The Shotgun Princess

A double-barreled, muzzle-loading shotgun rested upon two wooden pegs which protruded front the neatly whitewashed plaster of the kitchen wall. Both barrels were loaded with ample charges of buckshot, and two percussion caps gleamed with sinister brightness under the ornate hammers. Dark and menacing, the shotgun lay blackly along that immaculate wall, and by its presence prevented Doris Wilkins from getting married.

With that fearsome weapon, capable at close range of blowing a hole through the side of a house, Orla Wilkins guarded his sister from all young men who approached with serious intentions. Wilkins was large and smiling, one of those doughy men who lump out their clothes in the wrong places. He was able to hold his own in a fight with most of the stalwart sons of the Bildad Road neighborhood; but he was also much opposed to exertion, and it was far less trouble to point a shotgun than it was to swing a fist.

Wilkins had said, with his china-doll smile, that he would rather do manslaughter than lose a good housekeeper. Bildad Road believed him; at least sufficiently so that no man had yet been found who was willing to put the matter to the final test. Everybody knew that for the thirty-seven years of his life Orla had been nourished upon the famous Wilkins apple pie, first by his mother and then by his sister, and everybody realized that for a man who thought as much of his stomach as Orla Wilkins did, this was a life-and-death issue. He was the kind of brother-in-law no man would want.

Doris was something like the fresh apple pie that she made—young and sweet, tender and delicious. She was spiced with twinkles in her brown eyes and curls in her brown hair; where her colossal brother was pudgy, she was small and delicately curved and swift moving.

Some of the girls of Bildad Road would have treated such a brother to crockery or stovewood over the head, but Doris was as amiable as sunshine. Wilkins, knowing when he was well off, provided her with the best from the general store at the Corners, and until the coming of Johnny Trumbull she bowed cheerfully to fate; content to be the shotgun princess of Bildad, cherished and guarded for the sake of her delectable cooking.

On a snapping cold night in December this Johnny Trumbull sat in the Wilkins’ kitchen and meditated upon the Wilkins’ shotgun. By actual measurements he was a rather small man; something like fifty pounds lighter than Orla Wilkins and half a foot shorter. But Trumbull did not give the impression of being inferior in size, and it was only when he stood side by side with a genuine Bildad Roader that his stature was noticeably under the neighborhood average. His eye gleamed steadily, like a blue beacon, and he moved with a careless ease that was pleasant to watch. Doris was watching him now; her brother was, too, with a pale smile and a warning in his dull gaze.

Trumbull did not need to study the face of Orla Wilkins to know approximately what was going on behind it; he had been obliged to see that piecrust-colored countenance every time he came for the purpose of getting better acquainted with Doris, and he understood the feelings of Wilkins only too well. Wilkins never left his sister alone for a moment with any man under seventy-five.

Johnny Trumbull had come to the neighborhood a month before, and since he had got acquainted with Doris he had never been able to find her alone; whenever he went to the house, Orla Wilkins opened the door and settled himself in a creaking armchair. To-night there were little sparks in the eyes of Trumbull; he felt reasonably sure that the dimple would not appear so often in the cheek of Doris unless she were glad to see him, and he decided to find out just how much of Wilkins was reputation.

“Miss Wilkins,” began Trumbull after a considerable lull in the conversation, “do you care if I call you ‘Doris?’”

“Why⸺” She turned apple blossom pink, and the dimple twinkled at him as she answered, in a low voice: “I don’t believe I care if you do.’’

A crease appeared straight up and down in the middle of the large brow of Orla Wilkins. He shifted, his chair creaked, and two well-padded hands took hold of the arms as though he might rise suddenly. Trumbull looked at him and grinned; then he spoke to Doris again:

“Much obliged! So far we’ve talked mostly about the price of cordwood and the weather. It’s going to help to call you Doris. Maybe you’d like to go to the next dance at the Corners with me, Doris?”

Her lips parted, but it was the voice of Orla Wilkins that replied; a voice as thick and heavy as molasses and as unpleasantly sticky:

“She don’t like to go to dances. Nor anything else that keeps her out nights. Not with anybody!”

Doris said nothing. She looked down at the red-and-white checks of the cloth upon the table beside which she sat; her fingers traced out the design, but her eyes flashed once under long lashes at Johnny Trumbull and gave him encouragement to go on.

“Well,” said Trumbull, “I don’t like Sunday-school picnics very much, but anything would be nice with Doris. They’re going to have an indoor picnic in the Grange. Hall, and maybe I can take her to that.”

“She don’t like picnics, neither,” Wilkins told him, with the crease in his forehead growing deeper. “Nor coasting parties. Nor any doings that take her out anywhere, any time. She’s a home body.”

“That’s nice,” said Trumbull, with a glance at Doris, “even if it is hard on me. I take it you’re a home body, too, Wilkins.”

“I be!” replied Wilkins firmly. “And I calculate to be!”

Wilkins was trying to wear him out, of course, as he had worn out other young men callers. The difference was that Trumbull sometimes wore rough instead of ragged. He decided to force the situation to a break; and the eyes of Doris did not seem to forbid him.

I’ve always thought I’d like to marry a home body,” remarked Trumbull, giving a hitch to his belt. “And I don’t mean you, Wilkins.”

What followed was a little startling. Orla Wilkins rose from his chair with a quickness surprising in a man who looked so clumsy. He took down the shotgun that Trumbull had observed and heard about and sat down again with the barrels of the gun resting across his knees in the general direction of Trumbull. The silent menace which that old muzzle-loader had seemed to give off had not been imaginary.

“Doris don’t want to get married,” said Wilkins grimly. “Not to-night, nor any time.”

Trumbull looked at the black muzzles, the big thumb of Wilkins as it pulled back the hammers, and up into the man’s eyes. They were flat and impenetrable, dulled by much eating. They might mean business, and they might not. It is an uncomfortable feeling to have a double-barreled shotgun, said to be loaded with buckshot, pointed at one’s middle.

“Let’s get down to brass tacks,” said Trumbull, with a slight growl in his voice. “Just what for are you pointing that shooting iron at me?”

“Because I can set down to shoot,” Wilkins told him, without any change of expression of tone. “If I was to lick you it would be a lot of work, and most likely we’d bust some furniture.”

“Bah!” Trumbull barked a laugh. “You don’t think you can kill a man and get away with it, do you? You’re a bluff!”

“This here is my house,” replied Wilkins heavily, “and if you was to make a move I didn’t like, and I was to shoot you, it ain’t likely they could prove anything except self-defense. Doris wouldn’t swear her own brother into jail. A man has got an awful strong holt on the law when he’s in his own house.”

Maybe he would shoot. Johnny Trumbull did not like the cloudiness of that large face. He glanced at Doris and saw that she had gone pale; her little fingers were white against the edge of the table. She ought to know her brother better than anybody else.

“You won’t have to shoot me in self-defense,” returned Trumbull, and he began deliberately to fill his pipe.

“No!” thundered Trumbull suddenly. “Shoot a helpless man if you want to!”

There was dead silence for a while after that; broken at last by a faint gasp of relief from Doris that nothing had happened. Wilkins sat motionless and expressionless, and Trumbull puffed calmly at his pipe.

“The first time you make a motion toward me or my sister that gives me an excuse,” announced Wilkins at length, “I’ll blow a hole in you that a dog could jump through!”

“The first time I catch you without that gun you’ll have to fight,” Trumbull replied. “I don’t care whether it tires you all out or not.”

“Don’t have any trouble with him, Johnny!” exclaimed Doris. “Last year two husky fellows got between him and his gun, and he half killed them before he threw them out!”

Wilkins grunted what might have been intended for a laugh of scorn; he did not take the trouble to make answer to that offer. Trumbull smoked and watched the shotgun and wondered just what he was going to do next. He might have been allowed to come again if he had not brought on the crisis to-night. Now he knew that he would have a great deal of difficulty getting into the Wilkins’ home, once he had gone out. How long could he sit here? And what good would it do him if he sat here forever?

III

Trumbull looked across the table at Doris. There was a warmth in her eyes as they met his that communicated itself to his heart; she wanted to save him from harm. He would have given a month’s wages to know how much more than sympathy she felt for him. A lovely, rounded forearm was lying upon the table, with fingers drumming against the cloth. A man would be mad to let a shotgun stand between him and a girl like this!

Trumbull looked at the gun. It pointed toward his stomach, and he experienced an inward shudder at the thought of what would happen if the fingers of Orla Wilkins pressed a little harder against the triggers; or just one of the triggers. Trumbull would not live to know anything about the second barrel.

He began to get extremely angry and stubborn. No half-baked reflection on the human race was going to drive him away from the girl he wanted to marry without a fight! But how could a dead man fight? He was a good deal more than half convinced that the first movement toward battle on his part would fill his ears with the roar of doom.

Trumbull would not go, and he could not do anything else, except stay. The possibilities of just staying grew upon him as a sunrise grows. Suppose he were just to stay put where he was for an hour, twelve hours? Wilkins would not dare to shoot him in cold blood; punishment would be too nearly sure. Trumbull leaned back in his chair, tamped the tobacco down in his pipe, and chuckled.

Trumbull caught a gleam in the eye of the girl; the slit in the lower part of Wilkins’ face tightened grimly.

“You’re going to pay for this!” he grunted. “Doris! It’s time for my snack. Go get me some of them fresh doughnuts and cheese, and maybe a little apple sauce and a pitcher of cider.”

Doris Wilkins made a movement to rise, and Trumbull stopped her with a look; into that look he tried to throw all that was in his heart.

“Don’t feed the critter, Doris!” he said earnestly. “That is, if you’re just a little bit on my side of this game; don’t feed him until he puts down that gun and gives me a chance at him!”

“Don’t do it unless you want to see him drive me out!” exclaimed Trumbull.

For a tense moment she seemed to hesitate; then Doris sank into her chair with a toss of her head and a little spot of color in each cheek. “It’s about time I had something to say for myself!” she cried. “I’ll feed both of you when you promise not to quarrel any more!”

Johnny Trumbull grinned at his enemy. The face of Wilkins became troubled. He leaned forward and spoke pleadingly to his sister.

“You know my stomach is used to having something every night just about this time,” he said. “You never acted this way before.”

There was a quality in the voice of Doris Wilkins which was final. Trumbull guessed that her brother had never heard it before, for now his lower jaw sagged a trifle as he stared at her. His finger did not waver upon the trigger of the shotgun, but small beads of perspiration showed upon his forehead, and the end of a pale tongue ran around his lips. He was touched in his weakest spot.

“Trumbull,” he said huskily, “there’s trouble here, and I want you should go. I’ll⸺I’ll even pay you to go!”

Wilkins rediscovered his courage. He swept them both with a baleful look. “All right! I’ll starve to-night, but when I settle with you, Trumbull, it’s going to be terrible!”

Trumbull drew inspiration from his success. He turned carefully so that his movement might not be misinterpreted and smiled at Doris. “If you handed me a doughnut and a piece of cheese I guess I could eat without getting shot.”

The small feet of Doris tripped into the pantry, and a moment later Trumbull was munching slowly before the yearning gaze of Wilkins. He ate his doughnut to the last crumb.

Two hours passed; three, four. Midnight struck. Still the two men sat facing each other. Trumbull’s occasional baiting of Wilkins lost its flavor; the head of Doris sank slowly to the table after many false starts, and she slept there.

Trumbull had made himself as comfortable as possible by sliding down in his chair. Wilkins remained very nearly motionless, with the gun across his knees and his eyes brooding. There was no doubt that his suffering for food was genuine; he had trained his stomach to expect a gorging at regular and frequent intervals.

Trumbull dozed at intervals and then jerked himself awake. Time and again through the night he saw the gaze of Wilkins travel longingly in the direction of the pantry. Trumbull began to wonder why he did not drop the gun and fight it out instead of suffering. There must be some reason—was it possible that he was so lazy he would rather starve than exert himself?

Morning came and found them like this—Wilkins a trifle gray around the mouth, Trumbull slumped down in his chair, and Doris asleep. The lamps grew sickly in the light of a bright winter day; the big wooden clock on the mantel ticked monotonously. The fire had long since gone out, and it was cold in the room. Trumbull straightened up and stretched, bringing an answering movement from Wilkins.

“Doris!” said Trumbull. “I hate to wake you up, but I’m afraid you’ll catch cold if you don’t build a fire. Orla won’t build it for you, and I can’t!”

Doris lifted her head, sleepy and smiling as she saw Trumbull and remembered. She rubbed her eyes and made a dash for the mirror over the kitchen sink.

“My goodness!” she exclaimed, as she turned from a brief patting and rearranging of her brown hair. “I always get up and build the fire, so Orla won’t have to dress in the cold.”

“Huh!” Trumbull looked with fresh disfavor upon the man he had decided to have for his brother-in-law. “Unless Orla starves himself to death and ends it that way, he’s going to get up and build fires after this!”

“Nope!” replied Trumbull cheerfully. “You’re never going to eat again unless you put up that gun and act decent.”

“Then, by the great Jehoshaphat, I’ll starve!” flared Wilkins. “If I don’t get the best of you now, Doris’ll be fool enough to marry you, and I might as well be dead, anyway, as to have a hired housekeeper that can’t cook fit for the hogs! Either I’ll get rid of you, or I’ll starve to death right where I be!”

“What do you want for breakfast, Johnny—I mean Mr. Trumbull?” asked Doris; Trumbull’s heart thrilled.

“Taking orders from him!” barked her brother. “If I get drove too far, I’ll shoot anyway!”

“Ham and eggs and strong coffee,” replied Trumbull, with a watchful eye upon Wilkins. “You’ll have to hand me mine on a plate, for with him as hungry as he is right now I wouldn’t call it safe for me to move over to the table.”

While the savory odors of ham and coffee filled the kitchen, the eyes of Orla Wilkins grew more deepset and glaring. Yet he held out, even when Trumbull ate slowly and heartily before his famished gaze.

When Trumbull had drunk his last cup of coffee, and Wilkins still sat with his finger on a trigger of the shotgun, the situation began to look serious. Wilkins might be as pig-headed as he was hungry; and he was becoming more dangerous each minute. Trumbull saw Doris regard her brother with a worried look, and he knew that something must be done to break the deadlock. He resolved to take one last desperate chance, pinning his faith entirely upon the weakness of Orla Wilkins.

“Doris,” Trumbull said, “I know you must be tired, but we’ve got to get this finished. I wish you’d make me a pie out of the best apples you’ve got in the cellar. A kind of extra-special pie, with lots of cinnamon and sugar and juice and a flaky crust with just a touch of light brown here and there. A pie that’ll make a man’s mouth water as far as he can see and smell it.”

“Oh!” She stared at him, and then she laughed. “All right! I’ll bake a pie that would take first prize at the county fair.”

Doris Wilkins kept her promise. The pie that she set on the table an hour later was a masterpiece of pie making. Fresh from the oven, it gave off sweet and spicy odors which floated upon the air of the kitchen and fairly thickened it with temptation. Through holes in the top one could see hints of the interior lusciousness. Doris touched the crust with a fork, and it broke in little flakes that would melt in a man’s mouth.

Orla Wilkins could get to that pie and still keep his man covered, but he could not feed himself without putting the shotgun down. He seemed to realize that Johnny Trumbull was a very swift-moving man and that relaxation for an instant would mean that Trumbull would have his grip upon the gun.

Wilkins leaned forward, trying to look at the pie and Trumbull at the same time. A little moisture appeared at one corner of his mouth; his fat chin trembled. His face was ravaged by hate and hunger. Twice he started to get up, only to think better of it; once he lifted the shotgun slightly and his finger curled more firmly around the trigger.

That was a bad moment for Johnny Trumbull. He knew it might easily be that he had pressed Wilkins to the brink of murder; he knew that the man was made savage by a sleepless night of hunger, fearful of the loss of his lifelong comfort, and fairly venomous against the stranger who had come crashing in to take the heart of Doris.

For just that moment the situation hung on the edge of tragedy; with Doris standing breathless and white and Trumbull staring, dry-mouthed, into the eyes of Wilkins. Then, suddenly, Orla Wilkins let forth an incoherent cry of suffering and defeat and flung himself in the direction of the pie. The shotgun slid harmlessly to the floor. Trumbull seized it and threw it out of doors into the snow. Then he whirled to face Wilkins.

Wilkins had broken the pie into two pieces, and at that instant he stood with his face half buried in one of them. Trumbull swung the table out of the way and stripped off his coat.

The jaws of Orla Wilkins ceased to work. His eyes met Trumbull’s over a piece of pie crust; they shifted and flickered, and he swallowed hastily.

“I don’t know as you and me need to have any trouble!” he mumbled. “Not if you’ll let her cook for me once in a while. I dunno but maybe you could both live here, if you wanted to.”

The arms of Johnny Trumbull dropped to his sides. Was this the two-hundred-pound terror who had thrashed two husky men single-handed and thrown them out only the year before?

“It’s you—Johnny!” whispered Doris, with pink and lovely cheeks. “You’ve got more nerve than he has! And, anyway, he can’t fight on an empty stomach. I knew that.”

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The shotgun princess by William Merriam Rouse

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