12. From Ambush
The sensations of a sunrise awakening were new to Calvin Parker. He felt like a pioneer In some unexplored world as he strode to the front door and gazed at the nature study spread before him, brightcolored and moist, as from wet paint.
That his pinto and the squirrels were already astir filled him with a sort of indignation. Yet why shouldn't they be? Their precedent had dictated the hour of his retirement after supper last night when, tired by the carpenter's job of making horsehabitable the shed at the rear of the cabin, he had found that he could not read, could not even smoke.
But, this early morning, vigor swept through his veins, while thoughts to match breezed In his brain. He would demonstrate that his quest, which had seemed all-important the day before, could be forced Into secondary place to-day. He would stay at home and paint during the morning, postponing his excursion Into the Metcalf stronghold until afternoon.
A man should attend his work before seeking pleasure. Liquor, which he had allowed in the past to get the better of him. In the future should be a mere incident In his pleasure. "The mead that cheered" - cheer was its of&ce rather than corruption.
He congratulated himself that moral strength was coming to him as rapidly as physical In this vital mountain air. He realized and pardoned as entirely justifiable a great pride in his self-control. It was only that which he had lacked all along.
After toasting these commendable sentiments in strong coffee, he planted Teetotaler's picket-pin in a plot of tall grass near by, then assorted the paraphernalia of his art. A goodly piece of canvas he cut from his roll and stretched upon a frame with four thumb-tacks. His easel was soon put together.
An hour after rising found him astride a foldingchair on the edge of Falloway Rim just to the left of the cabin. Without the restriction of a drawing, he was transferring the oils from palette to canvas in an impressionistic reproduction of the colorful scene. In it had become pictured his strong thoughts about himself; the dews, still dripping, baptized it "Early to Rise."
From the branches of the huge armored pine which helped form the frame of the cabin, a pair of squirrels with progeny still nested, whom on earlier acquaintance he had addressed as Mr. and Mrs. Boomer, defied the laws of gravity in descent. Perhaps in appreciation of the hand-cooked breakfasts he had shared with them, perhaps because they expected further provender from the appetizing piles on the palette, they perked their tufted heads this way and that, chattering as though in favorable comment, for all the world like the human pretenders so inevitable in city galleries. Out of all proportion to their size, they subtracted from the solitude.
For a couple of hours Parker painted, pleased that he should be at work again, Inspired to excel. But there was a green that he tried for in vain from the tubes of his assortment - the pale yet potential green of sunlight on laurel, shafted through the deepest shadow. He arose and stepped back to study his latest experiment with dissatisfied eyes.
Suddenly he leaped aside. The report of a gunshot had shattered the quiet. A black spot near the upper left-hand thumbtack told that a bullet had pierced the frame of his stretcher. As he edged toward the more substantial cover of the armored pine, he realized that only his attempt at the elusive green had removed him in time.
Scarcely had he gained such shelter as the tree afforded, feeling painfully large and conspicuous, when a second shot spat from the unseen gun, a third, an instant fourth.
In the anxious silence that ensued, his vital concern over the integrity of his owm hide was somewhat alloyed by the observation that, in these last shots at least, his work had been aimed at, rather than himself. The edge of the upper right-hand tack had been dinted; the left-hand one had been missed entirely, as testified by a black pt)lka-dot a half-inch below it; the fourth had been hit so squarely that the canvas v/as cut from the board and curled inward.
With an imprecation, Parker turned and peered about. If his mortal career was to end, it would be now, since he could not achieve Invisibility. But in the laurel bushes that entirely screened the cabin and shed, nothing was seen to move, save the general, gentle flutter of the foliage. Not the faintest trace of smoke could he discern and no guidance could be hoped from the squirrels. They had wisely disappeared.
Substantiated In the theory that the immediate exaction of his life was not the object of the interruption, he spent the next half-hour systematically flaying the brush and searching for tracks. He was urged by a review of the several warnings he had received since his somewhat precipitate arrival in Dismal Gap. Was this last a warning, too, he asked himself?
Flouted in the discovery of any trace which he could assume to have been made by a prowler, he decided on artifice. Returning to the easel, he gathered up the canvas, folded easel and camp-chair, returned to the cabin, entered by the front door. The rear one stood open. With scarcely a pause to deposit his paraphernalia upon the cot, he seized his rifle and hurried out the back in time to see a disturbance of the underbrush, as of some one approaching to settle in ambush.
Without waiting to count the cost, he rushed the laurel and threw himself flat on the ground. The crash of a precipitate retreat rewarded him, although he could see nothing ahead but green. Pressing closely after the crackling of brush and thud of footfalls upon log or hard-pan, he plunged In reckless pursuit. But not for long.
A sudden cessation of noise ahead brought him to a standstill. His quarry must have side-stepped, perhaps had swung beyond pursuit of his ears Into ; the low-hanging boughs.
Exasperated, he began to beat the bush, this way ' and that, back and forth, determined to flush the disturber of his morning's work. He would not be ridiculed that way, he assured himself, with the vehemence of his unwonted bodily energy. Whoever had aimed those impertinent bullets into the four corners of his canvas was going to account to him.
He had need of persistence. Nothing whatever came of the bush-beating, not the faintest sound of any retreat, although several times he stopped short and held his breath for intensive listening.
Perspiring from mental as well as physical temperature, he dropped off a cut-bank to rest and think. There he found himself face to face with a humorous-eyed white mule - a white mule with red legs, tied to the rhododendron copse.
"Say, you didn't fire those shots?" he asked aloud, returning the look.
The beast continued to stare at him, his elongated features solemn, absolutely non-committal. By not so much as a twitch of lip or ear did he acknowledge the demand.
A rush of light came to Parker. Association of ideas led him to conclusion. White mule with red legs - girl of wondrous hair - Metcalf place nearby.
A queer way to greet an Inoffensive tourist whom once she had befriended, unto whom she had ministered by washing his face and ears I Why should she wish to demonstrate her marksmanship by puncturing the tacks of the canvas upon which he was at work - upon which he was painting what bade fair to be a masterpiece?
He had this and a few other questions to ask Miss Vernaluska Metcalf and he intended to ask them, even if she had evaded him in the woods by supercraft, he assured himself. She would answer, he guessed - that is, unless she preferred to walk home !
"Put them up, stranger I"
This pithy interruption rewarded a tedious campaign of waiting on the part of the man - Mr. Hybrid hadn't seemed to mind.
The voice was that of the girl who had put Tobe Riker in his place - there could be no doubt of it, although no one substantiated the conclusion in person.
Her command had been specific enough. Even Parker, unused to such, had no doubt what was meant by "them." He did drop his weapon and raise one hand, but only to lift his velour fedora, wave it toward the bush in general, then lay it on the bank beside him.
"Howdy-do, Miss Metcalf? Been there all along? Come on out."
When she appeared from the thickest of the rhododendron clumps, he understood better how she had eluded him. Her dress was green; in fact, almost that pale, potential shade for which he had been trying when the first shot had interrupted.
The perception impressed him. Above the gingiham, her hair, from which she had removed her hat, flushed in the sunlight with something the effect of the early rhododendron flowers atop the green plants.
"You appear to enjoy Solomon's company," she said. "I'm hungry."
Parker's resentful expression eased at the sight of hers.
"Oh, Solomon and I get along all right. You see, Pm sort of wise myself in my day and degeneration. Now that you mention It, I'm sort of hungry, too."
"Leastwise, not so you can't control it," she snapped. "Why have you been sitting guard on my mule?"
"Curiosity, my dear young woman - curiosity given endurance by an even stronger thing or two." Parker had arisen at her emergence from cover. "It may seem a small matter to you, but self-respect compels me to ask why you shot holes into all four corners of my picture."
"I didn't hurt it none."
"You didn't exactly ruin it, no. But do you think it was very nice to interrupt a harmless artist at work in that - er - emphatic way?"
A suggestion of a dimple wavered into her cheek as she proposed: "Any audience has got a right to express itself, ain't it? I was - was hissing you."
"Hissing? But why?"
"Because I don't like your picture nohow, that's why! Now that your self-respect is attended, I'll be wishing you good morning."
With this vixenish addendum, she started toward the mule. But Parker claimed her consideration with several more demands.
"My self-respect isn't properly attended. Having said that much, you owe it both to yourself and me to say more. You shot up my picture because you didn't like It? Why don't you like it?"
"It is a picture of nature that ain't natural."
"How could you know - that Is, how could you see its detail at such a distance?"
She sniffed, probably incensed anew by his corrected Insinuation that she was no fit critic of his work.
"Oh, I slipped up plenty close enough to see that picture. I could have seen It a quarter-mile, likely, the way you were wasting good paint. Why didn't you fling it on with a palette-knife?"
The question caught his attention even above his resentment. He took a more persuasive start:
"Perhaps you don't know. Miss Metcalf, that my method with that landscape Is one highly approved by an ultra-modern school. They hope to make the present-day age of art distinctive for its specialization. One thing in every picture, they think, is enough to emphasize. As a quick means to a superbrilliant end, It Is "
"Perhaps," she mimicked, putting full weight on his didactic tone, "I understand what you mean without your putting yourself out further."
"I'm sure you'd have liked my effort better," he continued, "had you known the name to which I was painting it - 'Early to Rise.' "
" 'Early to Rise," was it? Say, you-all had best get up earlier next time!"
She had the additional unklndness to vent a small, lilting laugh.
"Well, of all the unmitigated " The Indignation of the artist from the world outside started to boil over; then, because In his work he was always ready to learn, he turned off the fire. "I wish you would tell me," he said, "why my picture offended you Into shooting bullets at it. / thought it rather good."
She showed herself reached by his good-natured appeal.
"I don't mind If you don't," she smiled. "As a student of these mountains, I felt It my plumb duty to stop you. You could shovel on the paint to copy SImms's calico counter, or anything made by man, or even folks - who generally look a heap like what they-all make of themselves - and I wouldn't have a nary word to say. But when you set about making a freak out of Nature "
She paused a moment, studying him speculatively, as If to determine whether there could be any good In him, then went on :
"Do you know. It always appears to me like Goda-mlghty must have taken particular pains tinting the Blue Ridge, knowing He'd use It for a place to rest His spirit In. Can't you see how everything IS blended proper, with a nary splotch around? Sometimes I lie down on the moss and shut my eyes. Then I forget sight, feel only sound. The whole range kind of sings songs to me, sometimes sad and sometimes chlrky, according to the weather, but never loud. Every rock and every flower and every leaf is singing, singing along; but no voice ever raises loud or discordant above the rest. It's just grand and smooth - like religion! Of course you can't ever touch It In paint, but why don't you try, painter man - why don't you tryT''
The girl had lost all diffidence In the course of her speech; her eyes held steadily on his; her face was aglow. In her dress of Indeterminate green, backed by the deeper-hued bushes, her hair an aureole of spun copper, she made an Impression upon the color convert to which he perforce bent the knee. She was a strange creature and really beautiful, he told himself. She had not a bad feature. Probably her skin, beneath the freckles and tan, was the thin porcelain that went with her hair.
The truth In her criticism of what now looked plainly a faddish, tawdry effort humbled him, awoke a sort of gratitude In him for her Interruption, to replace the pique he had shown. He had seen red so long - nothing but red, red, red - perhaps he had grown dense to subtler effects.
But before he could express himself, her mood changed. A hostile look conquered that of exultation as she remembered.
"If you-all don't mind, IVe got an engagement now - a pressing engagement to meet a square meal."
"Won't you take lunch with me?" Parker exclaimed eagerly. "My larder Is well stocked with things warranted by the labels to cook In a jifty."
"Thank you," she refused curtly, "but I've brought my own chunk."
Forthwith she began untying a small parcel from the saddle of Solomon. This she opened; from It produced a tin cup, a pair of sandwiches, a thick slice of cake with nut-studded frosting, and two redcheeked, comely apples.
She started toward the creek with the cup, but Parker Intercepted her.
"You will allow me," he Insisted over her protest.
When he returned with It dripping, he found her seated, energetically undertaking one of the sandwiches. As she accepted the cup, with an embarrassed nod for his courtesy, she said:
"I *spect you-all think It would be turn-about for me to ask you to share my grub."
"There looks to be plenty," he encouraged.
"There Is a-plenty, but "
"I should be delighted." Parker accepted with his best manner and started to seat himself on the bank. He straightened, however, on her exclamation:
"Don'tyou sit down beside me - I ain't asked you yet!"
"But you're going to, aren't you?"
"That's the point; I'm not." She returned viciously to the sandwich.
"I couldn't let even a dog stand around as hungry as I am, and not offer him a crust. I don't eat so much as most men - could do with very little."
"Folks had ought to be friendly before they break bread together."
"iVnd aren't we that - friendly?"
Parker tried for a very hungry expression as he glanced from the food to her, from her back to the food. He realized as he had not done before that he was starved for companionship.
"Surely not." The auburn lashes lifted from a nice selection of the best biting-place in an apple cheek. They revealed a sneer in the fawn-colored eyes. "rm right glad that my manners didn't get the best of me and make me ask you to lunch. There ain't any particular reason why I should eat with a slick/*
Her culminative vehemence made Parker gasp; then chuckles began to agitate him.
"Fve enjoyed that joke before," he murmured between laughs, "but it never grows tiresome. You'll have to pardon me, but - but "
The girl made no remark. She sat and watched him, eating energetically the while, as though in devouring the last crumb of the luncehon which he had elected to divide she could most teUingly express her disapproval of him and his unseemly levity over a subject so serious to her.
She had swallowed the last bite, had mounted, and was heading out of the copse, when he first seemed to realize that she was going.
"0h, I say, Miss Metcalf, wait a minute!" he cried, springing up and following her. "If you'll let me explain how ridiculous it Is "
"I reckon my funny-bone ain't so sharp as yours, stranger."
He caught the bridle and tried to stop the mule, but was forced to deliver his further remarks on the move. Solomon proceeded to demonstrate that he was wise enough to recognize but one master.
Parker, his arm around the mule's neck, stumbled backward, facing the girl with the one-sided, winning smile that had gained the day for him with so many women of his past.
"I wish you wouldn't call me stranger. I've met you twice before, and your father once, to say nothing of knowing many of your acquaintances - Asa SImms, the Plotts, and others In the village."
" 'Pears to me you have met too many already."
"But why not, when I have come to your mountains entirely on my own initiative, just to have a nice, peaceable time? Naturally I expected folks to treat me in a nice, peaceable way. I am used even to being liked, Miss Metcalf, and I had hoped that you "
"Ain't that why they sent you, maybe?" she suggested.
"Nobody sent me, except Do stop this stiffnecked, forty-horse-power whippet, and let me get breath enough to explain!"
"I 'spect you haven't noticed," she said cuttingly, "that I am in something of a hurry? Git ep, Solomon!"
At the aversion In her voice and face, Parker released his hold of her mount and stopped. From the middle of the stream, where he found himself, soaked to the knees, he stood looking after her.
"I'm coming over to make a call on you at Roaring Fork," he threatened in lifted voice.
"Don't you dare ! Haven't you-all got any manners, to call on a lady when you ain't asked?"
"But I'm coming to call on your father. I feel sure he'll be fair enough to listen to me. I shall hope, however, to have the pleasure "
''Don't you hope for any such unlikely thing!" At last she had turned, a vehement note in her tones. "You won't find your kind of pleasure on Roaring Fork, Mr. Parker of New York, and you will find what's worse. Don't you come - I warn you!"
She heel-urged Solomon Into a sudden sprint of speed. LIckety-split, they were gone.
Parker stood for several seconds longer In the stream, contemplating the agitation of the branches through which she had disappeared. His ears felt hot, his breath was coming hard. He realized that he was very angry. What an overbearing, regardless disposition she had, the green-clad quarry whom he had thought fairly trapped! Never had he vatt such insolence from a woman, even when he was at fault, as he certainly was not In this Instance.
Very well, he would not call on her, since she had forbidden It. He would leave her to wonder and wait in vain. But, even though not the revenuer she had Insisted him, he would find a way to the Metcalf still.