Page:Weird Tales v01n01 (1923-03).djvu/44

Rh Well, we looked all around for the woman, expecting to get her help: but we couldn't find her, which was the first we knew that she had left Black Jean.

It took the French-Canadian's eye two or three months to heal, and then he came to our place to get something to wear over the empty socket. So father hammered out a circular piece of copper about twice the size of a silver dollar and bored a hole in opposite sides for a leather thong to hold it in place. Black Jean always wore it after that. He seemed vain of that piece of copper, for he used to keep it polished and shined until it glowed on a bright day like a bit of fire.

HAT fall the settlers opened up the first school in the district and imported a woman teacher from "The States."

I must tell you about that teacher. She was a thin, little mite of a thing that you would think the wind would blow away. Some said she was pretty and some that she wasn't. I could have called her pretty if her eyes hadn't been so black—hereabouts you don't see many eyes that are black—brown, maybe, and blue and gray, but not black. Fact is, there were just two people in these parts having those black eyes: Black Jean and the little mite of a school teacher.

Well she came. And she hadn't been here a month before it was noticed that Black Jean was coming to town more regular. And, what is more, he was coming down by the school and waiting around there with his bears.

This went on. They say that at first she didn't pay any attention to him, but I can't speak for that as I was too young. But in time there was talk and it came to me: then I watched. And I remember one afternoon after the teacher let us out we all went over to where the bears were. The teacher followed.

Black Jean was grinning and showing his white teeth.

"Beautiful ladee, "says he, "Sooch eyes, mooch black like the back of a water-bug."

Teacher smiled and said something I couldn't understand. It must have been French. I had never seen a Frenchman around women before, and Black Jean's manners were new to me. Here was a big weed of a man bowing and scraping and standing with his cap in his hand. We boys laughed at that—holding his cap in his hand.

The long and short of it was the French-Canadian was sparking the school teacher. And everybody talked about it, of course; they said it was a shame; they said if she didn't have sense enough to see what kind of man he was, someone should tell her.

I have often wondered since what would have happened if anybody had gone to that woman with stories of Black Jean. I know I'd never dared to, because, without knowing why, I was afraid of her. I guess maybe that is why the others didn't either.

There was no mistaking she was encouraging to Black Jean. She didn't seem to object in the slightest to his attentions and I can see them yet: her, little and pretty and in a white dress, and Black Jean lingering there with his bears, dirty, and towering head and shoulders above her.

LACK JEAN kept coming and people went on talking, and finally somebody said she had been to Split Hill.

And one day I began to understand it too. It was the time she was punishing some pupils. Three of them were lined up before her, and she started along whacking the outstretched hands with a stout ruler. Right in front of where I was sitting stood Ben Anger. He was the smallest of the lot and was trembling like a leaf.

Her first clip at him must have raised a welt on his hands, because he whimpered. She hit him again, and he closed his fingers. At that she caught up the jackknife he'd been whittling at his desk with and pried at his fingers until the blood came.

Sitting where I was, I saw her face while she was at it. It had the expression of a female devil. I didn't say