The stage-driver viewed the missive with professional interest as he delivered it. The majority of his pa.s.sengers paid him monotonously in b.u.t.ter or eggs for his services, his trips were tedious, and his ideals were limited. To read and digest all postals and to conjecture at the contents of all envelopes were his reward for handing out the mail at the turning of the lanes. The minister jogged down instantly to Davie's in his sulky, slapping the lines vigorously, if ineffectually, over the back of his brown mare, which understood, with a truly feminine insight, his perplexity before her character. Davie dropped his hoe and ran stumbling to meet him. He read the pages in a tremble. There was something for him from Elizabeth at the bottom of the last one. "Dear Davie," it ran, "are you well an' lookin' jest the same? Don't get lonesome for me. I ain't missin' you a mite."

During the period that she was resting for the operation Mary wrote daily, and every time the letter came the minister jogged down to the farmhouse, for the words were really from the old wife to Davie. Very cheerful words they were for the most part. "If Davie's askin' how the streets look, tell him I can't jest tell, for I come in the night, but the noise is amazin'." "Tell Davie I can see a church tower from the window, an' it's higher 'n' we ever dreamt of its bein', an' sweeter."

"Tell Davie to lay listenin' to feet goin' up and down on stones is grand." "Tell Davie I hev seen the surgeon an' that I never thought a great man'd be so kind. I was all in a flutter over him, but when he'd come 'n' had seen me, whatever'd I do but tell him 'bout him 'n'

Melindy Ethel, an' the meetin'-house, an' how the road runs by in front o' the farm. An' he said he knew, an' not to mind--as ma ust to.

Ain't it strange 'bout his knowin'?"

The letters to Elizabeth were a tremendous labor, for Davie was no speller, and always bashful in the presence of ink. He had only little happenings for his pen--he wrote with his tongue forming the painful syllables about his mouth. But to her they were infinite things--the May rose was blossomed in the garden, and a pair of robins were nesting on a ledge of the loom on finding the room so still; the speckled hen scratched up the pease, and the black cow's calf was lamed; the house dog pined for her and whimpered at the doors, letting the cats lick the edges of his dish; the neighbors had sent donations of a loaf of rye bread, a pitcher of broth, and the half of a new pressed cheese; Kerrenhappuch Green sat with him in the evenings, and he, Davie, was not getting lonesome nor missing _her_ at all. But the one blotted "'Lisbeth, 'Lisbeth," told the true tale of the empty house.

When no letter came from Mary he toiled, white as lint, in his potato-field. There followed two days of sick suspense; then the minister waved to him at the gray fence-rails. So greatly did he dread to hear the news he longed to know, he could not stir from the spot where he stood, but waited, a strained, pathetic figure, for him to make his way across the even furrows. On the fatherly, near-sighted countenance, as he drew nearer, was to be seen such a shining brightness that straightway Davie knew that she whom he loved had issued from her trial. The two men, alike weather-beaten and seamed by a humble work--the shepherd no less than the sheep of his flock anxiously tilling a rocky farm,--had the reticence which is learned in hill solitudes, but in the "Thank G.o.d, Davie," and the breaking "Yes, sir," much was spoken.

Now Davie slackened his toil and opened all the windows of the house to freshen the low-ceilinged rooms for Elizabeth's returning. Every morning he picked bunches of spring flowers and arranged them in stiff bouquets on the tables and old bureaus. He took out his Sunday suit from the closet and rebrushed it carefully and laid it with a clean collar and his musty tie. He began to carry himself all at once with something of an air, and he developed a reckless and unnatural enthusiasm about the weather; for to be darkly critical of the season after the thaw was a local point of masculine etiquette which hitherto he had scrupulously observed. The spring had always been in his judgment, sympathetically received, "too terrible warm," or "pointin'

right to a late frost that'll kill everything," or, were it not palpably a failure, "so durned nice now that the summer'll be mean."

But with the good news coming from the hospital he was ready to declare in response to friendly greetings: "It's the beatin'est time I ever come 'cross. Dun'no' when I hev heerd so many bluebirds or sech chirky ones. An' the sky's wonderful an' the ground's jest right. It's goin' to be a dreadful good year for farmin'."

There was in his mind no premonition of trouble on his receiving from the lumbering stage an envelope directed to him in Elizabeth's own hand. It was only that she was getting able to write to him herself.

He took it unopened up to the bench by the May rose to read its contents at his leisure away from the stage-driver's curious gaze.

"Dear Davie," the letter said, "the city streets is so wearyin' an'

I'm comin' home. If I ain't so well as we hoped, don't mind. 'Tain't like I was young to leave. Mary's comin' with me, for she's long been wantin' to visit the Ridge. Could you meet me with your wagon, Davie?"

She could not tell, what she did not know, that the money for Mary's journey had been sent to her by the minister for his old friend's needs.

The afternoon was very soft and fair when Davie met the train incoming to town from the city. The farms on Turkey Ridge were illumined with growing things like the faint, precious pages of a missal. Doves fluttered on the lowly roofs. Everywhere was the calling of birds and the smell of broken earth. The minister and Mary fell behind along the way. Kerrenhappuch Green, caught walking westward to the creek, his stale pockets bulged by bait, hid with a simple delicacy in the roadside bushes from Davie's face. Only the children hastening from school nodded to him as he pa.s.sed them, nor hushed the loud clatter of their burring tongues.

It was not for young children to be stricken by that sight upon the road--the pair of patient horses drawing slowly homeward in the shining of the sun a wagon fresh lined with straw, on which lay a homely mother, smiling with old lips; and above her, on the seat, humbly bowed in his Sunday suit, a gray-haired man whose cheeks were wet with tears.

BARNEY DOON, BRAGGART

BY PHILIP VERRILL MIGHELS

The nine dusty citizens of Bitter Hole, having one and all proposed, unsuccessfully, for the hand of Miss Sally Wooster, had about concluded that Bitter Water Valley was a desert, after all, when they finally thought to turn their attention once again to Barney Doon, the cook.

Let it here be stated, nevertheless, there was one thing to prove that the valley was a desert, despite the presence of Barney, and that was the face of the country itself. One-half of that whole Nevada area was a great white blister, forty miles long and fifteen wide, acrid with alkali, flat, barren, and harsh as a sheet of zinc. The valley's remaining territory was covered with gray, dry scrub, four inches high, through which the dusty Overland stage-route was crookedly scratched.

Bitter Hole was the station for the stage. In it flourished the nine dusty citizens, a dusty dog, and a dusty chicken, in addition to Barney and the buxom Miss Sally, whose father was among the citizens enumerated. At the end of the street was a hole, or well, the waters of which, being not precisely fatal to men and horses, had occasioned the growth of the place, there being no other water for leagues along the road.

Here in this land, even when Sally had scorned them, each in turn, the men of the Hole were still agreed there could be no desolation where Barney Doon had residence. Purely and simply they loved the little cook for the fiery suddenness of his temper and the ingenuity of the insults of which he was never guiltless. The sulphurous little demon was, as the miners and teamsters estimated, "only two sizes bigger than a full-grown jack-rabbit." What he lacked in size, however, he more than supplied in expression of countenance. His eyes were centres of incandescence, while the meagre supply of hair he grew bristled redly out from beside his ears like ill-ordered spears. Indeed, such a red-whiskered, bald-headed little parcel of fireworks as Barney was is rarely created.

Calmly considered, it is hardly a matter for marvel that Barney had, from time to time, accommodated every individual in the Hole with a quarrel. Moreover, he had challenged each to mortal combat. Indeed, he had never been known to do anything less. Barney was a challenger first and a cook incidentally. But, ancient and modern tradition through, there never was chronicle of actual encounter in which the fierce little cook cut figure.

And, as a matter of fact, the men esteemed him perhaps somewhat more for the skill and adroitness with which he invariably squirmed out of impending engagements, than they did for all the alacrity and pyrotechnics with which he was wont to surround himself with duelsome entanglements. The boys well knew that if blood were unlet till the bragging, hot little rogue of a Barney stained his record, they would all forget the color of a wound.

It was not without some elemental enthusiasm that the camp, one evening, extended its welcome to a mule-driver newly mustered to their company. The sobriquet by which the man was duly introduced was Slivers. He was swiftly appraised and as quickly a.s.similated, after which there was only one process required to complete his initiation, namely, that of preparing his mind for a "racket" with Barney Doon.

"Don't lose no time, but git right in at supper," instructed John Tuttle, for the group. "Jest bang him with any old insult you can think of, and leave the rest to Barney. Trot out a plain, home-made slap at the fodder he's dishin' up, fer instance. And when he comes at you with a challenge, don't fergit your privilege of pickin' out the weapons--savvy?"

It chanced that the moment selected for the entertainment was most propitious, inasmuch as Barney had that day declared his devotion to Sally Wooster, and had duly desired her big red hand for his own, only to hear a wild peal of laughter in reply, and to find himself boosted bodily out of the window by the hearty young lady herself. He was not, therefore, exactly in a mood of milk and honey.

It never had failed, and it did not fail to-night, that Barney should conceive himself more than half insulted merely by the sight of a stranger appearing at the board and calmly requiring the wherewithal to satisfy a mountain appet.i.te. Accordingly, when the miners and teamsters all came filing in, dusty, angular, raw-looking of countenance, Barney instantly detected the presence of Slivers among them, and his eyes "lit up shop" without delay.

Slivers, to speak the truth, was easily seen. He was framed like a sky-sc.r.a.ping building, with the girders all plainly suggested. Not without a certain insolence of deliberation, he stared about the room before a.s.suming his seat, and provoked himself to a sneer of opera-bouffe proportions.

"You're his meat already," whispered one of the men. "Set down."

Comrade Slivers thereupon proceeded to comport himself with a studied indifference to the cook which was duly galling. In a grim silence that all who knew him comprehended, Barney went about the table glowering with ferocity. Edging closer and closer to Slivers, the little man seemed itching in his ears to catch some careless word that might, by dint of inventiveness, be construed as a personal affront.

"I can see you ain't got no cook in the camp," said Slivers, loudly, to his neighbor, when Barney was directly behind his chair. "Has that pizened little boy I seen a while ago been playin' keep-house with the grub?"

"What's the matter with the grub, you scion of the wild-a.s.s family?"

demanded Barney, exploding like a fulminate.

Slivers looked around and scowled. "Git out, you yawping brat," said he. "You must have been losin' hair for years--one hair a day--for everything you don't know about decent grub. Go look at yer head, and figure out your ignorance."

Sensitive concerning the trackless Sahara which his pate presented, Barney clapped his hand upon it instantly. He could scarcely speak, for rage.

"You--dead lizard!" finally spurted from his safety-valve. "You mongrel viper! Low-bred ooze, disowned and outcast, I'll spoil a grave with your carca.s.s for this! You jelly of cowardice, meet me to-morrow for satisfaction, or I'll swing you about by the tongue, and hurl you to pulp against the sty of a pig!"

Even Slivers somewhat gasped.

"Meet you?" he retorted, arising, to tower above his foeman like a mast. "Iron me, Johnny!--if I can crawl in the hole to find you where you're hidin' I'll make you wish for hair a mile long, to stand on your head in your pitiful scare!"

"Oh, fie! Oh, bah!" said the cook, scanning the teamster's length with ill-concealed awe. "Buzzard, you toy with languages. To-morrow I shall throw tomato-cans in scorn to build your monument."

"All right," answered Slivers. "To-morrow suits me, and we'll fight it out bareback on buckin' broncos, out in the small corral, each feller armed with a stockin' full of rocks for a weapon."

Barney stared for a moment in consternation at the man before him. He had previously grown accustomed to the horrors suggested by pistols, knives, red-hot branding-irons, and even pitchforks, but rocks in a stocking--that smacked of barbarism. Moreover, to mount on the back of a bronco, wild or tame--the very meditation made the walls drop out of his stomach. However, he smiled.

"Child's play!" he answered, with fine disgust. "You warty infant! No matter, an odious child would become a more detestable reptile! Till to-morrow, don't speak to me--don't speak to me! Or I shall cheat myself of the morning's pastime." And with that he strode haughtily away.

"Howlin' coyotes!" said Slivers, when he met the gaze of a dozen pair of gleaming eyes. "Take him dose for dose he's worse than pizen! By gar! just see if he burned any holes in my shirt."

Nearly all night long, however, little Barney lay awake, wildly fashioning excuses to avoid that horrid duel in the morning. He had always escaped by a margin so narrow that no precedent of the past gave a.s.surance of luck for the future. He was mortally afraid that at last he had challenged such a monster of brute courage, malignity, and strength that nothing terrestrial could avert his untimely demise.

Then in the morning the first sight that met his troubled gaze was that of Slivers rounding up a pair of unbroken ponies, as wild as meteors, in the field of honor, hard by the camp. Every cell in Barney's structure was in a panic. How he managed to walk to the water-bench to wash was more than he knew. After that there was no retreat. The citizens of Bitter Hole surrounded him, according to preconcerted arrangement, and began to coach him for his fight.

"Barney, you'd better have a jolt of whiskey in yer vitals," suggested one. "Slivers is a regular expert with a stockin' of rocks."

"If I was you, Barney," said Tuttle, "I'd leave my bronco throw me right at him. Then. I'd turn in the air and soak my heels into Slivers's grub-basket and knock him into pieces small enough to smoke in a cigarette."

"Barney," counselled another, "you take my advice and fight standin'

up on your hoss, so you can jump over onto Slivers's bronco and cram your stockin' of rocks down that there mule-driver's neck and choke him clean to death."