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
ADVENTURE
25
‘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
ADVENTURE
26
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.
“In the cool season the girls used to come down and visit me in
Hilo, where Dad had two houses, one at the beach, or the three of
us used to go down to our place in Puna, and that meant canoes and
boats and fishing and swimming. Then, too, Dad belonged to the
Royal Hawaiian Yacht Club, and took us racing and cruising. Dad
could never get away from the sea, you know. When I was fourteen I
was Dad’s actual housekeeper, with entire power over the servants,
and I am very proud of that period of my life. And when I was
sixteen we three girls were all sent up to California to Mills
Seminary, which was quite fashionable and stifling. How we used to
long for home! We didn’t chum with the other girls, who called us
little cannibals, just because we came from the Sandwich Islands,
and who made invidious remarks about our ancestors banqueting on
Captain Cook–which was historically untrue, and, besides, our
ancestors hadn’t lived in Hawaii.
“I was three years at Mills Seminary, with trips home, of course,
and two years in New York; and then Dad went smash in a sugar
plantation on Maui. The report of the engineers had not been
right. Then Dad had built a railroad that was called ‘Lackland’s
Folly,’–it will pay ultimately, though. But it contributed to the
smash. The Pelaulau Ditch was the finishing blow. And nothing
would have happened anyway, if it hadn’t been for that big money
panic in Wall Street. Dear good Dad! He never let me know. But I
read about the crash in a newspaper, and hurried home. It was
before that, though, that people had been dinging into my ears that
marriage was all any woman could get out of life, and good-bye to
romance. Instead of which, with Dad’s failure, I fell right into
romance.”
“How long ago was that?” Sheldon asked.
“Last year–the year of the panic.”
“Let me see,” Sheldon pondered with an air of gravity. “Sixteen
plus five, plus one, equals twenty-two. You were born in 1887?”
“Yes; but it is not nice of you.”
“I am really sorry,” he said, “but the problem was so obvious.”
ADVENTURE
27
“Can’t you ever say nice things? Or is it the way you English
have?” There was a snap in her gray eyes, and her lips quivered
suspiciously for a moment. “I should recommend, Mr. Sheldon, that
you read Gertrude Atherton’s ‘American Wives and English
Husbands.'”
“Thank you, I have. It’s over there.” He pointed at the
generously filled bookshelves. “But I am afraid it is rather
partisan.”
“Anything un-English is bound to be,” she retorted. “I never have
liked the English anyway. The last one I knew was an overseer.
Dad was compelled to discharge him.”
“One swallow doesn’t make a summer.”
“But that Englishman made lots of trouble–there! And now please
don’t make me any more absurd than I already am.”
“I’m trying not to.”
“Oh, for that matter–” She tossed her head, opened her mouth to
complete the retort, then changed her mind. “I shall go on with my
history. Dad had practically nothing left, and he decided to
return to the sea. He’d always loved it, and I half believe that
he was glad things had happened as they did. He was like a boy