Bunch Grass | Page 3

Ajax stiffly.
Next day was Sunday. At breakfast the schoolmarm asked Ajax if there was likely to be a prayer-meeting.
"A prayer-meeting, Miss Buchanan?"
"It's the Sabbath, you know."
"Yes--er--so it is. Well, you see," he smiled feebly, "the cathedral isn't built yet."
"Why, what's the matter with the schoolhouse? I presume you're all church-members?"
Her grey eyes examined each of us in turn, and each made confession. One of the teamsters was a Baptist; another a Latter-Day Adventist; the Spaffords were Presbyterians; we, of course, belonged to the Church of England.
"We ought to have a prayer-meeting," said the little schoolmarm.
"Yes; we did oughter," assented Mrs. Spafford.
"I kin pray first-rate when I git started," said the Baptist teamster.
The prayer-meeting took place. Afterwards Ajax said to me--
"She's very small, is Whey-face, but somehow she seemed to fill the adobe."
In the afternoon we had an adventure which gave us further insight into the character and temperament of the new schoolmarm.
We all walked to Paradise across the home pasture, for Miss Buchanan was anxious to inspect the site--there was nothing else then--of the proposed schoolhouse. Her childlike simplicity and assurance in taking for granted that she would eventually occupy that unbuilt academy struck us as pathetic.
"I give her one week," said Ajax, "not a day more."
Coming back we called a halt under some willows near the creek. The shade invited us to sit down.
"Are there snakes--rattlesnakes?" Miss Buchanan asked nervously.
"In the brush-hills--yes; here--no," replied my brother.
By a singular coincidence, the words were hardly out of his mouth when we heard the familiar warning, the whirring, never-to-be-forgotten sound of the beast known to the Indians as "death in the grass."
"Mercy!" exclaimed the schoolmarm, staring wildly about her. It is not easy to localise the exact position of a coiled rattlesnake by the sound of his rattle.
"Don't move!" said Ajax. "Ah, I see him! There he is! I must find a stick."
The snake was coiled some half-dozen yards from us. Upon the top coil was poised his hideous head; above it vibrated the bony, fleshless vertebr? of the tail. The little schoolmarm stared at the beast, fascinated by fear and horror. Ajax cut a switch from a willow; then he advanced.
"Oh!" entreated Miss Buchanan, "please don't go so near."
"There's no danger," said Ajax. "I've never been able to understand why rattlers inspire such terror. They can't strike except at objects within half their length, and one little tap, as you will see, breaks their backbone. Now watch! I'm going to provoke this chap to strike; and then I shall kill him."
He held the end of the stick about eighteen inches from the glaring, lidless eyes. With incredible speed the poised head shot forth. Ajax laughed. The snake was recoiling, as he struck it on the neck. Instantly it writhed impotently. My brother set the heel of his heavy boot upon the skull, crushing it into the ground.
"Now let's sit down," said he.
"Hark!" said the little schoolmarm.
Another snake was rattling within a yard or two of the first.
"It's the mate," said I. "At this time of year they run in pairs. We ought to have thought of that."
"I'll have him in a jiffy," said my brother.
As he spoke I happened to be watching the schoolmarm. Her face was painfully white, but her eyes were shining, and her lips set above a small, resolute chin.
"Let me kill him," she said, in a low voice.
"You, Miss Buchanan?"
"Yes."
"It's easy enough, but one mustn't--er--miss."
"I shan't miss."
She took the willow stick from my brother's hand. Every movement of his she reproduced exactly, even to the setting of her heel upon the serpent's head. Then she smiled at us apologetically.
"I hated to do it. I was scared to death, but I wanted to conquer that cowardly Belle. It's just as you say, they're killed mighty easy. If we could kill the Old Serpent as easy----" she sighed, not finishing the sentence.
Ajax, who has a trick of saying what others think, blurted out--
"What do you mean by conquering--Belle?"
We sat down.
"My name is Alethea-Belle, a double name. Father wanted to call me Alethea; but mother fancied Belle. Father, you know, was a Massachusetts minister; mother came from way down south. She died when I was a child. She--she was not very strong, poor mother, but father," she spoke proudly, "father was the best man that ever lived."
All her self-consciousness had vanished. Somehow we felt that the daughter of the New England parson was speaking, not the child of the invertebrate Southerner.
"I had to take to selling books," she continued, speaking more to herself than to us, "because of Belle. That miserable girl got into debt. Father left her a little money. Belle squandered it sinfully on clothes and pleasure. She'd a rose silk dress----"
"A rose silk dress?" repeated Ajax.
"It was just too lovely--that dress," said the little schoolmarm, reflectively.
"Even Alethea