“Well, you know that little figure we saw, queer little figure on horseback, the day—the day I flew over the Gap, stampeded the outfit—woman I said looked as if she wanted it ‘here’?” He touched his forehead.
“Yes! Oh! I don’t know why, but, somehow, I’ve been thinking of her, on and off—all night. The—Little Lone Lady—all the names they give her!” The girl’s teeth were just chattering now.
“I mentioned her to Dad last evening, described her, you know—the slight deformity, the big, queer eyes, made you feel as if she had a ‘nick-in-the-neck’ somehow—a peculiarity within, as without—oh-h! I’ve met her once or twice on the trail—since—then.” He panted heavily.
“And—and Dad he just leaped to his feet and caught at the camp table, so that he pulled it over: ‘I’ll bet my life,’ he said, ‘I’ll bet my living body! it’s that queer stepsister of Grosvenor’s—back—again ... not that I would have called her queer long ago,’ he went on; ‘she had some strange gifts—powers—that may be as natural as radio; she influenced all our young set, in which she was, with them; she had a way of telling what was going on inside us, boy, what we were thinking of—and sometimes what was going to happen to us, too, that took our breath away.’
“Then—my gracious! he described her as if he had seen her only yesterday—yesterday.” The boy caught at his collar again,—at his working throat. “She was the daughter of Uncle Dwight Grosvenor’s mother, by a first marriage, he said. Her name was Margaret Deane.”
“They call her ‘Margot’ here—some of the mountain folk,” screamed Pemrose.
“And she always lived with Uncle Dwight, swayed him as she swayed the rest, but he—he’s my uncle by marriage, you know—married father’s sister, and that sister, Aunt Carolyn, simply couldn’t bear her. And when Una was born—this was after Dad went out West, but he heard about it since he came back—the feeling between the two women grew, for this peculiar step-aunt just worshiped the baby, would sit staring at it as if she saw something akin to herself in the little mite—Una—and wanted to bring it out.
“At last Aunt Carolyn couldn’t stand it any longer. She told Uncle Dwight that his stepsister had got to go. She wouldn’t have her child brought up under such influence. They were keeping it dark, until they could find a nice home for her—but she cleared out of herself, without saying good-by.”
“And haven’t they seen her since—oh! since long ago?” Pemrose was staring weirdly.
“No—nor heard from her, either. She drew a little money that she had, not enough Dad says, to support her, eked it out, he supposes by using her strange powers in distant cities, as—as this woman has done among the mountain people; and, in time, got to eking them out by trickery; she’d be a witch at that, he said, for she had a good education—knew something of chemistry and physics.”