The Sealed Valley. Footner Hulbert

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СКАЧАТЬ else. Now they suddenly seemed like foul-mouthed satyrs that a man ought to knock down one by one for decency's sake. They were not as bad as all that, of course; the change was in Ralph, not in them.

      Finally Joe said with what seemed to Ralph an egregious display of male vanity: "I can handle them. I'll find out who she is."

      He went inside the deckhouse with a propitiatory leer on his fat red face that caused Ralph's gorge to rise. Ralph sat on pins and needles watching out of the corners of his eyes, and straining his ears in vain to hear what was said.

      The conversation was like all such conversations.

      "Hello, dearie!" said Joe.

      The girl turned a bland, blank face toward him. "Hello," she said.

      Joe pulled up another box and sat down. "Thought you might be lonely all by yourself," he said agreeably.

      "I like be by myself me," she said, affecting a naïve simplicity of speech and manner.

      Joe glanced at her sharply. Her eyes were modestly cast down. He decided that she meant no offence, and went on:

      "What's your name, girly?"

      "Mary Black, please."

      "Where do you live when you're home?"

      "McIlwraith Lake. My fat'er him Scarface Jack Black. Him very good hunter."

      Her air of humble timidity encouraged Joe enormously. This was plain sailing. "What do you want to live in the woods for?" he said condescendingly. "That's no place for a good-lookin' gal like you—among a pack of savages."

      She shrugged deprecatingly.

      "You ought to be down here on the river where there's something doing. White men know how to enjoy life."

      "Yes," she said demurely.

      "If you stayed down at the Fort you'd knock the spots off the other gals there. There ain't one of them can touch you!"

      "I got no place," she said.

      "That's easy," said Joe. "I'll build you a shack."

      "I think about it," she said.

      "Dominion Day there's going to be a whale of a time at the Fort," Joe went on. "Racing and fireworks and dancing and free eats for everybody. Like that?"

      "Yes, sir."

      "Well, you come down to my place ahead of time, and we'll float down to the Fort on a raft."

      "Thank you," she said.

      Joe, overjoyed at the progress he was making, drew his box closer, and laid a ham of a hand on one of her slender brown ones. Ralph, observing the move from outside, ground his teeth afresh.

      "You're all right!" said Joe unctuously. "You and me'll be good friends. I'm a liberal feller, I am. A good-lookin' gal can get what she likes out of me."

      The girl drew away. "They see you outside," she said warningly.

      Joe laughed thickly. "You're shy, eh? That's all right, sis. I like 'em a little bashful at first. Me and you'll have a talk later on when there ain't nobody around."

      When Joe returned to the others it was with the air of a conqueror. Ralph's right fist instinctively doubled at the sight of his fat complacency, but for the present he had to content himself with picking out the spots where he would like to plant it.

      "She's all right," said Joe patronizingly. "Nice little gal."

      "What's her name? Where does she live?" asked Staley.

      Joe repeated what she had told him. Ralph breathed more freely.

      "She's lying," said Staley coolly. "I traded at McIlwraith Lake six years off and on. I ought to know. She never come of Sikannis stock; they're an undersized people and narrow-eyed."

      "Well, she's half-white, maybe," said Joe.

      "She never showed her face on McIlwraith Lake when I was there," said Staley. "I knew them all. There's no hunter in the tribe called Scarface Jack Black. She was stringing you."

      "I don't care," said Joe. "It don't hurt her looks any."

      During the afternoon each one of the other three men made an occasion to sidle up to the girl; Matthews the sardonic Scotchman, Staley with his pale, sharp, storekeeper's face, and the lubberly old Wes' with his wandering pale eye, and his tobacco-stained chin. The girl's manner was the same to each; demure, receptive, simple-minded. Ralph could make nothing of her. All this was hard on his temper. He was divided between anger at the ill-concealed grossness of the men, and anger at Nahnya for not resenting it. He no longer took any pleasure in the beauty of the river.

      At dusk they tied up to a tree on the shore and ran out a plank. The boys built a rousing fire under the pines, and as the darkness increased it made a fantastic chiaroscuro in crimson and black; the fire leaping under the boughs, the silhouettes of the half-breeds moving about it preparing supper, and on the river side the quaint little steamboat sticking her nose into the red glow.

      When supper was ready the five white men sat down beside the fire, but the girl, notwithstanding the hearty and jocular invitations of four of them, carried her portion back on the boat.

      "Let her go," said Joe. "She's dainty about eating in company."

      His air of proprietorship was almost more than Ralph could brook. Joe, sitting cross-legged, with his stomach on his knees, was not a beautiful sight. He had divested himself of all unnecessary clothing. He ate and drank with a noisy gusto that was all his own, and his cheeks and the bald spot on his crown became purple with the effort. A mat of dank black hair hung over his forehead, and the long ends of his moustache dripped tea.

      Nahnya sat down on the deck to her supper in view of the men, for it was not yet perfectly dark. Ralph, watching her covertly, was filled with a heavy anxiety at the thought of her position alone on the boat during the night. If she felt apprehensive herself she showed nothing, and it did not affect her appetite.

      Joe, observing Ralph's glances toward the steamboat, laughed in his uproarious way. "The kid's askeered of a petticoat!" he cried. "Go ahead, boy; it won't bite you!"

      Ralph could cheerfully have brained Joe where he sat. He was obliged, however, to turn it off with the best smile he could muster. At the same time Joe's jibe gave him an idea. He took care to finish before the others, and went on the boat, muttering something about getting tobacco.

      "Be up and down with her, kid," cried Joe. "Half measures won't get you nowhere!"

      "Fine night," said Ralph to Nahnya, loud enough for those on shore to hear.

      "Yes," she said, with exactly the same manner she had adopted toward them all.

      It dashed him a little. He went on inside to get tobacco out of his dunnage bag. When he came out again, she pointedly looked away across the river.

      Ralph came close to her, and lowered his voice; anxiety made him rough. СКАЧАТЬ