Jessie is so exasperatingly prosaic, at times, that she makes me feel either like crying, or like shaking her. On this occasion I was fortunately hindered from doing either by Ralph, who suddenly appeared, demanding to be "dwessed." After breakfast we harnessed the horses--we could either of us do that as well, and quicker than Joe--then we drove into the enclosure where the olive-tinted little spheres lay thick on the ground and proceeded to fill the wagon-box.
The patch was small, but the melons grew in great profusion, and it did not take long. Within a couple of hours I was traveling along the highway, perched upon the high spring seat of the wagon-box, with Guard beside me. Guard was, according to my idea, very good company, and it was, moreover, desirable that he should learn to ride in a wagon and to conduct himself properly while doing so. It was a very warm morning and as the sweet, cloying odor of my wagon load of produce a.s.sailed my nostrils, I could not but think of the famous couplet, "You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will, but the scent of the roses will hang round it still!" My route through the settlement might be traced, I fancied, by the fragrance that the melons exhaled.
My first stop was at the store where I disposed of a satisfactory quant.i.ty of melons, but after leaving the store the business dragged wearily, and I found myself obliged to take promises to pay in lieu of money from the women of the household when the masculine head chanced to be absent. They always explained, quite as a matter of course, that "he" had left no money with them. It appeared to me, as I patiently booked one promise after another, that "he" could not have kept hired help very long if their wages consisted of nothing more tangible--after the matter of food and lodging was eliminated--than those that fell to the lot of "his" womenfolk. I had observed, with some annoyance, when I first started out, that one of the wagon wheels had a tendency to make plaintive little protests, as if it objected to being put to any use. I could by no means fathom the reason for it, but by mid-afternoon the protest had grown into a piercing shriek. A shriek that even Guard shrank from with an indignant growl.
Less than one-fourth of my load yet remained unsold. I was most anxious to clear it all out, but that ear-piercing sound was becoming maddening. "The wagon must be conjured," I thought, recalling some of Joe"s fancies. Coming to a place at last, where two roads met, I halted the team and sat considering the question of a return home or a trip to Crusoe, which place I had not yet visited, when the sight of a horseman far down the left-hand road decided me to go in that direction. The horseman was well mounted and going at a good pace. "I don"t care!" I told myself, recklessly, "I"m going to overtake him and make him take some of these melons if I have to pay him for doing it."
But there was no occasion for my hurrying the horses. When the man on ahead caught the sound of my rapidly-advancing shriek he promptly drew up beside the roadway and awaited my approach, and then I saw that the rider was Mr. Rutledge. He recognized me at the same moment and exclaimed:
"Why, Miss Leslie, is that you?"
"Yes," I said, meekly, but I felt my face grow red, and was conscious, in spite of my good resolutions, of a sudden resentment against Joe.
Why had he left me to do such work as this?
Mr. Rutledge, drawing close to the wagon, ran an inquiring eye over my merchandise.
"Been buying melons?" he asked, adding: "I didn"t know that there was anything of the kind for sale in the valley."
The observation did not seem to require an answer, and I was silent while he reached into the box and selected one of the smaller melons and held it up laughingly, as if defying me to retake it.
"Findings is keepings!" he said, gayly.
[Ill.u.s.tration: HE DREW UP BESIDE THE ROADWAY (Page 166)]
"Also, pilferings," I returned, triumphantly. After all, I should not be compelled either to urge a sale or to offer a bribe.
"Call it pilfering if you have the face to, but in return for this bit of refreshment I am going to give you some advice."
"Well?"
"The next time that you take your colored attache"s place as teamster, make sure that he has greased your wagon wheels. You may not have observed it, but their protests against moving are simply diabolical."
"Oh, is that what causes that noise?" I asked, leaning down from the seat the better to peer at the wheels in question.
"Certainly; Joe should not have allowed you to go out with them in such shape."
The laughter had died out of my heart and my voice, but a stubborn, foolish pride held my tongue. I could not tell the mining superintendent, who would have been one of the best of customers, that the melons were for sale, or that Joe had left us. "If I tell him that Joe is gone," ran my foolish thought, "he will understand that I am peddling melons." Gathering up the lines, I started the horses quickly, lest he should ask where I got my load. Mr. Rutledge drew his horse aside, waiting for me to pa.s.s.
"Be sure to tell Joe about the wheels, when you see him!" he called after me, as the complaining shriek again rent the air.
"Yes," I returned, "I will;" and added to myself: "When I see him."
In my anxiety to escape questioning I had forgotten that a person who is riding in a wagon whose wheels need oiling cannot shake off a well-mounted horseman so easily. Underneath the weird outcry of the wheels the steady pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat of the black horse"s hoofs came to my ears, and I glanced back to see Mr. Rutledge close to the hind wheel. Unless he stopped entirely he must of necessity be close at hand. The road that Mr. Rutledge must take in order to reach the mining camp branched off from the one that we were following, at a little distance, and I understood very well that, considering the distance, he did not think it civil to gallop on ahead of me. But suppose he should yet ask me where the melons came from--just suppose it. Should I tell a lie, or should I tell him that I was not even acting as teamster to oblige another? I took up the whip--then I dropped it back into its socket. I had always known myself for, in my quiet way, rather a proud girl, but--it--but--it was not this kind of pride, and I had never before felt myself a coward. Because Mr.
Rutledge was a gentleman, was it any worse that he should know--
I drew in the reins sharply, and the team came to a standstill. The sudden cessation of that fearful noise called to mind a line or two that Jessie is fond of quoting: "And silence like a poultice comes, to heal the blows of sound."
Mr. Rutledge again halted his horse, and turned on me an inquiring look. My throat was dry and husky, and my voice sounded strange in my own ears as I said, in answer to the look:
"I wanted to tell you, Mr. Rutledge, that we raised these melons ourselves, and we are trying to sell them."
"Are you?"
His tone was very gentle. He regarded me and my dusty, wayworn outfit silently for a s.p.a.ce, then he said, this time with no laughter in his voice:
"I take off my hat to you, Miss Leslie"--he suited the action to the word--"and I thank you for teaching me anew the truth of the old saying: "True hearts are more than coronets, and simple worth than Norman blood.""
He replaced his hat with a sweeping bow, touched the black horse lightly with a spurred heel, and was gone. The tears were in my eyes as I watched the little swirl of dust raised by his horse"s hoofs settle back to place. I had not deserved praise, but it was something to feel that others understood how hard and distasteful was this bitter task, and I was glad to remember that he had not added to my humiliation by offering to buy my melons. I meant to sell them all before returning home now, and I did, but it was a long day"s work, and when I reached home I had only five dollars to show for it. "He"
had been chiefly absent from home, and I had booked many promises.
Jessie and Ralph met me at the gate as I drove up. Jessie was interested and anxious.
"Why, you have sold all the melons!" Jessie exclaimed, glancing into the wagon-box, and narrowly escaping being knocked over by Guard, as he sprang down from the seat. "You have had good luck, Leslie."
"Good luck doesn"t mean ready money in this case, Jessie, and that is what we need. There"s just about one more load of melons, and to-morrow we"ll take them out to the storage camp."
"That may be a good plan," Jessie admitted reflectively, "but it"s a long drive."
"Yes, we must get an early start, and we must not forget to oil the wagon wheels," I said, but I did not mention my meeting with Mr.
Rutledge.
CHAPTER XIV
AT THE STORAGE RESERVOIR
By nine o"clock the next morning we were on our way to the water-storage camp, twenty miles away across the plains.
The wagon-box was piled high with the last of our cantaloupe crop.
Jessie and I had risen at daylight to pull them. We had been careful to leave a vacant s.p.a.ce in the front of the wagon, and this, fitted up with his favorite little chair and plenty of blankets, made a snug harbor for Ralph. The little fellow was wild with excitement and pleasure at the prospect before him. There was room, besides, in the harbor for a well-filled lunch basket, a jug of water, and, if he became tired of walking, for Guard. The dog trotted on beside the wagon, alert and vigilant, until we were well outside of the valley, when, intoxicated, perhaps, by the sight of such boundless miles over which to chase them, he gave himself up to the pursuit of prairie dogs. An entirely futile pursuit in all cases, but Guard seemed unable to understand the hopelessness of it until some miles had been covered and he was panting with fatigue. The wary little creatures always kept within easy reach of their burrows, a fact which Guard did not comprehend until he had scurried wildly through a half-dozen prairie dog towns in succession. But when the conviction did force itself upon him their most insistent and insolent barking was powerless to arrest his further attention. He had learned his lesson.
I had put the rifle and a well-filled cartridge-belt into the wagon thinking that I might get a shot at a jack-rabbit or cotton-tail, but Guard"s experience impressed me as likely to be mine also should I attempt to kill such small game with a rifle, and I left the gun untouched.
The plains were gray with dust and shimmering in the heat. Clouds of the pungent alkali dust were stirred up by the horses" feet and by the wagon wheels--we had oiled the wheels after an extravagant fashion, I"m afraid, for I do not remember that Joe ever used up an entire jar of lard, as we did, for that purpose--and our throats were parched, our faces blistered, and our eyes smarting before half the distance to the camp was pa.s.sed over. The wind, what little there was of it, seemed but to add waves of heat to the torturing waves of alkali dust.
Ralph, after whimpering a little with the general discomfort, curled down in his nest and dropped off to sleep, but there was no such refuge for Jessie and me.
"It"s a dreadful thing to be poor!" Jessie exclaimed, at last. There was a desolate intonation in her voice, and my own spirits drooped.
The horses dropped into a slow walk.
"We shall have one advantage over Mr. Wilson, whatever happens,"
Jessie presently continued.
"How is that?" I inquired. It did not look, at the moment, as if we were ever destined to have the advantage of any one.
"We shall not find the men at dinner; they will have had their dinners and gone to work again."
"We may find them at supper," I said, giving Frank an impatient slap with the lines. The blow was a light one, but it took him by surprise, and, as was his wont, he stopped and looked back inquiringly, seemingly anxious to know what was meant by such a proceeding. Jessie s.n.a.t.c.hed up the whip, and I laughed as I invited Frank to go on.