West followed Mauchacho in silence and only spoke when they reached the Nedreau ranch. He hurried forward to help the girl dismount, but she scorned his assistance and sprang lightly to the ground.
“Did you—did you kill him?” she demanded, pushing up her hair with an angry gesture.
“Yes—I had to,” he replied, looking into her eyes with decisive determination.
Just then an old Indian with his squaw came into view. West accosted them, and by numerous gestures and gutteral sounds explained that down under the willows, near the creek, they would find “heap muck-a-muck.”
Bess became deeply interested in the ambiguous and incoherent conversation; saw their stoic faces assuming a happy and expectant expression as their benefactor impressed upon them the fact that a supply of fresh beef was at their command. Before West had fairly finished explaining to them, they had started their old, wobbly cayuses into their swiftest paces, to reach the treasure before some other hungry “Injun” had discovered the prize.
When West again looked at Bess she could not resist a smile, and remarked that at least some one would enjoy the spoils.
The man was greatly relieved at the restoration of her good humor, and when they joined James he informed them that in a few minutes all could have something to eat, even the horses.
“I hope it won’t be beef,” suggested Bess. “I should think that you two would never dare to look a cow in the face again.”
While at dinner James told his companions a story which was positively authentic. He remembered how, one day when he was about fifteen years of age, several of the grades, where he was attending school, met for the purpose of giving jointly a Longfellow programme. Everything went along smoothly and beautifully, and presently he heard his teacher announce that Miss Emma Lane would recite The Wreck of the Hesperus. He laughed now as he recalled how his heart thumped when the idol of his youthful dreams arose and walked nervously to the rostrum. In his swift yet ardent gaze at the object of his adoration, all he remembered seeing was a beautiful pink bow tucked snugly under a soft, generous chin, and two hands, fingering franticly at either side of her freshly laundered white dress. He did not dare look again for he felt himself too sympathetically nervous. Then he heard a tentative, quavering voice begin—“It was the schooner,”—a pause, a gulp, and again, “It was the schooner,” etc., and this time the Hesperus was fairly and swiftly launched with the skipper and his little daughter aboard. On sailed the craft and on sailed Emmie (“as I called her,” James explained), both rising and falling with the angry sea and rolling waves. With her ever-increasing confidence he felt his own courage returning, and presently he gazed with mouth wide open at the fair and fat girl on the platform. Oh, the joy he felt that she was his. If he could meet her on the way from school that afternoon he believed he would tell her how he loved her and thus relieve his overburdened heart. She, so simple, so fair, so plump (if a trifle too short), and withal so very modest! He did not hear a word now of the recitation, so engrossed was he in the living poem before him. But, as she made a frantic, sweeping gesture, he came back to earth with a thud as he heard: