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"You and I are going to have one big talk, Sheila, after I take you up home." "Up home?" she repeated. "You are going back to Cap'n Ira's. You know you are. That other girl has beat it for Boston, you say, and there's not a living reason why you shouldn't return to the Balls. Besides, they need you. I could see that with half an eye when I went away the other morning.
The dreadful recollection that the deputy had the power to detail him and the constable to scour the plain while he remained behind in company with Sue stopped Ira's further objections. Yet, if he could only get rid of her while the deputy was in the house, but then his nearest neighbor was five miles away! There was nothing left for him to do but to return with the men and watch his wife keenly.
Now one end of "the port," as the village of Big Wreck Cove was usually called by the natives, was known as Portygee Town. Wreckers' Head boasted of several homes of retired shipmasters and owners of Cap'n Ira's ilk.
I was telling you about Cap'n Ira's old mare." "Oh, yes! Wait. I'll dress and be right down." "That's all right," said Tunis. "I'll wait." She scurried into the clothes she had laid out before going to bed. In five minutes she crept down the stairs into the kitchen and out of the back door. Tunis, holding the sleepy mare by her rope bridle, met her between the kitchen ell and the barn.
Ira's cold reception of the suggestion was duly disposed of by the deputy. "I have the RIGHT, ye know," he said, with a grim pleasantry, "to summon ye as my posse to aid and assist me in carrying out the law; but I ain't the man to be rough on my friends, and I reckon it will do jest as well if I 'requisition' your house."
She had lived there since, an angular girl of fifteen, she had been awkwardly helped by Ira from the tail-board of the emigrant wagon in which her mother had died two weeks before, and which was making its first halt on the Californian plains, before Ira's door.
"I'm her niece, I tell you!" reiterated Ida May, pointing at Prudence, who shrank again from the vehement girl. Then she whirled on Tunis. She clasped her hands. Into her rage was distilled some fear because of Cap'n Ira's grim words. "You got to help me," she said to the younger man. "You know who I am, and you daren't deny it!"
"Cap'n Ira is over seventy and Prudence is not far from that age. You you are not acquainted with them?" "I never saw 'em. But I've heard a lot about 'em," said the stranger, with a light laugh. "They are sort of relations of mine." "You are a relative?" asked the girl. Even then she had no thought of who this newcomer was. "Cap'n Ira's relative? Or Mrs. Ball's, if I may ask?"
Wrung as Sheila's heart had been by the expression of the old woman's utter confidence in her and by Cap'n Ira's warm words of approbation spoken before the elder, it was nevertheless for Tunis Latham's sake that she had abetted the minister's desire and had agreed that the real Ida May Bostwick should come to the Ball house on Wreckers' Head.
Tunis!" bawled the captain. "Take her off'n me! She'll be afoul my hawser in another second, I do believe." It was evident that he spoke of the Queen of Sheba, but Tunis could not see how the mare was intentionally threatening Cap'n Ira's peace of mind or safety of body. She was, however, "close aboard" Cap'n Ira as he tobogganed down the sandy way.
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