Told In The Hills Part 30

"Good Lawd, Miss Rache!" she gasped. "He's skeered me before bad enough, but this the fust time he evah stopped stock an' glare at me! I's gwine to complain to the milantary--I is, shuah."

"You are a great old goose!" said Rachel brusquely. "He wasn't looking at you, but at that cold meat."

There seemed a general gathering of the clans along the Kootenai valley that winter. With the coming north of Genesee had come the troops, then Kalitan, then their mercurial friend of the autumn--the Stuart; and down from Scot's Mountain came Davy MacDougall, one fair day, to join the circle that was a sort of reunion. And among the troops were found many good fellows who were so glad of an evening spent at the ranch that never a night went by without a party gathered there.

"The heft o' them does everything but sleep here," complained Aunty Luce; "an' all the other ones look jealous 'cause Mr. Stuart does that."

For Hardy and his wife had insisted on his stopping with them, as before, though much of his time was spent at the camp. There was something about him that made him a companion much desired by men; Rachel had more opportunity to observe this now than when their circle was so much smaller. That gay good-humor, with its touches of serious feeling, and the delicate sympathy that was always alive to earnest emotion--she found that those traits were keys to the hearts of men as well as women; and a smile here, a kind word there, or a clasp of the hand, were the only arts needed to insure him the unsought friends.h.i.+p of almost every man in the company.

"It's the gift that goes wi' the name," said MacDougall one day when someone spoke of the natural charm of the man's manner. "It's just that--no less. No, o' course he does na strive for it; it's but a bit o'

nature. A blessin', say you, Miss? Well, mayhaps; but to the old stock it proved but a curse."

"It seems a rather fair life to connect the idea of a curse with,"

remarked the Major; "but I rather think he has seen trouble, too.

Captain Sneath said something to that effect, I believe--some sudden death of wife and children in an epidemic down in Mexico."

"Married! That settles the romance," said Fred; "but he is interesting, anyway, and I am going immediately to find out what he has written and save up my money to buy copies."

"I may save you that expense in one instance," and Rachel handed her the book Stuart had sent her. Tillie looked at her in astonishment, and Fred seized it eagerly.

"Oh, but you are sly!" she said, with an accusing pout; "you've heard me puzzling about his work for days and never gave me a hint."

"I only guessed it was his, he never told me; but this morning I charged him with it, and he did not deny. I do not think there is any secret about it, only down at the Fort there were several ladies, I believe, and--and some of them curious--"

"You're right," laughed the Major; "they would have hounded him to death. Camp life is monotonous to most women, and a novelist, especially a young, handsome fellow, would have been a bonanza to them. As it was, they tried to spoil him; and look here!" he said suddenly, "see that you say nothing of his marriage to him, Babe. As he does not mention it himself, it may be that the trouble, or--well, just remember not to broach the subject."

"Just as if I would!" said his daughter after he had left. "Papa never realizes that I have at all neared the age of discretion. But doesn't it seem strange to think of Mr. Stuart being married? He doesn't look a bit like it."

"Does that state of existence impress itself so indelibly on one's physical self?" laughed Rachel.

"It does--mostly," affirmed Fred. "They get settled down and prosy, or else--well, dissipated."

"Good gracious! Is that the effect we are supposed to have on the character of our lords and masters?" asked Mrs. Hardy unbelievingly.

"Fred's experience is confined to barrack life and its attendant evils.

I don't think she makes allowance for the semi-artistic temper of the Stuart. He strikes me as having just enough of it to keep his heart always young, and his affections too--on tap, as it were."

"What queer ideas you have about that man!" said Fred suddenly. "Don't you like him?"

"I would not dare say no with so many opposing me."

"Oh, you don't know Rachel. She is always attributing the highest of virtues or the worst of vices to the most unexpected people," said Tillie. "I don't believe she has any feeling in the question at all, except to get on the opposite side of the question from everyone else.

If she would own up, I'll wager she likes him as well as the rest of us."

"Do you, Rachel?" But her only answer was a laugh. "If you do, I can't see why you disparage him."

"I did not."

"Well, you said his affections were always on tap."

"That was because I envy him the exhaustless youth such a temperament gives one. Such people defy time and circ.u.mstances in a way we prosaic folks can never do. It is a gift imparted to an artist, to supply the lack of practical ingredients that are the prime ones to the rest of creation."

"How you talk! Why, Mr. Stuart is not an artist!"

"Isn't he? There are people who are artists though they never draw a line or mix a color; but don't you think we are devoting a great deal of time to this pill-peddler of literary leanings?"

"You are prejudiced," decided Fred. "Leanings indeed! He has done more than lean in that direction--witness that book."

"I like to hear him tell a story, if he is in the humor," remarked Tillie, with a memory of the cozy autumn evenings. "We used to enjoy that so much before we ever guessed he was a story-teller by profession."

"Well, you must have had a nice sort of a time up here," concluded Fred; "a sort of Tom Moore episode. He would do all right for the poet-prince--or was it a king? But you--well, Rachel, you are not just one's idea of a Lalla."

"You slangy little mortal! Go and read your book."

Which she did obediently and thoroughly, to the author's discomfiture, as he was besieged with questions that taxed his memory and ingenuity pretty thoroughly at times.

He found himself on a much better footing with Rachel than during his first visit. It may have been that her old fancy regarding his mission up there was disappearing; the fancy itself had always been a rather intangible affair--a fabrication wrought by the shuttle of a woman's instinct. Or, having warned Genesee--she had felt it was a warning--there might have fallen from her shoulders some of the responsibility she had so gratuitously a.s.sumed. Whatever it was, she was meeting him on freer ground, and found the a.s.sociation one of pleasure.

"I think Miss Fred or your enlarged social circle has had a most excellent influence on your temper," he said to her one day after a ride from camp together, and a long, pleasant chat. "You are now more like the girl I used to think you might be--the girl you debarred me from knowing."

"But think what an amount of time you had for work in those days that are forfeited now to dancing attendance on us women folk!"

"I do not dance."

"Well, you ride, and you walk, and you sing, and tell stories, and manage at least to waste lots of time when you should be working."

"You have a great deal of impatience with anyone who is not a worker, haven't you?"

"Yes," she said, looking up at him. "I grow very impatient myself often from the same cause."

"You always seem to me to be very busy," he answered half-vexedly; "too busy. You take on yourself responsibilities in all directions that do not belong to you; and you have such a way of doing as you please that no one about the place seems to realize how much of a general manager you are here, or how likely you are to overburden yourself."

"Nonsense!"

She spoke brusquely, but could not but feel the kindness in the penetration that had given her appreciation where the others, through habit, had grown to take her accomplishments as a matter of course. In the beginning they had taken them as a joke.

"Pardon me," he said finally. "I do not mean to be rude, but do you mind telling me if work is a necessity to you?"

"Certainly not. I have none of that sort of pride to contend with, I hope, and I have a little money--not much, but enough to live on; so, you see, I am provided for in a way."

"Then why do you always seem to be skirmis.h.i.+ng around for work?" he asked, in a sort of impatience. "Women should be home-makers, not--"

"Not prospectors or adventurers," she finished up amiably. "But as I have excellent health, average strength and understanding, I feel they should be put to use in some direction. I have not found the direction yet, and am a prospector meanwhile; but a contented, empty life is a contemptible thing to me. I think there is some work intended for us all in the world; and," she added, with one of those quick changes that kept folks from taking Rachel's most serious meanings seriously--"and I think it's playing it pretty low down on Providence to bluff him on an empty hand."

He laughed. "Do you expect, then, to live your life out here helping to manage other people's ranches and acc.u.mulating that sort of Western logic in extenuation?"

She did not answer for a little; then she said:

"I might do worse."