“Does Luke Meadows live here?” Westy asked. “Yes, sirrr,” said the little girl with a strong roll of her r’s.
“Could I see him?”
“I reckon you can,” said the little girl, then without going to the trouble of entering the house, she called, “Dad, thar’s a boy wants to see you.”
These were the first samples Westy had of that characteristic way of saying reckon and thar which he had soon to associate with new friends in a free, vast, far-off region. It occurred to him that if Meadows wished to lie low, as the saying is, it might go hard with the little girl who was so ready to admit his presence to a stranger.
The appearance and reputation of Barrett’s, as well as the unlawful shooting, had conjured up a picture in Westy’s mind which had made him apprehensive about his reception. And now he felt that the little girl might also feel something of the hunter’s displeasure.
His kindly fear for her was quite superfluous, for presently there appeared from within the house a youngish man who absently, as it seemed, placed his arm around the child’s shoulder and drew her toward him as he waited for Westy to make his business known.
The man was tall and raw-boned and wore nothing but queer-looking moccasins, corduroy trousers and a gray flannel shirt. His cheek-bones were high and he was as brown as a mulatto. What caught Westy and somewhat disconcerted him, was the stranger’s eyes, which were gray and of a clearness and keenness which he had never seen in the eyes of any human being before. They were the eyes of the forest and the plains, the eyes that see and read and understand where others see not. The eyes that speak of silent and lonely places and bespeak a competence which only rugged nature can impart. Such eyes Daniel Boone may have had.
At all events, they disconcerted Westy and knocked the beginning of his fine speech clean out of his head. The man was calm and patient, the little girl wriggled playfully in his strong hold, and Westy stood like a fool and said nothing. Then he found himself.
“Are you Lu—— Are you Mr. Luke Meadows?” he asked.
“Reckon I am,” drawled the man.
“Well, then,” said Westy, gathering courage, “I came to tell you that I know what you did in the woods because I—because I was the one that was there—I was the one that shouted.”
“Yer seed me, youngster?” the man drawled, not angrily.
“No, I didn’t see you,” said Westy, “but gee, you don’t have to see a person to find them out. You shot a deer and you know as well as I do it isn’t the season. And then you hid your gun—I guess you thought I was a game warden or something. But I found it, I’ll tell you that much and I saw your name on it.
“Do you know what you made me do?” he added, becoming vehement as his anger gave him courage. “You made me kill a deer, that’s what you made me do! You made me kill a deer after I promised I’d never shoot at anything but a target—that’s what you made me do,” he shouted in boyish anger. “You didn’t even kill it, you didn’t! Now you see what you did, sneaking and shooting game out of season! Now you see what you made me do!”
There was something so na?ve and boyish in putting the injury on personal grounds that even Meadows could not repress a smile.
“I made a promise to my father, that’s what I did,” said Westy indignantly.
The man neither confessed nor denied his guilt. It seemed strange............