“Tain’t food, Mum,” retorted the boy urgently, as he gazed into the steam-filled room. “It’s a feller, a great big feller, bigger than Usak, comin’ right along. What’ll I do? Tain’t any use tryin’ to ‘shoo’ him. He’s too big fer that. Guess it wouldn’t be any use Mary ‘shooin’’ him either. I—”
Hesther ran to the doorway. She stood framed in it, her thin, bare arms folded across her spare bosom. It was an attitude that might have suggested defiance. But at that moment there was only a deepening panic surging in her mother heart.
And standing there she beheld the approach of a man of unusual stature. He was clad in trail-stained, hard clothing that by no means helped his appearance. His buckskin coat was open, and under it was revealed a plain cotton shirt that gaped wide at the neck, about which was knotted a coloured scarf. His dark hair hung loose below his low-pressed cap. But these things passed unnoticed. For the woman was concerned only with the face of the man, and the thing she was trying to read there. As he came up he removed his cap and stood bareheaded before her. And he smiled down into her troubled, inquiring face out of a pair of grey eyes that never wavered for a moment.
“I guessed I’d best come right along down at once, mam,” he said in easy, pleasant tones. “We pulled in up the river last night And seeing things are kind of lonesome about here, and we’re a biggish outfit of strangers such as maybe you weren’t guessing to see about, I felt it might get you worried. Well, I just want to make it so you don’t feel that way. We’re a gold outfit figgering to prospect this river, and I’m running it. My name’s Bill Wilder. It won’t tell you a thing, I fancy. But I want to say right here that just so long as we’re around ther’s not a feller in my bunch that’s going to worry you or yours without getting a broken neck from me. That’s all I came along to pass you. You see, mam, it’s a queer country full of queer folk, and I sort of fancied making things easy for you.”
The woman in Hesther was deeply stirred. The man’s whole attitude was one of simple respect and kindliness. There was no mistaking it, and her favourable judgment of him was as instantaneous and headlong as had been her panic of the moment before. It was the voice, the clear smiling eyes of this whiteman stranger that claimed her ready confidence. For she was a woman whose simplicity of heart dictated at all times.
“Why, say, now, that’s real kind of you, sir,” she replied beaming with genuine relief. “It surely is a rough country for a lone woman with a bunch of God’s Blessings around her.” Then she moved back into the house with an air of removing the hurriedly set up defences of her home, and turned to Mary Justicia, while the other children gawked at the stranger. “You’ll set another platter, girl. I guess Mr. Wilder’ll take hash with us, if he ain’t scared to death eating with a bunch of kids with the manners of low-grade Injuns.” Then she smiled apologetically at the man with his powerful shoulders and great height. “You see, it’s wash-day with us, sir,” she went on, “an’ it ’ud take a wise feller to rec’nise our kitchen from a spring fog. But the ducks have been shot four days by the Kid, an’ I reckon they’ll eat as tender as Thanksgiving turkey. Will you step right in an’—welcome?”
The cordiality of the little woman’s invitation was irresistible. But Wilder shook his head in partial denial. Her reference to “the Kid” had changed his original intention of complete refusal.
“Mam,” he said, “ordinarily I’d be mighty glad to take that food with you all. But I guess I need to get back to camp in awhile. You see, we only pulled in last night at sundown, and ther’s a deal needs fixing when you’re runnin’ a bunch of tough-skinned gold men. But I’d be glad to step in and yarn some if wash-day permits.”
Wilder’s reputation amongst the men of his craft was that of scrupulous straight dealing and honesty for all he was an astute man of affairs in the business in which they trafficked. They knew him for a man who never needed to sign when his word was given. Beyond that they knew little of the real man. Amongst those whom he counted as friends there was an infinitely warmer side to the man. They saw the native simplicity and kindliness which he usually kept closely hidden under a harder surface. But, somehow, the real man was reserved for the eyes of such women as he encountered. His chivalry for the sex was innate. It was no make-believe veneer. To him it mattered nothing if a woman were plain or beautiful, old or young. Even her morals had no power to influence his attitude. A woman, with all her faults and virtues, was just the most sacred creature that walked the earth. Good, bad, or in a category between the two, she left the mundane gods of daily life nothing comparable in their claim upon him.