CHAPTER IV
THE SIN-BUSTER
In the fall, when the whole country had turned to a great cup of gold, purple-rimmed under the sky, Pierre went out into the hills after his winter meat. Joan was left alone. She spent her time cleaning and arranging the two-room cabin, and tidying up outdoors, and in “grubbing sagebrush,” a gigantic task, for the one hundred and fifty acres of Pierre’s homestead were covered for the most part by the sturdy, spicy growth, and every bush had to be dug out and burnt to clear the way for ploughing and planting. Joan worked with the deliberateness and intentness of a man. She enjoyed the wholesome drudgery. She was proud every sundown of the little clearing she had made, and stood, tired and content, to watch the piled brush burn, sending up aromatic smoke and curious, dull flames very high into the still air.
She was so standing, hands folded on her rake, when, on the other side of her conflagration, she perceived a man. He was steadily regarding her, and when her eyes fell upon him, he smiled and stepped forward—a tall, broad, very fair young man in a shooting coat, khaki riding-breeches, and puttees. He had a wide brow, clear, blue eyes and an eager, sensitive, clean-shaven mouth and chin. He held out a big white hand.
“Mrs. Landis,” he said, in a crisp voice of an accent and finish strange to the girl “I wonder if you and your husband can put me up for the night. I’m Frank Holliwell. I’m on a round of parish visits, and, as my parish is about sixty miles square, my poor old pony has gone lame. I know you are not my parishioners, though, no doubt, you should be, but I’m going to lay claim to your hospitality, for all that, if I may?”
Joan had moved her rake into the grasp of her left hand and had taken the proffered palm into her other, all warm and fragrantly stained.
“You’re the new sin-buster, ain’t you?” she asked gravely.
The young man opened his blue and friendly eyes.
“Oh, that’s what I am, eh? That’s a new one to me. Yes. I suppose I am. It’s rather a fine name to go by—sin-buster,” and he laughed very low and very amusedly.
Joan looked him over and slowly smiled. “You look like you could bust anything you’d a mind to,” she said, and led the way toward the house, her rake across her shoulder.