PAGE 7
A Drift from Redwood Camp
by
Elijah’s brow contracted. Relieved of its characteristic metaphor, he knew that this meant that the new Indian agent had made his usual official visit, and had exhibited the usual anxiety to see the famous chieftain.
“Good!” he said. “White Rabbit [his lieutenant] will see the Messenger and exchange gifts. It is enough.”
“The white messenger has brought his wangee [white] woman with him. They would look upon the face of him who hides it,” continued Wachita, dubiously. “They would that Wachita should bring them nearer to where my lord is, that they might see him when he knew it not.”
Elijah glanced moodily at his wife, with the half suspicion with which he still regarded her alien character. “Then let Wachita go back to the squaws and old women, and let her hide herself with them until the wangee strangers are gone,” he said curtly. “I have spoken. Go!”
Accustomed to these abrupt dismissals, which did not necessarily indicate displeasure, Wachita disappeared without a word. Elijah, who had risen, remained for a few moments leaning against the tent-poles, gazing abstractedly toward the sea. The bees droned uninterruptedly in his ears, the far-off roll of the breakers came to him distinctly; but suddenly, with greater distinctness, came the murmur of a woman’s voice.
“He don’t look savage a bit! Why, he’s real handsome.”
“Hush! you–” said a second voice, in a frightened whisper.
“But if he DID hear he couldn’t understand,” returned the first voice. A suppressed giggle followed.
Luckily, Elijah’s natural and acquired habits of repression suited the emergency. He did not move, although he felt the quick blood fly to his face, and the voice of the first speaker had suffused him with a strange and delicious anticipation. He restrained himself, though the words she had naively dropped were filling him with new and tremulous suggestion. He was motionless, even while he felt that the vague longing and yearning which had possessed him hitherto was now mysteriously taking some unknown form and action.
The murmuring ceased. The humble-bees’ drone again became ascendant–a sudden fear seized him. She was GOING; he should never see her! While he had stood there a dolt and sluggard, she had satisfied her curiosity and stolen away. With a sudden yielding to impulse, he darted quickly in the direction where he had heard her voice. The thicket moved, parted, crackled, and rustled, and then undulated thirty feet before him in a long wave, as if from the passage of some lithe, invisible figure. But at the same moment a little cry, half of alarm, half of laughter, broke from his very feet, and a bent manzanito-bush, relaxed by frightened fingers, flew back against his breast. Thrusting it hurriedly aside, his stooping, eager face came almost in contact with the pink, flushed cheeks and tangled curls of a woman’s head. He was so near, her moist and laughing eyes almost drowned his eager glance; her parted lips and white teeth were so close to his that her quick breath took away his own.
She had dropped on one knee, as her companion fled, expecting he would overlook her as he passed, but his direct onset had extracted the feminine outcry. Yet even then she did not seem greatly frightened.
“It’s only a joke, sir,” she said, coolly lifting herself to her feet by grasping his arm. “I’m Mrs. Dall, the Indian agent’s wife. They said you wouldn’t let anybody see you–and I determined I would. That’s all!” She stopped, threw back her tangled curls behind her ears, shook the briers and thorns from her skirt, and added: “Well, I reckon you aren’t afraid of a woman, are you? So no harm’s done. Good-by!”
She drew slightly back as if to retreat, but the elasticity of the manzanito against which she was leaning threw her forward once more. He again inhaled the perfume of her hair; he saw even the tiny freckles that darkened her upper lip and brought out the moist, red curve below. A sudden recollection of a playmate of his vagabond childhood flashed across his mind; a wild inspiration of lawlessness, begotten of his past experience, his solitude, his dictatorial power, and the beauty of the woman before him, mounted to his brain. He threw his arms passionately around her, pressed his lips to hers, and with a half-hysterical laugh drew back and disappeared in the thicket.