第11章

Out of compliment to Miss Nellie Wynn,Yuba Bill,on reaching Indian Spring,had made a slight detour to enable him to ostentatiously set down his fair passenger before the door of the Burnhams.When it had closed on the admiring eyes of the passengers and the coach had rattled away,Miss Nellie,without any undue haste or apparent change in her usual quiet demeanor,managed,however,to dispatch her business promptly,and,leaving an impression that she would call again before her return to Excelsior,parted from her friends and slipped away through a side street to the General Furnishing Store of Indian Spring.In passing this emporium,Miss Nellie's quick eye had discovered a cheap brown linen duster hanging in its window.To purchase it,and put it over her delicate cambric dress,albeit with a shivering sense that she looked like a badly folded brown-paper parcel,did not take long.As she left the shop it was with mixed emotions of chagrin and security that she noticed that her passage through the settlement no longer turned the heads of its male inhabitants.She reached the outskirts of Indian Spring and the high-road at about the time Mr.Brace had begun his fruitless patrol of the main street.Far in the distance a faint olive-green table mountain seemed to rise abruptly from the plain.It was the Carquinez Woods.Gathering her spotless skirts beneath her extemporized brown domino,she set out briskly towards them.

But her progress was scarcely free or exhilarating.She was not accustomed to walking in a country where "buggy-riding"was considered the only genteel young-lady-like mode of progression,and its regular provision the expected courtesy of mankind.

Always fastidiously booted,her low-quartered shoes were charming to the eye,but hardly adapted to the dust and inequalities of the highroad.It was true that she had thought of buying a coarser pair at Indian Spring,but once face to face with their uncompromising ugliness,she had faltered and fled.The sun was unmistakably hot,but her parasol was too well known and offered too violent a contrast to the duster for practical use.Once she stopped with an exclamation of annoyance,hesitated,and looked back.In half an hour she had twice lost her shoe and her temper;a pink flush took possession of her cheeks,and her eyes were bright with suppressed rage.Dust began to form grimy circles around their orbits;with cat-like shivers she even felt it pervade the roots of her blond hair.Gradually her breath grew more rapid and hysterical,her smarting eyes became humid,and at last,encountering two observant horsemen in the road,she turned and fled,until,reaching the wood,she began to cry.

Nevertheless she waited for the two horsemen to pass,to satisfy herself that she was not followed;then pushed on vaguely,until she reached a fallen tree,where,with a gesture of disgust,she tore off her hapless duster and flung it on the ground.She then sat down sobbing,but after a moment dried her eyes hurriedly and started to her feet.A few paces distant,erect,noiseless,with outstretched hand,the young solitary of the Carquinez Woods advanced towards her.His hand had almost touched hers,when he stopped.

"What has happened?"he asked gravely.

"Nothing,"she said,turning half away,and searching the ground with her eyes,as if she had lost something."Only I must be going back now.""You shall go back at once,if you wish it,"he said,flushing slightly."But you have been crying;why?"Frank as Miss Nellie wished to be,she could not bring herself to say that her feet hurt her,and the dust and heat were ruining her complexion.It was therefore with a half-confident belief that her troubles were really of a moral quality that she answered,"Nothing--nothing,but--but--it's wrong to come here.""But you did not think it was wrong when you agreed to come,at our last meeting,"said the young man,with that persistent logic which exasperates the inconsequent feminine mind."It cannot be any more wrong to-day.""But it was not so far off,"murmured the young girl,without looking up.

"Oh,the distance makes it more improper,then,"he said abstractedly;but after a moment's contemplation of her half-averted face,he asked gravely,"Has anyone talked to you about me?"Ten minutes before,Nellie had been burning to unburthen herself of her father's warning,but now she felt she would not."I wish you wouldn't call yourself Low,"she said at last.

"But it's my name,"he replied quietly.

"Nonsense!It's only a stupid translation of a stupid nickname.

They might as well call you 'Water'at once.""But you said you liked it."

"Well,so I do.But don't you see--I--oh dear!you don't understand."Low did not reply,but turned his head with resigned gravity towards the deeper woods.Grasping the barrel of his rifle with his left hand,he threw his right arm across his left wrist and leaned slightly upon it with the habitual ease of a Western hunter--doubly picturesque in his own lithe,youthful symmetry.

Miss Nellie looked at him from under her eyelids,and then half defiantly raised her head and her dark lashes.Gradually an almost magical change came over her features;her eyes grew larger and more and more yearning,until they seemed to draw and absorb in their liquid depths the figure of the young man before her;her cold face broke into an ecstasy of light and color;her humid lips parted in a bright,welcoming smile,until,with an irresistible impulse,she arose,and throwing back her head stretched towards him two hands full of vague and trembling passion.

In another moment he had seized them,kissed them,and,as he drew her closer to his embrace,felt them tighten around his neck."But what name do you wish to call me?"he asked,looking down into her eyes.