V
His impulse was to run and take her in his arms, but he knew now that he must be careful. You can’t be impetuous, it seems, with women, at least not with that one. He had tried that once, and learned his lesson. He slipped behind the barn, and stood wondering what to do. After a few seconds he peered around cautiously. There she sat, crying shakenly. He tried vainly to imagine a reason. Perhaps her uncle was complaining of having the responsibility of her and the children alone there. Perhaps she was actually in want, perhaps in want of food. Perhaps the other girls had been talking about going away to school, and she was heartbroken because her mother’s plans for her education were not to be carried out. Maybe she had just seen a snake. He remembered his mother saying that after Jeannie McNair had had to kill a snake, she used to sit down and cry. Some women did things like that, he knew, not his mother and sisters, but some. He peered around at her again, most uncomfortable. Her sobbing was terrible to see. He felt like a spy. He refrained from going to her, because something warned him that if she had not welcomed him before, she was less likely to do so now, when her face would be distorted with tears. But he remembered that prayer look with hot longing.
He stood hesitating. Presently he looked again. She was just lifting her head to wipe her nose, and she saw him. She gave a little cry and, jumping up, ran into the cabin, and slammed the door behind her. As if he were a robber! Then she came out, even more insultingly, more afraid, and caught up the sleeping baby, and carried her away to safety. She needn’t barricade the house against him, need she? Wully thought, angrily. Then he remembered her face in church. He would sit down and wait a while. He would wait till Dod came home, and see what he could learn from the lad. But when he looked again towards the house, there she was, sitting inside the door, and in her hands she had her father’s old gun!
How preposterous! How outrageous! If she didn’t want him as a lover, she might at least remember he was Wully McLaughlin, a decent, harmless man! Waiting for him with a gun! Could it be that the girl was losing her mind? Her mother had never recovered from that shock of hers. Could Chirstie have been unbalanced by her mother’s death! He wouldn’t think it! That would be disloyalty. But somebody, his mother, their aunt, somebody ought to go to her by force, and get her away from this lonely place. Who could tell what a girl might do with a gun! One thing he knew, he wasn’t going away and leave her there alone, so madly armed, and weeping.
After a while Dod came home, a red-faced, sweating little lad, and sat down contentedly with the soldier in the shade of the barn. He was, of course, barefooted and clothed in jeans, and his fitful haircut did no great honor to Chirstie’s skill as a barber. Surely he must know what she was crying about. And he would know that Wully would not be one to make light of her grief.
“What’s happened, Dod?” he began at once. “When I came up, Chirstie was sitting on the doorstep crying. What’s the matter? Don’t you mind her?”
Dod was instantly resentful.
“It’s nothing I done.” He was decided and scornful. “She won’t even let me go swimming a minute. She wants me to stay here all the time. She cries all the time, no matter what I do!”
This was worse than Wully had expected.
“Was she crying before now?” he asked.
“She cries all the time, I tell you.” He spoke carelessly. Girls’ tears were nothing to him. “She cries when she’s eating. She gets up in the morning crying. She’s daft!”
“You mustn’t say that, Dod!” said Wully sharply. “Can’t a girl grieve for her mother without being called daft? That’s no way for a man to speak!”
Dod was abashed, but unconvinced.
“She’s not grieving for mother,” he answered, defending himself. “She’s grieving for herself.”
This sounded good to Wully. He hoped she was unhappy for the same reason he was.
“How do you know?” he demanded.
“She says so. I says for her not to cry about mother, and she says she wasn’t. ‘I’m crying for myself,’ she says.”
Wully had no longer any scruples about finding out everything he could from the boy.
“What’s she sitting with that gun in her hands for, Dod? Does she shoot many chickens?”
“Her? She couldn’t hit a barn. She’s afraid. That’s what’s the matter with her.”
“What’s she afraid of?”
“Nothing. What’s there to be afraid of here? I don’t know what’s got into her!”
“Tell me now, Dod!” begged Wully. “My mother would want to know. Does Uncle John see that you have everything you need?”
“That’s not it!” exclaimed the boy, proudly. “We have enough. Some of them would come here and stay all the time, but she don’t want them. She won’t have anybody here. And we’re not going to church again.” This last he undoubtedly considered a decision worthy of the most tearless girl. Wully, who seized upon trifling straws, saw promise in this. She wasn’t going to church again, and she had wanted a good look at him! But what was it—why should she be so silly? Why wouldn’t she let him make
