The Wrong Woman (6 page)

She had not been able to see any way of getting the immediate future into her
own hands. Whenever she thought of bringing the story to an end, her mind
confronted her with the question, What next? Something certainly would be next.
With all her talking, she confined herself to the details of that one day's
experience. It seemed capable of indefinite expansion; there would never be any
end unless she made it. Having supported herself in conversational flight so
long, she began to feel that anything was better than suspense. She must do
something. With this in mind she ceased and looked out into the night. The
stars, a vast audience, had all taken their places. She leaned forward and began
removing the dishes from her napkins.

"It is time for me to be going," she said.

He sat up straightas suddenly erect as if he had been caught sleeping in the
saddle.

"Going! Going where?"

"I'm goingon my way."

"Why, town is seventeen miles from here!"

"Oh, I can walk ifif I only knew the way."

"And hear the coyotes? And no light!"

Getting his small heels directly under him, he rose to six feet and looked
directly down on her. It was as if he had ascended to the top of his stature to
get a full view of such a proposition. "Pshaw!" he said. "Stay right here. I 'll
fix you up all right."

Without pausing for further parley, or even looking to her for assent, he
turned and went into the shack. From the inside of this sleeping-place there
came sounds of energetic house-cleaning: pieces of property came tumbling out of
the dooran old saddle-blanket, a yellow slicker, a pair of boots, a tin bucket.
Finally a branding-iron bounded back from the heap and fell rattling on the
door-sill; then there was a sound of wiping and dusting out. Janet sat silent,
her hands in her lap. In a little while he came crawling backwards out of the
door and brushed the accumulated dirt off the door-sill with a light blue shirt.
He went in again, and after a moment appeared with the red blanket, which he
shook so that it made loud reports on the air and then carried to the fire for
inspection, and to find the long and short of it.

"I guess there is n't any head or foot to this, is there?" He smiled dryly as
if this comment pleased him; and without expecting an answer he went into the
shack with it and busied himself again.

"There, now!" he remarked as he came out. "You can fix up the little things
to suit yourself. And if there's anything else, just let me know and I 'll do it
for you."

"I am very much obliged to you," she said, rising.

"Oh, that's all rightno trouble at all. And now, if you will just excuse me,
I 'll go and finish up around the place. If you want to go to bed before I get
through, you will find a candle in the top bunk. I have n't got an extra
lantern."

So saying he took his leave. He put three of the coyote lanterns on their
poles at the corners of the pen, unwrapped the red cloth from the fourth and
used it to light his way over to the shed. He came back, wrapped the red around
it again, and hoisted it to its place at the top of the pole. A watchful ram
baaed
awesomely as it rose.

Janet's shoe had been hurting her unmercifully. She had not been able to
compose herself in any way without in some degree sitting on her foot; and it
had kept up a throbbing pain. As she stood up, it seemed to reach new heights of
aching and burning. She decided that she had better take possession of the shack
at once; so she got the candle and lit it at the fire. The first thing she did
upon entering was to remove her shoes. The relief was a luxury. The door had no
means of locking; the wooden latch lifted from the outside. Having latched it,
she sat down on the edge of the bunk.

Her shack! But after a little this inward exclamation began to take the form
of a question. Suddenly she rose and looked at the top bunk. The blue blanket
was still there. She was very tired. After sitting a while in thought, she put
the corner of the red blanket over her feet and lay down, letting the candle
burn. She was sleepy as well as tired; but she kept her eyes upon the door. It
was really his place, not hers. And that made it all so differentafter all.

Of all our protectors, there is none whose rumorous presence is more potent
than the Spirit of the Threshold. His speech is a whisper, and before his airy
finger even the desperado quails. Thus doors are stronger than they seem, and a
house, if there is no other need of it, is an excellent formality. The accusing
Spirit stands aside only for the owner.

Janet kept her eyes half open, watching that ancient mark between Mine and
Thine.

Janet, opening her eyes upon daylight, sat up drowsily and looked about. How
long she had been sleeping she had not the least idea. Her windowless chamber,
all shot through with sunlight, presented a surprising array of cracks, and the
slanting beams told her that the sun was well up. Her watch had stopped.

In the absence of toilet conveniences she arranged her hair as best she
could; and having adjusted her skirt-band and smoothed out the wrinkles, she put
her hand to the latch. Her attention was caught by certain sunlit inscriptions
on the pine sidingverses signed by the pencil of Pete Harding, Paducah,
Kentucky. Mr. Harding showed that he had a large repertoire of ribald rhyme. And
he had chosen this bright spot whereon to immortalize his name. She opened the
door and went out.

Mr. Brown was nowhere to be seen. The flock, all eyes, turned in a body and
stared at her. Presently she went to look for him. He was not in the storm-shed,
nor anywhere down the slope, nor in the gully. She walked slowly round the shack
and scanned the prairie in all directions. The face of nature was quite innocent
of his presence. The dog, too, was gone.

As she came back to her starting place, the sheep again regarded her in
pale-eyed expectation. A ewe emitted her one doleful note; another gave hers,
sadly. The fire had been burning quite a while; it had made a good bed of coals
on which the kettle was steaming briskly. She put on the coffee and prepared
breakfast; and as he still continued to be absent, she sat down and ate alone.
Then she put up a lunch and stowed it in the pocket of her slicker. Its weight
had diminished considerably from what it was the day before, and as it did not
now have to be done up in the form of a bundle it could be carried in a more
convenient way. She folded the slicker lengthwise and threw it across her
shoulder.

He had pointed out to her the direction in which the road lay at its nearest
point. She walked up and down restlessly. After much indecision and aimless
casting about, she turned suddenly toward her own quarter of the horizon and set
forth on her journey. But having proceeded a fair distance she slackened her
pace and came to a stop; and again she strolled up and down, looking
occasionally in the direction of the knoll. Finally, she returned to it and
resumed her meditations, less impatient.

After a long time, or so it seemed to her, she looked up and saw him coming.
He carried a rope, the long noose of which he was making smaller to fit the coil
on his arm. As he reached the shack he threw down the coil and lifted his hat.

"Good-morning, Miss Janet"he used the Southern form of address"are you all
ready to leave us?"

"Yes; I thought I ought to get as early a start as possible. I made the
coffee right away. I did not know but you might be back in a little while."

"Oh, I had breakfast long ago. I went out to see if I could get your horse
for you. But I did n't catch sight of him. I hunted for him longer than I
realized. It is quite a distance for you to walk, and I thought we might fix up
some way for you to ride."

"That was very kind of you, Mr. Brown. I shall be quite able to walk. It was
only necessary for me to be shown the direction."

"The road is over that way," he said, indicating its position with his arm.
"Keep in that direction a while and you will strike a wagon-trail. Then follow
that and it will bring you right out on the road. After you get to the road, you
will find a house about a mile to the right. That is, if you intend to go that
way."

"I am from Merrill, Mr. Brown. I am on my way to the county-seat. For the
past week I have been teaching school a few miles from Merrill. It is the little
white schoolhouse near Crystal Spring."

"A teacher!" he exclaimed.

"I can hardly claim to be a teacher," she answered. "The girl who has that
school was called home by the death of her brother. I have only been
substituting. I am on my way to Belleview to take a teacher's examination."

As Janet offered this conscientious information, Steve Brown looked in vain
for any allusion to her secretiveness of the night before. In her bearing there
was not the least vestige of arts and airs, nor any little intimation of mutual
understanding; she simply looked up with wide-open eyes and told it to him. This
honesty, quite as if she owed it, gave Steve a new experience in life; and he
gazed into eyes that charmed him by the clarity of their look.

"You are going to the court-house to get a certificate!" he remarked.

"I do not belong here in Texas," she said, continuing her story. "I am from
Ohio. I am stopping with the Dwights, down at Merrill. But for the past week I
have been stopping at a farmer's in order to be nearer the school."

"Will you be going back to Ohio, possibly?"

"It might be that I shall go back. But it all depends. I may get a school if
I pass."

She stepped forward to take leave of him. But just at that moment he thrust
both hands deep into his pockets and bent his gaze intently upon the ground, his
brows knit together. She waited.

"Miss Janet," he said, looking up suddenly, "I would be interested in knowing
whether you pass."

"Well," she said, "I suppose I might easily let you know."

"My address is Thornton, Box 20. I get my mail every dayexcepting the last
few days, of course;but I will get it again promptly as soon as I am out of
this fix I am in. I don't suppose"

"Why, are you in some sort of trouble?" she asked, interrupting him.

"Not very serious. I need a herder. I really ought to have two or three for a
while now. I don't suppose, Miss Janet, there is any
doubt
that you will
pass?"

"I think," she said, a playful light now touching her features, "it is quite
possible for me not to pass. I suppose I could have passed easily enough four
years ago. But after I got out of the Academy, I went to live with my aunt; and
women, you know, don't keep up their interest in algebra and things. This winter
when Aunt Mary died, in Toledo, I came down here."

She stepped forward again and extended her hand.

He had been seeing more and more of beauty as he gazed into her eyes. The
Truth was in them deeper than words. They were large gray eyes, gentle and quiet
and soft as dawn; and they had that fulfilling influence which spread peace upon
the waters of his soul.

"Good-bye, Mr. Brown. I am very much obliged to you."

"Wellgood-bye, Miss Janet. Be sure and let me know."

She turned at once and proceeded on her way.

With her attention straight ahead, but without any landmark to go by, she
went resolutely forward, and when finally she turned to look back she saw him
standing just as she had left him. He did not seem to have moved. Again she put
forward, widening the distance in imagination; and the next time she turned to
view her work, the shack was sinking behind a billow of land. She stood now and
gazed back at the flat, flowered expanse; then she turned her back upon it for
the last time. One does not look long upon the gay curtain after it has closed
upon the scene.

"I would be interested in knowing whether you pass." The morning had shed new
light upon her situation; and this shed a light upon morning. And now that she
could view her adventure in the light of its outcome, she went back to the
moment of their meeting, and did so, recalling what next he said or did. She
lived it all over again; this time more understandingly. Meantime the prairie
accommodated her with its silence. It was the same sameness as on the day
before; but not to her.

With her eyes fixed upon infinity she went buoyantly forward; for this time
she was not lost. The sun, already high when she arose, was blazing somewhere in
the regions above, and the strong light, flaring in her face and shining on the
broad reaches ahead, was very trying to her eyes. After peering against it
ineffectually for a while she took off the three-cornered hat and proceeded to
undo her work of the day before, removing the pins and letting down the rim.

The wearing of a man's hat was one of those things which she herself would
"never have thought of." But just at a time when she had been having experience
with the tribulations of a big leghorn on horseback, she saw a woman with a
man's hat turned up at the side; and the next day she had procured one like it,
which she turned up in the same manner with a breastpin. And the leghorn,
unsuited to trials of wind and weather, was left at home.

The womanRaymond her name waswas passing the school on horseback, and she
stopped in to get a drink. Janet noticed the hat more particularly because of
its contrast with the woman's hair, which was light like her own; although, as
she observed to herself, of quite a different shade. As it was almost noon she
stopped for lunch, and Janet found her very good company if not quite to her
fancy. She smelled horribly of perfume.

With the brim shading her eyes, Janet could now look forward with a degree of
comfort. Presently she was brought to a stop by a small stream. It was a mere
brookprobably the water from a single spring such as the one which issued from
the knoll; but at this point it spread out and took the form of a wide patch of
marsh grass. Farther down it gathered its laggard waters together and became a
brook again. Janet, keeping clear of the bog, went down here intending to jump
across. Finding it too wide for her, she followed it along, its varying width
promising to let her pass. She skirted round other patches of marsh grass and
black boggy places only to find it too wide again. At last she removed her shoes
and stockings and waded it.