Then Ill Come Back to You | Page 7

looking up at her,
and removed his battered hat. Caleb ranged awkwardly up alongside
him and looked up at her in turn. He, searching desperately for a neat
and cleverly casual opening speech, could not know that beneath her
forbidding manner a peal of soft laughter was struggling for utterance;

could not know that, at that moment, she was telling herself that, of the
two, Caleb was far the younger.
At last he cleared his throat, oratorically, and then she promptly
interrupted him.
"Supper is served, Cal," she drawled in her gentle, almost lisping voice.
Caleb received the statement as if it were an astounding bit of hitherto
undreamed-of news.
"Comin', Sarah!" he chirped briskly. "Comin' this blessed minute!"
And then, with an attempt at disingenuousness:
"I--I've a friend here, Sarah, whom I'd like to--er--present to you! This
is my sister, Miss Hunter," he announced to the silent boy, "and this
young man, Sarah, this young man is--er--ah--Mr.----"
"I'm Steve," said the boy, mildly. "I'm just Stephen O'Mara!"
"Certainly!" gasped Caleb. "Quite so--quite so! Sarah, this is just
Steve."
The frail little woman with her quaint dignity of another decade failed
to move; she did not unbend so much as the fraction of an inch. But
hard upon the heels of Caleb's last words the boy went forward
unhesitatingly. Hat in the hand that balanced his big steel trap, he
stopped in front of her and offered one brown paw.
"Haow dye do, Miss Hunter," he saluted her, gravely. And with a slow
smile that discovered for her a row of white and even teeth: "Haow dye
do? I--I reckon you're the first--dressed-up lady I ever did git to know!"
The calm statement took what little breath there had been left in Caleb's
lungs; it left Sarah breathless, too. But after an infinitesimal moment of
waiting she held out her own delicate fingers and took the outstretched
hand.

"Haow dye do, Steve?" she answered, and Caleb was at a loss to
interpret the suppressed quality of her voice. "And I--some day I am
sure it will be a great pleasure to remember that I was the--first!"
Then she faced her brother.
"Will you--will your friend, Mr.--Steve--remain for supper, Cal?" she
asked.
And Caleb, quick to see an opening, made the most of this one.
"Stay for supper," he repeated her question, and he laughed.
"Stay--for--supper! Well, I should hope he would. Why--why, he's
going to stop for the night!"
From the vantage place there at the top of the steps Sarah stood and
surveyed her brother's wide and guileless face for a second. Then her
lips began to twitch.
"Very clever, Cal," she told him. "Quite clever--for you!"
And she nodded and withdrew to see that the table was laid for three.
Caleb, chuckling, watched her go; then with a nod to the boy, he started
to follow her in. But Steve paused at the threshold, and when the man
stopped and looked back to ascertain the cause of his delay he found
that the boy was depositing the bear trap upon the porch floor--found
him tugging to free the rusty old revolver from his belt.
"I'll leave Samanthy here," the one called Steve stated, and Caleb
understood that he meant the trap. "An' I reckon I'd better not lug my
weapon into the house, neither, hed I? She might----" He nodded in the
direction of Sarah's disappearance--"Old Tom says womin folks that's
gentle born air kind-a skittish about havin' shootin' irons araound the
place. And I don't reckon it's the part of men folks to pester 'em."
Caleb didn't know just what to say, so he merely nodded approval.
Again he had been made to feel that it was not a boy but some little old

man who was explaining to him. Silently he led the way upstairs, and
after he had seen the blanket pack deposited in one corner of Sarah's
beloved guest-room, after he had seen the rusty coat peeled off as a
preface to removing the dust accumulation of the long hot day from
hands and face, an inspiration came to him. While the boy was washing,
utterly lost to everything but that none-too-simple task, he went out of
the room on a still-hunt of his own, and came back presently with the
thing for which he had gone searching. He found the boy wrestling a
little desperately with a mop of wavy chestnut hair which only grew the
more hopeless with every stroke of the brush.
"Never mind that." Caleb met the misapprehension in the boy's eyes.
"Never mind that! And I--I've taken the liberty of digging out this old
canvas shooting coat. It's one I got for Sarah--for my sister--but, as you
say, women folks are mighty skittish about anything that has to do with
a gun.