In the sitting-room the study of Steve Brown went forward prosperously again, but especially now in regard to the woman in the case. If the one they named was anywhere within range of psychic influence, it is safe to say her left ear burned that evening. And when, finally, it was all over, the guests, departing, paused at the gate and turned their thoughts to the rocks there a.s.sembled.

"What will we do? I would n't carry mine for anything," said Mrs.

Norton.

"Why, leave them here. We 'll have Jonas Hicks come and get them,"

said Mrs. Harmon.

CHAPTER VII

Janet caught her breath and looked about her. It was the same shack on a hillock, the same gully and sheep-pen and dog, likewise the same Mr.

Brown. Under the circ.u.mstances, it was natural for her to try to say something, and she did the best she could. When he had gathered, from her rather unexplanatory remarks, just what had happened, the first thought that crossed his mind was that he had eaten the last piece of fruit-cake which she left behind. If there is anything embarra.s.sing to a man, it is to have company come unexpectedly when there is not a thing fit to eat in the house. He had finished up the cake a short while before, together with the remainder of crackers and a dill pickle.

"I have eaten up all the good stuff," he explained. "Do you like beans?"

"Yes, indeed," answered Janet, who was truly hungry.

He lifted the lid of the box and produced a small iron pot of boiled beans. They were beans of the Mexican variety, a kind which look nice and brown because they are that color before you cook them. When he had put some bacon into the frying-pan and given it time to heat, he sc.r.a.ped the beans in and stirred them up. He had made bread for supper by the usual method of baking soft dough in a skillet with the lid on; there was left of this a wedge big enough to split the stoutest appet.i.te; and when he had placed this where it would warm up, he turned his attention to the coffee-pot.

"Oh, you do not need to do that. I can make my own coffee," offered Janet.

"You had better let me get supper," he answered. "You 're tired."

Several times during the day she had pondered upon his high-handed way of taking charge of her affairs. Submitting to this further dictation, she spread her slicker before her place at table, as indicated by the bare spot of ground, and sat down. Mr. Brown took a bucket and disappeared in the gully. Evidently he had gone to get fresh water.

Janet now put her feet out farther toward the fire.

When he returned, he made some remarks upon the weather and put on the coffee; then he turned about and went into the shack. As on the previous evening, everything came tumbling pell-mell out of the door.

Janet, having nothing else to do, looked up and gave her attention to a big sixteen-carat star.

Shep, the dog, came and planted himself at the very edge of the bare spot. Without giving her so much as a glance, he sat there primly and looked straight off the end of his nose at the sugar bowl in the middle. Not till this moment had Janet realized what a beautiful, intelligent-looking collie dog Mr. Brown had. His brown-buff coat, of just the right shade, seemed slightly veiled with black; his full out-arching front was pure white.

"Shep," said Janet.

His fine eyebrow rose as he gave her a look--a very short one, however.

When she addressed him again she could see his interest rising a degree; finally he came and sat down beside her. Encouraged by this show of friendship, Janet put her hand on him.

When her host had got through with the more violent exercises of practical courtesy,--which sounded somewhat like trouble in a barroom,--he came out bearing a jug marked MOLa.s.sES; this he set down before her, and then, finding the coffee done, he proceeded to serve up the viands.

"That is n't much of a supper," he remarked, sitting down opposite.

"It tastes very good," said Janet.

It hardly did seem the right thing to set before such a guest. But Janet, as good as her word, steadily made way with the _frijole_ beans and did full justice to the hot bread; and soon, inspirited by his powerful coffee, she continued the story of how she was frightened by the steer and baffled by the brook, and how she was foolish enough to think she was going straight forward all the time.

He had a way, whenever she came to a pause, of enticing her to go on.

Sometimes he primed the conversation by repeating the last thing she had said; again, an apt word or two summed up the whole spirit of the matter encouragingly; or there would be just a composed waiting for her to resume.

Not that he had any difficulty in finding something to say. He evidently liked to hear her talk, and so he rather deferred to her.

Whether it was that she now had a feeling of this, or that there was something in the influence of his presence, his voice and manner, which removed all constraint, Janet had not the least difficulty in talking.

She told him how the teacher at the school "boarded round," what an unnecessary number of cla.s.ses Miss Porter had for so small a number of pupils,--although it was difficult to remedy the matter by "setting back" certain children, because their proud mothers would object to such a leveling,--and how the Blodgett children, four of them, all came to school on the back of one buckskin pony, the youngest having to hold on tight to keep from slipping off at the tail. "Buckskin,"; it seemed, had won quite a place in Janet's affections, although he was the worst behaved horse that came to school. He used to graze in the yard till school was out,--the other horses being staked out on the prairie,--and he had become so familiar that he would sometimes go so far as to put his head in at the window in hope of being fed. And Janet could not see, considering that Texas horses were used to being staked out, what reason there had been for building a fence around a school that stood out on open prairie, unless it was, perchance, that the Texans thought they ought to have a corral to herd the children in.

While she was thus going on, there came from the corral a bleat in the awe-inspiring tone of _Fa_, and this was followed by a succession of bleats which reminded her of nothing so much as a child getting its hands on the keyboard of an organ. Steve, as if suddenly admonished of something, rose to his feet, excused himself, and disappeared in the direction of the corral.

With the place before her temporarily vacant, and unable to see out of her circle of light except by looking upward, Janet instinctively lifted her eyes to the scene above. Thousands and thousands of stars made the night big and beautiful. They were so clear and so lively, as if they took joy in their shining. A mild southern breeze gave the night motion and perfume. Janet took a deep breath which was hardly a sigh; it was rather a big drink of air and the final suspiration of all her worries. As she took in more deeply the constellated heavens and the free fresh spirit of the roaming air, she began to feel that she would rather like to be a sheep-herder herself. From looking at so many, her mind turned back to her selected star, the "captain jewel" of them all, and her eye sought its whereabouts again. In others she could see tremulous tinges of red and blue; but this seemed to be the pure spirit of light. Unconsciously she had put her arm around the dog, as if to hold on to this earth, and Shep, whose affection had been steadily growing, nudged up closer and gave her a sense of warm companionship.

When Steve returned from his mysterious errand, he looked at her a moment and then fetched an armful of wood. The fire, to serve better the purposes of cooking, had been allowed to burn down to coals, and the smouldering embers now gave so little light that the face and figure of his guest were losing themselves in obscurity. As this state of affairs hardly suited him, he piled on the dry mesquite brush and fanned it with his hat into leaping flames. When Janet was lit up to his satisfaction, he put down the hat and resumed his earthen lounge.

As he stretched himself out before her, lithe-limbed and big-chested, the atmosphere of that firelit place seemed filled with a sense of safety. His deliberate manner of speech, quite different from the slowness of a drawl, was the natural voice of that big starry world so generous of time. Occasionally he made a remark which ought to have been flattery, but which, coming from him, was so quiet and true that one might float on it to topics of unknown depth. He was so evidently interested in everything she said, and his attention was so single-minded and sincere, that Janet was soon chatting again upon the subject of her recent circ.u.mnavigation of the prairie, which, as she now saw it in the light of the present, seemed more and more a sea of flowers--as the Past always does. Indeed, the whole recent course of her experience was such a novelty--the trip to Texas was her first real adventure in the world--that she saw things with the new vision of a traveler; and the present situation, turning out so happily, put the cap-sheaf on that dream which is truly Life. Janet, recently delivered from all danger, and yet sitting right in the middle of her adventures, had a double advantage; she was living in the present as well as the past, breathing the sweetness of the air, looking up at the big flock of stars and seeing in them all nothing less than the divine shepherding.

"But, of all the wonderful things I ever saw," she exclaimed. "Why, it was worth walking all day to see it."

"What was it?" he asked.

"Sensitive plants. And when I came they all lowered their branches to their sides like--well, slowly, like this--"

She held her right arm out straight and lowered it slowly and steadily to her side. And a most graceful and shapely arm it was.

"I would n't have been so much surprised," she continued, "to just see leaves fold together, like clover. You know clover leaves all shut up at night and go to sleep. But these plants were quite large and they actually _moved_. And of course the leaves shut together, too; they were long like little tender locust leaves, and each one folded itself right in the middle."

She placed her hands edge to edge and closed them together to show him.

"But, you know, while they were doing that, they were folding back against their long stems, and the stems were folding back against the branches, and the straight branches were all folding downwards against the main stalk. What I mean is that everything worked together, like this--"

Janet extended both arms with her fingers widely spread; then, as her arms gradually lowered, her fingers closed together.

"It was something like that," she added, "but not exactly; it was ten times as much--something like the ribs of an umbrella going down all around, with stems and rows of locust leaves all along them closing together. And every little leaf was like a rabbit laying back its ears."

"Yes; I know what you mean," said Steve. "They are a kind of mimosa.

Some people call them that."

"Well," said Janet, "I sat and watched one. I just touched it with a hatpin and it did that. A person would almost think it had intelligence. And after a while--when it thought I was gone, I suppose--it began to open its leaves and stems and put its arms out again."

She raised her arms slowly, spreading her fingers. Steve was a most attentive listener and spectator. He rather wished there were other plants to imitate.

"But that wasn't really what I started to tell about," she went on.

"As I was walking along I came to a--well, you might say a whole _crowd_ of them. There was quite a growth like a patch of ferns. I had n't got to them yet, or even taken particular notice of them,--I must have been ten or twelve feet away,--when they all began to close up. I stopped perfectly still; and pretty soon the green leaves were gone and the place was all changed. Now, how do you suppose those plants ever _knew_ I was coming? I would give anything to know how such things can be."

"How much would you give?" inquired Steve.

For a moment, the spirit of this question hung in the balance. He felt the spell of her inquiring eyes as her hand dropped idly on Shep's back.

"Why--do you know?" she asked doubtfully.

"I think I do," he answered. "You see, that kind of plants have very long roots; they run away out. You stepped on their toes."

"Well, I declare," said Janet, enthusiastic again. "And what a way of saying it."