“I suppose I’m to stand here and freeze while you sit over there and laugh your fool head off!” shouted the Easterner. “I’ve got some dry clothing in my trunk on the wagon, which I might put on, if I could induce you to hurry a little.”
“Why, shucks. I come mighty near forgettin’ you, Willard,” said the rider. “An’ so you’ve got other clothes! Only they’re in your trunk on the buckboard, an’ you can’t get ’em. An’ you’re freezin’ an’ I’m laughin’ at you. You’ve got a heap of trouble, ain’t you, Willard. An’ all because you was dead set on goin’ to the left when you ought to have gone to the right.”
“Do hurry! Wont you, please?” said the girl’s voice, close to his stirrup.
He looked guiltily at her, for he had been about to say some vitriolic things to Masten, having almost lost patience with him. But at her words his slow good nature returned.
“I’m sure goin’ to hurry, ma’am.”
He urged the pony into the water again, rode to the buckboard, stepped off, and kneeling in the seat reached into the water and worked with the harness. Then, walking along the wagon tongue, which was slightly out of the water, he again reached into the water and fumbled with the harness. Then he stepped back, slapped the blacks and urged them with his voice, and they floundered out of the water and gained the bank, where they stood shaking the water from their glistening bodies.
He mounted his pony again and rode to the rear of the buckboard. Taking the braided hair rope that hung from the pommel of his saddle he made a hitch around the center of the rear axle. Then he wheeled his pony until it faced away from the buckboard, rode the length of the rope carefully, halted when it was taut, and then slowly, with his end of the rope fastened securely to the saddle horn, pulled the buckboard to a level on the river bottom.
Returning to the rear of the buckboard he unfastened the rope, coiled it, and rode to the bank, catching the blacks and leading them up the slope beyond where the girl, her aunt and uncle stood. He gently asked Uncle Jepson to hold the blacks, for fear they might stray, and then with a smile at the girl and Aunt Martha, he returned to the buckboard. There he uncoiled his rope again and attached one end of it to the tongue of the wagon, again, as before, riding away until the rope grew taut. Then, with a word to the pony, the wagon was drawn through the water to the edge of the sea of mud.
This mud looked treacherous, but it was the only way out; and so, after a pause for rest, he urged the pony on again. The buckboard traveled its length—then lurched into a rut and refused to move another foot, in spite of the straining of the pony and its rider’s urgings.
The rider paused, turned in the saddle and scratched his head in perplexity.
“I reckon we’ve run ag’in a snag, Patches,” he said. He scrutinized the slopes. “I expect we’ll have to try one of them, after all,” he decided.
“You were foolish to try to draw the wagon out with that thing, in the first place,” loudly criticized Masten. “If you had hitched the horses to the wagon after you had pulled it out of the hole, why—”
The rider looked at the fault-finder, his eyes narrowed.
“Why, if it ain’t Willard!” he said, amazed. “Standin’ there, workin’ his little old jaw ag’in! An’ a-mournin’ because I ain’t goin’ to get my feet wet! Well, shucks. I reckon there ain’t nothin’ to do now but to get the blacks an’ hitch ’em onto the wagon. There’s a heap of mud there, of course, but I expect some mud on them right pretty boots of yours wouldn’t spoil ’em. I’ll lead the blacks over an’ you can work your jaw on ’em.”
“Thanks,” said Masten, sneering, “I’ve had enough wettings for one day. I have no doubt that you can get the wagon out, by your own crude methods. I shall not interfere, you may be sure.”
He stalked away from the water’s edge and ascended the slope to a point several feet in advance of the wagon. Standing there, he looked across the mud at the girl and the others, as though disdaining to exchange further words with the rider.
The latter gazed at him, sidelong, with humorous malice in his glance. Then he wheeled his pony, rode back toward the wagon, veered when almost to it and forced the pony to climb the slope, thus getting Masten between the rope and the mud. He pulled the rope taut again, swinging wagon tongue and wheels at a sharp angle toward him, drove the spurs into the flanks of the pony and headed it toward the mud level, swinging so that the rope described a quarter circle. It was a time-honored expedient which, he expected, would produce the jerk releasing the wagon.
If he expected the action would produce other results, the rider gave no indication of it. Only the girl, watching him closely and seeing a hard gleam in his eyes, sensed that he was determined to achieve a double result, and she cried out to Masten. The warning came too late. The taut rope, making its wide swing, struck Masten in the small of the back, lifted him, and bore him resistlessly out into the mud level, where he landed, face down, while the wagon, released, swished past him on its way to freedom.
The rider took the wagon far up the sloping trail before he brought it to a halt. Then, swinging it sideways so that it would not roll back into the mud, he turned and looked back at Masten. The latter had got to his feet, mud-bespattered, furious.
The rider looked from Masten to the girl, his expression one of hypocritical gravity. The girl’s face was flushed with indignation over the affront offered her friend. She had punished him for his jealousy, she had taken her part in mildly ridiculing him. But it was plain to the rider when he turned and saw her face, that she resented the indignity she had just witnessed. She was rigid; her hands were clenched, her arms stiff at her sides; her voice was icy, even, though husky with suppressed passion.
“I suppose I must thank you for getting the wagon out,” she said. “But that—that despicable trick—” Her self-control deserted her. “I wish I were a man; you would not go unpunished!”
There was contrition in his eyes. For an infinitesimal space he regretted the deed, and his active mind was already framing an excuse. And then out of the tail of his eye he saw Uncle Jepson winking violent applause at him, and a broad grin suffused his face. He made some effort to suppress it, but deepening wrinkles around his eyes contradicted the gravity of his lips.
“Why, I wasn’t reckonin’ to hurt him, ma’am,” he said. “You see, he was right in the way, an’ I reckon I was feelin’ a bit wild right at that minute, an’—” His gaze went to Masten, who was scraping mud from his garments with a small flat stone. The rider’s eyes grew wide; more wrinkles appeared around them.
“Why, I’ve spoiled his white shirt,” he said as though speaking to himself, his voice freighted with awe. And then, as Masten shook a threatening fist at him, he suddenly yielded to the mirth that was consuming him and he bowed his head.
It was Uncle Jepson’s warning shout that impelled him to raise his head. He saw Masten coming toward him, clawing at the foolish holster at his waist, his eyes flashing murder, his teeth bared in a snarl.
“You, Patches!” said the rider, his voice coming with a cold, quick snap. And the piebald pony, his muscles and thews alive with energy in an instant, lunged in answer to the quick knee-press, through the mud, straight at Masten.
So it was a grim and formidable figure that Masten looked up at before he could get his weapon out of his holster. The lean face of the rider was close to his own, the rider’s eyes were steady, blue, and so cold that they made Masten forget the chill in the air. And one of the heavy pistols that the rider carried was close to Masten’s head, its big muzzle gaping forebodingly at him, and the rider’s voice, as he leaned from the saddle, came tense and low. The girl could not hear:
“Listen to this gospel, you mud-wallowin’ swine,” he said. “This is a man’s country,