SERIAL STORY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 6326, 28 September 1907, Page 2

SERIAL STORY.

A TENDERFOOT’S WOOING. By Clive Phillipps Woolley (Author of “Gold, Gold in Cariboo,” etc.) fAll Bights Reserved.] CHAPTER H. TWO STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT. ■When Anstruther had taken the ladies' baggage into the cabin, a miserable leg hut with a mud roof adorned Dy a few antlers, he turned to unharness the horses. His lingers were numbed with, cold, and non© of the buckles -were where his Hnglish experience had taught him that they 'should be, besides which, os a matter of fact, ho had generally left the unharnessing to his groom. "Isot that strap, Mr Anstruther, See, this is the way. ~ , But before Mrs Bolt could ©how him, the silent figure which had just taken the saddles off tho riding horses took charge, the wet - straps yielded f as li by magic to the cowboy's fingers, and the beasts wore led off by the Indian to some unseen corral. "Where have yon put Buddygorer

Anstruther asked Combo. "T-n the corral with the others. Why? Do you want him inside ?" On such a night Anstruther might have been forgiven for thinking mat the Hut was none too good for his well-bred hunter. It certainly was not aa good as the loose-box to that valuable beast had been accustomed, but Anstruther saw that there was no help for it. Buddygore would have to take his chance with the rest, i '‘Well, what can I do to help?", "You don't have to do anything. Just make yourself pleasant to' the ladies. I'll be through in a minute. * "You might cut some wood for us, Mr Anstruther," called Kitty from the doorway. "I should love a great roaring hr©. I am just perished, aren't you, Mary?" Anstruther picked up the axe a little .toapuuuy, ana iooiced hopelessly around for something to chop. "There are some pines in that* last gully w© passed through," suggested Mrs Bolt. , . .. Through the dark, and not quite certain of his direction, the unhappy 1 .cjiee tchaco i (tenderfoot) splashed his ; way, and once in the gully put his I back into the work. It was not his fault mat the ax© never bit twice the same place; it was to his credit that he kept on hammering, until at last a green pine, seven or eight inches in diameter, yielded to his perseverance. With infinite toil he trimmed it, cut it into lengths, and then packed it back in three trips to tho cabin. Jim had been waiting for the last | two trips, and as soon as Anstruther put his axe down he took it up, , and disappeared for five minutes, bringing back a huge burnt "stick" on his shoulder. There was rather more wood in that burnt "stick" than Anstruther had brought in his three trips. With half-a-dozen deft strokes, the cowboy cut two short lengths from Am stratheris green pine, for fire-dogs tossed all the rest of that gentleman's hard-earned loads out of the way, chopped, split, fcnd kindled his own dry hung the billy on an improvised gallows, and began to cut the bacon. It was all so simple and bo quickly done, when yan knew how to do it, but it was annoying to have worked for half an hour to no purpose. "I don't seem to be much good," said Anstruther. Mrs Bolt laughed, and shook her head at the cowboy. "Jim," she said, "you are an old bear. Why didn't you tell Mr Anstruther what kind of sticks to cut ?'' Jim grinned. "1 guessed he'd have known that much." "How should he? He has not had to chop wood before." ■ "You don't say! Is it all coal over there ?" Mrs Bolt ignored the question. "You play fair, Jim. You've got to show Mr Anstruther how to do thing©. If you don't. I'll go home." "Bight away ?" "Yea, right away." , "Stop and have dinner first/' he •aid. with impudent coaxing, and handed her a dish of bacon, the rashers cut as thin and as daintily toasted as if they had been prepared by a professional cook. "Won't you have some. Miss Clifford P” To tho younger woman his mannei

was deferential, if not nervous, and seeing her advantage, woman-like, Miss Kitty looked at the bacon and sniffed. “It's too greasy, Jim. I wonder if yon would toast some of it a little more for me, Mr Anstruther ?" Trank hurried to obey her, but the fire had been knocked together to make a blaze, and the little flames which shot out Durned his fingers and smoked the bacon, but would not toast it. “Half a shake, partner. Let mo fix that fir© for you. Now go ahead." A couple of touches in the right place from Jim's too had created a \ glowing hollow, over which the bacon curled and sizzled merrily, but again it was Jim's doing, and not Prank s, so that Kitty's pretty brow was bent, and though she laughed, there was a strong undercurrent of annoyance in her laugh when Mrs Eolt began innocently to hum that popular American air; ,

“You ain't no good. You cain't cut wood, dust kiss yourself good-bye."

The slight upward curl at the comers of Jim's mouth did not mend matters. He knew the air, though Anstruther did not. ■■ "Now, I am going to be lazy, and hay© a good time," declared Mrs Bolt, putting away her plate. "I know that women ought to wash up." "I'll do that, Mrs Bolt." "No, you won't; neither will you, Jijn* Just put that plate down instantly! I know your idea of washing up. Do you know, Mr Anstruther, when he bached—lived alone, 1 mean—Jum had more crockery than all the other ranchers in the neighbourhood put together. Fifty plates I think he had. Kitty counted them one day when she was in short frocks, and we never knejy what he wanted eo manv for until that poor young Webster took his shack for a winter shoot. Then X found out. Shall I tell* Jim?" „ "Makes no odds," laughed Jim, so long as you ain't what Mr Anstruther call too poetic." "Kitty knows it's true; and you daren't contradict her. When w© went to see how Mr Webster was getting along, we found him eating his food off tne kitchen table." "Good place, too," chuckled Jim. "'Hasn't Jim left any plates / for your' we asked. " f Fifty-three, Mi’s Bolt; that's the trouble. I've not had pluck enough to tackle them yet Come, /and Til' show you,' aiid ne took us to a pile as high as that, all duty on both sides. "Jim had had a clean side for- one hundred and sit mealA After that he let the house and the crockery. Here, pretty Dick, wash these things,^pleaife, and make them good and clean." When the laugn against Jim had died out, and the Indian had carried off the crockery, -Mrs Bolt drew them all round the fire. The hail had stopped for a little while, and no wind touched them under tho fly which Jim. had rigged up on the lea side of the hut; With a good bed of pin© brush on the ground, end a great lire of logs in front, there is no place cosier tnan a fly. Dike a great reflector, it catches all tho light and heat, and yet gives you all the benefit of the sweet fresh airf That interior made a pretty contrast ; to the drear and lonesome uplands, in which tnere wore uotnmg but grey : shadows and silence, the ruddy glow j of the firelight throwing out the pretty | figures of the women, and the smokers 1 at 'ui&r ieec, m strong relief. ! Handsome as Polly Bolt was in .a half-boyish, half-matronly way, tho go and ’ dash of the sportwoman tempered • by a few years of happy married life, , u was i,o v.u.idor bur we men's eyes passed her pur© profile to dwell on Bonny Kitty Clifford. Even the Chinaman who cooked for the rancho worshipped her. She had been worshipped by everyone all her small, spoilt life. Prom the crimson Tam o' Shanter, which she had unearthed from her saddle-bags, to her gleaming gum boots, ©he was as dainty a little apple of discord as ever fell between two men. 1 On anyone else, gum boots would have been a horror—shapeless, huge, mudbespattered. On her they only made you wonder where gum boots so astoundingly small; and smart could have been made. Besides, they suggested an apology, if one were needed, for the extreme brevity of Kitty's l skirts. The fir© was the most daring gallant in that crowd. It was he who touched Kitty’s white throat with his rosy fingers, he who lit the deep blue of her laughing ©yes, who threw that velvety shadow which so emphasised the full curve of her saucy chin, and, because even he became timid and uncertain in such a place, made you wonder whether that was a dimple just beyond the curve of those sweet red lips. Yes, Kitty was pretty, and knew it perhaps too well, pretty with that face which has haunted England for so many centuries, coing a-Chrlstmasing on the pillion behind old-fashioned fathers long ago, looking down perhaps a a Gulno-

▼ere or Gwendoline upon the mailed knights of tne tournay, or to-day making young men's pulses boat as they Raas through tho Army and Navy stores, where perhaps one meets more pretty women •to the acre than in any other space on earth. "Now, sing, eomo one," ordered Mrs Bolt.

"You don't mind my tobacco, 'do you T*

"Noj o. course not," Taking his pipe from his mouth, Jim had started at Anstruther s words, and looked a surprised question at tho Boss's wife. He had never dreamed that a man might not smoke in camp. "All right, Jim; it's only Mr Anstruther's idnglish frills. Where we breathe we smoke in BAJ., my husband says. He is my, law. But must 1 give you a load ?” and, without waiting for an answer, sh© began to sing th© "Old Swaneo Hiver/V iix a rich contralto voice, which gave to the words an infinite pathos as thiy died away in that homeless waste.

By a tamp fire a song must have a chorus; without it the' gregarious inistinct of man is unsatisfied. Perhaps map sings in part, because he is a little afraid'of Mature's silence, and, of all choiuses, those French Canadian choruses, roaring, rollicking, boating ditties, of wiuciT Jim sang one or two, have doue -more to hunt the blue devils from the rivers of lower Canada than else in the world. They are full of the spirit of a recklessly daring people, and Jim sang them with tne spirit of an old time voyageur, and an accent which, if not Fa/ri&ian, was at least not London. It was noticeable in Jim that though his English was apt to stumble and wonder into all sorts of byeways of slang, his French was good enough, and his English vocabulary at least as ample as an Englishman'e. It was only with tho , constantly-recurring phrases of everyday life that he and those of his kind played tho mountebank. It vra s well for the more scholarly Anstruther perhaps that he did not follow the cowboy in any foreign tongue. Instead, he song them "The Hounds of the Moynell," and. for .tne first time during that picnic Frank Anstruther placed ’himself, and was at home. A h he sang you knew what that spare horseman's ugure meant; you realised where that lean, high-bred face would seem a true typo; and to Kilty, dreaming as h© sang, came a vision of an old many-gabled house, set, as one's ancestors loved to set them, in a wooded hollow, all the lawns of it alive with hounds* and round the porch of it a group of such men and horses as only England can turn out. Amongst them all, that duffer who could do nothing right in Canada, had been the best man la the county. '‘Say," said Combe, when the song was finished, "air c it pretty hard to find a fox nowadays in the Old Country?" 1 ■ , Anstruther came back from the Vale with a start, and, perhaps because you cannot adjust yourself to your environments in five seconds,* answered a little superciliously: "No, why should it be. People don't shoot foxes there."

“They are v .ad, Jim, like our oayotes.” put in Mrs Bolt. “There ain’t no bounty on them then. Don’t they play old Harry with the ranchersf” “If they ao, we pay for it."

“Oh, well, you see, I . ain’t been in England myeelf. I was raised in Canada, and it is good epough for me. I knew there were plenty of foxes when my grandfather hunted the Old Berkshire, but I fanci?d that the people,; would have been too thick on the ground now tor any wild thing to live. This country is big enough, you’d think, but the Yanks have killed out the buffaloes, and will kill out most other thin vs before they are through." “When my grandfather hunted the Old , Larkshirc. It was said in such a quiet, matter-of-fact way that it took Anstruthor’e breath away, and yet ho, ,who knew the annals of fos-hnnting ' better than ho knew his Bible, remembered that one of the best masters the Old Berkshire had ever had was Sir Greviile Combe. Could this fellow in shape and flannel shirt, who spoke such appalling English, be grandson to Sir Greviile? A quiet smile on Mrs Bolt’s face' told him that it was so. In after years Anstruther learned to look through the clothes of the West, and see the men - beneath, but at tne moment a horror took him, and he wondered how long it- would take to make him a oowwas what he oamo out to bo, or so he had told his father and his friends, but, looking up, he caught Kitty's blue eyes fixed upon him, and know that he had lied. “Do you think that P should ever make a cowboy. Miss Clifford?" The question was very direct, and merited a snubbing, but . Kitty had ■been caught at a disadvantage. There had been more in her eyes than she meant to show just yet, so she stumbled, and Mrs Bolt answered for her. “Oh, I suppose you would learn to ride.’’\ "Thank you. I thought that was the one thing I could do." “On schooled horses. You haven’t tried a buckjumper yet.’’ “Yes, he has, though," put in Combe, 'looking up from the plug he was whittling. -“And you did not give us a chancre lof seeing the show! That was mean, Jim/’ “ “There wasn’t much of a show." “Well. I’m not sure that you would do much better yourself over a post and rails,’’ said tbe, girl, hotly. “It all depends what you are used to. I suppose you put him on Job. That brute would throw anyone but a broncho ouster."

“Didn't throw Mr Anstruther, anyway/'

"What! Did not Job get him off?" Tho girl's whole "lace lit with pleasure and pride in her friend. “Wasn’t to be done unless that oajnose had shed his hide," said Jim, quietly. ‘’Your friend can ride,” and if Jim put a little too much stress upon “your friend," the admission that he , could ride was very hearty and generous for a cowboy who was jealous. The girl knew it, knew too, that horsemanship was Jim Combe's great gift, and for a moment her eyes dwelt seriously on that big, loose figure in shaps, that old friend who had taught her so much, and borne with her 6o long. If only he could spoak English; if only lie was not Canadian," would he not b© the better man of the two?

.A year, ago, before she had been dazzled by tno glamour and luxury of the Old Country, she would have been auie to answer. Now she hesitated. ‘'After Combers testimonial, which I appreciate, do you think that I shall, ever' make a cowboy?;" persisted Anstruther. "Riding is not all. It may make a cowboy. I was thinking rather of a Western man."

"And your ideal of a. Western man is a high one?" V

"Just the highest. Your best Westerner i«s the best that can be made out of the. best English material, tempered by such a life as man ought to lead." They wore getting into deep water, and Mrs Bolt was not sorry to see Combe re-appear, carrying a hug© load of brush, boughs of young pines, which ho waved, one at a time, through the smoke of the camp fire, until most of the raindrops had left them. \ With thee© ho vanished into the cabin, and, after a long absence, returned to announce, "Bed time, ladies. I'm afraid 1 that your bed isn't what it might bo,, but, .with your slickers over that brush, and your blankets, it will bo dry enough. Don't worry to turn out till I cail you." "Where are you going to, sleep?" "We'll. sleep right here, if Mr Anstruther "don't min a, so ae to be handy in case you want anything. ' Let's go and look at the horses, Anstruther. Good-night;" and the two strolled away into the night whilst the* ladies turned in. , (To be continued in Monday’s issue.)