Part 3

They came presently to a narrow mountain stream, clear and brown, over the sunken leaves. The sunlight through the swaying tendrils of a wild grape-vine overhead sent dim but sharply defined shadows wavering back and forth over its bright surface, as though, being spiritualized, they breathed with a new life. A corn-crake, moving cautiously among the withered water-grasses, thrust forward its gay crest and peered inquisitively at them, whereupon the collie cleared the brook with an arching bound, and set forth in mad pursuit of this new quarry. The crake at once rose into the blue lift, with the harsh, derisive cry from which it takes its name.

After a while they came upon a log-cabin set in a little patch of cleared ground. From a small window close against the roof flaunted a mud-stained curtain of sacking. The red clay marks responded to a certain morbidness in Virginia, by suggesting the wiping of bloody hands upon the coarse stuff. There had been a murder some years before on this very mountain, and thoughts of a grewsome sort were easily called forth in her when remembering. A few black-and-white pigs of the genus “nigger” hurtled squealing down the hill-side, pursued by the indefatigable collie, while a little fawn-colored child, with whity-brown hair and purplish-white eyes, stood in the door and apparently bit its thumb at them.

“Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?” quoted Roden, cheerily, whereat the little darky fled, with a shrill “Yah!” of mingled delight and terror, into the bacon-perfumed room beyond.

They were now stopped by some draw-bars, which passed, they found themselves ascending a steep incline sown with large stones, as though Jove and his giants might have had a sharp encounter just in that spot. But having gained the top of the bluff, they came upon a view at which Roden stood and stared in silent admiration. It seemed to him that he had never before so entirely realized the ball-like character of the earth. It seemed now to be swinging like a magician’s globe, imprisoned in another of larger size, which was hollowed from some marvellous, million-colored gem.

The air had changed suddenly from balmy warmth to a strange damp keenness, while the sky, which had cleared on their way up, was strewn from east to west with the same woolly clouds which had at first covered it. All above them was a lustrous monotone of gray, brightening towards the east into a pale daffodil, and farther towards the south into a lurid orange. From south to west a band of vivid violet-blue stretched solidly, cleft here and there with wedges of pale light slanting in regular order, like the bayonets of a vast army marching eastward.

“That,” said Virginia, indicating the gorgeous phenomenon, “means rain.”

“Oh, I think not,” said Roden, carelessly.

“Very well,” said Miss Herrick.

The wind blew ever stronger and stronger from the north, shifting suddenly to the north-east. Virginia felt a heavy splash of water upon her hand. She said nothing, but held it out to Roden in silence, and at the same moment the wind, scolding like an old hag who has been deprived by some adventurous urchin of her dinner, bore down upon them.

“Never mind,” said Roden, “we are only about a quarter of a mile from the top.”

“Won’t you put on your coat now?” said Virginia, blinded by the blowing of her hair into her eyes.

He replied that he did not feel the need of it, and strode on a little ahead. The wind sent his shirt in fine ripples across his back. One could distinctly see the muscles at work beneath the flexible skin. Strength, above all things, was what this little barbarian admired, and she saw it now in a perfection which filled her with unconscious satisfaction.

“My! couldn’t he double that braggin’ Joe Scott up!” she told herself. “Whew! I’d like to see somebody make him right mad. Couldn’t he lick ’em!”

As they neared the summit the gale became more furious. Roden was obliged to lead the thoroughly frightened mare, and Virginia’s long hair, becoming unbound, whipped with the sting of a lash across his face. She recaptured and held it firmly with one hand, while he, furtively observing it, thought it must be at least two yards in length. She assumed a new phase in his eyes, wrapped thus in her plenteous tresses. A certain boyish look, transmitted to her through the medium of the short locks about her brow, had vanished completely. She looked like some mountain Godiva hidden all as in a banner of cloth of gold. Roden wondered if such marvellous hair was a characteristic of Southern women.

They came at last to the one stunted apple-tree which crowned the noble crest of the mountain, with an effect as bathetic as the scalp-lock of an Indian brave. The wind screamed through the gnarled ground-kissing branches with the sound of a gale through cordage. Pokeberry squatted ignominiously in the fierce hurly, and put back her nervous ears, while Virginia swung from the saddle. Once on the ground, she found that to keep the perpendicular was a matter of some skill. She put one arm around a mass of the tangled branches and looked up at Roden with a laugh, which was seized and dashed down the steep declivity or ever it reached his ears. He in the mean time having tethered the mare securely, resumed his coat, and unbinding his covert-coat from the saddle, offered to help the girl on with it. She looked at him in evident surprise, but made no resistance. As she loosened the branches in order to put her arms into the sleeves, which were whirling wildly, with an air of reckless intoxication, a sharp gust blew her, coat and all, directly into Roden’s arms.

He laughed, disentangling himself as best he might from the wet bondage of her heavy locks, but she, reddening vividly through all her clear, sun-browned skin, gave her attention to the garment that he held. It seemed to her a strange thing that he should offer to lend it. She had been on rainy expeditions with many men, both English and Virginian, while none that she could remember had ever before offered to protect her in such wise from the inclemency of her native heavens.

She looked down a little consciously at the weather-stained tan-color of the little coat. She felt that it would be an insult to suggest to so mighty a pedestrian the idea of taking cold; at the same time she was afraid that such would be the memento he would bear away with him from the top of Peter’s Mountain. As for herself, she was as accustomed to wind and rain as one of the big oxeye daisies in her own fields.

“There’s some sandwiches an’ a glass in that basket,” she said, or rather shrieked, to Roden. He went to get them, tacking through the stiff wind with much dexterity, and they partook of thin slices of Aunt Tishy’s bread and Virginian ham with a heroic disregard of the downpour. All at once they were confronted by a small ebon figure, hatless and breathless.

“_Popo!_” said Miss Herrick; “what in the name o’ sense are you doin’ here?”

“Oh, Miss Faginia, Miss Faginia,” howled the little black, “de lightnin’ dun gone thoo Marse Johnson’s house an’ kill he an’ he horg! An’ I wuz so skeered ’bout you I jess took out an’ run up de mounting to see ef you wuz all right.”

“Well, I am,” said his mistress. “You pore little thing, how wet you are! Come and get here under these branches.”

The faithful Popocatepetl came and crouched on his heels at her side. He was drenched to the skin, and his dark hide showed in patches through his shirt of some thin white stuff, which elsewhere puffed out in irregular blisters, like the wet linen in a washer-woman’s tub. From a strange freak of nature, not unusual in these Virginian mountains, his knotty wool was of a pale tan-color. It is a mistake to think that the little negro perpetually grins. Nothing absolutely could have been more full of woe and resignation than the expression of the young Popo as he watched with Pokeberry the ceaseless flood that swept over hill and valley.

Although comparatively sheltered, there still escaped through the tangled apple-boughs moisture sufficient to prove extremely unpleasant. The large drops fell heavy and monotonous, some into the furry hollows of the mare’s flexile ears, causing her to toss her head with a swift impatience of movement that set the little metal buckles on her head-gear tinkling faintly, some upon Roden’s breast and hands, some upon the uncovered head and cheeks of the girl at his side. She tossed her head once or twice with a close reproduction of Pokeberry’s impulsive gestures.

The surrounding mountains were by this time entirely blotted from sight by the lead-colored sheets of wind-urged rain. The branches of the trees on the slopes below them seemed living creatures, who, frantic with alarm, tugged and twisted to free themselves from their native boles, and to flee before the ruffian wind that assaulted them. Blown leaves, like troops of frightened birds, were driven past in gusts. Not a sound was to be heard save the ceaseless hiss of the rain on the hard ground, the creaking of the tortured trees, and the fluctuating roar of the wind above all else. Pokeberry, cowed and shivering, gazed wistfully down at the swimming field below.

The darkness had increased palpably within the last five minutes, and the wind, raging downward through the stems of the tall pines on the eastern slope of the mountain, made a sound like to the angry breathing of some giant through his locked teeth.

“That is almost wolfish,” said Roden.

“There _was_ wolves in these mountains when my father was a little boy,” she responded.

Darker clouds seemed to be ever rolling up from the east, veined with glittering threads of lightning, which pierced the irregular masses on all sides like the fronds of an immense leaf. The trees on the slopes, still wind-swept, seemed anon pale with terror or dark with dread as their light and dark leaves were alternately tossed upward. Over against the west was a dull citrine glare, like the smoke that overhangs a battle-field on a sunlit day, reflected here and there in the slimy soil and rain-roughened waters of a stream some way beneath them.

Suddenly Virginia turned and swung out of Roden’s coat with one of her swift movements. “Please put it on,” she said to him.

“Why, no,” he said; “I don’t want it. I’m perfectly comfortable. I don’t know why I brought it--unless from a happy inspiration in regard to you,” he added, pleasantly. She turned from him, and stooping, wrapped the shivering Popo in it.

“They feel the cole so!” she said to Roden, standing erect again. “An’ I never wrop up.” Roden did not know whether to laugh or to swear.

When the rain had abated somewhat, and they returned to Caryston, he told himself, as he soothed his inner man with some excellent Scotch whiskey, that he “really rather liked it in the girl; but--d--n the little nigger!--that was my pet coat!”

III.

Roden was the younger son of an Englishman of title. He was also what is sometimes graphically described as being _sans le sou_. It was his intention to try stud-farming in Virginia. No better horseman than Roden ever put boot in stirrup. He had, as an old pad-groom once remarked, “a genus for osses.” It was a mania, a fad of the most pronounced type, with him. No woman’s eye had ever possessed for him half the charm that did the full orbs of his favorite mare, Bonnibel, as she gazed lustrously upon him over her well-filled manger. No sheen of woman’s hair had ever vied, in his opinion, with the satin flanks of Bonnibel. What was it to love a woman? Was it half the zest, the delight, of feeling a good horse between one’s knees, what time the welcome cry of “Gone away!” makes glad delirium in one’s veins, while the music of the spotted darlings thrills air and soul? Roden would bluntly and unpoetically have informed you that you were a “duffer” had you attempted to argue the point. He had never cared much for women, either collectively or as individuals. They had perhaps played too small a part in his life. “Egad, sir!” his father had cried to him one day in a fit of anger, “you’ll grow up with a pair of legs like pot-hooks!”

Mr. Herrick informed him, on the second day after his arrival, that “the beauty of the question were, he cert’n’y did have a mighty good foothold on a hawse.”

It was on that day also that most of the horses arrived from New York--Bonnibel among them. She was as beautiful a daughter as Norseman ever sired. Deep of girth, clean of limb, broad of loin, with splendid oblique shoulders, bossed with sinew and muscle which quivered with restrained power beneath the silky, supple hide; a small compact head with ample front, over which the sensitive leaf-like ears kept restless guard; great limpid eyes, a crest like a rainbow, and quarters to have lifted Leander clean over the Hellespont. In color she was a rich brown, touched with tan on muzzle and flanks, while the slight floss of mane and tail had also flecks of gold towards the ends, like those in the locks of some dark-haired women. Like her great-granddam, Fleur-de-Lis, she stood full sixteen hands, but was neither leggy nor light of bone.

“May I give her an apple?” said Virginia, as she turned her slow, dark look from Bonnibel to her master. That sagacious damosel was already reaching after the coveted golden ball in the girl’s hand, with cajoling little movements of her soft nose. Having obtained permission, Miss Herrick threw one arm over the mare’s graceful crest and presented her with the apple--one of those renowned Albemarle pippins on which no duty is demanded by England’s gracious queen.

Bonnibel ate it with evident participation in her sovereign’s good taste, rubbing her handsome head against the girl’s arm with an almost cat-like softness of caress.

“I don’ s’pose any one ever rides her but you?” said Virginia, with a suggestion of wistfulness in her low voice.

“Well, no,” said Roden; “only the lad who gives her her gallops. She is as kind as a kitten, but rather hot-headed and excitable. Why do you ask? Would you like to ride her?”

“Yes, of co’se I would,” said the girl, calmly; “but you needn’t bother; I know how Englishmen are ’bout their horses. Some time, if the boy as rides her gets sick, if you’ll let me I’ll show you whether I kin ride or no.”

“Your father says you ride like an Indian,” said Roden.

She moved her shoulders beneath her loose gray jacket with something very like a shrug. “I don’t bleeve father ever saw a Injun in his life,” she remarked. “You wait; I’ll show you.”

“I don’t doubt you have a good seat,” said Roden, pleasantly; he took particular pains to speak pleasantly always to Herrick and his daughter. “But the chief thing with a horse like Bonnibel is the hands. How are you about that?”

“How do you mean?” she said, puzzled.

“Why, have you nice light hands? Are you gentle in handling your mount?”

“Oh,” she said, with the comprehensive indrawing of the breath which he was beginning to recognize as one of her chief characteristics. “You mean am I kind about yerkin’ ’em. Well, I’ll tell you: I never pulled any rougher on a horse’s mouth in my life than I’d like anybody to pull on mine.”

“I wish some of my friends would take that for their motto,” said Roden. “I’m thinking I’ll let you ride Bonnibel some time, if _she_ will.” He ended with a smile.

It was not more than a week afterwards that he had occasion to require Virginia’s services. One of the other horses, a rank, irritable brute, called Usurper, had jammed Roden’s shoulder quite severely against the side of the box, and Bonnibel’s own especial groom had been sent back to New York to bring on two new-comers but just arrived from England.

“I don’t think she’ll stand a riding-skirt,” he said, rather doubtfully, as the beautiful beast was led out, reaching after the reins with her supple neck.

“I ain’t goin’ to ride her with one,” said Virginia.

He then saw that Bonnibel was saddled with a man’s saddle, and the next moment the girl was astride of the mare, the reins gathered skilfully into her long brown fingers, head erect, and hands well down--lithe, beautiful with the beauty of some sunburnt, mountain-bred boy.

As Bonnibel felt the strange touch upon her mouth she wheeled, rearing a little, and the girl’s soft hat was shaken from her head. Roden wondered if he had ever seen anything prettier than the sunlight on the young Virginian’s sun-like curls, and the glossy hide of Bonnibel.

The mare was going quieter now, mincing along and picking up her feet after a fashion much in vogue among equine coquettes. She was beginning to like the feel of the light, firm hands, and to be sensible of the masterly pressure of the strong young knees upon her mighty shoulders.

“By Jove! what a graceful seat the little witch has got!” Roden said to himself with sufficient admiration. “And hands as steady as an old stager!--Gad!” This exclamation, breaking forth at first from an impulse of terror, ended in the relieved announcement, “That was fine; as I live it was!”

Bonnibel had bolted, going straight for a snake-fence at the bottom of the hill on which the stables were builded. To stop her was, he knew, impossible; to turn her aside on the slippery turf, more unreliable than usual with the spring rains, would have been culpably perilous. The fence just here was fortunately not very high, but Bonnibel had one serious fault. When excited, she had a way of going at her fences head down, after a fashion calculated to break her own neck, and certainly that of the person who rode her. He saw the girl sit well down in the saddle, run the bit through the mare’s mouth, and bring her head up, showing her the leap in front with a skill he could not himself have rivalled; and Roden was no tyro. Bonnibel cleared the rails in gallant form, and Virginia then took her for a canter around the field beyond.

She came up to Roden, ten minutes later, with flushed cheeks and her great eyes brilliant.

“If she had a-hurt herself then,” she said, flinging herself tempestuously to the ground, “I’d ’a’ got one o’ th’ grooms to kill me.” She turned and showered the mare’s sleek crest with kisses, then tossed the reins to Roden, and ran swiftly out of sight towards the house. He thought her the strangest creature he had ever seen.

In the mean time the days wore on. Roden was more than pleased with his Virginian venture. He had three excellent stables building, his gees were all in first-rate condition, and his prospect for the provincial races more than fair.

Virginia now rode Bonnibel every day. There sprung up between the two, mare and woman, one of those mutual attachments as rare in reality as they are common in fiction. Virginia could catch the nervous beast when it meant danger to others to come within reach of her iron-shod heels. Virginia seemed to murmur a strange language into her slender ears, as certain in its effects as the whisper of the Roumanians to their horses. For Virginia would Bonnibel become as a spring lamb for meekness, or one of her own mountain-streams for impetuosity. It afforded Roden a strange pleasure to watch the relations which existed between this beautiful savage maiden and his beautiful savage mare.

On the other hand, he found the girl more than useful to him. She knew all the owners of good horse-flesh in the surrounding counties. She explored strange woods with him, while it came to be an understood thing that every day she should go with him on his long tramps. She marched sturdily at his side through brake and brier. She had no skirts to tear, no under-draperies of lace to draggle. She was always good-tempered and never tired.

It was one day about the middle of March that they stood together on a windblown hill-side. A dark-blue sky gleamed overhead, set thickly with clouds of a vivid, opaque white, like the figures on antique Etruscan ware. The chain of distant hills clasped the tawny winter earth, as a violet ribbon might clasp the dusky body of an Eastern slave. So like was the pale horizon to a sunlit sea that the white gleam of a wood-dove’s wing across it suggested instantly to them both the idea of a sail.

There was a sound, now far, now near, vague, intermittent, made by the rushing of the wind through the dry grass in the fields. The forlorn discord of the voices of spring lambs reached their ears, together with the reassuring monotone of the ewes. A sudden commotion among the flock caused Virginia to run suddenly forward, shading her eyes with her hand.

“It’s that narsty Erroll dorg again!” she said, wrathfully. “He’ll jess run those sheep to death.”

“What dog?” said Roden, coming up beside her. “By Jove! it’s a German sleuth-hound,” he added. “I’m afraid he’ll play the deuce with your father’s sheep, Miss Virginia.”

“He will so, ef he ain’t stopped,” she said, gloomily. “I didn’t know the Errolls had come back to Windemere. Plague gone him! Look there, now!”

Just here came the shrill sound of a dog-whistle, then a clear voice calling, “Laurin! Laurin! Laurin, I say!”

They saw a girl on a chestnut horse, galloping towards the terrified, bleating sheep. She gained upon the great hound, came up with him, swung from her saddle, and caught him by the collar. After a moment or two she began to walk towards them through the weeds and brambles which overgrew the hill-side. As she came nearer they could see that she held a lamb beneath one arm. A tall, slight girl in a dark habit, with dark curls escaping about her forehead from her very correct pot hat. The hound followed meekly. “I am so very, very sorry,” she called out, while yet some distance off. “I am afraid my dog has hurt this poor little thing.” As she came closer Roden saw that there was blood on the lamb, and on the dog’s dripping jaws.

“Please look at it,” the girl said, wofully. “I’m afraid nothing will ever break him. He will have to be sent away. They are your father’s sheep, aren’t they, Miss Herrick--you are Miss Herrick?”

Virginia lifted her full look to the stranger’s face. “Yes, that’s my name,” she answered. “Why don’t you muzzle him, or keep him chained? He’ll get shot some day.”

The girl looked sadly down at her huge pet. “I’m afraid he will,” she said, gently. “I wish he wouldn’t do it. I can’t feel the same to him. Ah, you beast!”--this last to the recreant Laurin, in a tone of wrath. In the mean time Roden had finished his examination of the lamb.

“I don’t think it’s serious,” he said, kindly; “but it will have to be looked after a bit. Miss Herrick here will doctor it successfully, I’ve no doubt.”

“Oh, couldn’t I have it?” said the girl, eagerly. “I’m such a good hand at curing things. Do let me have it, Miss Herrick.”

“Take it if you want it,” said Virginia.

“But cannot you have it sent?” said Roden, as the girl held out her hand for the lamb. “I am afraid you will get blood all over your habit, Miss--” He had not meant to fish for her name, and stopped abruptly.

She looked at him with a soft smiling of lips and eyes. “My name is Erroll--Mary Erroll,” she said. “And thank you, I would rather take it. Laurin will follow me now. _Ah_, you beast!”

“You will have to put it down until you mount,” said Roden, laughing a little in spite of himself, as the old lines about Mary and her little lamb crossed his mind.

“Oh no, I wouldn’t put it down,” she said, hastily. “Miss Herrick will hold it for me, won’t you?--and if you would be so kind as to mount me, Mr. Roden.”

“You know my name?” said Roden, as he took the slight foot, arched like Bonnibel’s crest, into his hand.