CHAPTER XI.
REBUKED BY A GIRL.
At this critical point of our story it is necessary that we should return for a brief space to Raymond Challoner, whom we left still at Newport, though the Ocean House was just about closing for the season.
He had not put in an appearance when Queenie Trevalyn and her mother drove to the depot—not even to say good-by to the girl to whom he had been such a devoted lover for the whole season. With the loss of her fortune his interest waned. He did not get up from his comfortable chair as the hotel ’bus whirled past the door, with the girl and her mother as passengers, to take even a last look at the beauty of the season.
“Good-by, sweetheart, good-by!” he murmured, with a grim laugh, as he lighted a fresh Havana—then he proceeded forthwith to forget the Queenie Trevalyn romance and to look forward to conquests in pastures new.
He was terribly short of funds, and concluded that, under the present condition of affairs, he could not afford to settle his board bill just yet. Consequently, when the clerk of the hostelry sent up to the young millionaire’s apartments for the trifling amount which was still on the books against Mr. Raymond Challoner, that gentleman was found to be missing, bag and baggage.
Ray Challoner had shaken off the dust of Newport from his heels, and had gone as far away from the scene of his late social triumphs, and failure to secure a matrimonial prize, as possible. Was it fate that he should choose New Orleans as his place of destination? Who shall say?
He was anxious to reach there in time for the races; to recoup, if possible, his dwindling amount of cash. But once again fate seemed determined to balk him.
As they reached a little station the telegraph messenger rushed out and signaled the conductor, and a few hurried words passed between them. The conductor seemed greatly disturbed, and the faces of the trainmen who gathered about them also appeared troubled.
Then came the statement by the conductor that there had been an accident to the mail train just ahead and it would be impossible to proceed. The express was ordered to remain at that station until further orders from the manager of the road.
The uneasiness among the passengers was met with the assurance that they could be transferred to another line, which would bring them into New Orleans some five hours late—that was the best that could be done for them.
Ray Challoner fairly foamed as he cursed his luck—the races would be over by the time he could reach the track—and thus fled his hopes of replenishing his pocketbook with the funds of which he stood so sorely in need.
“Is there no way of reaching there save the one you have mentioned, conductor?” he inquired, pacing nervously up and down.
“Well, there is another way—you might stand a ghost of a chance of finding a horse here that might carry you over to Greenville, a distance of some twenty miles across the roughest road you ever struck; once at Greenville you might get a conveyance to take you the other thirty miles—or a horse, or something of that kind; and if you met no mishaps and pushed rapidly on you might land in New Orleans by noon, or a little after.”
“By George! I’ll act upon your suggestion,” declared Challoner, eagerly. “I cannot more than miss, and that’s what I would be doing if——” But here he stopped short, for some one was calling for the conductor, and that functionary was obliged to excuse himself in all haste and hurry away.
Ray Challoner did not wait to see the passengers transferred, but made all haste into the village in which he found himself.
It consisted of a few straggling houses, a blacksmith shop and a couple of general stores, and a farmers’ inn.
Toward the latter place Challoner bent his steps, losing no time in making known his wants to his host, but he soon found, to his chagrin, that a horse could not be hired for love nor money.
“Could I buy a cheap animal hereabouts?” he inquired in desperation.
That put a different face on the matter. The man was quite willing to dispose of an ancient animal he owned if the stranger would pay him his price.
“And what is your price?” queried Challoner, impatiently.
“Fifty dollars,” answered the man, promptly.
Challoner quickly concluded the bargain, although he had scarcely half that amount left in his purse.
An exclamation of intense wrath, not to say an imprecation, broke from his lips on beholding his purchase; but it did little good to invoke a torrent of anger upon the host of the inn, who already had his money pocketed.
“Why, that animal will not carry me five miles!” he cried, when the horse, already saddled, was led around to the front porch. “He is falling down already, and hasn’t a sound leg to stand on; and you could hang your hat on his projecting bones.”
“A lean horse for a long race, my friend,” remarked his host, sagely; “you’ll find that Roger—that’s his name—will carry you the twenty miles to Greenville all right.”
“And drop down dead when I get there,” said Challoner, with still another and more fierce imprecation.
“I didn’t agree that he could go much farther than to Greenville,” responded the late owner of Roger; “that would depend upon how much rest you gave him when you reach there, friend.”
“No doubt I can dispose of him for enough to hire a horse that is a horse to pursue the rest of my journey,” declared the disgruntled young man.
“Most likely,” remarked his host. But he said to his buxom wife, who stood by, as the stranger mounted the horse and rode off at a rattling pace: “If he keeps that gait up very long, Old Roger will surely rebel and refuse to go a step for him, that’s all there is about that. He might lash him to death and he wouldn’t stir a leg when the balky notion hits him. He’ll be glad enough to swap him for a five-dollar note by the time he gets to Greenville—and Roger will soon be walking home to us again.”
Roger had been a profitable animal to mine host. More than once he had sold him, and the new owner was always glad to sell him back to his previous owner at any cost.
Meanwhile the new owner was galloping away at the top of the speed of his new purchase, much to the discomfiture of Roger.
Mile after mile was thus traversed, until, at length, the town he was so anxious to reach loomed up in the distance before him. It was not until then that Roger’s impatience began to show itself. When he reached a green lane which led past a grand old place, the animal absolutely refused to go another step forward. This was a dilemma Challoner had not counted upon.
“Besides being as slow as molasses, he’s a balker, as well,” he muttered, and, taking his whip well in hand, he began to lash the tired beast most inhumanly, a fierce imprecation accompanying each cut of the lash.
One, two, three, four, five strokes of the sizzling rawhide had been brought down upon the quivering flank of the animal, when, forth from the branches of the tree overhead, a blow from a twig fell full upon the face of the startled horseman, a small brown hand was thrust down from among the green branches and a shrill, girlish voice cried, while the blows were rained down faster and faster upon the head of the young man, who was too astounded to make the slightest defense, or make a retreat:
“Take that, and that, and that! you outrageous monster, for lashing a poor, defenseless horse. Oh, I hope that I have hurt you as much as you hurt him—so there!” each word being accompanied by a whack from the stinging twig.
Ray Challoner looked up, as well as his amazement would permit, and saw overhead, sitting on a broad bough, a girl, and surely the angriest creature that he had ever beheld, gazing down at him.
Even in that moment, as he began to dodge the blows, he could not help but notice that the elfish, gypsyish-looking girl had a fine pair of dark eyes, even though they were at that moment blazing with passion, and that the head, crowned with a mass of dark curls, was well set and dainty, the lips were scarlet and curved like Cupid’s bow, and the brune face like a picture he had once seen in a foreign art gallery, of a Spanish princess—though, instead of the filmy lace dress of the former, this one wore a brown linsey dress, which made no pretense of covering the brown feet and ankles dangling down from it.
Challoner recovered his usual coolness instantly.
“Ah!” he said, backing away from the reach of that strong, belligerent young arm, that could deal such tremendous blows with the twig, “my assailant is a young girl, it would seem; therefore I am unable to defend myself from this uncalled-for attack.”
“Uncalled for!” exclaimed the girl, still more shrilly, for she was thoroughly angry at the stranger; “you provoked it by cruelly abusing your poor horse; I only wish he had reared and thrown you, as you deserved.”
“Thank you,” remarked Challoner, sneeringly and mockingly, but before he could utter the rest of the sentence which was on his lips, the horse, as though he had heard the suggestion and thought the idea a capital one, immediately reared backward with the quickness of motion that unseated his rider in a single instant, and in the next, Raymond Challoner found himself measuring his full length on the greensward, and the animal, freed from his obnoxious rider, had plunged forward into an adjacent thicket, and was lost to view.