Cressy. Bret Harte
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work for the teacher than for one of his scholars, and a young lady at that,” said Mr. Ford gravely, as he took the rifle from the hands of the half-amused, half-reluctant girl. “It’s quite safe with me, and I promise I shall deliver it into Mr. McKinstry’s hands and none other.”
“Perhaps it wouldn’t be ez likely to be gin’rally noticed ez it would if one of US carried it,” murmured Mrs. McKinstry in confidential abstraction, gazing at her daughter sublimely unconscious of the presence of a third party.
“You’re quite right,” said the master composedly, throwing the rifle over his shoulder and turning towards the door. “So I’ll say good-afternoon, and try and find your husband.”
Mrs. McKinstry constrainedly plucked at the folds of her coarse gown. “Ye’ll like a drink afore ye go,” she said, in an ill-concealed tone of relief. “I clean forgot my manners. Cressy, fetch out that demijohn.”
“Not for me, thank you,” returned Mr. Ford smiling.
“Oh, I see—you’re temperance, nat’rally,” said Mrs. McKinstry with a tolerant sigh.
“Hardly that,” returned the master, “I follow no rule, I drink sometimes—but not to-day.”
Mrs. McKinstry’s dark face contracted. “Don’t you see, Maw,” struck in Cressy quickly. “Teacher drinks sometimes, but he don’t USE whiskey. That’s all.”
Her mother’s face relaxed. Cressy slipped out of the door before the master, and preceded him to the gate. When she had reached it she turned and looked into his face.
“What did Maw say to yer about seein’ me just now?”
“I don’t understand you.”
“To your seein’ me and Joe Masters on the trail?”
“She said nothing.”
“Humph,” said Cressy meditatively. “What was it you told her about it?”
“Nothing.”
“Then you DIDN’T see us?”
“I saw you with some one—I don’t know whom.”
“And you didn’t tell Maw?”
“I did not. It was none of my business.”
He instantly saw the utter inconsistency of this speech in connection with the reason he believed he had in coming. But it was too late to recall it, and she was looking at him with a bright but singular expression.
“That Joe Masters is the conceitedest fellow goin’. I told him you could see his foolishness.”
“Ah, indeed.”
Mr. Ford pushed open the gate. As the girl still lingered he was obliged to hold it a moment before passing through.
“Maw couldn’t quite hitch on to your not drinkin’. She reckons you’re like everybody else about yer. That’s where she slips up on you. And everybody else, I kalkilate.”
“I suppose she’s somewhat anxious about your father, and I dare say is expecting me to hurry,” returned the master pointedly.
“Oh, dad’s all right,” said Cressy mischievously. “You’ll come across him over yon, in the clearing. But you’re looking right purty with that gun. It kinder sets you off. You oughter wear one.”
The master smiled slightly, said “Good-by,” and took leave of the girl, but not of her eyes, which were still following him. Even when he had reached the end of the lane and glanced back at the rambling dwelling, she was still leaning on the gate with one foot on the lower rail and her chin cupped in the hollow of her hand. She made a slight gesture, not clearly intelligible at that distance; it might have been a mischievous imitation of the way he had thrown the gun over his shoulder, it might have been a wafted kiss.
The master however continued his way in no very self-satisfied mood. Although he did not regret having taken the place of Cressy as the purveyor of lethal weapons between the belligerent parties, he knew he was tacitly mingling in the feud between people for whom he cared little or nothing. It was true that the Harrisons sent their children to his school, and that in the fierce partisanship of the locality this simple courtesy was open to misconstruction. But he was more uneasily conscious that this mission, so far as Mrs. McKinstry was concerned, was a miserable failure. The strange relations of the mother and daughter perhaps explained much of the girl’s conduct, but it offered no hope of future amelioration. Would the father, “worrited by stock” and boundary quarrels—a man in the habit of cutting Gordian knots with a bowie knife—prove more reasonable? Was there any nearer sympathy between father and daughter? But she had said he would meet McKinstry in the clearing: she was right, for here he was coming forward at a gallop!
CHAPTER III
When within a dozen paces of the master, McKinstry, scarcely checking his mustang, threw himself from the saddle, and with a sharp cut of his riata on the animal’s haunches sent him still galloping towards the distant house. Then, with both hands deeply thrust in the side pockets of his long, loose linen coat, he slowly lounged with clanking spurs towards the young man. He was thick-set, of medium height, densely and reddishly bearded, with heavy-lidded pale blue eyes that wore a look of drowsy pain, and after their first wearied glance at the master, seemed to rest anywhere but on him.
“Your wife was sending you your rifle by Cressy,” said the master, “but I offered to bring it myself, as I thought it scarcely a proper errand for a young lady. Here it is. I hope you didn’t miss it before and don’t require it now,” he added quietly.
Mr. McKinstry took it in one hand with an air of slightly embarrassed surprise, rested it against his shoulder, and then with the same hand and without removing the other from his pocket, took off his soft felt hat, showed a bullet-hole in its rim, and returned lazily, “It’s about half an hour late, but them Harrisons reckoned I was fixed for ‘em and war too narvous to draw a clear bead on me.”
The moment was evidently not a felicitous one for the master’s purpose, but he was determined to go on. He hesitated an instant, when his companion, who seemed to be equally but more sluggishly embarrassed, in a moment of preoccupied perplexity withdrew from his pocket his right hand swathed in a blood-stained bandage, and following some instinctive habit, attempted, as if reflectively, to scratch his head with two stiffened fingers.
“You are hurt,” said the master, genuinely shocked, “and here I am detaining you.”
“I had my hand up—so,” explained McKinstry, with heavy deliberation, “and the ball raked off my little finger after it went through my hat. But that ain’t what I wanted to say when I stopped ye. I ain’t just kam enough yet,” he apologized in the calmest manner, “and I clean forgit myself,” he added with perfect self-possession. “But I was kalkilatin’ to ask you”—he laid his bandaged hand familiarly on the master’s shoulder—“if Cressy kem all right?”
“Perfectly,” said the master. “But shan’t I walk on home with you, and we can talk together after your wound is attended to?”
“And she looked purty?” continued McKinstry without moving.
“Very.”
“And you thought them new store gownds of hers right peart?”
“Yes,” said the master. “Perhaps a little too fine for the school, you know,” he added insinuatingly, “and”—
“Not for her—not for her,” interrupted McKinstry. “I reckon thar’s more whar that cam from! Ye needn’t fear but that she kin keep up that gait ez long ez Hiram McKinstry hez the runnin’ of her.”
Mr. Ford gazed hopelessly at the hideous ranch in the distance, at the sky, and the trail before him; then his glance fell upon the hand still upon his shoulder, and he struggled with a final effort. “At another time I’d like to have a long talk with you about your daughter, Mr. McKinstry.”
“Talk on,” said McKinstry, putting his wounded hand through the master’s arm. “I admire to hear