The Wrong Woman (19 page)

Besides hearing about him in this way, she had once had the honor of meeting
Mr. Hicks himselfthis time also in connection with his leaning toward children.
He stopped at her schoolyard pump for a drink, and having taken it he put his
head in at the door and smileda thing he never did upon compulsion. Being
invited to enter, he did so, taking the visitors' chair near the rostrum; and
when she asked him, according to the time-honored custom, whether he would not
like to address a few words to the school, he did that also, standing his whip
up in the corner and giving some very engaging advice upon the subject of
education, part of which, being of a hidden nature, was evidently intended for
the entertainment of the teacher. In this way he had been her one and only
visitor; and then, having had his jocose presence so repeatedly called to mind
at the Wangers', she had become disabled to think of him as anything but the
ministering angel of pop-corn.

Now her sole concern was to put in her appearance in as graceful a manner as
possible. Whatever sort of man he might really be, she knew he was a person of
quick intelligence who would certainly see any indications of her taking fright
at him. She wished to emerge at once, smoothly and naturally. But when she put
her hands to the tight roofing-board she discovered that there was going to be
difficulty in the operation.

At first she tried to lift it by taking hold near the middle. As the board
had been bent down by her pressing it into place, her lifting only made it grip
tighter. It resisted her best efforts. Once and again she tried, but without
success; it was beyond her strength. She could not get out!

"Oh, dear," breathed Janet in dismay.

She tried to force it out sideways. But this was even less practicable if
anything. Perceiving finally the nature of her mechanical difficulty, she turned
with new hopes to the end that was against the door. As she expected, this
proved to be the proper place to take hold; but now the board moved only to make
a noise that was amazing. The method of its surprising operation was like the
stuttering of a stick when it is rubbed endwise on a box; but as this was a
board and as it operated against a rumbly shack, it reverberated like a giant
drum; it was an excellent apparatus for making artificial thunder. At her very
first effort it gave a little jump and made a noise sufficient to put all the
silence on the prairie to flight. She let go at once. More deliberate efforts
brought forth results still more tremendous; it was something between a volley
and a groan.

Now that she had done what she had, she felt that, embarrassing as it was,
she might as well get through with it and show herself promptly. She might as
well make the noise all at once as to make it piecemeal.

It was like operating a gatling gun. The board, being sprung down, had a
considerable distance to move before it would come free, but Janet, having put
her hands to it, stuck to it without flinching. It set the whole shack a-going;
those boards made such a noise as they had not made since the day they went
through the sawmill in long-drawn agony. But she got it free. Being through with
it, she set the board softly in the corner; then she calmed herself and stepped
forth.

So far as Janet could see, he considered it the most natural meeting in the
world. Jonas Hicks, fortunately, was not easily confused. She lost no time,
however, in beginning her explanation.

"You see, Mr. Hicks, I was going on horse-back from Wanger's farm up to the
county-seat to take the examination, and just as I was passing here"

Poor Janet; she had to tell that whole story over again. She told it with
particular attention to plausible detail; she wanted him to have a perfect
understanding of just how it was.

"Oh, yesjust soI see," he would say promptly. "You just got lost on the
prairie. And you 've been stopping a few days with Steve."

As if it were nothing! Such ready belief and general inconsequentiality
bothered Janet. She did not know, of course, that Jonas was hardly the sort of a
Texan to feel comfortable in having a woman stand before him in the defensive,
stating her case. Upon her first appearance he had concealed his surprise and
rallied nobly to the courtesies of the occasion; it was sufficient that he was
in the presence of the fair. Having heard enough to get the facts of her
adventure and grasp her present situation, it was hardly in him to play the part
of the unconvinced and give her a hearing through the corroborating detailsit
was too inquisitorial for him. Suspicion? He would have felt vitally impeached.
He could not stand judicially; he would have knocked down the man that did it.
For this reason, while he manifested sufficient interest, he escaped from his
position by finding casual employment; he examined the skillet, looked into the
provision box, and presently set about getting his supper, which, he insisted,
he was perfectly capable of doing. Janet persevered with her story. He kept up
his interest, making a mere anecdote out of her tale and mitigating the
atmosphere with the sound of pots and kettles.

"Well, now; if that don't beat all Naturally Just what would happen"
Such was the tenor of his remarks. As if nothing more need really be said.

To Janet, his too ready acceptance was peculiarly unsatisfying.

"And then," he remarked, just as she was coming to it, "I bet you walked
right round in a circle."

She wished most heartily that she could have replied, "Oh, no," and explained
that that was n't the way of it at all. She felt that her whole story must seem
to him an easily concocted, and a merely necessary fiction. But as that was
exactly what did happen she had to accept this part of it from him and do her
best with other details. She wished he would pay more strict attention.

"And so," she finally ended, "as Mr. Brown went away just a while ago to get
my horse, I was rather frightened when I heard somebody coming. I suppose I
surprised you too."

"Well, yes; I must say you did, sort of. But of course when I heard that
noise I knew something was bound to come of it. But I managed to save my
appetite."

"There is n't very much left to eat," she said seriously.

"Oh, I 've got a plenty to eat right there in my wagon. Pie is good enough
for anybody. I 've got a real Northern pie."

He made a trip to the wagon and came back with the pie. He placed the pie in
the middle of the repast and arranged knife and fork on their respective sides
of it. Having it properly disposed and everything in readiness he invited her to
join him. Janet, because she had had supper, was inclined to refuse. But there
is something cordial about a pie's countenance, especially if it be a pie of
one's own country, and still more especially if one has been living regularly on
frijole
beans. She cut her regrets short and accepted. It seemed to her,
though, that all human companionship was being rather strictly confined to the
process of eating.

Plainly he considered her the guest; he took her cup and poured the coffee
himself.

"It is a beautiful evening, is n't it," remarked Janet.

"I was just going to say it was a nice night. Quite a flock of stars out."

"A flock, did you say?"

"Well, sort of. I don't usually speak of them that way. Only on special
occasions. Hasn't Steve got any sweetenin'?"

He had just rattled the spoon in the sugar bowl and found it empty. Janet was
sorry to say that she had poured out the last grain of it that very evening. She
explained to him how the lamb had stepped into a bowlful and thus contributed to
the present shortage.

"Ain't Steve got a jug of molasses? He ought to have some sweetenin'
somewheres."

"Why, I did see a jug of something under the bed. I don't know what is in it,
though."

He went to investigate, getting down on the door-sill and entering the shack
on his knees. Presently he reappeared, smelling the cork.

"It ain't anything more or less than molasses," he reported.

As he sat down, the off wheeler of the team, which had been drawn up a short
distance from the fire, dropped on his paunch with a great rattling of chain and
began placidly chewing his cud. Following his example, an ox in the middle of
the string got down on his knees and began chewing. At the same moment the lamb,
which had fallen out of bed and found his way out of the shack, announced
himself with a bleat and went toddling off toward the darkness. Janet jumped up
at once and went after him. Having captured him, she brought him back and stowed
him comfortably in her lap, drawing the edge of her skirt up over him.

"I suppose you've noticed, Miss Janet," he remarked, as he again turned his
attention to the jug, "that the animals out in these parts don't know very much.
They make people lots of trouble."

"Oh, I don't mind the trouble at all. You see, I saved this one's life
myself; that's why I am so interested in caring for him. He 's an orphan."

"So I see. There's liable to be plenty of them. Are you partial to orphans?"

"I could hardly help caring for him. Of course one naturally is."

Jonas again turned his attention to the jug, removing the cork and placing it
upside down on the ground. Janet held a saucer to receive her share. The
molasses was slow about making its appearance.

"This Golden Drip is a little late about coming. It's as stubborn as old Doc
Wharton used to be."

"Was he stubborn?" Janet asked, keeping the saucer level.

"He wasn't much of anything else. He was so stubborn that when he drowned in
the Comanche he floated upstream."

"Really?"

"Wasn't any doubt about it. Some people said that his foot must 'a' been
caught in the stirrup and the horse dragged him up that far from where he went
in. But I always claimed it was just natural."

As the molasses had not yet responded, he up-ended the jug still farther and
waited for results.

"I suppose," he queried, "that Steve has told you about things down home. And
all about his mother?"

"He told me that he lost his mother last winter."

"Ye-e-e-es," he said reflectively, drawing the word out as a thick sluggish
stream began to pile up in the saucer.

When she exclaimed "enough," he lowered the bottom of the jug and kept the
mouth over the saucer as the molasses continued to run from it.

"You can't stop that stuff by saying
Wo
," he remarked, whirling the
jug in his hands to stop the flow from the lip. "It is n't as thick, though, as
some that I 've seen."

"No!"

"I don't suppose Steve told you about the molasses I had with the 'J. K.'
outfit one winter."

"No, he did n't tell me anything about it."

"Well, that molasses was so thick that when you got too much on a flapjack,
all you had to do was to give the jug a few turns and wind the molasses right up
into it again. You could wrap it around the neck of the jug till next time if
you wanted to. If you 'll just excuse me a moment, Miss Janet, I 'll put this
jug back in home, sweet home, again."

When he had put it where he found it, under the foot of the bed, he returned
to his place and passed the flapjacks. He insisted that she try one at least.

"So he told you about his mother. And maybe about his house?"

"He did n't tell me much about his housejust about his mother. He showed me
the clipping about her. He did n't tell me anything in particular about her."

"Well, that's all the same. Just the same as if he told you."

Janet sampled the pancake and complimented him upon his cooking, in return
for which he told her his recipe, which could be varied with water "according to
taste." There came a pause in which Mr. Hicks seemed to be thinking.

"Can you play the piano?" he asked.

"I can play some," answered Janet. "But I am a little out of practice
lately."

"You 'd soon enough pick that up, as long as you know how."

The first lot of pancakes having dwindled, he got up and put on the remainder
of the batter.

As Janet declined his offer of more, he insisted that she start on the pie.

"Are you fond of piano music?" she inquired as he sat down.

"Most any kind suits me. I suppose you can play most any kind of a tune."

"Yes, mostly. As I say, I am a little out of practice lately. But my music
always comes back to me suddenly after a day or two."

"Steve has a piano," he said.

There came a hiatus in the conversation. Janet applied herself to the pie.

"Mr. Hicks," she said suddenly, "I should think Mr. Brown would hardly choose
to come out here and do a sheep-herder's work. Especially as I understand he
does n't really have to."

"Well, it would seem that way, looking at it from this end. It's a little
lonesome out here when there is n't anybody around. But down home there is n't
anybody around his house, and that's lonesomer still. There a person would
notice it; but you don't expect anything else of a shack. I don't suppose he has
been on the inside of that house more than once in two or three weeks."

"And yet he lives there?"

"Oh, yes. Gets along good, too, as far as that goes. He washes the dishes on
the porch and hangs the pan up outside. I guess he borrowed some of his style
from me. Steve would make a pretty good Ranger yet; he hasn't got spoiled. But
his ma told him he must n't ever join them."

"Why," exclaimed Janet, "does
he
think of joining the Rangers?"

"Oh, nonot now. I don't suppose he ever thinks of such an idea. He 's got
too many other things to tend to, anyway."

"Then, why should she tell him that?"

"That was just an idea she had. When he was a young fellow about eighteen or
nineteen he had an idea of being a Ranger, and he gave her considerable worry, I
guess. Steve was like his father was, and she was always watching over him to
see that he did n't get into danger. Steve's ma was hardly more than up to his
elbow. She looked like a little girl alongside of him. She had real white hair."