The Girl of the Golden West, David Belasco [read with me txt] 📗

/>
"It was Fate," he told her, leaning over the table and looking down upon her admiringly.

She pondered his answer for a moment, then blurted out:

"You're a bluff! It may have been Fate, but I tho't you looked kind o' funny when Rance asked you if you hadn't missed the trail an' wa'n't on the road to see Nina Micheltorena--she that lives in the greaser settlement an' has the name o' shelterin' thieves."

At the mention of thieves, Johnson paled frightfully and the knife which he had been toying with dropped to the floor.

"Was it Fate or the back trail?" again queried the Girl.

"It was Fate," calmly reiterated the man, and looked her fairly in the eye.

The cloud disappeared from the Girl's face.

"Serve the coffee, Wowkle!" she called almost instantly. And then it was that she saw that no chair had been placed at the table for him. She sprang to her feet, exclaiming: "Oh, Lordy, you ain't got no chair yet to--"

"Careful, please, careful," quickly warned Johnson, as she rounded the corner of the table upon which his guns lay.

But fear was not one of the Girl's emotions. At the display of guns that met her gaze she merely shrugged and inquired placidly:

"Oh, how many guns do you carry?"

Not unnaturally she waited for his answer before starting in quest of a chair for him; but instead Johnson quietly went over to the chair near the door where his coat lay, hung it up on the peg with his hat, and returning now with a chair, he answered:

"Oh, several when travelling through the country."

"Well, set down," said the Girl bluntly, and hurried to his side to adjust his chair. But she did not return to her place at the table; instead, she took the barrel rocker near the fireplace and began to rock nervously to and fro. In silence Johnson sat studying her, looking her through and through, as it were.

"It must be strange living all alone way up here in the mountains," he remarked, breaking the spell of silence. "Isn't it lonely?"

"Lonely? Mountains lonely?" The Girl's laugh rang out clearly. "Besides," she went on, her eyes fairly dancing with excitement, "I got a little pinto an' I'm all over the country on 'im. Finest little horse you ever saw! If I want to I can ride right down into the summer at the foothills with miles o' Injun pinks jest a-laffin' an' tiger lilies as mad as blazes. There's a river there, too--the Injuns call it a water-road--an' I can git on that an' drift an' drift an' smell the wild syringa on the banks. An if I git tired o' that I can turn my horse up-grade an' gallop right into the winter an' the lonely pines an' firs a-whisperin' an' a-sighin'. Lonely? Mountains lonely, did you say? Oh, my mountains, my beautiful peaks, my Sierras! God's in the air here, sure! You can see Him layin' peaceful hands on the mountain tops. He seems so near you want to let your soul go right on up."

Johnson was touched at the depth of meaning in her words; he nodded his head in appreciation.

"I see, when you die you won't have far to go," he quietly observed.

Minutes passed before either spoke. Then all at once the Girl rose and took the chair facing his, the table between them as at first.

"Wowkle, serve the coffee!" again she called.

Immediately, Wowkle emerged from the cupboard, took the coffee-pot from the fire and filled the cups that had been kept warm on the fireplace base, and after placing a cup beside each plate she squatted down before the fire in watchful silence.

"But when it's very cold up here, cold, and it snows?" queried Johnson, his admiration for the plucky, quaint little figure before him growing by leaps and bounds.

"Oh, the boys come up an' digs me out o' my front door like--like--" She paused, her sunny laugh rippling out at the recollection of it all, and Johnson noted the two delightful dimples in her rounded cheeks. Indeed, she had never appeared prettier to him than when displaying her two rows of perfect, dazzling teeth, which was the case every time that she laughed.

"--like a little rabbit, eh?" he supplemented, joining in the laugh.

She nodded eagerly.

"I get digged out near every day when the mine's shet down an' Academy opens," went on the Girl in the same happy strain, her big blue eyes dancing with merriment.

Johnson looked at her wonderingly; he questioned:

"Academy? Here? Why, who teaches in your Academy?"

"Me--I'm her--I'm teacher," she told him with not a little show of pride.

With difficulty Johnson suppressed a smile; nevertheless he observed soberly:

"Oh, so you're the teacher?"

"Yep--I learn m'self an' the boys at the same time," she hastened to explain, and dropped a heaping teaspoon of coarse brown sugar into his cup. "But o' course Academy's suspended when ther's a blizzard on 'cause no girl could git down the mountain then."

"Is it so very severe here when there's a blizzard on?" Johnson was saying, when there came to his ears a strange sound--the sound of the wind rising in the canyon below.

The Girl looked at him in blank astonishment--a look that might easily have been interpreted as saying, "Where do you hail from?" She answered:

"Is it . . .? Oh, Lordy, they come in a minute! All of a sudden you don't know where you are--it's awful!"

"Not many women--" digressed the man, glancing apprehensively towards the door, but she cut him short swiftly with the ejaculation:

"Bosh!" And picking up a plate she raised it high in the air the better to show off its contents. "Charlotte rusks an' lemming turnover!" she announced, searching his face for some sign of joy, her own face lighting up perceptibly.

"Well, this is a treat!" cried out Johnson between sips of coffee.

"Have one?"

"You bet!" he returned with unmistakable pleasure in his voice.

The Girl served him with one of each, and when he thanked her she beamed with happiness.

"Let me send you some little souvenir of to-night"--he said, a little while later, his admiring eyes settled on her hair of burnished gold which glistened when the light fell upon it--"something that you'd just love to read in your course of teaching at the Academy." He paused to search his mind for something suitable to suggest to her; at length he questioned: "Now, what have you been reading lately?"

The Girl's face broke into smiles as she answered:

"Oh, it's an awful funny book about a kepple. He was a classic an' his name was Dent."

Johnson knitted his brows and thought a moment. "He was a classic, you say, and his name was--Oh, yes, I know--Dante," he declared, with difficulty controlling the laughter that well-nigh convulsed him. "And you found Dante funny, did you?"

"Funny? I roared!" acknowledged the Girl with a frankness that was so genuine that Johnson could not help but admire her all the more. "You see, he loved a lady--" resumed the Girl, toying idly with her spoon.

"--Beatrice," supplemented Johnson, pronouncing the name with the Italian accent which, by the way, was not lost on the Girl.

"How?" she asked quickly, with eyes wide open.

Johnson ignored the question. Anxious to hear her interpretation of the story, he requested her to continue.

"He loved a lady--" began the Girl, and broke off short. And going over to the book-shelf she took down a volume and began to finger the leaves absently. Presently she came back, and fixing her eyes upon him, she went on: "It made me think of it, what you said down to the saloon to-night about livin' so you didn't care what come after. Well, he made up his min', this Dent--Dantes--that one hour o' happiness with her was worth the whole da--" She checked the word on her tongue, and concluded: "outfit that come after. He was willin' to sell out his chances for sixty minutes with 'er. Well, I jest put the book down an' hollered." And once more she broke into a hearty laugh.

"Of course you did," agreed Johnson, joining in the laugh. "All the same," he presently added, "you knew he was right."

"I didn't!" she contradicted with spirit, and slowly went back to the book-shelf with the book.

"You did."

"Didn't!"

"You did."

"Didn't! Didn't!"

"I don't--"

"You do, you do," insisted the Girl, plumping down into the chair which she had vacated at the table.

"Do you mean to say--" Johnson got no further, for the Girl, with a naivete that made her positively bewitching to the man before her, went on as if there had been no interruption:

"That a feller could so wind h'ms'lf up as to say, 'Jest give me one hour o' your sassiety; time ain't nothin', nothin' ain't nothin' only to be a da--darn fool over you!' Ain't it funny to feel like that?" And then, before Johnson could frame an answer:

"Yet, I s'pose there are people that love into the grave an' into death an' after." The Girl's voice lowered, stopped. Then, looking straight ahead of her, her eyes glistening, she broke out with:

"Golly, it jest lifts you right up by your bootstraps to think of it, don't it?"

Johnson was not smiling now, but sat gazing intently at her through half-veiled lids.

"It does have that effect," he answered, the wonder of it all creeping into his voice.

"Yet, p'r'aps he was ahead o' the game. P'r'aps--" She did not finish the sentence, but broke out with fresh enthusiasm: "Oh, say, I jest love this conversation with you! I love to hear you talk! You give me idees!"

Johnson's heart was too full for utterance; he could only think of his own happiness. The next instant the Girl called to Wowkle to bring the candle, while she, still eager and animated, her eyes bright, her lips curving in a smile, took up a cigar and handed it to him, saying:

"One o' your real Havanas!"

"But I"--began Johnson, protestingly.

Nevertheless the Girl lit a match for him from the candle which Wowkle held up to her, and, while the latter returned the candle to the mantel, Johnson lighted his cigar from the burning match between her fingers.

"Oh, Girl, how I'd love to know you!" he suddenly cried with the fire of love in his eyes.

"But you do know me," was her answer, as she watched the smoke from his cigar curl upwards toward the ceiling.

"Not well enough," he sighed.

For a brief second only she was silent. Whether she read his thoughts it would be difficult to say; but there came a moment soon when she could not mistake them.

"What's your drift, anyway?" she asked, looking him full in the face.

"To know you as Dante knew the lady--'One hour for me, one hour worth the world,'" he told her, all the while watching and loving her beauty.

At the thought she trembled a little, though she answered with characteristic bluntness:

"He didn't git it, Mr. Johnson."

"All the same there are women we could die for," insisted Johnson, dreamily.

The Girl was in the act of carrying her cup to her mouth but put it down on the table. Leaning forward, she inquired somewhat sneeringly: