The two men went into the cabin. An hour later they reappeared, accompanied by the girl. Wilfred was still seated obediently on the rock, but at sight of them he rose with a gay laugh and advanced.
"Come over here in the shade," Willock called, as he strode toward a grassy bank that sloped up to a line of three cedar trees of interlocked branches. "Come over here and know her. This is our gal."
Lahoma looked at the young man with grave interest, taking note of his garments and movements as she might have examined the skin and actions of some unknown animal. Bill Atkins also watched him, but with suspicious eye, as if anticipating a sudden spring on his ward.
"Set down," said Willock, sinking on the grass. "The last man up is the biggest fool in Texas!"
Lahoma and Wilfred instantly dropped as if shot, at the same time breaking into unexpected laughter that caused Willock's beard to quiver sympathetically. Bill Atkins, sour and unresponsive, stood as stiffly erect as possible, aided no little in this obstinate attitude by the natural unelasticity of age.
The young man exclaimed boyishly, still smiling at the girl, "We're friends already, because we've laughed together."
"Yes," cried Lahoma, "and Brick is in it, too. That's best of all."
"I ain't in it," cried Bill Atkins so fiercely that the young man was somewhat discomposed.
"Now, Bill," exclaimed the girl reprovingly, "you sit right down by my side and do this thing right." She explained to the young man, "Bill Atkins has been higher up than Brick, and he knows forms and ceremonies, but he despises to act up to what he knows. Sit right down, Bill, and make the move." There was something so unusual in the attitude of the blooming young girl toward the weather-beaten, forbidding-looking man, something so authoritative and at the same time so protecting, at once the air of a superior who commands and who shelters from the tyranny of others—that Wilfred was both amused and touched.
"Yes, Bill," said Willock, "make the move. Make 'em know each other."
"This is Miss Lahoma Willock," growled Bill; "and this"—waving at the young man disparagingly—"SAYS he is Wilfred Compton. Know each other!"
"I'm glad to know you," Lahoma declared frankly. "It's mighty lucky you came this way, for, you see, I just live here in the cove and never touch the big world. I believe you know a thousand things about the world that we ain't never dreamed of—"
"That we have never dreamed of," corrected Bill Atkins.
"—That we have never dreamed of," resumed Lahoma meekly; "and that's what I would like to hear about. I expect to go out in the big world and be a part of it, when I am older, when I know how to protect myself, Brick says. I'm just a little girl now, if I do look so big; I'm only fifteen, but when I am of age I'm going out into the big world; so that's why I'm glad to know you, to use you like a kind of dictionary. Are you coming back here again?"
"I hope so!" he exclaimed fervently.
"And so do I. In my cabin I have a long list of things written down in my tablet that I'd like to know about; questions that come to me as I sit looking over the hill into the sky, things Brick doesn't know, and not even Bill Atkins. You going to tell me them there things?"
Bill interposed: "Will you kindly tell me those things?"
"Will you kindly tell me those things?" Lahoma put the revised question as calmly as if she had not suffered correction.
"You see how it is, son," Willock remarked regretfully; "Lahoma keeps pretty close to me, and I'm always a-leading her along the wrong trails, not having laid out an extensive education when I was planning the grounds I calculated to live in. When I got anything to say, I just follows the easiest way, knowing I'll get to the end of it if I talk constant. People in the big world ain't no more natural in talking than in anything else. They builds up fences and arbitrary walls, and is careful to stay right in the middle of the beaten path, and I'm all time keeping Bill busy at putting up the bars after me, so Lahoma will go straight."
"So that's why I'm glad to know you," Lahoma said gravely. "But why did you want to know ME?" She fastened on him her luminous brown eyes, with red lips parted, awaiting the clearing up of this mystery.
Wilfred preserved a solemn countenance, "I've been awfully lonesome, Lahoma, the last two years because, up to that time, I'd lived in a city with friends all about town and no end of gay times—and these last two years, I've been in the terrible desert. You are the first girl I've seen that reminded me of home; when I saw you and knew you were my kind, the way you held yourself and the smile in your eyes—"
Bill interposed: "Don't you forget that binding, young man!"
"Of course not. But I don't know how to tell just what it means to me to be with her—with all of you, I mean—but her especially, because—well, I had so many friends among the girls, back home and—and— It's no use trying to explain; if you've known the horrible lonesomeness of the plains you already understand, and if you don't..."
"I know what you mean," Willock remarked, with a reminiscent sigh.
"Let it not be put in words," Bill persisted. "If a thing can't be expressed, words only mislead. I never knew any good to come of talking about smiles in eyes. There's nothing to it but misleading words."
"Go on, Lahoma," said Willock encouragingly, "we're both staying with you, to see that you come out of this with flying colors. Just go ahead."
"I want to ask you all about yourself," remarked Lahoma thoughtfully, "because I can see from your face, and the way you talk, that you're a real sample of the big world. If I tell you all about myself, will you do the same?"
Wilfred promised, and Lahoma entered on the history of her childhood. Wilfred looked and listened joyously, conscious of the unusual scene, alive to the subtle charm of her fearless eyes, her unreserved confidences, the melting harmony of her musical tones. To be sure, she was only a child, but he saw already the promise of the woman. The petals as yet were closed, but the faint sweet fragrance was already astir. He found, too, that in her nature was already developed something not akin to youth, something impersonal, having nothing to do with one's number of years—like the breath of experience, or the ancient freshness of a new day. It was born of the mountains and nourished in the solitude of the plains.
How different the girls of fifteen or sixteen such as he had known in the city or in sophisticated villages in the East! Lahoma had not been so engrossed by trivial activities of exacting days that she had lacked time for thought. Her housekeeping cares were few and devoid of routine, leaving most of the hours of each day for reading, for day-dreaming, for absorbed meditation. Somehow the dreams seemed to linger in, her voice, to hover upon her brow, to form a part of her; and the longings of those dreams were half-veiled in her eyes, looking out shyly as if afraid of wounding her guardians by full revelation. She wanted to meet life, to take a place in the world—but what would then become of Willock and Bill?
"Bill used to live seven miles away at the mountain with the precipice," she went on, after she had told about the wonderful window. "But it was too far off. When he got to know me, it tired him, walking this far twice a day, morning and night,—didn't it, Bill! So at last Brick and Bill decided to cut some cedars from the mountain and make me a cabin,—they took the dugout to sleep in. There are two rooms in the cabin, one, the kitchen where we eat—and the other, my parlor where I sleep. Some time you shall visit me in the cabin, if Brick and Bill are willing. They made it for me, so I couldn't ask anybody in, unless they said so."
"We aren't far enough along," observed Bill, "to be shut up together under a roof."
"I'd like to have you visit my parlor," Lahoma said somewhat wistfully. "I'd like to show you all my books—they were Bill's when we first met him, but since then he's given me everything he's got, haven't you, old Bill!" Lahoma leaned over and patted the unyielding shoulder.
Bill stared moodily at the top of the mountain as if in a gloomy trance, but Wilfred fancied he moved that honored shoulder a trifle nearer the girl.
She resumed, her face glowing with sudden rapture: "There are six books—half a dozen! Maybe you've heard of some of them. Bill's read 'em over lots of times. He begins with the first on the shelf and when he's through the row, he just takes 'em up, all over again. I like to read parts of them—the interesting parts. This is the way they stand on the shelf: The Children of the Abbey—that's Bill's favorite; The Scottish Chiefs, David Copperfield, The Talisman, The Prairie, The Last of the Mohicans."
"I like The Children of the Abbey best, too," observed Brick Willock thoughtfully. "Lahoma, she's read 'em all to me; that's the way we get through the winter months. They's something softening and enriching about that there Children of the Abbey; and Scottish Chiefs has got some mighty high work in it, too. I tells Lahoma that I guess them two books is just about as near the real thing out in the big world as you can get. David Copperfield is sort of slow; I've went with people that knowed a powerful sight more than them characters in David. I used to drift about with a bunch of fellows that Uriah Heep couldn't have stood up against for five minutes. The Talisman is noble doings, too, but not up-to-date. As for The Prairie and The Last of the Mohicans, them is dissatisfying books,—they make you think, being as you lives in just such quarters, interesting things might happen most any minute—and they never does."
"Why, Brick!" Lahoma reproached him. "THIS has happened—" she nodded at Wilfred Compton. "Don't you call that interesting?"
"That's the way I discusses them books," returned Willock with manifest satisfaction. "I wasn't never no man to be overawed by no book, which, however high and by whoever wrote, ain't no more like life than a shadow in a pool. Try to grab that shadow, and where is it? Just to go out after game and climb the mountains all day and come home of an evening to sit down to a plate of bacon and eggs, and another of the same, with coffee smoking on the little stove, and Lahoma urging on the feast—that's more of real living than you'd get out of a big library. Ain't it, Bill?"
"Now WE want to talk, Brick," interposed Lahoma—"don't we, Wilfred?"
"So your cabin was built," Wilfred prompted her, "and the men took the dugout."
"Yes—and then, oh! the most wonderful thing happened: a family settled in the arm of the mountain at the west end—a family that had a woman and a baby in it—a sure-enough woman with a sweet face and of a high grade though worked down pretty level what from hardships—and a baby that laughed, just laughed whenever he saw me coming in the dugout—and I was over there every day. And that's how I got to be like a woman, and know how to dress, and how to meet strangers without being scared, and preside at table, and use language like this. Other settlers began coming into Greer, but they were far away, and Brick and Bill don't like folks, so they stayed shut up pretty close. But for three years I had the mother and her baby to show me how to be a woman. Then came the soldiers. Brick thinks a big cattle-king stood in with Congress, and he got the soldiers sent here to drive out all the settlers because they were beginning to farm the land instead of letting it grow wild for the cattle. Anyway, all the settlers were driven out of the country—and it's been four years since I lost my only friends in the world—except Brick and Bill. What makes me and Brick and Bill mad is, that the soldiers didn't have any right to drive out the settlers, because Texas claims this country, and so does the United States, but it's never been settled."
"But they didn't drive YOU out," Wilfred remarked inquiringly.
"You see," Brick explained simply, "we didn't want to go."
"It nearly broke Mrs. Featherby's heart to have to leave," Lahoma added, "for they'd got a good stand of wheat and I think she liked me 'most as well as I liked her. But Mr. Featherby came from Ohio, and he had respect to the government, so when the soldiers said 'Go,' he pulled up stakes."
"We ain't got no respect to nothing," Brick explained, "that stands in the way of doing what we're a mind to. The soldiers come to force us out, but they changed their minds. I reckon they knew they hadn't no morality on their side. Sure thing, they knowed they had but very little safety, whilst occupying their position. None was left but us in this country till you cattlemen come monopolizing Heaven and earth. Knowing we got just as much right to this cove as Uncle Sam himself, we expect to stay here at anchor till Lahoma steams out into the big world with sails spread. She expects to tug us along behind her—but I don't know, I'm afraid we'd draw heavy. Until that time comes, however, we 'lows to lay to, in this harbor. We feels sheltered. Nothing ain't more sheltering than knowing you have a moral right and a dependable gun."
"So that's about all," Lahoma went on. "These past four years, we've just been to ourselves, with a long journey once a year to the settlements; and all the time I had those sweet thoughts to dream over, about the little family that used to live in the west mountain. And I've tried to do like Mrs. Featherby used to do, and be like she was, and if I can make as fine a woman I needn't ask any more. She'd been to Europe, too, and she'd taught school in New England. Bill Atkins is higher up than Brick—Bill used to know Kit Carson and all those famous pioneers, and he's been most everywhere—except in settled places. When a boy he saw Sam Houston and ate with him, and he has heard David Crockett with his own ears—has heard him say 'Be sure you're right, then go ahead,' that's how far BILL has been. But it sort of hurt Brick's neck, and even Bill's, to look up high enough to see where Mrs. Featherby had risen. She was like you—right out of the big world. She came out here because the family was awful poor. Is that why you left the big world?"
Wilfred shook his head. "I'm poor enough," he said, "but it wasn't that. It was a girl."
Brick Willock explained, "He's got a sweetheart; he's been carrying her letters for about two years. He's done spoke for, Lahoma, staked out, as a fellow might say, and squatted on."
Lahoma looked at him in breathless interest. "A girl out in the big world? Completely civilized, I reckon! Was she as old as I am?"
"Why, honey!" Brick exclaimed uneasily, "YOU ain't got no age at all, to speak of! What are you but a mere child? This young man is talking about them as has got up to be old enough to think of sweethearting—something respectable in YEARS."
"And how old does a sweetheart have to be?" demanded Lahoma with some displeasure. "I feel old enough for anything, and Wilfred doesn't look any older than the knight standing guard in THE TALISMAN. Besides, look at David Copperfield and Little Em'ly."
"That was child's work," retorted Brick.
"I was afraid of this," growled Bill Atkins restlessly.
Wilfred laughed out. "Don't worry. My eastern girl is at least nineteen years old, and so thoroughly civilized that she thinks this part of the world is still overrun with Indians and buffaloes. She wouldn't live out here for a fortune, and she wouldn't marry a man back East without one—that's why I'm here. I didn't have the fortune."
"Does she LOVE you, Wilfred?" Her voice was so soft, her eyes were so big, that Bill uttered a smothered groan, and even Brick sat up.
"She did the last time I saw her—can't say how she feels now; that's been about two years ago." He spoke lightly; but gazing into the wonderful depths of Lahoma's eyes, he felt a queer sensation like a lost heart-beat.
"Did she send you here as a kind of test?"
"Oh, no, she told me good-by and we parted forever. Both of us were poor,—you can't live in the city if you're poor; you can BE poor there, but not LIVE. By this time she's found some one with property, I dare say—she's tremendously handsome and accomplished, and has a very distinguished-looking mother and they have friends in society—she'll make it all right, no doubt." His voice was matter-of-fact even to indifference; but for all that, he seemed to be deeply inhaling Lahoma's freshness of morning-rose sparkling with dew.
"Does it pierce your heart to think of her marrying somebody else?" Her voice was sweet with the dream-passion of a young girl.
"When I left home, I flung myself into the life of a cow-puncher and did all I could to keep from thinking. So my heart's rather callous by this time. I don't seem to mind like I thought I would if I should sit down to think about it. That's what I've avoided like the plague—sitting down to think about it. But I believe I could sit down and think about it now, pretty calmly."
"Then that's what I'd do," Lahoma cried. "I'd just face it. She isn't worthy of you if she'd rather have a fortune than the man she loves. I'd just sit down and face it."
"I will!" He had never before thought it could be easy. It seemed very easy, now.
"Maybe I could help you," Lahoma suggested earnestly. "When Mrs. Featherby lived near, I asked her all about such cases and got her advice and experience. Change of scene and time are the greatest remedies. You've had both. Then you must tell yourself that she isn't worthy. And then you'll remind yourself that there are OTHER girls in the world. Then you keep your mind occupied,—that is a great thing. If you come to the cove to visit us, we will try to occupy your mind—won't we Brick?—and Bill?"
Bill looked at Wilfred glumly. "It's too occupied now, I'm afraid."
"Bill, this is a-growing on you," Brick expostulated. "I like the young chap first rate. He's open and free. Bill, you are hampering, at times. I would go to my dugout if I was you, and cool my head."
"Your head'll be hot enough," growled Bill, "when this has gone too far."
Lahoma opened her eyes wide. "What do you mean?" she demanded, sincerely perplexed.
"Bill," cried Brick warningly, "you're a-going to start up a fire where they ain't even been no kindling laid."
Wilfred rose hastily. "I should like dearly to come, and come often," he exclaimed, "but I couldn't force myself where I'm not wanted."
"In that case," remarked Bill inflexibly, "you're seeing me for the last time, and may look your fill!"
Wilfred smiled at him tolerantly and turned to Willock. "I ought to go to my work, Brick. I won't try to explain what this hour has meant to me for I believe you understand. I'm like a man crossing the desert who finds a spring and gets enough water to last him till the next oasis."
He held out his hand to Lahoma who had risen swiftly at these signs of departure. "God bless you, little girl!" he said cheerily. "A man's fortunate who finds such oases along his desert-trail!"
It was not Bill's gruffness, but Lahoma's charm that warned him to flee lest he break his promise to her guardians.
"But you can't go, yet," cried Lahoma, not taking his hand, "there are a thousand things I want to do with you that I've never had a chance to do with anybody else—strolling, for instance. Come and stroll—I'll show you about the cove. Brick and Bill don't know anything about strolling as they do in pictures. Hold out your arm with a crook in it and I'll slip my hand just inside where you'll hold it soft and warm like a bird in its nest.... Isn't his noble? And I holds back—excuse me—I HOLD back my skirts with my other hand, and this is the way we stroll, like an engraving out of the history of Louis the Fourteenth's court. Do, oh, do!" Her bright eyes glowed into his like beckoning stars.
"We stroll," he gravely announced, responding to the pressure of her fingers, but at the same time feeling somewhat guilty as Bill rolled his eyes fearfully at Brick.
When they were a few yards from the trees Lahoma whispered, "Make for the other side of Turtle Hill. I want to feel grown up when I do my strolling, but I'm nothing but a little barefooted kid when Brick and Bill are looking at me!"
Hidden by the shoulder of the granite hill island she stopped, withdrew her hand, and stood very straight as she said, with breathless eagerness, "Answer me quick! Wilfred: ain't I old enough to be a sweetheart?"
"Oh, Lahoma," he protested warmly, "please don't think of it. Don't be anybody's until—until I say the word. You couldn't understand such matters, dear, you wouldn't know the—the proper time. I'll tell you when the time comes."
She looked at him keenly. "Am I to wait for a time, or for a person? I wish you'd never met that girl back East I think you'd have filled the bill for me, because, having always lived here in the mountains, I've not learned to be particular. Not but what I've seen lots of trappers and squatters in my day, but I never wanted to stroll with them. I don't see why that eastern girl ever turned you loose from her trap. I think a man's a very wonderful thing; especially a young man—don't you, Wilfred?"
"Not half so wonderful as you, Lahoma." His voice vibrated with sudden intensity. "There's your wonderful hair, like light shining through a brown veil ... and your eyes where your soul keeps her lights flashing when all the rest of you is in twilight ... and your hands and feet, four faithful little guides to the wonderful treasures that belong only to maidenhood ... and your mouth, changing with your thoughts—an adorable little thermometer, showing how high the smiles have risen in your heart; a mouth so pure and sweet—"
"Hey!" shouted Bill Atkins, as he and Brick came around the angle of the hill. "Hi, there! You may call that strolling, but if so, it's because you don't know its true name, if you ask ME!"
Wilfred came to himself with a sharp indrawing of his breath. "Yes," he stammered, somewhat dizzily, "Yes, I—I must be going, now."
She held his hand beseechingly. "But you'll come again, won't you? When I hold your hand, it's like grabbing at a bit of the big world."
"No, Lahoma, I'm not coming again." His look was long and steady, showing sudden purpose which concealed regret beneath a frank smile of liking.
She still held his hand, her brown eyes large with entreaty. "You WILL come again, Wilfred! You must come again! Don't mind Bill. I'll have a talk with him after you're gone. I'll send him over to the ranch after you. Just say you'll come again if I send for you."
"Of course he'll come, honey," said Brick, melted by the tears that sounded in her voice. "He won't get huffy over a foolish old codger like Bill Atkins. Of course he'll come again and tell you about street-cars and lamp-posts. Let him go to his work now, he's been up all night, just to get a word with you. Let him go—he'll come back tomorrow, I know."
Wilfred turned to Brick and looked into his eyes as he slowly released Lahoma's hand.
"Oh!" said Brick, considerably disconcerted. "No, I reckon he won't come back, honey—yes, I guess he'll be busy the rest of the summer. Well, son, put 'er there—shake! I like you fine, just fine, and as you can't come here to see us no more, being so busy and—and otherwise elsewhere bound—I'm kinder sorry to see you go."
"Partings," said Bill, somewhat mollified, "are painful but necessary, else there wouldn't be any occasion for dentists' chairs."
"That's so," Brick agreed. "You called Lahoma an oasis. And what is an oasis? Something you come up to, and go away from, and that's the end of the story. You don't settle down and live at a spring just because it give you a drink when you was thirsty. A man goes on his way rejoicing, and Wilfred according."
Lahoma walked up to Wilfred with steady eyes. "Are you coming back to see me?" she asked gravely.
"No, Lahoma. At least not for a long, long time. I don't believe it's good for me to forget the life I've chosen, even for a happy hour. When I left the city, it was to drop out of the world—nobody knows what became of me, not even my brother. You've brought everything back, and that isn't good for my peace of mind and so—good-bye!"
Tall and straight he stood, like a soldier whose duty it is to face defeat; and standing thus, he fastened his eyes upon her face as if to stamp those features in a last long look upon his heart.
"Good-by," said Lahoma; this time she did not hold out her hand. Her face was composed, her voice quiet. If in her eyes there was the look of one who has been rebuffed; her pride was too great to permit a show of pain.
Wilfred hesitated. But what was to be done? Solitude and homesickness had perhaps distorted his vision; at any rate he had succumbed to the folly against which he had been warned. He could not accept Lahoma as a mere child; and though, during the scene, he had repeatedly reminded himself that she was only fifteen, her face, her voice, her form, her manner of thought, refused the limits of childhood. Therefore he went away, outwardly well-content with his morning, but inwardly full of wrath that his heart had refused the guidance of his mind.
And she had been so simple, so eager to meet him on an equal plane, even clinging to him as to the only hope in her narrow world that might draw her out into deeper currents of knowledge.
"I've always been a fool," he muttered savagely, as he sought his horse. "I was a fool about Annabel—and now I'm too big a fool to enjoy what fortune has fairly flung in my path." Presently he began to laugh—it was all so ridiculous, beating a retreat because he could not regard a fifteen-year-old girl as a little child! He drew several time-worn letters from his pocket and tore them into small bits that fluttered away like snowflakes on the wind. He had no longer a sentimental interest in them, at all events.
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