"I don"t believe you know the one I mean," returned Bennington slowly.
"She"s a girl with a little mouth and a nose that is tipped up just a trifle----"
"Snub!" interrupted Old Mizzou, with some impatience. "Yas, I knows.
Same critter. Only one like her in th" Hills. Sa.s.shays all over th"
scenery, an" don"t do nothin" but sit on rocks."
"So she"s the daughter of that man!" said Bennington, still more slowly.
"Wall, so Mis" Lawton sez," chuckled Mizzou.
That night Bennington lay awake for some time. He had discovered the Mountain Flower; the story-book West was complete at last. But he had offended his discovery. What was the etiquette in such a case? Back East he would have felt called upon to apologize for being rude. Then, at the thought of apologizing to a daughter of that turkey-necked old whisky-guzzler he had to laugh.
CHAPTER IV
THE SUN FAIRY
The next afternoon, after the day"s writing and prospecting were finished, Bennington resolved to go deer hunting. He had skipped thirteen chapters of his work to describe the heroine, Rhoda. She had wonderful eyes, and was, I believe, dressed in a garment whose colour was pink.
"Keep yore moccasins greased," Old Mizzou advised at parting; by which he meant that the young man was to step softly.
This he found to be difficult. His course lay along the top of the ridge where the obstructions were many. There were outcrops, boulders, ravines, broken twigs, old leaves, and dikes, all of which had to be surmounted or avoided. They were all aggravating, but the dikes possessed some intellectual interest which the others lacked.
A dike, be it understood, is a hole in the earth made visible. That is to say, in old days, when mountains were much loftier than they are now, various agencies brought it to pa.s.s that they split and cracked and yawned down to the innermost cores of their being in such hideous fashion that chasms and holes of great depth and perpendicularity were opened in them. Thereupon the interior fires were released, and these, vomiting up a vast supply of molten material, filled said chasms and holes to the very brim. The molten material cooled into fire-hardened rock. The rains descended and the snows melted. Under their erosive influence the original mountains were cut down somewhat, but the erstwhile molten material, being, as we have said, fire-hardened, wasted very little, or not at all, and, as a consequence, stands forth above its present surroundings in exact mould of the ancient cracks or holes.
Now, some dikes are long and narrow, others are short and wide, and still others are nearly round. All, however, are highest points, and, head and shoulders above the trees, look abroad over the land.
When Bennington came to one of these dikes he was forced to pick his way carefully in a detour around its base. Between times he found hobnails much inclined to click against unforeseen stones. The broken twig came to possess other than literary importance. After a little his nerves a.s.serted themselves. Unconsciously he relaxed his attention and began to think.
The subject of his thoughts was the girl he had seen just twenty-four hours before. He caught himself remembering little things he had not consciously noticed at the time, as, for instance, the strange contrast between the mischief in her eyes and the austerity of her brow, or the queer little fashion she had of winking rapidly four or five times, and then opening her eyes wide and looking straight into the depths of his own. He considered it quite a coincidence that he had unconsciously returned to the spot on which they had met the day before--the rich Crazy Horse lode.
As though in answer to his recognition of this fact, her voice suddenly called to him from above.
"Hullo, little boy!" it cried.
He felt at once that he was pleased at the encounter.
"Hullo!" he answered; "where are you?"
"Right here."
He looked up, and then still up, until, at the flat top of the castellated dike that stood over him, he caught a gleam of pink. The contrast between it, the blue of the sky, and the dark green of the trees, was most beautiful and unusual. Nature rarely uses pink, except in sunsets and in flowers. Bennington thought pleasedly how every impression this girl made upon him was one of grace or beauty or bright colour. The gleam of pink disappeared, and a great pine cone, heavy with pitch, came buzzing through the air to fall at his feet.
"That"s to show you where I am," came the clear voice. "You ought to feel honoured. I"ve only three cones left."
The dike before which Bennington had paused was one of the round variety. It rose perhaps twenty feet above the _debris_ at its base, sheer, gray, its surface almost intact except for an insignificant number of frost fissures. From its base the hill fell rapidly, so that, even from his own inferior elevation, he was enabled to look over the tops of trees standing but a few rods away from him. He could see that the summit of this dike was probably nearly flat, and he surmised that, once up there, one would become master of a pretty enough little plateau on which to sit; but his careful circ.u.mvallation could discover no possible method of ascent. The walls afforded no chance for a squirrel"s foothold even. He began to doubt whether he had guessed aright as to the girl"s whereabouts, and began carefully to examine the tops of the trees. Discovering nothing in them, he cast another puzzled glance at the top of the dike. A pair of violet eyes was scrutinizing him gravely over the edge of it.
"How in the world did you get up there?" he cried.
"Flew," she explained, with great succinctness.
"Look out you don"t fall," he warned hastily; her att.i.tude was alarming.
"I am lying flat," said she, "and I can"t fall."
"You haven"t told me how you got up. I want to come up, too."
"How do you know I want you?"
"I have such a lot of things to say!" cried Bennington, rather at a loss for a valid reason, but feeling the necessity keenly.
"Well, sit down and say them. There"s a big flat rock just behind you."
This did not suit him in the least. "I wish you"d let me up," he begged petulantly. "I can"t say what I want from here."
"I can hear you quite well. You"ll have to talk from there, or else keep still."
"That isn"t fair!" persisted the young man, adopting a tone of argument. "You"re a girl----"
"Stop there! You are wrong to start with. Did you think that a creature who could fly to the tops of the rocks was a mere girl? Not at all."
"What do you mean?" asked the easily bewildered Bennington.
"What I say. I"m not a girl."
"What are you then?"
"A sun fairy."
"A sun fairy?"
"Yes; a real live one. See that cloud over toward the sun? The nice downy one, I mean. That"s my couch. I sleep on it all night. I"ve got it near the sun so that it will warm up, you see."
"I see," cried Bennington. He could recognise foolery--provided it were ticketed plainly enough. He sat down on the flat rock before indicated, and clasped his knee with his hands, prepared to enjoy more. "Is that your throne up there, Sun Fairy?" he asked. She had withdrawn her head from sight.
"It is," her voice came down to him in grave tones.
"It must be a very nice one."
"The nicest throne you ever saw."
"I never saw one, but I"ve often heard that thrones were unpleasant things."
"I am sitting, foolish mortal," said she, in tones of deep commiseration, "on a soft, thick cushion of moss--much more comfortable, I imagine, than hard, flat rocks. And the nice warm sun is shining on me--it must be rather chilly in the woods to-day. And there is a breeze blowing from the Big Horn--old rocks are always damp and stuffy in the shade. And I am looking away out over the Hills--I hope some people enjoy the sight of piles of quartzite."
"Cruel sun fairy!" cried Bennington. "Why do you tantalize me so with the delights from which you debar me? What have I done?"