couldn't, when you have dressed it so nicely."
The velvety touch of her warm arm was tingling in Freckles' fingertips.
Dainty lace and fine white
ribbon peeped through her torn dress.
There were beautiful rings on her fingers. Every article she wore
was of the finest material and in excellent taste. There was the
trembling Limberlost guard in his
coarse clothing, with his cotton
rags and his old pail of swamp water. Freckles was
sufficientlyaccustomed to contrasts to notice them, and
sufficiently fine to be
hurt by them always.
He lifted his eyes with a
shadowy pain in them to hers, and found
them of
serene,
unconsciouspurity. What she had said was straight
from a kind, untainted, young heart. She meant every word of it.
Freckles' soul sickened. He scarcely knew whether he could muster
strength to stand.
"We must go and hunt for the
carriage," said the Angel, rising.
In
instant alarm for her, Freckles
sprang up, grasped the cudgel,
and led the way,
sharply watching every step. He went as close the
log as he felt that he dared, and with a little searching found
the
carriage. He cleared a path for the Angel, and with a sigh of
relief saw her enter it
safely. The heat was
intense. She pushed
the damp hair from her temples.
"This is a shame!" said Freckles. "You'll never be coming here again."
"Oh yes I shall!" said the Angel. "The Bird Woman says that these
birds remain over a month in the nest and she would like to make a
picture every few days for seven or eight weeks, perhaps."
Freckles
barely escaped crying aloud for joy.
"Then don't you ever be torturing yourself and your horse to be
coming in here again," he said. "I'll show you a way to drive
almost to the nest on the east trail, and then you can come around
to my room and stay while the Bird Woman works. It's nearly always
cool there, and there's comfortable seats, and water."
"Oh! did you have drinking-water there?" she cried. "I was never so
thirsty or so hungry in my life, but I thought I wouldn't mention it."
"And I had not the wit to be seeing!" wailed Freckles. "I can be
getting you a good drink in no time."
He turned to the trail.
"Please wait a minute," called the Angel. "What's your name? I want
to think about you while you are gone." Freckles lifted his face
with the brown rift across it and smiled quizzically.
"Freckles?" she guessed, with a peal of
laughter. "And mine is----"
"I'm
knowing yours," interrupted Freckles.
"I don't believe you do. What is it?" asked the girl.
"You won't be getting angry?"
"Not until I've had the water, at least."
It was Freckles' turn to laugh. He whipped off his big, floppy
straw hat, stood uncovered before her, and said, in the sweetest of
all the sweet tones of his voice: "There's nothing you could be but
the Swamp Angel."
The girl laughed happily.
Once out of her sight, Freckles ran every step of the way to
the cabin. Mrs. Duncan gave him a small
bucket of water, cool from
the well. He carried it in the crook of his right arm, and a basket
filled with bread and butter, cold meat, apple pie, and pickles, in
his left hand.
"Pickles are kind o' cooling," said Mrs. Duncan.
Then Freckles ran again.
The Angel was on her knees, reaching for the
bucket, as he came up.
"Be drinking slow," he cautioned her.
"Oh!" she cried, with a long
breath of
satisfaction. "It's so good!
You are more than kind to bring it!"
Freckles stood blinking in the dazzling glory of her smile until he
scarcely could see to lift the basket.
"Mercy!" she exclaimed. "I think I had better be naming you
the `Angel.' My Guardian Angel."
"Yis," said Freckles. "I look the
character every day--but today
most emphatic!"
"Angels don't go by looks," laughed the girl. "Your father told us
you had been scrapping. But he told us why. I'd
gladly wear all
your cuts and bruises if I could do anything that would make my
father look as peacocky as yours did. He strutted about proper.
I never saw anyone look prouder."
"Did he say he was proud of me?" marveled Freckles.
"He didn't need to," answered the Angel. "He was radiating
pride from every pore. Now, have you brought me your dinner?"
"I had my dinner two hours ago," answered Freckles.
"Honest Injun?" bantered the Angel.
"Honest! I brought that on purpose for you."
"Well, if you knew how hungry I am, you would know how thankful
I am, to the dot," said the Angel.
"Then you be eating," cried the happy Freckles.
The Angel sat on a big camera, spread the lunch on the
carriageseat, and divided it in halves. The daintiest parts she could
select she carefully put back into the basket. The remainder
she ate. Again Freckles found her of the swamp, for though she was
almost ravenous, she managed her food as
gracefully as his little
yellow fellow, and her every
movement was easy and
charming. As he
watched her with famished eyes, Freckles told her of his birds,
flowers, and books, and never realized what he was doing.
He led the horse to a deep pool that he knew of, and the tortured
creature drank
greedily, and lovingly rubbed him with its nose as
he wiped down its welted body with grass. Suddenly the Angel cried:
"There comes the Bird Woman!"
Freckles had intended leaving before she came, but now he was glad
indeed to be there, for a warmer, more worn, and worse bitten
creature he never had seen. She was staggering under a load of
cameras and paraphernalia. Freckles ran to her aid. He took all he
could carry of her load, stowed it in the back of the
carriage, and
helped her in. The Angel gave her water, knelt and unfastened the
leggings, bathed her face, and offered the lunch.
Freckles brought the horse. He was not sure about the
harness, but
the Angel knew, and soon they left the swamp. Then he showed them
how to reach the chicken tree from the outside, indicated a cooler
place for the horse, and told them how, the next time they came,
the Angel could find his room while she waited.
The Bird Woman finished her lunch, and lay back, almost too tired
to speak.
"Were you for getting Little Chicken's picture?" Freckles asked.
"Finely!" she answered. "He posed
splendidly. But I couldn't do
anything with his mother. She will require coaxing."
"The Lord be praised!" muttered Freckles under his
breath.
The Bird Woman began to feel better.
"Why do you call the baby vulture `Little Chicken'?" she asked,
leaning toward Freckles in an interested manner.
"'Twas Duncan began it," said Freckles. "You see, through the
fierce cold of winter the birds of the swamp were almost starving.
It is
mightylonely here, and they were all the company I was having.
I got to carrying scraps and grain down to them. Duncan was
that ginerous he was giving me of his wheat and corn from his
chickens' feed, and he called the birds me swamp chickens.
Then when these big black fellows came, Mr. McLean said they were
our nearest kind to some in the old world that they called
`Pharaoh's Chickens,' and he called mine `Freckles' Chickens.'"
"Good enough!" cried the Bird Woman, her splotched
purple face
lighting with interest. "You must shoot something for them
occasionally, and I'll bring more food when I come. If you will
help me keep them until I get my
series, I'll give you a copy of
each study I make, mounted in a book."
Freckles drew a deep
breath.
"I'll be doing me very best," he promised, and from the deeps he
meant it.
"I wonder if that other egg is going to hatch?" mused the Bird Woman.
"I am afraid not. It should have pipped today. Isn't it a beauty!
I never before saw either an egg or the young. They are rare this
far north."
"So Mr. McLean said," answered Freckles.
Before they drove away, the Bird Woman thanked him for his kindness
to the Angel and to her. She gave him her hand at
parting, and
Freckles
joyfully realized that this was going to be another person
for him to love. He could not remember, after they had
driven away,
that they even had noticed his
missing hand, and for the first time
in his life he had forgotten it.
When the Bird Woman and the Angel were on the home road, she told
of the little corner of
paradise into which she had strayed and
of her new name. The Bird Woman looked at the girl and guessed
its appropriateness.
"Did you know Mr. McLean had a son?" asked the Angel. "Isn't the
little
accent he has, and the way he twists a
sentence, too dear?
And isn't it too
old-fashioned and funny to hear him call his
father `mister'?"
"It sounds too good to be true," said the Bird Woman, answering the
last question first. "I am so tired of these present-day young men
who patronizingly call their fathers `Dad,' `Governor,' `Old Man"
and `Old Chap,' that the boy's attitude of respect and deference
appealed to me as being fine as silk. There must be something rare
about that young man."
She did not find it necessary to tell the Angel that for several
years she had known the man who so
proudly proclaimed himself
Freckles' father to be a
bachelor and a Scotchman. The Bird Woman
had a fine way of attending
strictly to her own business.
Freckles turned to the trail, but he stopped at every wild brier to
study the pink satin of the petals. She was not of his world, and
better than any other he knew it; but she might be his Angel, and
he was dreaming of
naught but blind, silent
worship. He finished
the happiest day of his life, and that night he returned to the
swamp as if drawn by
invisible force. That Wessner would try for
his
revenge, he knew. That he would be abetted by Black Jack was
almost certain, but fear had fled the happy heart of Freckles.
He had kept his trust. He had won the respect of the Boss.
No one ever could wipe from his heart the flood of holy adoration
that had welled with the coming of his Angel. He would do his best,
and trust for strength to meet the dark day of
reckoning that he
knew would come sooner or later. He swung round the trail, briskly
tapping the wire, and singing in a voice that scarcely could have
been surpassed for sweetness.
At the edge of the
clearing he came into the bright
moonlight and
there sat McLean on his mare. Freckles
hurried to him.
"Is there trouble?" he inquired
anxiously.
"That's what I wanted to ask you," said the Boss. "I stopped at the
cabin to see you a minute, before I turned in, and they said you
had come down here. You must not do it, Freckles. The swamp is none
too
healthful at any time, and at night it is rank poison."
Freckles stood combing his fingers through Nellie's mane, while the
dainty creature was twisting her head for his caresses. He pushed
back his hat and looked into McLean's face. "It's come to the
`sleep with one eye open,' sir. I'm not looking for anything to be
happening for a week or two, but it's bound to come, and soon.
If I'm to keep me trust as I've promised you and meself, I've to live
here
mostly until the gang comes. You must be
knowing that, sir."
"I'm afraid it's true, Freckles," said McLean. "And I've
decided to
double the guard until we come. It will be only a few weeks, now;
and I'm so
anxious for you that you must not be left alone further.
If anything should happen to you, Freckles, it would spoil one of
the very dearest plans of my life."
Freckles heard with
dismay the
proposition to place a second guard.
"Oh! no, no, Mr. McLean," he cried. "Not for the world! I wouldn't
be having a stranger around, scaring me birds and tramping up me
study, and disturbing all me ways, for any money! I am all the
guard you need! I will be faithful! I will turn over the lease with
no tree
missing--on me life, I will! Oh, don't be sending another
man to set them
saying I turned
coward and asked for help. It will
just kill the honor of me heart if you do it. The only thing I want