"Don"t you?" she asked, slowly.
"Not so very," I compromised, seeing the danger signal. "I think you were just making a jolly chump of me, that"s all. I don"t so much mind making one of myself, but it"s rotten having other people do it for me!"
"I suppose," she said indifferently, raising her arms to tuck in a lock of hair, "that if it"s worthwhile making the distinction, you might be allowed a choice."
For the pure deviltry of this remark I looked around for something to throw at her, and then saw our fire--a tragic picture of dead ashes which the wind was blowing over a now cold skillet.
"See," I cried, "what our family row has led to! Fire out, breakfast ruined, and here I am due at the office in half an hour!"
"Oh, Jack," she looked at me gravely, putting an end to our banter--and for the first time calling me Jack, though I believe she did it unconsciously--"haven"t we any more b.u.t.tonwood? This is serious, isn"t it!"
"Not so very, perhaps. We can try another kind."
"Will it be safe?" she asked, uncertainly.
"With a small fire of very dry hardwood, and this rising wind, what little smoke there is won"t hold together long enough to be seen."
"But it"ll blow right toward their camp! The wind"s changed since yesterday!"
"That"s more than two miles off, and they"re probably still after Smilax. I"ll make a very small fire."
This, indeed, seemed to work well enough, and by the time a new breakfast was ready our uncertainties had become shadows of no consequence.
"But you _do_ know I was angry, don"t you?" she asked, out of a clear sky, with an unexpectedness that made me throw back my head and laugh.
"You bet I do! And you beat me in the race, too; and you"re the best cook on our block!"
"It seems to be the same old story," she smiled, with affected sorrow, "that food must always be the price of masculine tractability. Ah, the long drawn out tragedy of woman"s existence, that she must forever be stuffing man with things to eat, as reptiles are stuffed, to keep him facile!"
"You fail to observe, my little snake charmer," I replied, "that you omitted to say good things to eat. I"m never facile after Smilax feeds me."--Though I owe Smilax an apology for this!
"He must have run great risks of being bitten."
"Oh, no; I"m not the biting kind of snake! I"m a constrictor--I hug!"
"Mercy!" She gave a little gasp, then, turned and went indifferently toward the spring.
Whistling happily I finished the dishes. But I finished them with the promise of a better cleansing next time, and soon was calling her.
She came to me humming the song I had been whistling--an unconscious bit of flattery on her part, but it added to my pleasure. There is, after all, so much to be gained by hitching your wagon to a star, that I tried to believe she deliberately intended it. I would have hitched up oftener to that same star, except for the fact that stars sometimes get hot and furious at too many liberties, and switch their tails and kick the wagons of well-meaning people to smithereens. That it may be better to have had a stellar joy-ride and be sent to h.e.l.l for speeding than keep your boots forever in the clay, I will neither affirm nor deny; but the prudent man hitcheth to the moon!
As we went toward the fort she turned to me, asking:
"Don"t you think they should have been here sooner? Do you fear anything you won"t tell me?" Her eyes were anxious, and I saw how insistent this worry had been.
"Everything depends on how far Smilax had to go," I answered. "He"d never dream of coming back until the men gave up--and they might chase him half across the state! So a few extra days doesn"t mean anything.
They can"t catch him, that"s certain; and he and Echochee"ll only stay away as long as they"re pursued. They"ll come through, I believe it sincerely; and your Chancellor, sweet Princess, will guard you with his life--with ten lives, if he had them."
"I know that," she murmured, "and shan"t worry if you tell me not to."
"Then cheer up! Smilax is a past-master of the swamps and woods, take my word for it!"
"I really suppose Echochee knows a great deal about them, too," she said, after a pause, "for when she was sixteen she had to leave the Reservation with her husband and hide him in the Everglades. She learned a great deal, then."
"Why did she have to do that?"
"He"d fought and killed another Indian, and the officers were expected.
But in the fight he received a cut that made him blind. For ten years Echochee fed and clothed him, hunting alligators and watching her chance of slipping the skins to a market. By extreme stinting she finally saved enough to "buy him loose"--her optimistic way of saying "pay a lawyer for his defense." Think, after being outcasts all that time, of leading a blind husband through half a hundred miles of wilderness, with the savings of ten years to wager on a chance of having him cleared!"
"I hope he was," I declared.
"In a sense he was, yes. He knew where she kept the money, and while she was in the lawyer"s office persuading him to take the case, her husband stole it and sneaked away."
I uttered a cry at this hideous ingrat.i.tude, and she glanced at me, gravely adding:
"Then he got drunk and was run over by a train; so, in a sense, Echochee freed him, after all."
"Oh, the magnanimous courage of a woman"s devotion!" I stopped and looked at her. "It"s always the same, irrespective of tribe and nation.
She"s dauntless, world-defying, utterly self-sacrificing. I hope to G.o.d, Doloria, that you won"t be among those who squeeze their hearts dry! You"ve lived away from the world and may not know how plentiful these are; but no day pa.s.ses without its toll of some woman being silently crucified in her losing fight to save a besotted biped--the lord of her earthly temple. It"s only by a streak of luck when their stage is cleared, as Echochee"s was!"
"That may be all right for clearing the stage," she murmured, "but it doesn"t heal the hearts of those who were made to suffer."
I had not fathomed the penetration of her sympathy, being satisfied, man like, to let a swift revenge wipe the slate. She seemed to be contemplating what I had said, and when she again spoke her voice was tender as though it had come unbidden from a wistful reverie.
"I suppose you"re right, Jack. The world I"ve known, only through books, must be full of such cruelties. I rather dread having to go into it. It seems a pity that I can"t always live in--in----" then, with a smile, she asked: "Do you ever dream? I don"t mean when you"re asleep, but awake--wide awake?"
"I rather think I"m dreaming now," I admitted, for a great contentment had fallen about us as we walked beneath the solemn trees.
The silence that followed was again stirred by her voice, saying:
"You mustn"t think me childish, but I"ve always had a secret gateway to a place--my Secret world--where everything is make-believe, and nothing can be but truth and beauty. Often when Echochee was tiresome, or I was tired, I used to slip away and go there."
"I wish you"d take me--won"t you?"
"Oh, I can"t," she quickly answered, stooping for a flower in our path, holding it in both hands and leaning her face above it.
"Yes," at last I said, "I"ve a place like that; but I don"t know whether I live there in make-believe, or throwing off the make-believe we have to wear in the world you"re going to, I live honestly with myself. If you won"t take me to yours, sometime maybe you"ll come to mine!"
Now, I had no intention of making love to her. We were talking only about secret worlds and day-dreams.
"I"m afraid it might be difficult," she answered, dropping the flower and walking a shade more slowly. "Our lives--yours and mine--are cast along such opposite lines, it seems!"
"That"s what Secret worlds are for," I told her, "----that, no matter how far apart we are, our spirits may come and meet; live again, as we"ve lived here; be happy again--as I"ve been." I turned, saying with a laugh that was meant to convey an impression of insouciance--yet failing rather miserably: "These two big pines here, Princess, actually make the gateway to my pool--which is, in fact, my Secret world, because you helped me build my home there. So, you see, it wouldn"t be very difficult, as you were about to enter without knowing it. Oh, I wish I could tell you more about it!" And I then became silent, too helplessly afraid to go on.
A brighter color had come into her throat and cheeks, but she was smiling whimsically as she said:
"Then we must go around--find another path to the fort--mustn"t we!"
She had stopped before me, poised delicately, almost swaying; and for several seconds our eyes, that must have been charged with some untranslatable excitement, held fast. Mine would not let go, and hers I believe could not. Her hands, idly at her sides, were turned palms forward, unconsciously suggestive of supplication.