and hung around outside the tepees at night, and tried to whistle the girls out. But I never held by such a tingle-pingle contraption as that," he said scornfully, pushing the banjo with his foot. "To my mind it's for niggers and Eyetalians. 'Tis unmanly."
Jack raised his head. "Did you break it?" he demanded scowling.
"Nay," said Cranston coolly. "I brought it along wi' you. It's property, and I spoil nothing that is not my own."
There was a silence. Cranston with the greatest deliberation, took out his pipe and stuck it in his mouth; produced his plug of tobacco, shaved it nicely, and put it away again; rolled the tobacco thoroughly between his palms, and pressed it into the bowl with a careful forefinger. A glowing ember from the fire completed the operation. For five minutes he smoked in silence, occasionally glancing at Jack from under heavy brows.
"Have ye anything to say?" he asked at last.
"No," muttered Jack.
There was another silence. Cranston sat as if he meant to spend the night.
"I don't get too many chances to talk to a white man," he finally said with a kind of gruff diffidence. "Yon pretty fellows sleeping on the steamboat, they are not men, but clothespins. Sir Bryson Trangmar, Lord love ye! he will be calling me 'my good man' to-morrow. And him a grocer once, they say—like myself." There was a cavernous chuckle here.
Jack sensed that the grim old trader was actually making friendly advances, but the young man was to sore, too hopelessly in the wrong, to respond right away.
Cranston continued to smoke and to gaze at the fire.
"Well, I have something to say," he blurted out at last, in a changed voice. "And it's none too easy!" There was something inexpressibly moving in the tremor that shook his grim voice as he blundered on. "You made a mistake, young fellow. She's too good for this 'whistle and I'll come to ye, my lad,' business. If you had any sense you would have seen it for yourself—my little girl with her wise ways! But no offence. You are young. I wouldn't bother wi' ye at all, but I feel that I am responsible. It was I who gave them a dark-skinned mother. I handicapped my girl and my boys, and now I have to be their father and their mother too."
A good deal less than this would have reached Jack's sense of generosity. He hid his face again, and hated himself, but pride still maintained the ascendency. He could not let the other man see.
"It is that that makes you hold her so lightly," Cranston went on. "If she had a white mother, my girl, aye, wi' half her beauty and her goodness, would have put the fear of God into ye. Well, the consequences of my mistake shall not be visited on her head if I can prevent it. What does an idle lad like you know of the worth of women? You measure them by their beauty, which is nothing. She has a mind like an opening flower. She is my companion. All these years I have been silenced and dumb, and now I have one to talk to that understands what a white man feels!
"She is a white woman. Some of the best blood of Scotland runs in her veins. She's a Cranston. Match her wi' his lordship's daughter there, the daughter of the grocer. Match her wi' the whitest lilies of them all, and my girl will outshine them in beauty, aye, and outwear them in courage and steadfastness! And she's worthy to bear sons and daughters in turn that any man might be proud to father!"
He came to a full stop. Jack sat up, scowling fiercely, and looking five years younger by reason of his sheepishness. What he had to say came out in jerks. "It's damn hard to get it out," he stuttered. "I'm sorry. I'm ashamed of myself. What else can I say? I swear to you I'll never lay a finger of disrespect on her. For heaven's sake go, and let me be by myself!"
Cranston promptly rose. "Spoken like a man, my lad," he said laconically. "I'll say no more. Good-night to ye." He strode away.
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