The Fire Flower/Chapter 8

HE stirred a very little; then lay still again. Pantherine! The word described her as no other word could do. Even in the little movement there was the litheness and grace that is so characteristic of the monster wild cats. Her eyes moved swiftly with every slightest move on his part.

She was like an animal a man has trapped, watching him narrowly, understanding something of his purpose, groping to read it all. When her eyes left him at all it was to travel in a flash to the door, to come back as swiftly. He still stood in the way. He was almost over her, so that he could be upon her before she was fairly on her feet.

Now the wild rise and fall of her breasts had lessened a little. She breathed more regularly, with now and then a long, lung-filling sigh. She lay with one arm flung above her head, the other at her side. He saw the red marks of his hands upon her wrists and frowned.

He had been as gentle as he could. But only unmerciful strength, not gentleness, could have quieted her. He thought how different she was from any girl in that outside world of which she spoke as a land of wickedness.

He, too, kept his eyes upon her, her and the open door. But he glanced about the room. The interior of the cabin was just what he could have imagined it to be. A few rough chairs, a table, some dishes, a fireplace with a littered hearth, a partition across the room with a bunk on each side.

He found that he was breathing as quickly as she was. His forehead was wet. As he looked down at her, resting, she seemed merely a slender, sun-browned slip of a girl. He marveled at the strength in that trim little body.

“I am sorry if I hurt you,” he said quietly when a few moments had passed in silence. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you ever. Won’t you believe me?”

She made no answer, but continued to stare at him, a hint of a frown gathering her brows, her eyes dark with distrust. From the depths of his heart he pitied her. Would it not be better if he turned now and went out of the house, leaving her? If he went his way back over the mountains and into the “outside world,” carrying not even the tale to tell of her? Mad, born of a mad father, what hope lay in life for her?

“Little Paula,” he said gently, soothingly, as he might have spoken to a very little girl, “I am sorry for you. Very sorry, little Paula. I want to be your friend. Can’t you believe me?”

Troubled eyes, eyes filled with distrust and fear and emotions which blended and were too vague for him to grasp, answered him silently. He moved a step; her eyes, full of eagerness, turned to the open door.

“No,” he said steadily. “You can’t go yet. Pretty soon I am going to let you go; you and your father. And I will go away and not even tell that you are here. He is your father, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” she said dully.

“All I want now,” went on Sheldon, his voice as gentle as he could make it, “is for you to rest and stay with me until your father comes back.” “He will never come back while you are here,” she said listlessly. “Never.”

“He’ll be away a deuced long, long time then,” he assured her grimly. “I’ll stay all year if I have to. What makes you think he won’t come back if I am here?”

“I know,” she answered decidedly.

She stopped there. He questioned her still further, but she was defiantly silent, so he drew a chair up and sat down, his rifle across his knees. She watched him curiously, losing not so much as his slightest gesture.

Perplexed, he brought out his pipe, scarcely conscious that he did so. It was his way to smoke at times of uncertainty when he sought to find a way out. He swept a match across his thigh, set it to the bowl of his pipe, drew at it deeply, and sent out a great cloud of smoke.

“You are a devil!” she screamed. “A devil!”

She had leaped to her feet, seeking to stoop under his arms as he sprang in front of her, wildly endeavoring to escape through the open door. But he caught her and carried her back to the bunk. She fought as she had fought before, striking at him, scratching, even trying to sink her teeth into his forearm.

“I’m not the one who is the devil!” he panted as at last he had thrust her back and stood over her again.

His pipe had fallen to the floor. He saw that her eyes were upon it now instead of on him. And the look in them was one of pure terror. She was afraid of a man’s pipe!

Suddenly he understood and his abrupt laughter, startling her, whipped her piercing look back to him. She drew away from him, crouching against the wall, ready to strike if he drew closer or to leap again toward the liberty he denied her. And Sheldon, even while he pitied her, laughed. He could not help it.

But in a little, heartily ashamed of himself, and yet grinning over his words, be said to her:

“You poor little thing, that isn’t any infernal apparatus! It’s just a pipe and the stuff in it isn’t brimstone, but merely Virginia tobacco. Everybody smokes outside—that is, pretty nearly all the men do,” he added hastily. “But I shouldn’t have smoked without asking your consent, in the first place, and I shouldn’t inflict that old pipe on any one if he did consent. But, honestly, Paula, there’s nothing satanic about it.”

“Liar!” she flung at him in scornful disbelief.

He picked up the pipe, knocked out the fire, and stuffed it back into his pocket.

“Look here,” he said quietly, his good-natured grin still in evidence at the corners of his mouth and in his eyes; “you’ve just made up your mind to hate me and call me names. It isn’t fair. Give me a chance, why don’t you? I’m not half as bad as you’re trying to make me out.”

She looked her disbelief, offering no remark. She made no pretenses: she hated him, held him in high scorn, would have struck him down had she been able, would dodge out of the door and slip away into the forest if he gave her the chance.

But, sane or mad, there was one characteristic which she had in common with all other human beings. Even through her fear and distrust of him, always had her curiosity looked out nakedly. He sought to take advantage of this to make her listen to him, then to draw her out a little. So, speaking slowly and quietly, he began to tell her of his trip in, of having lost his trail, of many trifling incidents of the journey.

Then he spoke of Belle Fortune, of men and women there, of the sort of lives they led. And of the world beyond Belle Fortune, the world “outside.” Of Seattle and San Francisco, of the ships and ferry-boats, of stores and theaters, of public gatherings, dances, picnics; of how women dressed and how men gambled—a thousand little colored bits of life with which he wished to interest her.

“Men are not bad out there,” he assured her. “Some are, of course; but most of them are not. They help one another often enough; they are friends and pardners, and a pretty good sort.”

He talked with her thusly for an hour. Through it she sat very still, her back against the wall, her knees drawn up between her clasped hands, her eyes steady upon his. What emotions, if any, he stirred in her breast, he could not guess. Her expression altered very little—never to show what she thought of him.

He felt rather hopeless, ready to give over in despair, when out of her calm and apparently unconcerned, uninterested quiet came the first swift, unexpected question. He was speaking carelessly of some friends in Vancouver with whom he had visited—the Grahams, who had the bulliest little team of twins you ever saw—”

“Tell me about them!” she interrupted eagerly.

Sheldon, in his surprise at hearing her speak at all, lost the thread of his story.

“The Grahams?” he asked. “Why, they—”

“No, the babies,” she said. “I have never seen a baby. Just little baby bears and squirrels.”

She stopped as abruptly as she had begun, her lips tight shut. But Sheldon had gropingly understood a wee bit of what lay in the girl’s heart, and hurried to answer, pretending not to see her return to her stubborn taciturnity.

“Well,” he told her, pleased so that his good-humored smile came back into his eyes, “they’re just the cutest little pair of rascals you ever saw. Bill and Bet, they call ’em. Just two years when I saw them last; walking around, you know, and looking on at life as though they knew all about it. And up to ’most anything. They are something like young bears, come to think about it! Just about as awkward, falling over everything. And rolypoly, fat as butterballs. Why, would you believe it—”

And so forth. Before he got through he made a fairly creditable story of it, combining in the Graham twins all the baby tricks he had ever seen, heard, or read of. He affected not to be watching her all the time, but none the less saw that there was at last a little sparkle of interest in her eyes.

“Poor little starved heart,” he thought. “Mad as she is, she is still woman enough to suffer for the want of little children about her.”

When he had done with the twins there was a long silence in the cabin. He had pretty well talked himself out, in the first place. And in the second, he wanted time to think. He couldn’t sit here and babble on this way indefinitely. Soon or late he must seek actively, rather than thus passively, for the solution to his problem.

Leaning back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head, he smiled at her pleasantly. And he fancied that she was puzzled by him, that almost she was ready to wonder if all men were in truth the creatures of evil she so evidently had thought them. Was she almost ready to believe in him a little bit?

“Swallow some more fire,” said Paula suddenly.

“Eh?” muttered Sheldon.

“Yes,” she told him. “I won’t run this time.”

His lips twitching, he drew out his pipe and again lighted it. He saw that she was tremendously interested. The scratching of the match made her draw back as though from a threatened blow, but she caught herself and did not move again. He drew in a great mouthful of smoke and sent it out ceilingward. She watched that, too, interestedly.

“You see,” he informed her with a semblance of gravity as deep as her own, “I don’t swallow the fire. I just take in the smoke and send it out again.”

“Why do you do it?” she wanted to know. “Is it some sort of magic?”

“Bless you, no!” he chuckled. “It’s just for fun; a kind of habit, you know. A man smokes just as you’d eat ice-cream or candy, or something that was fun to eat. Just as— By glory!” He caught himself up. “I’ll bet you don’t know what candy is! Do you?”

She shook her head.

“Those little fire-sticks.” She kept him to the subject which now held her interest. “They are magic, though.”

He tossed a match to her.

“Light it,” he said. “You can do it. You poor little kid!”

But she drew away from it, shaking her head violently. And, taking a chance that he read her character in one particular, he called her “Coward!”

She flashed a look at him that was full of angry defiance, and reaching out quickly took up the match. He saw that her hand shook. But her determination did not. She scratched the match upon the wall, held it while it burned. And her eyes, while the embers fell to her lap, were dancing with excitement.

“Another!” she cried, like a child, in evident forgetfulness of her hostility. “Another!”

She lighted them one after the other. Over the second she laughed delightedly. It was the first time he had heard her laugh. He laughed with her, as delighted as she. She struck a full dozen before he stopped her, saying that matches were gold-precious on the trail and must be hoarded.

“Then let me swallow smoke!” she commanded.

The vision of this splendid young girl-animal smoking his black old pipe tickled his sense of humor, and it was difficult for him to explain seriously what in most likelihood would be the result to her.

“You’ve missed a lot of fun, little Paula,” he told her through the cloud of smoke, which seemed of far greater interest to her than were his words. “If you’ve actually lived here all your life, as I’m beginning to believe you have. Never saw a man smoke; never tasted ice-cream or candy; never saw a two-year-old baby toddling around from one mishap to another; never saw a street-car, or a boat, or a man who had had a shave! By golly,” growing enthusiastic over it, “never ate a strawberry shortcake or had a cup of coffee! Whew!”

He put his hand into his pocket. He had seized his lunch from his pack hurriedly and at random. In his haste he had thought to pick out a can of beans and one of corn. He had eaten the beans, and had found that he had not brought the corn, but the one tin of peaches which he had brought with him from Belle Fortune.

Such things as peaches were luxuries; but Sheldon had known aforetime the hunger for sweets which will come to a man when he’s deep in the woods. He opened his knife, and under Paula’s bright eyes cut out a great circle in the tin top. He speared a half of a golden-yellow peach, and tasted it to reassure her. Then he gave her the can.

“Taste that,” he offered.

Paula tasted, a bit anxiously, taking out the peach with her finger-tips. There came into her expression something of utter surprise, then delight little short of ecstasy. And then—he marveled how daintily such an act could be performed—she licked the sirup from her fingers.

“Good?” he chuckled.

Paula smiled at him.

Smiled! The red lips parted prettily; the white teeth showed for a flashing instant. The smile warmed him, went dancing through his blood. It was a quick smile, quickly gone. The white teeth were busy with the second peach.

“They were nice,” said Paula. She had finished, and turned to him with a great sigh of satisfaction. Sheldon’s peaches were gone.

“I’ve got a slab of sweetened chocolate in my pack,” he told her, trying not to look surprised at the empty tin. “I’ll bring it to you. It’s like candy.”

“You are nice, too,” said Paula. “Are all bad men nice?”

Again Sheldon plunged into a long argument meant to convince her that he wasn’t a bad man at all. He rather overdid it, in fact, so that had Paula believed all he told her, she must have thought him an angel. But Paula didn’t believe.

“You tell me too many lies,” she said quietly when he had done.

He protested and went over the ground again. But in one thing he was greatly pleased; at last she talked with him. He felt that at least some little gain had been made. And he hoped that, in spite of her words, she held him in less horror than she had at first.

Once more he sought to draw her out, to get her to talk of herself, of her life, of her father.

“Have you really lived here all your life?” he asked casually.

“Yes,” she answered.

“And you know absolutely nothing of the world outside?”

“I know that all men there are bad. That they kill and steal and lie.”

“How do you know this?”

“My father has told me.”

“What does he know about it?”

“He knows everything. He is very wise. And once he lived there. Men were so wicked that he left them and came away to live here. He brought me with him. Once,” she Informed him gravely, “I was a little baby like the twins. I grew up big, you know”

“Not so dreadfully big,” he protested. “And you live here year in and year out?”

She nodded.

“But the winters? There must be a deuced lot of snow. How do you manage?”

“There is not too damn much snow in here,” she informed him. “The mountains all around are so high they stop much of it.”

“Young ladies in the world outside,” he remarked soberly, though with a twinkle in his eyes, “don’t say ‘damn.’”

“Don’t they?” asked Paula. “Why?”

“They call it a bad word,” he explained. “Maybe it is you, in here, who are bad—”

“Papa says damn,” she insisted. “He is not bad. He is good.”

“We’ll let it go, then. Don’t other men ever come here?”

“Not many. They never come to Johnny’s Luck.”

“Why?”

“Papa kills them.”

“Good Lord!” The coolness of her statement, the careless tone, shocked him.

“We see their camp-fire smoke sometimes a long way off.”

“That’s the way you came upon me first, on the other side of the mountain?”

She nodded.

“How was it, then, you came out, and not your amiable father? You don’t—don’t do the work sometimes, do you?”

“No. I don’t like to kill things.”

“And your father rather enjoys it?”

“N-no.” She hesitated. “But he must. For they are bad, and would hurt us and take away—”

“Take away what?” demanded Sheldon sharply.

But she shut her lips tight, and the suspicion came back into her eyes.

“Oh, well,” he said hastily, “it doesn’t matter. Only you can rest assured that I didn’t come to take anything away. Unless,” lightly, though with deep earnestness under the tone, “you will let me take you and your father back with me?”

The look of suspicion changed to sudden terror.

“No, no!” she cried. “We won’t go—”

“You’d see other women, and they’d be good to you,” he went on gently. “You’d see their babies, and you’d love them. You’d have girls of your own age to talk with. You’ve got to believe me, Paula. The world isn’t filled with wicked people. That’s all a mistake.”

He thought that she wanted to believe him. She looked for one brief instant hungry to believe. He pressed the point. But in the end she shook her head.

“Papa has told me,” she said when he had done. “Papa knows.”

The picture of that gaunt, wild-eyed, terribly uncouth man with brain on fire with madness was very dear in his mind. And how she trusted in him, how she believed in his wisdom To Sheldon, here was the most piteous case of his experience. He wondered if the whole affair would end in his taking the girl in his arms by sheer brute strength and so carrying her out of this cursed place. Or, after all, would it be better, better for her, if he went away and left them?

“I don’t know what to do!” he muttered, speaking his thought.

A little sound at the door startled him. He turned swiftly, his hands tightening about his rifle.

A squirrel squatted on its haunches on the door-step, its bright, round eyes fixed on him in unwinking steadiness. With quick flirt of bushy tail a second squirrel appeared from without. He leaped by his brother, landed fairly inside, saw Sheldon, and turned, chattering, and went scampering out. From the yard he, too, looked in curiously. There came the third, drawing near cautiously until he, too, sat up on the door-step.

Paula called to them softly, so softly that Sheldon, at her side, barely heard the call. It came from low in her throat, and was strangely musical and soothing. She called again. The squirrels pricked up their ears.

At the third call one of them came through the doorway, hesitated, made a great circle around Sheldon so that the bushy tail brushed the wall, and with a quick little jump was on the bunk and under the girl’s arm. His brothers, emboldened, followed him. From Paula’s protecting arms they looked out at Sheldon with a suspicion not unlike that which had been so much in her own eyes.

The girl cuddled them, cooing to them, making those strange, soft sounds deep in her throat. She looked up at Sheldon with the second of her quick smiles. “They are Napoleon and Richard and Johnny Lee!” she told him brightly. “They are my little friends. Kiss me, Napoleon!”

And Napoleon obeyed.