A Mountain Europa | Page 5

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. A shower 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
II
LIGHTS twinkled from every cabin as Clayton passed through the
camp. Outside the kitchen doors, miners, bare to the waist, were
bathing their blackened faces and bodies, with children, tattered and
unclean, but healthful, playing about them; within, women in loose
gowns, with sleeves unrolled and with disordered hair, moved like
phantoms through clouds of savory smoke. The commissary was
brilliantly lighted. At a window close by improvident miners were
drawing the wages of the day, while their wives waited in the store with
baskets unfilled. In front of the commissary a crowd of negroes were
talking, laughing, singing, and playing pranks like children. Here two,

with grinning faces, were squared off, not to spar, but to knock at each
other's tattered hat; there two more, with legs and arms
indistinguishable, were wrestling; close by was the sound of a
mouth-harp, a circle of interested spectators, and, within, two dancers
pitted against each other, and shuffling with a zest that labor seemed
never to affect.
Immediately after supper Clayton went to his room, lighted his lamp,
and sat down to a map he was tracing. His room was next the ground,
and a path ran near the open window. As he worked, every passer-by
would look curiously within. On the wall above his head a pair of
fencing-foils were crossed under masks. Below these hung two pistols,
such as courteous Claude Duval used for side-arms. Opposite were two
old rifles, and beneath them two stone beer-mugs, and a German
student's pipe absurdly long and richly ornamented. A mantel close by
was filled with curiosities, and near it hung