The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories Part 3

"Of course," she said resentfully, "you can make fun of it--but all the same, it's better than nothing. It answers the purpose."

Weary turned his head till he could look straight into her eyes--a thing he seemed rather fond of doing, lately. "What purpose? It sure isn't ornamental; it's a little the hardest looker I ever saw in the shape of a gun. And it won't scare anything. If you want a gun, why, take one that can make good. You can have mine; just watch what a different effect it has."

He reached backward and drew a s.h.i.+ning thing from his pocket, flipped it downward--and the effect was unmistakably different. The gopher leaped and rolled backward and then lay still, and Miss Satterly gave a little, startled scream and jumped quite off the doorstep.

"Don't yuh see? You couldn't raise any such a dust with yours. If yuh pack a gun, you always want to pack one that's ready and willing to do business on short notice. I'll let yuh have this, if you're sure it's safe with yuh. I'd hate to have you shooting yourself accidental."

Weary raised innocent eyes to her face and polished the gun caressingly with his handkerchief. "Try it once," he urged.

The schoolma'am was fond of boasting that she never screamed at anything. She had screamed just now, over a foolish little thing, and it goes without saying she was angry with the cause. She did not sit down again beside him, and she did not take the gun he was holding up invitingly to her. She put her hands behind her and stood accusingly before him with the look upon her face which never failed to make sundry small Beckmans and Pilgreens squirm on their benches when she a.s.sumed it in school.

"Mr. Davidson"--not Weary Davidson, as she was wont to call him--"you have killed my pet gopher. All summer I have fed him, and he would eat out of my hand."

Weary cast a jealous eye upon the limp, little animal, searched his heart for remorse and found none. Ornery little brute, to get familiar with _his_ schoolma'am!

"I did not think you could be so wantonly cruel, and I am astonished and--and deeply pained to discover that fatal flaw in your character."

Weary began to squirm, after the manner of delinquent Beckmans and Pilgreens. One thing he had learned: When the schoolma'am rose to irreproachable English, there was trouble a-brew. It was a sign he had never known to fail.

"I cannot understand the depraved instinct which prompts a man brutally to destroy a life he cannot restore, and which in no way menaces his own--or even interferes with his comfort. You may apologize to me; you may even be sincerely repentant"--the schoolma'am's tone at this point implied considerable doubt--"but you are powerless to return the life you have so heedlessly taken. You have revealed a low, brutal trait which I had hoped your nature could not harbor, and I am--am deeply shocked and--and grieved."

Just here a tiny, dry-weather whirlwind swept around the corner, caught ruffled, white ap.r.o.n and blue skirt in its gyrations and, pus.h.i.+ng them wickedly aside, gave Weary a brief, delicious glimpse of two small, slippered feet and two distracting ankles. The schoolma'am blushed and retreated to the doorstep, but she did not sit down. She still stood straight and displeased beside him. Evidently she was still shocked and grieved.

Weary tipped his head to one side so that be might look up at her from under his hat-brim. "I'll get yuh another gopher; six, if yuh say so,"

he soothed, "The woods is full of 'em."

The angry, brown eyes of Miss Satterly swept the barren hills contemptuously. She would not even look at him. "Pray do not inconvenience yourself, Mr. Davidson. It is not the gopher that I care for so much--it is the principle."

Weary sighed and slid the gun back into his pocket. It seemed to him that Miss Satterly, adorable as she always was, was also rather unreasonable at times. "All right, I'll get yuh another principle, then."

"Mr. Davidson," she said sternly, "you are perfectly odious!"

"Is that something nice, Girlie?" Weary smiled trustfully up at her.

"Odious," explained the schoolma'am haughtily, "is not something nice.

I'm sorry your education has been so neglected. Odious, Mr. Davidson, is a synonym for hateful, obnoxious, repulsive, disagreeable, despicable--"

"I never did like cinnamon, anyhow," put in Weary, cheerfully.

"I did not mention cinnamon. I said--"

"Say, yuh look out uh sight with your hair fixed that way. I wish you'd wear it like that all the time," he observed irrelevantly, looking up at her with his sunniest smile.

"I wish to goodness I were really out of sight," snapped the schoolma'am. "You make me exceedingly weary."

"_Mrs._ Weary," corrected he, complacently. "That's what I'm sure aiming at."

"You aim wide of the mark, then," she retorted valiantly, though confusion waved a red flag in either cheek.

"Oh, I don't know. A minute ago you were roasting me because my aim was too good," he contended mildly, glancing involuntarily toward the gopher stretched upon its little, yellow back, its four small feet turned pitifully up to the blue.

"If you had an atom of decency you'd be ashamed to mention that tribute to your diabolical marksmans.h.i.+p."

"Oh, mamma!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Weary under his breath, and began to make himself a smoke. His guardian angel was exhorting him to silence, but it preached, as usual, to unsentient ears.

"_I_ never mentioned all those things," he denied meekly. "It's you that keeps on mentioning. I wish yuh wouldn't. I like to hear you talk, all right, and flop all those big words easy as roping a calf; but I wish you'd let me choose your subject for yuh. I could easy name one where you could use words just as high and wide and handsome, and a heap more pleasant than the brand you've got corralled. Try admiration and felicitation and exhilarating, ecstatic osculation--" He stopped to run the edge of paper along his tongue, and perhaps it was as well he did; there was no need of making her any angrier. Miss Satterly hated to feel that she was worsted, and it was quite clear that Weary had all along been "guying" her.

"If you came here to make me _hate_ you, you have accomplished your errand admirably; it would be advisable now for you to hike."

Weary, struck by that incongruous last word, did an unforgivable thing.

He laughed and laughed, while the match he had just lighted flared, sent up a blue thread of brimstone smoke, licked along the white wood and scorched his fingers painfully before he remembered his cigarette.

Miss Satterly turned abruptly and went into the house, put on her hat and took up the little, tin lard-pail in which her aunt Meeker always packed her lunch. She was back, had the key turned in the lock and was slowly pulling on her gloves by the time Weary recovered from his mirth.

"Since you will not leave the place, I shall do so. I want to say first, however, that I not only think you odious, but all the synonyms I mentioned besides. You need not come for me to go to the Labor Day dance, because I will not go with you. I shall go with Joe."

Weary gave her a startled glance and almost dropped his cigarette.

This seemed going rather far, he thought--but of course she didn't really mean it; the schoolma'am, he heartened himself with thinking, was an awful, little bluffer.

"Don't go off mad, Girlie. I'm sorry I killed your gopher--on the dead, I am. I just didn't think, That's a habit I've got--not thinking.

"Say! You stay, and we'll have a funeral. It isn't every common, scrub gopher that can have a real funeral with mourners and music when he goes over the Big Divide. He--he'll appreciate the honor; I would, I know, if it was me."

The schoolma'am took a few steps and stopped, evidently in some difficulty with her glove. From the look of her, no human being was within a mile of her; she certainly did not seem to hear anything Weary was saying.

"Say! I'll sing a song over him, if you'll wait a minute. I know two whole verses of 'Bill Bailey,' and the chorus to 'Good Old Summertime.'

I can shuffle the two together and make a full deck. I believe they'd go fine together.

"Say, you never heard me sing, did yuh? It's worth waiting for--only yuh want to hang tight to something when I start. Come on--I'll let you be the mourner."

Since Miss Satterly had been taking steps quite regularly while Weary was speaking, she was now several rods away--and she had, more than ever, the appearance of not hearing him and of not wanting to hear.

"Say, Tee-e-cher!"

The schoolma'am refused to stop, or to turn her head a fraction of an inch, and Weary's face sobered a little. It was the first time that inimitable "Tee-e-cher" of his had failed to bring the smile back into the eyes of Miss Satterly. He looked after her dubiously. Her shoulders were thrown well back and her feet pressed their imprint firmly into the yellow dust of the trail. In a minute she would be quite out of hearing.

Weary got up, took a step and grasped Glory's trailing bridle-rein and hurried after her much faster than Glory liked and which he reproved with stiffened knees and a general pulling back on the reins.

"Say! You wouldn't get mad at a little thing like that, would yuh?"

expostulated Weary, when he overtook her. "You know I didn't mean anything, Girlie."

"I do not consider it a little thing," said the schoolma'am, icily.

Thus rebuffed, Weary walked silently beside her up the hill--silently, that is, save for the subdued jingling of his spurs. He was beginning to realize that there was an uncomfortable, heavy feeling in his chest, on the side where his heart was. Still, he was of a hopeful nature and presently tried again.

"How many times must I say I'm sorry, Schoolma'am? You don't look so pretty when you're mad; you've got dimples, remember, and yuh ought to give 'em a chance. Let's sit down on this rock while I square myself.

Come on." His tone was wheedling in the extreme.

Miss Satterly, not replying a word, kept straight on up the hill; and Weary, sighing heavily, followed.