Nobody's Child

The quietude of winter still lay on the land, the apathetic dun of field and woodland unstirred as yet by the hint of spring that was tipping with eagerness the wings of the birds and, under their brown frost-dulled blanket, was quickening into fresh green the woody stems of arbutus. The mid-morning sun had struggled out of a gray March chill and was setting a-gleam the drops of moisture on trees and grass, drawing little rivulets from the streaks of snow which hid in the corners of the rail-fences and in the hollows of the creek. Winter was reluctantly saying farewell.

The girl, who a mile back had turned in from the old Fox-Ridge Post-Road and had come up through the pastures to the edge of the woodland, looked with smiling understanding at the slow yielding of winter. Another winter added to her sum of seventeen. Or, rather, as youth always looks forward and counts much upon the future, perhaps a joyous spring to be added to her sum of experience.

As she sat, swaying gently to the jerky motion of the creaking buggy, the reins lax in her hands, her eyes from beneath the shadow of her brown hood traveled over the reaches of pasture, the slopes of reddish soil freshly turned for oats, the trails of the snake-fences strangled by brown undergrowth, the twists and curves of the creek that divided the pasture from the upward slopes of grain-land, and, beyond, against the horizon, the red scars and dull patches of scrubby growth that marked the "Mine Banks," the ancient, worked-out, and now overgrown and abandoned iron-ore bed that a hundred and fifty years before had yielded wealth to its owners.

"Spring will make even the Mine Banks lovely," Ann Penniman was thinking.

She had come up now to the woodland, a wide half circle of tall oaks and chestnuts, which, like the bend of a huge bow, touched the Mine Banks in the distance, and behind her reached to the Post-Road. She skirted the woods for a time, the horse straining through sand, a rough road, in the winter rarely traveled, but in summer a possible short cut from the Post-Road to the Penniman farm, which was just beyond the woods.

A short distance ahead, this side of where the creek came out into the open, the road turned and led into the woods, and Ann had almost reached the turn when a streak of red, a fox running swift and low, darted across the road, slid over the corner of pasture that lay between the woods and the creek, reappeared beyond the creek, then sped up the slope of plowed ground, making for the shelter of the Mine Banks.

Ann drew up and waited a moment, until the woods awoke to the deep bay of the hounds as they picked up the scent, followed by the halloo of the huntsmen. The next moment the whole pack swept almost under her horse's nose, over and under and through the rail-fence, across the bit of pasture, checked for a moment or two and casting along the bank of the creek, then were over and off up the plowed slope, after their quarry.

The color came into the girl's cheeks and she sat taut. A bag-fox! If a game fox, he would mix up the hunt in the Mine Banks, and be off to the denser woods and rock-holes above the river, an all day's sport for the Fox-Ridge Hunt Club. The woods rang and rustled now to their approach. Some took the fence, some came out by the road, and one and all cleared the creek and galloped up the opposite slope. Here and there fluttered a woman's dark skirt, a somber note amid the cluster of men in pink.

Ann knew the meaning of it all well. The Hunt Club was just beyond the woods, half a mile or so from the Penniman farm. They had loosed the fox at the edge of the woods, given him his start, then set on the hounds. She looked with tingling wistfulness after the aristocracy of the Ridge, embarked on its Saturday of excitement and pleasure, then with lifted lip at the thin rump of the mare she was driving, and gathered up the reins. The animal had pricked its ears and quivered when the hunt swept over it; it had life enough in it for that, but that was all.

Then with a revulsion of feeling, pity for the beast commingled with self-pity, she let the reins drop. It had been a hard pull of four miles up the muddy Post-Road and through the sand of the Back Road, and the wait here was pleasanter than the return to the farm would be. The hunt had passed, leaving her behind; everything bearing the name of Penniman or belonging to a Penniman was fated to be left behind; why not sit in the sun for a time?

But it seemed she had not seen the last of the hunt, for her ear caught now the gallop of horses, even before she saw them: two horsemen who cleared the fence at the lower end of the pasture with a bird-like lift and dip that brought the light into Ann's eyes, and who now galloped up and by her, headed for the creek, two belated huntsmen come cross-country from the Post-Road and evidently intent upon joining the hunt. Ann recognized the foremost rider first from his horse, a long-necked, clean-limbed sorrel, then from the fleeting glimpse of the man's profile, dark and clear-cut, the face that for months had played with her fancy: Garvin Westmore, the most indefatigable sportsman of the Ridge. The other young man's heavier-jawed and rougher-featured face she did not know. A guest of the club, probably, out from the city for the day.

Then she saw again, with a choke of delight, the light lift and dip of the riders as they cleared the creek-stood up in her ramshackle buggy to see it.... Saw one horse go down, pitching his rider over his head, and the other horseman, not Garvin Westmore, go on-wheel when well up the slope and start back; saw that the horse was struggling with nose to the ground, but that the man lay motionless.

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