Me Smith

was walking about the living-room to rest herself, while this conversation was taking place. Her glance fell upon a gaudy vase on a shelf, and some thought came to her which made her laugh mischievously. She emptied the contents of the vase into the palm of her hand and, closing the other over it, tiptoed into the dining-room and stood behind Smith.
    Dora and he, engrossed in conversation, paid no attention to her. She put her cupped palms close to Smith’s ear and, shaking them vigorously, shouted:
    “Snakes!”
    The result was such as Susie had not anticipated.
    With a shriek which was womanish in its shrillness, Smith sprang to his feet, all but upsetting the lamp in his violence. Unmixed horror was written upon his face.
    The girl herself shrank back at what she had done; then, holding out several rattles for inspection, she said:
    “Looks like you don’t care for snakes.”
    “You—you little——”
    Only Susie guessed the unspeakable epithet he meant to use. Her eyes warned him, and, too, he remembered Dora in time. He said instead, with a slight laugh of confusion:
    “Snakes scares me, and rat-traps goin’ off.”
    The color had not yet returned to his face when a knock came upon the door.
    In response to Susie’s call, a tall stranger stepped inside—a stranger wide of shoulder, and with a kind of grim strength in his young face.
    From the unnatural brightness of the eyes of Susie and of Smith, and their still tense attitudes, Ralston sensed the fact that something had happened. He returned Smith’s unpleasant look with a gaze as steady as his own. Then his eyes fell upon Dora and lingered there.
    She had sprung to her feet and was still standing. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes luminous, and the soft lamplight burnishing her brown hair made the moment one of her best. Smith saw the frank admiration in the stranger’s look.
    “May I stop here to-night?” He addressed Dora.
    He had the characteristic Western gravity of manner and expression, the distinguishing definiteness of purpose. Though the quality of his voice, its modulation, bespoke the man of poise and education, the accent was unmistakably of the West.
    “There’s a bunk-house.” It was Smith who answered.
    His unuttered epithet still rankled; Susie turned upon him with insulting emphasis:
    “And you’d better get out to it!”
    “Are you the boss here?” The stranger put the question to Smith with cool politeness.
    “What I say goes! ”
    Smith looked marvellously ugly.
    Susie leaned toward him, and her childish face was distorted with anger as she shrieked:
    “ Not yet, Mister Smith! ”
    Involuntarily, Dora and the stranger exchanged glances in the awkward silence which followed. Then, more to relieve her embarrassment than for any other reason, Ralston said quietly, “Very well, I will do as this—gentleman suggests,” and withdrew.
    “Good-night,” said Dora, gathering up her books; but neither Smith nor Susie answered.
    With both hands deep in his trousers’ pockets, Smith was smiling at Susie, with a smile which was little short of devilish; and the girl, throwing a last look of defiance at him, also left the room, violently slamming behind her the door of the bed-chamber occupied by her mother and herself.
    For a full minute Smith stood as they had left him—motionless, his eyelids drooping. Rousing himself, he went to the window and looked into the moonlight-flooded world outside. Huddled in a blanket, a squat figure sat on a fallen cottonwood tree.
    Smith eyed it, then asked himself contemptuously:
    “Ain’t that pure Injun?”
    Taking his hat, he too stepped into the moonlight.
    The woman did not look up at his approach, so he stooped until his cheek touched hers.
    “What’s the matter, Prairie Flower?”
    “My heart is under my feet.” Her voice was harsh.
    In the tone one uses to a sulky child, he said:
    “Come into the house.”
    “You no like me, white man. You like de white woman.”
    Smith reached under the blanket and took her hand.
    “Why don’t you marry de white woman?”
    He pressed her hand tightly against his heart.
    “Come into the house, Prairie Flower.”
    Her face relaxed like that of a child when it smiles through its tears. And Smith, in the hour when the first real love of his life was at its zenith, when his heart was so full of it that it seemed well nigh bursting, walked back to the house with the squaw clinging tightly to his fingers.
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VIII
THE BUG-HUNTER