“I want a pie if you please, ma’am,” he said, with a true Yankee drawl.
“But they are not made yet. At least they are not baked,” said Nell, as she stooped to put another tin filled with pies into the oven, and shut the door, after having carefully tested the heat with her bare elbow, which was the only thermometer she possessed.
“How long to wait?” demanded the boy, in a laconic fashion.
“Half an hour, more or less. Where do you come from?” inquired Nell, turning from the oven to the table, and starting on a fresh batch of pies, her quick fingers turning, twisting, and moulding with an ease and skill delightful to witness, or at least the boy appeared to think so, as he crept into the room, and stood by the table, watching her operations with a look of absorbed interest.
At the question, he shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, as if hesitating about his answer; then, lifting his head with a defiant jerk, he replied—
“From Goat’s Gulch.”
“Goat’s Gulch?” repeated Nell, wondering why the name seemed so familiar, and at the same time brought with it such disagreeable sensations. Then suddenly she started, remembering that it was the place from which the man unknown had said that he brought the Chinaman’s coffin on that eventful evening in last September. “That is a long way from here, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes, about six or seven miles, perhaps, and such a road!” said the boy, rolling up his eyes until only the whites showed, as if to express its badness.
“Did you come all that way, just to buy a pie?” asked Nell, in surprise.
He nodded, then became more explicit. “I’ve got to take two, one for myself, don’t you see, for dad said I shouldn’t be picking and pulling at the one for old Doss if I’d got one of my own.”