“If you're lookin' for the spring, it's a spell furder on—by the willows.”
It was a pleasant voice, the teamster thought, albeit with a dry, crisp, New England accent unfamiliar to his ears. He looked into the depths of an unlovely blue-check sunbonnet, and saw certain small, irregular features and a sallow check, lit up by a pair of perfectly innocent, trustful, and wondering brown eyes. Their timid possessor seemed to be a girl of seventeen, whose figure, although apparently clad in one of her mother's gowns, was still undeveloped and repressed by rustic hardship and innutrition. As her eyes met his she saw that the face of this gloomy stranger was still youthful, by no means implacable, and, even at that moment, was actually suffused by a brick-colored blush! In matters of mere intuition, the sex, even in its most rustic phase, is still our superior; and this unsophisticated girl, as the trespasser stammered, “Thank ye, miss,” was instinctively emboldened to greater freedom.
“Dad ain't tu hum, but ye kin have a drink o' milk if ye keer for it.”
She motioned shyly towards the cabin, and then led the way. The stranger, with an inarticulate murmur, afterwards disguised as a cough, followed her meekly. Nevertheless, by the time they had reached the cabin he had shaken his long hair over his eyes again, and a dark abstraction gathered chiefly in his eyebrows. But it did not efface from the girl's mind the previous concession of a blush, and, although it added to her curiosity, did not alarm her. He drank the milk awkwardly. But by the laws of courtesy, even among the most savage tribes, she felt he was, at that moment at least, harmless. A timid smile fluttered around her mouth as she said:—
“When ye hung up them things I thought ye might be havin' suthing to swap or sell. That is,”—with tactful politeness,—“mother was wantin' a new skillet, and it would have been handy if you'd had one. But”—with an apologetic glance at his equipments—“if it ain't your business, it's all right, and no offense.”
“I've got a lot o' skillets,” said the strange teamster, with marked condescension, “and she can have one. They're all that's left outer a heap o' trader's stuff captured by Injuns t'other side of Laramie. We had a big fight to get 'em back. Lost two of our best men,—scalped at Bloody Creek,—and had to drop a dozen redskins in their tracks,—me and another man,—lyin' flat in er wagon and firin' under the flaps o' the canvas. I don't know ez they waz wuth it,” he added in gloomy retrospect; “but I've got to get rid of 'em, I reckon, somehow, afore I work over to Deadman's Gulch again.”
The young girl's eyes brightened timidly with a feminine mingling of imaginative awe and personal, pitying interest. He was, after all, so young and amiable looking for such hardships and adventures. And with all this, he—this Indian fighter—was a little afraid of HER!
“Then that's why you carry that knife and six-shooter?” she said. “But you won't want 'em now, here in the settlement.”
“That's ez mebbe,” said the stranger darkly. He paused, and then suddenly, as if recklessly accepting a dangerous risk, unbuckled his revolver and handed it abstractedly to the young girl. But the sheath of the bowie-knife was a fixture in his body-belt, and he was obliged to withdraw the glittering blade by itself, and to hand it to her in all its naked terrors. The young girl received the weapons with a smiling complacency. Upon such altars as these the skeptical reader will remember that Mars had once hung his “battered shield,” his lance, and “uncontrolled crest.”
Nevertheless, the warlike teamster was not without embarrassment. Muttering something about the necessity of “looking after his stock,” he achieved a hesitating bow, backed awkwardly out of the door, and receiving from the conquering hands of the young girl his weapons again, was obliged to carry them somewhat ingloriously in his hands across the road, and put them on the wagon seat, where, in company with the culinary articles, they seemed to lose their distinctively aggressive character. Here, although his cheek was still flushed from his peaceful encounter, his voice regained some of its hoarse severity as he drove the oxen from the muddy pool into which they had luxuriantly wandered, and brought their fodder from the wagon. Later, as the sun was setting, he lit a corn-cob pipe, and somewhat ostentatiously strolled down the road, with a furtive eye lingering upon the still open door of the farmhouse. Presently two angular figures appeared from it, the farmer and his wife, intent on barter.