The Foreigner Part 43

"No! No! Don't you think of it!" cried the man from the tent door.

"He will attack us."

Kalman stepped forward, and beating the dogs from their quarry, drew his pistol and shot the beast through the head.

"Get back, Captain! Back! Back! I say. Down!"

With difficulty he drew the wolf from the jaws of the eager hounds, and swung it into the wagon out of the dogs' reach.

"My word!" exclaimed the young man, leaping from the wagon with precipitate haste. "What are you doing?"

"He won't hurt you, sir. He is dead."

The young man's red, chubby face, out of which peered his little round eyes, his red hair standing in a disordered halo about his head, his strange attire, with trailing braces and tag-ends of his night-robe hanging about his person, made a picture so weirdly funny that the girl went off into peals of laughter.

"Marjorie! Marjorie!" cried an indignant voice, "what are ye daein'

there? Tak' shame to yersel', ye hizzie."

Marjorie turned in the direction of the voice, and again her peals of laughter burst forth. "Oh! Aunt Janet, you do look so funny."

But at once the head with its aureole of curl-papers was whipped inside the tent.

"Ye're no that fine to look at yersel', ye shameless la.s.sie,"

cried Aunt Janet.

With a swift motion the girl put her hand to her head, gathered her garments about her, and fled to the cover of her tent, leaving Kalman and the young man together, the latter in a state of indignant wrath, for no man can bear with equanimity the ridicule of a maiden whom he is especially anxious to please.

"By Jove, sir!" he exclaimed. "What the deuce did you mean, running your confounded dogs into a camp like that?"

Kalman heard not a word. He was standing as in a dream, gazing upon the tent into which the girl had vanished. Ignoring the young man, he got his horse and mounted, and calling his dogs, rode off up the trail.

"h.e.l.lo there!" cried Harris, the engineer, after him. Kalman reined up. "Do you know where I can get any oats?"

"Yes," said Kalman, "up at our ranch."

"And where is that?"

"Ten miles from here, across the Night Hawk Creek." Then, as if taking a sudden resolve, "I'll bring them down to you this afternoon. How much do you want?"

"Twenty-five bushels would do us till we reach the construction camp."

"I'll bring them to-day," said Kalman, riding away, his dogs limping after him.

In a few moments the girl came out of the tent. "Oh!" she cried to the engineer, "is he gone?"

"Yes," said Harris, "but he'll be back this afternoon. He is going to bring me some oats." His smile brought a quick flush to the girl's cheeks.

"Oh! has he?" she said, with elaborate indifference. "What a lovely morning! It's wonderful for so late in the year. You have a splendid country here, Mr. Harris."

"That's right," he said; "and the longer you stay in it, the better you like it. You'll be going to settle in it yourself some day."

"I'm not so sure about that," cried the girl, with a deeper blush, and a saucy toss of her head. "It is a fine country, but it's no'

Scotland, ye ken, as my Aunt would say. My! but I'm fair starving."

It happened that the ride to the Galician colony, planned for that afternoon by Mr. Penny the day before, had to be postponed.

Miss Marjorie was hardly up to it. "It must be the excitement of the country," she explained carefully to Mr. Penny, "so I'll just bide in the camp."

"Indeed, you are wise for once in your life," said her Aunt Janet.

"As for me, I'm fair dune out. With this hurly-burly of such terrible excitement I wonder I did not faint right off."

"Hoots awa', Aunt Janet," said her niece, "it was no time for fainting, I'm thinking, with yon wolf in the tent beside ye."

"Aye, la.s.sie, you may well say so," said Aunt Janet, lapsing into her native tongue, into which in unguarded moments she was rather apt to fall, and which her niece truly loved to use, much to her Aunt's disgust, who considered it a form of vulgarity to be avoided with all care.

As the afternoon was wearing away, a wagon appeared in the distance. The gentlemen were away from camp inspecting the progress of the work down the line.

"There's something coming yonder," said Miss Marjorie, whose eyes had often wandered down the trail that afternoon.

"Mercy on us! What can it be, and them all away," said her Aunt in distress. "Put your saddle on and fly for your father or Mr. Harris.

I am terrified. It is this awful country. If ever I get out alive!"

"Hoots awa', Aunt, it's just a wagon."

"Marjorie, why will you use such vulgar expressions? Of course, it's a wagon. Wha's--who's in it?"

"Indeed, I'm not caring," said her niece; "they'll no' eat us."

"Marjorie, behave yourself, I'm saying, and speak as you are taught. Run away for your father."

"Indeed, Aunt, how could I do this and leave you here by yourself?

A wild Indian might run off with you."

"Mercy me! What a la.s.sie! I'm fair distracted."

"Oh, Auntie dear," said Marjorie, with a change of voice, "it is just a man bringing some oats. Mr. Harris told me he was to get a load this afternoon. We will need to take them from him. Have you any money? We must pay him, I suppose."

"Money?" cried her Aunt. "What is the use of money in this country?

No, your father has it all."

"Why," suddenly exclaimed her niece, "it's not the man after all."

"What man are you talking about?" enquired her Aunt. "What man is it not?"

"It's a stranger. I mean--it's--another man," said Marjorie, distinct disappointment in her tone.

"Here, who is it, or who is it no'?"

"Oh," said Marjorie innocently. "Mr. Harris is expecting that young man who was here this morning,--the one who saved us from that awful wolf, you know."

"That man! The impudent thing that he was," cried her Aunt.

"Wait till I set my eyes on him. Indeed, I will not look at any one belonging to him." Aunt Janet flounced into the tent, leaving her niece to meet the stranger alone.