The Prairie Mother Part 12

"No, I'll take him," I announced.

He'd be the hungry boy when he awakened, I remembered as I gathered him up in my arms. My knees were a bit shaky, as I carried him back to the shack, but I did my best to disguise that fact. I could have carried him, I believe, right on to Buckhorn, he seemed such a precious burden.

And I was glad of that demand for physical expenditure. It seemed to bring me down to earth again, to get things back into perspective. But for the life of me I couldn't find a word to say to Lady Allie as I walked into my home with d.i.n.ky-d.i.n.k in my arms. She stood watching me for a moment or two as I started to undress him, still heavy with slumber. Then she seemed to realize that she was, after all, an outsider, and slipped out through the door. I was glad she did, for a minute later d.i.n.kie began to whimper and cry, as any child would with an empty stomach and an over-draft of sleep. It developed into a good l.u.s.ty bawl, which would surely have spoilt the picture to an outsider.

But it did a good turn in keeping me too busy to pump any more brine on my own part.

When d.i.n.ky-Dunk came in I was feeding little d.i.n.kie a bowl of hot tapioca well drowned in cream and sugar. My lord and master took off his hat--which struck me as funny--and stood regarding us from just inside the door. He stood there by the door for quite a long while.

"Hadn't I better stay here with you to-night?" he finally asked, in a voice that didn't sound a bit like his own.

I looked up at him. But he stood well back from the range of the lamplight and I found it hard to decipher his expression. The one feeling I was certain of was a vague feeling of disappointment. What caused it, I could not say. But it was there.

"After what's happened," I told him as quietly as I could, "I think I'd rather be alone!"

He stood for another moment or two, apparently letting this sink in.

It wasn't until he'd turned and walked out of the door that I realized the ambiguity of that retort of mine. I was almost prompted to go after him. But I checked myself by saying: "Well, if the shoe fits, put it on!" But in my heart of hearts I didn't mean it. I wanted him to come back, I wanted him to share my happiness with me, to sit and talk the thing over, to exploit it to the full in a sweet retrospect of relief, as people seem to want to do after they've safely pa.s.sed through great peril.

It wasn't until half an hour later, when d.i.n.kie was sound asleep again and tucked away in his crib, that I remembered my frantic promises to G.o.d to forgive d.i.n.ky-Dunk everything, if He'd only bring my boy back to me. And there'd been other promises, equally foolish and frantic.

I've been thinking them over, in fact, and I _am_ going to make an effort to keep them. I'm so happy that it hurts. And when you're happy, you want other people to be that way, too.

_Wednesday the Third_

Humor is the salt of life. The older I grow the more I realize that truth. And I'm going to keep more of it, if I can, in the work-room of my soul. Last night, when d.i.n.ky-Dunk and I were so uppish with each other, one single clap of humor might have shaken the solemnity out of the situation and shown us up for the poseurs we really were. But Pride is the mother of all contention. If d.i.n.ky-Dunk, when I was so imperially dismissing him from his own home, had only up and said: "Look here, Lady-bird, this is as much my house as it is yours, you feather-headed little idiot, and I'll put a June-bug down your neck if you don't let me stay here!" If he'd only said that, and sat down and been the safety-valve to my emotions which all husbands ought to be to all wives, the igloo would have melted about my heart and left me nothing to do but crawl over to him and tell him that I missed him more than tongue could tell, and that getting d.i.n.kie's daddy back was almost as good as getting d.i.n.kie himself back to me.

But we missed our chance. And I suppose Lady Allie sat up until all hours of the night, over at Casa Grande, consoling my Diddums and talking things over. It gives me a sort of bruised feeling, for I've n.o.body but Whinstane Sandy to unbosom my soul to....

Iroquois Annie has flown the coop. She has gone for good. I must have struck terror deeper into the heart of that Redskin than I imagined, for rather than face death and torture at my hands she left Slip-Along and the buckboard at the Teetzel Ranch and vamoosed off into the great unknown. I have done up her valuables in an old sugar-sack, and if they're not sent for in a week's time I'll make a bonfire of the truck. Whinnie, by the way, is to help me with the house-work. He is much better at was.h.i.+ng dishes than I ever thought he could be. And he announces he can make a fair brand of bannock, if we run out of bread.

_Tuesday the Ninth_

I've got a hired man. He dropped like manna, out of the skies, or, rather, he emerged like a tadpole out of the mud. But there's something odd about him and I've a floaty idea he's a refugee from justice and that some day one of the Mounties will come riding up to my shack-door and lead my farm-help away in handcuffs.

Whatever he is, I can't quite make him out. But I have my suspicions, and I'm leaving everything in abeyance until they're confirmed.

I was on Paddy the other morning, in my old shooting-jacket and Stetson, going like the wind for the Dixon Ranch, after hearing they had a Barnado boy they wanted to unload on anybody who'd undertake to keep him under control. The trail was heavy from the night rain that had swept the prairie like a new broom, but the sun was s.h.i.+ning again and the air was like champagne. The ozone and the exercise and Paddy's _legato_ stride all tended to key up my spirits, and I went along humming:

"Bake me a bannock, And cut me a callop, For I've stole me a grey mare And I'm off at a gallop!"

It wasn't until I saw Paddy's ear p.r.i.c.k up like a rabbit's that I noticed the gun-boat on the trail ahead. At least I thought it was a gun-boat, for a minute or two, until I cantered closer and saw that it was a huge gray touring-car half foundered in the prairie-mud. Beside it sat a long lean man in very muddy clothes and a rather disreputable-looking hat. He sat with a ridiculously contented look on his face, smoking a small briar pipe, and he laughed outright as I circled his mud-hole and came to a stop opposite the car with its nose poked deep down in the mire, for all the world like a rooting shote.

"Good morning, Diana," he said, quite coolly, as he removed his battered-looking cap.

His salutation struck me as impertinent, so I returned it in the curtest of nods.

"Are you in trouble?" I asked.

"None whatever," he airily replied, still eying me. "But my car seems to be, doesn't it?"

"What's wrong?" I demanded, determined that he shouldn't elbow me out of my matter-of-factness.

He turned to his automobile and inspected it with an indifferent eye.

"I turned this old tub into a steam-engine, racing her until the water boiled, and she got even with me by blowing up an intake hose. But I'm perfectly satisfied."

"With what?" I coldly inquired.

"With being stuck here," he replied; He had rather a bright gray eye with greenish lights in it, and he looked rational enough. But there was something fundamentally wrong with him.

"What makes you feel that way?" I asked, though for a moment I'd been prompted to inquire if they hadn't let him out a little too soon.

"Because I wouldn't have seen you, who should be wearing a crescent moon on your brow, if my good friend Hyacinthe hadn't mired herself in this mud-hole," he had the effrontery to tell me.

"Is there anything so remarkably consolatory in that vision?" I asked, deciding that I might as well convince him he wasn't confronting an untutored she-coolie of the prairie. Whereupon he studied me more pointedly and more impersonally than ever.

"It's more than consolatory," he said with an accentuating flourish of the little briar pipe. "It's quite compensatory."

It was rather ponderously clever, I suppose; but I was tired of both verbal quibbling and roadside gallantry.

"Do you want to get out of that hole?" I demanded. For it's a law of the prairie-land, of course, never to side-step a stranger in distress.

"Not if it means an ending to this interview," he told me.

It was my turn to eye him. But there wasn't much warmth in the inspection.

"What are you trying to do?" I calmly inquired, for prairie life hadn't exactly left me a shy and timorous gazelle in the haunts of that stalker known as Man.

"I'm trying to figure out," he just as calmly retorted, apparently quite unimpressed by my uppity tone, "how anything as radiant and lovely as you ever got landed up here in this heaven of chilblains and coyotes."

The hare-brained idiot was actually trying to make love to me. And I then and there decided to put a brake on his wheel of eloquence.

"And I'm still trying to figure out," I told him, "how what impresses me as rather a third-cla.s.s type of man is able to ride around in what looks like a first-cla.s.s car! Unless," and the thought came to me out of a clear sky, and when they come that way they're inspirations and are usually true, "unless you stole it!"

He turned a solemn eye on the dejected-looking vehicle and studied it from end to end.

"If I'm that far behind Hyacinthe," he indifferently acknowledged, "I begin to fathom the secret of my life failure. So my morning hasn't been altogether wasted."

"But you did steal the car?" I persisted.

"That must be a secret between us," he said, with a distinctly guilty look about the sky-line, as though to make sure there were no sheriffs and bloodhounds on his track.

"What are you doing here?" I demanded, determined to thrash the thing out, now that it had been thrust upon me.