“No,” Aunt Val was speaking in her most New York voice, very languid, “I didn’t write to Colonel Marchbanks; he wrote to me. This man Pearsall is—er—well-meaning, of course, but I can’t help feeling that an educated person, a gentleman, such as Colonel Marchbanks seems to be, might be a more fortunate selection.”
“This man Pearsall!” They were talking about Uncle Hank. Then the children they spoke of were herself and Burchie. Mechanically, Hilda pushed the blocks about to keep Burch quiet, listening with all her ears now, while in the room there the talk went from bad to worse, till finally Miss Valeria spoke of Uncle Hank as uncouth. Hilda hadn’t much idea as to what that might mean; but it sounded bad.
Justice was not to be had here; but there was a theater which she maintained in her child’s mind, where all these elbowing and shoving assertions and commands—often both vague and contradictory—that Aunt Val put on people were turned right around and Hilda’s own idea of fair play and human satisfaction had the say. She herself was the character that adorned and ruled that stage, but not in any such guise as Hilda’s friends would have recognized. This was a presence of lofty stature, and of a countenance and glance insupportable to evil-doers—a creature called forth by the helpless child fancy oftener than grown-ups suppose. For some reason whose explanation I will leave to others, it spoke always in shrill falsetto, that high sing-song which is the voice of the Chinese actor. But it never had to speak more than once. Not only people, but things and conditions, hustled to do its bidding.
In there—right back in that parlor—Aunt Val, seated among her visiting ladies, had said that Uncle Hank used bad grammar! And the lady from Ohio had agreed that he was ignorant, though good-hearted. The big black eyes yet flashed; Hilda retired to her mental theater and hastily set its stage as the ranchhouse parlor, dragging onto it Miss Val herself, the visiting ladies from their several ranches, and the pert outsider from Ohio. On chairs of unworthiness there she stuck the offenders. To them she saw enter this big, haughty, terrifying other self of hers. It came swishing through the room, about seven feet tall, irreproachably clean of countenance, teeth and finger-nails, with conquering eyes and a paralyzingly correct toilet. Often it never spoke at all; merely froze the guilty ones into silence with one glance as it passed; but this was a time for plain speaking.
Uncle Hank was not ignorant! Ignorant, yourself, Miss or Madam Ohio! Could it be possible that she, Hilda, alone of them all was aware that he knew more than anybody else in the world? Why, you starched-up lady with your gold spectacles and shiny slippers, it would need a lifetime’s toil for you to come into half his stored wisdom concerning coyotes and why they howl; touching prairie dogs, wild mustangs, cactus, jack rabbits, trail-herds, boggy fords, relating to “when we were down on the Pecos,” or “one spring on the Canadian,” or, “when cows stampede.” Uncle Hank was beautiful too. No one living had such eyes as those blue ones of his; his smile was as the very rays of the sun; his voice; his touch—! Hilda knew that sometimes children had to get along without relatives and without parents; but that any little girl could possibly face existence without some sort of Uncle Hank was beyond her powers of belief. Supposing that she—even in her own proper and insignificant person—should lead these glib scoffers to Uncle Hank’s trunk, lift the lid and show them where his Sunday suit lay? If that did not convict them of shallow judgments, surely the bottle of cologne would do the trick. It was imported, so Uncle Hank said; and to Hilda’s thinking its possession was better than a patent of nobility.
Hilda’s secret court of justice and the visit came to an end about the same time. The ladies, who never knew what they’d been through in the little girl’s mind, came out into the hall; the buckboard that was to carry two of them, the ponies for the others, were at the door. Hilda rose, made her bow and said her good-bys in that queer, artificial tone that pleased her aunt. Burchie had stood solid on his two feet; not a word out of him; just a pink fist up, methodically wiping off kisses—and Aunt Val let him. She and the ladies even exchanged pitying glances over the top of his head. But Hilda knew that Burch heard all they said perfectly, and could have talked well enough if he’d wanted to—and surely Aunt Val knew it. Grown-ups—all but Uncle Hank—were dreadfully puzzling. Finally Hilda had led little brother away, given him his bread and milk, put him to bed, and now had come back to her evening perch on the door-stone where she always watched for Uncle Hank.
While she sat there turning over these recollections in her mind, the warm gold had faded to delicate ashes-of-roses. The light waned with infinite gentleness and tenderness. A great spirit of quietness sighed across the open land, enfolding the few tiny evening sounds that began to make themselves heard. Her mind wandered from the questions she was going to ask Uncle Hank. It was funny about those little brown owls that sit up at the mouths of prairie-dog holes; how they will turn their heads to watch you as you walk around them, and keep right on turning, until, if you’d walk around them often enough, they would wring their little heads right off. Oh, yes, they will. Indeed and truly. Shorty had seen ’em, mor’n once.
A cooler air blew in from the southwest. The shine had gone from the window panes. A cricket chirped close at hand, and, without having consciously heard it, the child momentarily glanced that way. Then back to her vigil and her reflections.
It was funny about a dogie. It was funny, and it was sad, too, that a dogie—
Suddenly in the growing dimness, far out on the Ojo Bravo trail, a tiny speck began to vibrate. To the untutored gaze, it might well have been a jack-rabbit or a coyote, or even an idly cruising tumbleweed, but to the eyes that were watching it now, full of eager love, already deeply versed in plainscraft, that speck was instantly recognized as Uncle Hank on Buckskin. Aunt Val and the ladies who had been visiting her; the little brown owls who twisted off their own heads; the dogies, those forlorn orphans of the range, whose affairs had barely swum over the verge of her mental horizon—all were thrust headlong into the rag-bag of oblivion. The little feet struck the ground with a sharp spat; lightly as a blown feather Hilda was off, running down the trail.