when margaret earle dawned upon that bunk-room the men sat up with one accord, ran their rough, red hands through their rough, tousled hair, smoothed their beards, took down their feet from the benches where they were resting. that was as far as their etiquette led them. most of them continued to smoke their pipes, and all of them stared at her unreservedly. such a sight of exquisite feminine beauty had not come to their eyes in many a long day. even in the dim light of the smoky lanterns, and with the dust and weariness of travel upon her, margaret earle was a beautiful girl.
"that's what's the matter, father," said her mother, when the subject of margaret's going west to teach had first been mentioned. "she's too beautiful. far too beautiful to go among savages! if she were homely and old, now, she might be safe. that would be a different matter."
yet margaret had prevailed, and was here in the wild country. now, standing on the threshold of the log cabin, she read, in the unveiled admiration that startled from the eyes of the men, the meaning of her mother's fears.
yet withal it was a kindly admiration not unmixed with awe. for there was about her beauty a touch of the spiritual which set her above the common run of women, making men feel her purity and sweetness, and inclining their hearts to worship rather than be bold.
the boy had been right. pop wallis was asleep and out of the way. from a little shed room at one end his snoring marked time in the silence that the advent of the girl made in the place.
in the doorway of the kitchen offset mom wallis stood with her passionless face—a face from which all emotions had long ago been burned by cruel fires—and looked at the girl, whose expression was vivid with her opening life all haloed in a rosy glow.
a kind of wistful contortion passed over mom wallis's hopeless countenance, as if she saw before her in all its possibility of perfection the life that she herself had lost. perhaps it was no longer possible for her features to show tenderness, but a glow of something like it burned in her eyes, though she only turned away with the same old apathetic air, and without a word went about preparing a meal for the stranger.
margaret looked wildly, fearfully, around the rough assemblage when she first entered the long, low room, but instantly the boy introduced her as "the new teacher for the ridge school beyond the junction," and these were long bill, big jim, the fiddling boss, jasper kemp, fade-away forbes, stocky, croaker, and fudge. an inspiration fell upon the frightened girl, and she acknowledged the introduction by a radiant smile, followed by the offering of her small gloved hand. each man in dumb bewilderment instantly became her slave, and accepted the offered hand with more or less pleasure and embarrassment. the girl proved her right to be called tactful, and, seeing her advantage, followed it up quickly by a few bright words. these men were of an utterly different type from any she had ever met before, but they had in their eyes a kind of homage which pop wallis had not shown and they were not repulsive to her. besides, the boy was in the background, and her nerve had returned. the boy knew how a lady should be treated. she was quite ready to "play up" to his lead.
it was the boy who brought the only chair the bunk-house afforded, a rude, home-made affair, and helped her off with her coat and hat in his easy, friendly way, as if he had known her all his life; while the men, to whom such gallant ways were foreign, sat awkwardly by and watched in wonder and amaze.
most of all they were astonished at "the kid," that he could fall so naturally into intimate talk with this delicate, beautiful woman. she was another of his kind, a creature not made in the same mold as theirs. they saw it now, and watched the fairy play with almost childish interest. just to hear her call him "mr. gardley"!—lance gardley, that was what he had told them was his name the day he came among them. they had not heard it since. the kid! mr. gardley!
there it was, the difference between them! they looked at the girl half jealously, yet proudly at the boy. he was theirs—yes, in a way he was theirs—had they not found him in the wilderness, sick and nigh to death, and nursed him back to life again? he was theirs; but he knew how to drop into her world, too, and not be ashamed. they were glad that he could, even while it struck them with a pang that some day he would go back to the world to which he belonged—and where they could never be at home.
it was a marvel to watch her eat the coarse corn-bread and pork that mom wallis brought her. it might have been a banquet, the pleasant way she seemed to look at it. just like a bird she tasted it daintily, and smiled, showing her white teeth. there was nothing of the idea of greediness that each man knew he himself felt after a fast. it was all beautiful, the way she handled the two-tined fork and the old steel knife. they watched and dropped their eyes abashed as at a lovely sacrament. they had not felt before that eating could be an art. they did not know what art meant.
such strange talk, too! but the kid seemed to understand. about the sky—their old, common sky, with stars that they saw every night—making such a fuss about that, with words like "wide," "infinite," "azure," and "gems." each man went furtively out that night before he slept and took a new look at the sky to see if he could understand.
the boy was planning so the night would be but brief. he knew the girl was afraid. he kept the talk going enthusiastically, drawing in one or two of the men now and again. long bill forgot himself and laughed out a hoarse guffaw, then stopped as if he had been choked. stocky, red in the face, told a funny story when commanded by the boy, and then dissolved in mortification over his blunders. the fiddling boss obediently got down his fiddle from the smoky corner beside the fireplace and played a weird old tune or two, and then they sang. first the men, with hoarse, quavering approach and final roar of wild sweetness; then margaret and the boy in duet, and finally margaret alone, with a few bashful chords on the fiddle, feeling their way as accompaniment.
mom wallis had long ago stopped her work and was sitting huddled in the doorway on a nail-keg with weary, folded hands and a strange wistfulness on her apathetic face. a fine silence had settled over the group as the girl, recognizing her power, and the pleasure she was giving, sang on. now and then the boy, when he knew the song, would join in with his rich tenor.
it was a strange night, and when she finally lay down to rest on a hard cot with a questionable-looking blanket for covering and mom wallis as her room-mate, margaret earle could not help wondering what her mother and father would think now if they could see her. would they not, perhaps, almost prefer the water-tank and the lonely desert for her to her present surroundings?
nevertheless, she slept soundly after her terrible excitement, and woke with a start of wonder in the early morning, to hear the men outside splashing water and humming or whistling bits of the tunes she had sung to them the night before.
mom wallis was standing over her, looking down with a hunger in her eyes at the bright waves of margaret's hair and the soft, sleep-flushed cheeks.
"you got dretful purty hair," said mom wallis, wistfully.
margaret looked up and smiled in acknowledgment of the compliment.
"you wouldn't b'lieve it, but i was young an' purty oncet. beats all how much it counts to be young—an' purty! but land! it don't last long. make the most of it while you got it."
browning's immortal words came to margaret's lips—
grow old along with me,
the best is yet to be,
the last of life for which the first was made—
but she checked them just in time and could only smile mutely. how could she speak such thoughts amid these intolerable surroundings? then with sudden impulse she reached up to the astonished woman and, drawing her down, kissed her sallow cheek.
"oh!" said mom wallis, starting back and laying her bony hands upon the place where she had been kissed, as if it hurt her, while a dull red stole up from her neck over her cheeks and high forehead to the roots of her hay-colored hair. all at once she turned her back upon her visitor and the tears of the years streamed down her impassive face.
"don't mind me," she choked, after a minute. "i liked it real good, only it kind of give me a turn." then, after a second: "it's time t' eat. you c'n wash outside after the men is done."
that, thought margaret, had been the scheme of this woman's whole life—"after the men is done!"
so, after all, the night was passed in safety, and a wonderful dawning had come. the blue of the morning, so different from the blue of the night sky, was, nevertheless, just as unfathomable; the air seemed filled with straying star-beams, so sparkling was the clearness of the light.
but now a mountain rose in the distance with heliotrope-and-purple bounds to stand across the vision and dispel the illusion of the night that the sky came down to the earth all around like a close-fitting dome. there were mountains on all sides, and a slender, dark line of mesquite set off the more delicate colorings of the plain.
into the morning they rode, margaret and the boy, before pop wallis was yet awake, while all the other men stood round and watched, eager, jealous for the handshake and the parting smile. they told her they hoped she would come again and sing for them, and each one had an awkward word of parting. whatever margaret earle might do with her school, she had won seven loyal friends in the camp, and she rode away amid their admiring glances, which lingered, too, on the broad shoulders and wide sombrero of her escort riding by her side.
"wal, that's the end o' him, i 'spose," drawled long bill, with a deep sigh, as the riders passed into the valley out of their sight.
"h'm!" said jasper kemp, hungrily. "i reck'n he thinks it's jes' th' beginnin'!"
"maybe so! maybe so!" said big jim, dreamily.
the morning was full of wonder for the girl who had come straight from an eastern city. the view from the top of the mesa, or the cool, dim entrance of a cañon where great ferns fringed and feathered its walls, and strange caves hollowed out in the rocks far above, made real the stories she had read of the cave-dwellers. it was a new world.
the boy was charming. she could not have picked out among her city acquaintances a man who would have done the honors of the desert more delightfully than he. she had thought him handsome in the starlight and in the lantern-light the night before, but now that the morning shone upon him she could not keep from looking at him. his fresh color, which no wind and weather could quite subdue, his gray-blue eyes with that mixture of thoughtfulness and reverence and daring, his crisp, brown curls glinting with gold in the sunlight—all made him good to look upon. there was something about the firm set of his lips and chin that made her feel a hidden strength about him.
when they camped a little while for lunch he showed the thoughtfulness and care for her comfort that many an older man might not have had. even his talk was a mixture of boyishness and experience and he seemed to know her thoughts before she had them fully spoken.
"i do not understand it," she said, looking him frankly in the eyes at last. "how ever in the world did one like you get landed among all those dreadful men! of course, in their way, some of them are not so bad; but they are not like you, not in the least, and never could be."
they were riding out upon the plain now in the full afternoon light, and a short time would bring them to her destination.
a sad, set look came quickly into the boy's eyes and his face grew almost hard.
"it's an old story. i suppose you've heard it before," he said, and his voice tried to take on a careless note, but failed. "i didn't make good back there"—he waved his hand sharply toward the east—"so i came out here to begin again. but i guess i haven't made good here, either—not in the way i meant when i came."
"you can't, you know," said margaret. "not here."
"why?" he looked at her earnestly, as if he felt the answer might help him.
"because you have to go back where you didn't make good and pick up the lost opportunities. you can't really make good till you do that right where you left off."
"but suppose it's too late?"
"it's never too late if we're in earnest and not too proud."
there was a long silence then, while the boy looked thoughtfully off at the mountains, and when he spoke again it was to call attention to the beauty of a silver cloud that floated lazily on the horizon. but margaret earle had seen the look in his gray eyes and was not deceived.
a few minutes later they crossed another mesa and descended to the enterprising little town where the girl was to begin her winter's work. the very houses and streets seemed to rise briskly and hasten to meet them those last few minutes of their ride.
now that the experience was almost over, the girl realized that she had enjoyed it intensely, and that she dreaded inexpressibly that she must bid good-by to this friend of a few hours and face an unknown world. it had been a wonderful day, and now it was almost done. the two looked at each other and realized that their meeting had been an epoch in their lives that neither would soon forget—that neither wanted to forget.
