Devil's Ford by Bret Harte (best free ebook reader for android .TXT) 📖
- Author: Bret Harte
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“You here, Mr. Kearney? How strange!—but how glad I am to meet you again!”
She tried to smile; her voice trembled, and her little hand shook as she extended it to him.
He raised his dark eyes quickly, and impulsively urged his horse to her side. But, as if suddenly awakening to the reality of the situation, he glanced at her hurriedly, down at his barbaric finery, and threw a searching look towards her escort.
In an instant Christie saw the infelicity of her position, and its dangers. The words of Whiskey Dick, “He wouldn’t stand that,” flashed across her mind. There was no time to lose. The banker had already gained control over his horse, and was approaching them, all unconscious of the fixed stare with which George was regarding him. Christie hastily seized the hand which he had allowed to fall at his side, and said quickly:—
“Will you ride with me a little way, Mr. Kearney?”
He turned the same searching look upon her. She met it clearly and steadily; he even thought reproachfully.
“Do!” she said hurriedly. “I ask it as a favor. I want to speak to you. Jessie and I are here alone. Father is away. YOU are one of our oldest friends.”
He hesitated. She turned to the astonished young banker, who rode up.
“I have just met an old friend. Will you please ride back as quickly as you can, and tell Jessie that Mr. Kearney is here, and ask her to join us?”
She watched her dazed escort, still speechless from the spectacle of the fastidious Miss Carr tete-a-tete with a common Mexican vaquero, gallop off in the direction of the canyon, and then turned to George.
“Now take me home, the shortest way, as quick as you can.”
“Home?” echoed George.
“I mean to Mr. Prince’s house. Quick! before they can come up to us.”
He mechanically put spurs to his horse; she followed. They presently struck into a trail that soon diverged again into a disused logging track through the woods.
“This is the short cut to Prince’s, by two miles,” he said, as they entered the woods.
As they were still galloping, without exchanging a word, Christie began to slacken her speed; George did the same. They were safe from intrusion at the present, even if the others had found the short cut. Christie, bold and self-reliant a moment ago, suddenly found herself growing weak and embarrassed. What had she done?
She checked her horse suddenly.
“Perhaps we had better wait for them,” she said timidly.
George had not raised his eyes to hers.
“You said you wanted to hurry home,” he replied gently, passing his hand along his mustang’s velvety neck, “and—and you had something to say to me.”
“Certainly,” she answered, with a faint laugh. “I’m so astonished at meeting you here. I’m quite bewildered. You are living here; you have forsaken us to buy a ranche?” she continued, looking at him attentively.
His brow colored slightly.
“No, I’m living here, but I have bought no ranche. I’m only a hired man on somebody else’s ranche, to look after the cattle.”
He saw her beautiful eyes fill with astonishment and—something else. His brow cleared; he went on, with his old boyish laugh:
“No, Miss Carr. The fact is, I’m dead broke. I’ve lost everything since I saw you last. But as I know how to ride, and I’m not afraid of work, I manage to keep along.”
“You have lost money in—in the mines?” said Christie suddenly.
“No”—he replied quickly, evading her eyes. “My brother has my interest, you know. I’ve been foolish on my own account solely. You know I’m rather inclined to that sort of thing. But as long as my folly don’t affect others, I can stand it.”
“But it may affect others—and THEY may not think of it as folly—” She stopped short, confused by his brightening color and eyes. “I mean— Oh, Mr. Kearney, I want you to be frank with me. I know nothing of business, but I know there has been trouble about the mine at Devil’s Ford. Tell me honestly, has my father anything to do with it? If I thought that through any imprudence of his, you had suffered—if I believed that you could trace any misfortune of yours to him—to US—I should never forgive myself”—she stopped and flashed a single look at him—“I should never forgive YOU for abandoning us.”
The look of pain which had at first shown itself in his face, which never concealed anything, passed, and a quick smile followed her feminine anticlimax.
“Miss Carr,” he said, with boyish eagerness, “if any man suggested to me that your father wasn’t the brightest and best of his kind— too wise and clever for the fools about him to understand—I’d—I’d shoot him.”
Confused by his ready and gracious disclaimer of what she had NOT intended to say, there was nothing left for her but to rush upon what she really intended to say, with what she felt was shameful precipitation.
“One word more, Mr. Kearney,” she began, looking down, but feeling the color come to her face as she spoke. “When you spoke to me the day you left, you must have thought me hard and cruel. When I tell you that I thought you were alluding to Jessie and some feeling you had for her—”
“For Jessie!” echoed George.
“You will understand that—that—”
“That what?” said George, drawing nearer to her.
“That I was only speaking as she might have spoken had you talked to her of me,” added Christie hurriedly, slightly backing her horse away from him.
But this was not so easy, as George was the better rider, and by an imperceptible movement of his wrist and foot had glued his horse to her side. “He will go now,” she had thought, but he didn’t.
“We must ride on,” she suggested faintly.
“No,” he said with a sudden dropping of his boyish manner and a slight lifting of his head. “We must ride together no further, Miss Carr. I must go back to the work I am hired to do, and you must go on with your party, whom I hear coming. But when we part here you must bid me good-by—not as Jessie’s sister—but as Christie—the one—the only woman that I love, or that I ever have loved.”
He held out his hand. With the recollection of their previous parting, she tremblingly advanced her own. He took it, but did not raise it to his lips. And it was she who found herself half confusedly retaining his hand in hers, until she dropped it with a blush.
“Then is this the reason you give for deserting us as you have deserted Devil’s Ford?” she said coldly.
He lifted his eyes to her with a strange smile, and said, “Yes,” wheeled his horse, and disappeared in the forest.
He had left her thus abruptly once before, kissed, blushing, and indignant. He was leaving her now, unkissed, but white and indignant. Yet she was so self-possessed when the party joined her, that the singular rencontre and her explanation of the stranger’s sudden departure excited no further comment. Only Jessie managed to whisper in her ear,—
“I hope you are satisfied now that it wasn’t me he meant?”
“Not at all,” said Christie coldly.
A few days after the girls had returned to San Francisco, they received a letter from their father. His business, he wrote, would detain him in Sacramento some days longer. There was no reason why they should return to Devil’s Ford in the heat of the summer; their host had written to beg him to allow them a more extended visit, and, if they were enjoying themselves, he thought it would be well not to disoblige an old friend. He had heard they had a pleasant visit to Mr. Prince’s place, and that a certain young banker had been very attentive to Christie.
“Do you know what all this means, dear?” asked Jessie, who had been watching her sister with an unusually grave face.
Christie whose thoughts had wandered from the letter, replied carelessly,—
“I suppose it means that we are to wait here until father sends for us.”
“It means a good deal more. It means that papa has had another reverse; it means that the assay has turned out badly for the mine— that the further they go from the flat the worse it gets—that all the gold they will probably ever see at Devil’s Ford is what they have already found or will find on the flat; it means that all Devil’s Ford is only a ‘pocket,’ and not a ‘lead.’” She stopped, with unexpected tears in her eyes.
“Who told you this?” asked Christie breathlessly.
“Fairfax—Mr. Munroe,” stammered her sister, “writes to me as if we already knew it—tells me not to be alarmed, that it isn’t so bad— and all that.”
“How long has this happened, Jessie?” said Christie, taking her hand, with a white but calm face.
“Nearly ever since we’ve been here, I suppose. It must be so, for he says poor papa is still hopeful of doing something yet.”
“And Mr. Munroe writes to you?” said Christie abstractedly.
“Of course,” said Jessie quickly. “He feels interested in—us.”
“Nobody tells ME anything,” said Christie.
“Didn’t—”
“No,” said Christie bitterly.
“What on earth DID you talk about? But people don’t confide in you because they’re afraid of you. You’re so—”
“So what?”
“So gently patronizing, and so ‘I-don’t-suppose-you-can-help-it,- poor-thing,’ in your general style,” said Jessie, kissing her. “There! I only wish I was like you. What do you say if we write to father that we’ll go back to Devil’s Ford? Mr. Munroe thinks we will be of service there just now. If the men are dissatisfied, and think we’re spending money—”
“I’m afraid Mr. Munroe is hardly a disinterested adviser. At least, I don’t think it would look quite decent for you to fly back without your father, at his suggestion,” said Christie coldly. “He is not the only partner. We are spending no money. Besides, we have engaged to go to Mr. Prince’s again next week.”
“As you like, dear,” said Jessie, turning away to hide a faint smile.
Nevertheless, when they returned from their visit to Mr. Prince’s, and one or two uneventful rides, Christie looked grave. It was only a few days later that Jessie burst upon her one morning.
“You were saying that nobody ever tells you anything. Well, here’s your chance. Whiskey Dick is below.”
“Whiskey Dick?” repeated Christie. “What does he want?”
“YOU, love. Who else? You know he always scorns me as not being high-toned and elegant enough for his social confidences. He asked for you only.”
With an uneasy sense of some impending revelation, Christie descended to the drawing-room. As she opened the door, a strong flavor of that toilet soap and eau de Cologne with which Whiskey Dick was in the habit of gracefully effacing the traces of dissipation made known his presence. In spite of a new suit of clothes, whose pristine folds refused to adapt themselves entirely to the contour of his figure, he was somewhat subdued by the unexpected elegance of the drawing-room of Christie’s host. But a glance at Christie’s sad but gracious face quickly reassured him. Taking from his hat a three-cornered parcel, he unfolded a handsome saffrona rose, which he gravely presented to her. Having thus reestablished his position, he sank elegantly into a tete-a-tete ottoman. Finding the position inconvenient to face Christie, who had seated herself on a chair, he transferred himself to the other side of the ottoman, and addressed her over its back as from a pulpit.
“Is this really a fortunate accident, Mr. Hall, or did you try to find us?” said Christie pleasantly.
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