The Fire Flower/Chapter 6

S directed, Sheldon went back down the knoll until he stood near a tumble-down shanty there, some fifty or sixty feet from the sturdy log house, from which he did not remove his eyes. As he went the door opened a very little, just enough for a pair of alert and vigilant eyes to watch him.

When he stopped he was prepared to see a round, brown arm slip out to retrieve the fallen bearskin. But instead the door opened quickly, there stepped out what at first glance seemed to be a boy clad in man’s trousers, boots, and terribly torn and patched blue shirt. But her hair lay in two loosely plaited braids across her shoulders, and hardly the second glance was needed to assure him that here was no boy, but she who had fled before him.

In coming out the door had opened just far enough for her to pass out, then had been closed so quickly that he had had no glimpse of the cabin’s interior. She stood still, a hand upon the latch behind her, facing him.

Sheldon raised his hand to lift his hat, remembered and said quietly:

“Good morning.”

“Good morning,” she repeated after him.

He was near enough to guess something of what lay in her eyes. Certainly a strange sort of curiosity underlay her penetrating gaze which seemed in all frankness to search deeply for all that a long look could tell her.

And, it seemed to him, under this look lay another that hinted to him that she’d whirl, jerk the door open, and disappear in a flash if he so much a stookas took [sic] a step forward. So he moved back another pace or two, to reassure her, leaning against a fragment of wall.

If she regarded him with fixed intentness, no less did the man stare at her. There was every sign of hasty dressing; she must have drawn on the first garments falling to her hurrying hands. The boots were unquestionably many sizes too large; trousers and shirt were monstrously ill-fitting. And, even so, the amazing thing was that she was most undeniably pretty. And, burned as she was from the sun, she was not an Indian. Her hair was a sunkissed brown; her eyes, he fancied, were gray.

“I am sorry,” said Sheldon after a considerable silence, “that I frightened you just now.”

Her gaze did not waver, lost nothing of its steady, searching intentness. He could see no change of expression upon her slightly parted lips. She offered no remark to his, but stood waiting.

“I think,” he went on in a little, putting all of the friendliness he could manage into his voice, “that I was at first startled as much as you. I’d hardly expected to stumble upon a girl here, you know!”

If she did know she didn’t take the trouble to tell him that she did. There was something positively disconcerting in the scrutiny to which she so openly subjected him.

“You see,” he continued his monologue stoutly, determined to overlook any little idiosyncrasies, “it was a surprise to me to see your tracks, in the first place. And then to come upon you like that—and to find this old settlement here— Why, I had always thought that no man had ever so much as builded him a dugout in the Sasnokee-keewan.”

He stopped suddenly. It struck him as ridiculous: this was he babbling on while she stood there looking at him like that. Certainly he had given her ample opportunity to say something. Yet she seemed to have not the slightest intention of opening her mouth. Still she watched him as one might watch some new, strange animal.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded sharply, her attitude beginning to irritate him. “Can’t you talk?”

“Yes.” Just the monosyllable, clearly enunciated. She had answered his question; he hoped she would go on. But she made no offer to do so.

“Well,” cried the man, “why don’t you? You’re not keeping still because we haven’t been introduced, are you? Good Lord, why do you look at me like I was part of a side show? Didn’t you ever see a man before? I’m not trying to flirt with you! Say something!”

His nerves had been tense, and at best his temper was likely to flare out now and then. He wished for a second that she was a few years younger so that he could take her across his knee.

“Flirt?” she repeated after him, lifting her brows. She shook her head. “What must I say?”

The suspicion came upon him that she was secretly enjoying herself at his expense, and he said quickly:

“I should think you could find a number of things to say here where a stranger doesn’t come every day. You might even ask me inside and strain no sense of convention. You might offer me a cup of coffee and nobody would accuse you of being forward! You might tell me where I am and what town this is—or was. You might tell me something about the rest of your party, where they are, and when I can have a talk with some one who is willing to talk.”

For a moment she seemed to be pondering what he had said. Then, as bidden, she answered, speaking slowly, taking up point by point:

“You cannot come inside. I would lock the door. I would shoot you with a big gun I have in there. It is like yours, but bigger. Coffee?” She shook her head as she had before. “I don’t know what that is. This town is Johnny’s Luck. I have no one else for you to talk to. You must go away.”

Sheldon stared at her incredulously. The short laugh with which he meant to answer her was a bit forced, unconvincing in his own ears. The girl watched him with the same keen, speculative eyes.

“You don’t mean for me to believe that you are here all alone?” he demanded.

She hesitated. Then she answered in her own words of a moment ago:

“I have no one else for you to talk to.”

“That’s pure nonsense, you know,” he retorted bluntly. She made no reply.

“I got off my trail and blundered into this place,” he went on presently. “I’m going on out presently. I’m not going to trouble you or any of your people.”

“That is nice,” was the first remark voluntarily given. Sheldon flushed.

“Just the same,” he said a little sternly, “I’m not going out like a blind fool without finding out a thing or two. If you’re up to some kind of a lark it strikes me that it’s run on about long enough. There’s precious little use in your pretending to be the only one in here.”

By now he knew better than to expect her to speak except in reply to a direct question, and so continued:

“Will you tell me who you are?”

“I am Paula.”

“Paula?” he said. “Paula what?”

“Just Paula,” quietly.

“But your other name?”

“I have just one name. I am Paula.”

For the life of him he did not know what to make of her. There was the possibility that she was playing with him. In that case she played her part amazingly well! There was the possibility that she spoke in actual as well as in seeming sincerity.

“Who is your father?” he asked abruptly.

And at her answer, calmly, quietly spoken, he was startled Into the suspicion of the third possibility—madness.

For she had answered gravely:

“He is a king. His name is Midas.”

From under gathered brows his eyes probed at her like knives. Was she hoaxing him, or was she mad? Unless she was crazed why did she so cleverly seek to appear so? What maid stands out before a man, stranger though he be, and poses to him in the light of an insane woman? If she were not mad, then why was she striving to make him believe her so? Then why?

He had come to her for answers, and he but got new questions that were, as yet, unanswerable. When he spoke again it was thoughtfully.

“Why do you tell me your father is King Midas?” he asked.

“Because you said to me, ‘Who is your father?’”

“And you just naturally and truthfully tell me he is a king! What’s the use of this nonsense?”

She made no reply. There was a little silence before he spoke. There came to him clearly the sound as of some heavy object falling upon bare floor within the cabin.

“There is some one else in there!” he exclaimed impatiently. “Who is it? Why don’t they come out and answer me sensibly if you won’t!”

Positively now there was a quick look of alarm upon her face. For a second he thought that she was going to whisk back into the house. And then she cried hurriedly :

“He is in there—yes. The king! And Napoleon is there and Richard and Johnny Lee. Shall I throw open the door for them to put out their guns and shoot you?”

“Great Heavens!” gasped Sheldon. And to her, wonderingly, “Why should they shoot me? What harm am I doing any one?”

“I know!” Her voice, until now so quiet, suddenly rang out passionately. “You come from the world outside, from over there!” she threw out her arm widely toward the south. “You come over, the mountains from the world outside where all men are bad! Where they fight like beasts for what we have here, where they steal and kill and cheat and lie and snatch from one another like hungry coyotes and wolves! You come here to steal and kill. I know! Haven’t others come before you, bad men creeping in from the outside?”

A strange sort of shiver ran through Sheldon’s blood. But, with quick inspiration, he asked her:

“And what has happened to them?”

“They died!” was the unhesitating answer. “As you, too, will die and quick if you do not go out and leave us. I should have killed you last night while you slept. But you startled me; I had never seen a man like you. The others had beards; you had no hair upon your face and for a little I thought you were a woman, another like me, and I was glad. And then you woke—and I ran. I should have killed you—”

She broke off panting, her breast rising and falling tumultuously. Her eyes were bright and hard, her tanned cheeks flushed.

“She’d drive a knife into a man sleeping and never turn a hair!” was Sheldon’s silent comment.

“I tell you to go!” she flung at him again. “Before I have you killed like the others. What do you want here? What is here that belongs to you? You are looking for gold. I know! That is what the others wanted. Do you want to die as they died?”

“Listen to me!” interrupted the man sharply. “I didn’t come here to hurt you. I didn’t come for gold. I came because I lost the trail.”

“Liar!” she cried out at him.

Silenced, he could but stand and stare at her. And slowly all sense of anger at her words died out of him and into his heart welled a great pity. For no longer did he wonder if she but played a part or was mad.

Again, through the brief silence, there came to him faintly the sound of something stirring within the cabin. He listened eagerly, hoping to guess what it was moving beyond the door she guarded so jealously. But the sound had come and gone and it was very still again.

Was there one person in there? Or were there two? Or more? Man or woman? Surely there was some one, surely there could not be two mad people here! Then why did the one in there hold back, letting her dispute entrance to the stranger? Why was there not another face to show at a crack of the door or at a window?

Questions, questions, and questions! And no one to answer them but a mad girl who said that she was Paula, daughter of King Midas! No; not even Paula to answer. For suddenly she had jerked the door open, slipped inside, and Sheldon heard the sound as of a heavy bar dropping into wooden sockets.

He was quite alone in the empty street of a town that had lived and died and been forgotten. And never in all his life had he been more uncertain what next to do.