CHAPTER VI

THE MAN-HUNTERS

The girl's handsome face was turned toward the valley below her. She was staring with eyes of dreaming, half regretful, yet not without a faint light of humor, at the nestling village in the lap of the woodlands, which crowded the heart of the valley, where the silvery thread of river wound its way.

The wide foliage of the maple tree, beneath which she sat, sheltered her bare head from the burning noonday sun. And here, so high up on the shoulder of the valley, she felt there was at least air to breathe.

The book on the ground beside her had only just been laid there; its pages, wide open, had been turned face downward upon the dry, gra.s.sless patch surrounding the tree trunk.

Only a few feet away another girl, slight and fair-haired, was nimbly plying her needle upon a pile of white lawn, as to the object of which there could be small enough doubt. She was working with the care and obvious appreciation which most women display toward the manufacture of delicate underclothing.

As her companion laid her book aside and turned toward the valley, the pretty needlewoman raised a pair of gray, speculative eyes. But almost at once they dropped again to her work. It was only for a moment, however. She reached the end of her seam and began to fold the material up, and, as she did so, her eyes were once more raised in the direction of her sister, only now they were full of laughter.

"Kate," she said, in a tone in which mirth would not be denied, "do you know, it's five years to-day since we first came to Rocky Springs?

Five years." She breathed a profound sigh, which was full of mockery.

"You were twenty-three when we came. You are twenty-eight now, and I am twenty-two. We'll soon be old maids. The folks down there," she went on, nodding at the village below, "will soon be speaking of us as 'them two old guys,' or 'them funny old dears, the Seton sisters.'

Isn't it awful to think of? We came out West to find husbands for ourselves, and here we are very nearly--old maids."

Kate Seton's eyes wore a responsive twinkle, but she did not turn.

"You're a bit of a joke, Hel," she replied, in the slow musical fashion of a deep contralto voice.

"But I'm not a joke," protested the other, with pretended severity.

"And I won't be called 'Hel,' just because my name's Helen. It--it sounds like the way Pete and Nick swear at each other when they've been spending their pay at Dirty O'Brien's. Besides, it doesn't alter facts at all. It won't take much more climbing to find ourselves right on the shelf, among the frying pans and other cooking utensils.

I'm--I'm tired of it--I--really am. It's no use talking. I'm a woman, and I'd sooner see a pair of trousers walking around my house than another bunch of skirts--even if they belong to my beloved sister.

Trousers go every time--with me."

Kate withdrew her gaze from the village below and looked into her sister's pretty face with smiling, indulgent eyes.

"Well?" she said.

The other shook her fair head. Her eyes were still laughing, but their expression did not hide the seriousness which lay behind them.

"It's not 'well' at all," she cried. She drew herself up from the ground into a kneeling position, which left her sitting on the heels of shoes that could never have been bought in Rocky Springs. "Now, listen to me," she went on, holding up a warning finger. "I'm just going to state my case right here and now, and--and you've got to listen to me. Five years ago, Kate Seton, aged twenty-three, and her sister, Helen Seton, were left orphans, with the sum of two thousand dollars equally divided between them. You get that?"

Her sister nodded amusedly. "Well," the girl went on deliberately.

"Kate Seton was no ordinary sort of girl. Oh, no. She was most _un_ordinary, as Nick would say. She was a sort of headstrong girl with an absurd notion of woman's independence. I--I don't mean she was masculine, or any horror like that. But she believed that when it came to doing the things she wanted to do she could do them just as well, and deliberately, as any man. That she could think as well as any man.

In fact, she didn't believe in the superiority of the male s.e.x over hers. The only superiority she did acknowledge was that a man could ask a woman to marry, while the privilege of asking a man was denied to Kate's s.e.x. But even in acknowledging this she reserved to herself an alternative. She believed that every woman had the right to make a man ask her."

The patient Kate mildly protested. "You're making me out a perfectly awful creature," she said, without the least umbrage. "Hadn't I better stand up for the--arraignment?"

But her sister's mock seriousness remained quite undisturbed.

"There's no necessity," she said, airily. "Besides, you'll be tired when I'm through. Now listen. Kate Seton is a very kind and lovable creature--really. Only--only she suffers from--notions."

The dark-eyed Kate, with her handsome face so full of decision and character, eyed her sister with the indulgence of a mother.

"You do talk, child," was all she said.

Helen nodded. "I like talking. It makes me feel clever."

"Ye--es. People are like that," returned the other ironically. "Go on."

Helen folded her hands in her lap, and for a moment gazed speculatively at the sister she knew she adored.

"Well," she went on presently. "Let us keep to the charge. Five years ago this spirit of independence and adventure was very strong in Kate Seton. Far, far stronger than it is now. That's by the way. Say, anyhow, it was so strong then that when these two found themselves alone in the world with their money, it was her idea to break through all convention, leave her little village in New England, go out west, and seek 'live' men and fortune on the rolling plains of Canada. The last part of that's put in for effect."

The girl paused, watching her sister as she turned again toward the valley below.

With a sigh of resignation Helen was forced to proceed. "That's five years--ago," she said. Then, dropping her voice to a note of pathos, and with the pretense of a sob: "Five long years ago two lonely girls, orphans, set out from their conventional home in a New England village, after having sold it out--the home, not the village--and turned wistful faces toward the wild green plains of the western wilderness, the home of the broncho, the gopher, and the merciless mosquito."

"Oh, do get on," Kate's smile was good to see.

"It's emotion," said Helen, pretending to dab her eyes. "It's emotion mussing up the whole blamed business, as Nick would say."

"Never mind Nick," cried her sister. "Anyway, I don't think he swears nearly as much as you make out. I'll soon have to go and get the Meeting House ready for to-morrow's service. So----"

"Ah, that's just it," broke in Helen, with a great display of triumph in her laughing eyes. "Five years ago Kate Seton would never have said that. She'd have said, 'bother the old Meeting House, and all the old cats who go there to slander each other in--in the name of religion.'

That's what she'd have said. It's all different now. Gone is her love of adventure; gone is her defiance of convention; gone is--is her independence. What is she now? A mere farmer, a drudging female, spinster farmer, growing cabbages and things, and getting her manicured hands all mussed up, and freckles on her otherwise handsome face."

"A successful--female, spinster farmer," put in Kate, in her deep, soft voice.

Helen nodded, and there was a sort of helplessness in her admission.

"Yes," she sighed, "and that's the worst of it. We came to find husbands--'live' husbands, and we only find--cabbages. The man-hunters. That's what we called ourselves. It sounded--uncommon, and so we used the expression." Suddenly she scrambled to her feet in undignified haste, and shook a small, clenched fist in her sister's direction. "Kate Seton," she cried, "you're a fraud. An unmitigated--fraud. Yes, you are. Don't glare at me. 'Live' men!

Adventure! Poof! You're as tame as any village cat, and just as--dozy."

Kate had risen, too. She was not glaring. She was laughing. Her dark, handsome face was alight with merriment at her sister's characteristic attack. She loved her irresponsible chatter, just as she loved the loyal heart that beat within the girl's slight, shapely body. Now she came over and laid a caressing hand upon the girl's shoulder. In a moment it dropped to the slim waist about which her arm was quickly placed.

"I wish I could get cross with you, Helen," she said happily. "But I simply--can't. You know you get very near the mark in your funny fashion--in some things. Say, I wonder. Do you know we have more than our original capital in the bank? Our farm is a flourishing concern.

We employ labor. Two creatures that call themselves men, and who possess the characters of--hogs, or tigers, or something pretty dreadful. We can afford to buy our clothes direct from New York or Montreal. Think of that. Isn't that due to independence? I admit the villagy business. I seem to love Rocky Springs. It's such a whited sepulcher, and its inhabitants are such blackguards with great big hearts. Yes, I love even the unconventional conventions of the place.

But the spirit of adventure. Well, somehow I don't think that has really gone."

"Just got mired--among the cabbages," said Helen, slyly. Then she released herself from her sister's embrace and stood off at arm's length, a.s.suming an absurdly accusing air. "But wait a moment, Kate Seton. This is all wrong. I'm making the charge, and you're doing all the talking. There's no defense in the case. You've--you've just got to listen, and--accept the sentence. Guess this isn't a court of men--just women. Now, we're man-hunters. That's how we started, and that's what I am--still. We've been five years at it, with what result? I'll just tell you. I've been proposed to by everything available in trousers in the village--generally when the 'thing' is drunk. The only objects that haven't asked me to marry are our two hired men, Nick and Pete, and that's only because their wages aren't sufficient to get them drunk enough. As for you, most of the boys sort of stand in awe of you, wouldn't dare talk marrying to you even in the height of delirium tremens. The only men who have ever had courage to make any display in that direction are Inspector Fyles, when his duty brings him in the neighborhood of Rocky Springs, and a dypsomaniac rancher and artist, to wit, Charlie Bryant. And how do you take it?

You--a man-hunter? Why, you run like a rabbit from Fyles. Courage?

Oh, dear. The mention of his name is enough to send you into convulsions of trepidation and maidenly confusion. And all the time you secretly admire him. As for the other, you have turned yourself into a sort of hospital nurse and temperance reformer. You've taken him up as a sort of hobby, until, in his lucid intervals, he takes advantage of your reforming process to acquire the added disease of love, which has reduced him to a condition of imbecile infatuation with your charming self."

Kate was about to break in with a laughing protest, but Helen stayed her with a gesture of denial.

"Wait," she cried, grandly. "Hear the whole charge. Look at your village life, which you plead guilty to. You, a high-spirited woman of independence and daring. You are no better than a sort of hired cleaner to a Meeting House you have adopted, and which is otherwise run by a lot of cut-throats and pirates, whose wives and offspring are no better than themselves. You attend the village social functions with as much appreciation of them as any village mother with an unwashed but growing family. You gossip with them and scandalize as badly as any of them, and, in your friendliness and charity toward them, I verily believe, for two cents, you'd go among the said unwashed offspring with a scrub-brush. What--what is coming to you, Kate? You--a man-hunter? No--no," she went on, with a hopeless shake of her pretty head, "'tis no use talking. The big, big spirit of early womanhood has somehow failed you. It's failed us both. We are no longer man-hunters. The soaring Kate, bearing her less brave sister in her arms, has fallen. They have both tumbled to the ground. The early seed, so full of promise, has germinated and grown--but it's come up cabbages. And--and they're getting old. There you are, I can't help it. I've tripped over the agricultural furrow we've ploughed, and----.

There!"

She flung out an arm dramatically, pointing down at the slight figure of a man coming toward them, slowly toiling up the slope of the valley.

"There he is," she cried. "Your artist-patient. Your dypsomaniac rancher. A symbol, a symbol of the bonds which are crushing the brave spirits of our--ahem!--young hearts."

But Kate ignored the approaching man. She had eyes only for the bright face before her.