The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh | Page 4

bein' queer on the water," returned the young girl with a reflecting
sense of justice.
"Then they ain't no call to go gunnin', and wastin' Guv'nment powder
on ducks instead o' Injins."
"Thet's so," said the girl thoughtfully. "Wonder ef Guv'nment pays for
them frocks the Kernel's girls went cavortin' round Logport in last
Sunday--they looked like a cirkis."
"Like ez not the old Kernel gets it outer contracts--one way or another.
WE pay for it all the same," he added gloomily.

"Jest the same ez if they were MY clothes," said the girl, with a quick,
fiery, little laugh, "ain't it? Wonder how they'd like my sayin' that to
'em when they was prancin' round, eh, Jim?"
But her companion was evidently unprepared for this sweeping
feminine deduction, and stopped it with masculine promptitude.
"Look yer--instead o' botherin' your head about what the Fort girls wear,
you'd better trot along a little more lively. It's late enough now."
"But these darned boots hurt like pizen," said the girl, limping. "They
swallowed a lot o' water over the tops while I was wadin' down there,
and my feet go swashin' around like in a churn every step."
"Lean on me, baby," he returned, passing his arm around her waist, and
dropping her head smartly on his shoulder. "Thar!" The act was
brotherly and slightly contemptuous, but it was sufficient to at once
establish their kinship.
They continued on thus for some moments in silence, the girl, I fear,
after the fashion of her sex, taking the fullest advantage of this slightly
sentimental and caressing attitude. They were moving now along the
edge of the Marsh, parallel with the line of rapidly fading horizon,
following some trail only known to their keen youthful eyes. It was
growing darker and darker. The cries of the sea-birds had ceased; even
the call of a belated plover had died away inland; the hush of death lay
over the black funereal pall of marsh at their side. The tide had run out
with the day. Even the sea-breeze had lulled in this dead slack-water of
all nature, as if waiting outside the bar with the ocean, the stars, and the
night.
Suddenly the girl stopped and halted her companion. The faint far
sound of a bugle broke the silence, if the idea of interruption could
have been conveyed by the two or three exquisite vibrations that
seemed born of that silence itself, and to fade and die in it without
break or discord. Yet it was only the 'retreat' call from the Fort two
miles distant and invisible.

The young girl's face had become irradiated, and her small mouth half
opened as she listened. "Do you know, Jim," she said with a
confidential sigh, "I allus put words to that when I hear it--it's so
pow'ful pretty. It allus goes to me like this: 'Goes the day, Far away,
With the light, And the night Comes along--Comes along-- Comes
along--Like a-a so-o-ong.'" She here lifted her voice, a sweet, fresh,
boyish contralto, in such an admirable imitation of the bugle that her
brother, after the fashion of more select auditors, was for a moment
quite convinced that the words meant something. Nevertheless, as a
brother, it was his duty to crush this weakness. "Yes; and it says:'shut
your head, Go to bed,'" he returned irascibly; "and YOU'D better come
along, if we're goin' to hev any supper. There's Yeller Bob hez got
ahead of us over there with the game already."
The girl glanced towards a slouching burdened figure that now
appeared to be preceding them, straightened herself suddenly, and then
looked attentively towards the Marsh.
"Not the sodgers again?" said her brother impatiently.
"No," she said quickly; "but if that don't beat anythin'! I'd hev sworn,
Jim, that Yeller Bob was somewhere behind us. I saw him only jest
now when 'Taps' sounded, somewhere over thar." She pointed with a
half-uneasy expression in quite another direction from that in which the
slouching Yellow Bob had just loomed.
"Tell ye what, Mag, makin' poetry outer bugle calls hez kinder muddled
ye. THAT'S Yeller Bob ahead, and ye orter know Injins well enuff by
this time to remember that they allus crop up jest when ye don't expect
them. And there's the bresh jest afore us. Come!"
The 'bresh,' or low bushes, was really a line of stunted willows and
alders that seemed to have gradually sunk into the level of the plain, but
increased in size farther inland, until they grew to the height and
density of a wood. Seen from the channel it had the appearance of a
green cape or promontory thrust upon the Marsh. Passing through its
tangled recesses, with the aid of some unerring instinct, the two
companions emerged upon another and much