The Bell-Ringer of Angels | Page 5

cabin, moving
away afterwards with more than his usual placid contentment.
It was about eleven o'clock one morning, and Madison Wayne was at
work alone on the Bar. Clad in a dark gray jersey and white duck
trousers rolled up over high india-rubber boots, he looked not unlike a
peaceful fisherman digging stakes for his nets, as he labored in the ooze
and gravel of the still half-reclaimed river bed. He was far out on the
Bar, within a stone's throw of the promontory. Suddenly his quick ear
caught an unfamiliar cry and splash. Looking up hastily, he saw Mrs.
McGee's red petticoat in the water under the singularly agitated boughs
of an overhanging tree. Madison Wayne ran to the bank, threw off his
heavy boots, and sprang into the stream. A few strokes brought him to
Mrs. McGee's petticoat, which, as he had wisely surmised, contained
Mrs. McGee, who was still clinging to a branch of the tree. Grasping
her waist with one hand and the branch with the other, he obtained a
foothold on the bank, and dragged her ashore. A moment later they
both stood erect and dripping at the foot of the tree.
"Well?" said the lady.
Wayne glanced around their seclusion with his habitual caution,
slightly knit his brows perplexedly, and said: "You fell in?"
"I didn't do nothin' of the sort. I JUMPED in."
Wayne again looked around him, as if expecting her companion, and

squeezed the water out of his thick hair. "Jumped in?" he repeated
slowly. "What for?"
"To make you come over here, Mad Wayne," she said, with a quick
laugh, putting her arms akimbo.
They stood looking at each other, dripping like two river gods. Like
them, also, Wayne had apparently ignored the fact that his trousers
were rolled up above his bare knees, and Mrs. McGee that her red
petticoat clung closely to her rather pretty figure. But he quickly
recovered himself. "You had better go in and change your clothes," he
said, with grave concern. "You'll take cold."
She only shook herself disdainfully. "I'm all right," she said; "but YOU,
Mad Wayne, what do you mean by not speaking to me--not knowing
me? You can't say that I've changed like that." She passed her hand
down her long dripping braids as if to press the water from them, and
yet with a half-coquettish suggestion in the act.
Something struggled up into the man's face which was not there before.
There was a new light in his grave eyes. "You look the same," he said
slowly; "but you are married--you have a husband."
"You think that changes a girl?" she said, with a laugh "That's where all
you men slip up! You're afraid of his rifle--THAT'S the change that
bothers you, Mad."
"You know I care little for carnal weapons," he said quietly. She DID
know it; but it is the privilege of the sex to invent its facts and then to
graciously abandon them as if they were only arguments. "Then why do
you keep off from me? Why do you look the other way when I pass?"
she said quickly.
"Because you are married," he said slowly.
She again shook the water from her like a Newfoundland dog. "That's it.
You're mad because I got married. You're mad because I wouldn't
marry you and your church over on the cross roads, and sing hymns

with you and become SISTER Wayne. You wanted me to give up
dancing and buggy ridin' Sundays--and you're just mad because I didn't.
Yes, mad--just mean, baby mad, Mr. Maddy Wayne, for all your
CHRISTIAN resignation! That's what's the matter with you." Yet she
looked very pretty and piquant in her small spitefulness, which was still
so general and superficial that she seemed to shake it out of her wet
petticoats in a vicious flap that disclosed her neat ankles.
"You preferred McGee to me," he said grimly. "I didn't blame you."
"Who said I PREFERRED him?" she retorted quickly. "Much you
know!" Then, with swift feminine abandonment of her position, she
added, with a little laugh, "It's all the same whether you're guarded with
a rifle or a Church Presbytery, only"--
"Only what?" said Madison earnestly.
"There's men who'd risk being SHOT for a girl, that couldn't stand
psalm-singin' palaver."
The quick expression of pain that passed over his hard, dark face
seemed only to heighten her pretty mischievousness. But he simply
glanced again around the solitude, passed his hand over his wet sleeve,
and said, "I must go now; your husband wouldn't like me being here."
"He's workin' in the claim,--the claim YOU gave him," said Mrs.
McGee, with cheerful malice. "Wonder what he'd say if he knew it was
given to him by the man who used to spark his wife only