The laughter had died out of my heart and my voice, but a stubborn, foolish pride held my tongue. I could not tell the mining superintendent, who would have been one of the best of customers, that the melons were for sale, or that Joe had left us. “If I tell him that Joe is gone,” ran my foolish thought, “he will understand that I am peddling melons.” Gathering up the lines, I started the horses quickly, lest he should ask where I got my load. Mr. Rutledge drew his horse aside, waiting for me to pass.
“Be sure to tell Joe about the wheels, when you see him!” he called after me, as the complaining shriek again rent the air.
“Yes,” I returned, “I will;” and added to myself: “When I see him.”
In my anxiety to escape questioning I had forgotten that a person who is riding in a wagon whose wheels need oiling cannot shake off a well-mounted horseman so easily. Underneath the weird outcry of the wheels the steady pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat of the black horse’s hoofs came to my ears, and I glanced back to see Mr. Rutledge close to the hind wheel. Unless he stopped entirely he must of necessity be close at hand. The road that Mr. Rutledge must take in order to reach the mining camp branched off from the one that we were following, at a little distance, and I understood very well that, considering the distance, he did not think it civil to gallop on ahead of me. But suppose he should yet ask me where the melons came from—just suppose it. Should I tell a lie, or should I tell him that I was not even acting as teamster to oblige another? I took up the whip—then I dropped it back into its socket. I had always known myself for, in my quiet way, rather a proud girl, but—it—but—it was not this kind of pride, and I had never before felt myself a coward. Because Mr. Rutledge was a gentleman, was it any worse that he should know—
I drew in the reins sharply, and the team came to a standstill. The sudden cessation of that fearful noise called to mind a line or two that Jessie is fond of quoting: “And silence like a poultice comes, to heal the blows of sound.”
Mr. Rutledge again halted his horse, and turned on me an inquiring look. My throat was dry and husky, and my voice sounded strange in my own ears as I said, in answer to the look:
“I wanted to tell you, Mr. Rutledge, that we raised these melons ourselves, and we are trying to sell them.”
“Are you?”
His tone was very gentle. He regarded me and my dusty, wayworn outfit silently for a space, then he said, this time with no laughter in his voice: