第33章 A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE(7)

They were quite firm in this decision,--however absurd or obscure their conclusions,--and Jackson, after his first flash of indignation, felt a certain relief in their departure. But strangely enough, while he had hesitated about keeping the property when they were violently in favor of it, he now felt he was right in retaining it against their advice to compromise. The sentimental idea had vanished with his recognition of his hateful cousin in the role of the injured orphan. And for the same odd reason her prettiness only increased his resentment. He was not deceived,--it was the same capricious, willful, red-haired girl.

The next day he set himself to work with that dogged steadiness that belonged to his simple nature, and which had endeared him to his partners. He set half a dozen Chinamen to work, and followed, although apparently directing, their methods. The great difficulty was to restrain and control the excessive vegetation, and he matched the small economies of the Chinese against the opulence of the Californian soil. The "garden patch" prospered; the neighbors spoke well of it and of him. But Jackson knew that this fierce harvest of early spring was to be followed by the sterility of the dry season, and that irrigation could alone make his work profitable in the end. He brought a pump to force the water from the little stream at the foot of the slope to the top, and allowed it to flow back through parallel trenches. Again Buckeye applauded! Only the gloomy barkeeper shook his head. "The moment you get that thing to pay, Mr. Wells, you'll find the hand of Brown, somewhere, getting ready to squeeze it dry!"

But Jackson Wells did not trouble himself about Brown, whom he scarcely knew. Once indeed, while trenching the slope, he was conscious that he was watched by two men from the opposite bank; but they were apparently satisfied by their scrutiny, and turned away. Still less did he concern himself with the movements of his cousin, who once or twice passed him superciliously in her buggy on the road. Again, she met him as one of a cavalcade of riders, mounted on a handsome but ill-tempered mustang, which she was managing with an ill-temper and grace equal to the brute's, to the alternate delight and terror of her cavalier. He could see that she had been petted and spoiled by her new guardian and his friends far beyond his conception. But why she should grudge him the little garden and the pastoral life for which she was so unsuited, puzzled him greatly.

One afternoon he was working near the road, when he was startled by an outcry from his Chinese laborers, their rapid dispersal from the strawberry beds where they were working, the splintering crash of his fence rails, and a commotion among the buckeyes. Furious at what seemed to him one of the usual wanton attacks upon coolie labor, he seized his pick and ran to their assistance. But he was surprised to find Jocelinda's mustang caught by the saddle and struggling between two trees, and its unfortunate mistress lying upon the strawberry bed. Shocked but cool-headed, Jackson released the horse first, who was lashing out and destroying everything within his reach, and then turned to his cousin. But she had already lifted herself to her elbow, and with a trickle of blood and mud on one fair cheek was surveying him scornfully under her tumbled hair and hanging hat.

"You don't suppose I was trespassing on your wretched patch again, do you?" she said in a voice she was trying to keep from breaking.

"It was that brute--who bolted."

"I don't suppose you were bullying ME this time," he said, "but you were YOUR HORSE--or it wouldn't have happened. Are you hurt?"

She tried to move; he offered her his hand, but she shied from it and struggled to her feet. She took a step forward--but limped.

"If you don't want my arm, let me call a Chinaman," he suggested.

She glared at him. "If you do I'll scream!" she said in a low voice, and he knew she would. But at the same moment her face whitened, at which he slipped his arm under hers in a dexterous, business-like way, so as to support her weight. Then her hat got askew, and down came a long braid over his shoulder. He remembered it of old, only it was darker than then and two or three feet longer.

"If you could manage to limp as far as the gate and sit down on the bank, I'd get your horse for you," he said. "I hitched it to a sapling."

"I saw you did--before you even offered to help me," she said scornfully.

"The horse would have got away--YOU couldn't."

"If you only knew how I hated you," she said, with a white face, but a trembling lip.

"I don't see how that would make things any better," he said.

"Better wipe your face; it's scratched and muddy, and you've been rubbing your nose in my strawberry bed."

She snatched his proffered handkerchief suddenly, applied it to her face, and said: "I suppose it looks dreadful."

"Like a pig's," he returned cheerfully.

She walked a little more firmly after this, until they reached the gate. He seated her on the bank, and went back for the mustang.

That beautiful brute, astounded and sore from its contact with the top rail and brambles, was cowed and subdued as he led it back.

She had finished wiping her face, and was hurriedly disentangling two stinging tears from her long lashes, before she threw back his handkerchief. Her sprained ankle obliged him to lift her into the saddle and adjust her little shoe in the stirrup. He remembered when it was still smaller. "You used to ride astride," he said, a flood of recollection coming over him, "and it's much safer with your temper and that brute."

"And you," she said in a lower voice, "used to be"-- But the rest of her sentence was lost in the switch of the whip and the jump of her horse, but he thought the word was "kinder."