Told In The Hills Part 12

"I think I can;" and the cook at once rolled up the sleeves of her riding-dress, and Jimmy brought out the eggs and some bits of salt meat--evidently bear-meat--that was hung from the ceiling of the cupboard; at once there began a great beating of eggs and stirring up of a corn pone; some berries were set on the coals to stew in a tin-cup, the water put to boil for the coffee, and an iron skillet with a lid utilized as an oven; and the fragrance of the preparing eatables filled the little room and prompted the hungry lifting of lids many times ere the fire had time to do its work.

"That pone's a 'dandy!'" said Jim, taking a peep at it; "it's gettin' as brown as--as your hair; an' them berries is done, an' ain't it time to put in the coffee?"

Acting on this hint, the coffee, beaten into a froth with an egg, had the boiling water poured over it, and set bubbling and aromatic on the red coals.

"You mayn't be much use to find strayed-off stock," said Jim deliberately, with his head on one side, as he watched the apparent ease with which the girl managed her primitive cooking apparatus; "but I tell you--you ain't no slouch when it comes to gettin' grub ready, and gettin' it quick."

"Better keep your compliments until you have tried to eat some of the cooking," suggested Miss Hardy, on her knees before the fire. "I believe the pone is done."

"Then we'll dish-up in double-quick," said Jim, handing her two tin pans for the pone and potatoes. "We'll have to set the berries on in the tin--by George! what's that?"

"That" was the neigh of Betty in the shed by the chimney, and an answering one from somewhere out in the darkness. Through the thunder and the rain they had heard no steps, but Jim's eyes were big with suspense as he listened.

"My horse has broke loose from the shed," he said angrily, reaching for his hat; "and how the d.i.c.kens I'm to find him in this storm I don't know."

"Don't be so quick to give yourself a shower-bath," suggested the girl on the floor; "he won't stray far off, and may be glad to come back to the shed; and then again," she added, laughing, "it may be MacDougall."

Jim looked rather blankly at the supper on the hearth and the girl who seemed so much at home on the buffalo-robe.

"By George! it might be," he said slowly; and for the first time the responsibility of their confiscations loomed up before him. "Say," he added uneasily, "have you any money?"

"Money?" she repeated inquiringly; and then seeing the drift of his thoughts, "Oh, no, I haven't a cent."

"They say MacDougall is an old crank," he insinuated, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, to see what effect the statement would have on her. But she only smiled in an indifferent way. "An'--an' ef he wants the money cash down for this lay-out"--and he glanced comprehensively over the hearth--"well, I don't know what to say."

"That's easily managed," said the girl coolly; "you can leave your horse in p.a.w.n."

"An' foot it home ten miles?--not if I know it!" burst out Jim; "an'

besides it's Hardy's horse."

"Well, then, leave the saddle, and ride home bareback."

"I guess not!" protested Jim, with the same aggressive tone; "that's my own saddle."

After this unanswerable reason, there was an expectant silence in the room for a little while, that was finally broken by Jim saying ruefully:

"If that is MacDougall, he'll have to have them two potatoes."

Rachel's risible tendencies were not proof against this final fear of Jim's, and her laughter drowned his grumblings, and also footsteps without, of which neither heard a sound until the door was flung open and a man walked into the room.

Jim looked at him with surprised eyes, and managed to stammer, "How are you?" for the man was so far from his idea of old Davy MacDougall that he was staggered.

But Miss Hardy only looked up, laughing, from her position by the fire, and drew the coffee-pot from the coals with one hand, while she reached the other to the new-comer.

"Klahowya! Mr. Jack," she said easily; "got wet, didn't you? You are just in time for supper."

"You!" was all he said; and Jim thought they were both crazy, from the way the man crossed the room to her and took her one hand in both his as if he never intended letting it go or saying another word, content only to hold her hand and look at her. And Miss Rachel Hardy's eyes were not idle either.

"Yes, of course it's I," she said, slipping her hand away after a little, and dropping her face that had flushed pink in the fire-light; "I don't look like a ghost, do I? You would not find a ghost at such prosaic work as getting supper."

"Getting supper?" he said, stepping back a bit and glancing around. For the first time he seemed to notice Jim, or have any remembrance of anything but the girl herself. "You mean that you two have been getting supper alone?"

"Yes, Jim and I. Mr. Jack, this is my friend Jim, from the ranch. We tried to guide each other after sheep, and both got lost; and as you did not get here in time to cook supper, of course we had to do it alone."

"But I mean was there no one else here?"--he still looked a little dazed and perplexed, his eyes roving uneasily about the room--"I--a--a young Indian--"

"No!" interrupted the girl eagerly. "Do you mean the Indian boy who brought me that black bear's skin? I knew you had sent it, though he would not say a word--looked at me as if he did not understand Chinook when I spoke."

"May be he didn't understand yours," remarked Jimmy, edging past her to rake the potatoes out of the ashes.

"But he wasn't here when we came," continued Miss Hardy. "The house was deserted and in darkness when we found it, just as the storm came on in earnest."

"And the fire?" said Genesee.

"There was none," answered the boy. "The ashes were stone-cold. I noticed it; so your Injun hadn't had any fire all day."

"All day!" repeated the man, going to the door and looking out. "That means a long tramp, and to-night--"

"And to-night is a bad one for a tramp back," added Jim.

"Yes," agreed Genesee, "that's what I was thinking."

If there was a breath of relief in the words, both were too occupied with the potatoes in the ashes to notice it. He shut the door directly as the wind sent a gust of rain inside, and then turned again to the pirates at the fire-place.

"What did you find to cook?" he asked, glancing at the "lay-out," as Jim called it. "I haven't been here since yesterday, and am afraid you didn't find much--any fresh meat?"

Miss Hardy shook her head.

"Salt meat and eggs, that's all," she said.

"Not by a long shot it ain't, Mr.--Mr Jack," said Jim, contradicting her flatly. "She's got a first-cla.s.s supper; an' by George! she can make more out o' nothin' than any woman I ever seen." In his enthusiasm over Rachel he was unconscious of the slur on their host's larder. "I never knowed she was such a rattlin' cook!"

"I know I have never been given credit for my everyday, wearing qualities," said the girl, without looking up from the eggs she was scrambling in the bake-oven of a few minutes before. The words may have been to Jim, but by the man's eyes he evidently thought they were at Genesee--such a curious, pained look as that with which he watched her every movement, every curve of form and feature, that shone in the light of the fire. Once she saw the look, and her own eyes dropped under it for a moment, but that independence of hers would not let it be for long.

"Do you want a share of our supper?" she asked, looking up at him quizzically.

"Yes," he answered, but his steady, curious gaze at her showed that his thoughts were not of the question or answer.

Not so Jim. That young gentleman eyed dubiously first the lay-out and then Genesee's physique, trying to arrive at a mental estimate of his capacity and the probable division of the pone and potatoes.

"How about that saddle, now, Jim?" asked the girl. Whereupon Jim began a pantomime enjoining silence, back of the chair of the man, who appeared more like a guest than host--perhaps because it was so hard to realize that it was really his hearth where that girl sat as if at home. She noticed his preoccupation, and remarked dryly:

"You really don't deserve a share of our cooking after the way you deserted us before!--not even a klahowya when you took the trail."

"You're right, I reckon; but don't you be the one to blame me for that,"

he answered, in a tone that made the command a sort of plea; and Miss Hardy industriously gave her attention to the supper.

"It's all ready," announced Jim, as he juggled a pan of hot pone from one hand to another on the way to the table. "Ouch! but it's hot! Say, wouldn't some fresh b.u.t.ter go great with this!"