Silence. The merman reclined gently against the bank with a comfortable air of satisfaction. The color came flooding back to her startled face.
"Oh, are you hurt?" she cried.
A puzzled frown struggled through the mud.
"Hurt?" he echoed. "Who, me?... Why, no--leastwise, I guess not."
He wiggled his fingers, raised his arms, wagged his head doubtfully and slowly, first sidewise and then up and down; shook himself guardedly, and finally raised tentative boot-tips to the surface. After this painstaking inspection he settled contentedly back again.
"Oh, no, I"m all right," he reported. "Only I lost a big, black, fine, young, nice horse somehow. You ain"t seen nothing of him, have you?"
"Then why don"t you get out?" she demanded. "I believe you are hurt."
"Get out? Why, yes, ma"am. Certainly. Why not?" But the girl was already beginning to clamber down, grasping the shrubbery to aid in the descent.
Now the bank was steep and sheer. So the merman rose, tactfully clutching the grapevines behind him as a plausible excuse for turning his back. It followed as a corollary of this generous act that he must needs be lame, which he accordingly became. As this mishap became acute, his quick eyes roved down the canon, where he saw what gave him pause; and he groaned sincerely under his breath. For the black horse had taken to the parked uplands, the dragging rope had tangled in a snaggy tree-root, and he was tracing weary circles in bootless effort to be free.
Tactful still, the dripping merman hobbled to the nearest shade wherefrom the luckless black horse should be invisible, eclipsed by the intervening ridge, and there sank down in a state of exhaustion, his back to a friendly tree-trunk.
CHAPTER II
FIRST AID
"Oh woman! in our hours of ease Uncertain, coy and hard to please; But seen too oft, familiar with thy face We first endure, then pity, then embrace!"
A moment later the girl was beside him, pity in her eyes.
"Let me see that cut on your head," she said. She dropped on her knee and parted the hair with a gentle touch.
"Why, you"re real!" breathed the injured near-centaur, beaming with wonder and gratification.
She sat down limply and gave way to wild laughter.
"So are you!" she retorted. "Why, that is exactly what I was thinking! I thought maybe I was asleep and having an extraordinary dream. That wound on your head is not serious, if that"s all." She brushed back a wisp of hair that blew across her eyes.
"I hurt this head just the other day," observed the bedraggled victim, as one who has an a.s.sortment of heads from which to choose. He pulled off his soaked gloves and regarded them ruefully. ""Them that go down to deep waters!" That was a regular triumph of matter over mind, wasn"t it?"
"It"s a wonder you"re alive! My! How frightened I was! Aren"t you hurt--truly? Ribs or anything?"
The patient"s elbows made a convulsive movement to guard the threatened ribs.
"Oh, no, ma"am. I ain"t hurt a bit--indeed I ain"t," he said truthfully; but his eyes had the languid droop of one who says the thing that is not. "Don"t you worry none about me--not one bit. Sorry I frightened you. That black horse now----" He stopped to consider fully the case of the black horse. "Well, you see, ma"am, that black horse, he ain"t exactly right plumb gentle." His eyelids drooped again.
The girl considered. She believed him--both that he was not badly hurt and that the black horse was not exactly gentle. And her suspicions were aroused. His slow drawl was getting slower; his cowboyese broader--a mode of speech quite inconsistent with that first sprightly remark about the little eohippus. What manner of cowboy was this, from whose tongue a learned scientific term tripped spontaneously in so stressful a moment--who quoted sc.r.a.ps of the litany unaware? Also, her own eyes were none of the slowest. She had noted that the limping did not begin until he was clear of the pool. Still, that might happen if one were excited; but this one had been singularly calm, "more than usual ca"m," she mentally quoted.... Of course, if he really were badly hurt--which she didn"t believe one bit--a little bruised and jarred, maybe--the only thing for her to do would be to go back to camp and get help.... That meant the renewal of Lake"s hateful attentions and--for the other girls, the sharing of her find.... She stole another look at her find and thrilled with all the pride of the discoverer.... No doubt he was shaken and bruised, after all. He must be suffering. What a splendid rider he was!
"What made you so absurd? Why didn"t you get out of the water, then, if you are not hurt?" she snapped suddenly.
The drooped lids raised; brown eyes looked steadily into brown eyes.
"I didn"t want to wake up," he said.
The candor of this explanation threw her, for the moment, into a vivid and becoming confusion. The dusky roses leaped to her cheeks; the long, dark lashes quivered and fell. Then she rose to the occasion.
"And how about the little eohippus?" she demanded. "That doesn"t seem to go well with some of your other talk."
"Oh!" He regarded her with pained but unflinching innocence. "The Latin, you mean? Why, ma"am, that"s most all the Latin I know--that and some more big words in that song. I learned that song off of Frank John, just like a poll-parrot."
"Sing it! And eohippus isn"t Latin. It"s Greek."
"Why, ma"am, I can"t, just now--I"m so muddy; but I"ll tell it to you.
Maybe I"ll sing it to you some other time." A sidelong glance accompanied this little suggestion. The girl"s face was blank and non-committal; so he resumed: "It goes like this:
"Said the little Eohippus, "I"m going to be a horse, And on my middle fingernails To run my earthly course"----
"No; that wasn"t the first. It begins:
"There was once a little animal No bigger than a fox, And on five toes he scampered----
"Of course you know, ma"am--Frank John he told me about it--that horses were little like that, "way back. And this one he set his silly head that he was going to be a really-truly horse, like the song says. And folks told him he couldn"t--couldn"t possibly be done, nohow. And sure enough he did. It"s a foolish song, really. I only sing parts of it when I feel like that--like it couldn"t be done and I was going to do it, you know. The boys call it my song. Look here, ma"am!" He fished in his vest pocket and produced tobacco and papers, matches--last of all, a tiny turquoise horse, an inch long. "I had a jeweler-man put five toes on his feet once to make him be a little eohippus. Going to make a watch-charm of him sometime. He"s a lucky little eohippus, I think. Peso gave him to me when--never mind when. Peso"s a Mescalero Indian, you know, chief of police at the agency." He gingerly dropped the little horse into her eager palm.
It was a singularly grotesque and angular little beast, high-stepping, high-headed, with a level stare, at once complacent and haughty. Despite the first unprepossessing rigidity of outline, there was somehow a sprightly air, something endearing, in the stiff, purposed stride, the alert, inquiring ears, the stern and watchful eye. Each tiny hoof was faintly graven to semblance of five tinier toes; there, the work showed fresh.
"The cunning little monster!" Prison grime was on him; she groomed and polished at his dingy sides until the wonderful color shone out triumphant. "What is it that makes him such a dear? Oh, I know. It"s something--well, childlike, you know. Think of the grown-up child that toiled with pride and joy at the making of him--dear me, how many lifetimes since!--and fondly put him by as a complete horse." She held him up in the sun: the ingrate met her caress with the same obdurate and indomitable glare. She laughed her rapturous delight: "There! How much better you look! Oh, you darling! Aren"t you absurd? Straight-backed, stiff-legged, thick-necked, square-headed--and that ridiculously baleful eye! It"s too high up and too far forward, you know--and your ears are too big--and you have such a malignant look! Never mind; now that you"re all nice and clean, I"m going to reward you." Her lips just brushed him--the lucky little eohippus.
The owner of the lucky little horse was not able to repress one swift, dismal glance at his own vast dishevelment, nor, as his shrinking hands, entirely of their own volition, crept stealthily to hiding, the slightest upward rolling of a hopeful eye toward the leaping waters of the spring; but, if one might judge from her sedate and matter-of-fact tones, that eloquent glance was wasted on the girl.
"You ought to take better care of him, you know," she said as she restored the little monster to his owner. Then she laughed. "Hasn"t he a fierce and warlike appearance, though?"
"Sure. That"s resolution. Look at those legs!" said the owner fondly.
"He spurns the ground. He"s going somewheres. He"s going to be a horse!
And them ears--one c.o.c.ked forward and the other back, strictly on the _cuidado_! He"ll make it. He"ll certainly do to take along! Yes, ma"am, I"ll take right good care of him." He regarded the homely beast with awe; he swathed him in cigarette papers with tenderest care. "I"ll leave him at home after this. He might get hurt. I might sometime want to give him to--somebody."
The girl sprang up.
"Now I must get some water and wash that head," she announced briskly.
"Oh, no--I can"t let you do that. I can walk. I ain"t hurt a bit, I keep telling you." In proof of which he walked to the pool with a palpably clever a.s.sumption of steadiness. The girl fluttered solicitous at his elbow. Then she ran ahead, climbed up to the spring and extended a firm, cool hand, which he took shamelessly, and so came to the fairy waterfall.
Here he made himself presentable as to face and hands. It is just possible there was a certain expectancy in his eye as he neared the close of these labors; but if there were it pa.s.sed unnoted. The girl bathed the injured head with her handkerchief, and brushed back his hair with a dainty caressing motion that thrilled him until the color rose beneath the tan. There was a glint of gray in the wavy black hair, she noted.
She stepped back to regard her handiwork. "Now you look better!" she said approvingly. Then, slightly flurried, not without a memory of a previous and not dissimilar remark of hers, she was off up the hill: whence, despite his shocked protest, she brought back the lost gun and hat.
Her eyes were sparkling when she returned, her face glowing. Ignoring his reproachful gaze, she wrung out her handkerchief, led the patient firmly down the hill and to his saddle, made him trim off a saddle-string, and bound the handkerchief to the wound. She fitted the sombrero gently.
"There! Don"t this head feel better now?" she queried gayly, with fine disregard for grammar. "And now what? Won"t you come back to camp with me? Mr. Lake will be glad to put you up or to let you have a horse. Do you live far away? I do hope you are not one of those Rosebud men. Mr.