PAGE 7
The Hussy
by
“I gave in. I had to. Except for the excuse that she needed Vahna’s help around the house (which she didn’t at all), old Paloma never said why she stuck up for the girl. Anyway, Vahna was a quiet thing, never in the way. And she never gadded. Just sat in- doors jabbering with Paloma and helping with the chores. But I wasn’t long in getting on to that she was afraid of something. She would look up, that anxious it hurt, whenever anybody called, like some of the boys to have a gas or a game of pedro. I tried to worm it out of Paloma what was worrying the girl, but all the old woman did was to look solemn and shake her head like all the devils in hell was liable to precipitate a visit on us.
“And then one day Vahna had a visitor. I’d just come in from a run and was passing the time of day with her–I had to be polite, even if she had butted in on me and come to live in my house for keeps– when I saw a queer expression come into her eyes. In the doorway stood an Indian boy. He looked like her, but was younger and slimmer. She took him into the kitchen and they must have had a great palaver, for he didn’t leave until after dark. Inside the week he came back, but I missed him. When I got home, Paloma put a fat nugget of gold into my hand, which Vahna had sent him for. The blamed thing weighed all of two pounds and was worth more than five hundred dollars. She explained that Vahna wanted me to take it to pay for her keep. And I had to take it to keep peace in the house.
“Then, after a long time, came another visitor. We were sitting before the fire–“
“Him and the hussy,” quoth Mrs. Jones.
“And Paloma,” he added quickly.
“Him and his cook and his light housekeeper sitting by the fire,” she amended.
“Oh, I admit Vahna did like me a whole heap,” he asserted recklessly, then modified with a pang of caution: “A heap more than was good for her, seeing that I had no inclination her way.
“Well, as I was saying, she had another visitor. He was a lean, tall, white-headed old Indian, with a beak on him like an eagle. He walked right in without knocking. Vahna gave a little cry that was half like a yelp and half like a gasp, and flumped down on her knees before me, pleading to me with deer’s eyes and to him with the eyes of a deer about to be killed that don’t want to be killed. Then, for a minute that seemed as long as a life-time, she and the old fellow glared at each other. Paloma was the first to talk, in his own lingo, for he talked back to her. But great Moses, if he wasn’t the high and mighty one! Paloma’s old knees were shaking, and she cringed to him like a hound dog. And all this in my own house! I’d have thrown him out on his neck, only he was so old.
“If the things he said to Vahna were as terrible as the way he looked! Say! He just spit words at her! But Paloma kept whimpering and butting in, till something she said got across, because his face relaxed. He condescended to give me the once over and fired some question at Vahna. She hung her head, and looked foolish, and blushed, and then replied with a single word and a shake of the head. And with that he just naturally turned on his heel and beat it. I guess she’d said ‘No.’