She had finished wiping her face, and was hurriedly disentangling
two stinging tears from her long lashes, before she threw back his
handkerchief. Her sprained ankle obliged him to lift her into the saddle
and adjust her little shoe in the stirrup. He remembered when it
was still smaller. "You used to ride astride," he said, a flood of
recollection coming over him, "and it's much safer with your temper and
that brute."
"And you," she said in a lower voice, "used to be"--But the rest of her
sentence was lost in the switch of the whip and the jump of her horse,
but he thought the word was "kinder."
Perhaps this was why, after he watched her canter away, he went back to
the garden, and from the bruised and trampled strawberry bed gathered
a small basket of the finest fruit, covered them with leaves, added a
paper with the highly ingenious witticism, "Picked up with you," and
sent them to her by one of the Chinamen. Her forcible entry moved
Li Sing, his foreman, also chief laundryman to the settlement, to
reminiscences:
"Me heap knew Missy Wells and ole man, who go dead. Ole man allee
time make chin music to Missy. Allee time jaw jaw--allee time make
lows--allee time cuttee up Missy! Plenty time lockee up Missy topside
house; no can walkee--no can talkee--no hab got--how can get?--must
washee washee allee same Chinaman. Ole man go dead--Missy all lightee
now. Plenty fun. Plenty stay in Blown's big house, top-side hill; Blown
first-chop man."
Had he inquired he might have found this pagan testimony, for once,
corroborated by the Christian neighbors.
But another incident drove all this from his mind. The little
stream--the life blood of his garden--ran dry! Inquiry showed that it
had been diverted two miles away into Brown's ditch! Wells's indignant
protest elicited a formal reply from Brown, stating that he owned the
adjacent mining claims, and reminding him that mining rights to water
took precedence of the agricultural claim, but offering, by way of
compensation, to purchase the land thus made useless and sterile.
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