Sally of Missouri Part 9

"Yes, sir, I do."

Black Chloe, who had been making slow trips between kitchen and dining-room for some minutes, stopped now to say, in a sort of Arabian Nights measure, "Ef you raddy fuh yo' brekfus, yo' brekfus raddy fuh you."

"Better than anybody?" pursued Madeira, but his daughter was drawing him to the table, and he did not notice that her only answer was a quivering laugh.

They sat down to a breakfast-table whose delightful appearance was due to that sense of colour in Sally Madeira's temperament. Both ate some fruit, because it was juicy and went down easily, and both looked at their coffee-cups.

"Why don't you eat your breakfast, Daddy?"

"Why don't you?" Perhaps if he had waited for her to tell him, her gladness would have sent her story bubbling to her lips, but he did not wait. "I'm bothered, Honey, that's why I can't eat."

"What's the bother, Dad?"

Madeira, considering that this was his opportunity, closed in determinedly, with that iron grip of his. "It's that man Steering, Honey."

"Taken a foolish old dislike to him, haven't you, Dad?" She was ready for him, eager to get her case before him, to make her points quickly and surely.

"Foolish," Madeira gasped and put his hand to his vest pocket. "Sally, girl, it's a matter of life and death, I take it." He rose from his chair, his face grey. Staggering a little to the left, he moved to the window, where he stood with his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the Garden of Dreams. Behind him the girl sat on quietly. She had put one hand to her chin, so that her face was up-tilted. The light from the window was strong on it.

"Sally," began Madeira again, "I've never asked very much of you, have I? Always let you do as you please, haven't I? And it's too late now to try to force you to do anything, isn't it? Besides, I wouldn't do it anyway. I wouldn't like it that way. But I'm going to ask you to do something for me. Then I'm going to leave the doing wholly to you. I'm going to ask you to drop that man Steering. I thought it all out last night, Sally. I know that he and I are going to mix up if he doesn't keep well out of my sight. I'm going to ask you to drop him, for my sake, Pet."

He came back toward her, and again he half reeled as he started. With one hand on her shoulder, he looked down at her. By now she was staring unseeingly at the bird that stared at the nest in the magnolia tree.

"Are you going to do what I want, Honey?" His hand shook on her shoulder and when she turned to look up at him the ashen hue of his face frightened her. She nestled her cheek into his hand. "It's the G.o.d's truth I'm telling you, Sally," went on Madeira, "it's life or death, I think. I've got to get rid of Steering--I--I--oh, I hate him so."

"And you won't tell me why, Daddy?"

"And I won't--I can't--there's reason enough, Sally, that's all I can say. Can't you let it go at that, and help me out?"

"Yes, Dad, yes," she said. "You've done such a lot for me, you've helped me out--it--be--a pity,"--her voice went astray in her throat, and in the strong light Madeira saw a wild pain on her upturned face--"pity if I couldn't do anything you ask me to--wouldn't it?" She got up suddenly and ran to the door.

"Sally!" he called, "Sally, you don't mean--you don't--it isn't that"--but she was gone.

_Chapter Nine_

GOOD-BYE!

Madeira went off in the buckboard late that morning, and, having left word with black Chloe that he might have dinner at the Canaan Hotel, did not come home at all at noon.

His daughter stayed in her room all morning, and far past her lunch hour. About the middle of the afternoon she got up from the bed where she had been lying and sat by the window that looked out across the Tigmores. Her father's face, in its frame of entreaty, trouble, unrest, hung between her and the hills, so that, for a time, she saw nothing but Madeira. Little by little, however, the hills themselves became insistent. They were very beautiful, a long, ma.s.sed glory of colour, red and gold and green, all looped about by the silver cord of the Di. As the girl watched, a lone horseman came out of one of the wooded k.n.o.bs and galloped down the ridge road toward Canaan. She could see him plainly, his breadth of shoulders, his high-headedness, his good horsemans.h.i.+p. She got up quickly, swaying toward the window, her hands over her heart, with the strange little pus.h.i.+ng gesture, as though she must push her heart down. The horseman went on down the road toward Canaan.

"Oh!" cried the girl presently, pleadingly, "if I may see him just once again! If I just don't have to lose him all at once!" She ran then across the room to another window, through which she whistled shrilly at the negro man dozing in the succulent gra.s.s in front of the stable.

"Samson!" she shouted, "saddle Ribbon the quickest you ever did in your life!" And when she saw that the negro had roused sufficiently to execute her commands, she turned from the window hurriedly, went to her clothes-closet hurriedly, changed her house gown for a riding-habit hurriedly, and was out in the yard at the mounting block as the saddle mare was led up from the stable. Taking the bridle from the negro's hand, she leaped into the saddle and was off across the yard like a flash, while the lip of the astonished Samson sagged with impotent inquiry.

Out on the ridge road, she urged the mare to a gallop. All the way she was talking to Madeira, almost praying to him. His face with its trouble and pain still moved before her. "Ah, but you will forgive me!" she was saying to it. "You wait. Wait and see how this ride turns out. I'm going to give myself just one chance, Dad. I'm going to find him, and I'm going riding with him. And I'm not going to say anything. But I look nice, don't I, when I'm riding--and loving--and hoping--and maybe he can't stand it, and if he can't stand it, and rides up close, and stops his horse and tells me--oh, what I hope he will tell me--why, Daddy, dear, I _must_ lean over into his arms for just one minute, mustn't I?

You see that, don't you? And maybe after that, everything will be all right, and we can all be happy ever after. I don't see how we could help being happy ever after that, Dad!"

And, praying so, on the galloping mare, Sally Madeira came into the main street of Canaan, and drew rein at last in front of her father's bank.

Madeira saw her at once and hurried out to her.

"I'm going to take a little last ride with Mr. Steering, Dad," she said, her head as high as a queen's and her voice strong and sweet. "I didn't want you to think that I was deceiving you. I wanted you to know about it before I did it." Often there was a good deal of the child in Sally's straight gaze, and Madeira saw it there now and loved it.

"You do just exactly whatever you want to, Honeyful," he said. "I don't know--I----" He could not go on at all for a minute, and when he could go on he said abruptly, "I'm going to see Steering, too, before I quite bust up with him, Sally." Then he went quickly back to the bank, and the girl pa.s.sed on down the street to the post-office, in front of which she saw Steering's horse at the hitching-rail. She sent a bare-footed boy inside to post a letter to Elsie Gossamer and to ask Mr. Steering to come out to her.

While she waited, she could see Steering at the pen-and-ink desk, loitering there, one arm on the desk, watching the thin stream of people that went by him to the convex gla.s.s-and-pine booth where the post-office boxes were. The men from the Canaan stores, a lonely drummer from the hotel, some belated farmers and several Canaan young ladies pa.s.sed Steering, the young ladies seeming not to see him, but, in some subtly feminine way, making it impossible for Steering not to see them--their glowing young faces, their enormous hats, the way their gowns didn't fit, the slip-shod carriage of their bodies, all the differences between them and the only other real western girl he knew.

None of the people went out of the post-office at once, all idling at the door for a few minutes. From time to time there was quite a little crush at the door, so that Steering did not see Miss Madeira until her messenger reached him. Then he ran out to her quickly.

"I shan't get down," she told him, speaking in a lower tone than the listening Canaanites approved of. "I was hoping that I might find you here. Get on your horse and let's go to the woods. Wouldn't you like to?

The hills are one long glory to-day." It was not the note of her prayer, it was well-ordered and calm. Still, Steering's heart leaped like a boy's at her friendliness, and he began to speak his grat.i.tude in a lyric tune:

"Ah, what fortune! Just to be young and alive and off on the hills with you!" he said, and vaulted to his horse's back from the curb, so easily that even the Missourians who were candidly watching and listening, remarked, "Oh, well, it's because he's got some Missouri in him, that's why-for."

Side by side, the horses moved down Main Street. At the bank Crittenton Madeira was standing at the plate-gla.s.s window. He had his thumbs in his trousers pockets, and he was rocking to and fro, s.h.i.+fting his weight from his heels to the b.a.l.l.s of his feet peculiarly, as though seeking for balance. His eyes were moodily thoughtful, and he kept snapping at his lower lip with his big white teeth.

"Why, G.o.d bless you, Steering!" he cried pleasantly, moving out to the curb as the horses came up, "I made a mistake in missing you at the house yesterday. Want to see you again, as soon as I can. What about to-night, young man? Going to get in home early, aren't you, Sally?"

"Yes, Dad, early."

"Well then, my boy, you just stop by the bank, when you get in from the hills, will you? I shan't leave the bank before eight o'clock. Shan't be home to supper, Honeyful."

"All right, Mr. Madeira, I'll come," a.s.sented Steering; "look for me sometime before eight."

"All right, my boy. So long, Honeyful."

Again the horses moved off, side by side. Soon the town lay far behind the riders, who were following the s.h.i.+mmering Di around the blue hills.

Where the road ran up the bluff into heavy timber they got into deep odorous silences, the silences of young unspoiled places; musical, too, somehow, over and beyond the stillness. Where the road came down to the bottom land along the river the silence shook with the river's silver mystery. No matter where the road ran, always off beyond them lay the hills, ridge upon ridge, beautiful, glorious.

"Aren't they tremendous?" said the girl, "Aren't you glad they are almost yours?" A sense of possession was indeed mounting into a cry of rejoicing within Steering. He admitted it and then laughed at it.

"It's the house of Grierson that should rejoice," he said longingly.

"Wait until I bring you out above Salome Park," said the girl. "I, too, have some land up here that's worth while. From my land you can look straight across the country for miles, back again into your land."

Sometimes, as they journeyed, they pa.s.sed log cabins backed up against the long hills, or squatting close to the s.h.i.+ning river. Sometimes, as they journeyed, the red bluffs beetled up above them, tall and frowning.

Sometimes the trees, trailing long green veils, all but met across the Di below them. Once they pa.s.sed a saw-mill, set and buzzing; once they had to wait in the woods while a string of cattle stampeded by; once they saw a man in a skiff far down the Di. He raised his hand and waved to them for loneliness' sake. He looked sick with loneliness.

"You know your Missouri by heart," Steering commented admiringly, as she led him through bridle-paths and by short cuts with a fine woodsmans.h.i.+p.

"Well, I ought to. The times that I have been over it, with Piney, a ragged Robin-goodfellow at my heels! This is the apple-jack country that we are in now. Did you know that? Apple-jack stands for our big red apples and for zinc. There's some of both down here, see!" She stopped him on a high spur in the ridge road and waved her riding whip toward the flats below, whose miles upon miles of apple trees made him wonder.

"But wait for Salome Park," she insisted, and led him on.

Riding along beside her, listening to her, forgetful of his complications, his hills billowing toward him, Steering grew intensely happy. Just to look at her was enough to make a man happy. Her black, semi-fitting riding-habit outlined her graces of form enchantingly, the admirable litheness of her broad deep chest, her firmly-knit back. In her vigour of well-shaped bone and sinew and muscle she constantly emphasised the unpoetic nuisance of superfluous flesh. Beneath her little black hat her burnished hair lay coiled in soft smooth ma.s.ses low on her neck. The wonderful vitality that beat through her veins brought the red colour to her cheeks in delicate waves. In her sunny amber eyes the high lights danced far back, dazzlingly.

"Now," she cried at last, "one more climb, and here we are at the summit! Fine, isn't it? That's Salome Park, all of it, as far as you can see, until you see the Tigmores curving around way off yonder to the west again. Ah, yes, I thought you would like it!"