The Barrier | Page 7

Country,' did he?"
"No. We tied him down and choked it out of him," Necia laughed. "Dear, funny old Poleon--he loves me like a brother."
The man opened his lips, then closed them, as if on second thought, and rose to his feet, for, coming towards them up the trail from the barracks, he beheld a trim, blue-coated figure. He peered at the approaching officer a moment, set his jaw more firmly, and disappeared into the store.
"Well, we have raised our flag-staff," said the Lieutenant as he took a seat below Necia. "It's like getting settled to keep house."
"Are you lazy?" inquired the girl.
"I dare say I am," he admitted. "I've never had time to find out. Why?"
"Are you going to boss our people around?" she continued, bent on her own investigation.
"No. Not as long as they behave. In fact, I hardly know what I am to do. Maybe you can tell me." His smile was peculiarly frank and winning. "You see, it's my first command, and my instructions, although comprehensive, are rather vague. I am supposed to see that mining rights are observed, to take any criminals who kindly offer themselves up to be arrested, and to sort of handle things that are too tough for the miners themselves."
"Why, you are a policeman!" said Necia, at which he made a wry face.
"The Department, in its wisdom, would have me, a tenderfoot, adjust those things that are too knotty for these men who have spent their lives along the frontier."
"I don't believe you will be very popular with our people," Necia announced, meditatively.
"No. I can see that already. I wasn't met with any brass-bands, and I haven't received any engraved silver from the admiring citizens of Flambeau. That leaves nothing but the women to like me, and, as you are the only one in camp, you will have to like me very much to make up for its shortcomings."
She approved of his unusual drawl; it gave him a kind of deliberation which every move of his long, lithe body belied and every glance of his eyes contradicted. Moreover, she liked his youth, so clean and fresh and strange in this land where old men are many and the young ones old with hardship and grave with the silence of the hills. Her life had been spent entirely among men who were her seniors, and, although she had ruled them like a spoiled queen, she knew as little of their sex as they did of hers. Unconsciously the strong young life within her had clamored for companionship, and it was this that had drawn her to Poleon Doret--who would ever remain a boy--and it was this that drew her to the young Kentuckian; this, and something else in him, that the others lacked.
"Now that I think it over," he continued, "I'd rather have you like me than have the men do so."
"Of course," she nodded. "They do anything I want them to--all but father, and--"
"It isn't that," he interrupted, quickly. "It is because you ARE the only woman of the place, because you are such a surprise. To think that in the heart of this desolation I should find a girl like--like you, like the girls I know at home."
"Am I like other girls?" she inquired, eagerly. "I have often wondered."
"You are, and you are not. You are surprisingly conventional for these surroundings, and yet unconventionally surprising--for any place. Who are you? Where did you come from? How did you get here?"
"I am just what you see. I came from the States, and I was carried. That is all I can remember."
"Then you haven't lived here always?"
"Oh, dear, no! We came here while I was very little, but of late I have been away at school."
"Some seminary, eh?"
At this she laughed aloud. "Hardly that, either. I've been at the Mission. Father Barnum has been teaching me for five years. I came up-river a day ahead of you."
She asked no questions of him in return, for she had already learned all there was to know the day before from a grizzled corporal in whom was the hunger to talk. She had learned of a family of Burrells whose name was known throughout the South, and that Meade Burrell came from the Frankfort branch, the branch that had raised the soldiers. His father had fought with Lee, and an uncle was now in the service at Washington. On the mother's side the strain was equally militant, but the Meades had sought the sea. The old soldier had told her much more, of which she understood little; told her of the young man's sister, who had come all the way from Kentucky to see her brother off when he sailed from San Francisco; told her of the Lieutenant's many friends in Washington, and of his family