[Illustration]




                          THE SHOTGUN PRINCESS

                        By William Merriam Rouse
                          Tale of Bildad Road


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.




                                   II


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.

“Ain’t you going to get out?” asked Wilkins.

“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!”

“I’ll take a chance if he’ll put up the gun,” returned Trumbull.

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.

“Ain’t it about time you was going home?” asked Wilkins.

“I don’t intend to go home. Never! I like it too well where Doris is!”

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!”

“Doris!” bellowed Wilkins. “You get me that stuff to eat!”

“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.”

“Put up that gun, then, and be friends with Mr. Trumbull!”

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!”

“Money couldn’t hire me to leave!” Trumbull chuckled.

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.

“That’s another debt you’ve got to pay!” muttered Wilkins.




                                   IV


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!”

“Ain’t you two going to give me any breakfast?” demanded Wilkins.

“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.




                                   V


“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.

“Now!” he cried. “Stand up and fight like a man!”

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?

“What’s the matter with him?” asked Trumbull, turning to Doris.

“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.”

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the March 15, 1926 issue of
the Top-Notch Magazine.]