"Call him off,I tell ye!"cried the girl,angrily,springing to the ground."Git out o'the way.Don't you see he's a-comm'at ye?"The dog leaped nimbly into the bushes,and the maddened bull was carried on by his own Impetus toward Clayton,who,with a quick spring,landed in safety in a gully below the road.When he picked himself up from the uneven ground where he had fallen,the beast had disappeared around the bowlder.The bag had fallen,and had broken open,and some of the meal was spilled on the ground.The girl,flushed and angry,stood above it.
"Look thar,now,"she said."See whut you've done.Why'n't ye call that dog off?""I couldn't,"said Clayton,politely."He wouldn't come.I'm sorry,very sorry.""Can't ye manage yer own dog?"she asked,half contemptuously.
"Not always."
"Then ye oughter leave him to home,and not let him go round a-skeerin'folks'beastes."With a little gesture of indignation she stooped and began scooping up the meal in her hand.
"Let me help you,"said Clayton.The girl looked up in surprise.
You go 'way,"she said.
But Clayton stayed,watching her helplessly.He wanted to carry the bag for her,but she swung it to her shoulder,and moved away.
He followed her around the bowlder,where his late enemy was browsing peacefully on sassafras-bushes.
"You stay thar now,"said the girl,"and keep that dog back.""Won't you let me help you get up?"he asked.
Without answering,the girl sprang lightly to the bull's back,Once only she looked around at him.He took off his hat,and a puzzled expression came into her face.Then,without a word or a nod,she rode away.Clayton watched the odd pair till the bushes hid them.
"Europa,by Jove!"he exclaimed,and he sat down in bewilderment.
She was so very odd a creature,so different from the timid mountain women who shrank with averted faces almost into the bushes when he met them.She had looked him straight in the face with steady eyes,and had spoken as though her sway over mountain and road were undisputed and he had been a wretched trespasser.She paid no attention to his apologies,and she scorned his offers of assistance.She seemed no more angered by the loss of the meal than by his incapacity to manage his dog,which seemed to typify to her his general worthlessness.He had been bruised by his fall,and she did not even ask if he were hurt.
Indeed,she seemed not to care,and she had ridden away from him as though he were worth no more consideration than the stone under him.
He was amused,and a trifle irritated.How could there be such a curious growth in the mountains?he questioned,as he rose and continued the descent.There was an unusual grace about her,in spite of her masculine air.Her features were regular,the nose straight and delicate,the mouth resolute,the brow broad,and the eyes intensely blue,perhaps tender,when not flashing with anger,and altogether without the listless expression he had marked in other mountain women,and which,he had noticed,deadened into pathetic hopelessness later in life.Her figure was erect,and her manner,despite its roughness,savored of something high-born.
Where could she have got that bearing?She belonged to a race whose descent,he had heard,was unmixed English;upon whose lips lingered words and forms of speech that Shakespeare had heard and used.Who could tell what blood ran in her veins?
Musing,he had come almost unconsciously to a spur of the mountains under which lay the little mining-camp.It was six o'clock,and the miners,grim and black,each with a pail in hand and a little oil-lamp in his cap,were going down from work.Ashower had passed over the mountains above him,and the last sunlight,coming through a gap in the west,struck the rising mist and turned it to gold.On a rock which thrust from the mountain its gray,sombre face,half embraced by a white arm of the mist,Clayton saw the figure of a woman.He waved his hat,but the figure stood motionless,and he turned into the woods toward the camp.
It was the girl;and when Clayton disappeared she too turned and went on her way.She had stopped there because she knew he must pass a point where she might see him again.She was little less indifferent than she seemed;her motive was little more than curiosity.She had never seen that manner of man before.
Evidently he was a "furriner "from the "settlemints."No man in the mountains had a smooth,round face like his,or wore such a queer hat,such a soft,white shirt,and no galluses,"or carried such a shiny,weak-looking stick,or owned a dog that he couldn't make mind him.She was not wholly contemptuous,however.She had felt vaguely the meaning of his politeness and deference.She was puzzled and pleased,she scarcely knew why.
"He was mighty accomodatin',"she thought.But whut,"she asked herself as she rode slowly homeward-"whut did he take off his hat fer.
