THE HEART OF THE WOODS

The WONDER
WOMAN

By Mae Van Norman Long

Illustrated by
J. MASSEY CLEMENT

THE PENN PUBLISHING
COMPANY PHILADELPHIA
1917

COPYRIGHT
1917 BY
THE PENN
PUBLISHING
COMPANY

The Wonder Woman

TO
LAWSON

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE WONDER WOMAN

CHAPTER I
TWO WOMEN

“DO you see her now, Mr. David?”

I nodded, pointing into the coals. “I see a lion, and an old witch, and a monkey. I don’t see any woman.”

“There! There!” I cried. “She’s just going through the postern gate. Oh, she’s gone, lad! Never mind! Next time you may see her.”

“And is she prettier’n Wanza, Mr. David?”

“Perhaps not prettier,” I responded. “Wanza looking out from beneath the pink-lined umbrella on her peddler’s cart is very charming, indeed. But the woman I see in the fire is—oh, she’s altogether different!”

This was the customary tenor of my conversation with Joey as we sat before our fire of pine knots of an evening. The lad would point out to me queer kaleidoscopic creatures he saw deep in the heart of the pine fire; but his young eyes never saw the face I beheld there, and so I was obliged to describe my wonder woman to him.

It was not strange that Joey should share my confidence in this fashion. He had been my sole companion since the night four years before when I had found him—poor tiny lad—sobbing on the doorstep of a shack some three miles down the river. I had lifted him to my shoulder and entered the shack to find there a dying woman. The woman died that night, but before she passed away she gave the child to me, saying: “He is only a waif! I took him from my poor brother when he died over on the Sound, about six months ago. My brother was a fisherman. He picked the child up on the beach one morning after a fierce storm a year ago. I was meaning to keep the boy always, poor as I be. But now—you take Joey, mister,—he’ll be a blessing to you!”

A blessing! I said the words over to myself as I carried the boy home that night. I said them to myself when I awakened in the morning and looked down at him cradled in the hollow of my arm. I had been out of conceit with life. For me the world was “jagged and broken” in very truth. But looking down at the young stranger I thrilled with the sudden desire to smooth and shape my days again. To stand sure! And here was a companion for me! I was through with living alone!

I went to the window, threw it wide, and saw the dawn rosy in the east. A mountain bluebird that had a nest in a hole in a cottonwood tree hard by was perched on a serviceberry bush beside the window. I heard its song with rapture. I was smiling when I turned back to the bunk where I had left the child. The child was smiling too. He sat straight up among the blankets, his eyes were fixed on the bird, and he was holding out his little arms. I lifted him and carried him to the window, and he lisped: “I love birdie! I love you!”

And so Joey became my boy.

It was not only in the heart of the pine fire that I saw the radiant creature I described to Joey. When I looked from my workshop door at twilight across the shadowy river to the cool purple peaks of the mountains, the nebular mist arising seemed the cloud-folds of her garments. And when I lay on my back at noon time, in the cedar grove, gazing upward through the shivering green dome at the sky, I always dreamed of the splendor of her eyes.

I grew to wonder how I should meet her. Someway, I always pictured myself astride my good cayuse, Buttons, on the river road returning from Roselake village, gay in my holiday clothes, with a freshly shaven face, and a bag of peppermints in my pocket for Joey.

As it fell out I was in my shop by the river at work on a cedar chest. I was garbed in a dark-blue flannel shirt and blue overalls, and needed a hair-cut sadly. I heard a sound and looked up. “She has come!” I said to myself. “Out of the land of dreams she has come to me!”

A young woman stood before me. The face I saw was oval and flawless. The cheeks were a delicate pink. Her lips were vivid, her eyes luminous as stars. Her silky, lustrous hair was bound with a broad band of blue ribbon. Although her riding skirt was torn, her blouse soiled, although she was dusty and disheveled, with shadows of weariness about her splendid eyes, her manner was that of a young princess as she addressed me.

“This place is for sale, I understand?”

I had not thought of selling the few acres that remained of the hundred-and-sixty-acre homestead I had taken up eight years before; but I was so overcome with awe and confusion, that I stammered forth:

“Why, no—that is, I think not! I shall sell some time, I dare say.”

Her face showed a flash of amusement and then grew thoughtful.

“It is a desirable place,” she murmured, half to herself.

I knew then she had come to the shop by the yew path—the path that runs beneath the trailing yews and winds in and out like a purple-brown ribbon near the spring, where the moss is downy and green, and the bracken is high, and the breeze makes a sibilant sound in the rushes. I straightened my shoulders, laid aside my plane, and rolled down my sleeves. Thus far I had not fully appraised my visitor, having fallen a prey to the creeping paralysis of shyness at my first glance, but now, grown bolder, I stole a hardier look at her face. I saw the scarlet lips, the brilliant eyes, and the ivory forehead beneath the midnight hair. I saw the rose tint on her cheek, the tan on her tender throat where the rolled-back collar left it bare. I saw—and I breathed: “God help me!” deep in my heart; and there must have crept a warmth that was disquieting into my gaze, for she lowered her eyes swiftly, and slid her hand, in its riding glove, caressingly along the smooth surface of the cedar chest between us.

“What beautiful wood,” she said softly. “You are a carpenter—a craftsman,” she amended. “How wonderful to work with wood like this.”

“Christ was a carpenter,” a voice—a wee voice announced from behind us. Joey had stolen into the shop through the rear window as was his custom, and curled up on my work bench among the shavings.

“Who told you, lad?” I queried, being used to Joey’s terse and unexpected utterances.

My wonder woman looked at him sharply. Her black brows came together as she surveyed him, and she did not smile. Joey stared and stared at her, until I thought he never would have done, and she continued to scrutinize him. I saw her eyes wander over his attire. Poor lad—his collection of wearing apparel was motley enough—an old hunting coat of mine that almost covered him, a pair of trousers unmistakably cut over, a straw hat that was set down so far on his brown head that his ears had perforce to bear the weight; a faded shirt, and scuffed out shoes. But Joey’s scrutiny was more persistent than the one accorded him, and presently, my wonder woman was tricked into speech.

“Well?” she murmured, her lips relaxing.

Joey gave a great sigh, kicked up his heels like a fractious colt, and rolled over among the shavings. “Gracious Lord!” was his comment, delivered in awed tones.

“Joey!” I gasped, turning. But Joey was slipping, feet first, through the window. I caught him by the trousers and gave him a surreptitious shake, as I lowered him wriggling to the ground. He rolled over, rose to his knees; his brown eyes, big and soft, looked up at me affectionately; his lips parted in a grin of understanding.

“I’ll put the potatoes on, Mr. David,” he vouchsafed, and vanished.

The beautiful face was questioning when I turned back. “Mr. David,” she repeated. “He is not your boy then?”

I hesitated. “No,” I said slowly. Somehow, I was in no mood to tell her Joey’s story at that moment.

“Joey has the manners of a young Indian,” I apologized. “I hope he did not annoy you.”

“Children never annoy me,” she replied.

A tiny dimple played at one corner of her mouth and died suddenly as the half smile left her face. She bent her riding-whip between her hands and a look of distress came into her eyes.

“I am wrong, then, about this place being for sale? I saw a sign-board back there on the road. It said ‘For Sale’ in bold black letters. There was a big hand that pointed this way.”

A light broke in on me.

“It must be Russell’s old ranch on Hidden Lake,” I said. “To be sure, that is for sale. It has been for sale ever since I can remember.”

I saw her eyes brighten.

“There is a place I can buy, then? What is it like—this Hidden Lake?”

“It is a mere pond, hidden in the thickets. It can be reached from the river. If you can find the lead you can pole in with a canoe. It’s a famous place for ducks. The tules almost fill it in summer. There’s a good spring on the place, and I guess the soil is fair. One could raise vegetables and berries.”

“I don’t want to raise anything.”

I fancied her lip curled.

“No—no—why, I dare say not! How stupid of me,” I murmured.

She flirted her whip impatiently.

“Is there a road I can take?”

“I will show you,” I replied, and she walked out of the shop as if anxious to be off.

She paused in the cedar thicket beyond, and I joined her. We could see the river shining like silver gauze through the green latticed walls of the grove, and the sky above the steeples of the trees was amethyst and gray. The sun was low in the west, and the shadows lay purple along the wood aisles.

It was a magical May day. Hawthorn and serviceberry bushes waved snowy arms along the river bank and dropped white petals in the stream, the birch trees dangled long festoons of moss above the water, balm o’ Gileads shed their pungent perfume abroad, and the honeysuckle and wild clematis hung from the limbs of the slender young maples.

I held aside the underbrush for my wonder woman that she might pass, and we went through the cedar thicket, threaded our way through aspens and buck brush, and reached the trailing yews that were bending to dip their shining prisms in the spring.

“This is the yew path,” I explained, breaking the silence that we had maintained since leaving the shop. “It winds through the meadow and joins a trail that skirts Nigger Head mountain. Follow the trail, and it will take you to Hidden Lake.”

The soft neighing of a horse interrupted me. I peered through the buck brush, and glimpsed a bay mare tethered to the meadow bars. My companion gave a soft chirrup and pushed on before me. She had the mare’s bridle in her hand, and was stroking the animal’s nose when I reached her side.

I said, “Allow me,” and offered my hand for her foot. She glanced at my hand, looked into my face, and smiled slowly as if amused. I felt the hot blood mount to my brow, and then her foot pressed my palm, and she was in the saddle, and her mare was wheeling.

“Good Sonia,” I heard her murmur, and saw her gauntleted hand steal along the arching neck. She bent to me. The grace of her supple figure, the vital alluring face, her baffling beautiful eyes, her ripe lips with their dimpled corners, were sweet as life to me. For a moment our eyes met. She said gratefully: “Thank you. My ride will be splendid beneath those whispering yews.”

Of a sudden my hands grew cold, my tongue stiffened in my throat, and my eyes smarted. She was going. I had no power to detain her, no sophisticated words to cajole her. I stared after her, and saw her ride away through the swaying meadow-grass to the yew path, the sun dappling her blue riding skirt, and the breeze lifting and swaying her bonny tresses.

When I went indoors after a retrospective half hour beside the spring, I found Joey in the grip of intense excitement. The table in the front room was laid for three, there was a roaring fire in the kitchen stove, and Joey’s face was crimson as he stood on a stool at the sink turning the boiling water off a kettle of potatoes.

“I’ve made squatty biscuits like you showed me once,” he volunteered in a loud whisper, “and stewed apples. And, Mr. David—I’ve hung a clean towel over the wash-bench, and scoured the basin with rushes.”

I looked at Joey. Out in the woods I had undergone a savage battle with my old self that had walked out of the shadows and confronted me. I had remembered things—submerged, well-forgotten things; I had exhumed skeletons from their charnel house—skeletons long buried; I had seen faces I had no wish to see, heard voices, the music of whose tones I could not sustain with equanimity; I had suffered. But as I looked at Joey, the futile little friend who loved me, and saw his pitiful efforts to please, the ice went out of my heart, and the fever out of my brain. I turned aside to the window and stood looking out with tightening throat.

Joey came and hovered near my elbow.

“There are only two pieces of gingerbread, Mr. David. I’ve put them on, and you can just say you don’t believe in giving children sweets.”

I laid my arm across the lad’s shoulders. I looked down into the honest brown eyes seeking mine for approval. The pressure of the two small rough hands on my arm was comforting.

“You’re a splendid provider, Joey,” I cried. “But you may eat your gingerbread, my boy. There will be no guest. She has gone on to Hidden Lake.”

Joey looked aghast. His jaw dropped, and his eyes grew black with disappointment.

“And I’ve sweetened the apple sauce with white sugar, and gone and wasted all that butter in those biscuits!”

I strolled into the front room and viewed the preparations. There was a large bunch of lupine in the big blue bowl in the center of the table, and all our best china was set forth in brave array. The bread-board I had carved graced one end of the table; at the other, Joey had arranged the two thick slabs of gingerbread on a pressed glass comport, a paper napkin beneath. I was smiling as I stood there, but I had an uncomfortable feeling that all was not well with Joey. A sound from the kitchen attracted me. I went toward it. Joey leaned across the sink, his face buried in the roller towel. His young shoulders were heaving.

“I wanted her—oh, I wanted her to stay!” he blubbered.

I knew not what to say to comfort my lad, and so I said nothing. I caught up the pail and went outside to the spring for water.

I had filled my pail and was stooping to gather a handful of cress when I heard the sharp click of wheels in the underbrush behind me. Some one was driving over the uneven ground that lay between the cabin and the workshop. I looked around. A girl sitting beneath a pink-lined, green umbrella, in a two-wheeled cart, waved her whip at me. I straightened up, dropped the cress, and ran through the buck brush after her.

“Wait, wait, Wanza,” I cried.

I heard her say: “Whoa, Rosebud!” And the buckskin pony she was driving curveted and pawed the ground and set the green paper rosettes on its harness bobbing coquettishly as she pulled it up.

“Were you coming to the cabin, Wanza?” I asked, as I reached the cart.

“Whoa, Rosebud! No, I wasn’t to-night, Mr. Dale—I was only taking a short cut through your field.”

“I WAS ONLY TAKING A SHORT CUT”

She leaned out from beneath the shadow of her pink-lined umbrella and smiled at me. Seldom it was that Wanza smiled at me like that. Friends we were—friends of years’ standing—but Wanza was chary of her smiles where I was concerned, and I must confess I found her frowns piquant enough.

The day that passed without Wanza whistling from her peddler’s cart at my door seemed more cheerless than usual. Wanza peddled everything, from shoe laces to linen dusters. She was the apple of her father’s eye, the pride of the village, and the delight of the steamboat men on the river. Ever since I had known her she had been her father’s housekeeper. Her mother had died when Wanza was a baby. And she and her father lived alone in a funny little house, flanked by a funny little garden, on the edge of the village.

“Wanza,” I cried eagerly, “come in to supper with Joey and me.”

I looked up at her pleadingly. Her charming elf-face continued to smile down at me. She shook her head slowly.

“Please,” I begged.

Gradually the smile left her face, a shrewd look replaced it.

“I can make you a cake,” she began hesitatingly, “if you’ve got any brown sugar in the cabin.”

“We don’t want you to bake for us, Wanza—we have a good meal laid out, and we want you to honor us by sharing it.”

“Glory! Is that it, Mr. David Dale? Well, I’ll stay. Not,” she added quickly, “that I wouldn’t be too tickled to make you a cake, only—”

“Only—Wanza?”

“Only it’s great to be invited, with all the supper ready before hand and waiting—it sure is!”

“You usually earn your supper with us, girl,” I said, as we walked toward the cabin. “There is no one can bake such cakes as yours, and as for your cherry pies—well, I have no words!”

She tossed her head. And then catching sight of a long-tailed chat, tumbling and rollicking above a hawthorn thicket, she stopped, her head poised high, her delicate subtle chin lifted, her expression rapt. All unconscious of my eyes she began making a funny little noise in her throat:

“Crr—crr—whrr—tr—tr—tr—”

It was pure felicity to look at Wanza Lyttle as she stood thus. She wore a gown of pink cotton, and her tangled maize-colored hair was looped back from her face with a knot of vivid rose-pink ribbon. Her wide-brimmed beribboned hat hung on her shoulders. Her collar was rolled away from a throat of milk. Her sleeves were tucked up, exposing brown, slender arms. Her feet were encased in white stockings and sandals. She was a picturesque, daring figure. And her face!—it was like a flame in a lamp of marble.

Her father, old Griffith Lyttle, was fond of dilating on the beauty of his daughter to me. Once he said: “She do be the prettiest young gal astepping—but, man, I reckon she’ll see trouble with that face o’ hers. It’s the face as goes with a hot temper.” Looking at her now it was difficult to associate anything but loveliness of disposition with her face, which seemed at this moment fairly angelic.

“The chat has a variety of songs, Wanza,” I ventured. “He is laughing at you. Unless you can caw like a crow, and mew like a cat, and bark like a dog you can’t attract him.”

“I like him because he is so bouncing and jolly,” the girl answered. “I like bouncing, jolly people, Mr. Dale.”

We walked on to the cabin. When we entered the kitchen and Joey saw us, he gave a shout of joy.

“Now, I’d liever have Wanza to supper than the other woman, Mr. David,” he vouchsafed. “I like the other woman, course I do, but I ain’t used of her yet.”

I refrained from meeting Wanza’s eyes. I went to the stove and took the biscuits from the oven with assiduous care. But when we were seated at the table, Wanza in the post of honor at the head, she leaned across the battered tea-things, rapped smartly on the table to attract my attention and demanded:

“What woman did Joey mean by ‘the other woman,’ Mr. Dale?”

I coughed. “Why—er—only a strange lady who stopped at the workshop to enquire if this place were for sale. She saw Russell’s old sign at the crossroads, and, as she explained, thought the hand pointed to Cedar Dale.”

Wanza looked at me intently; an interesting gleam came into her big eyes.

“What sort of a looking person was she, Mr. Dale?”

I reached out, helped myself to a biscuit, spread it with butter, and answered with assumed nonchalance:

“Oh—so so! She went on to Hidden Lake, following my directions.”

Happening to glance across at Joey I surprised a peculiar expression on his face. I saw astonishment written there and a look almost of chagrin in his eyes.

“Why, Mr. David,” he burst forth, “I been thinking sure she was our wonder—”

I saved the situation by springing from my seat and pointing out of the window. “Look, look, Wanza and Joey! There is a willow goldfinch on that little spruce tree yonder. See his yellow body, his black wings and tail! Isn’t he very like a canary? I heard his song this afternoon—I told you, did I not, lad? Hm!—he has the most charming song—sweet as his disposition. And his flight is wonderfully graceful!—the poetry of motion.”

When we went back to our seats I was careful to steer the conversation into safer channels.

That night at bed-time, Joey confidentially said to me:

“I won’t tell Wanza that the new woman is our wonder woman—’cause she mightn’t like it. Anyhow, is she any more of a wonder woman than Wanza, Mr. David?”

It took me many months to answer that question satisfactorily to myself.

CHAPTER II
HAIDEE

ONCE, years ago, when I was a lad, in an old volume of poems in my father’s library I came across a steel engraving of a beautiful woman. She had a small head with raven black tresses bound smoothly about her brow with a fillet, but twisted back over her ears and ending in ringlets over her shoulders. She had big dark eyes, a tiny mouth, a slim white throat, and infinitesimally small hands and feet. Her name was Haidee. I think her feet fascinated me most; for she wore shoes unlike any I had ever seen, ending in high curving points at the toes. She was a most distracting, elusive personality.

When my wonder woman placed her foot in my palm, and mounted her mare at my meadow bars, to myself I muttered: “Haidee.” So, the following morning, in answer to Joey’s query: “What’s her name, Mr. David?” I answered “Haidee,” and grinned at the lad sheepishly through the smoke that arose from the griddle I was greasing with bacon rind.

Joey, giving the cake batter in the yellow pitcher furtive sly dabs with the iron spoon when he thought me unaware, looked grave.

“It don’t sound nice. It sounds like that name you say sometimes—”

“Ssh!”

“When you’re mad,” finished Joey adroitly.

I shoved the stove lid into place beneath the hot griddle, and motioned to Joey to bring the yellow pitcher. While I poured out the foamy batter, Joey kept silence, watching the sizzling process with fascinated eyes, but when I took the pancake-turner in hand and opened the window to let the smoke escape, he spoke again:

“It’s bad for her, ain’t it, having a name like that?”

“It isn’t her real name, Joey. It’s a name I bestowed upon her. It seemed to belong to her someway. We shall never see her again, so it does not matter.”

“We’ll see her again, Mr. David, if she buys Russell’s old ranch.”

I paused midway to the table, the cake-turner heaped with steaming cakes in my hand. I stared at Joey. Curiously I’d forgotten the possibility of Haidee becoming my neighbor. My wrist trembled, the cakes slipped to the floor. Joey pounced upon them, bore them to the sink and rinsed them painstakingly in the pail of fresh spring water.

“I like cold cakes,” he was saying manfully, when I awoke to the situation.

“So does the collie. No, no, lad—we may not be living in affluence, but we don’t have to economize on corn cakes.” I laughed boisterously and patted his shoulder. “My cedar chests are selling, and my book—my nature story—is almost completed—why, soon we shall be turning up our noses at flapjacks!”

“At flapjacks!” Joey cried incredulously, making a dash for the yellow pitcher.

We were half through breakfast before he spoke again, and then he ventured tentatively: “Suppose she’ll come to-day?”

“Who, Joey?”

“Her—the—woman. The one that made me swear when I saw her in the workshop.”

“Oh, I’d forgotten your behaviour in the shop, Joey! It was reprehensible—it was rude—”

Joey nodded. “I forgot I was a human bein’.”

He put his elbows on the table, sunk his chin in his hands, and regarded me. I raised my coffee-cup hurriedly, drained the contents, and coughed spasmodically, Joey’s eyes widening in concern.

Two days after this conversation with Joey, as, butterfly-net in hand, I was crossing the ploughed field back of the cabin at noon returning from a collecting trip, I saw the bent figure of a man approaching along the river road. He carried a sack of flour on his back and he walked with his head so far forward that his chin almost touched his knees. I was feeling particularly jubilant, having taken four Electas, six Zerenes and two specimens of Breuner’s Silver-spot, and I accosted him lustily: “Good day, Lundquist.”

He attempted to straighten up, found the effort of no avail, and nodded. I rested on the bars and he came slowly toward me. His red face was so knotted and twisted that his very eyes seemed warped askew beneath his ugly freckled forehead. His old hands were horny and purple-veined, his legs spindling and bowed. Poor old derelict! Hapless, hard old man! He lived high up on Nigger Head mountain alone with the birds and squirrels. How he subsisted was a mystery. But he always had tobacco to smoke, and a corn-cob pipe to smoke it in. This fact comforted me, when I fell to musing on his meagre estate.

“It’s a fine day, Lundquist,” I continued.

He came closer, halted, and peered up at me.

“Ya, it ban.”

“Been to town?”

“Ya—I been to town.” He took his old black pipe from his mouth and crept closer. “Last night,” he stuttered, in his rasping broken accent, “last night I saw a light, Mr. Dale—a light—down thar.”

He pointed with his pipe-stem over his shoulder.

“A light? Do you mean you saw a light from your cabin?”

“Ya—in the old shack on Hidden Lake.” He chuckled. “Thar been no light thar fer three year. The wood-rats they eat up the furniture ole Russell leave. Place sold—maybe?”

I saw Joey watching me miserably during dinner. I ate like an automaton, and never once did I speak. Afterward it was no better. I took my book and sat on a bench outside the cabin. Joey’s voice soaring high above the rattle of the dishes in the sink; a red-shafted flicker hammering noisily on a pine tree before the door, saluting me with his “kee-yer, kee-yer”; the whistle of the Georgie Oaks at the draw-bridge, were all heard as in a dream. I was back in the workshop with Haidee, I heard her eager question: “There is a place I may buy, then?” I tried to picture to myself Russell’s old cabin metamorphosed by that radiant presence. It required a daring stretch of the imagination to vision anything so improbable.

The valley which lies like an emerald-green jewel in the very lap of the mountains in this section of Idaho, is watered by innumerable streams which it seems presumptuous to call rivers, and honeycombed with tiny blue lakes, their entrance from the rivers so concealed by tangles of birches and high green thickets and clumps of underbrush that their existence is practically unknown, save to the settlers along the adjacent rivers and to a few zealous sportsmen who make portages from lake to lake, dragging their canoes across the intervening marshes and of the Georgie Oaks likens the shadowy St. Joe and the equally shadowy but more obscure Cœur meadow-land. The tourist sitting on the deck d’Alene river to the Rhine, and bemoans the absence of storied castles, never dreaming of the chain of jeweled lakes that lies just beyond.

It was on the most cleverly hidden of these lakes that Russell’s cabin stood. Years before I had paddled down the river and contrived to find the lead. But the thickets were still deeper now, and I doubted my ability to find the narrow aperture. Toward the middle of the afternoon, therefore, I threw the saddle on Buttons, and rode away beneath the fragrant yews, seeking the trail that skirted the mountain.

The day was fair, the sky a soft azure, and the wheat fields rippled in a sultry breeze; but as I left the trail and descended through a boscage of cedars and scrub pines, following the damp clay path to Hidden Lake, I shivered in spite of the warmth of the day. And when I rode through the rushes that grew as high as a man’s head, and emerged on the cozy grey beach, and gazed across the deep blue, unnatural quiet of the water, I was weighted down by a weird depression. I felt suddenly like a puny thing, shaken with the knowledge of my own mutability. A bittern rose up from the tules, flapped its wings and gave its honking note of desolation; a flock of terns on a piece of driftwood emitted raucous cries. Russell’s cabin stood before me, weather-beaten, warped, and unsightly; moss on the roof, bricks falling from the chimney, the door steps rotted, the small porch sagging.

I slid off my cayuse and stood contemplating the ravages about me. Not a sound came from the cabin. Presently, I gathered my courage sufficiently to mount the steps and knock with the butt of my whip on the slatternly door that stood ajar. I received no response. I waited. The bittern in the tules gave its pumping call, “pumper-lunk, pumper-lunk,” and the hollow rushes droned suddenly in the wind like ghoulish piccolos. I pushed open the door without further ado and looked within.

I saw a small room, dust-covered and cob-web frescoed. The floor was littered with refuse, the fireplace held a bank of gray ashes, the home-made furniture had fallen a prey to the savage onslaughts of wood-rats. A damp and disagreeable odor permeated the air. “Surely she has not been here,” I said to myself.

I stepped to a door at the further end of the room, turned the wobbly knob, peered within, and shrank back, confounded at what I saw.

The light was streaming in through a window that had been recently washed and polished until it shown, over a floor freshly scoured. A small white-draped dressing table with all a woman’s dainty toilet paraphernalia met my prying eyes; a small cot gleamed fresh and spotless in a corner; and on every chair, and ranged on the floor around the room, were canvases of various sizes with tantalizing impressionistic bits of the outdoor world painted upon them, while streaming from an open trunk and overflowing in sumptuous, foamy sensuousness to the crude pine floor was the lingerie of a fastidious woman.

I took myself out of the house post-haste, threw myself into my saddle, and plunged away into the enveloping shadows of the cedar thicket. That night I climbed up Nigger Head almost to old Lundquist’s very door. I cast my eyes down in the direction of Hidden Lake. I saw a small red light gleaming there. I lay down on a ledge of rock and watched the light, watched it until toward midnight it disappeared, the wind came up with a soughing sound, the tall pines creaked and swayed above my head, and I walked down the mountain—the rain in my face.

CHAPTER III
I FELL SOME TREES

ALL night the rain pelted furiously against my window, and the wind blew a hurricane, roaring in the pine trees, maundering in my chimney, and rattling the loose casements. In the morning the rain had ceased. The sky was massed with black clouds, but streaks of blue glimmered here and there, and there was a glorious rainbow.

“Oh, Mr. David,” Joey shouted, hanging on my arm as I opened the front door, “the sky looks like a Bible picture!” But I was thinking of Haidee and wondering how she had borne the storm, alone on the shore of that black melancholy lake, through all the devastating night. A huge pine tree lay uprooted across the path, the serviceberry bushes were stripped bare of bloom, and a cottonwood growing on the river bank sprawled, a shattered giant, bathing its silver head in the water.

I evaded Joey, slipped around to the tool-shed, and taking my ax and crosscut saw, mounted my cayuse and rode stealthily away. When I got within sight of the cabin on Hidden Lake, I looked around me fearfully. Smoke was coming from the chimney, and the cabin seemed unscathed. And then I saw that one of the towering pine trees in the draw adjacent had fallen, and in falling had barely grazed the lean-to. The cabin had miraculously escaped.

I rode around to the rear of the cabin and knocked with my whip on the closed door. A figure rose up suddenly out of the bracken by the spring and came to my horse’s head. A figure in a crumpled red cape, with big startled tired eyes, and pale cheeks.

“I have come to cut down every tree that endangers the cabin,” I announced grimly.

She looked at me, brushed her disordered hair back from her eyes, attempted to speak, and failing, dropped her head forward against the horse’s neck and stood with face hidden.

“I came as soon as I could,” I continued, brooding above the wonderful bent head with its heavy ringlets of hair.

A sound unintelligible answered me. I sat there awkwardly, scarcely knowing what was expected of me. Presently she moved, looked up at me, and smiled. Her purple-black eyes were dewy. Standing there in her jaunty cape and short skirt, with her opulent hair unbound and sweeping her shoulders, she might have been a timid schoolgirl; and suddenly I lost my awe of her, though my admiration deepened.

“Were you alone through all that brute of a storm?”

“Yes.”

I got off my horse, and she took the bridle from my hand.

“I shall have to get a woman to stay with me,” she said slowly.

“An elderly woman?”

“No! No! A young woman—a strapping country girl with boisterous spirits,” she protested, an odd husky catch in her voice.

I revolved this in my mind. “Wanza Lyttle is the very one for you,” I declared jubilantly. Then I added uncertainly: “That is, if she will come.”

“And who is Wanza Lyttle?”

“Oh, Wanza is a wonderful girl,” I answered, warming to my part. “She drives a peddler’s cart. I’ve no doubt she will call on you. There never was such a peddler’s cart as Wanza’s, I’ll give you my word. It has a green umbrella with a pink lining, and two green wheels with pink spokes, and Wanza’s buckskin pony is never without a green paper rosette for his harness—”

“You’re not telling me much about Wanza, after all,” Haidee interrupted, opening her velvet eyes wide, and favoring me with an odd glance.

“Oh, but I am, I am going on to tell you that Wanza lined the green umbrella herself, and painted her cart. She is very capable. She makes cherry pies that melt in your mouth. And her tatting!—you should see her tatting.”

“It’s on all her dresses, I suppose?”

“It is. And her dresses are pink and starchy. Yes,” I ended, “Wanza is very capable, indeed—” I hesitated. It was awkward not knowing what to call my wonder woman.

“My name is Judith Batterly,” she said quietly, seeing my hesitation—“Mrs. Batterly. I am a widow.”

A turbulent tide of crimson swept up to her brow as she spoke. Her eyes sought the ground. There was a silence. The sun had forsaken its nest of feathery clouds and all the shy woodland things began to prink and preen. A flycatcher ruffled its olive plumage on an old stump in the spring, a blue jay jargoned stridently. Above our heads tiny butterflies floated—an iridescent, turquoise cloud. A fragrant steam arose from the damp earth.

As the sound of my trusty ax rang through the woods, and I chopped and sawed with a will all through the morning, I asked myself what it mattered to me whether Haidee were maid, wife or widow. I asked myself this, over and over again, and I did not answer my own question.

By noon I was hot, streaming with perspiration, and covered with chips and sawdust. I was inspecting a symmetrical, soaring white fir-tree that towered some fifty feet distant from the cabin, when a voice behind me cried: “No, no!” so peremptorily, that I started.

I turned to see Haidee standing there. She had looped up the masses of her black hair, and discarded the scarlet cape for a white corduroy jacket. A white duck skirt gave her an immaculate appearance.

“I want that fir left,” she explained.

“Your cabin is in jeopardy while it stands,” I assured her.

“Oh, I’ll take the risk,” she said carelessly.

“It is foolish to take a risk,” I countered.

She smiled. “Are all woodsmen as cautious as you?”

Now, I am convinced she was only bantering me, but I chose to take offense. I looked at her cool daintiness, and met her level gaze with shifting sullen eyes. I was unpleasantly aware of the figure I presented, with my grimy hands and soiled clothing, and red, streaming face. I reached for my handkerchief, remembered that I had lent it to Joey, and used the back of my hand, instead, to wipe my beaded forehead.

“It is sometimes fortunate for the new-comer that we woodsmen are before-handed,” I said pointedly.

At this, a stain of carmine crept into the flawless face. Resentment deepened in her eyes. “Thank you for your morning’s work, my man,” she said, as if to an inferior. “How much do I owe you?”

A vast slow anger shook me. I saw her through hot eyes. I did not answer. She lifted her shoulders with a forebearing shrug, and tendered me a coin on a palm that was like a pink rose petal. I snatched at the coin. I sent it spinning into the buck brush. And I turned on my heel.

“When you want that tree felled, send for old Lundquist back on Nigger Head. He’s the man you want,” I growled, jerking my thumb over my shoulder.

By the time I reached Cedar Dale, I was overcome with chagrin and remorse at my uncouth behavior. The more so, when on dismounting I turned Buttons over to Joey’s eager hands; for in the saddle-bag Joey discovered a small flat parcel addressed: “To the boy who goes to Sunday School.” The parcel contained peppermints of a kind Joey had never encountered before, and a gaily striped Windsor tie between the leaves of a book of rhymes.

Each night after that I climbed Nigger Head and lay on my ledge of basaltic rock and watched the light down on Hidden Lake. Each time the wind came up in the night, I turned uneasily on my pillow and thought of Haidee alone in that ramshackle cabin. And I worried not a little over that white fir that towered there, sentinel like, but menacing her safety.

Joey surprised me one day with the information that he had been to Hidden Lake.

“I took Jingles—the collie. Jingles carried the basket,” he added.

“What basket?” I asked sharply, looking up from the flute I was making for Joey out of a bit of elder.

“The basket with the strawberries.”

I knew of course they were berries from my vines, that were unusually flourishing for that season of the year, but I continued:

“What strawberries, Joey?”

Joey’s honest eyes never wavered. He smiled at me, pursed his lips, and attempted a whistle.

“I’m most sure I saw a little brown owl fly out of a hole in the ground last night, Mr. David,” he ventured, giving over the whistling after a time. “Do owls burrow in holes—like rabbits?”

“What strawberries, Joey?” I repeated perseveringly.

“Our strawberries—mine and yours. I put green salmon berry leaves in the basket. Jingles carried it so careful! Never spilled a berry.”

I stroked the shaggy head at my knee. “He’s a good old fuss pup. Aren’t you, Jingles?”

“That’s what she said, Mr. David. I sat on her porch a whole hour. She asked the most questions.” Joey reflected. “People always ask boys questions.”

“Do they, Joey?”

“Gracious—goodness! I should say so! She asked me what I was agoing to be when I grow up. I told her—” Joey came over to my knee and stroked the flute in my hand caressingly.

“What did you tell her, boy?”

“I told her,” he took his hand away and looked at me slyly, “I told her I was agoing to be a fixing man like you.”

CHAPTER IV
WANZA

“WANZA,” I asked, “how would you like to earn some money?”

Wanza’s big child eyes looked at me from beneath the curls that tumbled distractingly about her fair face.

“Mr. Dale,” she said solemnly, “I earn six dollars a week with my cart.”

We were sitting on the river bank in the shade of some cottonwoods, having met at the village post-office. We had met at three o’clock, and it was close onto five when I propounded my query. I admitted to myself, when I put the question, that I had been philandering. But there was not a swain in the village of Roselake who did not philander with Wanza. And Wanza, gay, quick-tempered, happy-hearted Wanza—who knew if she were as guileless as she seemed with her frank camaraderie?

“To be sure you do,” I answered her, lying back on the soft green turf and lazily watching the skimming clouds high above the terre verte steeples of the pines, “to be sure you do. But how would you like to earn thirty dollars a month—and still drive your cart?”

“Mr. Dale,” Wanza returned, solemnly as before, “it can’t be done.”

Her eyes had grown bigger and brighter, and she rocked forward, clasping her hands over her knees. I did not reply to this assertion, and after a pause she spoke one word, still hugging her knees and keeping her cornflower blue eyes fixed steadily on the river. “How?”

“Wanza,” I asked, “did you know Russell’s old ranch on Hidden Lake had been sold?”

She shook her head.

“A lady has bought it. And this lady wants a companion—some one young and lively. I think she would pay you well for being—er—lively. And I am almost sure she would not object to the peddler’s cart, if you would give up your evenings to her—”

Wanza spoke abruptly. “No! Oh, no! No, indeed!” she declared.

I was puzzled. “Why,” I said, “I thought the plan a capital one.”

“But it isn’t. Just think of it, Mr. Dale. Daddy at home alone every evening, and me—all smugged up, asetting there on one side of the kitchen table—her on the other—me asewing, and her aknitting and asleeping in her chair. Oh, I think I have a large sized picture of myself doing it.”

“Wanza,” I began tactfully, “how old do you think the lady is?”

Wanza’s lips drew down, and she shook her head.

“She is not old,” I ventured.

“But I hate rich ladies when they’re middle-aged, Mr. Dale. A rich woman, middle-aged, is as bad as a poor one when she’s terrible, squeezy old. The rich one’ll want tea and toast in bed, and a fire in her bedroom.”

“Well,” I said, “I can’t vouch for the lady’s personal habits, but I’m quite certain she won’t nod over her knitting, and I shouldn’t call her middle-aged, Wanza.”

Wanza looked suddenly suspicious. “Is she the lady as came to your workshop, Mr. Dale?”

“Yes, Wanza.”

“How old would you say she was?”

“Not over twenty-six.”

“Twenty-six.” A suspicious glint darkened Wanza’s blue eyes. “Pretty?”

“Yes.”

The eyes glowered.

“Thirty a month would be a help, now, Wanza, wouldn’t it?” I wheedled.

Wanza threw out both arms, dropped back on the grass and lay with closed eyes. Presently she murmured faintly: “Did you say thirty a month?”

“I said thirty a month,” I repeated firmly.

One eye opened. Wanza kicked a pine cone into the river, opened the other eye, and stared at the tips of her copper-toed shoes fixedly.

“Thirty a month added to twenty-four—Mm! I could go to school next year, Mr. Dale.”

“You could.”

“I could learn how to talk.”

“How to talk correctly,” I amended.

“That’s what I meant. Well, it all depends.”

“On what, Wanza?”

“On her. If she’s a certain kind, I can’t go—if she isn’t, I can.”

“It sounds simple,” I decided.

We were silent for a time. I lay back with half closed eyes, watching a king-bird that had a nest in a cottonwood tree on the bank hard by. Presently Wanza spoke lazily:

“There’s a lot of those Dotted Blue butterflies hovering about, Mr. Dale—the gay little busy things—they look like flowers with wings.”

I unclosed my eyes and looked at the azure cloud before us.

“Those are the Acmon, girl. See the orange-red band on the hind wings. Look closely. The Dotted Blue have a dusky purplish band.”

“Of course. I don’t seem to learn very fast. But I’m getting to know the birds, and I do know heaps about the wild flowers. I never saw such big daisies as I saw to-day in the meadow back of our house—I don’t suppose you call them daisies—and a yellow-throat has a nest among ’em. Yes! Oh, the meadow looks like a snow field! I been watching the daisies—they close up at night, tight.”

“And they open with the dawn. Daisies are not very common in the west. I must have a look at your snow field.”

Wanza’s luxuriant hair of richest maize color was spread out in sheeny wealth over the pillow of pine needles on which her head rested. I reached out negligently and separated a long curl from its fellows. “How silky and fine it is,” I commented. Wanza lay motionless. “It would be wonderful—washed,” I murmured, half to myself.

Wanza kicked another pine cone into the river.

“Plenty of soap and a thorough rinsing,” I continued musingly.

“Let it alone,” Wanza commanded crossly, her light brows coming together over stormy eyes.

“I can’t,” I said teasingly. “My fingers are rough, and it clings.”

Wanza sat up quickly, cried “Ouch!” and the next instant I received a stinging slap on the cheek. I caught her by the elbows, got to my feet, and pulled her up beside me.

“I think I won’t recommend you to the lady who has bought Russell’s old ranch, after all,” I taunted. “She wouldn’t want a virago.”

She gave a smothered sound and put her head down suddenly into the crook of her arm, and I felt that she was weeping. I looked down at the sunny hair straying in beautiful disarray over the rough sleeve of my flannel shirt, and I experienced a pang of self-reproach. I had wounded her pride. I had offended grievously. Repentantly I attempted to lift the burrowing chin.

“I was only teasing, silly,” I was beginning.

Wanza’s head came up with an abrupt jerk, and—she bit me—a nasty, sharp little nip on my ingratiating finger.

CHAPTER V
THE LEAD

I SEEMED to have cut myself off quite effectually from communication with either Haidee or Wanza. The days went by, colorless and unlovely. And June came at last, bringing new wonderful wild flowers, and added tassels to the tamaracks, and browner stalks to the elder bushes.

One unusually hot afternoon I sat in my canoe, idly drifting on the shadowy river, marvelling at the clear cut reflections, and casting an eye about for a certain elusive break in the screen of willow shoots and rushes. If I once paddled my craft successfully through this meagre opening, I knew I should find a narrow waterway that would convey me to the shore of Hidden Lake.

What I should do when I reached that shore was a matter of conjecture. But after paddling along close to the high grass and floundering about in the tules for an hour, I gave over my search, rested on my paddle, and fell into deep thought. And my thoughts were not pleasant ones. Like the man in the story, I realized that at a certain hour of a certain day I had been a fool.

A slight sound disturbed my reverie. I looked ahead. A canoe came slipping along in the shade of the willows. As I stared and stared, a voice hailed me, a voice compelling and shrill. Wanza sat, paddle in hand, the thick fair hair pleached low on her brows and bound with a crimson handkerchief, her young eyes disdainful, her lips sulky. When she met my eyes she frowned.

I swept my canoe close to hers. “Did you call me?” I asked, with marked respect.

She frowned still more deeply.

“Wanza,” I cried, with swift cajolery, “washed or unwashed your hair is wonderful. It is the color of corn silk, and your eyes are surely blue as the cornflowers. Will you forgive my rudeness when last we met?”

She smiled ever so slightly and the heaviness left her face.

“How is business?” I asked.

“I’ve sold one whisk broom, five spools of darning cotton, a pair of cotton socks, and three strings of blue glass beads, to-day,” she said succinctly.

“Glass beads are the mode, then? It is shocking how out of touch I am with the world of fashion beyond Cedar Dale.” I smiled across at the flushed face. “Now who among the rancher’s wives, I wonder, could have had the temerity to pay the price of three strings of blue glass beads.”

Wanza drew her paddle from the water, giving her head a backward toss. “And it isn’t to ranchers’ wives or town folks I’ve been selling the beads. It’s to the gipsies at the gipsy encampment beyond the village.” Of a sudden her face crumpled with an expression of sly reflection. “A gipsy woman told my fortune too, Mr. Dale; oh, a great fortune she told me!”

“What did she tell you, child?” I asked, anxious to appear friendly and interested. “It must have been something exceptionally good, since you are so vastly pleased.”

Her light brows came together. She shook her head until her hair spun out riotously like fine zigzag flames about her damask cheeks. “It was not a bit good. It was as bad as bad could be. Hm! It made me shiver, Mr. Dale. She said she saw,” Wanza lowered her voice and glanced apprehensively over her shoulder at the tree shadows, “she said she saw blood on my hands.”

In spite of myself I felt myself grow cold, sitting there with the warm sun on my back. And I cried out angrily: “Have you no better sense than to listen to a pack of foolish lies from the tongue of a vagabond gipsy? I am surprised at you, Wanza. Surprised—yes, and ashamed of you!”

I dipped my paddle into the water and swung my canoe about.

“Wait,” I heard a surprisingly meek voice entreat. “I thought you was going to get me a place with the lady as has bought Russell’s old place. Have you forgotten, Mr. Dale?”

I rested on my paddle. “Oh, no,” I said, airily, “I have not forgotten!”

“I believe you’ve been hunting for the opening in the willows and haven’t been able to find it, either! And here was I hoping you could help me! I been looking for it for an hour. I was going to see this woman at Hidden Lake, myself. After a while when I get to a slack time with my peddling I may take the place with her.”

There was a brief silence. I felt her searching eyes on my face.

“To be sure,” I said then, “I can find the tricksy aperture that leads to the narrow water route that runs between this river and Hidden Lake—”

Wanza interrupted me with an impish laugh.

“It sounds like that nursery rhyme you say to Joey.”

“Yes,” I went on with the air of weighing the matter, “I can find the opening very easily, I dare say, when I come to look for it.”

Her eyes grew grave. She favored me with a ruminative glance. Presently she said:

“Well, go ahead—find the tricksy aperture! I’m waiting.”