Chapter I: Front Matter

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.