"Oh, what a bully old fellow you are!" thought Lettis as he looked at him. Lettis was thinking of other qualities than flesh, but the physical Red Saunders on horseback was deserving of a glance from anybody; the ma.s.sive figure so well poised; the clear cut, proud profile; the shapely head with its crown of red-gold hair; the easy grace of him by virtue of his strength--it would be a remarkable crowd in which Chanta Seechee Red couldn't pa.s.s for a man. He was every inch of that from the ground up.

Lettis had come to bow down to him in adoration, with all an affectionate boy's worship. To those eyes Red was just right, in every particular. Likewise to Miss Mattie, who even now was filling her eyes with him, from behind the vantage of a broad-brimmed straw hat.

At last the whole party disembarked at the flat before the mill, and made ready for the official starting of the machinery. The big doors were thrown open, so that the company could see within while resting outside in the shade, and under the cooling influence of what breeze there was. The mill was officially started. Red climbed the bank to the flume, and raised the gate. The crowd cheered as the imprisoned waters leapt to freedom with a hollow roar, raising in pitch as the penstock filled and the wheels began to go round. Speech was called for, and the vigorously protesting Red forced to the front by his former friends, Demilt and Lettis.

Thus betrayed by those he trusted, Red made the best of it.

"Ladies and gentlemen, fellow citizens!" said he. "The mill is now open to all comers. We hope to make this thing a success; we hope to see every h.o.r.n.y-handed, hump-backed farmer in the country rosin the soles of his moccasins, and shove his plough through twice as much ground as he ever did before, and if he comes here with his plunder, we'll give him a square shake. We'll pay him as much as we dast, and not let him in on the ground floor, so he can crawl out through the coal-hole, as is sometimes done. Now, everybody run away and have a good time, for I don't like to talk this yappi any more than you like to hear it. Kola geus! By-bye!"

It was a very successful picnic. They spent the afternoon in wandering around in the usual picnic fashion, developing appet.i.tes, until it occurred to Red to liven the performance by showing them the art of roping, as practiced upon an old cow found in the woods.

As a spectacle it was a failure. The combined efforts of all the hooting small boys could not make that cow run; she even stretched her neck toward Red, as though saying, "Hurry up with your foolishness. I have a cud to chew and can't stand here idle all day." So Red galloped by and threw the noose over her head as an exhibition of how the thing was done, rather than how it ought to be done. Nevertheless, picnic parties are not hypercritical in the matter of amus.e.m.e.nt, and the feat received three encores. The last time he missed his cast through overconfidence. Whereat the old cow tossed her head and tail in the air, and tore off at an elephantine gallop, with a bawl that sounded to Red mightily like derision.

"Durned if she ain't laughing at me!" he cried. But as a matter of fact, it was a hornet and its unmistakable sting that injected this activity into her system.

It was all very pleasant to Miss Mattie, as one's first picnic in many years should be. She enjoyed the crisp green sod, the great trees standing around, park-like, with the sunlight falling between their shade like brilliant tatters of cloth-of-gold; while from the near distance came the tiny shouting of cool waters. They had a camp-fire at night, making the moonlight still more mysterious and remote by contrast. The quartette of strings played for the ears of those who cared to listen and for the legs of those who chose to take chances on tripping their light fantastic toes over tree roots in the gra.s.s.

Red loved music, and he loved the night. The poetic side of his memories of watching the Dipper swing around Polaris, while he sung the cows to sleep, came back to him. In his mind he saw the vast prairie roll on to infinity; saw the mountains stand out, a world of white peaks, rising from a sea of darkness. Again he heard the plaintive shrilling of an Indian whistle, or the song of the lad down creek made tuneful and airy by the charm of distance.

"Having a good time, Mattie?" he asked, with a smile.

"The best I ever had, Will," she answered, smiling back unsteadily.

Poor lady! The size of an occasion is so many standards, whether the standard be inches or feet, or miles. Miss Mattie's events had been measured in hundredths of an inch, and it took a good many of them to cover so small an action as a successful picnic on a beautiful night. Her eyes were humid; her mouth smiled and drooped at the corners alternately. Red felt her happiness with a keen sympathy, and as he looked at her, suddenly she changed in his eyes. Just what the difference was he could not have told; nor whether it was in her or in him. A sudden access of feeling, undefinable, unplaceable, but strong, possessed him. There is a critical temperature in the life of a man, when no amount of pressure can ever make the more expansive emotions a.s.sume the calmer form of friendship. There was something in Miss Mattie's eye which had warmed Red to that degree, but he didn't know it. He only knew that he wanted to sit rather unnecessarily close beside her, and that he would be sorry when it came time to go home. And he was very silent.

During the drive back to the house he spoke in monosyllables; he went straight to the barn with Lettis afterward, and made no attempt to take the usual frank and hearty good-night kiss.

"You're as glum as an oyster!" said Lettis, when they reached their quarters. "What's the matter, old man?"

"I don't know, Let; I feel kind of quiet, somehow."

"Sick? Or something go wrong?"

"No; nothing of the kind; it's just sort of an attack of stillness, but I feel durn good."

Lettis laughed. "If it wasn't you, Red, I'd say you were in love,"

he said.

It was well the barn was dark; or he would have seen a change wonderful to behold come over the ex-puncher's face. "The lad has. .h.i.t it," he said to himself in astonishment; aloud he grunted "hunh" scornfully, and aroused himself for an unnecessary joke or two.

Miss Mattie had noticed the "attack of stillness" and immediately tried to fasten the blame upon herself. What had she done? She couldn't recall anything. She remembered she had said something about the way his hair looked with the moon shining on it; perhaps he had taken offence at that; the remark was entirely complimentary, but sometimes people are touchy about such things; still that was not the least like Cousin Will. She must have said or done something though--what could it be? Oh what a pitiful memory that could not recollect an injury done to one's best friend! She tossed and wondered over it for a long time before at length she tell asleep.

Red also looked up at the roof, and took account of stock. His face was radiant in the dark. "If I could only pull that off!" he thought. "I must seem an awful rough cuss to her, though; all right for a cousin, but it's different when you come to the other proposition. My Jiminy! I'll take a chance in the morning and find out anyhow!" said he, and, eased in mind by the decision of action, he too shook hands with Morpheus and was presently dreaming.

It had never occurred to Red Saunders that he was afraid of anybody. He even chuckled, when he got Lettis out of the way with a plausible excuse the next morning. Then he strode briskly into the house, his question on his lips in a plump out-and-out form.

Miss Mattie looked at him with her slow smile. "What is it?" she asked.

Red swallowed his question whole. "I--I wanted a little hot water to shave with," said he. Then a fury took hold of him. "What the devil am I lying like this for?" he thought. He exhorted himself to go on and say what he had to say like a man; but the other Red Saunders refused to do anything of the sort. He took the cup of hot water most abjectly and fled from the house. He had to shave then, and in his hurry and indignation he turned the operation into a clinic. "Oh Jiminy! Look at that!" he cried, as the razor opened up another part of the subject. "There's a slit an inch long! If I keep on at this gait, I won't have face enough to say good morning, let alone what I want to do. What ails me? What ails me? Why should I be scart of the nicest woman G.o.d ever built?

Now by all the Mormon G.o.ds! I'll post right into the house and say my little say as soon as these cuts stop bleeding!"

Cob-webs stopped the cuts, and other cob-webs stopped Red Saunders, late of the Chanta Seechee ranch; two hundred and fifty pounds of the very finest bone and muscle. And the cob-webs held him, foaming and boiling with rage and disgust, calling himself all the yaller pups he could think of, but staying strictly within the safe limits of the barn. It was a revelation to the big man, and not a pleasant one. How was he to know that the most salient point of his apparent cowardice was nothing less worthy than respect for the woman's purity? That if he would stop swearing long enough to get at the springs of his action, he would find that he hesitated because the new light on the matter made huge shadows of the slips in the career of a strong, lawless, untrained but sorely tempted man? He knew nothing of the sort, and the funniest of comedies took place in the barn. He would reach the sensible stage. "Pah!

All foolishness. Go? Of course he'd go, and this very minute, and have the thing done with, good or bad"; he was quite amused at his former conduct--until he reached the door. Then he'd skip nimbly back again, with a hot feeling that somebody was watching him, although a careful inspection through the crack of the door revealed no one.

Red discovered another thing that afternoon, which was that the more nervous you are the more nervous you get. He groaned in perfect misery: "Ohoho! That I should have seen the day when I was afraid to ask anybody anything. What's come over me anyhow? It's this darn country, I believe--'tain't me," then he stopped short.

"What you saying, Red?" he queried. "Why don't you own up like a man!" The fact that it had a funny side struck him, and he laughed, half forlornly, and half in thorough enjoyment. He suddenly sobered down. "She's worth it, anyway," said he. "She's the best there is, and I ought to feel kind of leery of the outcome--Well--Now, I guess I won't say anything till there's a downright good chance. I see I didn't savvy this kind of business like I thought I did. 'Twouldn't be no kind of manners to step up to a lady and shout, 'I'd like to have you marry me, if you feel you've got the time!' That don't go no more than a Chinaman on roller-skates. Your work is good, Red, but it's a little lumpy in spots; them two left feet bother you; you're good in your place, but you'd better build a fence around the place--d.a.m.n the luck!

Smotheration! I think she likes me, all right, but when it comes to more'n that--oh, blast it, I'll just have to wait for a real good chance; now come, old man, get four feet on the ground and don't roll your eyes, take it easy till the chance comes."

Little he knew the chance was coming up the street at that moment.

He only saw Miss Mattie step out into the bed of flowers, her face looking unusually pretty and youthful under the big straw hat, and start to reduce the weeds to order. She glanced around as though in search of some one, and Red felt intuitively that the one was himself.

"Here's where I ought to act as if I wore long pants," said he; "now, what's to hinder me from going out there and get a-talking?"

And then he sat down hastily, more disgusted than ever, and smote the air with his fist. "You'd think the nicest, quietest woman that ever lived was a wild beast, the way I act; yes sir, you would!"

Meantime the chance drew nearer. It was not a pleasant looking opportunity. Its eyes, full of dread and dreadful, peeped out from beneath a brush of matted hair; a tough, ropy foam hung from its mouth. If you put as much of that foam as would go on the point of a pin in an open cut, you would have an end that your worst enemy would shudder at. For this was the most horrifying of dangerous animals--a mad dog. Poor brute! As he came shambling down the road, he was the grisly mask of tragedy.

It was near noon, intensely hot, and the street of Fairfield was deserted. No one saw the dog, and if his occasional rattling, strangling howl reached any ears, they were dead to its meaning.

He was unheeded until he lurched through the gate which Lettis had left open, as usual, and spinning around in a circle gave voice to his cry.

It brought Miss Mattie to her feet in an unknown terror; it brought Red from the barn in a full cognizance--he had heard that sound before, when a mad coyote landed in a cabin-full of fairly strong nerved cowmen, and set them screeching like hysterical women before a chance shot ended him.

Red saw the brute jump toward Miss Mattie. Instantly his hand flew to his hip, and as instantly he remembered there was nothing there.

Then with great, uneven leaps he sprang forward. "Keep your hands up, Mattie, and don't move!" he screamed. "Let him chew the dress!

For G.o.d's sake, don't move!"

She turned her white face toward his, and through the dimness of sight from his straining efforts, he saw her try to smile, as she obeyed him to the letter, and without a sound. "O, brave girl!" he thought, and threw the ground behind him desperately.

At twenty feet distance he dove like a base-runner, and his hands closed around the dog's neck. Over they went with the shock of the onset, and before they were still, the hands had finished their work. A clutch, and a snap, and it was done.

The dog lay quivering. Red rose to his knees wondering at the humming in his head. His wits came back to him sharply.

"Did he bite you, Mattie?" he cried. But she had already caught his hands and was looking at them, with a savage eagerness one would not have believed to be in her.

"There is no mark," she said, suddenly weak, "he didn't touch you?"

"Answer me when I speak to you!" shouted Red, beside himself. "Did he bite you?"

She answered him with a sob "No." And then his question asked itself, and answered itself, although, again, he did not know it.

He gathered her up in his arms, kissed her like one raised from the dead, and swore and prayed and thanked G.o.d all in the same breath.

His old imperious nature came back with the relief. "Here!" said he, putting her away for a moment. "Take off that dress--that slime on there's enough to kill a hundred men--take it right off."

Miss Mattie started blindly to obey, then stopped. "Not here, Will--I'll go in the house," she said.

"You'll take it off right here and now," said Red, "and I'll burn it up on the spot. I'd ruther have forty rattlesnakes around than that stuff--off with it. This is no child's play, and I don't care a d.a.m.n what the old lady next door thinks."

Miss Mattie slipped off her outer skirt, and stood a second, confused and dainty. She took flight to the house, running as lithely as a greyhound.

"By Jingo!" said Red in admiration.

"Let's see you bring another woman that can run like that!"