Vandemark's Folly Part 17

It must have been three o'clock, for the rooster of the half-dozen fowls which I had traded for had just crowed, when Virginia called to me from the wagon.

"That man," said she in a scared voice, "is hunting for me."

"Yes," said I, only guessing whom she meant.

"If he takes me I shall kill myself!"

"He will never take you from me," I said.

"What can you do?"

"I have had a thousand fights," I said; "and I have never been whipped!"

I afterward thought of one or two cases in which bigger boys had bested me, though I had never cried "Enough!" and it seemed to me that it was not quite honest to leave her thinking such a thing of me when it was not quite so. And it looked a little like bragging; but it appeared to quiet her, and I let it go. From the mention she had made back there at Dyersville of men who could fight, using pistol or knife, she apparently was accustomed to men who carried and used weapons; but, thought I, I had never owned, much less carried, any weapons except my two hard fists. Queer enough to say I never thought of the strangeness of a boy's making his way into a new land with a strange girl suddenly thrown on his hands as a new and precious piece of baggage to be secreted, smuggled, cared for and defended.

CHAPTER IX

THE GROVE OF DESTINY

When I had got up in the morning and rounded up my cows I started a fire and began whistling. I was not in the habit of whistling much; but I wanted her to wake up and dress so I could get the makings of the breakfast out of the wagon. After I had the fire going and had whistled all the tunes I knew--_Lorena, The Gipsy's Warning, I'd Offer Thee This Hand of Mine,_ and _Joe Bowers_, I tapped on the side of the wagon, and said "Virginia!"

She gave a scream, and almost at once I heard her voice calling in terror from the back of the wagon; and on running around to the place I found that she had stuck her head out of the opening of the wagon cover and was calling for help and protection.

"Don't be afraid," said I. "There's n.o.body here but me."

"Somebody called me 'Virginia,'" she cried, her face pale and her whole form trembling. "n.o.body but that man in all this country would call me that."

She hardly ever called Gowdy by any other name but "that man," so far as I have heard. Something had taken place which struck her with a sort of dumbness; and I really believe she could not then have spoken the name Gowdy if she had tried. What it was that happened she never told any one, unless it was Grandma Thornd.y.k.e, who was always dumb regarding the sort of thing which all the neighbors thought took place. To Grandma Thornd.y.k.e s.e.x must have seemed the original curse imposed on our first parents; eggs and link sausages were repulsive because they suggested the insides of animals and vital processes; and a perfect human race would have been to her made up of beings nourished by the odors of flowers, and perpetuated by the planting of the parings of finger-nails in antiseptic earth--or something of the sort. My live-stock business always had to her its seamy side and its underworld which she always turned her face away from--though I never saw a woman who could take a new-born pig, calf, colt or fowl, once it was really brought forth so it could be spoken of, and raise it from the dead, almost, as she could.

But every trace of the facts up to that time had to be concealed, and if not they were ignored by Grandma Thornd.y.k.e. New England all over!

If Gowdy was actually guilty of the sort of affront to little Virginia for which the public thought him responsible, I do not see how the girl could ever have told it to grandma. I do not see how grandma could ever have been made to understand it. I suspect that the worst that grandma ever believed, was that Gowdy swore or used what she called vulgar language in Virginia's presence. Knowing him as we all did afterward, we suspected that he attempted to treat her as he treated all women--and as I believe he could not help treating them. It seems impossible of belief--his wife's orphan sister, the recent death of Ann Gowdy, the girl's helplessness and she only a little girl; but Buck Gowdy was Buck Gowdy, and that escape of his wife's sister and her flight over the prairie was the indelible black mark against him which was pointed at from time to 'time forever after whenever the people were ready to forgive those daily misdoings to which a frontier people were not so critical as perhaps they should have been. Indeed he gained a certain popularity from his boast that all the time he needed to gain control over any woman was half an hour alone with her--but of that later, if at all.

"That was me that called you 'Virginia,'" said I. "I want to get into the wagon to get things for breakfast--after you get up."

"I never thought of your calling me Virginia," she answered--and I had no idea what was in her mind. I saw no reason why I shouldn't call her by her first name. "Miss" Royall would have been my name for the wife of a man named Royall. It was not until long afterward that I found out how different my manners were from those to which she was accustomed.

I never thought of such a thing as varying from my course of conduct on her account; and just as would have been the case if my outfit had been a boat for which time and tide would not wait, I yoked up, after the breakfast was done, and prepared to negotiate the miry crossing of the creek and pull out for Monterey County, which I hoped to reach in time to break some land and plant a small crop. We did not discuss the matter of her going with me--I think we both took that for granted. She stood on a little knoll while I was making ready to start, gazing westward, and when the sound of cracking whips and the shouts of teamsters told of the approach of movers from the East, even though we were some distance off the trail, she crept into the wagon so as to be out of sight. She had eaten little, and seemed weak and spent; and when we started, I arranged the bed in the wagon for her to lie upon, just as I had done for Doctor Bliven's woman, and she seemed to hide rather than anything else as she crept into it. So on we went, the wagon jolting roughly at times, and at times running smoothly enough as we reached dry roads worn smooth by travel.

Sometimes as I looked back, I could see her face with the eyes fixed upon me questioningly; and then she would ask me if I could see any one coming toward us on the road ahead.

"n.o.body," I would say; or, "A covered wagon going the wrong way," or whatever I saw. "Don't be afraid," I would add; "stand on your rights.

This is a free country. You've got the right to go east or west with any one you choose, and n.o.body can say anything against it. And you've got a friend now, you know."

"Is anybody in sight?" she asked again, after a long silence.

I looked far ahead from the top of a swell in the prairie and then back.

I told her that there was no one ahead so far as I could see except teams that we could not overtake, and n.o.body back of us but outfits even slower than mine. So she came forward, and I helped her over the back of the seat to a place by my side. For the first time I could get a good look at her undisturbed--if a bashful boy like me could be undisturbed journeying over the open prairie with a girl by his side--a girl altogether in his hands.

First I noticed that her hair, though dark brown, gave out gleams of bright dark fire as the sun shone through it in certain ways. I kept glancing at that s.h.i.+fting gleam whenever we turned the slow team so that her hair caught the sun. I have seen the same flame in the mane of a black horse bred from a sorrel dam or sire. As a stock breeder I have learned that in such cases there is in the heredity the genetic unit of red hair overlaid with black pigment. It is the same in people.

Virginia's father had red hair, and her sister Ann Gowdy had hair which was a dark auburn. I was fascinated by that smoldering fire in the girl's hair; and in looking at it I finally grew bolder, as I saw that she did not seem to suspect my scrutiny, and I saw that her brows and lashes were black, and her eyes very, very blue--not the b.u.t.termilk blue of the Dutchman's eyes, like mine, with brows and lashes lighter than the sallow Dutch skin, but deep larkspur blue, with a dark edging to the pupil--eyes that sometimes, in a dim light, or when the pupils are dilated, seem black to a person who does not look closely. Her skin, too, showed her ruddy breed--for though it was tanned by her long journey in the sun and wind, there glowed in it, even through her paleness, a tinge of red blood--and her nose was freckled. Glimpses of her neck and bosom revealed a skin of the thinnest, whitest texture--quite milk-white, with pink showing through on account of the heat. She had little strong brown hands, and the foot which she put on the dashboard was a very trim and graceful foot like that of a thoroughbred mare, built for flight rather than work, and it swelled beautifully in its gra.s.s-stained white stocking above her slender ankle to the modest skirt.

A great hatred for Buck Gowdy surged through me as I felt her beside me in the seat and studied one after the other her powerful attractions--the hatred, not for the man who misuses the defenseless girl left in his power by cruel fate; but the l.u.s.t for conquest over the man who had this girl in his hands and who, as she feared, was searching for her. I mention these things because, while they do not excuse some things that happened, they do show that, as a boy who had lived the uncontrolled and, by a.s.sociation, the evil life which I had lived, I was put in a very hard place.

2

After a while Virginia looked back, and clutched my arm convulsively.

"There's a carriage overtaking us!" she whispered. "Don't stop! Help me to climb back and cover myself up!"

She was quite out of sight when the carriage turned out to pa.s.s, drove on ahead, and then halted partly across the road so as to show that the occupants wanted word with me. I brought my wagon to a stop beside them.

"We are looking," said the man in the carriage, "for a young girl traveling alone on foot over the prairie."

The man was clearly a preacher. He wore a tall beaver hat, though the day was warm, and a suit of ministerial black. His collar stood out in points on each side of his chin, and his throat rested on a heavy stock-cravat which went twice around his neck and was tied in a stout square knot under his chin on the second turn. Under this black choker was a s.h.i.+rt of snowy white, as was his collar, while his coat and trousers looked worn and threadbare. His face was smooth-shaven, and his hair once black was now turning iron-gray. He was then about sixty years old.

"A girl," said I deceitfully, "traveling afoot and alone on the prairie?

Going which way?"

The woman in the carriage now leaned forward and took part in the conversation. She was Grandma Thornd.y.k.e, of whom I have formerly made mention. Her hair was white, even then. I think she was a little older than her husband; but if so she never admitted it. He was a slight small man, but wiry and strong; while she was taller than he and very spare and grave. She wore steel-bowed spectacles, and looked through you when she spoke. I am sure that if she had ever done so awful a thing as to have put on a man's clothes no one would have seen through her disguise from her form, or even by her voice, which was a ringing tenor and was always heard clear and strong carrying the soprano in the First Congregational Church of Monterey Centre after Elder Thornd.y.k.e had succeeded in getting it built.

"Her name is Royall," said Grandma Thornd.y.k.e--I may as well begin calling her that now as ever--Royall. When last seen she was walking eastward on this road, where she is subject to all sorts of dangers from wild weather and wild beasts. A man on horseback named Gowdy, with a negro, came into Independence looking for her this morning after searching everywhere along the road from some place west back to the settlement. She is sixteen years old. There wouldn't be any other girl traveling alone and without provision. Have you pa.s.sed such a person?"

"No, I hain't," said I. The name "Genevieve" helped me a little in this deceit.

"You haven't heard any of the people on the road speak of this wandering girl, have you?" asked Elder Thornd.y.k.e.

"No," I answered; "and I guess if any of them had seen her they'd have mentioned it, wouldn't they?"

"And you haven't seen any lone girl or woman at all, even at a distance?" inquired Grandma Thornd.y.k.e.

"If she pa.s.sed me," I said, turning and twisting to keep from telling an outright lie, "it was while I was camped last night. I camped quite a little ways from the track."

"She has wandered off upon the trackless prairie!" exclaimed Grandma Thornd.y.k.e. "G.o.d help her!"

"He will protect her," said the elder piously.

"Maybe she met some one going west," I suggested, rather truthfully, I thought, "that took her in. She may be going back west with some one."

"Mr. Gowdy told us back in Independence," returned Elder Thornd.y.k.e, "that he had inquired of every outfit he met from the time she left him clear back to that place; and he overtook the only two teams on that whole stretch of road that were going east. It is hard to understand.

It's a mystery."

"Was he going on east?" I asked--and I thought I heard a stir in the bed back of me as I waited for the answer.

"No," said the elder, "he is coming back this way, hunting high and low for her. I have no doubt he will find her. She can not have reached a point much farther east than this. She is sure to be found somewhere between here and Independence--or within a short distance of here. There is nothing dangerous in the weather, the wild animals, or anything, but the bewilderment of being lost and the lack of food. G.o.d will not allow her to be lost."

"I guess not," said I, thinking of the fate which led me to my last night's camp, and of Gowdy's search having missed me as he rode by in the night.