THE EATING OF THE APPLE
One morning Molly found herself awakened very early by the sound of whistling just outside. She opened her eyes to discover Peter, who had occupied one end of the wagon, sitting, head and ears up, listening to the same sound. The whistling was young, tuneless. Finally she peered through the crack in the canvas.
Outside, on the wagon tongue, sat the Kid patiently waiting, his little rifle across his knees, one bare foot digging away at the dust, his lips puckered to cheerful sibilance, his wide gray eyes turning every once in awhile to the canvas cover of the schooner. He discovered Molly looking out. The whistle abruptly stopped.
"Come on out, Molly," said he. "I ben waiting for you a long time."
"My! it's so awful early!" yawned Molly. "What do you want to do?"
"I'm going to take you hunting," confided the Kid. "We perhaps can get a squirrel down the gulch, or perhaps a cotton-tail. Come on, hurry up!"
"Why, I ain't dressed yet," objected Molly.
"Well, dress!" said the Kid impatiently.
By this time she was well awake, and the glorious morning was getting into her lungs. Her eye disappeared, and in a few minutes she emerged fully clothed. The Kid looked her over.
"Y' ain't going that way?" he asked incredulously.
"Course not. You wait till I come back."
She stepped down on the whiffletree, her heavy waving hair falling in masses of curls and crinkles over her shoulders.
"Oh, Lord!" cried the Kid pathetically. In the entrance stood Peter, his head on one side. Molly laughed.
"I thought I'd got rid of him," complained the Kid, "and here he is!"
"Never mind," said Molly soothingly, "I can make him stand round. Come here, Peter!"
At the pool of the lower creek Molly knelt, turning back the sleeves from her white arms, loosening the dress from about her round young throat. After a little she leaned back against the mosses and piled the strands of her hair, watching the interested Kid with shining eyes.
"My, but you're purty!" he cried. She nodded to him, laughing.
They took their way down the gulch, walking soberly in the road, while Peter skirmished unrestrained among the possibilities of the thickets at either hand. In the judgment of the Kid, this was too near town for the best hunting. The Kid talked.
"You never been down here, have you?"
"No," replied Molly, "I've always been up in the hills, you know; it's more fun, I think. Do you think we'll find anything down here near the road?"
"Not just yet; but after we get by Bugchaser's—Say, you've never seen Bugchaser, then, have you?"
"No," laughed the girl, "I should think not. What in the world is Bugchaser?"
"It isn't a 'what'; it's a 'him.' He's crazy. He has a 'coon, and a bear, and a bobcat. I'd like to go up an' see 'em, but I'm scairt of him."
"Is he dangerous?" asked Molly.
"Pop says he eats little boys. Hoh! that ain't so, of course. But he's crazy, you know."
"What makes you think so?"
"He chases bugs with a fishnet."
"Oh!" cried Molly comprehendingly, and began to laugh.
The Kid looked at her with offended reproach.
"Well," he remarked finally, "you can do what you want; but you betcher life I'm keepin' away from him!"
His eyes were wide with childish wonder, strangely incongruous in this solemn, lonely little creature with his ways of early maturity and his ridiculous cut-down clothes.
"There, there," laughed Molly soothingly. "I wonder what's up with Peter!"
Peter was barking like a bunch of fire crackers.
"Sounds exciting!" said she. "Maybe it's a squirrel up a tree. Let's see!"
The Kid threw his rifle into the position of a most portentous ready, and the two entered the bushes. Peter was discovered, his hair bristling between his shoulders, jumping eagerly around some object which lay, invisible, on the ground. He snapped with excitement. The Kid ran forward with a shout. Molly picked her skirts up and followed with equal rapidity and considerably more grace. They nearly ran over a large coiled rattlesnake.
The Kid yelled and leaped to one side. Molly stopped stock-still and uttered a piercing scream, after which she climbed rapidly to the top of a near-by bowlder, where she perched, her skirts daintily raised, her eyes bright with excitement. Peter leaped madly about. The Kid discharged rapid but ineffectual pea bullets at the reptile.
"I imagine you need a little help," said a voice so unexpected that Molly nearly fell from the rock. The Kid gave one look at the newcomer and fled with a howl of terror. "A most peculiar youth," observed Durand reflectively as he advanced. "Most peculiar—seemingly obsessed of an unwarranted terror for my person. Strange! I have never acted in any way brusquely toward him." He picked up a stick, and, advancing without the slightest hesitation, killed the whirring snake with a single blow. "You may now descend," he assured her, turning with exquisite grace to offer his hand.
He led the way out to the road. Peter followed until within sight of the animals chained to the posts, and then he quietly disappeared in search of the Kid. This was not cowardice on Peter's part, but he had long since tested by experiment the futility of challenging barks.
Molly had recognized the newcomer from the Kid's description; and her first glance assured her that her surmise as to his calling had been true. She had been reading the Life of Wilson, the naturalist, recently; and so knew of the existence of such men. To her they seemed rather romantic.
"Oh!" cried she on catching sight of the chained animals. "Are they tame? Are they tame enough to pet?"
The old man smiled a little at her enthusiasm. He had been looking her over with pleasure, but without surprise. Michaïl Lafond, his new friend, had mentioned his "daughter"; but never, Durand now thought, in fitting terms. This girl was really beautiful. The little interview became an audience to which Durand brought his exquisite court manners.
"Jacques, the little raccoon, certainly is," he replied to Molly's question, "but the others—I do not know—they are tame enough for me—but a stranger——. We can try, cautiously."
Molly had run forward and fallen on her knees before the 'coon. She was delighted with his grizzled, round body, with his bright eyes, his sharp little nose, the stripes across his back, his bare, black hands, almost human, and above all with the clean, fresh woods-smell that is characteristic of such an animal when not too closely confined. Finding him quite gentle, she took him in her arms. Jacques proceeded at once to investigate busily the recesses and folds of her dress.
"He seeks for sweetmeats," explained the old man, who was looking on.
From Jacques they proceeded to Isabeau, the lynx. Isabeau spat a little and looked askance, but under reproof permitted a dainty pat on the tips of his tasselled ears. Patalon, the great clown bear, was good-natured, but rough. He desired to be rubbed here and there, he wished affectionately to return this young lady's attentions with a mighty hug. He smelt rank of the wild beast. Molly returned soon to little Jacques.
"How did you get them?" she asked, tapping the end of Jacques' nose to see him wrinkle his face.
"It is not difficult. One captures them young, when they are mere cubs; and so, although they never will lose their wild instincts, they become as you see them."
"But the mothers——?"
"Ah, that is the pity," replied the old man simply. "Sometimes it becomes necessary that they die."
Molly looked on him with new wonder, this slayer of bears and wild cats, who nevertheless appeared so gentle, whose eye was so mild. It was indeed a marvellous world. She forgot the Kid and the hunting party, and gave herself up to the pleasure of the moment.
From the pets they wandered to the flowers. These interested Molly exceedingly, for she herself was struggling with the boxes of geraniums. It was fully half an hour later when Molly finally said farewell to her host and continued on down the gulch in the direction taken by her little companion.
The Kid was waiting with all the heart-rending impatience of youth. The precious time before breakfast was slipping away in futility. He had made a sacrifice in taking this girl. Never would he do it again! never! never! And then he saw her coming, and forgot everything except his relief.
"Took you long enough to break away," was his only complaint as he rose to conduct the party.
"Have we got time to hunt now? Ain't it 'most breakfast-time?" inquired Molly dubiously. "Don't you think we'd better let it go for this morning?"
"Lord, no! Come on! For heaven's sake don't let's waste any more time!" cried the Kid with a gusty impatience that surprised his companion. She did not realize the humiliated disappointment that had this last hour seethed in the little breast. "I s'pose we might 's well get up on the ridge," suggested the Kid, still grumbling.
They turned sharp to the left, through the thicket, where the birds were already hushing their songs, and the early dew was quite dried away. The Kid pushed ahead with almost feverish rapidity. Here and there in the brush Peter scurried, head down, hind legs well drawn together beneath his flanks. He snuffled eagerly into the holes and forms, doing his dramatic best to create some game, if necessary. Every once in awhile his bristly head, all alert, peered, cock-eared, over a bush, searching the hunter's face for directions, and then plunging away suddenly as his own judgment advised. It was most scienceless and unsportsman-like. The Kid peered eagerly to right and left, holding the muzzle of the little rifle conscientiously at an angle of forty-five degrees, as he had been taught, and vainly striving to avoid dry twigs, although Peter was making enough noise for a circus parade. The girl followed a step or so in the rear. It was breath-taking, this excitement. Every stir of the bushes needed examination, every flutter of wings was a possibility, every plunge of Peter might send a covey whirring into the pine tops, or rouse a squirrel to angry expostulation. As they went on up the side hills, still without result, but therefore with expectation the more sharpened, and as Molly's cheeks became redder and redder under her brown skin and her eyes brighter and brighter, and as she bit her under lip more and more, and as the straight level line of her brows grew straighter and straighter with the concentration of her thoughts, it is to be doubted if the most enthusiastic lover of scenery could have torn his eyes from the pretty picture even for the sake of the magnificent sweep of country below. So at least thought Cheyenne Harry, on his way across the ridge to his claim.
He surveyed the eager three with some slight amusement.
"Hullo!" he called suddenly.
The boy and girl started.
"Hullo!" answered Molly after a moment, when her intent hunting expression had quite fled before her cheerful look of recognition. "That you?"
The Kid too paused, but evidently under protest, and with the idea of moving on again at the earliest polite moment.
"How's hunting?" inquired Harry facetiously. "Killed all the game down below there?"
"All we've seen," replied Molly promptly; "and the hunting's very good." She put ever so slight a stress on the word "hunting." "We're going over the ridge now. Want to come along and help carry the game?"
Harry looked speculatively at the Kid, who was standing first on one bare foot, then on the other. "Naw, guess not," he replied. The Kid brightened at once. "I'm going over to the Gold King for a while. You'd better come along with me."
"Haven't had any breakfast," objected Molly.
"Oh, that's nothing. Neither have I. I'm just out to look around. Come ahead."
Molly did not care a snap of her fingers about the Gold King claim, except that it belonged to Cheyenne Harry; and, owing to the rarity of that individual's visits to his property, she had never seen it. Besides this, she had been a good deal the last few days with Graham. That young man had been interesting her greatly with a most condensed and popularized account of the nebular theory, which seemed to Molly very picturesque and intellectual. She was much taken with the idea of thus improving herself and she gave herself great credit for the effort, but it was so far above the usual plane of her intellectual workings that she had to stand on tiptoe to reach it. The evening before, she had gone to bed keyed up to wonderful resolves. To-day the pendulum had begun ever so slowly to swing back. All the influences of out-door life had drawn her to the earth; the clear freshness of the early morning, the rank smell of the wild beast, the incipient hero-worship in her admiration of the old man's supposed prowess as a slayer of bears, the actual physical contact with the slapping clinging brush through which she had passed. She breathed deep of the crisp air. She broadened her chest, and stretched her muscles, and drank the soft caressing sun warmth. She felt she would like to get down near the grass, to breathe its earthly smell, to kiss it. It was the gladness of just living.
And to her in a subtle manner Cheyenne Harry symbolized these things, just as Graham symbolized that elusive intangible humiliating power of the intellect. He was strong and bold and breezy of manner, and elemental of thought, and primitive in his passions and the manner of their expression. He appealed to that spirit in her which craved the brusque conqueror.
So for the moment the idea of a scramble with him over these rough dike-strewn ridges seemed to her the one idea in perfect tune with the wild Western quality of the newborn day. And therefore, to the consternation of the waiting Kid, she replied—
"Why, yes. I think it would be good fun, though I don't believe there is any Gold King claim. I believe it's just an excuse for your loafing around, for you certainly never spent much time on it."
"It's the finest thing ever," Harry assured her with a laugh. "I'll show you."
The Kid stood stock-still in consternation.
"Oh!" cried he, when he could get his voice, "and how about our hunt?"
"You come along with us," invited Cheyenne Harry good-naturedly. "It's good hunting all the way."
But the Kid knew better. This heedless climbing and loud talking would be quite different from the careful attention necessary for the destruction of the wily "chicken" or experienced squirrel. He looked very sad.
"Yes, come on," urged Molly; "we'll get something over in 'Teepee.'"
The Kid shook his head, unable to trust himself to speak. Cheyenne Harry turned away a little impatiently.
"I'm sorry," continued Molly with hesitation. "I think you'd like it. But we've had quite a hunt already, haven't we? And we can go another time."
She joined Cheyenne Harry. Peter stood looking first at the Kid, then at the two retreating forms. He was plainly undecided. Molly's gingham dress fluttered for the last time before she turned the corner of a bowlder. Peter suddenly made up his worried mind. The Kid was left alone.
He sat down on a rock, and rested his chin in his hands, and looked away across the valley to the peak of Tom Custer. A tiny white cloud was sailing down the wind. He watched it until, swirling, it dissolved into the currents of air. Far back in the forest of pines a little breeze rustled, faint as a whisper: then it crept nearer, ever waxing in strength, until, with a murmur as of a throng of people, it passed overhead, and vanished with a last sigh in the distance. The Kid listened attentively to the birth and death of the voice. A squirrel directly above him broke into a rattling torrent of chattering rage. The Kid sat, his chin in his hands, looking out over the valley with unseeing eyes, his little rifle resting idly against his knee. The moments passed by, one after the other, distinct, like the ticks of a great clock.
A soft muzzle nosed its way gently between his wrists. He looked down. Peter's homely, gray-whiskered face with the pathetic eyes looked up into his own. The Kid flung both arms about the dog's coarse-furred neck, and burst into a passion of tears.
From the top of the ridge, where she had paused a moment to take breath, Molly saw the whole of this little scene. She suddenly felt very irritated.
That Kid was certainly the most unreasonable of children! Why, she spent three-quarters of her time doing nothing but amuse him. She had got up cheerfully at an unearthly hour, walked several miles without breakfast, followed him uncomplaining through a lot of damp grass and underbrush, and now, because she wouldn't spend the rest of the day with him, he sulked. Forsooth, was she to give up all her friends, her amusements, for the sake of that boy? Molly was most impatient—with the Kid—and she became so preoccupied in pitying herself that she hardly answered Cheyenne Harry's remarks, and was a very poor companion. She deceived herself perfectly; yet in the background of her consciousness was something she did not recognize—something uncomfortable. It was an uneasiness, a heaviness, a slight feeling of guilt for something which she could not specify, quite indefinable, and therefore the more annoying. It made her feel like shaking her shoulders. There seemed no valid reason why she should not be as light-hearted as she had been a few minutes ago, for her reason saw nothing in her conduct to regret. And yet she was uneasy, as though she had done something wrong and was on the point of being found out. She could not understand it, but it was very real, and, because she could see no reason for it, it made her angry, with a sense of injustice.
It was the first manifestation of another phase of heredity—the New England conscience.