"From now on," said the girl, shaking out her skirts before sitting
down, "I am going to be a mystery."
"You are already," replied Bennington, for the first time aware that
such was the fact.
"No fencing. I have a plain business proposition to make. You and I are
going to be great friends. I can see that now."
"I hope so."
"And you, being a--well, an open-minded young man" (Now what does she
mean by that? thought Bennington), "will be asking all about myself. I
am going to tell you nothing. I am going to be a mystery."
"I'm sure----"
"No, you're not sure of anything, young man. Now I'll tell you this:
that I am living down the gulch with my people."
"I know--Mr. Lawton's."
She looked at him a moment. "Exactly. If you were to walk straight
ahead--not out in the air, of course--you could see the roof of the
house. Now, after we know each other better, the natural thing for you
to do will be to come and see me at my house, won't it?"
Bennington agreed that it would.
"Well, you mustn't."
Bennington expressed his astonishment.
"I will explain a very little. In a month occurs the Pioneer's Picnic
at Rapid. You don't know what the Pioneer's Picnic is? Ignorant boy!
It's our most important event of the year. Well, until that time I am
going to try an experiment. I am going to see if--well, I'll tell you;
I am going to try an experiment on a man, and the man is you, and I'll
explain the whole thing to you after the Pioneer's Picnic, and not a
moment before. Aren't you curious?"
"I am indeed," Bennington assured her sincerely.
She took on a small air of tyranny. "Now understand me. I mean what I
say. If you want to see me again, you must do as I tell you. You must
take me as I am, and you must mind me."
Bennington cast a fleeting wonder over the sublime self-confidence
which made this girl so certain he would care to see her again. Then,
with a grip at the heart, he owned that the self-confidence was well
founded.
"All right," he assented meekly.
"Good!" she cried, with a gleam of mischief. "Behold me! Old Bill
Lawton's gal! If you want to be pards, put her thar!"
"And so you are a girl after all, and no sun fairy," smiled Bennington
as he "put her thar."
"My cloud has melted," she replied quietly, pointing toward the brow of
Harney.
They chatted of small things for a time. Bennington felt intuitively
that there was something a little strange about this girl, something a
little out of the ordinary, something he had never been conscious of in
any other girl. Yet he could never seize the impression and examine it.
It was always just escaping; just taking shape to the point of
visibility, and then melting away again; just rising in the
modulations of her voice to a murmur that the ear thought to seize as
a definite chord, and then dying into a hundred other cadences. He
tried to catch it in her eyes, where so much else was to be seen.
Sometimes he perceived its influence, but never itself. It passed as a
shadow in the lower deeps, as though the feather mass of a great sea
growth had lifted slowly on an undercurrent, and then as slowly had
sunk back to its bed, leaving but the haunting impression of something
shapeless that had darkened the hue of the waters. It was most like a
sadness that had passed. Perhaps it was merely an unconscious trick of
thought or manner.