A Pagan of the Hills Part 21

But Sol had had enough, for the present. Alexander's presence made him, somehow, feel foolish, as if his thras.h.i.+ng were less of an embarra.s.sment than its cause.

"I war jest a-funnin,'" he protested. "I'm willin' ter take back anything thet's done give offense."

One day shortly after that, when Joe came unexpectedly into the house he surprised Alexander attired as he had never before seen her--in the skirts of her own s.e.x.

"Fer ther Lord's sake," exclaimed the boy. "Thet's ther fust time I ever seed ye in petticoats. Looks like ye must hev on a half score of 'em."

"Like es not hit's ther last time ye'll ever see hit, too," retorted Alexander hotly while her cheeks flamed. "Some day I mout hev ter go down below ter some big town on business. A woman's got ter w'ar these fool things thar, an' I was practising so's I could larn ter walk with 'em flappin' round my legs."

Yet she walked, for all the alleged difficulty, with an untrameled and regal ease. With a sweep of hauteur she left the grinning boy and when she returned a few minutes later she was breeched and booted as usual.

Sometimes, in these days, she went to a crest from which the view reached off for leagues over the valley and beyond that over ridge upon ridge of hilltops. There she thought of many things and was very lonely. She could not have worded it but, deep in her heart, she felt the outcry of the Spring voice: "Make me anything but neuter when the sap begins to stir."

But how could this be any love-impulse in Alexander? Love, she had always heard, must fix itself upon some one endearing object and lay its glamor over definite features.

The most magnificent figure of a man she had ever seen often reared itself in her thought-pictures with its six feet six of straight limbed strength, its eagle-like keenness of eye, and its self-confident bearing.

"Ef I could really be a man," she told herself, "I'd love ter be a man like ther Halloway feller--ef only he wasn't so plum dirty and raggedy."

One day on her way back from the fields she saw a tall figure loafing near the front door of her house and, at that distance, she thought that it was Halloway. It stood so tall and straight that it must be, but that was because the setting sun was in her eyes and the man showed only in silhouette. So seen Jerry O'Keefe--for it proved to be Jerry--suffered little by comparison with any man she knew--except Halloway.

But Alexander did not greet him with any great warmth. She was angry with herself because her heart had started suddenly to pounding at the instant when she had imagined this man to be the other. She was angry, too, with Jerry for disappointing her.

So she nodded coolly and demanded, "What's yore business hyarabout?"

In Jerry the rising joyousness of rebirth was full confessed. He was here because since he had seen her last he had carried no other picture in his thoughts, and now that the world was in bloom he wanted to see her against a befitting background. To that end he had sold his small farm and rented a plot and cabin near-by and if there was to be no welcome for him here he had merely sold himself out of a home.

But the gray-blue eyes were whimsical, and the mobile lips smiling. He was unrebuffed as he made a counter-query.

"Kain't a feller kinderly come broguein' in hyar, without some special business brings him?"

Alexander felt that she had been unneighborly, but in her memory the things that Brent had said to her had become a sort of troublesome refrain. "Men will come and they won't be turned back." She remembered, too, her own hot retort, "Like h.e.l.l they won't!" It was in the spirit of that retort that she answered.

"Ef ye hain't got no business hyar, ye hain't got no business hyar, an'

thet's all thar air ter hit."

"Mebby ye're ther business yoreself, Alexander," he suggested and there was a persuasive quality in his voice.

"I'm my own business, n.o.body else's."

In this mood that had troubled her of late, Alexander was very combative. She was not willing to surrender her code--not willing yet to be treated as a woman.

"I heers tell thet ye've moved over hyar, bag an' baggage--an' ef I kin help ye out any way, I'll seek ter convenience ye outen a sperit of neighborness." She spoke in that extra-deliberate fas.h.i.+on that went before a storm, and as she stood there with her head high, and her eyes undeviatingly meeting his, she had the beauty of a war-G.o.ddess. "But when ye hain't got no matter of need, don't come."

Jerry had no intention of being lightly repulsed. His purpose of courts.h.i.+p had become his governing law but he had learned much of this Amazonian woman and had set himself, not to an easy conquest, but to a hard campaign. The man who, merely to be near one woman, sells a river bottom farm that he had nursed into something like prosperity and who takes on rocky acres in its stead, has shown, by his works, the determination of his spirit.

Now, the humorous eyes riffled with a quiet amus.e.m.e.nt.

"I didn't say thet I come without business, Alexander. Mebby I hain't stated hit yit."

"Then ye'd better state hit. Ye don't seem ter be in no tormentin'

haste."

O'Keefe thought that "tormentin' haste" in his position would be fatal and yet the streak of whimsey that ran through him brought a paradoxical answer.

"My hearth's cold over thar. I come ter borry fire."

He was watching her as he spoke, and now that he no longer stood under the disadvantage of comparison with Jack Halloway he was no mean figure of a man. One could not miss the fine, if slender, power of his long and shapely lines from broad shoulder to tapering waist. His hair curled crisply and incorrigibly and he bore himself with a lazy sort of grace, agile for all its indolence. Alexander could not be quite sure whether the eyes were insolent or humble. When he had stated his mission of "borrowing fire" he had used a quaint phrase, eloquent of a quainter custom. It had to do with that isolated life in a land where until recently matches were rare and when the hearth fire died one had to go to the neighbor's house and hasten back with a flaming f.a.got for its relighting.

"Ye don't seem ter hev ther drive of a man borryin' fire. Why didn't ye ask Joe. I heers him in thar."

"Hit's _goin' home_ not _comin'_ thet a man's got ter hasten with his fire," he reminded her. "I didn't ask Joe because--he hain't got ther kind of fire my heart needs, Alexander."

So her suspicion was true! He had been speaking, not literally, but in the allegory of a suitor and her gathering wrath burst.

"Then I hain't got hit fer ye nuther. Let yore h'arth stay cold, an'

be d.a.m.ned ter ye--an' now begone right speedily!"

With pure effrontery the young man laughed. Into his voice he put a pretense of appeal, as he calmly stuffed his pipe with tobacco crumbs.

"Alexander ye wouldn't deny a man such a plum needcessity es fire, would ye?" he questioned, though even as he said it he drew from his pocket a box of matches and struck one.

So he had made deliberate and calculated sport of her! Her anger saw in his presence itself only the insult of the first attack from those men who "would not be turned back," and once more the rage in her came to its boiling-point.

She wheeled and went into the house and when she came out her face was pale to the lips and her brows drawn in a resolute pucker, while in her hands she carried a c.o.c.ked rifle.

"Down yonder lays my fence-line," she autocratically told the man who had continued standing where she had left him, and whose seeming was still unflurried. "I've got a license ter say who crosses. .h.i.t. Ye've done sought ter make sport of me, an' now I commands ye ter cross ther fence an' begone from hyar." She paused a moment because her breath was coming fast with pa.s.sion. "I warns ye nuver ter put foot on this farm ergin--I aims ter see thet ye don't--an' when ye starts away don't tarry ter look back, nuther."

Slowly Jerry O'Keefe nodded. One ordered from another's house must obey, but the twinkle had not altogether faded from his eyes and there was nothing precipitate in his movements, albeit the rifle was at ready and the girl's deep breast was heaving with unfeigned fury.

"All right," he acceded, "I'm goin' now but es fer not lookin' back, I wouldn't like ter mek no brash promises. You're hyar an' hit mout prove right hard ter keep my eyes turned t'other way. I'm an easy-goin' sort of feller anyhow, an' I likes ter let my glance kind of rove hyar an' thar."

Her hands trembled on the gun and her voice shook into huskiness.

"Begone," she warned. "I kain't hold down my temper much longer."

"An' es fer comin' back," Jerry continued blandly, "some day you're ergoin' ter _invite_ me back. Anyhow, I reckon I'd come, because thar's somethin' hyar thet'll kinderly pulls me hither stronger then guns kin skeer me off."

The girl sat there on her doorstep with her rifle across her knees and halfway to the fence-line Jerry paused and looked back. The rifle came up--and dropped back again as Alexander belatedly pretended that she had not seen him. At the stile O'Keefe paused to turn his head again.

He even waved his hat, and this time she looked through him as through a pane of gla.s.s.

But when she had been sitting broodingly for a long while, the cloud slowly dissipated from her face. In her eyes a twinkle of merriment battled with the fire of righteous indignation, and at last she even laughed with a low pealing note like a silver bell.

"He's an impudent, no-count devil," she said, "but he's got right unfalterin' nerve, an' thar's a mighty pleasin' twinkle in his eyes."

Not long after that Alexander made a journey to a nearby town, but since it was one near the railroad she went in woman's attire, paying a new deference to public opinion which she had heretofore scorned. She was busily occupied there all day and her mission was one of mystery.