it was late in the forenoon before it was discovered at hotel helicon that miss crabb was missing, and even then there arose so many doubts about the tragic side of the event that before any organized search for her had been begun, she returned, appearing upon the scene mounted behind wesley tolliver on a small, thin, wiry mountain mule.
crane and peck each drew a deep, swift sigh of relief upon seeing her, for the sense of guilt in their breasts had been horrible. they had by tacit conspiracy prevented any examination of eagle’s nest, for they dreaded what might be disclosed. of course they did not mean to hide the awful fate of the poor girl, nor would they willingly have shifted the weight of their dreadful responsibility, but it was all so much like a vivid dream, so utterly strange and theatrical as it arose in their memories, that they could not fully believe in it.
miss crabb looked quite ludicrous perched behind the tall mountaineer on such a dwarfish mule. especially comical was the effect of the sun-bonnet she wore. she had accepted this article of apparel from tolliver’s mother, and it appeared to clutch her head in its stiff folds and to elongate her face by sheer compression.
everybody laughed involuntarily, as much[63] for joy at her safe return as in response to the demand of her melodramatic appearance.
“i’ve brung back yer runerway,” said tolliver cheerily, as he helped the young woman to dismount. “she clim down the mounting by one pertic’ler trail an’ i jes’ fotch her up by t’other.”
miss crabb spoke not a word, but ran into the hotel and up to her room without glancing to the right or to the left. in her great haste the stiff old sun-bonnet fell from her head and tumbled upon the ground.
“wush ye’d jes’ be erbligin’ enough ter han’ thet there head-gear up ter me, mister,” said tolliver addressing crane, who was standing near. “my mammy’d raise er rumpage ef i’d go back ’thout thet ther bonnet.”
with evident reluctance and disgust crane gingerly took up the fallen article and gave it to tolliver, who thanked him so politely that all the onlooking company felt a glow of admiration for the uncouth and yet rather handsome cavalier.
“thet gal,” he observed, glancing in the direction that miss crabb had gone, “she hev the winnin’est ways of any gal i ever seed in my life. ye orter seen ’er up inter thet there bush a writin’ in ’er book! she’d jes’ tumbled kerwhummox down the clift an’ hed lodged ther’ in them cedars; but as she wer’ a writin’ when she started ter fall w’y she struck a writin’ an’ jes’ kep’ on at it same’s if nothin’ had happened. she’s game, thet ole gal air, i tell[64] ye! she don’t propose for any little thing like fallin’ off’n a clift, ter interfere with w’at she’s a doin’ at thet time, le’ me say ter ye. lord but she wer’ hongry, though, settin’ up ther a writin’ all night, an’ it’d a done ye good to a seen ’er eat thet chicken and them cake-biscuits my mammy cooked for breakfast. she air a mos’ alarmin’ fine gal, for a fac’.”
at this point dufour came out of the hotel, and when tolliver saw him there was an instantaneous change in the expression of the mountaineer’s face.
“well i’ll ber dorged!” he exclaimed with a smile of delight, “ef ther’ haint the same leetle john the baptis’ what bapsonsed me down yer inter the branch! give us yer baby-spanker, ole feller! how air ye!”
dufour cordially shook hands with him, laughing in a jolly way.
“fust an’ only man at ever ducked me, i’m here ter say ter ye,” tolliver went on, in a cheery, half-bantering tone, and sitting sidewise on the mule. “ye mus’ hev’ a sight o’ muscle onto them duck legs and bantam arms o’ your’n.”
he had the last word still in his mouth when the little beast suddenly put down its head and flung high its hind feet.
“woirp!” they heard him cry, as he whirled over in the air and fell sprawling on the ground.
dufour leaped forward to see if the man was[65] hurt, but tolliver was upright in an instant and grinning sheepishly.
“thet’s right, bonus,” he said to the mule which stood quite still in its place, “thet’s right ole fel, try ter ac’ smart in comp’ny. yer a beauty now, ain’t ye?”
he replaced his hat, which had fallen from his head, patted the mule caressingly on the neck, then lightly vaulting to the old saddle-tree, he waved his hand to the company and turning dashed at a gallop down the mountain road, his spurs jingling merrily as he went.
“what a delicious character!”
“what precious dialect!”
“how typically american!”
“a veritable hero!”
everybody at hotel helicon appeared to have been captivated by this droll fellow.
“how like tolstoi’s lovely russians he is!” observed miss fidelia arkwright, of boston, a near-sighted maiden who did translations and who doted on virile literature.
“when i was in russia, i visited tolstoi at his shoe-shop—” began crane, but nobody appeared to hear him, so busy were all in making notes for a dialect story.
“tolstoi is the greatest fraud of the nineteenth century,” said peck. “that shoe-making pretence of his is about on a par with his genius in genuineness and sincerity. his novels are great chunks of raw filth, rank, garlic garnished and hideous. we touch them only because the[66] french critics have called them savory. if the revue de deux mondes should praise a turkish novel we could not wait to read it before we joined in. tolstoi is remarkable for two things: his coarseness and his vulgar disregard of decency and truth. his life and his writings are alike crammed with absurdities and contradictory puerilities which would be laughable but for their evil tendencies.”
“but, my dear sir, how then do you account for the many editions of tolstoi’s books?” inquired the historian, r. hobbs lucas.
“just as i account for the editions of cowper and montgomery and wordsworth and even shakespeare,” responded peck. “you put a ten per cent. author’s royalty on all those dear classics and see how soon the publishers will quit uttering them! if tolstoi’s russian raw meat stories were put upon the market in a fair competition with american novels the latter would beat them all hollow in selling.”
“oh, we ought to have international copyright,” plaintively exclaimed a dozen voices, and so the conversation ended.
strangely enough, each one of the company in growing silent did so in order to weigh certain suggestions arising out of peck’s assertions. it was as if a score of semi-annual statements of copyright accounts were fluttering in the breeze, and it was as if a score of wistful voices had whispered:
“how in the world do publishers grow rich when the books they publish never sell?”
perhaps gaspard dufour should be mentioned as appearing to have little sympathy with peck’s theory or with the inward mutterings it had engendered in the case of the rest of the company.
if there was any change in dufour’s face it was expressed in a smile of intense self-satisfaction.
