A Voice in the Wilderness | Page 5

wait."
In fear and trembling Margaret descended her rude ladder step by step,
primitive man seated calmly on his horse, making no attempt whatever
to assist her.
"This ain't no baggage-car," he grumbled, as he saw the suit-case in her
hand. "Well, h'ist yerself up thar; I reckon we c'n pull through
somehow. Gimme the luggage."
Margaret stood appalled beside the bony horse and his uncouth rider.
Did he actually expect her to ride with him? "Couldn't I walk?" she
faltered, hoping he would offer to do so.

"'T's up t' you," the man replied, indifferently. "Try 't an' see!"
He spoke to the horse, and it started forward eagerly, while the girl in
horror struggled on behind. Over rough, uneven ground, between
greasewood, sage-brush, and cactus, back into the trail. The man,
oblivious of her presence, rode contentedly on, a silent shadow on a
dark horse wending a silent way between the purple-green clumps of
other shadows, until, bewildered, the girl almost lost sight of them. Her
breath came short, her ankle turned, and she fell with both hands in a
stinging bed of cactus. She cried out then and begged him to stop.
"L'arned yer lesson, hev yeh, sweety?" he jeered at her, foolishly. "Well,
get in yer box, then."
He let her struggle up to a seat behind himself with very little
assistance, but when she was seated and started on her way she began
to wish she had stayed behind and taken any perils of the way rather
than trust herself in proximity to this creature.
From time to time he took a bottle from his pocket and swallowed a
portion of its contents, becoming fluent in his language as they
proceeded on their way. Margaret remained silent, growing more and
more frightened every time the bottle came out. At last he offered it to
her. She declined it with cold politeness, which seemed to irritate the
little man, for he turned suddenly fierce.
"Oh, yer too fine to take a drap fer good comp'ny, are yeh? Wal, I'll
show yeh a thing er two, my pretty lady. You'll give me a kiss with yer
two cherry lips before we go another step. D'yeh hear, my sweetie?"
And he turned with a silly leer to enforce his command; but with a cry
of horror Margaret slid to the ground and ran back down the trail as
hard as she could go, till she stumbled and fell in the shelter of a great
sage-bush, and lay sobbing on the sand.
The man turned bleared eyes toward her and watched until she
disappeared. Then sticking his chin out wickedly, he slung her suit-case
after her and called:

"All right, my pretty lady; go yer own gait an' l'arn yer own lesson." He
started on again, singing a drunken song.
Under the blue, starry dome alone sat Margaret again, this time with no
friendly water-tank for her defense, and took counsel with herself. The
howling coyotes seemed to be silenced for the time; at least they had
become a minor quantity in her equation of troubles. She felt now that
man was her greatest menace, and to get away safely from him back to
that friendly water-tank and the dear old railroad track she would have
pledged her next year's salary. She stole softly to the place where she
had heard the suit-case fall, and, picking it up, started on the weary
road back to the tank. Could she ever find the way? The trail seemed so
intangible a thing, her sense of direction so confused. Yet there was
nothing else to do. She shuddered whenever she thought of the man
who had been her companion on horseback.
When the man reached camp he set his horse loose and stumbled into
the door of the log bunk-house, calling loudly for something to eat.
The men were sitting around the room on the rough benches and bunks,
smoking their pipes or stolidly staring into the dying fire. Two smoky
kerosene-lanterns that hung from spikes driven high in the logs cast a
weird light over the company, eight men in all, rough and hardened
with exposure to stormy life and weather. They were men with
unkempt beards and uncombed hair, their coarse cotton shirts open at
the neck, their brawny arms bare above the elbow, with crimes and
sorrows and hard living written large across their faces.
There was one, a boy in looks, with smooth face and white skin
healthily flushed in places like a baby's. His face, too, was hard and set
in sternness like a mask, as if life had used him badly; but behind it was
a fineness of feature and spirit that could not be utterly hidden. They
called him the Kid, and thought it was his youth