The Long Shadow, B. M. Bower [best books to read fiction .txt] 📗

"She can make a punkin pie quick's a cat can wink her eye,

She's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother!"

"But, of course," observed Mr. Dill quite unexpectedly, "you know, William, time will remedy that drawback."

Billy started, looked suspiciously at the other, grew rather red and shut up like a clam. He did more; he put the spurs to his horse and speedily hid himself in a dust-cloud, so that Dill, dutifully keeping pace with him, made a rather spectacular arrival whether he would or no.

Charming Billy, his hat carefully dimpled, his blue tie fastidiously knotted and pierced with the Klondyke nugget-pin which was his only ornament, wandered hastily through the assembled groups and slapped viciously at mosquitoes. Twice he shied at a flutter of woman-garments, retreated to a respectable distance and reconnoitred with a fine air of indifference, to find that the flutter accompanied the movements of some girl for whom he cared not at all.

In his nostrils was the indefinable, unmistakable picnic odor—the odor of crushed grasses and damp leaf-mould stirred by the passing of many feet, the mingling of cheap perfumes and starched muslin and iced lemonade and sandwiches; in his ears the jumble of laughter and of holiday speech, the squealing of children in a mob around the swing, the protesting squeak of the ropes as they swung high, the snorting of horses tied just outside the enchanted ground. And through the tree-tops he could glimpse the range-land lying asleep in the hot sunlight, unchanged, uncaring, with the wild range-cattle feeding leisurely upon the slopes and lifting heads occasionally to snuff suspiciously the unwonted sounds and smells that drifted up to them on vagrant breezes.

He introduced Dill to four or five men whom he thought might be congenial, left him talking solemnly with a man who at some half-forgotten period had come from Michigan, and wandered aimlessly on through the grove. Fellows there were in plenty whom he knew, but he passed them with a brief word or two. Truth to tell, for the most part they were otherwise occupied and had no time for him.

He loitered over to the swing, saw that the enthusiasts who were making so much noise were all youngsters under fifteen or so and that they hailed his coming with a joy tinged with self-interest. He rose to the bait of one dark-eyed miss who had her hair done in two braids crossed and tied close to her head with red-white-and-blue ribbon, and who smiled alluringly and somewhat toothlessly and remarked that she liked to go 'way, 'way up till it most turned over, and that it didn't scare her a bit. He swung her almost into hysterics and straightway found himself exceedingly popular with other braided-and-tied young misses. Charming Billy never could tell afterward how long or how many he swung 'way, 'way up; he knew that he pushed and pushed until his arms ached and the hair on his forehead became unpleasantly damp under his hat.

"That'll just about have to do yuh, kids," he rebelled suddenly and left them, anxiously patting his hair and generally resettling himself as he went. Once more in a dispirited fashion he threaded the crowd, which had grown somewhat larger, side-stepped a group which called after him, and went on down to the creek.

"I'm about the limit, I guess," he told himself irritably. "Why the dickens didn't I have the sense and nerve to ride over and ask her straight out if she was coming? I coulda drove her over, maybe—if she'd come with me. I coulda took the bay team and top-buggy, and done the thing right. I coulda—hell, there's a heap uh things I coulda done that would uh been a lot more wise than what I did do! Maybe she ain't coming at all, and—"

On the heels of that he saw a spring-wagon, come rattling down the trail across the creek. There were two seats full, and two parasols were bobbing seductively, and one of them was blue. "I'll bet a dollar that's them now," murmured Billy, and once more felt anxiously of his hair where it had gone limp under his hat. "Darned kids—they'd uh kept me there till I looked like I'd been wrassling calves half a day," went with the patting. He turned and went briskly through an empty and untrampled part of the grove to the place where the wagon would be most likely to stop. "I'm sure going to make good to-day or—" And a little farther—"What if it ain't them?"

Speedily he discovered that it was "them," and at the same time he discovered something else which pleased him not at all. Dressed with much care, so that even Billy must reluctantly own him good-looking enough, and riding so close to the blue parasol that his horse barely escaped grazing a wheel, was the Pilgrim. He glared at Billy in unfriendly fashion and would have shut him off completely from approach to the wagon; but a shining milk can, left carelessly by a bush, caught the eye of his horse, and after that the Pilgrim was very busy riding erratically in circles and trying to keep in touch with his saddle.

Billy, grown surprisingly bold, went straight to where the blue parasol was being closed with dainty deliberation. "A little more, and you'd have been late for dinner," he announced, smiling up at her, and held out his eager arms. Diplomacy, perhaps, should have urged him to assist the other lady first—but Billy Boyle was quite too direct to be diplomatic and besides, the other lady was on the opposite side from him.

Miss Bridger may have been surprised, and she may or may not have been pleased; Billy could only guess at her emotions—granting she felt any. But she smiled down at him and permitted the arms to receive her, and she also permitted—though with some hesitation—Billy to lead her straight away from the wagon and its occupants and from the gyrating Pilgrim to the deep delights of the grove.

"Mr. Walland is a good rider, don't you think?" murmured Miss Bridger, gazing over her shoulder.

"He's a bird," said Billy evenly, and was polite enough not to mention what kind of bird. He was wondering what on earth had brought those two together and why, after that night, Miss Bridger should be friendly with the Pilgrim; but of these things he said nothing, though he did find a good deal to say upon pleasanter subjects.

So far as any one knew, Charming Billy Boyle, while he had done many things, had never before walked boldly into a picnic crowd carrying a blue parasol as if it were a rifle and keeping step as best he might over the humps and hollows of the grove with a young woman. Many there were who turned and looked again—and these were the men who knew him best. As for Billy, his whole attitude was one of determination; he was not particularly lover-like—had he wanted to be, he would not have known how. He was resolved to make the most of his opportunities, because they were likely to be few and because he had an instinct that he should know the girl better—he had even dreamed foolishly, once or twice, of some day marrying her. But to clinch all, he had no notion of letting the Pilgrim offend her by his presence.

So he somehow got her wedged between two fat women at one of the tables, and stood behind and passed things impartially and ate ham sandwiches and other indigestibles during the intervals. He had the satisfaction of seeing the Pilgrim come within ten feet of them, hover there scowling for a minute or two and then retreat. "He ain't forgot the licking I gave him," thought Billy vaingloriously, and hid a smile in the delectable softness of a wedge of cake with some kind of creamy filling.

"I made that cake," announced Miss Bridger over her shoulder when she saw what he was eating. "Do you like it as well as—chicken stew?"

Whereupon Billy murmured incoherently and wished the two fat women ten miles away. He had not dared—he would never have dared—refer to that night, or mention chicken stew or prune pies or even dried apricots in her presence; but with her own hand she had brushed aside the veil of constraint that had hung between them.

"I wish I'd thought to bring a prune pie," he told her daringly, in his eagerness half strangling over a crumb of cake.

"Nobody wants prune pie at a picnic," declared one of the fat women sententiously. "You might as well bring fried bacon and done with it."

"Picnics," added the other and fatter woman, "iss for getting somet'ings t' eat yuh don'd haff every day at home." To point the moral she reached for a plate of fluted and iced molasses cakes.

"I love prune pies," asserted Miss Bridger, and laughed at the snorts which came from either side.

Billy felt himself four inches taller just then. "Give me stewed prairie-chicken," he stooped to murmur in her ear—or, to be exact, in the blue bow on her hat.

"Ach, you folks didn'd ought to come to a picnic!" grunted the fatter woman in disgust.

The two who had the secret between them laughed confidentially, and Miss Bridger even turned her head away around so that their eyes could meet and emphasize the joke.

Billy looked down at the big, blue bow and at the soft, blue ruffly stuff on her shoulders—stuff that was just thin enough so that one caught elusive suggestions of the soft, pinky flesh beneath—and wondered vaguely why he had never noticed the beating in his throat before—and what would happen if he reached around and tilted back her chin and—"Thunder! I guess I've sure got 'em, all right!" he brought himself up angrily, and refrained from carrying the subject farther.

It was rumored that the dancing would shortly begin in the schoolhouse up the hill, and Billy realized suddenly with some compunction that he had forgotten all about Dill. "I want to introduce my new boss to yuh, Miss Bridger," he said when they had left the table and she was smoothing down the ruffly blue stuff in an adorably feminine way. "He isn't much