«By the same token, to go into a nigger's stomach should be the quintessence of adventure,» he retorted.
«I don't think you have any romance in you,» she exclaimed. «You're just dull and sombre and sordid like the business men at home. I don't know why you're here at all. You should be at home placidly vegetating as a banker's clerk or-or-«
«A shopkeeper's assistant, thank you.»
«Yes, that-anything. What under the sun are you doing here on the edge of things?»
«Earning my bread and butter, trying to get on in the world.»
«'By the bitter road the younger son must tread, Ere he win to hearth and saddle of his own,'» she quoted. «Why, if that isn't romantic, then nothing is romantic. Think of all the younger sons out over the world, on a myriad of adventures winning to those same hearths and saddles. And here you are in the thick of it, doing it, and here am I in the thick of it, doing it.»
«I-I beg pardon,» he drawled.
«Well, I'm a younger daughter, then,» she amended; «and I have no hearth nor saddle-I haven't anybody or anything-and I'm just as far on the edge of things as you are.»
«In your case, then, I'll admit there is a bit of romance,» he confessed.
He could not help but think of the preceding nights, and of her sleeping in the hammock on the veranda, under mosquito curtains, her bodyguard of Tahitian sailors stretched out at the far corner of the veranda within call. He had been too helpless to resist, but now he resolved she should have his couch inside while he would take the hammock.
«You see, I had read and dreamed about romance all my life,» she was saying, «but I never, in my wildest fancies, thought that I should live it. It was all so unexpected. Two years ago I thought there was nothing left to me but. . . .» She faltered, and made a moue of distaste. «Well, the only thing that remained, it seemed to me, was marriage.»
«And you preferred a cannibal isle and a cartridge-belt?» he suggested.
«I didn't think of the cannibal isle, but the cartridge-belt was blissful.»
«You wouldn't dare use the revolver if you were compelled to. Or,» noting the glint in her eyes, «if you did use it, to-well, to hit anything.»
She started up suddenly to enter the house. He knew she was going for her revolver.
«Never mind,» he said, «here's mine. What can you do with it?»
«Shoot the block off your flag-halyards.»
He smiled his unbelief.
«I don't know the gun,» she said dubiously.
«It's a light trigger and you don't have to hold down. Draw fine.»
«Yes, yes,» she spoke impatiently. «I know automatics-they jam when they get hot-only I don't know yours.» She looked at it a moment. «It's cocked. Is there a cartridge in the chamber?»
She fired, and the block remained intact.
«It's a long shot,» he said, with the intention of easing her chagrin.
But she bit her lip and fired again. The bullet emitted a sharp shriek as it ricochetted into space. The metal block rattled back and forth. Again and again she fired, till the clip was emptied of its eight cartridges. Six of them were hits. The block still swayed at the gaff-end, but it was battered out of all usefulness. Sheldon was astonished. It was better than he or even Hughie Drummond could have done. The women he had known, when they sporadically fired a rifle or revolver, usually shrieked, shut their eyes, and blazed away into space.
«That's really good shooting . . . for a woman,» he said. «You only missed it twice, and it was a strange weapon.»
«But I can't make out the two misses,» she complained. «The gun worked beautifully, too. Give me another clip and I'll hit it eight times for anything you wish.»
«I don't doubt it. Now I'll have to get a new block. Viaburi! Here you fella, catch one fella block along store-room.»
«I'll wager you can't do it eight out of eight . . . anything you wish,» she challenged.
«No fear of my taking it on,» was his answer. «Who taught you to shoot?»
«Oh, my father, at first, and then Von, and his cowboys. He was a shot-Dad, I mean, though Von was splendid, too.»
Sheldon wondered secretly who Von was, and he speculated as to whether it was Von who two years previously had led her to believe that nothing remained for her but matrimony.
«What part of the United States is your home?» he asked. «Chicago or Wyoming? or somewhere out there? You know you haven't told me a thing about yourself. All that I know is that you are Miss Joan Lackland from anywhere.»
«You'd have to go farther west to find my stamping grounds.»
«Ah, let me see-Nevada?»
She shook her head.
«California?»
«Still farther west.»
«It can't be, or else I've forgotten my geography.»
«It's your politics,» she laughed. «Don't you remember 'Annexation'?»
«The Philippines!» he cried triumphantly.
«No, Hawaii. I was born there. It is a beautiful land. My, I'm almost homesick for it already. Not that I haven't been away. I was in New York when the crash came. But I do think it is the sweetest spot on earth-Hawaii, I mean.»
«Then what under the sun are you doing down here in this God– forsaken place?» he asked. «Only fools come here,» he added bitterly.
«Nielsen wasn't a fool, was he?» she queried. «As I understand, he made three millions here.»
«Only too true, and that fact is responsible for my being here.»
«And for me, too,» she said. «Dad heard about him in the Marquesas, and so we started. Only poor Dad didn't get here.»
«He-your father-died?» he faltered.
She nodded, and her eyes grew soft and moist.
«I might as well begin at the beginning.» She lifted her head with a proud air of dismissing sadness, after, the manner of a woman qualified to wear a Baden-Powell and a long-barrelled Colt's. «I was born at Hilo. That's on the island of Hawaii-the biggest and best in the whole group. I was brought up the way most girls in Hawaii are brought up. They live in the open, and they know how to ride and swim before they know what six-times-six is. As for me, I can't remember when I first got on a horse nor when I learned to swim. That came before my A B C's. Dad owned cattle ranches on Hawaii and Maui-big ones, for the islands. Hokuna had two hundred thousand acres alone. It extended in between Mauna Koa and Mauna Loa, and it was there I learned to shoot goats and wild cattle. On Molokai they have big spotted deer. Von was the manager of Hokuna. He had two daughters about my own age, and I always spent the hot season there, and, once, a whole year. The three of us were like Indians. Not that we ran wild, exactly, but that we were wild to run wild. There were always the governesses, you know, and lessons, and sewing, and housekeeping; but I'm afraid we were too often bribed to our tasks with promises of horses or of cattle drives.
«Von had been in the army, and Dad was an old sea-dog, and they were both stern disciplinarians; only the two girls had no mother, and neither had I, and they were two men after all. They spoiled us terribly. You see, they didn't have any wives, and they made chums out of us-when our tasks were done. We had to learn to do everything about the house twice as well as the native servants did it-that was so that we should know how to manage some day. And we always made the cocktails, which was too holy a rite for any servant. Then, too, we were never allowed anything we could not take care of ourselves. Of course the cowboys always roped and saddled our horses, but we had to be able ourselves to go out in the paddock and rope our horses-«
«What do you mean by ROPE?» Sheldon asked.
«To lariat them, to lasso them. And Dad and Von timed us in the saddling and made a most rigid examination of the result. It was the same way with our revolvers and rifles. The house-boys always cleaned them and greased them; but we had to learn how in order to see that they did it properly. More than once, at first, one or the other of us had our rifles taken away for a week just because of a tiny speck of rust. We had to know how to build fires in the driving rain, too, out of wet wood, when we camped out, which was the hardest thing of all-except grammar, I do believe. We learned more from Dad and Von than from the governesses; Dad taught us French and Von German. We learned both languages passably well, and we learned them wholly in the saddle or in camp.