'Smiles' - Eliot H. Robinson (uplifting books for women .txt) 📗
- Author: Eliot H. Robinson
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Donald sharply commanded the likewise bristling Mike to keep to heel, threw his rifle to hip and backed hastily toward the cabin. He had no wish to employ his weapon, and as retreat was the other alternative, for his companion's sake, if not his own, indeed, discretion seemed to be, by all odds, valor's better part.
A noisy and exciting moment brought him to the cabin's door, still face to the enemy. Fumbling behind him with his left hand, Donald found and lifted the latch. The door swung suddenly open under his weight, Mike scurried between his legs, and the combination resulted in his downfall, precipitate and sprawling.
Simultaneously came a startled exclamation in a treble voice, the clatter of a fallen kettle and then a quick cry of pain.
In an instant Donald had scrambled ungracefully to his feet and found himself face to face with a picture that he was destined never to forget.
Backed by a big stone fireplace, in which the embers were glowing ruddily, stood a young girl clad in a simple one-piece dress, which left neck, arms and legs bare. One dusty, but dainty, foot was held between her hands, while she balanced on the other. A tumbling mass of rich brown curls, shot with gleaming threads like tiny rays of captive sunshine, fell, unbound, over her shoulders, and partly veiled a childlike face, tanned to an Indian brown and now twisted with pain, but nevertheless so startlingly sweet and appealing that the man gasped in astonishment.
"ONE DUSTY, BUT DAINTY, FOOT WAS HELD BETWEEN HER HANDS"
As it is with many who wear bluntness like a cloak, Donald possessed a deep-seated appreciation of the beautiful, without being capable of expressing it. But now he vaguely realized that here, where he would last have looked for it, he had blundered upon a child whom Mother Nature had designed lovingly and with painstaking care, perhaps in order to satisfy herself that, in the bustle of creation which nowadays left her little time for attention to fine detail, her hands had not wholly lost the cunning which was theirs when the world was young and women were few and fair.
Her face had the qualities of a sweet wild-flower, delicate of form yet hardy enough to stand up under the stress of a storm. A critic might have declared the sensitive mouth a shade too broad for the tapering lines which formed the firmly rounded chin; he might have said that the upper lip, against which its companion was now tightly pressed to check its trembling, was too short for classic beauty; but he would hardly have been able to find a flaw in the molding of the straight, slender nose or the broad forehead, or the cheeks which curved as symmetrically as the petals of a damask rose, or—if he were human—with the faint shadows at the corners of the lips which were not dimples, but fascinatingly suggested them. But, above all, it was the child's eyes, heavy with a sudden rush of unshed tears that merely added to their appealing charm, which left the strongest impression on the man. They were remarkable eyes, long of lash and of a deep blue with limpid purple shadows and golden highlights.
Her form, untrammelled by confining clothing and bending naturally, was slender and lithesome, but full of curves which told that the bud of childhood was just beginning to open into the blossom of early maturity—about fifteen or sixteen years old, Donald guessed her to be.
At her feet lay an overturned kettle the contents from which, a simple stew, was sending up a cloud of steam from the rough floor, and explained the reason for the misty eyes and tenderly nursed ankle.
The whole picture was graven on his mind in a single glance; but, the next instant the sunniest, most appealing of smiles broke through the girl's pain-drawn tears.
"Yo' ... yo' looked so funny a-fallin' over thet thar dawg, an' a-rollin' on the floor," her words bubbled forth.
"I'm glad that you have something to laugh about, but dev ... deucedly sorry that I made you burn yourself, child," answered Donald, awkwardly. "It must hurt like the ... the mischief," he added, as he stepped forward to examine the injury with a quick return to his professional manner.
"Wall, hit do burn, kinder. But taint nothin'." She sniffed bravely, but a tear overflowed its reservoir and made a channel through a smudge on her cheek.
"Well, I happen to be a doctor—when I'm not on a vacation—so I can do a little toward repairing the damage I caused." He was already unfastening the small first-aid kit which experience had taught him never to go without.
"Taint nothin', sir, really. I'll jest put some lard on hit, an' ..." began the girl, timidly backing away.
Donald did not stop to argue, but placed his strong hands on either side of her slender waist and lifted her lightly to the homemade table, while she gasped and again the wonderful smile, more shy this time, transformed her tear-stained face. In silence, and with flying, experienced fingers, the physician applied a soothing salve to the blotchy red, fast-swelling burn on the ankle, and deftly bandaged it.
"There," he said. "You won't know, in a few minutes, that anything has happened."
"Thank ye, sir," said the girl, as he lifted her again and allowed her to slip gently to the floor. "Yo' shore knows how ter do up a foot."
She hopped gingerly over to the fireplace, and began to clear up the wreck of supper, first calmly lifting the dog away from the steaming hot meat which his quivering nose was inquisitively approaching.
"Be careful. Mike might ..."
"Oh, he won't bite me." She broke into his warning, and gave a playful tug at the coarse hair on the animal's neck. Somewhat to Donald's surprise, the dog wiggled ecstatically at the friendly advances and paid his lowly homage by licking her bare foot.
"Never mind that mess, I'll clean it up if you'll get me a shovel. And of course I mean to pay for it," said Donald hastily.
"In course yo' won't do no sech thing. We-all's got plenty uv pertaties,—I growed 'em myself,—this yere meat haint hurt a mite, an' water's cheap," she responded. "Yo' jest take a cheer, mister, an' yo' kin hev supper along with us as soon as grandpap comes, which'll be right soon, I reckon. We-all don't see stranger folks much up yere, an' he'll be plumb glad thet ye drapped in." She tossed a morsel of meat to the expectant Mike; then added shyly, "An' so be I."
"Well, I certainly 'drapped,'" laughed Donald. "It looked as though all the dogs south of the Mason-Dixon line had gathered to give Mike and me a warm, if not cordial, welcome, so we didn't stop to knock before coming in."
"Lucky fer ye thet yo' struck a cabin whar the latch string air allus out," she answered, her silver laughter echoing his. "I hadn't a' ought ter hev been so skeered, but I warn't payin' no attention ter all the barkin', fer I jest allowed thet the dawgs hed treed a coon, er somep'n. Yo' see they haint exactly fond o' strangers, an' they be powerful fierce. I reckon they'd hev gobbled Mike right up."
Donald glanced affectionately at the wiry mass of bone and sinew which went to make the police dog every inch a warrior, and doubted it. The child had finished her task, and started the stew to heating again over the fire, and now she turned, swept back the mass of curls from her heated face with a graceful motion of her shapely arm, and stood regarding him with frank curiosity. Donald had no intention of remaining longer, or accepting the hospitable invitation, but there was a touch of romance in the adventure, and a strong appeal in the girl herself, which caused him to hesitate, and linger to ask a few questions about the neighborhood and her life. When he did regretfully pick up his cap and rifle, and call the dog, who turned protestingly from her-who-dispensed-savory-pieces-of-meat, he found that he had suffered the fate of all who hesitate, for a glance through the window showed him that, although the glowing, iridescent reflection from the western sky still lingered in the mountain top, embroidering its edge with gold, it was fast fading, and already Night had spread her dusky mantle over the eastern slope. Already darkness had blotted out the lower reaches.
As Donald stopped, uncertain, there came the sound of measured, heavy footfalls on the beaten dirt path outside the cabin. The girl's face lighted up joyfully; she hopped to the door, flung it open, and a slightly stooping, but gigantic, form stepped in out of the darkness, caught her up in his huge arms and submitted with a quizzical smile while she pulled his face toward hers by tugging at his long beard, and kissed him.
Across the tumbled masses of her hair the newcomer's still piercing dark eyes, blinking a little under their shaggy brows as the fire leaped in the draft from the open door, caught sight of Donald as he stood back among the shadows. He straightened up suddenly, and his brows drew together in a suspicious scowl.
The city man knew enough of the primitive code of the mountain people to understand that the presence of a man,—especially a strange man,—alone in the house with a young woman, was fraught with unpleasant possibilities. But, before he could speak, the child-woman had launched into a vivacious, if ungrammatical, explanation and story of what had occurred. In substantiation she now raised her short skirt and lifted the bandaged foot, with utter freedom from embarrassment, and laughed deliciously until an answering smile crept slowly into the eyes of the old mountaineer.
With a simple courtesy, which seemed to hold something of innate majesty, he stepped forward, and extended a weatherbeaten hand, several sizes larger than Donald's, and boomed out in a deep voice that matched his physical proportions, "Yo're suttinly welcome, stranger. What happened warn't no fault o' yourn, and I'm plumb obleeged ter ye fer fixin' up my granddarter's hurt. Draw up a cheer fer the stranger, Smiles, he'll jine us in a bite er supper. The fare's simple, but I war raised on't, and 'pears ter me thet I top ye some."
"I should say that you did. You make me feel small, and it's not often any man does that ... physically, I mean."
The two clasped hands, and Donald winced as his own powerful fingers cracked under the crushing pressure of those of the older man, who seemed to take a boyish delight in this display of his tremendous strength.
"What a colossus he is," thought Donald, as he gritted his teeth to keep back the involuntary exclamation of pain, for, although the massive shoulders and Jovian head of the mountaineer were stooped forward, he towered fully three inches above the six foot city athlete, and his iron-gray beard, rusted with tobacco juice about his mouth, swept over his chest almost to his waist.
"Thanks for the invitation," he said aloud, as he covertly nursed his right hand. "It's mighty kind of you, but I don't want to impose longer, and, besides, I'd better start back to Fayville before it gets dark altogether. If you'll just tell me the most direct way, ..."
"Wall, I reckon the most deerect way air ter go straight through the woods thar a piece, an' then jump off'n a four hundred foot cliff," the old man chuckled titanically. "But I likewise reckon taint pra'tical; leastwise, not onless yo' happen ter be one o' them new-fangled aviationeers I've hearn tell on. However, here ye be, an' here yo're goin'
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