and he liked being ugly.
He began telling the boys that it was too hot to hunt now, but
later he meant to steal down to the marsh, where the ducks came at
sundown, and bag a few. "I can make off across the corn fields
before the old Cap sees me. He's not much on the run."
"He'll complain to your father."
"A whoop my father cares!" The speaker's restless eyes were
looking up through the branches. "See that woodpecker tapping;
don't mind us a bit. That's nerve!"
"They are protected here, so they're not afraid," said precise
George.
"Hump! They'll spoil the old man's grove for him. That tree's
full of holes already. Wouldn't he come down easy, now!"
Niel and George Adams sat up. "Don't you dare shoot here, you'll
get us all into trouble."
"She'd come right down from the house," cried Ed Elliott.
"Let her come, stuck-up piece! Who's talking about shooting,
anyway? There's more ways of killing dogs than choking them with
butter."
At this effrontery the boys shot amazed glances at one another, and
the brown Weaver twins broke simultaneously into giggles and rolled
over on the turf.
But Ivy seemed unaware that he was regarded as being especially
resourceful where dogs were concerned. He drew from his pocket a
metal sling-shot and some round bits of gravel. "I won't kill it.
I'll just surprise it, so we can have a look at it."
"Bet you won't hit it!"
"Bet I will!" He fitted the stone to the leather, squinted, and
let fly. Sure enough, the woodpecker dropped at his feet. He
threw his heavy black felt hat over it. Ivy never wore a straw
hat, even in the hottest weather. "Now wait. He'll come to.
You'll hear him flutter in a minute."
"It ain't a he, anyhow. It's a female. Anybody would know that,"
said Niel contemptuously, annoyed that this unpopular boy should
come along and spoil their afternoon. He held the fate of his
uncle's spaniel against Ivy Peters.
"All right, Miss Female," said Ivy carelessly, intent upon a
project of his own. He took from his pocket a little red leather
box, and when he opened it the boys saw that it contained curious
little instruments: tiny sharp knife blades, hooks, curved needles,
a saw, a blow-pipe, and scissors. "Some of these I got with a
taxidermy outfit from the Youth's Companion, and some I made
myself." He got stiffly down on his knees,--his joints seemed
disinclined to bend at all,--and listened beside his hat. "She's
as lively as a cricket," he announced. Thrusting his hand suddenly
under the brim, he brought out the startled bird. It was not
bleeding, and did not seem to be crippled.
"Now, you watch, and I'll show you something," said Ivy. He held
the woodpecker's head in a vice made of his thumb and forefinger,
enclosing its panting body with his palm. Quick as a flash, as if
it were a practised trick, with one of those tiny blades he slit
both the eyes that glared in the bird's stupid little head, and
instantly released it.
The woodpecker rose in the air with a whirling, corkscrew motion,
darted to the right, struck a tree-trunk,--to the left, and struck
another. Up and down, backward and forward among the tangle of
branches it flew, raking its feathers, falling and recovering
itself. The boys stood watching it, indignant and uncomfortable,
not knowing what to do. They were not especially sensitive; Thad
was always on hand when there was anything doing at the slaughter
house, and the Blum boys lived by killing things. They wouldn't
have believed they could be so upset by a hurt woodpecker. There
was something wild and desperate about the way the darkened
creature beat its wings in the branches, whirling in the sunlight
and never seeing it, always thrusting its head up and shaking it,
as a bird does when it is drinking. Presently it managed to get
its feet on the same limb where it had been struck, and seemed to
recognize that perch. As if it had learned something by its
bruises, it pecked and crept its way along the branch and
disappeared into its own hole.
"There," Niel Herbert exclaimed between his teeth, "if I can get it
now, I can kill it and put it out of its misery. Let me on your
back, Rhein."
Rheinhold was the tallest, and he obediently bent his bony back.
and the branches begin a long way up. Niel tore his trousers and
scratched his bare legs smartly before he got to the first fork.
After recovering breath, he wound his way up toward the woodpecker's
hole, which was inconveniently high. He was almost there, his
companions below thought him quite safe, when he suddenly lost his
balance, turned a somersault in the air, and bumped down on the
grass at their feet. There he lay without moving.
"Run for water!"
"Run for Mrs. Forrester! Ask her for whiskey."
"No," said George Adams, "let's carry him up to the house. She
will know what to do."
"That's sense," said Ivy Peters. As he was much bigger and
stronger than any of the others, he lifted Niel's limp body and
started up the hill. It had occurred to him that this would be a
fine chance to get inside the Forresters' house and see what it was
like, and this he had always wanted to do.
Mary, the cook, saw them coming from the kitchen window, and ran
for her mistress. Captain Forrester was in Kansas City that day.
Mrs. Forrester came to the back door. "What's happened? It's
Niel, too! Bring him in this way, please."
Ivy Peters followed her, keeping his eyes open, and the rest
trooped after him,--all but the Blum boys, who knew that their
place was outside the kitchen door. Mrs. Forrester led the way
through the butler's pantry, the dining-room, the back parlour, to
her own bedroom. She threw down the white counterpane, and Ivy
laid Niel upon the sheets. Mrs. Forrester was concerned, but not
frightened.
"Mary, will you bring the brandy from the sideboard. George,
telephone Dr. Dennison to come over at once. Now you other boys
run out on the front porch and wait quietly. There are too many of
you in here." She knelt by the bed, putting brandy between Niel's
white lips with a teaspoon. The little boys withdrew, only Ivy
Peters remained standing in the back parlour, just outside the
bedroom door, his arms folded across his chest, taking in his
surroundings with bold, unblinking eyes.
Mrs. Forrester glanced at him over her shoulder. "Will you wait on
the porch, please? You are older than the others, and if anything
is needed I can call on you."
Ivy cursed himself, but he had to go. There was something final
about her imperious courtesy,--high-and-mighty, he called it. He
had intended to sit down in the biggest leather chair and cross his
legs and make himself at home; but he found himself on the front
porch, put out by that delicately modulated
voice as effectually as
if he had been kicked out by the brawniest tough in town.
Niel opened his eyes and looked wonderingly about the big, half-
darkened room, full of heavy, old-fashioned walnut furniture. He
was lying on a white bed with ruffled pillow shams, and Mrs.
Forrester was kneeling beside him, bathing his forehead with
cologne. Bohemian Mary stood behind her, with a basin of water.
"Ouch, my arm!" he muttered, and the perspiration broke out on his
face.
"Yes, dear, I'm afraid it's broken. Don't move. Dr. Dennison will
be here in a few minutes. It doesn't hurt very much, does it?"
"No'm," he said faintly. He was in pain, but he felt weak and
contented. The room was cool and dusky and quiet. At his house
everything was horrid when one was sick. . . . What soft fingers
Mrs. Forrester had, and what a lovely lady she was. Inside the
lace ruffle of her dress he saw her white throat rising and falling
so quickly. Suddenly she got up to take off her glittering rings,--
she had not thought of them before,--shed them off her fingers
with a quick motion as if she were washing her hands, and dropped
them into Mary's broad palm. The little boy was thinking that he
would probably never be in so nice a place again. The windows went
almost down to the baseboard, like doors, and the closed green
shutters let in streaks of sunlight that quivered on the polished
floor and the silver things on the dresser. The heavy curtains
were looped back with thick cords, like ropes. The marble-topped
wash-stand was as big as a sideboard. The massive walnut furniture
was all inlaid with pale-coloured woods. Niel had a scroll-saw,
and this inlay interested him.
"There, he looks better now, doesn't he, Mary?" Mrs. Forrester ran
her fingers through his black hair and lightly kissed him on the
"Wheels on the bridge; it's Doctor Dennison. Go and show him in,
Mary."
Dr. Dennison set Niel's arm and took him home in his buggy. Home
was not a pleasant place to go to; a frail egg-shell house, set off
on the edge of the prairie where people of no consequence lived.
Except for the fact that he was Judge Pommeroy's nephew, Niel would
have been one of the boys to whom Mrs. Forrester merely nodded
brightly as she passed. His father was a widower. A poor relation,
a spinster from Kentucky, kept house for them, and Niel thought she
was probably the worst housekeeper in the world. Their house was
usually full of washing in various stages of incompletion,--tubs
sitting about with linen soaking,--and the beds were "aired" until
any hour in the afternoon when Cousin Sadie happened to think of
making them up. She liked to sit down after breakfast and read
murder trials, or peruse a well-worn copy of "St. Elmo." Sadie was
a good-natured thing and was always running off to help a neighbour,
but Niel hated to have anyone come to see them. His father was at
home very little, spent all his time at his office. He kept the
county abstract books and made farm loans. Having lost his own
property, he invested other people's money for them. He was a
gentle, agreeable man, young, good-looking, with nice manners, but
Niel felt there was an air of failure and defeat about his family.
He clung to his maternal uncle, Judge Pommeroy, white-whiskered and
portly, who was Captain Forrester's lawyer and a friend of all the
great men who visited the Forresters. Niel was proud, like his
mother; she died when he was five years old. She had hated the
West, and used haughtily to tell her neighbours that she would never
think of living anywhere but in Fayette county, Kentucky; that they
had only come to Sweet Water to make investments and to "turn the
crown into the pound." By that phrase she was still remembered,
poor lady.
THREE
For the next few years Niel saw very little of Mrs. Forrester. She
was an excitement that came and went with summer. She and her
husband always spent the winter in Denver and Colorado Springs,--
left Sweet Water soon after Thanksgiving and did not return until
the first of May. He knew that Mrs. Forrester liked him, but she
hadn't much time for growing boys. When she had friends staying
with her, and gave a picnic supper for them, or a dance in the
grove on a moonlit night, Niel was always invited. Coming and
going along the road to the marsh with the Blum boys, he sometimes
met the Captain driving visitors over in the democrat wagon, and he
heard about these people from Black Tom, Judge Pommeroy's faithful
negro servant, who went over to wait on the table for Mrs.
Forrester when she had a dinner party.
Then came the accident which cut short the Captain's career as a
roadbuilder. After that fall with his horse, he lay ill at the
Antlers, in Colorado Springs, all winter. In the summer, when Mrs.
Forrester brought him home to Sweet Water, he still walked with a
cane. He had grown much heavier, seemed encumbered by his own
bulk, and never suggested taking a contract for the railroad again.
He was able to work in his garden, trimmed his snowball bushes and
lilac hedges, devoted a great deal of time to growing roses. He
and his wife still went away for the winter, but each year the
period of their absence grew shorter.
All this while the town of Sweet Water was changing. Its future no
longer looked bright. Successive crop failures had broken the
spirit of the farmers. George Adams and his family had gone back
to Massachusetts, disillusioned about the West. One by one the
other gentlemen ranchers followed their example. The Forresters
now had fewer visitors. The Burlington was "drawing in its horns,"
as people said, and the railroad officials were not stopping off at
Sweet Water so often,--were more inclined to hurry past a town
where they had sunk money that would never come back.
Niel Herbert's father was one of the first failures to be crowded
to the wall. He closed his little house, sent his cousin Sadie
back to Kentucky, and went to Denver to accept an office position.
He left Niel behind to read law in the office with his uncle. Not
that Niel had any taste for the law, but he liked being with Judge
Pommeroy, and he might as well stay there as anywhere, for the
present. The few thousand dollars his mother had left him would
not be his until he was twenty-one.
Niel fitted up a room for himself behind the suite which the Judge
retained for his law offices, on the second floor of the most
pretentious brick block in town. There he lived with monastic
cleanliness and severity, glad to be rid of his cousin and her
inconsequential housewifery, and resolved to remain a bachelor,
like his uncle. He took care of the offices, which meant that he
did the janitor work, and arranged them exactly to suit his taste,
making the rooms so attractive that all the Judge's friends, and
especially Captain Forrester, dropped i
n there to talk oftener than
ever.
The Judge was proud of his nephew. Niel was now nineteen, a tall,
straight, deliberate boy. His features were clear-cut, his grey
eyes, so dark that they looked black under his long lashes, were
rather moody and challenging. The world did not seem over-bright
to young people just then. His reserve, which did not come from
embarrassment or vanity, but from a critical habit of mind, made
him seem older than he was, and a little cold.
One winter afternoon, only a few days before Christmas, Niel sat
writing in the back office, at the long table where he usually
worked or trifled, surrounded by the Judge's fine law library and
solemn steel engravings of statesmen and jurists. His uncle was at
his desk in the front office, engaged in a friendly consultation
with one of his country clients. Niel, greatly bored with the
notes he was copying, was trying to invent an excuse for getting
out on the street, when he became aware of light footsteps coming
rapidly down the outside corridor. The door of the front office
opened, he heard his uncle rise quickly to his feet, and, at the
same moment, heard a woman's laugh,--a soft, musical laugh which
rose and descended like a suave scale. He turned in his screw
chair so that he could look over his shoulder through the double
doors into the front room. Mrs. Forrester stood there, shaking her
muff at the Judge and the bewildered Swede farmer. Her quick eye
lighted upon a bottle of Bourbon and two glasses on the desk among
the papers.
"Is that the way you prepare your cases, Judge? What an example
for Niel!" She peeped through the door and nodded to the boy as he
rose.
He remained in the back room, however, watching her while she
declined the chair the Judge pushed toward her and made a sign of
refusal when he politely pointed to the Bourbon. She stood beside
his desk in her long sealskin coat and cap, a crimson scarf showing
above the collar, a little brown veil with spots tied over her
eyes. The veil did not in the least obscure those beautiful eyes,
dark and full of light, set under a low white forehead and arching
eyebrows. The frosty air had brought no colour to her cheeks,--her
skin had always the fragrant, crystalline whiteness of white
lilacs. Mrs. Forrester looked at one, and one knew that she was
bewitching. It was instantaneous, and it pierced the thickest
hide. The Swede farmer was now grinning from ear to ear, and he,
too, had shuffled to his feet. There could be no negative
encounter, however slight, with Mrs. Forrester. If she merely
bowed to you, merely looked at you, it constituted a personal
relation. Something about her took hold of one in a flash; one
became acutely conscious of her, of her fragility and grace, of her
mouth which could say so much without words; of her eyes, lively,
laughing, intimate, nearly always a little mocking.
"Will you and Niel dine with us tomorrow evening, Judge? And will
you lend me Tom? We've just had a wire. The Ogdens are stopping
over with us. They've been East to bring the girl home from
school,--she's had mumps or something. They want to get home for
Christmas, but they will stop off for two days. Probably Frank
Ellinger will come on from Denver."
"No prospect can afford me such pleasure as that of dining with
Mrs. Forrester," said the Judge ponderously.
"Thank you!" she bowed playfully and turned toward the double
doors. "Niel, could you leave your work long enough to drive me
home? Mr. Forrester has been detained at the bank."
Niel put on his wolfskin coat. Mrs. Forrester took him by his
shaggy sleeve and went with him quickly down the long corridor and
the narrow stairs to the street.
At the hitch-bar stood her cutter, looking like a painted toy among
the country sleds and wagons. Niel tucked the buffalo robes about