CHAPTER XXIV THE WAY OF A MAID

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      The Halfway House was an oasis in the desert. To-day it was an oasis and a battle ground. Franklin watched Mary Ellen as she passed quietly about the long, low room, engaged in household duties which she performed deftly as any servant. He compared these rude necessities with the associations amid which he knew this girl had been nurtured, and the thought gave him nothing but dissatisfaction and rebellion. He longed to give her all the aid of his own strength, and to place her again, as he felt he some day might, in something of the old ease and comfort, if not in the same surroundings. Yet, as he bethought himself of the apparent hopelessness of all this, he set his teeth in a mental protest near akin to anger. He shifted in his seat and choked in his throat a sound that was half a groan. Presently he rose, and excusing himself, went out to join Buford at the corral.

      "Come," said the latter, "and I'll show you around over our improvements while we are waitin' for a bite to eat. We are goin' to have a great place here some day. Besides our own land, Miss Beauchamp and our servant have a quarter-section each adjoinin' us on the west. If ever this land comes to be worth anything at all, we ought to grow into something worth while."

      "Yes," said Franklin, "it will make you rich," and as they walked about he pointed out with Western enthusiasm the merits of the country round-about.

      The "bite to eat" was in time duly announced by a loud, sonorous note that arose swelling upon the air. Aunt Lucy appeared at the kitchen door, her fat cheeks distended, blowing a conch as though this were Tidewater over again.

      The long table was spread in the large room of general assembly, this room being, as has been mentioned, excavated from the earth, so that, as they sat at table, their heads were perhaps nearly level with the surface of the ground. The short side walls, topped with a heavy earthen roof made of this sort of abode a domicile rude and clumsy enough, but one not lacking in a certain comfort. In the winter it was naturally warm, and in the summer it was cool, the air, caught at either end by the gable of the roof, passing through and affording freshness to the somewhat cellar-like interior. Cut off from the main room were three smaller rooms, including the kitchen, from which Aunt Lucy passed back and forth with massive tread. The table was no polished mahogany, but was built of rough pine boards, and along it stood long benches instead of chairs. For her "white folks" Aunt Lucy spread a cloth at one end of this long table, placing also in order the few pieces of china and silver that had survived a life of vicissitudes.

      "I may be poor," said Buford, commenting grimly on the rude appearance of the board, "and I reckon we always will be poor, but when the time comes that I can't have a silver spoon in my coffee, then I want to die."

      "Major!" said Mrs. Buford reprovingly from the head of the table, where she sat in state, "I do not like to hear you speak in that way. We are in the hands of the Lord."

      "Quite right," said Buford, "and I beg pardon. But, really, this country does bring some changes, and we ourselves surely change with it. No one seems to think of the past out here."

      "Don' you b'lieve I don' never think o' the past!" broke in a deep and uninvited voice, much to Mrs. Buford's disquietude. "This yer sho'hly is a lan' o' Sodom an' Tomorrow. Dey ain't a sengle fiahplace in the hull country roun' yer. When I sells mer lan' fer a hundred dollahs, fust thing I'm a-goin' do is to build me a fiahplace an' git me er nice big settle to putt in front o' hit, so'st I kin set mer bread to raise befo' the fiah, like all bread orter be sot. How kin a pusson cook out yet — not to say, cook?"

      "That will do, Lucy," said Mrs. Buford.

      "We are demoralized," said Mary Ellen hopelessly, "and I resent it. I resent your knowing us or knowing anything about our lives. If you had never heard anything at all about us it mightn't have been so bad. We came out here to get away from every one."

      Franklin bit his lip. "Mary Ellen, my child!" cried Mrs. Buford.

      "That's hardly fair," said Franklin. "We are all beginners in this land." Yet there was an awkward break in the conversation.

      "Providence guides all our ways," said Mrs. Buford, somewhat irrelevantly, and with her customary sigh.

      "Amen!" cried a hearty voice from the kitchen. "'Scuse meh!"

      "You will oblige me, captain," said Buford as they finally rose from the table, "if you will be so good as to drive Miss Beauchamp over to the claim shanty after a while. I'll just ride along over on horseback. I don't like to put a guest to work, but really I need a little help about that roof. It has fallen in at one corner, and I presume it ought to be repaired, for the sake of Miss Beauchamp's conscience when she goes to the Land Office to prove up."

      Franklin assented to this proposition with such eagerness that he blushed as he saw how evident had been his pleasure at this opportunity for a moment's speech alone with the girl who sat so near but yet so unapproachable. "I'll be delighted," said he.

      Mary Ellen said nothing. The pink spot in her cheek was plainly deeper. It did not lessen as she stood watching the struggle the two men had in again hitching to the buggy the wild black horse. Seizing the tug with one hand and the singletree with the other, Franklin fairly swept the obdurate beast off its balance as he forced it to its place at the pole. His strength was apparent.

      "Are you afraid to ride behind that horse?" asked he.

      "I don't think so," she replied simply, and her uncle helped her in, while Franklin steadied the team. Yet how Franklin hated the wild black horse now! All the way across the prairie during the short drive to the shanty the beast gave him plenty to do to keep it inside the harness, and he had no time for a single word. The girl sat silent at his side, looking straight ahead. Franklin felt her arm brush his at the jolting of the vehicle now and then. Her hand, brown and shapely, lay in her lap. As Franklin gathered the slack of the reins, his own hand approaching hers, it seemed to him that an actual emanation, a subtle warmth, stole from her hand to his, an unspoken appeal from some vital source. A vague, delicious sense of happiness came over him. He too fell quite silent. He guided the horses as though he saw neither them nor aught else between him and some far-off horizon. At the shanty he helped her down. Ignorant, he saw not the tale of a bosom heaving, nor read correctly the story of the pink in the cheek. He believed rather the import of a face turned away, and of features set in a mask of repose. There had as yet been no word.

      The claim shanty was indeed in some need of repair. One corner of the roof had fallen in, carrying with it a portion of the sod wall that made the inclosure, and spilling a quantity of earth in the bed customarily occupied by Aunt Lucy when she "resided" here in company with her mistress in their innocent process of acquiring one hundred and sixty acres of land apiece by means of a double dwelling place. Upon the opposite side, protected by a screen, Franklin caught sight of a corner of the other bed. There were also upon that side of the shack a little table, a chair, and a dainty looking-glass, with a few other such feminine appurtenances. Two wash-stands, with basins, went far toward completing the remaining furniture. It must be admitted that there was dust upon the table and in the basins. The housekeeper in Mary Ellen apologized as she began to clean them. "We don't sleep here very often," she said.

      "And aren't you afraid?" said Franklin.

      "Not now. We used to be afraid of the coyotes, though, of course, they can't hurt us. Once uncle killed a rattlesnake in the shanty. It had crawled in at the door. I don't think, though, that you