From Sand Hill to Pine Part 7

"Jest a spell arter ye rise the hill, ef ye keep 'longside the woods.

But it's a right smart chance beyond, ef ye go through it."

This was quite plain to him. In the local dialect a "spell" was under a mile; "a right smart chance" might be three or four miles farther.

Luckily the spring and outcrop were near the outskirts; he would pa.s.s near them again on his way. He looked longingly at the pan which she still held in her hands. "Would you mind lending me that pan for a little while?" he said half laughingly.

"Wot for?" demanded the girl quickly. Yet her tone was one of childish curiosity rather than suspicion. Fleming would have liked to avoid the question and the consequent exposure of his discovery which a direct answer implied. But he saw it was too late now.

"I want to wash a little dirt," he said bluntly.

The girl turned her deep sunbonnet toward him. Somewhere in its depths he saw the flash of white teeth. "Go along with ye--ye're funnin'!" she said.

"I want to wash out some dirt in that pan--I'm prospecting for gold," he said; "don't you understand?"

"Are ye a miner?"

"Well, yes--a sort of one," he returned, with a laugh.

"Then ye'd better be scootin' out o' this mighty quick afore dad comes.

He don't cotton to miners, and won't have 'em around. That's why he lives out here."

"Well, I don't live out here," responded the young man lightly. "I shouldn't be here if I hadn't lost my way, and in half an hour I'll be off again. So I'm not likely to bother him. But," he added, as the girl still hesitated, "I'll leave a deposit for the pan, if you like."

"Leave a which?"

"The money that the pan's worth," said Fleming impatiently.

The huge sunbonnet stiffly swung around like the wind-sail of a s.h.i.+p and stared at the horizon. "I don't want no money. Ye kin git," said the voice in its depths.

"Look here," he said desperately, "I only wanted to prove to you that I'll bring your pan back safe. Now look! If you don't like to take money, I'll leave this ring with you until I come back. There!" He slipped a small specimen ring, made out of his first gold findings, from his little finger.

The sunbonnet slowly swung around again and stared at the ring. Then the little red right hand reached forward, took the ring, placed it on the forefinger of the left hand, with all the other fingers widely extended for the sunbonnet to view, and all the while the pan was still held against her side by the other hand. Fleming noticed that the hands, though tawny and not over clean, were almost childlike in size, and that the forefinger was much too small for the ring. He tried to fathom the depths of the sun-bonnet, but it was dented on one side, and he could discern only a single pale blue eye and a thin black arch of eyebrow.

"Well," said Fleming, "is it a go?"

"Of course ye'll be comin' back for it again," said the girl slowly.

There was so much of hopeless disappointment at that prospect in her voice that Fleming laughed outright. "I'm afraid I shall, for I value the ring very much," he said.

The girl handed him the pan. "It's our bread pan," she said.

It might have been anything, for it was by no means new; indeed, it was battered on one side and the bottom seemed to have been broken; but it would serve, and Fleming was anxious to be off. "Thank you," he said briefly, and turned away. The hound barked again as he pa.s.sed; he heard the girl say, "Shut your head, Tige!" and saw her turn back into the kitchen, still holding the ring before the sunbonnet.

When he reached the woods, he attacked the outcrop he had noticed, and detached with his hands and the aid of a sharp rock enough of the loose soil to fill the pan. This he took to the spring, and, lowering the pan in the pool, began to wash out its contents with the centrifugal movement of the experienced prospector. The saturated red soil overflowed the brim with that liquid ooze known as "slumgullion," and turned the crystal pool to the color of blood until the soil was washed away. Then the smaller stones were carefully removed and examined, and then another was.h.i.+ng of the now nearly empty pan showed the fine black sand covering the bottom. This was in turn as gently washed away.

Alas! the clean pan showed only one or two minute glistening yellow scales, like pinheads, adhering from their specific gravity to the bottom; gold, indeed, but merely enough to indicate "the color," and common to ordinary prospecting in his own locality.

He tried another panful with the same result. He became aware that the pan was leaky, and that infinite care alone prevented the bottom from falling out during the was.h.i.+ng. Still it was an experiment, and the result a failure.

Fleming was too old a prospector to take his disappointment seriously.

Indeed, it was characteristic of that performance and that period that failure left neither hopelessness nor loss of faith behind it; the prospector had simply miscalculated the exact locality, and was equally as ready to try his luck again. But Fleming thought it high time to return to his own mining work in camp, and at once set off to return the pan to its girlish owner and recover his ring.

As he approached the cabin again, he heard the sound of singing. It was evidently the girl's voice, uplifted in what seemed to be a fragment of some negro camp-meeting hymn:--

"Dar was a poor man and his name it was Lazarum, Lord bress de Lamb--glory hallelugerum!

Lord bress de Lamb!"

The first two lines had a brisk movement, accented apparently by the clapping of hands or the beating of a tin pan, but the refrain, "Lord bress de Lamb," was drawn out in a lugubrious chant of infinite tenuity.

"The rich man died and he went straight to h.e.l.lerum.

Lord bress de Lamb--glory hallelugerum!

Lord bress de Lamb!"

Fleming paused at the cabin door. Before he could rap the voice rose again:--

"When ye see a poo' man be sure to give him crumbsorum, Lord bress de Lamb--glory hallelugerum!

Lord bress de Lamb!"

At the end of this interminable refrain, drawn out in a youthful nasal contralto, Fleming knocked. The girl instantly appeared, holding the ring in her fingers. "I reckoned it was you," she said, with an affected briskness, to conceal her evident dislike at parting with the trinket.

"There it is!"

But Fleming was too astounded to speak. With the opening of the door the sunbonnet had fallen back like a buggy top, disclosing for the first time the head and shoulders of the wearer. She was not a child, but a smart young woman of seventeen or eighteen, and much of his embarra.s.sment arose from the consciousness that he had no reason whatever for having believed her otherwise.

"I hope I didn't interrupt your singing," he said awkwardly.

"It was only one o' mammy's camp-meetin' songs," said the girl.

"Your mother? Is she in?" he asked, glancing past the girl into the kitchen.

"'Tain't mother--she's dead. Mammy's our old nurse. She's gone to Jimtown, and taken my duds to get some new ones fitted to me. These are some o' mother's."

This accounted for her strange appearance; but Fleming noticed that the girl's manner had not the slightest consciousness of their unbecomingness, nor of the charms of face and figure they had marred.

She looked at him curiously. "Hev you got religion?"

"Well, no!" said Fleming, laughing; "I'm afraid not."

"Dad hez--he's got it pow'ful."

"Is that the reason he don't like miners?" asked Fleming.

"'Take not to yourself the mammon of unrighteousness,'" said the girl, with the confident air of repeating a lesson. "That's what the Book says."

"But I read the Bible, too," replied the young man.

"Dad says, 'The letter killeth'!" said the girl sententiously.

Fleming looked at the trophies nailed on the walls with a vague wonder if this peculiar Scriptural destructiveness had anything to do with his skill as a marksman. The girl followed his eye.

"Dad's a mighty hunter afore the Lord."