Even at any time she would have been an enchanting vision to these men, but in the glow of exercise and sparkle of anger she was bewildering. Her wonderful hair, the color of freshly hewn redwood, had escaped from her hat in her passage through the underbrush, and even as she swept down upon them in her majesty she was jabbing a hairpin into it with a dexterous feminine hand.
The three partners turned quite the color of her hair; Jackson Wells alone remained white and rigid. She came on, her very short upper lip showing her white teeth with her panting breath.
Rice was first to speak. "I beg--your pardon, Miss--I thought it was Brown--you know," he stammered.
But she only turned a blighting brown eye on the culprit, curled her short lip till it almost vanished in her scornful nostrils, drew her skirt aside with a jerk, and continued her way straight to Jackson Wells, where she halted.
"We did not know you were--here alone," he said apologetically.
"Thought I was afraid to come alone, didn't you? Well, you see, I'm not. There!" She made another dive at her hat and hair, and brought the hat down wickedly over her eyebrows. "Gimme my plants."
Jackson had been astonished. He would have scarcely recognized in this willful beauty the red-haired girl whom he had boyishly hated, and with whom he had often quarreled. But there was a recollection--and with that recollection came an instinct of habit. He looked her squarely in the face, and, to the horror of his partners, said, "Say please!"
They had expected to see him fall, smitten with the hairpin! But she only stopped, and then in bitter irony said, "Please, Mr. Jackson Wells."
"I haven't dug them up yet--and it would serve you just right if I made you get them for yourself. But perhaps my friends here might help you--if you were civil."
The three partners seized spades and hoes and rushed forward eagerly. "Only show us what you want," they said in one voice.
The young girl stared at them, and at Jackson. Then with swift determination she turned her back scornfully upon him, and with a dazzling smile which reduced the three men to absolute idiocy, said to the others, "I'll show YOU," and marched away to the cabin.
"Ye mustn't mind Jacksey," said Rice, sycophantically edging to her side, "he's so cut up with losin' your father that he loved like a son, he isn't himself, and don't seem to know whether to ante up or pass out. And as for yourself, Miss--why-- What was it he was sayin' only just as the young lady came?" he added, turning abruptly to Wyngate.
"Everything that cousin Josey planted with her own hands must be took up carefully and sent back--even though it's killin' me to part with it," quoted Wyngate unblushingly, as he slouched along on the other side.
Miss Wells's eyes glared at them, though her mouth still smiled ravishingly. "I'm sure I'm troubling you."
In a few moments the plants were dug up and carefully laid together; indeed, the servile Briggs had added a few that she had not indicated.
"Would you mind bringing them as far as the buggy that's coming down the hill?" she said, pointing to a buggy driven by a small boy which was slowly approaching the gate. The men tenderly lifted the uprooted plants, and proceeded solemnly, Miss Wells bringing up the rear, towards the gate, where Jackson Wells was still surlily lounging.
They passed out first. Miss Wells lingered for an instant, and then advancing her beautiful but audacious face within an inch of Jackson's, hissed out, "Make-believe! and hypocrite!"
"Cross-patch and sauce-box!" returned Jackson readily, still under the malign influence of his boyish past, as she flounced away.
Presently he heard the buggy rattle away with his persecutor. But his partners still lingered on the road in earnest conversation, and when they did return it was with a singular awkwardness and embarrassment, which he naturally put down to a guilty consciousness of their foolish weakness in succumbing to the girl's demands.
But he was a little surprised when Dexter Rice approached him gloomily. "Of course," he began, "it ain't no call of ours to interfere in family affairs, and you've a right to keep 'em to yourself, but if you'd been fair and square and above board in what you got off on us about this per--"
"What do you mean?" demanded the astonished Wells.
"Well--callin' her a 'red-haired gal.'"
"Well--she is a red-haired girl!" said Wells impatiently.
"A man," continued Rice pityingly, "that is so prejudiced as to apply such language to a beautiful orphan--torn with grief at the loss of a beloved but d----d misconstruing parent--merely because she begs a few vegetables out of his potato patch, ain't to be reasoned with. But when you come to look at this thing by and large, and as a fa'r-minded man, sonny, you'll agree with us that the sooner you make terms with her the better. Considerin' your interest, Jacksey,--let alone the claims of humanity,--we've concluded to withdraw from here until this thing is settled. She's sort o' mixed us up with your feelings agin her, and naturally supposed we object to the color of her hair! and bein' a penniless orphan, rejected by her relations"--
"What stuff are you talking?" burst in Jackson. "Why, YOU saw she treated you better than she did me."
"Steady! There you go with that temper of yours that frightened the girl! Of course she could see that WE were fa'r-minded men, accustomed to the ways of society, and not upset by the visit of a lady, or the givin' up of a few green sticks! But let that slide!
We're goin' back home to-night, sonny, and when you've thought this thing over and are straightened up and get your right bearin's, we'll stand by you as before. We'll put a man on to do your work on the Ledge, so ye needn't worry about that."