That's all, Mattie, just us two!--whilst I was growing up out West, I kind of expected things to be standing still back here, and be just the same as I left them--hum--Well, how are you anyhow?"

"I'm well, Will, and"--laying her hand upon his, "_don't_ think I'm not glad to see you--_please_ don't. I'm so glad, Will, I can't tell you--but I'm all confused--so little happens here."

"I shouldn't guess it was the liveliest place in the world, by the look of it," said Red. "And as far as that's concerned, I kinder don't know what to say myself. There's such a heap to talk about it's hard to tell where to begin--but we've got to be friends though, Mattie--we've just _got_ to be friends. Good Lord! We're all there's left! Funny, I never thought of such a thing! Well, blast it! That's enough of such talk! I've brought you a present, Mattie." He stretched out a leg that reached beyond the limits of the front porch, and dove into his trousers pocket, bringing out a buck-skin sack. He fumbled at the knot a minute and then pa.s.sed it over saying, "You untie it--your fingers are soopler than mine,"

Miss Mattie's fingers were shaking, but the knots finally came undone, and from the sack she brought forth a chain of rich, dull yellow lumps, fashioned into a necklace. It weighed a pound. She spread it out and looked at it astounded. "Gracious, Will! Is that _gold_?" she asked.

"That's what," he replied. "The real article, just as it came out of the ground: I dug it myself. That's the reason I'm here. I'd never got money enough to go anywheres further than a horse could carry me if I hadn't taken a fly at placer mining and hit her to beat h--er--the very mischief."

Miss Mattie looked first at the barbaric, splendid necklace and then at the barbaric, splendid man. Things grew confused before her in trying to realise that it was real. What two planets so separated in their orbits as her world and his? She had the imagination that is usually lacking in small communities, and the feeling of a fairy story come true, possessed her.

"And now, Mattie," said he, "I don't know what's manners in this part of the country, but I'll make free enough on the cousin part of it to tell you that I could look at some supper without flinching. I've walked a heap to-day, and I ain't used to walking."

Miss Mattie sprang up, herself again at the chance to offer hospitality.

"Why, you poor man!" said she. "Of course you're starved! It must be nearly eight o'clock! I almost forget about eating, living here alone. You shall have supper directly. Will you come in or sit a spell outside?"

"Reckon I'll come in," said Red. "Don't want to lose sight of you now that I've found you."

It was some time since Miss Mattie had felt that anyone had cared enough for her not to want to lose sight of her, and a delicate warm bloom went over her cheeks. She hurried into the little kitchen.

"Mattie!" called Red.

"What is it, Will?" she answered, coming to the door.

"Can I smoke in this little house?"

"Cer--tainly! Sit right down and make yourself comfortable. Don't you remember what a smoker father was?"

Red tried the different chairs with his hand. They were not a stalwart lot. Finally he spied the home-made rocker in the corner.

"There's the lad for me," he said, drawing it out. "Got to be kinder careful how you throw two-hundred-fifty pounds around."

"Mercy!" cried Miss Mattie, pan in hand. "Do you weigh as much as that, Will?"

"I do," returned Red, with much satisfaction. "And there isn't over two pounds of it fat at that."

"What a great man you have grown up to be, Will!"

Red took in a deep draught of tobacco and sent the vapor clear across the little room.

"On the hay-scales, yes," he answered, with a sort of joking earnestness--"but otherwise, I don't know."

The return to the old home had touched the big man deeply, and as he leaned back in his chair there was a shade of melancholy on his face that became it well.

Miss Mattie took in the ma.s.s of him stretched out at his ease, his legs crossed, and the patrician cut of his face, to which the upturned moustache gave a cavalier touch. They were good stock, the Saunders, and the breed had not declined in the only two extant.

"He's my own cousin!" she whispered to herself, in the safety of the kitchen. "And such a splendid looking man!" She felt a pride of possession she had never known before. n.o.body in Fairfield or vicinity had such a cousin as that. And Miss Mattie went on joyfully fulfilling an inherited instinct to minister to the wants of some man. She said to herself there was some satisfaction in cooking for somebody else. But alack-a-day, Miss Mattie's ideas of the wants of somebody else had suffered a Fairfield change.

Nothing was done on a large scale in Fairfield. But she sat the little cakes--lucky that she had made them yesterday--and the fried mush, and the small pitcher of milk, and the cold ham, and the cold biscuit on the table with a pride in the appearance of the feast.

"Supper's ready, Will," said she.

Red responded instanter. Took a look at the board and understood.

He ate the little cakes and biscuit, and said they were the durned best he ever tasted. He also took some pot-cheese under a misapprehension; swallowed it, and said to himself that he had been through worse things than that. Then, when his appet.i.te had just begun to develop, the inroads on the provisions warned him that it was time to stop. Meanwhile they had ranged the fields of old times at random, and as Red took in Miss Mattie, pink with excitement and sparkling as to eyes, he thought, "Blast the supper!

It's a square meal just to look at her. If she ain't pretty good people, I miss my guess."

It was a merry meal. He had such a way of telling things! Miss Mattie hadn't laughed so much for years, and she felt that there was no one that she had known so long and so well as Cousin Will.

There was only one jarring note. Red spoke of the vigorous celebration that had been followed by the finding of gold. It was certainly well told, but Miss Mattie asked in soft horror when he had finished, "You didn't get--_intoxicated_--Will?"

"DID I?" said he, lost in memory, and not noticing the tone.

"Well, I put my hand down the throat of that man's town, and turned her inside out! It was like as if Christmas and Fourth of July had happened on the same day."

"Oh, Will!" cried Miss Mattie, "I can't think of you like that--rolling in the gutter." Her voice shook and broke off. Her knowledge of the effect of stimulants was limited to Fairfield's one drunkard--old Tommy McKee, a disreputable old Irishman--but drunkenness was the worst vice in her world.

"Rolling in the gutter!" cried Red, in astonishment. "Why girl!

What for would I roll in the gutter? What's the fun in that?

Jiminy Christmas! I wanted to walk on the telegraph wires--there wasn't anything in that town high enough for me--what put gutters into your head?"

"I--I supposed people did that when they were--like that."

"I wouldn't waste my money on whisky, if that's all the inspiration I got out of it," replied Red.

"Well, of course I don't know about those things, but I wish you'd promise me one thing."

"Done!" cried Red. "What is it?"

"I wish you'd promise me not to touch whisky again!"

"Phew! That's a pretty big order!" He stopped and thought a minute. "If you'll make that 'never touch it when it ain't needed,' leaving when it's needed to what's my idea of the square thing on a promise, I'll go you, Mattie--there's my hand."

"Oh, I shouldn't have said anything at all, Will! I have no right.

But it seemed such a pity such a splendid man--I mean--I think--.

You mustn't promise me anything, Will," stammered Miss Mattie, shocked at her own daring.

"Here!" he cried, "I'm no little kid! When I promise I mean it!

As for your not having any right, ain't we all there is? You've got to be mother and sister and aunt and everything to me. I ain't as young as I have been, Mattie, and I miss she-ways terrible at times. Now put out your fin like a good pardner, and here goes for no more rhinecaboos for Chantay Seeche Red--time I quit drinking, anyhow," he slipped a ring off his little finger. "Here, hold out your hand," said he, "I'll put this on for luck, and the sake of the promise--by the same token, I've got a noose on you now, and you're my property."

This, of course, was only Cousin Will's joking, but Miss Mattie noticed with a sudden hot flush, that he had chosen the engagement finger--in all ignorance, she felt sure. The last thing she could do would be to call his attention to the fact, or run the risk of hurting his feelings by transferring the ring; besides, it was a pretty ring--a rough ruby in a plain gold band--and looked very well where it was.

Then they settled down for what Red called a good medicine talk.

Miss Mattie found herself boldly speaking of little fancies and notions that had remained in the inner shrine of her soul for years, shrinking from the matter-of-fact eye of Fairfield; yet this big, ferocious looking Cousin Will seemed to find them both sane and interesting, and as her self-respect went up in the arithmetical, her admiration for Cousin Will went up in the geometrical ratio. He frankly admitted weaknesses and fears that the males of Fairfield would have rejected scornfully.

Miss Mattie spoke of sleeping upstairs, because she could not rid herself of the fear of somebody coming in.

"I know just how you feel about that," said Red. "My hair used to be on its feet most of the time when we were in the hay camp at the lake beds. Gee whizz! The rattlers! We put hair ropes around--but them rattlers liked to squirm over hair ropes for exercise. One morning I woke up and there was a crawler on my chest. 'For G.o.d's sake, Pete!' says I to Antelope Pete, who was rolled up next me, 'come take my friend away!' and I didn't holler very loud, neither. Pete was chain lightning in pants, and he grabs Mr. Rattler by the tail and snaps his neck, but I felt lonesome in my inside till dinner time. You bet! I know just how you feel, exactly. I didn't have a man's sized night's rest whilst we was in that part of the country."

It struck Miss Mattie that the cases were hardly parallel. "A rattlesnake on your chest, Will!" she cried, with her hands clasped in terror.

"Oh! it wasn't as bad as it sounds--he was asleep--coiled up there to get warm--sharpish nights on the prairie in August--but darn it!

Mattie!" wrinkling up his nose in disgust, "I hate the sight of the brutes!"