"That's the program. I'm going to civilize you—that means to make you like white folks. It's going to take time, but the mountains is full of time."

"You 'civilize' me right now?— You begin today?" She started up and stood erect with arms folded, evidently waiting for treatment.

"The process will be going on all the while you're associating with me, honey. That chief, Red Feather—he has a daughter, hasn't he?"

"No; him say no girl, no boy." She spoke with confidence.

"I see. And your father's dead too, eh?" Evidently Red Feather had thoroughly convinced her of the truth of these pretenses.

"Both—mother, father. Nobody but me." She knelt down at his side, her face troubled. "If I had just one!"

"Can you remember either of them?"

"Oh, yes, yes—and Red Feather, him talk about them, talk, talk, always say me be white with the white people some day. This is the day. You make me like mother was. You civilize me—begin!" She regarded him with dignified attention, her little hands locked about her blanket where it lay folded below her knees. The cloud had vanished from her face and her eyes sparkled with expectancy.

"I ain't got the tools yet, honey. They's no breaking up and enriching land that ain't never bore nothing but buffalo-grass, without I have picks and spades and plows and harrers. I got to get my tools, to begin."

She stiffened herself. "You needn't be afraid I'll cry. I WANT you to hurt me, if that the way."

"It ain't like a pain in the stomach, Lahoma. All I gets for you will be some books. Them is the tools I'm going to operate with."

"Books? What are books?"

"Books?" Willock rubbed his bushy head in desperation. "Books? Why, they is just thoughts that somebody has ketched and put in a cage where they can't get away. You go and look at them thoughts somebody capable has give rise to, and when you finds them as has never ranged in your own brain, you captures 'em, puts your brand on 'em, and serves 'em out in your own herd. You see, Lahoma, what you think in your own brain ain't of no service, for YOU don't know nothing. If you want to be civilized, you got to lasso other people's thoughts—people as has went to and fro and has learned life—and you got to dehorn them ideas, and tame 'em."

Lahoma examined him with new interest. "Are YOU civilized?" Her countenance fell.

"Not to no wide extent, but I can ford toler'ble deep streams that would drown you, honey. Just put confidence in me, and when I get over my head, I'll holler for help. I judge I can put five good years' work on you without exhausting my stores. I can read amongst the small words pretty peart—the young calves, so to say—and lots of them big steers in three or four syllables,—I can sort o' guess at their road-brands from the company I've saw 'em traveling with, in times past. And I can write my own name, and yours too, I reckon.—Lahoma Gledware—yes, I'm toler'ble well versed on a capital 'G'—you just make a gap with a flying tail to it."

"My name NOT Lahoma Gledware," she interposed in some severity. "My name, Lahoma Willock. Beautiful name—lovely, like flower—Willock; call me Lahoma Willock—like song of little stream. Gledware, hard—rough."

Brick Willock stared at her in amazement. "Where'd you get that from?"

"My name Lahoma Willock—Red Feather tell me."

He smoked in silence, puffing rapidly. Then—"My name is Brick Willock. How came you to be named Lahoma Willock?"

Lahoma suggested thoughtfully—"All white people named Willock?"

"There's a few," Willock shook his head, "with less agreeable names. But after all, I'm glad you have my name. Yes—the more I think on it, the more pleased I get. I reckon we're sort of kinfolks, anyhow. Well, honey, this is enough talk about being civilized; now let's make the first move on the way. You want to see your mother's grave, and lay some of these wild flowers on it. That's a part of being civilized, caring for graves is. It's just savages as forgets the past and consequently never learns nothing. Come along. Them moccasins will do famous until I can get you shoes from the settlements. It's seventy mile to Vernon, Texas, and none too easy miles. But I got a pony the first time I ventured to Doan's store, and it'll carry you, if I have to walk at your side. We'll make a festibul march of that journey, and lay in clothes as a girl should wear, and books to last through the winter."

Willock rose and explained that they must cross the mountain. As they traversed it, he reminded her that she had not gathered any of the flowers that were scattered under sheltering boulders.

"Why?" asked Lahoma, showing that her neglect to do so was intentional.

"Well, honey, don't you love and honor that mother that bore so much pain and trouble for you, traveling with you in her arms to the Oklahoma country, trying to make a home for you up there in the wilderness, and at last dying from the hardships of the plains. Ain't she worth a few flowers."

"She dead. She not see flowers, not smell flowers, not know."

Willock said nothing, but the next time they came to a clump of blossoms he made a nosegay. Lahoma watched him with a face as calm and unemotional as that of Red Feather, himself. She held her back with the erect grace and moved her limbs with the swift ease of those among whom she had passed the last two years. In delightful harmony with this air of wildness was the rich and delicate beauty of her sun-browned face, and the golden glow of her silken brown hair. Willock's heart yearned toward her as only the heart of one destined to profound loneliness can yearn toward the exquisite grace and unconscious charm of a child; but to the degree that he felt this attraction, he held himself firmly aloof, knowing that wild animals are frightened when kindness beams without its veil.

"What you do with that?" She pointed at the flowers in his rough hand.

"I'm going to put 'em on your mother's grave."

"She not know. Not see, not smell. She dead, mother dead."

"Lahoma, do you know anything about God?"

"Yes—Great Spirit. God make my path white."

"Well, I want God to know that somebody remembers your mother. It's God that smells the flowers on the graves of the dead."

They walked on. Pretty soon Lahoma began looking about for flowers, but they had reached the last barren ledge, and no more came in sight.

"Take these, Lahoma."

"No. Couldn't fool God." They began the last descent. Willock suddenly discovered that tears were slipping down the girl's face. He said nothing; he did not fear, now, for he thought the tears promised a brighter dawning.

Suddenly Lahoma cried joyfully, "Oh, look, Brick, look!" And she darted toward the spot at the foot of a tall cedar, where purple and white blossoms showed in profusion. She gathered an armful, and they went down to the plain.

"Her head's toward the west," he said, as they stood beside the pile of stones. Lahoma placed the flowers at the Western margin of the pyramid. Willock laid his at the foot of the grave. The sun had set and the warmth of the heated sand was tempered by a fragrant breeze. Though late in October, he felt as if spring were just dawning. He took Lahoma's hand, and his heart throbbed to find that she showed no disposition to draw away.

He looked up with a great sigh of thanksgiving. "Well, God," he said softly, "here she is—You sure done it!"



CHAPTER VIII

GETTING CIVILIZED

During the two years passed by Brick Willock in dreary solitude, conditions about him had changed. The hardships of pioneer life which, fifty years ago, had obtained in the Middle States yet prevailed, in 1882, in the tract of land claimed by Texas under the name of Greer County; but the dangers of pioneer life were greatly lessened. As Lahoma made the acquaintance of the mountain-range, and explored the plain extending beyond the natural horseshoe, Willock believed she ran little danger from Indians. He, himself, had ceased to preserve his unrelaxing watchfulness; after all, it had been the highwaymen rather than the red men whom he had most feared—and after two years it did not seem likely that such volatile men would pre serve the feeling of vengeance.

With the wisdom derived from his experience with wild natures, he carefully abstained from any attempt to force Lahoma's friendship, hence it was not long before he obtained it without reserve. As she walked beside him, grave and alert, she no longer thought of his bushy beard and prodigious mop of harsh hair; and the daily exhibition of his strength caused him to grow handsome in her eyes because most of those feats were performed for her comfort or pleasure. In the meantime he talked incessantly, and to his admiration, he presently found her manner of speech wonderfully like his own, both fluent and ungrammatical.

He knew nothing of grammar, to be sure, but there were times when his mistakes, echoed from her lips, struck upon his ear, and though he might not always know how to correct them, he was prompt to suggest changes, testing each, as a natural musician judges music, by ear. Dissatisfied with his own standards, he was all the more impatient to depart on the expedition after mental tools, despite the dangers that might beset the journey.

His first task prompted by the coming of Lahoma, had been to partition off the half of the dugout containing the stove for the child's private chamber. Cedar posts set in the ground and plastered with mud higher than his head, left a space between the top and the apex of the ceiling that the temperature might be equalized in both rooms. Thus far, however, they did not stay in the dugout except long enough to eat and sleep, for the autumn had continued delightful, and the cove seemed to the child her home, of which the dugout was a sort of cellar. Concerning the stone retreat in the crevice she knew nothing. Willock did not know why he kept the secret, since he trusted Lahoma with all his treasures, but the unreasoning reticence of the man of great loneliness still rested on him. Some day, he would tell—but not just yet.

"Lahoma," he said one day, "there's a settler over yonder in the mountains across the south plain. How'd you like to pay him a visit?"

"I don't want anybody but you," said Lahoma promptly.

Willock stood on one leg, rubbing the other meditatively with his delighted foot. Not the quiver of a muscle, however, revealed the fact that her words had flooded his heart with sunshine. "Well, honey, that's in reason. But I've got to take you with me after books and winter supplies, and I don't like the idea of traveling alone. It come to me that I might get Mr. Settler to go, too. Time was not so long ago when Injun bands was coming and going, and although old Greer is beginning to be sprinkled up with settlers, here and there, I can't get over the feel of the old times. They ain't no sensation as sticks by a man when he's come to be wedged in between forty-five and fifty, as the feel of the old times."

"Well," said Lahoma earnestly, "I wish you'd leave me here when you go after them books. I don't want to be with no strangers, I want to just squat right here and bear myself company."

"That's in reason. But, honey, while you might be safe enough whilst bearing the same, I would be plumb crazy worrying about you. I might not have good cause for worrying, but worrying—it ain't no bird that spreads its wings and goes north when cold weather comes; worrying—it's independent of causes and seasons."

"If you have got to be stayed with to keep you from worrying, they ain't nothing more to be said."

"Just so. That there old settler, I have crossed a few words with him, and I believe he would do noble to travel with. He's as gruff and growly as a grizzly bear if you say a word to him, and if he'll just turn all that temper he's vented on me on to any strangers we may run up against on the trail, he'll do invaluable."

"I'll go catch up the pony," said Lahoma briefly, "for I see the thing is to be did. This will be the first visit I ever made in my life when I wasn't drug by the Injuns."

"You mustn't say 'drug,' honey, unless specifying medicines and herbs. I ain't saying you didn't get it from me, and knowing you do get from me all I got, is what makes me hone for them books. You must say 'dragged.' The Injuns DRAGGED you from one village to another." He paused meditatively, muttering the word to himself, while Lahoma ran away to catch the pony. When she came back, leading it by the mane, he said, "I've been a-weighing that word, Lahoma, and it don't seem to me that 'dragged' sounds proper. It don't seem no sort of word to use in a parlor. What do you think? DRAGGED! How does that strike you?"

"I don't like the sound of it, neither," said Lahoma, shaking her head. "I think DRUG is softer. It kinder melts in the ear, and DRAGGED sticks."

"Well, don't use neither one till I can find out." Presently he was swinging along across the plain toward the southwestern range while the girl kept close beside him on the pony. Their talk was incessant, voicing the soul of good comradeship, and but for the difference between heavy bass and fluty soprano, a listener might have supposed himself overhearing a conversation between two Brick Willocks.

There was nothing about the second range of the Wichita Mountains to distinguish it from the one farthest toward the northeast except a precipice at its extremity, rising a sheer three or four hundred feet above the level plain. Beyond this lofty termination, the mountain curved inward, leaving a wide grassy cove open toward the south; and within this half-circle was the settler's dugout.

The unprotected aspect of that little home was in itself an eloquent commentary on the wonderful changes that had come about during the last seventeen years. The oval tract of one million five hundred thousand acres lying between Red River and its fork, named Greer County, and claimed by Texas, was in miniature a reproduction of the early history of America. Until 1860 it had not even borne a name, and since then it had possessed no settled abodes. Here bands of Indians of various tribes had come and gone at will, and here the Indians of the Plains, after horrible deeds of depredation, massacre and reprisal, had found shelter among its mountains. The country lay at the southwest corner of Indian Territory for which the Indians had exchanged their lands in other parts of the United States on the guarantee that the government would "forever secure to them and their heirs the country so exchanged with them."

At the close of the Civil War the unhappy Indians long continued in a state of smoldering animosity, or warlike activity, tribe against tribe, band against band; they had inherited the rancor and bitterness of the White Man's war with neither the fruits of victory nor the dignity that attends honorable defeat. The reservations that belonged originally to the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole and Creek tribes, were reduced in area to make room for new tribes from Kansas, Colorado and other states, and the Indian wars resulted. For a time the scalp-knife was crimsoned, the stake was charred, bands stole in single file over mountains and among half-dried streams; troups of the regular army were assaulted by invisible foes, and forts were threatened. Youths who read romances of a hundred years ago dealing with the sudden war-cry, the flaming cabin, the stealthy approach of swarming savages, need have traveled only a few hundred miles to witness on the open page of life what seemed to them, in their long-settled states, fables of a dead past.

But though the Indian wars in the Territory had been bloody and vindictive, they had not been protracted as in the old days. Around the country of the red man was drawn closer and more securely, day by day, the girdle of civilization. Within its constricting grasp the spirit of savagery, if not crushed, was at least subdued. Tribes naked but for their blankets, unadorned save by the tattoo, found themselves pressed close to other tribes which, already civilized, had relinquished the chase for agricultural pursuits. Primeval men, breathing this quickened atmosphere of modernity, either grew more sophisticated, or perished like wild flowers brought too near the heat. It is true the plains were still unoccupied, but they had been captured—for the railroad had come, and the buffalo had vanished.

Brick Willock and the man he had come to see were very good types of the first settlers of the new country—one a highwayman, hiding from his kind, the other a trapper by occupation, trying to keep ahead of the pursuing waves of immigration. It was the first time Lahoma had seen Bill Atkins, and as she caught sight of him before his dugout, her eyes brightened with interest. He was a tall lank man of about sixty-five, with a huge gray mustache and bushy hair of iron-gray, but without a beard. The mustache gave him an effect of exceeding fierceness, and the deeply wrinkled forehead and square chin added their testimony to his ungracious disposition.

But Lahoma was not afraid of coyotes, catamounts or mountain-lions, and she was not afraid of Bill Atkins. Her eyes brightened at the discovery that he held in his hand that which Willock had described to her as a book.

"Does he read?", she asked Willock, breathlessly. "Does he read, Brick?"

Willock surveyed the seated figure gravely. "He reads!" he responded.

The man looked up, saw Willock and bent over his book—discovered Lahoma on the pony, and looked up again, unwillingly but definitely. "You never told me you had a little girl," he remarked gruffly.

"You never asked me," said Willock. "Get down, Lahoma, and make yourself at home."

The man shut his book. "What are you going to do?"

"Going to visit you. Turn the pony loose, Lahoma; he won't go far."

"Haven't you got all that north range to yourself?" Bill Atkins asked begrudgingly.

"Yap. How're you making it, Atkins?"

"Why, as long as I'm let alone, I'm making it all right. It's being let alone that I can't ever accomplish. When I was a boy I began my travels to keep out where I could breathe, and I've been crowded out of Missouri and Kansas and Colorado and Wyoming and California, and now I've come to the American Desert thinking I could die in peace, but oh, no, not ME! I no sooner get settled and made my turf dugout, than here comes a stranger—"

"Name of Brick Willock, if you've forgot," interpolated Willock genially. "I'll just light my pipe, as I reckon there's no objections. Lahoma don't care, and you can breathe all right if you keep with the wind from you."

The man turned his back upon Willock, opened his book and read.

Lahoma approached the block of wood that supported him, while Willock calmly stretched himself out on the grass. "Is that a book?" she asked, by way of opening up the conversation.

The man gripped it tighter and moved his lips busily. As she remained at his knee, he presently said, "Oh, no, it's a hand-organ!"

Lahoma smiled pityingly. "Are you afraid of me, Atkins?"

The man looked up with open mouth. "Not exactly, kid!" There was something in her face that made him lose interest in his book. He kept looking at her.

"Then why don't you tell the truth? WE won't hurt you."

The man opened his mouth and closed it. Then he said, "It's a book."

"Did you ever read it before?"

"This is the third time I've read it."

"Seems as it hasn't accomplished no good on you, as you still tell lies."

The man rose abruptly, and laid the book on the seat. His manner was quite as discouraging as it had been from the start.

"Honey," interposed Willock, "that ain't to say a lie, not a real lie."

"IS it a hand-organ?" Lahoma demanded sternly.

"In a manner of speaking, honey, it is a hand-organ in the sense of shutting you off from asking questions. You learn to distinguish the sauces of speech as you gets older. Out in the big world, people don't say this or that according as it is, they steeps their words in a sauce as suits the digestion. Don't be so quick to call 'LIES!' till you learns the flavor of a fellow's meaning, not by his words but by the sauce he steeps 'em in."

"Don't get mad at me," said Lahoma to the trapper. "I don't know nothing, never having captured and branded the thoughts that is caged up in books. But I want to be civilized and I am investigating according."

The trapper, somewhat conciliated, reseated himself. He regarded the girl with greater interest, not without a certain approval. "How comes it that you aren't civilized, living with such a knowing specimen as your own father?"

"My father's dead. Brick is my cousin, but I not knowing nothing of him till he saved my life two years ago and after that, me with the Indians and him all alone. Would you like to hear about it?"

"I wouldn't bother him, honey, with all that long story," interposed Willock, suddenly grown restive.

"Yes, tell me," said the trapper, moving over that she might find room on the block of wood beside him.

Lahoma seated herself eagerly and looking up into the other's face, which softened more and more under her fearless gaze, she said:

"We was crossing the plains—father, mother and me, in a big wagon. And men dressed up like Indians, they come whooping and shooting, and father turns around and drives with all his might—drives clear to yonder mountain. And mother dies, being that sick before, and the jolting too much for her. So father takes me on his horse and rides all night, and I all asleep. Well, those same men dressed like Indians, they was in a cabin 'way up north, and had put their wigs and feathers off and was gambling over what they stole from the other wagons. So father, he sees the light from the window and rides up with me. And they takes him for a spy and says they, in a voice awful fierce, just this way—'KILL 'EM BOTH!'"

The trapper gave a start at the explosiveness of her tone.

Lahoma shouted again, as harshly as she could, "'Kill 'em both,' says they." Then she turned to Willock. "Did I put them words in the correct sauce, Brick?"

"You done noble, honey."

Lahoma resumed: "Now it was in a manner of happening that Brick, he was riding around to have a look at the country, and when he rides up to the cabin, why, right outside there was me and father, and two of the robbers about to kill us. 'What are you devils up to?' says Brick. 'You go to hell,' says the leading man, 'that's where we're going to send this spy and his little girl,' says he; 'you go to hell and maybe you'll meet 'em there,' he says. And with that he ups and shoots at Brick, the bullet lifting his hat right off his head and scaring the horse out from under him, so he falls right there at the feet of them two robber-men, on his back. Brick, he never harmed nobody before in his life, but what was he to do? He might of let them kill him, but that would of left father and me in their grip, so he just grabs the gun out of the leading man's hand, as he hadn't ever carried a gun in his life his own self, and he shot both them robbers, him still laying there on his back—"

"No, honey, I got up about that time."

"Brick, you told me you was still laying there on your back just as you fell."

"Did I, honey, well, I reckon I was, then, for when I told you about it, it was more recent."

"It's awful interesting," the trapper remarked dryly.

"Yes, ain't it!" Lahoma glowed. "Then father jumped on one horse with me, and Brick put out on another, and when I woke up, the Indians were all everywhere, but Brick come here and lived all alone and nearly died because he didn't have me to comfort him. So the Indians took me and they killed father, and for two years I was moved from village to village till Red Feather brought me to Brick. And then we found out we are cousins and he is going to civilize me. Brick, he remembers about a cousin of his, Cousin Martha Willock, her sister went driving out to the Oklahoma country with her husband and little girl and wasn't never heard of. I am the little girl, all right, and Brick he's my second cousin. And wasn't it lucky Brick was riding around that night, looking at the country, when they was about to put daylight into me?"

"I'd think," remarked the trapper, "that he'd take you back to your Cousin Martha, for men-folks like him and me aren't placed to take care of women-folks."

"Yes, but he got a letter saying my Cousin Martha and all her family is done been swept away by a flood of the Mississippi River, and him and me is all they is left of the Willockses, so we got to stick together. Besides, you see, he killed them two robbers, and the rest of the gang is laying for him; Brick, he feels so dreadful, he never having so much as put a scratch to a man's face before, for he wouldn't never fight as a boy, his conscience wouldn't rest if he was in civilization. He'd go right up to the first policeman he met and say, 'I done the deed. Carry me to the pen!' he'd say, and then what would become of me?"

"He might get another letter from your Cousin Martha to help him out of the scrape."

Lahoma stared at him, unable to grasp the significance of these foolish words, and Brick, seeking a diversion, explained his purpose of taking Lahoma to the settlements after supplies, and proffered his petition that Bill Atkins accompany them.

Lahoma has never forgotten that expedition to the settlements. Along the Chisholm Trail marched Brick Willock and Bill Atkins, one full of genial philosophy, responsive to every sight and sound along the way, the other taciturn and uncompanionable, a being present in the flesh, but seemingly absent in the spirit. Behind them rode the girl, with unceasing interest in the broad hard-beaten trail—the only mark in that wilderness to tell them that others had passed that way. The men walked with deliberate but well-measured step, preserving a pace that carried them mile after mile seemingly with little weariness. Three times on the journey great herds of cattle were encountered on their way toward Kansas, and many were the looks of curiosity cast on the little girl sitting as straight as an Indian on her pony.

She was glad when a swinging cloud of dust announced the coming of thousands of steers, attended by cowboys, for it meant a glimpse into an unknown world, and the bellowing of cattle, the shouting of men and the cracking of whips stirred her blood. But she was glad, too, when the stream of life had flowed past, and she was left alone with Brick and Bill, for then the never-ending conversation with the former was resumed, picked up at the point where it had been dropped, or drawn forward from raveled bits of unfinished discourse of the day before, and though Bill Atkins said almost nothing and always looked straight ahead, he was, in a way, spice in the feast of her enjoyment.

When they stopped for their meals, they drew aside from the trail, if possible near some spring or river-bed in which pools of water lingered, but such stopping-places were far apart in the desert country. At night there was a cheerful bonfire, followed by zestful talk as they lay on the ground, before falling asleep in their tarpaulins—talk eagerly monopolized by Brick and Lahoma, and to which Atkins seemed in a manner to listen, perhaps warming his heart at the light of their comradeship even as they warmed their hands in the early morning at the breakfast fire. Atkins had brought with him one of his books, and at the noon hour's rest, and at evening beside the bonfire, he kept his nose buried in its pages.

Lahoma did not think life would have been too long to devote to such pilgrimages. In the settlements, she was bewildered, but never satiated, with novelties, and on the way back, everything she had seen was discussed, expounded and classified between her and her "cousin." Sometimes her questions drove Brick up against a stone wall and then Bill Atkins would raise his voice and in three or four words put the matter in its true light.

"Bill, he's saw more of life than me," Brick conceded admiringly. "He has come and went amongst all sorts of people, but my specialty has in the main been low."

"Yes, I've seen more of life," Atkins agreed; "that's why I try so hard to keep away from it."

"The more I see, the more I want to see!" cried Lahoma eagerly.

"Yes, honey," Brick explained, "that's because you're a WOMAN."

Once more back in the cove, Lahoma dreamed new dreams, peopling the grassy solitude with the figures she had encountered on her travels, likening the rocks to various houses that had caught her fancy. She turned with absorbed interest to the primer and elementary arithmetic with which Brick had supplied himself as the first tools for his mental kit.

The journey hack home had been far easier than the descent into Texas because both Willock and Atkins had supplied themselves with ponies,—animals that sold ridiculously cheap at the outlying posts of the settlements. Brick Willock brought back with him something else to add cheerfulness and usefulness to approaching winter. This was a square window-sash, set with four small panes of good glass. It was hard work to place this window in Lahoma's side of the dugout, but it was work thoroughly enjoyed. Lahoma's room was on the west, and from noon to sundown, the advantage of the window was a source of never-ending delight.

"Good thing we've got our window," Brick would say as they sat on the low rude bench before the little stove, and the furious wind of January howled overhead. Or, when the wintry sky was leaden and all Brick's side of the partition was as dark as the hole of a prairie-dog, he would visit Lahoma, and gloat over the dim gray light stealing through the small panes. "That window's no bad idea!" he would chuckle, stooping his great bulk cautiously as he seated himself, as if to lighten his weight by doubling in upon himself.

"Good thing I've got my window," Lahoma would say as the snow lay thick on the plains and in broken lines all over the mountain, and the cutting blast made the fire jump with sudden fright. She would hold her book close to the dirt square in which the frame was planted, and spell out words she had never heard used, such as "lad," "lass," "sport," and the like mysteries. "This window is going to civilize me, Brick."

It did not lessen their relish in the subject that they had discussed it already a hundred times. It was the same way with the hand-made bench, with the trench that carried water from their door during sudden downpours, and with the self-congratulation over owning two ponies to keep each other company.

"They's one thing about us, Lahoma, which it ain't according to the big outside world, and yet I hope it won't never be changed. We are mighty glad we've got what we've got. And to be glad of what you've got is a sure way to multiply your property. Every time you brag on that window, it shines like two windows to me."

Spring came late that year, and in the early days of March, Brick rode over to the cove behind the precipice after Bill Atkins. "I want you to come over to my place," he begged, "and answer some of Lahoma's questions. Being closeted with her in that there dugout all winter, she has pumped me as dry as a bone."

Perhaps Bill Atkins had had his fill of solitude during that cold winter—or perhaps he was hungry for another hour of the little girl's company. Nothing, however, showed his satisfaction as he entered her chamber. "Here I am," he announced, seating himself on the bench. This was his only greeting.

"Is it drug or dragged?" demanded Lahoma.

"Dragged."

"Why don't God send me a little girl to play with, after me asking for one every night, all winter?"

"Don't understand God's business," replied Atkins briefly.

"I puts it this way," Brick spoke up; "God's done sent one little girl, and it ain't right to crowd Him too far."

"Will I be all they is of me, as long as I live?"

"Nobody won't never come to live in these plains," Brick declared, "unless its trappers and characters like us. But we'll stay by you, won't we, Bill Atkins?"

Atkins looked exceedingly gruff and shook his head as if he had his doubts about it. "You'll have to be taken to the States," he declared.

"But what would become of Brick?"

"Well, honey," said Brick, "you want to take your place with people in the big world, don't you?"

"Oh, YES!" cried Lahoma, starting up and stretching her arm toward the window. "In the big world—yes! That's the place for me—that's where I want to live. But what will become of you?"

"Well," Brick answered slowly, "the rock pile, t'other side the mountain is good enough for me. Your mother sleeps under it."

"Oh, Brick!" She caught his arm. "You wouldn't die if I went away, would you?"

"Why, you see, honey, they wouldn't be nothing left to go on. I'd just sort of stop, you know—but it wouldn't matter—out there in the big world, people don't remember very long, and when you're grown you wouldn't know there'd ever been a cove with a dugout in it, and a window in the wall, and a Brick Willock to carry in the wood for the fire."

"I'll always remember—and I won't go without you. He COULD go with me, couldn't he, Bill?"

"I suspicion he has his reasons for not," Atkins observed gravely.

"I has, and I shall never go back to the States."

"Then what's the use civilizing me?" demanded Lahoma mournfully.

"I want you to enjoy yourself. And when I'm old and no-'count, you'd need somebody to take care of you—and you'd go full-equipped and ready to stand up to any civilized person that tried to run a bluff on you."

"But, oh, I want to GO—I want to go out THERE—where there ain't no plains and alkali and buffalo-grass—where they's pavements and policemen and people in beautiful clothes. I don't mean NOW, I mean when I have got civilized." She drew herself up proudly. "I wouldn't go till I was civilized, till I was like them." She turned impulsively to Brick: "But you've got to go with me when I go! I'm going to stay with you till I'm fit to go, and then you're going to stay with me the rest of my life."

"Am I fit to go with her?" Brick appealed to Bill Atkins.

"You ain't," Bill replied.

"I ain't fit," Brick declared firmly. "I'm a-going to fitten you; but it's too late to work on me; and besides, if they WAS time enough, it ain't to the grain of my nature. I knows all I wants to know, which if little or much is enough for me. And I wouldn't be fit to go with you out into the big world and cut a figger in it, which couldn't be no figger but a figger naught. And Atkins who knows more than me, he says the same."

The tears were in Lahoma's eyes. She looked from one to the other, her little face deeply troubled. Suddenly she grabbed up her books and started toward the stove. "Then this here civilizing is going to stop," she declared.

"Lahoma!" Brick cried in dismay.

"Yes, it is—unless you promise to stay with me when I go to live in the big world."

"Honey, I'll promise you this: When you are ready to live out there, I'll sure go with you and stay with you—if you want me, when the time comes."

Lahoma seized his hand, and jumped up and down in delight.

"It's a safe promise," remarked Bill Atkins dryly.



CHAPTER IX

A YOUNG MAN'S FANCY

One evening in May, a tall lithe figure crept the southern base of the mountain range, following its curves with cautious feet as if fearful of discovery. It was a young man of twenty-one or two, bronzed, free of movement, agile of step. His face was firm, handsome and open, although at present a wish to escape observation caused the hazel eyes to dart here and there restlessly, while the mouth tightened in an aspect of sternness. This air of wild resolution was heightened by the cowboy's ordinary garments, and the cowboy's indispensable belt well-stocked with weapons.

On reaching the spur that formed the western jaw of the horseshoe, he crept on hands and knees, but satisfied by searching glances that the inner expanse was deserted, he half rose and stole shadow-like along the granite wall, until he had reached the hill-island that concealed the cove. Again falling on hands and knees, he drew himself slowly up among the huge flat rocks that covered the hill in all directions. In a brief time he had traversed it, and a view of the cove was suddenly unrolled below. A few yards from Brick Willock's dugout, now stood a neat log cabin, and not far from the door of this cabin was a girl of about fifteen, seated on the grass.

She had been reading, but her book had slipped to her feet. With hands clasped about her knee, and head tilted back, she was watching the lazy white clouds that stretched like wisps of scattered cotton across the blue field of the sky. At first the young man was startled by the impression that she had discovered his presence and was scrutinizing his position, but a second glance reassured him, and he stretched himself where a block of granite and, below it, a cedar tree, effectually protected him from discovery. Thus hidden, he stared at the girl unblinkingly.

He was like a thirsty traveler drinking at a cool well unexpectedly discovered in a desert country. For two years he had led the life of the cowboy, exiled from his kind, going with the boys from lower Texas to Kansas along the Chisholm Trail, overseeing great herds of cattle, caring for them day and night, scarcely ever under a roof, even that of a dugout. Through rain and storm, the ground had been his bed, and many a blistering summer day a pony captured wild from the plains, and broken to stand like a dog, had been his only shade. During these two years of hard life, reckless companions and exacting duties, he had easily slipped into the grooves of speech and thought common to his fellows. Only his face, his unconscious movements and accents, distinguished him from the other boys of "Old Man Walker"—the boss of the "G-Bar Outfit." On no other condition but that of apparent assimilation could he have retained his place with Walker's ranchmen; and in his efforts to remove as quickly as possible the reproach of tender-foot it was not his fault that he had retained the features of a different world, or that a certain air, not of the desert, was always breaking through the crust under which he would have kept his real self out of sight. He himself was the least conscious that this was so.

For two years he had seen no one like the girl of the cove, none—though he had seen women and girls of the settlements, often enough—who even suggested her kind. Her dress, indeed, was plain enough, and obviously chosen in cheerful ignorance of forms and conventions, though the color, a delicate pink, was all he could have wished. After all, the clothes revealed nothing except absence from city shops and city standards.

That was wonderful hair, its brown tresses gleaming though untouched by the sun, as if in it were enmeshed innumerable particles of light. It seemed to glow from its very fineness, its silkiness—the kind of hair one is prompted to touch, to feel if it is really that way! The face was more wonderful, because it told many things that can not be expressed in mere hair-language. There was the seal of innocence on the lips, the proof of fearlessness in the eyes, the touch of thought on the brow, the sign of purpose about the resolute little chin. The slender brown hands spoke of life in the open air, and the glow of the cheeks told of burning suns. Her form, her attitude, spoke not only of instinctive grace, but of a certain wildness in admirable harmony with the surrounding scene. Somehow, the ruggedness of the mountains and the desolate solitudes of the plains were reflected from her face.

The young man gazed as if his thirst would never be appeased. The flavor of nights about the camp-fire and other nights spent in driving sleet, also days when the first flowers come and the wide beds of the desert rivers are swollen with overbrimming floods; the cruel exposure of winter, the thrilling balminess of early spring—all spoke to him again from that motionless figure. He recalled companions of his boyhood and youth, but they were not akin to this child of the desert mountains. Still more alien were those of the saloon stations, the haunts at the outskirts of civilization. It seemed to him that in this young girl, who bad the look and poise of a woman, he had found what hitherto he had vainly sought in the wilderness—the beauty and the charm of it, refined and separated from its sordidness and its uncouthness—in a word, from all that was base and ugly. It was for this that he had left his home in the East. Here was typified that loveliness of the unbroken wilderness without its profanity, its drunkenness, its obscenity, its terrible hardships.

At last he tore himself away, retraced his steps as cautiously as he had conic, and flung himself upon the pony left waiting at a sheltered nook far from the cove. As he sped over the plains toward the distant herd, it came to him suddenly in a way not before experienced, that it was May, that the air was balmy and fragrant, and that the land, softly lighted in the clear twilight, was singularly beautiful. He seemed breathing the roses back home—which recalled another face, but not for long. The last time he had seen that eastern face, the dew had lain on the early morning roses—how could a face so different make him think of them? But imagination is sometimes a bold robber, and now it did not hesitate to steal those memories of sweet scents to encloud the picture of the mountain-girl.

The G-Bar headquarters was on the western bank of what was then known as Red River, but was really the North Fork of Red River. "Old Man Walker," who was scarcely past middle age, had built his corral on the margin of the plain which extended to that point in an unbroken level from a great distance, and which, having reached that point, dropped without warning, a sheer precipice, to an extensive lake. The lake was fed by springs issuing from the bluffs; not far beyond it and not much lower, was the bed of the river, wide, very red and almost dry. Beyond the river rose the bold hills of the Kiowa country, a white line chiseled across the face of each, as if Time had entertained some thought of their destruction, but finding each a huge block of living rock, had passed on to torture and shift and alter the bed of the river.

The young man reached the corral after a ride of twelve or thirteen miles, most of the distance through a country of difficult sand. He galloped up to the rude enclosure, surrounded by a cloud of dust through which his keen gray eyes discovered Mizzoo on the eve of leaving camp. Mizzoo was one of the men whose duty it was to ride the line all night—the line that the young man had guarded all day—to keep Walker's cattle from drifting.

"Come on, Mizz," called the young man, as the other swung upon his broncho, "I'm going back with you."

The lean, leather-skinned, sandy-mustached cattleman uttered words not meet for print, but expressive of hearty pleasure. "Ain't you had enough of it, Bill?" he added. "I'd think you'd want to lay up for tomorrow's work."

"Oh, I ain't sleepy," the young man declared, as they rode away side by side. "I couldn't close an eye tonight—and I want to talk."

The cattleman chuckled enjoyingly. It was lonely and monotonous work, riding back and forth through the darkness, keeping a sharp lookout for wolves or Indians, driving straggling cattle back to the herd, in brief, doing the picket duty of the plains.

Mizzoo was so called from his habit of attributing his most emphatic aphorisms to "his aunt, Miss Sue of Missouri"—a lady held by his companions to be a purely fictitious character, a convenient "Mrs. Harris" to give weight to sayings worn smooth from centuries of use.

Of all the boys of the ranch, Mizzoo found Wilfred Compton most companionable. When off duty, they were usually to be found near each other, whether awake or asleep; and when Mizzoo, on entering some village at the edge of the desert, sought relaxation from a life of routine by shooting through the windows and spurring his pony into the saloons, it was the young man, commonly known as Bill, who lingered behind to advance money for damages to the windows, or who kept close to the drunken ranger in order to repair the damages Mizzoo had done to his own soul and body.

"I'll talk my head off," Mizzoo declared, "if that'll keep you on the move with me, for it's one thing meeting a ghost in the desert all alone, and quite another when there's a pair of us. Yes, I know you don't believe nothing I say about that spirit, and I only hope we'll come on it tonight! It ain't been a week since I see something creeping along behind me whilst I was riding the line, a little thing as swift as a jack-rabbit and as sly as a coyote—something with long arms and short legs and the face of an Injun—"

"Of course it WAS an Indian," returned the young man carelessly. "He is hanging about here to steal some of our horses. I don't want you to talk about your ghost, I've heard of him a thousand times."

"Bill, the more you talk about a ghost, the more impressive he gets. I tell you that wasn't no live Injun! Didn't I blaze away at him with my six-shooter and empty all my barrels for nothing? No, sir, it's the same spirit that haunts the trail from Vernon, Texas, to Coffeyville. I've shot at that red devil this side of Fort Sill, and at Skeleton Spring, and at Bull Foot Spring, and a mile from Doan's store—always at night, for it never rises except at night, as befits a good ghost. I reckon I'll waste cartridges on that spook as long as I hit the trail, but I don't never expect to draw blood. Others has saw him, too, but me more especial. I reckon I'm the biggest sinner of the G-Bar and has to be plagued most frequent with visitations to make me a better man when I get to be old."

"He's a knowing old ghost if he's found you out, Mizzoo, but if you want my company, tonight, you'll drop the Indian. What I want you to talk about is that little girl you met on the trail down in Texas, seven years ago."

Mizzoo burst out in a hearty laugh. "I reckon it suits you better to take her as a little kid," he cried, his tall form shaking convulsively. "I'll never forget how you looked, Bill, when we tried to run a bluff on her daddy last month!"

The other did not answer with a smile. Apparently the reminiscence pleased him less than it did the older man. He spurred his horse impatiently, and it plunged forward through the drifted banks of white sand.

Mizzoo hastened to overtake him, still chuckling. "Old Man Walker never knowed what a proposition he was handing us when he ordered us to drive the old mountain-lion out of his lair! Looks like the six of us ought to have done the trick. Them other fellows looked as wild as bears, and you was just like a United States soldier marching on a Mexican strongholt, not stopping at nothing, and it ain't for me to say how brave I done. Pity you and me was at the tail-end of the attacking party. Fust thing we knowed, them other four galoots was falling backwards a-getting out of that trap of a cove, and the bullets was whizzing about our ears—"

He broke off to shout with laughter. "And it was all done by one old settler and his gal, them standing out open and free with their breech-loaders, and us hiking out for camp like whipped curs!"

The young man was impatient, but he compelled himself to speak calmly. "As I never got around the spur of the mountain before you fellows were in full retreat, I object to being classed with the whipped curs, and you'll bear that in mind, Mizzoo. You saw the girl all right, didn't you?"

"You bet I did, and as soon as I see her, I knowed it was the same I'd came across on the trail, seven year ago. I'd have knowed it from her daddy, of course, but there wasn't no mistaking HER. Her daddy give it to us plain that if he ever catched one of us inside his cove he'd kill us like so many coyotes, and I reckon he would. Well, he's got as much right to his claim as anybody else—this land don't belong to nobody, and there he's been a-squatting considerable longer than we've laid out this ranch. He was in the right of it, but what I admire was his being able to hold his rights. Lots of folks has rights but they ain't man enough to hold 'em. And if von could have seen that gal, her eyes like two big burning suns, and her mouth closed like a steel-trap, and her hand as steady on that trigger as the mountain rock behind her! Lord, Bill! what a trembly, knock-kneed, meaching sort of a husband she's a-going to fashion to her hand, one of these days! But PRETTY? None more so. And a-going all to waste out here in the desert!"

They rode on for some time in silence, save for the intermittent chuckling of the cattleman as visions of his companions' pale faces and scurrying forms rose before his mind.

"And now about that child, seven years ago," the young man said, when the last hoarse sound of mirth had died away.

"Why, yes, me and the boys was bringing about two thousand head up to Abiline when we come on to this same pardner and another man walking the trail, with a little gal coming behind 'em on her pony. And it was this same gal. I reckon she was seven or eight year old, then. Well, sir, I just thought as I looked at her, that I never seen a prettier sight in this world and I reckon I ain't, for when I looked at the same gal the other day, the gun she was holding up to her eye sort of dazzled me so I couldn't take stock of all her good points. But seeing that little gal out there in the plains it was like hearing an old-fashioned hymn at the country meeting-house and knowing a big basket dinner was to follow. I can't express it more deep than that. We went into camp that evening, and all of us got pretty soft and mellow, what from the unusualness of the meeting, and we asked the old codger if we could all come over to his camp and shake hands with the gal—he'd drawed back from us about a mile, he was that skeered to be sociable. So after considerable haggling and jawing, he said we could, and here we come, just about sundown, all of us looking sheepish enough to be carved for mutton, but everlasting determined to take that gal by the paw."

"Well?" said the young man who had often heard this story, but had never been treated to the sequel, "what happened then, Mizzoo? You always stop at the same place. Didn't you shake hands with her?"

The other ruminated in deep silence for some time, then rejoined, "I don't know how it is—a fellow can talk about the worst devilment in creation with a free rein, and no words hot enough to blister his tongue, but let him run up against something simple like that, and the bottom of his lungs seems to fall out. I guess they ain't no more to be told. That was all there was to it, though I might add that the next day we come along by old Whisky Simeon's joint that sets out on the sand-hills, you know, and we put spurs to our bronks and went whooping by, with old Whisky Sim a-staring and a-hollering after us like he thought we was crazy. I don't know as I had missed a drunk before for five year, when the materials was ready-found for its making. And I ain't never forgot the little kid with the brown hair and the eyes that seen to your bottom layer, like a water-witch a-penetrating the ground with a glance, seeing through dirt and clay and rocks to what water they is."

Mizzoo relapsed into meditative silence, and the young man, in sympathy with his mood, kept at his side, no longer asking questions. Darkness came on and the hour grew late but few words were exchanged as they rode the weary miles that marked the limit of the range. There were the usual incidents of such work, each bringing its customary comments. The midnight luncheon beside a small fire, over which the coffee steamed, roused something like cheerful conversation which, however, flickered and flared uncertainly like the bonfire. On the whole the young man was unwontedly reserved, and the other, perceiving it, fell back contentedly on his own resources—pleasant memories and rank tobacco.

"Guess I'll leave you now," remarked the young man, when the fire had died away.

"Yes, better turn in, for you're most uncommon dull you know," Mizzoo replied frankly. "'Twould be just about as much company for me if you'd hike out and leave me your picture to carry along."

Instead of taking the direction toward the river, the young man set out at a gallop for the distant mountain range which, in the gloom, seemed not far away. After an hour's hard riding, he reached it. His impatience bad made that hour seem almost interminable, yet it had not been long enough to furnish him with any clear reason for having come. If, as Mizzoo had declared, he needed sleep, he would surely not think of finding it near the cove from which his companions had been warned under penalty of death. If drawn by longing for another glimpse of the girl of the cove he could not expect to see her an hour or two after midnight. Yet here he was, attracted, and still urged on, by impulses he did not attempt to resist.



CHAPTER X

THE FLAG OF TRUCE

Earliest dawn found the young man seated composedly upon one of the flattened outcroppings of the bill of stone that lay like an island between the outer plain and the sheltered cove. As yet, there was no sign of life within the cove—both the dugout and the cabin of cedar logs were as silent and as void of movement as the rocks behind them. The young man watched first one, then the other, as tireless and vigilant as if he had not been awake for twenty-four hours.

It was the dugout that first started from its night's repose. Before the sun showed itself over the rim of the prairie, long before its rays darted over the distant mountain-crest, the door was thrown away from the casing, and a great uncouth man, strong as a giant, and wild of aspect as a savage, strode forth, gun in hand, his eyes sweeping the landscape in quick flashing glances. Almost instantly he discovered the figure perched on the granite block overlooking his retreat. He raised his gun to his shoulder.

The young man fell sidewise behind the rocks and a bullet clipped the edge of his barricade. Remaining supine, he fastened his handkerchief to the end of his whip and waved it above the rampart. Having thus manifested his peaceful intent, he rose, still holding the flag of truce above his head, and remained motionless. Brick Willock stared at him for a moment in hostile indecision, then strode forward. At the same time, an old man, thin, tall and white-haired, issued from the dugout evidently attracted by the gunshot; and soon after, the cabin door opened, and the girl of the cove looked out inquiringly.

In the meantime the young man slowly descended the hill to the oval valley, while Willock hurried forward to meet him.

"Don't you come no futher!" Willock commanded, threatening with his gun. "Keep your hands above your head until I can ship your cargo."

Obediently he stood while the great whiskered fellow took the weapons from his belt, and dived into his hip pockets.

"That'll do. Now—what do you want?"

"It's hard to put it into a few words," the other complained. "I'd like to have a little talk with you."

"You are one of them fellows that come here to run us out of the country, ain't you? I don't remember seeing you, but I guess you belong to the bunch over on Red River. Well, you see we're still here, meaning to stay. Are your pards outside there, waiting for a message?"

"Nobody knows I'm here, or thought of coming. Let me put that affair in its true light. The boys are all under our boss, and when he lays down the law it isn't for us to argue with him—we carry out orders—"

"Unless there's a Brick Willock involved in them orders," returned the man, with a grim smile.

"But it's our duty to TRY to carry out the orders, whether we like 'em or not. So you won't hold that against me—that little scrimmage of last month, especially as you came out best man."

"I used to have a boss, myself," Willock spoke uncompromisingly. "But when he give me certain orders, one particular night that I recollect, I knocked him on the head and put out for other parts. You must of thought yourself in PRETTY business coming over here to take away the land and all on it, that's belonged to me for nine years, and nobody never having tried to prize me out of it except some trifling Injuns and horse-thieves. Ain't they NO honesty in the world? Hasn't no man his property rights? I guess your boss knowed this wasn't HIS land, didn't he? What's going to become of this country when man isn't satisfied with what is his'n? Well, now you've had a little talk with me, and hoping you've enjoyed it, you can just mosey along. I'll send your weapons after you by a messenger."

The young man cast a despairing glance toward the girl who stood like a statue in her doorway, gravely listening. The man with the bushy white hair had drawn near, but evidently with no thought of interfering.

"Willock," the voice came so eager, so impetuous, that the words were somewhat incoherent, "I've GOT to talk to your daughter—hold on, don't shoot, LISTEN!—that's what I've come for, to see her and—and meet her and hear her voice. I can't help it, can I? It's been two long years since I left home, back East, and in all these two years I've never seen anything like your little girl and—and what harm can it do? I say! Have pity on a fellow, and do him the biggest favor he could enjoy on this earth when it won't cost you a penny, or a turn of your hand. Look here—hold on, don't turn away! I'm just so lonesome, so homesick, so dead KILLED by all these sand-hills and alkali beds and nothing to talk to from one year's end to the next but men and cattle...."

Willock glared at him in silence, fingering the trigger thoughtfully.

"There I've sat, on that hill," he continued, "since two o'clock last night, waiting for daylight so I could ask you to help a miserable wretch that's just starving to death for the sound of a girl's voice, and the sight of a girl's smile. Isn't this square, waiting for you, and telling you the whole truth? I never saw her but once, and that was from this same hill. She didn't know I was watching; it was yesterday. Maybe all I'm saying sounds just crazy to you, and I reckon I am out of my senses, but until I saw her I didn't know how heart-sick I was of the whole business."

"It IS kinder lonesome," remarked the other gruffly. He lowered his gun and leaned on it, irresolutely. "You've sure touched me in the right spot, son, for I knows all you mean and more that you ain't even ever dreampt of. But you see, we don't know nothing about your name, your character, if you've got one, nor what you really intends. I like your looks and the way you talk, fine, just fine, but I've saw bobcats that was mighty sleek and handsome when they didn't know I was nigh."

"My name in Wilfred Compton. I—I have a letter or two in my pocket that I got a long time ago; they'd tell something about me but I'd rather not show 'em, as they're private—"

"From your gal, I reckon?" asked Willock more mildly.

"Yes," he answered gloomily.

"Carried 'em as long as a year?"

"Nearly two years."

"Mean to still lug 'em around?"

"Of course I'm going to keep 'em."

"Well, I don't deny THAT'S pretty favorable. Now look here, son, I've been half-crazy from lonesomeness, and I don't believe I've got the heart to send you away. That gal of ours—she's just a kid, you understand.... Now you wouldn't be taking up no idea that she was what you'd classify as a young lady, or anything like that, eh?"

"Of course not—she's fifteen or sixteen, I should think. Upon my honor, Willock, any thought of sentiment or romance is a thousand miles from my mind."

"Yes, just so. But such thoughts travels powerful fast; don't take 'em long to lap over a thousand mile."

"But it's because she IS a young girl, fresh and unartificial as the mountain breezes, that I want to be with her for a little while—yes, get to know her, if I may."

Willock turned to the taciturn old man standing a little behind him. "Bill Atkins, what do you say?"

"I say, fire him and do it quick!" was the instant rejoinder, accompanied by threatening twitchings of the huge white mustache.

Willock was not convinced. "Son, if you sets here till we have had our breakfast, and has held a caucus over you, I'll bring you the verdict in about an hour. If you don't like that, they's nothing to do but put out for your ranch."

"I go on duty at seven," replied the young man composedly, "but I have a friend riding the line that'll stay with it till I come. So I'll wait for your caucus."

"That friend—one of them devils I shot at the other day?"

Wilfred Compton smiled with sudden sunniness. "Yes."

Somewhere beneath the immense whiskers, an answering smile slipped like a breeze, stirring the iron-gray hair. "I kinder believe in you, son! Nobody can't gainsay that you've played the man in this matter. Now, just one thing more. You must swear here before me, with Bill Atkins for an unwilling witness, that should we let you make the acquaintance of our little gal, and should you get to be friends, you two, that the very fust minute it comes to you that she ain't no little gal, but is in the way of being food for love—Bill Atkins, air I making myself plain?"

"You ain't," returned the old man sourly. "You're too complicated for ordinary use."

"Then YOU tell him what I mean."

The old man glared at Wilfred fiercely. "If we decide to grant your request, young man, swear on your honor that the second you find yourself thinking of our little girl as a WOMAN, to be wooed and won, you'll put out, and never stop till you're so far away, you'll be clear out of her world. And not one word to her, not so much as one hint, mind you, as to the reason of your going; it'll just be good-by and farewell!"

"You see," Willock interpolated, "she is nothing a little gal, and we don't want no foolish ideas to the contrary. You takes her for what she is, nothing took from nor added to. In course, she'll be growed up some day, I reckon, though may the good Lord take a good long time finishing up the work He's begun so noble. When she's growed up, when she's a woman, it ain't for us to say how you come and how you go, take from or add to. But while she's a kid, it is different, according."

"You have my word of honor to all these conditions," Wilfred cried lightly. "As a child of the mountains I ask for her acquaintance. If I should ever feel differently about her, I'll go away and stay away until she's a woman. Surely that's enough to promise!"

"There ain't too much to promise, when it comes to the peace and happiness of our little girl," retorted the old man, "but I can't think of any more for you to take oath to."

"Me nuther, Bill," agreed Willock. "Seems to me the young man is bound as firm as humans can do the binding. Now you sit right here, son, don't come a step nigher the house, and we'll go to breakfast; and later you'll know whether or not all this promising has been idle waste of time."

"But I can see how it'll turn out," growled Atkins, "for she is always a-looking for something new, something out of the big world that she don't know nothing about."

"Never mind, Bill, don't give up so quick," Willock reproached him, as they turned away. "She's been having a good look at him all this time, and it may be she have took a distaste to him already."



CHAPTER XI

THE HALF-OPENED BUD

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—"