "You do things wholesale while you are about it, Will, don't you?"

Red smiled in pleased acknowledgment. "I'm no peanut stand, old lady," said he. "I like to see things move."

Then Miss Mattie broached the question she had been hovering around ever since her guests had taken their leave.

"Do you think you'll really go into business with that young man who was here to dinner?" she asked.

"Why, I think it's kinder likely," said Red.

"But you don't know anything about him, Will," she continued, putting the weak side of her desire forward, in order to rest more securely if that stood the test.

"No, I don't," agreed Red. "But here's the way I feel about that: I want to be doing something according to my size; besides that, it would be a good thing for this place if some kind of a live doings was to start here. All right, that's my side of it. Now, as far as not knowing that young feller's concerned, I might think I knew him from cyclone-cellar to roof-tree, and he might do me to a crowded house. My idea is that life's a good deal like faro--you know how that is."

"I remember about his not letting the people go, but I'm afraid I don't know my Bible as well as I ought to, Will," apologised Miss Mattie, rather astonished at his allusion.

"Let the people go? Bible?" cried Red, laying down his knife and fork, still more astonished at her allusion. "Will you kindly tell me what that has to do with faro-bank? Girl, one of us is full of ghost songs, and far, far off the reservation. What in the name of Brigham Young's off-ox are you talking about?"

"Why, you spoke of Pharaoh, Will, and I can remember about his holding the children of Israel captive, and the plagues, but I really don't see just how it applies."

"Oh!" said Red, as a great light broke upon him. "Oh, I see what you're thinking about. The old boy who corralled the Jews, and made 'em work for the first and last time in their history, and they filled him full of fleas, and darkness, and all kinds of unpleasant experiences to break even? Well, I was not talking about him at all. My faro is a game played with a lay-out and a pack of cards and a little tin box that you ought to look at carefully before you put any money on the board, to see that it ain't arranged for dealing seconds; and there's a lookout and a case keeper and--well, I don't believe I could tell you just how it works, but some day I'll make a layout and we'll have some fun. It's a bully game, but I say, it's a great deal like life--the splits go to the dealer; that is to say, that if the king comes out to win and lose at the same time, you lose anyhow, see?"

"No," said Miss Mattie, truthfully.

Red thrust his fingers through his hair and sighed. "I'm afraid I know too much about it to explain it clearly," he replied. "But what I mean is this: some people try to play system at faro, and they last about as quick as those that don't. I always put the limit on the card that's handiest, and the game don't owe me a cent; as a matter of fact, some of the tin-horns used to wear a pained expression when they saw me coming across the room. I've split 'cm from stem to keelson more than once, and never used a copper in my life--played 'em wide open, all the time. Now," and he brought his fist down on the table, "I'm going to play that young man wide open, and I'll bet you I don't lose by him neither. He looks as honest as a mastiff pup, for all he dresses kind of nice. I might just as well try him on the fly, as to go lunk-heading around and get stuck anyhow, with the unsatisfactory addition of feeling that I was a fool, as well as confiding."

Most of the argument had been ancient Aryan to Miss Mattie, but the ring of the voice and the little she understood made the tenor plain. A sudden moisture gathered in her eyes as she said, "You're too good and honest and generous a man to distrust anybody: that's what I think, Will."

"Mattie, I wish you wouldn't talk like that," said he, in an injured voice. "It ain't hardly respectable."

After which there was a silence for a short time. Then said Miss Mattie, "Do you think you could content yourself here, Will, after all the things you've seen?"

Red brightened at the change of topic. "I'll tell you how that is: if I hadn't any capital, and had to work here as a poor man, I don't believe I'd take the trouble to try and live--I'd smother; but having that pleasant little crop of long greens securely planted in the bank where the wild time doesn't grow, and thusly being able to cavort around as it sweetly pleases me, why, I like the country. It's sport to take hold of a place like this, that's only held together by its suspenders, and try to make a real live man's town out of it."

Miss Mattie drew a deep breath of relief. "You came like the hero in a fairy story, Will, and I was afraid you'd go away like one," she said.

He reached across the table and patted her hand. "You'd have had to gone, too," said he. "The family'll stick together."

She thanked him in a soft little voice. "Dear me!" she murmured. "It does seem that you've been here a year, Will."

"Never was told that I was such slow company before."

"You know perfectly well that that isn't what I mean."

"Well, you'll have to put up with me for a while, whatever I am; insomuch as I'm to be a manufacturer and the Lord knows what. Then some day I'm going to have an awful hankering for the land where the breeze blows, and then we'll take a shute for open prairie. It's cruelty to animals for me to straddle a horse now, yet there's where I'm at home, and I'm going to buy me a cayuse of some kind--say, I ought to get at that; if I'm going around with Lettis I want to ride a horse--know anybody that's got a real live horse for sale, Mattie? No? Well, I'll stop in and see the lady that deals the mail--I'll bet you what that woman doesn't know about what's going on in this camp will never get into history--be back right away."

Said he to the post-mistress, "My name's Saunders, ma'am--cousin to Miss Mattie. I just stopped in to find out if you knew anyone that had a riding horse for sale; horse with four good legs that'll carry me all day, and about the rest I don't care a frolicsome cuss."

The post-mistress replied at such length, and with such velocity that Red was amazed. He gathered from her remarks that a certain Mr. Upton had an animal, purchased of a chance horse dealer, which it was altogether likely he would dispose of, as the first time he had tried the brute it went up into the air all sorts of ways, and caused the owner to perform such tricks before high Heaven as made the angels weep.

"Where does this man live?" asked Red, with a kindling eye.

"He lives about three miles out on the Peterville road, but he's in town to-night visitin' Miss Alders--Johnny!" to a small boy who had been following the conversation, his wide-open eyes bent on Red, and his mouth and wiggling bare toes expressing their delight in vigorous contortions, "Johnny, you run tell Mr. Upton there's a gentleman in here wants to see him about buying a horse."

"Don't disturb him if he's visiting," remonstrated Red.

"He won't call that disturbing him," replied the post-mistress, with a shrill laugh. "He'll be here in no time."

She was a true prophet. It seemed as if the boy had barely left the store when he returned with a stoop-shouldered, solemn-faced man, who had a brush-heap of chin-whisker decorating the lower part of his face. After greetings and the explanation of the errand, Mr. Upton stroked his chin-whisker regretfully. "Young man," said he, "I'm in a pecooliar and onpleasant position; there's mighty feyew things I wouldn't do in a hawse trade, but I draw the line on murder. That there hawse'll kill you, just's sure as you're fool enough to put yerself on his back. I'll sell you a real hawse mighty reasonable--"

"I'll risk him," cut in Red. "Could you lead him down here in the morning?"

"Yes, indeedy--he's a perfect lady of a horse to lead---you can pick up airy foot--climb all over him in fac', s'long's you don't try to ride him or hitch him up. If you do that--well, young man, you'll get a pretty fair idee of what is meant by one of the demons of hell."

"What kind of saddle have you got?"

"One of them outlandish Western affairs that the scamp threw in with the animal--you see, I thought I'd take up horse-back riding for my health; I was in bed three weeks after my fust try."

"I'll go you seventy-five dollars for the outfit, just as you got it--chaps, taps, and latigo straps, if you'll have it in front of my house at nine o'clock to-morrow."

"All right, young man--all right sir--now don't blame me if you air took home shoes fust."

"Nary," said Red. "Come and see the fun."

"I shorely will," replied the old gentleman.

 

IV

At nine the next morning there was a crowd in front of the house.

"What have you been doing now, Will?" asked Miss Mattie with prescience.

"Only buying a horse, Mattie," returned Red soberly. "Seems to be quite an event here."

"Is that all?"

"That's all, so help me Bob!" Red had a suspicion that there would be objections if she knew what kind of a horse it was.

Lettis, who had roomed with Red overnight, was in the secret.

The horse arrived, leading very quietly, as Mr. Upton had said. It was a buckskin, fat and hearty from long resting. Nothing could be more docile than the pensive lower lip, and the meek curve of the neck; nothing could be more contradictory than the light of its eye; a brooding, baleful fire, quietly biding its time.

"Scatter, friends!" cried Red, as he put his foot in the stirrup. "Don't be too proud to take to timber!"

He swung over as lightly as a trapeze performer, deftly catching his other stirrup. The horse groaned and shivered.

"Don't let him get his head down! Gol-ding it! Don't you!" screamed Mr. Upton in wild excitement.

Red threw the bridle over the horn of the saddle. "Go it, you devil!" cried he. And they went. Six feet straight in the air, first pass. The crowd scattered, as requested. They hurried at that. Red gave the brute the benefit of his two hundred and a half as they touched earth, and his opponent grunted when he felt the jar of it. They rocketted and ricochetted; they were here, they were there, they were everywhere, the buckskin squealing like a pig, and fighting with every ounce of the strength that lay in his steel strung legs; the dust rose in clouds; Red's hat flew in no time; he was yelling like a maniac, and the crowd was yelling like more maniacs. Now and then a glimpse of the rider's face could be caught, transported with joy of the struggle; then the dust would roll up and hide everything. No one was more pleased at the spectacle than the blacksmith. He was capering in the middle of the road, waving a hand-hammer and shouting "Hold him _down_! Hold him DOWN! Why do you let him jump up like that? If _I_ was on that horse I'd show you! Aw, there it is again--Stop him! _Stop_ him!"

At this point the buckskin made three enormous leaps for the blacksmith, as though he had understood. The smith cast dignity to the winds and went over the nearest fence in the style that little boys, when coasting, call "stomach-whopper"--or words to that effect--and took his next breath two minutes later. He might have saved the labour, as the horse wheeled on one foot, and pulled fairly for the picket fence opposite. Red regretted the absence of herders as the sharp pickets loomed near. It was no time for regrets. The horse was over with but little damage--a slight scratch, enough to rouse his temper, however, for he whaled away with both hind feet, and parts of the fence landed a hundred feet off. Then a dash through an ancient grape arbor, and they were lost to view of the road. Some reckless small boys scampered after, but the majority preferred to trace the progress of the conflict by the aboriginal "Yerwhoops" that came from somewhere in behind the old houses.

"There they go!" piped up a shrill voice of the small-boy brigade. "Right through Mis' Davisses hen coops!--you _ought_ to see them hens FLY!" The triumphant glee is beyond the reach of words. Simultaneous squawking verified the remark, as well as a feminine voice, urging a violent protest, cut short by a scream of terror, and the slam of a door. The inhabitants of "Mis' Davisses" house instantly appeared through the front door, seeking the street.

To show the erraticalness of fate, no sooner had they reached the road, than Red's mount cleared the parapet of the bridge in a single leap--a beautiful leap--and came down upon them in the road.

All got out of the way but a three-year-old, forgotten in the excitement. Upon this small lad, fallen flat in the road, bore the powerful man and horse. Then there were frantic cries of warning. Fifty feet between the youngster and those mangling hoofs--twenty--five! the crowd gasped--they were blotted together! Not so. A mighty hand had snatched the boy away in that instant of time. He was safe and very indignant in a howling, huddled heap in the ditch by the roadside, but alas, for horse and rider! The buckskin was not used to such feats, and when Red's weight was thrown to the side for the reach he missed his stride, struck his feet together, and down they went, while the foot-deep dust sprang into the air like an explosion.

Miss Mattie rushed to the scene of the accident, followed by everybody. Young Lettis, equally frightened, was close beside her.

"Oh, Will! Are you killed?" she cried.

And then a voice devoid of any signs of weakness, but loaded to the breaking point with wrath, told in such language as had never been heard in Fairfield that the owner was still much alive.

"Run away, Mattie! Run away and let me cuss!" shrieked Red. Miss Mattie collapsed into the arms of Lettis.

The dust settled enough so that the anxious villagers could see horse and man; the former resting easily, as if he had had enough athletics for one day, and the latter sitting in the road. Neither showed any intention of rising.

"What's the matter, Mr. Saunders, are you hurt?" inquired the fussy post-mistress.

"Please go 'way, ma'am," said Red, waving his arm.

"I'm sure you're hurt--I'm perfectly sure you're hurt," she persisted, holding her ground. "Now, do tell us what can possibly be the matter with you?"

"Very well," returned the exasperated cow-puncher, "I will. My pants, ma'am, have suffered in this turn-up, and they're now in a condition to make my appearance in polite society difficult, if not impossible; now please go 'way and somebody fetch me a horse blanket."

It is regrettable that the discomfiture of the post-mistress was received with undisguised hilarity. The blanket was produced, and Red stalked off in Indian dignity, marred by a limp in his left leg, for he had come upon Mother Earth with a force which made itself felt through all that foot of soft dust.

"Bring that durn-fool horse along," he called over his shoulder. Buckskin rose and followed his owner. There was no light in his eye now; he looked thoughtful. He, too, limped, and there was a trickle of blood down his nose. Verily it had been a hard fought field.

* * * * *

As both men were anxious to see the lay of the land as soon as possible. Red took his place in the waggon that day, after the damages were repaired, content to wait until his leg was less sore for horseback riding.

There followed a busy two weeks for them. Mr. Demilt had some money he wished to put into the enterprise, but his most valuable assistance was, of course, his thorough knowledge of the resources of the country.

They found an admirable site for the mill, in an old stone barn, which had stood the ravages of desolation almost unimpaired. Red's mining experience told him that the creek could easily be flumed to the barn, and as that was the only objection of the others to this location, they wrote the owner of the property for a price. They were astonished when they received the figures. It had come by inheritance to a man to whom it was a white elephant of the most exasperating sort, and he was glad to get rid of it for almost a song. They were a jubilant three at the news. It saved the cost of building a mill, and including that, the price was as low per acre as any land they could have obtained. Red closed the bargain instantly.

Lettis' part of the business was chiefly to arrange for the disposal of their product, and when he explained to his partners what he could reasonably hope to do in that line, the affair lost its last tint of unreality, and became a good proposition, for Lettis had an excellent business acquaintance, who would be glad to deal with the straightforward young fellow.

The night after the signing of the deeds, Red said to Miss Mattie, "We ought to have a stockholders' dinner to-morrow night, Mattie. If you could hire that scow-built girl, who wears her hair scrambled, to come in and give you a lift, would you feel equal to it?"

"You always put it that I'm doing you a great favour in such things, Will, but you know perfectly well there's nothing I'd rather do," replied Miss Mattie, with a dimpling smile. "However, it adds to the pleasure of it to have it put in that way, so I won't complain. I'll just have my supper first, and then you men can talk over your business undisturbed."

"You _will_ not--you'll eat with the rest of us."

"Yes, but you stockholders--" The word had an import to Miss Mattie; a something, if not regal, at least a kinship to the king. Under her democracy lay a respect for the founded institution; impersonal; an integral part of the law of the State; in fact, a minor sovereignty within an empire.

"Stockholder yourself!" retorted Red. "Don't you call me names."

"What do you mean, Will?" asked Miss Mattie, with wide-opened eyes.

"I mean you're a stockholder as good as anybody--you've got half my stack. Now, hold on! Just listen! This is a queer run, Mattie, from the regulation point of view, this company of ours; I know enough about fillin' and backin' to know that--you ought to have seen the pryin', and pokin', and nosin' around them Boston men did before they took holt of the Chantay Seeche and made it a stock company! One feller was the ablest durn fool I ever come acrosst. I used to let on I didn't savvey anything about it. 'Now, explain to me,' says I to him. 'You say you have so many shares of them stock,' waving my hand to a bunch of critters in the distance. 'What part do you take? I mean, what's your share of each animal, and does the last man get the hoofs and the tail?' 'Oh! you don't understand,' says he. 'I'll explain it to you.' So he starts in to tell me that 'stock didn't necessarily mean beef critters,' and a lot more things, whilst old man Ferguson, who was putting the deal through, stood listening and chewing his teeth, thinking I was going to give our friend the frolicsome hee-hee at the wind-up. But I stood solemn, and never even drew a smile, for fear of queering Ferguson. Well. That's the proper way to start a company; make it as dreary and long-winded as possible. We ain't done that, and perhaps we'll go broke for breaking the rules, and then your stock won't be worth a cuss; so don't you get excited about it. I wanted the Saunders family to be represented. Pretty soon the old lad with the nose will be around, and you'll have a chance to read about the 'parties of the first part,' and 'second parts of the party' and 'aforesaids' and 'behindsaids' and the rest of the yappi them lawyers swing so that honest men won't know what the devil they're up to."

"Oh, Will! How can I ever thank you!" cried Miss Mattie, her eyes filling. It seemed a great and responsible position to the gentle lady to be a stockholder in the corporation. It wasn't the monetary value of the thing; it was the pride of place.

"If you don't know how, don't try," returned Red. "You give the other three stockholders a good feed to-morrow and the thanks will be up to you. Hello! There's the old lad now!" as a trumpet blast rang out from the front porch. "It must take some practise to blow your nose like that. I've heard Jackasses that could not bray in the same class with that little old gent--come in. Come in! You needn't sound the rally again."

Thus adjured the lawyer made his entrance, and Miss Mattie became in due and involved course of law a stockholder in the Fairfield Strawboard Mfg. Co.

Fairfield rose to activity like a very small giant refreshed. Teams and their heavy loads kept the respectable dust in constant commotion. A grist mill was added to the intended plant, thus offering an inducement to the farmer to raise grain, and incidentally straw, "So we can ketch 'em on both ends, too," as Red put it.

The time seemed like enchantment to Miss Mattie. As a bringer of the tidings, and a stockholder in the company, she had risen to be a person of importance, with the result that she was even more modestly shy than before, although in her heart she liked it; but more delightful yet was the spirit of holiday activity which inspired and pervaded the place.

Red had insisted on operating on the lines that are laid down with railroad spikes in the Western communities; to patronise home industries as much as possible. Therefore the machinery orders went through Mr. Farrel, the blacksmith, initiating that worthy man into the mysteries of making money without doing anything for it, which seemed little less than a miracle to him. Everything that could be bought through local people was obtained in that way. It cost a trifle more, but it brought more money into the place, and enabled the villagers to partake of the enlivenment, without the feeling that it was a Barmecide feast. The post-mistress furnished the paint, and it is painful to add that she tried to furnish a number three paint for a number one price, arguing that she was a poor, lone woman, struggling through an uncharitable world and that the increased profit would do her considerable good--a view which Red did not share. He would willingly have made her a present of the difference, but he did not in the least intend to be choused out of it by man nor woman. They had a very funny debate in private, wherein the feminine tried to dominate the masculine principle by sheer volubility and found to its disgust that the method didn't work. Red listened most respectfully and always replied, "Yes ma'am, but we don't want that paint. Get us some good paint--bully old paint with stick'um in it--this stuff is like whitewash, only feebler. We're going to put on a swell front up at the mill, and we've got to have the right thing." And at last the post-mistress said that she would, her respect for the ex-cowpuncher having risen noticeably in the meantime.

 

V

The work on the mill was pushed, and in spite of the usual amount of unforeseen delays, it was ready for work by the latter part of September. The official opening was set for the twenty-seventh--Miss Mattie's birthday--and the village of Fairfield was invited to a picnic to be held at the mill in honor of the occasion. It is needless to say that the Fairfield Strawboard Mfg. Co. did the thing up in shape. Waggons loaded with straw, and drawn by four-horse teams, went the rounds of the village, collecting the guests. It is doubtful if Fairfield was ever more surprised than at the realisation of how much there was of her--using the pronoun out of respect to the majority--"when she was bunched," as Red said. You would not have believed that straggling, lonesome-looking place held so many people. As Red could discover no means in the town's resources to provide a meal for three hundred people it was necessarily a basket party, which struck Mr. Saunders as being grievously like a Swede treat. He made up for it in a measure by having barrels of lemonade and cider on tap at the grounds--stronger beverages being barred--and by hiring a quartette of strings "clear from town."

At half-past two on a resplendent but hot September afternoon the caravan started for the mill grounds, the women dressed in the most un-picnicky costumes imaginable, and the men ostentatiously at ease in their store clothes. Everyone was in the best of spirits, keen for the excitement and pleasure that was sure to mark the occasion.

Red rode old Buckskin, who had succumbed to the inevitable, and only "jumped around a little," as Red put it, on being mounted. It was pretty lively "jumping around," but perhaps Mr. Saunders found some satisfaction in sitting perfectly at his ease, smoking his cigarette, while Buck jumped and Fairfield admired. And, at any rate, Buck had legs of iron, and the wind of a locomotive, carrying Red all day, and willing to kick at anything which bothered him when night came. He was a splendid beast through and through, from forelock to tail-tip, but he had learned who was his master and obeyed him accordingly.

It was a five mile ride, mostly under the shade of fine old trees. The road wound around the hills; here and there a break in the arboreal border showed views of rolling country, well-shaped and pleasing, winding up grassy slopes in groves of verdure. Of course most of the freshness of leaf was past, yet the modest gray-green gave a silvery sheen to the landscape that brought it into unity.

One member of the party felt that his heart was very full as he looked at it. That was Lettis. "Blast the old office!" he kept saying to himself. "Blast its six dingy windows, and the clock at the end! Doesn't this look good, and doesn't it smell good, dust and all?" and then he'd howl at the horses in sheer exuberance of good feeling, making the mild old brutes put a better foot of it to the front.

Red cantered up beside his waggon. "Well, Lettis," he said, "here we go for the opening overture, with the full strength of the company--we're great people this day, ain't we?" And the big man smiled like a pleased big boy.

"Oh, what a bully old fellow you are!" thought Lettis as he looked at him. Lettis was thinking of other qualities than flesh, but the physical Red Saunders on horseback was deserving of a glance from anybody; the massive figure so well poised; the clear cut, proud profile; the shapely head with its crown of red-gold hair; the easy grace of him by virtue of his strength--it would be a remarkable crowd in which Chanta Seechee Red couldn't pass for a man. He was every inch of that from the ground up.

Lettis had come to bow down to him in adoration, with all an affectionate boy's worship. To those eyes Red was just right, in every particular. Likewise to Miss Mattie, who even now was filling her eyes with him, from behind the vantage of a broad-brimmed straw hat.

At last the whole party disembarked at the flat before the mill, and made ready for the official starting of the machinery. The big doors were thrown open, so that the company could see within while resting outside in the shade, and under the cooling influence of what breeze there was. The mill was officially started. Red climbed the bank to the flume, and raised the gate. The crowd cheered as the imprisoned waters leapt to freedom with a hollow roar, raising in pitch as the penstock filled and the wheels began to go round. Speech was called for, and the vigorously protesting Red forced to the front by his former friends, Demilt and Lettis. Thus betrayed by those he trusted, Red made the best of it.

"Ladies and gentlemen, fellow citizens!" said he. "The mill is now open to all comers. We hope to make this thing a success; we hope to see every horny-handed, hump-backed farmer in the country rosin the soles of his moccasins, and shove his plough through twice as much ground as he ever did before, and if he comes here with his plunder, we'll give him a square shake. We'll pay him as much as we dast, and not let him in on the ground floor, so he can crawl out through the coal-hole, as is sometimes done. Now, everybody run away and have a good time, for I don't like to talk this yappi any more than you like to hear it. Kola geus! By-bye!"

It was a very successful picnic. They spent the afternoon in wandering around in the usual picnic fashion, developing appetites, until it occurred to Red to liven the performance by showing them the art of roping, as practiced upon an old cow found in the woods. As a spectacle it was a failure. The combined efforts of all the hooting small boys could not make that cow run; she even stretched her neck toward Red, as though saying, "Hurry up with your foolishness. I have a cud to chew and can't stand here idle all day." So Red galloped by and threw the noose over her head as an exhibition of how the thing was done, rather than how it ought to be done. Nevertheless, picnic parties are not hypercritical in the matter of amusement, and the feat received three encores. The last time he missed his cast through overconfidence. Whereat the old cow tossed her head and tail in the air, and tore off at an elephantine gallop, with a bawl that sounded to Red mightily like derision.

"Durned if she ain't laughing at me!" he cried. But as a matter of fact, it was a hornet and its unmistakable sting that injected this activity into her system.

It was all very pleasant to Miss Mattie, as one's first picnic in many years should be. She enjoyed the crisp green sod, the great trees standing around, park-like, with the sunlight falling between their shade like brilliant tatters of cloth-of-gold; while from the near distance came the tiny shouting of cool waters. They had a camp-fire at night, making the moonlight still more mysterious and remote by contrast. The quartette of strings played for the ears of those who cared to listen and for the legs of those who chose to take chances on tripping their light fantastic toes over tree roots in the grass.

Red loved music, and he loved the night. The poetic side of his memories of watching the Dipper swing around Polaris, while he sung the cows to sleep, came back to him. In his mind he saw the vast prairie roll on to infinity; saw the mountains stand out, a world of white peaks, rising from a sea of darkness. Again he heard the plaintive shrilling of an Indian whistle, or the song of the lad down creek made tuneful and airy by the charm of distance.

"Having a good time, Mattie?" he asked, with a smile.

"The best I ever had, Will," she answered, smiling back unsteadily. Poor lady! The size of an occasion is so many standards, whether the standard be inches or feet, or miles. Miss Mattie's events had been measured in hundredths of an inch, and it took a good many of them to cover so small an action as a successful picnic on a beautiful night. Her eyes were humid; her mouth smiled and drooped at the corners alternately. Red felt her happiness with a keen sympathy, and as he looked at her, suddenly she changed in his eyes. Just what the difference was he could not have told; nor whether it was in her or in him. A sudden access of feeling, undefinable, unplaceable, but strong, possessed him. There is a critical temperature in the life of a man, when no amount of pressure can ever make the more expansive emotions assume the calmer form of friendship. There was something in Miss Mattie's eye which had warmed Red to that degree, but he didn't know it. He only knew that he wanted to sit rather unnecessarily close beside her, and that he would be sorry when it came time to go home. And he was very silent.

During the drive back to the house he spoke in monosyllables; he went straight to the barn with Lettis afterward, and made no attempt to take the usual frank and hearty good-night kiss.

"You're as glum as an oyster!" said Lettis, when they reached their quarters. "What's the matter, old man?"

"I don't know, Let; I feel kind of quiet, somehow."

"Sick? Or something go wrong?"

"No; nothing of the kind; it's just sort of an attack of stillness, but I feel durn good."

Lettis laughed. "If it wasn't you, Red, I'd say you were in love," he said.

It was well the barn was dark; or he would have seen a change wonderful to behold come over the ex-puncher's face. "The lad has hit it," he said to himself in astonishment; aloud he grunted "hunh" scornfully, and aroused himself for an unnecessary joke or two.

Miss Mattie had noticed the "attack of stillness" and immediately tried to fasten the blame upon herself. What had she done? She couldn't recall anything. She remembered she had said something about the way his hair looked with the moon shining on it; perhaps he had taken offence at that; the remark was entirely complimentary, but sometimes people are touchy about such things; still that was not the least like Cousin Will. She must have said or done something though--what could it be? Oh what a pitiful memory that could not recollect an injury done to one's best friend! She tossed and wondered over it for a long time before at length she tell asleep.

Red also looked up at the roof, and took account of stock. His face was radiant in the dark. "If I could only pull that off!" he thought. "I must seem an awful rough cuss to her, though; all right for a cousin, but it's different when you come to the other proposition. My Jiminy! I'll take a chance in the morning and find out anyhow!" said he, and, eased in mind by the decision of action, he too shook hands with Morpheus and was presently dreaming.

It had never occurred to Red Saunders that he was afraid of anybody. He even chuckled, when he got Lettis out of the way with a plausible excuse the next morning. Then he strode briskly into the house, his question on his lips in a plump out-and-out form.

Miss Mattie looked at him with her slow smile. "What is it?" she asked.

Red swallowed his question whole. "I--I wanted a little hot water to shave with," said he. Then a fury took hold of him. "What the devil am I lying like this for?" he thought. He exhorted himself to go on and say what he had to say like a man; but the other Red Saunders refused to do anything of the sort. He took the cup of hot water most abjectly and fled from the house. He had to shave then, and in his hurry and indignation he turned the operation into a clinic. "Oh Jiminy! Look at that!" he cried, as the razor opened up another part of the subject. "There's a slit an inch long! If I keep on at this gait, I won't have face enough to say good morning, let alone what I want to do. What ails me? What ails me? Why should I be scart of the nicest woman God ever built? Now by all the Mormon Gods! I'll post right into the house and say my little say as soon as these cuts stop bleeding!"

Cob-webs stopped the cuts, and other cob-webs stopped Red Saunders, late of the Chanta Seechee ranch; two hundred and fifty pounds of the very finest bone and muscle. And the cob-webs held him, foaming and boiling with rage and disgust, calling himself all the yaller pups he could think of, but staying strictly within the safe limits of the barn. It was a revelation to the big man, and not a pleasant one. How was he to know that the most salient point of his apparent cowardice was nothing less worthy than respect for the woman's purity? That if he would stop swearing long enough to get at the springs of his action, he would find that he hesitated because the new light on the matter made huge shadows of the slips in the career of a strong, lawless, untrained but sorely tempted man? He knew nothing of the sort, and the funniest of comedies took place in the barn. He would reach the sensible stage. "Pah! All foolishness. Go? Of course he'd go, and this very minute, and have the thing done with, good or bad"; he was quite amused at his former conduct--until he reached the door. Then he'd skip nimbly back again, with a hot feeling that somebody was watching him, although a careful inspection through the crack of the door revealed no one.

Red discovered another thing that afternoon, which was that the more nervous you are the more nervous you get. He groaned in perfect misery: "Ohoho! That I should have seen the day when I was afraid to ask anybody anything. What's come over me anyhow? It's this darn country, I believe--'tain't me," then he stopped short. "What you saying, Red?" he queried. "Why don't you own up like a man!" The fact that it had a funny side struck him, and he laughed, half forlornly, and half in thorough enjoyment. He suddenly sobered down. "She's worth it, anyway," said he. "She's the best there is, and I ought to feel kind of leery of the outcome--Well--Now, I guess I won't say anything till there's a downright good chance. I see I didn't savvy this kind of business like I thought I did. 'Twouldn't be no kind of manners to step up to a lady and shout, 'I'd like to have you marry me, if you feel you've got the time!' That don't go no more than a Chinaman on roller-skates. Your work is good, Red, but it's a little lumpy in spots; them two left feet bother you; you're good in your place, but you'd better build a fence around the place--damn the luck! Smotheration! I think she likes me, all right, but when it comes to more'n that--oh, blast it, I'll just have to wait for a real good chance; now come, old man, get four feet on the ground and don't roll your eyes, take it easy till the chance comes."

Little he knew the chance was coming up the street at that moment. He only saw Miss Mattie step out into the bed of flowers, her face looking unusually pretty and youthful under the big straw hat, and start to reduce the weeds to order. She glanced around as though in search of some one, and Red felt intuitively that the one was himself.

"Here's where I ought to act as if I wore long pants," said he; "now, what's to hinder me from going out there and get a-talking?" And then he sat down hastily, more disgusted than ever, and smote the air with his fist. "You'd think the nicest, quietest woman that ever lived was a wild beast, the way I act; yes sir, you would!"

Meantime the chance drew nearer. It was not a pleasant looking opportunity. Its eyes, full of dread and dreadful, peeped out from beneath a brush of matted hair; a tough, ropy foam hung from its mouth. If you put as much of that foam as would go on the point of a pin in an open cut, you would have an end that your worst enemy would shudder at. For this was the most horrifying of dangerous animals--a mad dog. Poor brute! As he came shambling down the road, he was the grisly mask of tragedy.

It was near noon, intensely hot, and the street of Fairfield was deserted. No one saw the dog, and if his occasional rattling, strangling howl reached any ears, they were dead to its meaning. He was unheeded until he lurched through the gate which Lettis had left open, as usual, and spinning around in a circle gave voice to his cry.

It brought Miss Mattie to her feet in an unknown terror; it brought Red from the barn in a full cognizance--he had heard that sound before, when a mad coyote landed in a cabin-full of fairly strong nerved cowmen, and set them screeching like hysterical women before a chance shot ended him.

Red saw the brute jump toward Miss Mattie. Instantly his hand flew to his hip, and as instantly he remembered there was nothing there. Then with great, uneven leaps he sprang forward. "Keep your hands up, Mattie, and don't move!" he screamed. "Let him chew the dress! For God's sake, don't move!"

She turned her white face toward his, and through the dimness of sight from his straining efforts, he saw her try to smile, as she obeyed him to the letter, and without a sound. "O, brave girl!" he thought, and threw the ground behind him desperately.

At twenty feet distance he dove like a base-runner, and his hands closed around the dog's neck. Over they went with the shock of the onset, and before they were still, the hands had finished their work. A clutch, and a snap, and it was done.

The dog lay quivering. Red rose to his knees wondering at the humming in his head. His wits came back to him sharply.

"Did he bite you, Mattie?" he cried. But she had already caught his hands and was looking at them, with a savage eagerness one would not have believed to be in her.

"There is no mark," she said, suddenly weak, "he didn't touch you?"

"Answer me when I speak to you!" shouted Red, beside himself. "Did he bite you?"

She answered him with a sob "No." And then his question asked itself, and answered itself, although, again, he did not know it. He gathered her up in his arms, kissed her like one raised from the dead, and swore and prayed and thanked God all in the same breath.

His old imperious nature came back with the relief. "Here!" said he, putting her away for a moment. "Take off that dress--that slime on there's enough to kill a hundred men--take it right off."

Miss Mattie started blindly to obey, then stopped. "Not here, Will--I'll go in the house," she said.

"You'll take it off right here and now," said Red, "and I'll burn it up on the spot. I'd ruther have forty rattlesnakes around than that stuff--off with it. This is no child's play, and I don't care a damn what the old lady next door thinks."

Miss Mattie slipped off her outer skirt, and stood a second, confused and dainty. She took flight to the house, running as lithely as a greyhound.

"By Jingo!" said Red in admiration.

"Let's see you bring another woman that can run like that!"

He gathered some hay and piled it on the dress, firing the heap.

Then he turned to his antagonist. "Poor old boy! Hard luck, eh? But I had to do it," he said, and gave him decent interment at the end of the garden; washed his hands carefully and went into the house on pleasanter duties.

"I'll ask her now, by the great horn spoon!" said he, valiantly.

Miss Mattie was in a curious state of mind. There was an after effect from the fright, which made her tremble, and a remembrance of Cousin Will's actions which made her tremble more yet. When she heard him coming she started to fly, although now clothed beyond reproach, but her knees deserted her, and she was forced to sink back in her chair. Red came in whistling blithely--vainglorious man!

He had _his_ suspicions, generated by the peculiar fervour Miss Mattie had shown in regard to his hands.

"Mattie," quoth he, "I'm tired of living out there in the barn--I want a respectable house of my own."

"Yes, Will," replied Miss Mattie, astonished that he should choose such a subject at such a time.

"Yes," he continued, "and I want a wife, too. You often said you'd like to do something for me, Mattie; suppose you take the job?"

How much of glancing at a thing in one's mind as a beautiful improbability will ever make such a cold fact less astonishing? Miss Mattie eyed him with eyes that saw not; speech was stricken from her.

Red caught fright. He sprang forward and took her hand. "Couldn't you do it, Mattie?" said he. There was a world of pleading in the tone. Miss Mattie looked up, her own honest self; all the little feminine shrinkings left her immediately.

"Ah, but I _could_, Will!" she said. Lettis came up on the stoop unheard. He stopped, then gingerly turned and made his way back on tip-toe, holding his arms like wings.

"Well, by George!" he murmured, "I'll come back in a little while, when I'll be more welcome."

He spoke to Red in strong reproach that night, in the barn. "You never told me a word, you old sinner!" said he.

"Tell you the honest truth, Let," replied Red earnestly, looking up from drawing off a boot, "I didn't know it myself till you told me about it."

They talked it all over a long time before blowing out the light, but then the little window shut its bright eye, and the only life the mid-night stars saw in Fairfield was Miss Mattie, her elbow on the casement, looking far, far out into the tranquil night, and thinking mistily.

[The end]
Henry Wallace Phillips's short story: When The Chinook Struck Fairfield

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