Sam

Chapter XI Treed!

It was early afternoon when Sam nursed the Fifty-Fifty into the rock-bound cove that formed his island harbor, made her fast, and stepped ashore. He advanced up the winding path to his cabin. Midway in its length he paused and listened.

A dog barked.

The boatman resumed his advance at a quicker pace. He caught sight of the cabin, then of an agitated red setter that ran to and fro beneath a tree whose branches brushed the roof of the dwelling. The animal was yelping nervously.

Next the boatman saw a pair of feet, shod in snowy white and outlined sharp and clear against the dark-green foliage. The feet were attached to a pair of ankles, also in white—ankles that were slim, aristocratic, even haughty.

Then as he stepped forward the rim of a white skirt came into view. A second later his advance brought him to a point from which he obtained a full view of Rosalind Chalmers, sitting on the branch of a tree.

“Call off your dog!” she commanded.

Sam removed his gaze from the vision in the tree and studied the animal thoughtfully. The setter, having sighted the boatman, ceased baying and sat down with an alert eye upon the quarry.

“The dog, I said!” said Rosalind harshly. “Call him off!”

Sam’s glance returned to the lady on the branch.

“Good afternoon,” he said pleasantly.

Rosalind returned the inspection through angry eyes.

“Are you going to call off the dog?” she demanded.

“Why, I was just thinking about it,” drawled Sam. “I don’t know that I ought to discourage him.”

The lady in the tree uttered an exclamation.

“You see,” added the boatman, “the dog is only doing his duty. His job is to protect my property. He looks out for it when I’m away.”

She observed that the boatman was staring intently, not at her eyes—where it is customary to look at a person—but at her ankles, where it is not always polite to stare. She knew they were conspicuous, but she also realized the futility of flinching. Sitting on a limb, there was absolutely no way to make her skirt cover them.

“This—this is an outrage!” she stormed.

“Why, perhaps—ma’am. But whose fault?”

“The beast—he—chased me!”

“I told him to.”

“You told him to?”

“That is, I told him to chase anybody. I hardly expected he’d tree you. Did I, old sport?”

The dog relaxed his vigil long enough to turn his head, wag his tail furiously, and give throat to a joyous bark.

“You see, this is where I live,” added Sam with a nod at the cabin. “He’s in charge when I’m not here.”

“In charge since—”

“Yesterday.”

“You stole him!”

The boatman seemed indifferent to the charge.

“That dog belongs to Mr. Witherbee,” declared Rosalind. “You know perfectly well you stole him. And—will you call him off?”

“Perhaps—by and by,” answered the boatman.

He seated himself on the ground ten feet below her and began fumbling for tobacco. Rosalind was pink with rage.

“I’m coming down!” she declared.

Sam did not appear to hear the announcement.

She slid cautiously along the limb for a few inches, steadying herself by a tight grip on another branch. The dog sprang to his feet and yelped furiously. Rosalind became rigid again.

“Will you call him off?”

Sam studied her ankles, then resumed the methodical filling of his pipe.

“What brought you here?” he asked after a pause.

“I came in a rowboat.”

“Alone?”

“Certainly.”

“I didn’t see the boat.”

“It drifted away—I wouldn’t be here except for that.”

“What did you come for?”

Rosalind gritted her teeth and wondered if the dog would really bite.

“I was merely rowing,” she said, trying to calm her voice. “I—I thought the island was unoccupied.”

“You didn’t happen to be looking for a smugglers’ cave, did you?”

“No!”

“Or a burglars’ den?”

“No!”

“Or an international spy?”

She remained furious and silent.

“It’s rather important for me to know,” he explained as he scratched a match. “There’s so much hunting going on that it isn’t safe to ignore it. You don’t happen to be a member of a posse, do you?”

“Will you let me down?”

“That’s his affair,” answered the boatman, nodding in the direction of the dog. “He seems to like you where you are. I don’t know that I ought to interfere. It might discourage him and make him careless in the future. Did you visit my cabin?”

Rosalind remained silent.

The boatman whispered something to the dog, then arose lazily and walked over to the shack. Rosalind saw him disappear within the door. She made a second tentative move toward descent. The dog, which lay watching her with his nose between his paws, sprang up and snarled.

A moment afterward Sam emerged from the cabin, staring ruefully at the sheet of paper that was in his hand.

“You tore down my picture-gallery,” he said reproachfully. “Why did you do that?”

Rosalind flushed and compressed her lips.

“I thought quite a lot of that picture,” he mused, seating himself again. “It seemed like such a good likeness.”

“You beast!”

“That’s not the way to make friends with him,” cautioned the boatman.

“I mean you!”

“Oh! Well, that’s not the way to make friends with me, either. Didn’t you like my portrait of a lady?”

“I’m coming down!” she warned desperately.

“I wouldn’t—yet. He can really bite, ma’am. Have you been there long?”

“An hour.”

“Is it comfortable up there?”

She remained grimly silent. It was not comfortable. The limb was very hard and its diameter was meager. Her feet were asleep.

The boatman returned to a study of the “portrait.” He even began to read aloud from it, when Rosalind stopped him with an imploring exclamation.

“Please—please!” she cried.

“But it’s such a good portrait,” he protested, looking up at her mildly. “It’s a new kind of art. It’s got the cubists beaten a mile. Statist, I suppose you’d call it. It gives all the dope—just draws a picture in facts and figures. I’m strong for it.

“Listen. Here’s where it says you—”

“Stop!”

“You are the daughter of—”

“Oh, will you stop?”

He paused in his reading and observed her attentively. What he saw appeared to please him. Rosalind was never more charming. She was a goddess, all in white save for the fiery tint in her cheeks and the dangerous glint in her blue eyes.

“Say,” he said with sudden interest, “how’d you get up there, anyhow? It’s some climb.”

“I—I had to climb.”

“Meaning he pushed you pretty hard,” nodding at the dog.

“Of course!”

“I’d have given a lot to have seen you make it,” he mused. “If I call him off will you do it again?”

She flushed hotly and shot him a look of stinging contempt. He never winced.

“You see,” he explained, “there’s no branch below the one you’re sitting on. And that’s a good ten feet up. You must have jumped for it and swung yourself up, or else you shinned the tree. In either case it was a stunt that’s a credit to you. I’m certainly sorry I missed it—ma’am.”

He drawled the last word with maddening emphasis.

Rosalind was in despair. It was not fear of the dog—now. She knew that Sam would not dare to let the animal attack, even if she descended from her refuge. It was fear of the boatman’s mocking eyes. He was smiling. What would he do when she, Rosalind, the dignified, began the scramble that must precede her arrival at terra firma?

Dignity scarcely sat with her on the limb, even now; it would be a thousand miles away when she made the first decisive move. It was a sense of dignity wholly that restrained Rosalind. She did not care particularly about her ankles; she was not ashamed of them and had no reason to be. But she was bitterly resolved that she would cling to the very end to whatever shred of haughty poise remained to her.

Temper loosed her tongue again.

“Thief! Smuggler!” she exclaimed. “They’ll make short work of you when I’m free from this.”

“Well, we’re all little pals together,” he observed serenely.

“Spy!”

“Say, that was a funny one, wasn’t it?” he said, brightening. “Me und Schmidt—spies! That was one you never even thought of, ma’am.”

“Will you stop calling me ‘ma’am’?”

“Excuse me. I was only trying to be respectful. What do you want me to call you—Rosie?”

Rosalind almost lost her balance. She recovered herself with a desperate grab at a branch and made a choking noise in her throat. It shamed her to know that tears were in her eyes, but she could not force them back.

“About that spy business,” he went on. “Did you believe that?”

“I see no reason to doubt it.”

He mused over that for a while.

“It’s hanging if it’s true,” he remarked presently.

“I hope so!”

“Hanging for me und Schmidt. I hate to think about it.”

Rosalind could contemplate it with pleasure.

“Poor old Schmidt! Fat old Schmidt—who never did anything worse than buy and sell wheat on the Chicago Board of Trade! Think of hanging Schmidt as a spy!”

Rosalind paid little attention to the uttered thoughts of the boatman. She was trying to concentrate on her own case. Thus far conversation had been futile while the dog and the man remained inexorable.

She blamed herself bitterly for the panic that had driven her to an arboreal refuge. If only she had stopped and faced the beast all might have been saved! As she looked down upon him now she did not believe he would bite. But he had come upon her so suddenly, so clamorously, that self-possession fled from her in a flash.

And now, even though she lacked faith in his ferocity and remembered how insinuatingly he had nosed his muzzle into her hand back on the Witherbee place, there were other reasons. Chief of course was the sardonic boatman.

Yet she was frantically anxious to descend from her tree. To gain that she was almost willing to sacrifice everything save dignity. She was even content to sue for peace—to make terms, if need be to humiliate herself before this common creature who calmly smoked and watched her discomfiture.

“May I come down now?” she asked so sweetly that the alteration in her voice startled him.

He stared at her and whistled.

“Please!”

Rosalind’s tone was liquid in its smoothness. And—she smiled! The boatman dropped his pipe.

“Do it again,” he said incredulously.

“What?”

“Smile!”

She did it again, this time with less obvious effort. His complete astonishment helped to lighten the task.

“Great heavens, you can do it!”

“And now may I come down?”

She suited a movement to the question, but the dog growled again. The boatman recovered his composure.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” he said. “It depends. You see, you’ve invaded my island and you’ve been prospecting around my cabin, and maybe you’re fixing to get me into trouble.”

“I promise!” she exclaimed hastily.

“But you’ve got me for a thief, a smuggler, and a spy, and that’s a whole lot to have on anybody.”

“I’m willing to ignore the matter, then. It’s none of my business.”

“Hum! That’s sounds fair enough, of course. But how can I tell they won’t wheedle it out of you?”

“Do you think I’m a child?”

“I should say not!”

She did not relish the emphasis nor see the need for it.

“Well, am I to be released?” she asked after a pause.

“I’m thinking about it. Why did you tear down my picture-gallery?”

“It was an insult!”

“Not a bit, ma’am. It was just a portrait—a bully one. Anyhow, why shouldn’t I have one? Thousands of ’em have been printed.”

Rosalind bit her lip.

“They’re in common circulation, all over. Anybody with three dollars can buy one.”

“You stole it.”

“That’s a compliment to you, ma’am. See the risk I ran—for a picture.”

“They—they are not for common people,” she said frigidly.

Sam surveyed her leisurely.

“I suppose that means me,” he remarked.

She answered with a gesture.

“And of course you’re something better than common clay,” he mused.

She did not stoop to answer him.

“Say!” he broke out suddenly. “Far be it from me to be impolite to a lady, particularly a lady with her portrait written in a three-dollar society book. But do you know that you make me good and tired?”

The lady in the tree gasped.

“Yes; dead weary. I’ve heard about you. I read the papers sometimes. You’re one of the exclusive bunch; you’re in the ’it’ class. Everybody outside of it is plain common dirt—to you. You’ve got the coin and the pedigree, which is supposed to make you something extra special. You’re supposed to be a shade higher up than human. They tell me you’re a heart-breaker, too.”

Rosalind turned white.

“Just why you should be such a heart-breaker,” he continued, examining her with a critical eye, “is something I don’t quite get. You’re a good-enough looker, so far as that goes, but—shucks! There are lots of those. Never saw a man yet that was fit to marry you, I understand. A sort of a man-hater, maybe.

“Yet you never try to head a man off if you see he’s in a fair way to get his heart cracked. That’s your favorite sport, according to the dope I get. You just take it as something that is naturally coming to you. If it didn’t happen you’d feel insulted. Oh, yes! I’ve heard about you.”

She was rigid as marble and almost as breathless.

“Let me tell you something—Rosie. You can’t put that stuff over on me. You can swing it across on some society guy, but it doesn’t go here. Why, I can tell things about your doings in the last forty-eight hours that’ll knock you clean out of the Blue Book.

“As I said before, I don’t want to be rude to a lady, ma’am, and I don’t intend to say anything that would hurt her feelings—not for anything. But you make me plain and plumb tired.”

Rosalind was crying in sheer helpless rage. The boatman watched the tears stonily. After a short pause he arose from his seat on the ground and whistled to the dog.

“You can come down if you like,” he informed her.

Torn with a storm of sobs and mortification, Rosalind made no move to descend. He watched her for a minute, then went into the cabin and returned, dragging the table. This he placed beneath the limb where she still clung, quivering.

Mounting the table, he reached up and in a most impersonal way grasped her about the waist and swung her clear of the tree. For an instant Rosalind found herself poised in the air. Then she was deposited on the ground. She walked a few steps and leaned weakly against the tree. The dog barked in delight.

“Well, you’ve got to get home, I suppose,” said Sam. “And your boat’s gone. It’s up to me to take you. I don’t mind earning a little money.

“You may as well quit crying, too. You’re not hurt and you’re not down-hearted. You’re just good and mad; that’s all.”

He turned to lead the way down the path, then stopped and stared through an opening in the trees.

“Another visitor,” he observed with a grin.

Rosalind followed the direction of his glance. Reginald Williams in a motor-launch was just making the shore of the island. He glimpsed her white-clad figure and waved his hand.

“Oh!” she gasped.

“Trouble?” inquired Sam.

“You mustn’t tell him! How shall I explain? What shall I do? I can’t ever, ever—”

Her tears began to flow afresh.

“Needn’t worry about me telling him anything, ma’am. I’m deaf and dumb—to him.”

“But—but—”

Rosalind Chalmers was deserted by her cloak of calm disdain. She was in a panic.

A sudden change came over the boatman.

“Come on, buck up!” he said, cheerfully. “I’m sorry I made you cry. I take it all back—honest. Just forget it. We’ll get out of this easy. Get your nerve now—quick! He’ll be here in a couple of minutes. Be a sport, Miss Chalmers! Be a pal; just make believe you’re the master mechanic again. Think hard now. We’ve got to hand him something.”

“But he’ll think that I—”

“No, he won’t,” declared Sam soothingly. “He won’t have time to think anything. That’s it; brace hard, now. I knew you were game.”

He actually patted her on the shoulder. Somehow Rosalind neglected to resent the vulgar familiarity.

“Here! I’ve got the scheme!” he exclaimed. “Only you’ll have to spiel it at him because I’m a dummy. Now, listen!”