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The Trail of Conflict

by Emilie Baker Loring · English · Gutenberg #34129 · 402,389 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Trail of Conflict

Author: Emilie Baker Loring


        
Release date: October 24, 2010 [eBook #34129]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34129

Credits: E-text prepared by Darleen Dove, Roger Frank, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRAIL OF CONFLICT ***


E-text prepared by Darleen Dove, Roger Frank, Mary Meehan, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)



THE TRAIL OF CONFLICT

by

EMILIE LORING







Publishers
Grosset & Dunlap
New York

Copyright 1922 by the Penn Publishing Company

By Arrangement with Little, Brown & Company

Made in the U. S. A.




CONTENTS

   CHAPTER I

   CHAPTER II

   CHAPTER III

   CHAPTER IV

   CHAPTER V

   CHAPTER VI

   CHAPTER VII

   CHAPTER VIII

   CHAPTER IX

   CHAPTER X

   CHAPTER XI

   CHAPTER XII

   CHAPTER XIII

   CHAPTER XIV

   CHAPTER XV

   CHAPTER XVI

   CHAPTER XVII

   CHAPTER XVIII

   CHAPTER XIX

   CHAPTER XX

   CHAPTER XXI

   CHAPTER XXII




CHAPTER I


"That is your ultimatum, Glamorgan? My boy for your girl or you scoop up
my possessions and transfuse them into yours?"

Peter Courtlandt tapped the arm of his chair nervously as he regarded
the man who sat opposite in front of the fire. The two men were in
striking contrast. Courtlandt seemed a component part of the room in
which they sat, a room which with its dull, velvety mahogany, its costly
Eastern rugs, its rare old portraits and book-lined walls, proclaimed
generations of ancestors who had been born to purple and fine linen. He
was spare and tall. His features might have served as the model for the
portrait of Nelson in the Metropolitan Museum. His eyes were darkly
luminous, the eyes of a dreamer; his white hair curled in soft rings
over his head; his hands were long and patrician. Glamorgan was built on
the Colossus plan, large head, heavy features into which the elements
had ground a dull color, a huge body without the least trace of fat.
Only his eyes were small. They looked as though they had been forgotten
until the last moment, as though the designer had then hastily poked
holes beneath the Websterian brows to insert two brilliant green beads.
He was a handsome man in a clean-souled, massive way; moreover he looked
to be a person who would crash through obstacles and win out by sheer
persistence.

He flung the remains of his cigar into the fire as he answered
Courtlandt. With the cushion-tipped fingers of his large hands spread
upon his knees he bent forward and fixed his interrogator with his
emerald gaze.

"That statement sounds raw but it's true. I've been playing my cards for
what you call a scoop for some time. Fifty years ago my mother brought
her family from Wales to this country. We had come from the coal region.
Coal was all the older children knew, so we drifted to Pennsylvania.
Until I was seventeen I picked coal. Occasionally I saw the stockholders
who came to inspect the mines. One day your father brought you. You
passed me as though I were a post, but right then and there I learned
the difference between mere money and money with family behind it. That
day I laid my plans for life. I'd make money, Lord, how I'd pile it up;
I'd cut out the dissipations of my kind, I'd marry the most refined girl
who'd have me, and I'd have one of my children, at least, marry into a
family like yours. My grandchildren should have ancestors who counted.
Well, I got the girl. She had good Virginia stock behind her. Geraldine
was born and after five years Margaret, and then my wife died. I began
to pile. I denied myself everything but books, that my girls could be
fitted to fill the position I was determined they should have. I----"

Peter Courtlandt's clear, high-bred voice interrupted. There was a trace
of amusement in his tone:

"Did you never think that your daughters might develop plans of their
own? That they might refuse to be disposed of so high-handedly?"

"Margaret may, but Jerry won't. Since she was a little thing she's been
brought up with the idea of marrying for social position; she knows that
my heart is set on it. Why, I used to visit her at school dressed in my
roughest clothes, that the difference between me and the other fathers
would soak in thoroughly. Oh well, smile. I acknowledge that the idea is
an obsession with me; every man has some weak joint; that's mine. I'll
say for Jerry that she never once flinched from owning up to me as hers.
I've seen the color steal to her eyes when I appeared in my rough
clothes, but she'd slip her hand into mine, for all the world as though
she were protecting me, cling tight to it, and introduce me to her
friends. The girls and teachers loved her, or she couldn't have got away
with it. Her friends were among the best at college. Oh, she'll marry to
please me. Even if she didn't want to, she'd do it to give Peg a chance;
she's crazy about her, but I know her, she won't go back on her old Dad.
Besides, Courtlandt, I have a firm conviction that a person can put
through any worthy thing on which he is determined. How else do you
account for the seeming miracles men got away with in the World War? The
test is, how much do you want it? I've gone on that principle all my
life, and it's worked, I tell you, it's worked!"

He waved away the box of cigars Courtlandt offered and pulled a
vicious-looking specimen of the weed from his pocket. He stuck it
between his teeth before he resumed:

"After I left the coal-mines I beat it to Texas, got an option on land
there and began to make my pile in the oil-fields. I worked like a slave
days and studied nights. I didn't mean to give Jerry cause to be ashamed
of her Dad when she did land. Then I set my lawyer to looking up the
affairs of the Courtlandt family. I found that you had a boy, handsome,
upstanding and decent. I had him well watched, I assure you. I wasn't
throwing Jerry away on a regular guy even if I was stuck on your
family. I found also that your money was getting scarcer than hen's
teeth. I took the mortgage on this house, on every piece of property in
your estate. I knew when the boy chucked his law course and went into
the army. I had him watched while he was overseas and I know that he
came through that seething furnace of temptation straight. On the day
your boy marries my girl and brings her to this house to live I'll turn
your property over to you free and clear. It is in fine condition and
will give you a handsome income. It won't be sufficient for you and the
young people to live as I want to see them, but I'll take care of that.
You've known me now for three months. You know that I'm absolutely on
the level in my business dealings. What say?"

Courtlandt rose impetuously and stood with his back to the fire, one arm
resting on the carved mantel.

"Good Lord, man, I'm not the one to say. It isn't my life that's being
tied up. This property can go to the----" he stopped, and looked about
the beautiful room. He stared for a moment at the portrait of a
seventeenth century Courtlandt which hung opposite, then up at the
beautiful face of the woman in the painting set like a jewel in the dark
paneling above the mantel. Her eyes looked back at him, gravely,
searchingly. His voice was husky as he added quickly, "I'll talk with
Steve to-night and if he----"

Glamorgan nodded approvingly.

"I'm glad you named him Stephen. It was Stephanus Courtlandt whose
estate was erected into the lordship and manor of Courtlandt by William
the third, wasn't it? You see I know your family history backward. I
never buy a pig in a poke," with rough frankness. He rose and stretched
to his great height. The man watching him thought of the Russian bear
which had roused and shaken himself with such tragic results. "Why don't
you and Steve run in town to-night and have supper with Jerry and me
after the theatre?"

"Thank you; if Steve has no engagement we will."

Glamorgan thrust his hands deep into his pockets and glowered at the man
by the mantel.

"I'll leave you now to deal with him. You might mention to Steve the
fact that if he refuses my offer I foreclose within forty-eight hours."

The blood rushed to Courtlandt's face as though it would burst through
the thin, ivory skin. He touched a bell, his voice was cold with
repression as he answered the threat:

"I'll talk with Stephen this evening. Judson, Mr. Glamorgan's coat," to
the smooth-haired, smooth-faced, smooth-footed butler who answered the
ring.

The big man paused a moment, his little green eyes flames of suspicion.

"You'll let me hear from you to-morrow? No shilly-shallying, mind. A
straight 'Yes' or 'No.'"

"A straight 'Yes' or 'No' to-morrow it is, Glamorgan. Good-night!
Judson, when Mr. Stephen comes in ask him to come to me here."

After his guest had departed Courtlandt snapped off the lights and
plunged the room in darkness save for the soft glow from the blazing
logs. He sank into a wing-chair before the fire and rested his head on
his thin hand. What a mess he had made of things. He had lost his
inheritance, not through extravagance, but because he had not been
enough of a business man to steer his financial ship clear of reefs
during the last years of swiftly shifting values. To have the Courtlandt
property swept away! It was impossible. He didn't care for himself but
for Steve and Steve's children. He was a liar! He did care for himself.
It would break his heart to have this old home, which had been the
manor, fall into the hands of an erstwhile coal-picker. The town house
was different. The location of that had followed the trail of fashion,
it had no traditions, but this----He rose and paced the floor then
returned to his old place before the mantel and listened. There was the
sound of whistling in the hall, virile, tuneful, the sort that brings a
smile to the lips of the most sophisticated. "The Whistling Lieut.!"
Courtlandt remembered Steve had been called in the army. He dropped his
head to his extended arm and stared unseeingly down at the flames. What
would he say----?

"Holloa, Sir Peter! Fire-worshiping?" a clear voice called buoyantly.
"You're as dark in here as though you expected an air-raid. Let's light
up and be cheerio, what say?" The speaker pressed a button and flooded
the room with soft light. "Judson said you wanted me. Shall I stay now
or come back when I've changed?"

Courtlandt senior straightened and looked at his son with the appraising
eyes of a stranger. He admitted to himself regretfully that the boy
looked older than his twenty-seven years. He was tall and lean and
lithe, not an ounce of superfluous flesh on him. He stood with his feet
slightly apart, a golf-bag dragging from one arm, his other hand in his
coat pocket. His black hair had a rebellious kink, his eyes were dark
blue, his nose clean-cut, his lips and chin hinted at a somewhat
formidable strength of purpose. Courtlandt's courage oozed as he
regarded those last features.

"I--I merely wanted to ask you to give me this evening, Steve.
I--I--well, there's business to be talked over."

The son looked back at his father. A slight frown wrinkled his broad
forehead. He started to speak, then lifted the golf-bag and went toward
the door.

"The evening is yours, Sir Peter."

His father listened till his whistle trailed off into silence in the
upper regions. His dark eyes clouded with regret. Steve had adapted his
selection to dirge tempo.

As father and son smoked and drank their coffee in front of the library
fire after dinner, Peter Courtlandt found it even more difficult to
approach the distasteful subject. He talked nervously of politics, labor
conditions and the latest play. His son watched him keenly through
narrowed lids. He emptied and filled his pipe thoughtfully as he waited
for a break in his father's flood of words. When it came he dashed in.

"What's the business you wanted to talk with me about, Sir Peter? Fire
away and let's get it over. Anything wrong?"

The elder man bent forward to knock the ashes from his cigar. The
gravity of Steve's "Sir Peter" had moved him curiously. It was the name
his wife had called him, which the boy had adopted when he was too
grown-up to say "Daddy." Silent seconds lengthened into minutes as he
sat there. The quiet of the room was subtly portentous. There was a hint
of unsteadiness in his voice when he finally spoke.

"It's all wrong, Steve. Everything we have is mortgaged to the
gunwales."

"But I thought----" The end of the sentence was submerged in stunned
amazement.

"That we couldn't go broke? Well, we have. We lose everything we have
to-morrow unless----" He dropped his head on his hand.

"Unless what?" prompted Steve.

Courtlandt leaned his white head against the back of his chair and
looked at his son with haggard eyes. His voice was strained, humiliated.

"Unless--unless you marry Glamorgan's daughter."

"What!"

The exclamation brought Steve Courtlandt to his feet. The color surged
to his dark hair then ebbed slowly back again. His lips whitened.

"Look here, Sir Peter, you don't know what you're saying! You've
forgotten that we are living in the twentieth century. Marry Glamorgan's
daughter! I've never seen her. I didn't know the old piker had a
daughter. What does he know about me? I've never spoken to him more
than twice and then when I couldn't help it. I don't like him,
he's----"

"Sit down, Steve. Stop raging up and down the room. I want to tell you
all about it."

The younger man flung the cigarette he had just lighted into the red
coals and dropped into a chair. He kept his eyes on the fading, flaring
lights of the fire as his father told of his interview with Glamorgan.
The muscles of his jaw tightened, his blue eyes smoldered as he
listened.

"What sort of a girl would let herself be traded like that?" he demanded
when his father paused.

"That is for you to find out, Steve. I started to have Judson turn the
Welshman out of the house after he made his astounding proposition, to
tell him to go to the devil--then I thought of you. That I had no right
to fling away your inheritance without giving you a voice in the matter.
The Courtlandts have held some of the property since the first of the
family came from Holland in the seven----"

"Oh, I know all about those old boys; it is what their descendant is up
against that's worrying me. Have you tried Uncle Nick?"

The slow color tinged Peter Courtlandt's face.

"Yes. I've appealed to Nicholas Fairfax twice. But you know as well as I
that he has never forgiven your mother and me for not letting him have
you six months out of every year. He contended that as you, the only son
of his sister, were to be his heir, he should have an equal share in
bringing you up. Your mother and I couldn't see it that way and so----"

"But I spent every summer there until I went overseas--and, oh boy, how
I worked. While my pals were vacationing I was ranching, and ranching
under Old Nick is no vacation. I'm as capable of running the Double O
now as Ranlett is. Lord, the nights I've come in so stiff that I'd fall
on the bed with my boots on. I'd got to shoot and rope, ride and
round-up, drive a tractor, know the difference in the quality of the
wheat-seed and the grades of cattle. Nick wasn't contented with my doing
things as well as his outfit, I'd got to go them one better. But I loved
the life and I'll confess that I love Old Nick in spite of his fool
ideas."

"I'll try him once more, Steve--but----"

"I'll be darned if you will. Isn't there some other way we can raise
money until I----"

"My boy, what can you do? What can you earn at present? You finished
your law course after you came out of the army, but it will be several
years, as times are now, before you can more than support yourself."

"You don't think I'd touch a penny of the old coal-picker's money even
if I married the daughter, do you?" interrupted Steve furiously. "I'd
break stones in the road first. Look here, be honest now, what would you
do if we lost this place?"

"Blow my brains out," with passionate impulsiveness; then as he saw his
son's face whiten and his jaw set, he realized the effect of his words.
"No, no, Steve, of course I didn't mean that. The Courtlandts have never
been quitters. I swear I wouldn't break the record. Forget that
sob-stuff. You and I would go somewhere together and I--perhaps I'll
keep younger if I have less leisure."

"When are you to give Glamorgan his answer?" Steve seemed the elder of
the two now, seemed to have taken the reins into his hands.

"To-morrow."

"To-morrow! Before the girl sees me? Before she has been given a chance
to decide whether the encumbrance which goes with the name and social
position is worth her thirty pieces of silver?"

"Try not to be bitter, Steve. Remember that when a big man has an
obsession it's in proportion to his bigness, and you'll have to admit
that Glamorgan's a giant in his world. You have a chance to see the girl
before to-morrow. Her father suggested that we run in for supper with
them to-night after the theatre. I have a feeling that the daughter is
willing to sacrifice herself to make the great dream of her father's
life come true, just as you are willing to sacrifice yourself for
me--no, don't deny it,"--as his son impetuously opened his lips. "I
haven't lived with you for twenty-seven years without knowing some of
your mental processes, my boy. If it were only myself I'd tell Glamorgan
to go to the devil, but the property will be yours after me and your
children----"

Steve interrupted with a short laugh.

"My children! It's going some to make a mess of my life for prospective
children. Take it from me, they'll keep on playing with the angels for
some time yet."

"Then don't make a mess of your life. Is--is there any other girl? Are
you in love, Steve?"

His son thrust his hands hard into the pockets of his dinner coat.

"I've never been swept off my feet at the sight of a girl's face, if you
mean that according-to-fiction stuff. Before I went across I thought
Felice Peyton----"

"Felice! But she married Phil Denbigh while you were away and now----"
He stopped in perturbed realization of what had happened.

"And now they've separated and Felice is cynical and hard. I know that.
I never really approved of her in my heart, her ideas, her ideals--oh
well, she hasn't any; she wouldn't recognize an ideal if it tapped her
on the shoulder. Her plan of life wasn't mine, but somehow I was
eternally tagging after her. Moth and candle stuff, I suppose."

Courtlandt stared into the fire for a moment before he raised his head
and looked at his son.

"We won't go on with this, Steve. It's taking too many chances. I'll
tell Glamorgan in the morning that he can foreclose and be----"

"No you won't, at least not until we have met the daughter. Have
you ever seen her?" then as his father shook his head, "I'll give
you a close-up of the lady. Amazon variety--look at the size of
Glamorgan--little eyes, prominent teeth, a laugh that would raise the
dead and, oh boy,--I'll bet she's kittenish." He glanced at the tall
clock in the corner. "I'll tell Judson to have the sedan brought round.
We'll have just time to array ourselves for the sacrifice, and motor to
town before the theatres are out."

As the older man's eyes, turbulent with affection and anxiety met his,
he exclaimed with a sporting attempt at a laugh:

"I'll bet a hat, sir, that when the lady sees you nothing short of being
the Mrs. Courtlandt will satisfy her soaring ambition. She won't stand
for being merely Mrs. Stephen. By the way, what's the prospect's name?"

"Geraldine. Her father calls her Jerry." Courtlandt senior laughed for
the first time that evening. "That's a great idea of yours, Steve. I
hadn't thought of offering myself. Perhaps as she only wants the name
and position she'd take me and let you off. Your mother would
understand," with a tender smile at the woman over the mantel. Her
lovely eyes seemed to answer his. For an instant a look of unutterable
yearning saddened the man's eyes--then he straightened and looked at his
son.

"But no, Glamorgan expressly stipulated that he'd have you for a
son-in-law or----"

The light died out of Stephen Courtlandt's face as he muttered furiously
under his breath:

"Glamorgan be hanged!"




CHAPTER II


The telephone in the luxurious living-room of their suite rang sharply
as Daniel Glamorgan and his daughter entered. The girl looked at the
instrument as though she suspected a concealed bomb in its mysterious
depths, then appealingly at her father. He took down the receiver.

"Yes. All right. Send them up." He replaced it with a click. His grim
mouth softened into a self-congratulatory smile. "Courtlandt and his son
are down-stairs," he announced. "Did you order supper, Jerry?"

"Yes, Dad. The table is laid in the breakfast-room. Leon will serve it
when you ring. I'll--I'll go to my room and leave my wrap."

His green eyes dilated with pride as he regarded her.

"You look like a princess to-night, my girl."

"I feel like a princess. They're usually disposed of to a title or some
little thing like that, aren't they?" she asked with a laugh which held
a sob of terror.

"Look here, Jerry. You're not losing your nerve? You're not going back
on me, are you?"

She met his eyes squarely.

"I am not, Dad. The fewer ancestors one has behind one the better
ancestor one must make of oneself. When I make a promise I make it to
keep. I promised you that if Stephen Courtlandt asked me to marry him
I'd say 'Yes.'"

Glamorgan's eyes glistened with satisfaction.

"You have the right idea, Jerry. Here they are now," as the bell rang.

"You meet them. I'll take off my wrap--I'll----" In sudden panic the
girl entered her room and closed the door behind her. She leaned against
it. Her heart beat like mad. In the process of making the dream of her
father's life come true was she wrecking her own life? But he had been
such a wonderful father--and--to be honest with herself, the romance and
tradition and social standing of the Courtlandt name made an alluring
appeal to her. She had envied friends at school and college for their
careless references to their grandfathers; her earliest recollection was
of a room full of hot, grimy miners in a little home near the
coal-fields. To marry into the Courtlandt family in America would be
commensurate with marrying into a dukedom in England. She breathed a
fervent prayer of thanksgiving that her father's ambition hadn't urged
him in that direction, also that character had counted with him before
social position when he selected his prospective son-in-law.

Her shimmering wrap dropped to the floor as she crossed to her
dressing-table and gravely appraised her reflection in the mirror. Was
the girl staring so intently back at her fitted to preside over the
Courtlandt Manor? She tested every detail of her appearance. Her orchid
evening gown set off her arms and the curves of her white shoulders to
perfection. Her hair was of glistening brown, brown shot through with
red and gold where its soft waves caught the light. Her eyes were brown,
large and dark and velvety, like deep pools reflecting a myriad tiny
gold stars now when she was deeply moved and excited. Her mouth seemed
fashioned for laughter. The lips were vivid and exquisitely curved, and
when they smiled a deep dimple dented one cheek. Her ringless hands were
slender and beautifully formed.

"Dad says that you have Mother to thank for your hands," she told the
looking-glass girl. She lingered before the mirror, aimlessly moving the
gold and enameled appointments on the dressing-table. She dreaded to
enter the next room. Her life might be changed for all time, doubtless
would be, for she would marry Stephen Courtlandt if he wanted to save
his estate enough to take her on her own conditions. She flushed then
whitened. Perhaps he wouldn't want her after all. Well, that would soon
be settled. Better to have the awkward meeting over as soon as possible.
She picked up a large feather fan that was a shade deeper than her gown.
As she touched it she felt armed for any contingency, and not without
reason, for a fan in the hands of a beautiful woman is as effective as a
machine-gun directed by an expert rifleman. Jerry swept her vis-a-vis a
profound courtesy.

"I'll say you'll do, Mrs. Stephen Courtlandt," she encouraged with gay
inelegance. The laugh still lingered on her lips and lurked in her eyes
as she entered the living-room.

The three men who had been looking into the fire turned. The girl's
heart went out to the elder Courtlandt in a rush of sympathy. His head
was so high, his face so white, his eyes so full of hurt pride. The
younger man's face was quite as white, his head quite as high, but there
was an aggressive set to lips and jaw, a mixture of amazement and
antagonism in his eyes, then something else flamed there which she
couldn't diagnose as easily.

"He looks stunned. What did he expect, the pig-faced lady?" the girl
thought contemptuously even as she advanced with extended hand and
smiled up at the elder Courtlandt.

"Mr. Courtlandt, you seem like an old friend, my father has spoken of
you so often," she welcomed in her charming, well-bred voice which had a
curiously stimulating lilt in it.

The color rushed back to Peter Courtlandt's face, the expression in his
eyes changed to one of relief and honest admiration as he bent over her
hand.

"I realize now how much I have lost in not accepting your father's
invitation to call before. Will you permit me to present my son,
Stephen?"

Jerry crushed down an hysterical desire to laugh. It was so ridiculous,
the casual, pleased-to-meet-you attitude of the three persons whom her
father was moving at his will about the checker-board of life. She
murmured something in which the words "a pleasure" were alone audible.
Steve acknowledged them stiffly. Her eyes met his with their faint
scornful smile which she felt masked so much. They held hers for a
second before she turned to her father.

"Shall we go out to supper?" With engaging camaraderie she slipped her
hand under Peter Courtlandt's arm. The expression of his eyes when they
had first met hers had won her tender heart. "We'll let the younger set
follow us," she laughed. He shook his head.

"I defy Steve to feel as young as I feel now," he asserted with a
gallant promptness which delighted her.

At supper she devoted herself to him. He laughed and jested with her and
but for his white hair looked almost as young as his son. Steve, angered
by her persistent avoidance of himself, broke into their conversation
with a banality which caused his father to look at him in amazed
incredulity.

"Are you enjoying New York, Miss Glamorgan?"

Jerry regarded him for a moment from under long lashes before, with a
smile which she was sure made him want to shake her, she answered:

"Immensely; but this is not my first winter in the city. Dad and I have
made our headquarters here since I grew up." She turned to his father,
but Steve refused to be ignored.

"Do you like it?"

"Like it? I love it! It's so big, so beautiful and--and--and so faulty,"
her pose of indifference had fallen from her like a discarded veil; she
was all eager enthusiasm. "I--I like to be where there are many people.
I would starve for companionship, not food, in the wilderness." Steve
raised his brows and smiled unsmilingly.

"Then you believe in love?"

The color burned over her face to her scornful eyes. "He is willing to
marry for money yet he dares sneer at me about love," she thought
angrily, even as she looked up and deliberately studied him. She
laughed a gay little, mocking laugh.

"Believe in love? Of course I believe in love; don't you? But what an
absurd question to ask. As though you would champion the tender
passion." She saw his eyes darken and his jaw set before she turned to
his father. She was contrite, a little frightened. What had possessed
her to antagonize him like that? A poor way to begin a partnership which
she had hoped would develop into a real friendship.

"Jerry, take Steve into the living-room and give us some music. Mr.
Courtlandt and I will smoke here," commanded Glamorgan, as his servant,
who fairly exuded efficiency, passed cigars and cigarettes.

"Perhaps--perhaps he would prefer to stay here and smoke," the girl
suggested hurriedly, for the first time losing her poise. She caught a
glint of challenge in Stephen's eyes and rose. Her color was high, her
breath a bit uneven as she smiled at him with bewildering charm. "After
all, why should I make suggestions? You are quite old enough to decide
what you want to do yourself, aren't you?"

"Yes. Quite old enough and quite ready to decide for myself," he
answered as he stood aside for her to precede him into the living-room.
"Do you play or sing?" he asked as he followed her to the piano. The
instrument looked as though it were loved and used. It was her turn to
be a trifle scornful.

"I play and sing. Does it seem incredible that I should?" She seated
herself and dropped her hands in her lap. "Shall I play for you?"

"Please." He leaned his arms on the piano and looked down at her, but
she realized that his thoughts were not following his eyes. "I am not in
the least musical, but we had a chap in our company overseas who could
make the most shell-shocked instrument give out what seemed to us in the
midst of that thundering inferno, heavenly music. Sometimes now a wave
of longing for the sound of a piano sweeps over me, played by someone
who loves music as that boy loved it. Do you know--Schumann's
'Papillions'? That was one of his favorites."

For answer she played the first bar of the exquisite thing. Once she
glanced up. The eyes of the man leaning on the piano, not blue now, but
dark with memories, were an ocean removed from her. It was a minute
after the last note was struck before they came back to her face. He
drew a long breath.

"Thank you," he said simply, but his tone was better than a paean of
praise. Then the softness left his eyes. There was aggressiveness and a
hint of irony in his voice as he said stiffly:

"My--my father has given me to understand that you will do me the honor
to marry me."

A passion of anger shook the girl. She valiantly forced back the tears
which threatened, rose and faced him defiantly. Her slender fingers
smoothed out the long plumes of her fan. There should be no subterfuge
now, she determined, no cause for recrimination later.

"Your father, doubtless, has told you also that my father is willing to
buy your name and social position for me with a portion of his fortune.
A sort of fifty-fifty arrangement, isn't it?" she added flippantly, with
the faintest flicker of her bronze-tipped lashes. Courtlandt shrugged.

"If you wish to put it so crudely."

She took a step back and clenched her hands behind her. Her beautiful
eyes were brilliant with scorn, her heart pounded. It seemed as though
it must visibly shake her slender body as she answered:

"Why not? If we speak the truth now it may save complications later. You
know that my father wants me to marry you and--and why. I frankly
confess that I sympathize with his ambitions. I want the best of life in
my associations. Your father is in difficulties of one sort--my father
is in difficulties of another sort--if a lack of family background can
be called a difficulty--and it appears that with our help they can
accommodate one another. I'd do anything for Dad--he has done so much
for me." She set her teeth sharply in her under lip to steady it.

"Then--then you are not afraid to marry without love?" His eyes were
inscrutable.

"Without love? For the man I marry? No, not as long as I have no love
for any other. I might love a man when I married him, and then--love
comes unbidden, oftentimes unwanted and pouf!--it goes the way it came,
and no one can stop it. You know that yourself."

"Not if it is real love, the love of a man for the one woman," he
defended.

"Is there such a thing? I wonder?" skeptically.

If he felt a temptation to retaliate he resisted it.

"Then I may conclude that you accept me?" he prompted with frigid
courtesy.

"Yes, that is----" a nervous sob caught at her voice. "If--if you will
agree to my conditions. Dad has promised me an income of a hundred
thousand a year. I will keep half of it in my possession, the other half
you are to have to use as you please."

Courtlandt's eyes were black with anger, his knuckles white. He was
rough, direct, relentless as he answered:

"You are indeed determined to make this a business affair. But
understand now that I won't touch one cent of your cursed money.
Whatever arrangement your father wants to make with you and my father is
his affair and yours, but you are to leave me out of it absolutely.
That's my condition. Do you get it?"

"Yes, I get it." She colored richly, angrily, then paled. Even her lips
went white. "There is one thing more. I--we--this marriage is really a
bargain--money for social position. Let it be only that. Need there be
anything else? You must understand me--you must," in passionate appeal.
She laid her hand on his arm. He looked down at her with disconcerting
steadiness. His face was stern.

"Yes, I understand. You mean a marriage stripped to its skeleton of
legal terms. No mutual responsibilities, no mutual sacrifices, no--no
love. That is for you to decide. The Courtlandt debt is far too great
for me not to accept any terms you may dictate. It shall be as you wish,
I--promise."

Her brown eyes were brilliant with unshed tears as she held out an
impulsive hand.

"Thank you. You make the arrangements seem bleak and sordid, but you
have given me back my self-respect. Now I feel that it is an honorable
bargain between us two. You are to be perfectly free to come and go as
you like, and I shall be free, too--but there is one thing I promise
you, I--I shall never harm the name I take."

He looked down at the hand he held for an instant then released it.

"I knew that when you came into the room to-night. Will you marry me
soon?"

"Whenever you like. Will you--say good-night to your father for me?
I----" With a valiant effort to steady her lips, she smiled faintly,
opened the door of her room and closed it quickly behind her.

Peter Courtlandt was the first to break the silence as father and son
motored home. He made an effort to speak lightly.

"Well, my boy, your close-up was wrong. Geraldine Glamorgan has neither
prominent teeth, nor little eyes, nor a kittenish manner; in fact, I
don't know when I have seen so beautiful a girl so singularly free from
the barnacles of vanity and self-consciousness."

"Kittenish!" his son repeated curtly. "She's far from kittenish. She's
an iceberg, and what's more she has the business instinct developed to
the nth degree. Believe me, she's a born trader."




CHAPTER III


Geraldine Courtlandt slowed down her car to enter the river road. The
sun was setting in a blaze of crimson glory, a few belated birds winged
swiftly into the west. Lights on the opposite shore flickered for a
moment as they flashed into being, then shone with steady brilliancy.
Lights appeared on the few boats swinging at anchor in the quiet water.
Lights in house windows beaconed a steady welcome to home-comers. What
individuality there was in lights the girl thought. Those across the
river seemed entirely municipal and commercial, those on the boats
carried a silent warning, those in the windows seemed warmly human.

The turmoil in Jerry's heart subsided. She had driven miles that
afternoon through the cold, exhilarating rush of December air, trying to
forget Steve's tone when he had refused her offer to drive him to town
that morning. Had she been married only a month? It seemed as though
centuries had passed since she and Steve had stood before the altar with
their few witnesses and exchanged marriage vows. She shivered. If she
had realized how irrevocable they were, their solemn admonition, would
she have had the courage to marry to please her father, she wondered.

"And forsaking all others keep thee only unto him as long as ye both
shall live?" The question had echoed in every sound at the wedding
breakfast in her father's apartment; she had read it deep in Peggy's
eyes as they had met hers from across the room; it had kept time to the
revolution of the wheels as she and Steve had motored out to the Manor
in the late afternoon. Her lips twisted in a bitter little smile as she
remembered Sir Peter's tactful suppression of surprise when they had
told him that there would be no wedding journey. She and Steve had
decided that under the circumstances such a function would be nothing
short of farcical, besides he would not ask for leave from the office.
Sir Peter had quite suddenly decided to go on a hunting trip.

The girl's brows wrinkled in a troubled frown. She knew now that she had
done a grave injustice to Steve, to herself, when she had consented to
her father's proposition. Well, the deed was done, her only course was
to turn her mistake into a stepping-stone toward ultimate good. That was
the one way to treat mistakes remedially, she had learned in her
twenty-three years. Repining proved nothing.

"Every engaged couple ought to have the marriage service read aloud to
them at least once a week. That would give them pause," she murmured
with fervent conviction. She ground on her brake just in time to avoid
running down a "ROAD CLOSED. DETOUR" sign. The black letters on the
white board danced weirdly before her eyes for a moment. She must cure
herself of the reprehensible habit of driving with her mind miles away.
She turned into the side road and drove slowly. Detours were notoriously
rough even if they sometimes offered adventure, she thought whimsically.

The upper windows of the Manor reflected the setting sun through
swaying, bare branches. They shone like molten mirrors as Jerry turned
into the tree-lined avenue which led to the house. At the foot of the
garden slope she caught the shimmer of the river. Already she loved the
place. The great house had "home" writ large all over it. It bulged, it
loomed, it rambled in unexpected places as though it had grown with the
family. And yet, in spite of the additions, it remained a choice example
of early architecture. It was as though a beneficent fairy, versed in
the arts, had presided over the alterations.

As the girl entered the great hall, where logs blazed in the mammoth
fireplace, she had the sense of being enfolded in warm, tender arms. If
Steve would not be so frigidly courteous she could be quite happy, she
thought resentfully. At breakfast each morning during these interminable
weeks he had politely asked her preference for the evening. Should they
motor to town for the theatre, dance, what should they do? And she,
dreading to bore him more than he was already bored, and hating to face
the curious eyes of his world which had been set agog at their marriage,
had replied to each suggestion:

"I prefer to remain in this lovely country, but please go yourself. I
really shouldn't be in the least lonely."

He had refused to take advantage of her suggestion. Every night they
dined together with great formality, she in the loveliest frocks of her
hastily assembled trousseau, he in correct and immaculate dinner
clothes. The only time there seemed the least sympathy between them was
when she was at the piano, in the library, and Steve smoked in the big
chair in front of the fire. He kept so absolutely still, usually with
his eyes on his mother's portrait. Was he dreaming dreams, she wondered.
Had there been a girl without money whom he loved? Did he know what "the
love of a man for the one woman" meant? She should never forget the tone
in which he had asked that question. She was standing in the hall, her
coat off, when she thought of that. She shook herself mentally and
dragged her thoughts back to the present. She spoke to her trim maid who
came to take her coat:

"Tell Judson to serve tea in the library, Hilda. I--I'm cold."

She was half-way to the fireplace in the long room before she discovered
that the wing-chair in front of it was occupied, occupied by a queer,
elfish type of man who regarded her with a poorly suppressed snort of
disdain as she paused in surprise. The skin stretched over his high
cheek-bones till it shone like mellowing, yellowing ivory. His colorless
eyes glittered as with fever, his forehead reared to where his coarse
white hair brandished a sort of kewpie-curl. A black cape, of wool so
soft that it looked like velvet, lay across his thin, stooped shoulders.
From under its folds his hands protruded, clasped on the top of a stout
ebony stick. They were gnarled and distorted with rheumatism. His voice,
true to type, was high and slightly cracked as he spoke to the girl
after an instant of peeved scrutiny.

"So--you're the new Mrs. Courtlandt, the lady of the Manor, are you?
You're the girl who has been traded in to save the family fortune?"

The angry color flamed to Jerry's hair but she stood her ground. She
even managed to bestow a patronizing frown upon him.

"Now I know who you are. No one but 'Old Nick' would be so rude. You
see your reputation has preceded you." She sank into the chair opposite
him and with elbow on its arm, chin on her hand, regarded him curiously.
She made a brilliant bit of color in the dark-toned room. The light from
the fire fell on her rose-color sports suit, brought out the sheen of
the velvet tam of the same shade, drooped picturesquely over one ear,
flickered fantastically on her white throat, set the diamonds in the pin
which fastened the dainty frills of her blouse agleam with rainbows and
played mad pranks with the circlet of jewels on the third finger of her
left hand.

How ill and fragile he looked, the girl thought, pathetically fragile.
She had a passion of sympathy for the old. She would ignore his
rudeness. She leaned forward and smiled at him with gay friendliness.

"Now that I have guessed who you are it's your turn. Tell me how you got
here. Did a magician wave his wand, and presto, an enchanted carpet, or
did you arrive via air-route? I am sorry that there was no one at the
Manor to welcome you. I was detained by one of those silly detours. Sir
Peter has been away but returns to-night, and Steve--did Steve know that
you were coming? Did--did he write you about--about me?" the last word
was added in an undignified whisper.

"Steve! Do they ever let Steve tell me anything?"

"Now I've done it, he's off!" Jerry thought with an hysterical desire to
laugh, he was so like an old war-horse scenting battle.

"No. The first I knew of you was when Peter Courtlandt wrote that a
marriage had been arranged between the daughter of Glamorgan, the
oil-king, and Steve. Arranged! Stuff and nonsense! What poor fool
arranged it, I'd like to know? Hasn't Peter Courtlandt seen enough of
life to know that when a man who has nothing marries a girl with a large
fortune he's ruined? If he has any strength of character it turns to
gall, if he's a weak party, he gets weaker--it's hell--for a proud man.
Why didn't they give me a chance to save the family fortune? I'd have
done it if Steve had asked me, but I turned his father down--I wouldn't
give a penny to save him. Why--why that boy ought to have married
someone who'd count, not a once-removed coal-picker."

Furious as she was at his insult, Jerry kept her temper. It was so
pathetically evident that he was old and disappointed and alarmingly
ill. However, there was a hint of Glamorgan's determination in her eyes
as she answered coolly:

"You may say what you like about me, but I can't let you disparage my
father. He is the biggest thing in my life. After all, why should you
roar at me? Steve and I are not the first victims sacrificed on the
altar of pride of family and possessions, are we? Sentiment is quite out
of fashion. What passes for it is but a wan survival of the age of
romance and chivalry. Marriage in that strata of society to which I have
been lately elevated is like the Paul Jones at a dance, when the whistle
blows change partners--in the same set, if one should happen to go out
of it, pandemonium, quickly followed by oblivion."

If he was conscious of the sting of sarcasm in her words he ignored it.
His voice was barbed with thorns of irritation as he affirmed:

"Then it is as I suspected; you're not in love with Steve. So love is
out of fashion, is it? To be scornful of love is the prerogative of
youth; when we get old we treasure it. Well, I warn you now, young
woman, that my nephew shan't live the loveless life I've lived. I was
born rich. Had I been poor and married, had my wife been my working
partner dependent upon me for money, helping me climb, I shouldn't be
the wreck of a man I am now."

"What a pre-nineteenth amendment sentiment," the girl dared
mischievously. He glowered at her from under his bushy brows.

"You can't switch me off my subject with your flippancy. I repeat,
Steve shall have love. I'll get it for him--I'll----" He rose and
brandished his stick at the girl. He fell back and leaned his head
weakly against the chair. Jerry leaned over him and smoothed back his
hair tenderly. He looked up at her with fever-bright eyes and gasped
breathlessly:

"I haven't gone--yet. I shan't go till--I've thought of some way to--to
yank Steve out of this--this damnable Sam Jones ring you talk about.
Give me some tea. Quick! Give it to me--strong. My fool doctor won't let
me have anything else. What's Steve doing? Living on your income?" he
asked as Judson, after fussing among the tea-things, at a low word from
the girl, left the room.

Jerry's cheeks flushed, tiny sparks lighted her eyes as she countered
crisply:

"Don't you know your nephew better than to ask that question? He is in a
lawyer's office working for the munificent sum of fifteen per." Fairfax
choked over his tea.

"D'you mean to tell me that a son-in-law of Glamorgan the oil-king is an
office boy? Between you all you've made a mess of it, haven't you? What
does your father say to that?"

"He's--he's furious," Jerry answered, as she studied the infinitesimal
grounds in her teacup. She gave the tea-cart a little push which removed
it from between them. She rose, hesitated, then slipped to her knees
before the old man. She looked up at him speculatively for a moment
before she commenced to trace an intricate pattern on his stout stick
with a pink-tipped finger. Her voice was low and a trifle unsteady as
she pleaded:

"Uncle Nick, be friends with me, will you?" A non-committal grunt was
her only answer. "Steve won't talk to me. He won't listen to reason.
Having made his big sacrifice for the family fortunes by marrying me he
is holding his head so high that he'll step into a horrible shell-hole
if he doesn't watch out. Dad is furious that he won't live and spend
money as befits a Courtlandt, that is, as he thinks a Courtlandt should
live and spend, and with that fine illogic, so characteristic of the
male of the species, takes it out on me. Steve is so--so maddening. He
won't use the automobiles unless he is taking me somewhere, although
they were all, with the exception of my town car and roadster, in the
garage when I came here. He just commutes and commutes in those
miserable trains. Commuting corrupts good manners; he's a--a bear. He
and I are beginning all wrong, Uncle Nick." She met the stern old eyes
above her before she dropped her head to the arm of his chair. "Steve
hates the sight of me and I----"

Fairfax laid his stick across her shoulders with a suddenness and
strength, which, made her jump.

"What did you expect? Didn't I tell you that when a poor man marries a
fortune his pride turns to gall? Can a red-blooded man really love a
girl who would marry for position? You're fast getting to hate him, I
suppose?" he demanded in a tone which brought her to her feet and iced
her voice and eyes.

"You wouldn't expect me to be crazy about him, would you? He is cold and
disagreeable and is evidently laboring under the delusion that the world
was created to revolve around Stephen Courtlandt." A contemptuous snort
fired her with the determination to hurt someone or something. "You may
take it from me that if I had the chance to choose again between
disappointing Dad or marrying your precious nephew I'd--I'd disappoint
Dad." She was breathless but triumphant as she flung the last words at
him. He glared at her.

"So-o, you're a quitter, are you?"

Jerry's face was white, her eyes smoldering coals of wrath. Her voice
was low with repressed fury as she flung back his taunt.

"I'm not a quitter. By why couldn't Dad have selected some other
aristocrat for a son-in-law? From what I have observed there are plenty
of them who need money. Believe me, I'm tired of living in this cold
storage atmosphere. I was willing to play fair, willing to keep my part
of the contract----" Her voice failed her as she met his grilling eyes.

"Are you fulfilling your----"

"What, Uncle Nick, tea-broken?" interrupted a voice from the door. The
old man struggled to his feet as his nephew came toward him. A smile of
tenderness dimmed the glitter of his eyes. Jerry's heart looped the
loop. How long had Steve been at the door? Had he heard that last
rebellious declaration of hers? How would he greet his uncle? She hoped
that he would be tender, for no matter how disagreeable Nicholas Fairfax
was, he was old and evidently dangerously ill. She was quite unconscious
of her breath of relief as the younger man laid an affectionate arm
about the elder's shoulders.

"This sure is a surprise and then some, Uncle Nick. Why didn't you let
us know you were coming?"

"I knew if I wrote, your father'd invent an excuse to put me off, so I
roped Doc Rand and came along. I have no time to waste. I wanted to see
the kind of girl they'd sold you to----"

"Then you have seen a fine one who did me the honor to marry me, haven't
you?" There was a set to young Courtlandt's jaw which boded ill for the
person who differed with him. "Why not come up to your room and rest
before dinner? Sir Peter returns to-night and you'll want--here he is
now," as the hum of voices in the hall drifted to the library.

Jerry sprang forward with a radiant smile of welcome as Peter Courtlandt
entered the room. He seized her two hands in his and kissed her
tenderly.

"It's a good many years since I had a welcome home like this," he
admitted with a break in his voice. "How are you, Steve? Nick, I just
ran into Doc Rand in the hall. He told me that you were here." He held
out his hand to his brother-in-law who responded grudgingly.

"I suppose he told you a lot of other stuff, too. Well, I'll fool him."

Jerry gave the hand that still held one of hers a surreptitious squeeze.

"It's good to have you back, Sir Peter. The house has seemed terribly
big and empty without you."

"Empty!" echoed Fairfax with his sardonic chuckle. "Fancy a bride of a
month complaining of emptiness in a house without her father-in-law."

"How does it happen that you have torn yourself away from the ranch,
Nick?" interrupted Peter Courtlandt before Steve, who had grown white
about the nostrils, could speak. "The last time you came on you said
you would never leave it again."

Fairfax swallowed the bait which never failed to lure him. His western
possessions were his pride, and he welcomed an opportunity to talk of
them much as a fond parent does of his child.

"Didn't want to leave. Felt it my duty to come and see what you had done
to Steve," he growled. "Greyson, of the X Y Z, is looking after things
for me."

"Greyson of the X Y Z! Is your ranch near his?" Jerry demanded. A faint
color stole to her face, her eyes were alight with interest.

"It is. What do you know about it?" Fairfax's eyes were interrogation
points of suspicion.

"Not much. I met Mr. Greyson last winter, and I----"

"Met Greyson, did you? Humph! So that's what's the matter with him. I
suppose the daughter of an oil-king looked down upon----"

"Have you had a profitable year?" interrupted Peter Courtlandt, adroitly
getting between his son and the old man. "They tell me that this has
been a banner season for wheat."

"They told you right. If the cattle winter safe I shall achieve the
ambition of my life, to own the biggest and finest herd of Shorthorns in
the country. I'll show 'em a thing or two about that breed of cattle. I
tell you, Peter----"

"Mrs. Denbigh," announced Judson at the door.

Jerry caught the look of consternation which Peter Courtlandt threw at
his son. She saw also the sudden tightening of Steve's lips. What did it
mean? She had met Felice Denbigh once and had been repulsed by her
super-golden hair and super-perfect complexion. Was she an old
sweetheart of Steve's? She took a step toward the smartly gowned woman
who spoke as she crossed the threshold.

"Mrs. Courtlandt, you will forgive me for this intrusion on your
honeymoon, won't you? But--but Steve left his gloves in my sedan this
morning when we drove to town, and I came to return them."

Jerry's mind took a dizzy turn or two then settled down to clear
thinking. She had a curious sense that with the explanation Felice
Denbigh had fired the opening gun of a campaign. So there had been a
reason why Steve had refused to allow her to drive him to town. She
flashed a glance at him even while she murmured welcoming platitudes to
her guest. He had his hand on his uncle's arm.

"You remember Felice Peyton, don't you, Uncle Nick?"

"What's that? Felice Peyton, the girl you were forever running after
when you were in college? Well, Miss Peyton, you lost him, didn't you?"
asked the terrible old man.

"But--but dear Mr. Fairfax, I'm not Miss Peyton now--I married Phil
Denbigh when Steve deserted me and went to war. I----"

"Philip Denbigh!" The old man rose, straightened himself like an
avenging Nemesis. "Poor devil! So he drew another blank besides that
good-for-nothing philandering mother of his. A mother who wept and
begged until she kept the boy from enlisting, and by some hokuspokus got
him into Class C.--No, I won't stop," as Courtlandt senior laid a
peremptory hand on his arm. "There are a lot of men who are cringing
through life to-day because their women did not love them enough to
cheer them on to fight in the Great Fight."

Felice Denbigh was white with anger, her eyes tiny green flames. Jerry
flung herself into the breach:

"Won't you stay and dine with us informally, Mrs. Denbigh? Poor S-Steve
must have been bored to death, surfeited with my society this last
month."

"Thank you, no." Felice's self-possession was superb. "I shall pay my
respects to the new Mrs. Courtlandt later when she is formally at home.
Good-night, Mr. Fairfax. What a pleasure it must be for the family to
have your genial presence at the Manor. You don't know how happy it
makes me to find that someone remembers Steve's devotion to me. He seems
to have forgotten it. Good-night, Sir Peter. Stevie, will you come and
start that cranky car of mine?" Then, as he reached her side, Jerry
heard her ask softly, "Shall we meet at the same place to-morrow
morning?"

Nicholas Fairfax must have heard it also, for the girl heard him mutter:

"Snake!"




CHAPTER IV


As she served coffee in the library after dinner Jerry pondered over
those low-spoken words. The firelight set the sequins on her pale blue
gown glittering like jewels; it accentuated the satiny sheen of her
hair, betrayed the troubled expression in her lovely eyes. Nicholas
Fairfax was in his room. He had collapsed when he went up to dress for
dinner. Doctor Rand, whom he had brought with him, stood back to the
fire stirring his coffee. There was a suggestion of fat and wheeze about
the little man. His weather-stained face had the wrinkled effect of a
quite elderly, quite plump russet apple. His white hair bushed a la
Golliwog. His frock coat was of finest, pre-war broadcloth. The
flamboyant effect of his black necktie made the girl think of the bow on
the neck of a pet kitten. He tested his coffee before he observed dryly:

"If a man with an under-developed heart-beat and an over-developed
blood-pressure will go chasing half-way across the continent to see a
pretty girl," he bowed with somewhat ponderous gallantry in Jerry's
direction, "what can you expect but collapse? He's crazy about you,
Steve, and somewhere he got the fool notion that you were unhappy.
That's what started him East. I tried to hold him back. I knew the price
he'd pay."

Stephen Courtlandt came suddenly from the window where he had been
looking out upon the snow-dusted world. He approached the fire. His eyes
looked strained.

"Then you think he won't rally from this attack, Doc?" he asked
anxiously.

"It's better for you to know the truth, Steve. He knows. He's wired for
Greyson of the X Y Z and----"

"Oh-h!"

The startled exclamation had escaped Jerry's lips before she realized
that she had made a sound. A delicate pink stole to her hair as she met
Steve's steady eyes. Doctor Rand was apparently quite unconscious of the
interruption.

"And sent for your family lawyer. Your father is with him now. I'll go
and relieve him. Your cookie sure makes good coffee, Mrs. Jerry. Bring
her out to the Double O and invite us old bachelors for eats once in a
while. You'd be doing a charity bigger than some you spend your time on
here, I can tell you."

"Mrs. Courtlandt would starve for people in that wilderness, Doc,"
announced Stephen with parrot-like glibness.

"Would she now? Sure, she doesn't look like a child who'd be so
dependent on chatter. Well, the Double O isn't in the Dude ranch region,
neither is it exactly a wilderness. It's a seething cauldron of society
in comparison to some of the places. You knew that Old Nick and Greyson
had given the Bear Creek ranch to a returned service man, didn't you,
Steve?" then as Courtlandt nodded, "He brought a wife out last spring.
She doesn't have a woman to speak to but she reminds me of a
meadow-lark, little and quiet but with a voice that sings."

"Do she and her husband live there all alone?" Jerry asked in wonder.

"Yes--that is--there's a range-rider but--but that's another story." Had
she not thought it quite out of character Jerry would have sworn that
Doc Rand was embarrassed. "We--here I am talking when my patient needs
me. It's all your fault, Mrs. Jerry. You shouldn't have vamped me so
outrageously. Steve, I want a prescription filled."

"I'll send Carter for it, Doc. Give it to me." He left the room with the
slip of paper in his hand. Rand looked after him, then thoughtfully at
the girl where she sat in the flickering light of the fire. He set his
cup on the tray and patted her hand gently.

"Don't mind Old Nick, child. He's sick and jealous and--and mad about
Steve--it will all come right. Things have a marvelous unbelievable way
of coming right. That's what I kept telling Fairfax but he wouldn't
listen."

"Why--why should he hate me so?"

"He doesn't hate you, he's--he's just afraid for Steve, that's all. He
adored his sister--he used to say that when he found a woman like her,
he'd marry----" he looked up at the portrait over the mantel. Jerry's
glance followed his. The eyes, so like Steve's, were thoughtful, there
was a suspicion of laughter in the curve of the lips, the flesh tints
were marvelously lovely, a string of rare pearls gleamed softly on the
creamy neck. The artist had worked lovingly and had produced a portrait
that was humanly, warmly alive, a spirit that dominated the quiet room.

"Steve,--Steve and Sir Peter love her like that too, do they not?"

Rand thrust his hands under his coat tails and flapped them in time with
his heel and toe teeter.

"Love her! It is more than love. Betty Fairfax, the name clung even
after marriage, makes me believe in immortality. The best of her is
living in Steve and it will be handed on to his children. Her spirit is
just as much alive for her husband and son as it was the day she left
them. That's why Steve has kept straight through temptations which would
have lured most chaps of his age. No one can ever tell me, and get
across with it, that a mother's influence doesn't live forever. That boy
is one of a thousand, isn't he, Mrs. Jerry?"

"Oh--perhaps, as thousands go." She looked up from under her long lashes
at his discomfited face. Laughter gleamed through the tears which his
tribute to the mother had brought. "You shouldn't pry into the secrets
of a maiden's heart," she teased with exaggerated demureness. Rand
responded to her mood.

"That's better. A child like you should laugh, not be as serious as
you've been ever since I've seen you. Don't let Nick's condition depress
you. He may live for weeks and when he does go, it will be a release. He
wants it--if--if he can go knowing that Steve's happiness is assured."

"Is anyone's happiness assured?" asked the girl gravely.

"No"--he regarded her with his twinkling gray eyes--"but I'll bet my
broncho if anyone's is--it's Steve's. Good-night."

He was gone before Jerry could reply. Her heart felt curiously warmed by
his words. He--he evidently liked her if Steve didn't. She went to the
piano. Her fingers touched the keys experimentally for a moment, then
she quite unconsciously struck the opening bar of "Papillions." The
music danced and rose with dainty spontaneity. She drifted into Bach's
"Praeludium." Separated chords or flowing melody, she played with a
sympathy and sureness which showed the touch of an artist. She knew when
Steve came into the room and crossed to the window. As the last note
died away she turned. He stood with his hands clenched behind his back.
What was interesting him outside, she wondered. She wanted to speak to
him but she never yet had addressed him by his first name. It seemed
absurd, it was absurd, but she had avoided using it to his face. To
continue the avoidance presented difficulties now that his back was
turned. She usually waited until he looked at her, which she had to
acknowledge was seldom. She ran through the opening bars of "Papillions"
again but his back remained obdurately turned to the room.

"I--you----" she halted awkwardly, "I would like to talk to you," she
admitted hesitatingly. Courtlandt wheeled and approached the piano.

"Good Lord, don't you know my name that you have to juggle 'I--you----'
when you want to attract my attention?" he demanded belligerently. There
was a defiant gleam in the eyes which met his.

"It does sound silly, doesn't it--Stevie?" with exaggerated demureness
and an exact imitation of Felice Denbigh's voice. "But--but I know yours
better than you know mine--I think----" then as he opened his lips to
speak she hurried on, "I wanted to ask if you were in love with Felice
Denbigh? No--no--don't mistake me," as his blue eyes darkened to
purple-black, and his lips tightened, "I'm not jealous--really I'm
not--I only wanted you to know that if you are, I'm sorry, terribly
sorry. It's a tragedy to love one person and have to marry another."

"How do you know? Are you in love with Greyson?" with rough directness.

His sudden turn of the tables took the girl's breath. She colored
betrayingly. She knew that she must be the picture of guilt as she stood
there, her color coming and going, her heart beating like a silly
tom-tom. There was even a slight unsteadiness in her voice as she
evaded:

"I haven't seen Bruce Greyson since last winter," then maddened at her
own lack of poise she looked up with frank defiance. "It's a pity that
he doesn't live here. He could motor me to town."

He flushed darkly.

"My motoring to town with Mrs. Denbigh this morning was purely
accidental."

"But--but--you will never go with me."

"Trolley incomes should avoid limousine ladies."

"Limousine ladies!" Jerry gripped her temper and controlled her voice.
"Pardon! My mistake," she drawled maddeningly. "Is--is Mrs. Denbigh
divorced?"

"Not yet. What Old Nick said about Phil's mother was true. She did ruin
his life. It would have been better for him and for her had he been shot
to pieces, than to have him as he is now with this gnawing shame at his
heart."

"She--she was not much like your mother, was she?"

"Like Mother?" Jerry thought she had never heard anything so beautiful
as that word "Mother" as Courtlandt uttered it. He smiled up at the
portrait--"Mother was--well----" he cleared the huskiness from his voice
and went on, "As I was saying about Denbigh, remorse got too much for
him and a year ago he disappeared, dropped completely out of sight."

"Why didn't Felice go with him?"

"Do you know, I fancy that Phil didn't want her."

"Nevertheless she had married him. One doesn't take the vow 'and
forsaking all others' to break it, does one?" gravely.

"I deduce from that that you do not believe in divorce?"

"Divorce! While I acknowledge that there may be situations where it is
unavoidable, I hate the word. Always to me it takes on the semblance of
Medusa's head in my school mythology, its snaky, hissing locks striking,
stabbing, stinging, scarring indelibly. I believe in keeping covenants."

"It's hard sometimes."

"It is, but life isn't intended to be all joy-ride. I've found that
out."

"You mean----"

"Nothing which need make you glower at me like that," defiantly. "Do you
know, I fancy," with an exact imitation of his earlier voice and manner,
"that the future first families of America's 'Who's Who' will be those
who can count back at least four generations of ancestors who have, in
spite of disappointment and disillusion, poverty or riches, sickness or
health, kept their marriage covenants. A curious idea, isn't it? It just
came to me. 'A little thing but mine own,'" her tone changed from
earnestness to flippancy on the last words. She syncopated a few bars of
"Papillions" as though to emphasize her indifference.

Courtlandt thrust his hands hard into the pockets of his dinner coat.
The atmosphere tingled with electricity. The girl wondered if he were
throttling a desire to shake her. She hoped so. He met her eyes steadily
for a moment before he turned to leave the room. Jerry took a hasty
step after him.

"Wait, please--if--if----" as he kept on she added desperately, "Steve,
please." He stopped and turned. "If--if you should see Dad--do not
mention the fact that Bruce--that Mr. Greyson's ranch is near your
uncle's."

"Why not?" relentlessly.

"Because in an attack of homesickness last winter I became engaged to
him."




CHAPTER V


In the music-room of the Manor the rugs had been rolled back, the voice
of the phonograph released from captivity and the Courtlandts' guests
were dancing, at least some of them were. Sir Peter had beguiled
Glamorgan to the library for a smoke. The oil-king had cast a gloom over
the dinner. Was it because he was disturbed about Nicholas Fairfax,
Jerry wondered. To the amazement of all, he and the ranchman had become
great friends. It would be like her father to be irritable if he were
moved. Perhaps it had been the arrival of Greyson which had infuriated
him. Last winter he had quickly made her see the folly of her engagement
to the owner of the X Y Z, and now she was grateful to him. She had
known at the time that she did not love Bruce Greyson, but that she was
in love with love. In a way her life had been a lonely one, and when he
had pleaded with her to marry him, she had agreed to a tentative
engagement. Now she was glad that she had kept him at a distance, even
in those two weeks.

She looked up at Greyson as he sat beside her in one of the deep
embrasures of a window. A distinguished looking man, he gave the
impression of having lived in great spaces, of having achieved
worth-while things, of being absolutely poised and self-assured. His
dark hair was tending toward neutral at the temples, his keen blue eyes
had fine lines radiating from them, which denoted long-distance gazing.
The weather-beaten texture of his skin was emphasized by the immaculate
white of the shirt and collar of his up-to-the-minute dinner clothes.

Peggy Glamorgan, as she danced with her brother-in-law, was doing
direful things to the heart of young Don Curtis, whose family estate
adjoined the Manor. She was a charming, younger model of her sister,
except that where Jerry's eyes were brown, Peggy's were a somewhat
elfish hazel. She was making the most of a week-end freedom from school
discipline. Steve Courtlandt's glance wandered to the two in the deep
window. Peggy looked up at him with tormenting concern.

"That's the second time you've lost step, Steve. I protest. I hate being
trodden on." Her laughing eyes and mischievously curved lips robbed the
words of their sting.

"I'm sorry! Give me one more trial, Peg-o'-my-heart, and I'll do
better," promised Steve. He had taken an immense liking to the girl, she
was so genuine, so unaffected, so brimming over with the zest of
living.

"Nothing doing, brother. Go get Jerry. It's a part of her job to put up
with your poor dancing, isn't it? A part of the love, honor and obey
stuff? Catch me saying 'I will' to that. Jerry's different. She'd walk
over the proverbial ploughshares if she thought duty called." She looked
across the room to where her sister sat and added softly, "It's a queer
trick of fortune that Bruce Greyson should be your uncle's confidential
man and should come to this house."

"Why accent this?" demanded Steve Courtlandt bluntly.

Peggy flushed guiltily beneath his stern eyes.

"That's only my exclamatory style. I meant that it was strange that
Jerry should meet him here after--after--I--I wonder if that was what
made her cry last night?"

"Did Jerry cry last night?"

"She cross-my-throat-and-hope-to-die swore she didn't, this morning, but
her lids were suspiciously pink. Didn't you notice it? Thank you, I
should love it," she responded to young Curtis who had been impatiently
hovering in the offing. "There really isn't much fun dancing with old
married men," she confided in a tone intended to reach Steve. She made
an impudent little face at her brother-in-law over her partner's
shoulder. He smiled and blew her a kiss as she danced away but her
words hurt, hurt because he knew that she was right. He felt years older
than he had that epoch-making October night when his father had revealed
to him the state of the family finances, and had presented the means
whereby it could be remedied. Had he chosen wisely, he wondered;
wouldn't it have been better to let the property go than to have married
a girl who had so quickly acquired an aversion for him?

He looked across at the two engrossed faces in the window. He'd break
that up. Jerry should remember where she was and not give occasion for
silly gossip. Already Felice Denbigh, who had motored out from town for
dinner, had called his attention to Greyson's apparent devotion. With
eyes combative, Steve strolled to where Jerry sat.

"Will you dance with me, Mrs. Courtlandt?" he asked with aggressive
formality. In the midst of a sentence, she looked up in startled
surprise. Greyson rose.

"I have committed the unpardonable blunder of monopolizing my hostess,
Steve," he apologized, "but the temptation to live over a perfect
friendship was too great to be resisted. I will beg a dance from your
sister, Mrs. Courtlandt."

Jerry's eyes followed him as he crossed the room. They made Steve think
of deep, troubled pools when she looked up at him. Was it because Peg
had put the idea into his head or did they look as though they had known
recent tears? Was she finding her marriage a bar to happiness already?
His face was a trifle white, a trifle grim as he reminded:

"Do we dance?"

Without answering she rose, and he put his arm about her. Except for
taking her hand it was the first time he had touched her. How slender
she was, how soft, how graceful. He could feel her heart pound heavily
against his breast. One might think that she was frightened, but with
him--that was absurd. Her dancing like her walk was perfection of
motion. He was careful of his steps as they danced down the long room.
Jerry should have no occasion to echo Peg's reprimand. She stopped.

"Tired?" he asked solicitously, his senses still throbbing from the
appeal of music and dance. She shook her head.

"Tired! I don't know what it is to be tired. Some of our guests are not
dancing. Mrs. Denbigh is quite alone and looking horribly bored. Peg
seems to have appropriated more than her share of men; she is
surrounded. Don't you think that as host you should dance with Felice?"

"Presently. I have something to say to you first." He changed his
position so that he stood between her and the others in the room.

"Why did you cry?"

She crimsoned even under the tiny curls at the nape of her white neck.

"I! Crying! How absurd. You really should go and dance with your
guest----"

"Not until you tell me why you cried."

"But I haven't been crying."

"Oh, yes you have. I----"

"Supper is served in the library, Mrs. Courtlandt," interrupted Judson
of the velvet tread. As they left the room in the wake of their guests
the butler detained Stephen Courtlandt and said something in a low tone.

"Has Mr. Greyson gone up?" he asked hurriedly and when Judson answered
in the affirmative he turned to Jerry:

"I must go to Uncle Nick. I may not be down again."

"Is he----" but he was mounting the stairs two steps at a time before
Jerry had finished the sentence. With a feeling of foreboding she
entered the library. The guests were grouped around the fire with Judson
and a maid serving supper. She stopped in the shadow of the doorway.
Up-stairs the spirit of an old, weary man was passing, here--the room
and its furnishings made a rich background for the shimmering satin of
dainty gowns; the firelight played mad pranks with jewels at white
throats and on pink fingers, with the glittering buckles on silver
slippers; bright eyes were laughing into eyes that pleaded or compelled,
young voices were teasing, challenging.

Jerry's breath came unevenly. She had cried last night. It was a rare
indulgence for her. She could not tell now why. How could Steve have
known? She hoped that none of these chattering boys and girls suspected
it. She looked about the room. How she loved it! It stood for all the
background she had acquired by her marriage. She loved the old
seventeenth century Courtlandt, she held long, one-sided conversations
with him when she was sure that she was quite alone. He had given her to
understand that a _marriage de convenance_ quite met with his approval,
that in his day girls married to please their parents. She wasn't so
sure of the judgment of Steve's mother. Her eyes, so like her son's,
looked down with a grave question in their depths when she appealed to
her.

The group around the fire made room as they welcomed her with gay
reproof for tardiness. Felice Denbigh inquired impatiently for Steve.
Jerry made his apologies and explained his absence. The voices of the
guests became hushed. One by one they left, almost tiptoeing through the
hall. Peggy snuggled up to her sister when the two were alone.

"Has--has Uncle N-Nick--gone?" she whispered. Then as Jerry shook her
head, "If--if he does will you come and sleep with me?"

"I will, dear, but there is nothing to frighten you. Why should there be
in the passing of an old man's spirit?"

"But--but he was such a cross old man. What has made you so brave,
Jerry? Once you would have dreaded it as much as I--being here at a time
like this, I mean."

"Perhaps it is the hours I have spent in the hospital with the sick and
wounded soldiers. I have seen so much and felt so much, that death has
seemed beautiful, not terrible. Go to bed, child. I'll come in later and
stay with you."

She went down the hall. "But he was such a cross old man!" Peggy's
obituary of Nicholas Fairfax echoed persistently in her mind. What a
tragic thing to have said about one. She couldn't blame her sister. Old
Nick had been consistently disagreeable to her and Peg was too young to
take into consideration his age and illness. She lingered for a moment
before the door of the room in which Nicholas Fairfax lay. Could she
help? The nurse came out suddenly and almost collided with her.

"Goodness, Mrs. Courtlandt, you gave me a start! I was just coming for
you. Mr. Stephen sent me. His uncle wants you."

With her breath coming hurriedly, her heart pounding, Jerry followed
the woman. What could Old Nick want? To continue his insults? She passed
into the inner room. The window was open to let in the clear winter air.
The old man was raised high on his pillows. Steve held one of the
gnarled hands. Courtlandt was behind him. Greyson, as rigid and
immovable as one of the mountains of his own country, stood at the foot
of the bed. Doctor Rand, his face grave and deeply lined, motioned the
girl to take her place opposite Steve, then he and the nurse and Greyson
moved back to the outer room. As Jerry bent over him, Nicholas Fairfax
looked up into her eyes. They met his tenderly. The tenseness of his
expression relaxed, he fumbled for something under his pillow. Jerry
reached for him and drew out an open prayer-book. His shaking finger
pointed to the page; it was the marriage service.

"Read that--read that--aloud," he commanded in a voice which still held
a ring of power.

Slipping to her knees beside the bed the girl read. Haltingly, huskily
at first, but as she lost thought of self in the beauty and meaning of
the words her voice cleared.

"'Wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded husband, to live together
after God's ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony and forsaking all
others keep thee only to him as long as ye both shall live?'"

The gnarled, claw-like hand fell on the book. The Old man leaned
forward. His voice, weaker now, interrupted:

"'And forsaking all others keep thee only to him as long as ye
both--shall live,' did you mean it, girl, when you made that vow?"

Jerry's face was colorless. There was a broken exclamation from Steve.
She laid her hand gently over the icy hand on the book. Her young ardent
eyes met his dim ones steadily.

"I did, Uncle Nick."

He dropped back with a faint sigh.

"Then it will be all right--Steve. I was afraid--that I might have--but
I meant it for the best--it will come right Doc Rand says--things will
come right--marvelously--unbelievably--right!"

His voice trailed off into silence. The lines of pain and weakness in
his face disappeared as though a soothing hand had been laid upon them.
The curtains at the open window stirred for a moment and then were
still.




CHAPTER VI


Caleb Lawson paused in the reading of the will of Nicholas Fairfax to
peer over his half-moon spectacles. His pursed lips made a red, bulbous
blot on his pale face as he regarded the three persons in the library at
the Manor. Outside an ice-tipped vine struck with a ghostly tap! tap!
tap! against the diamond-paned window. Geraldine sat beside Peter
Courtlandt. Stephen stood with his back to the fireplace. The sunlight
which streamed in at the window touched the girl's hair and transformed
it into a crown of bronze with curious red and gold lights. The lawyer's
gaze lingered on her for a moment before he cleared his throat with a
force which sent a premonitory thrill down the spines of his hearers and
resumed the reading of the bulky document he held.

"'Lastly, all the rest, residue and remainder of the property both real
and personal of which I may be possessed or to which I may be entitled
at my decease, I give and devise to my nephew Stephen Courtlandt, to him
and his heirs forever, on condition, however, that he take possession
and management of my ranch in the State of Wyoming not later than three
months after my decease and live there one year with his wife Geraldine
Glamorgan Courtlandt. And on the further condition that his said wife,
during said year, shall refuse to receive income from the fund her
father has provided for her, and shall dispose of all securities and
money she may have. If my nephew Stephen Courtlandt or his wife,
Geraldine Glamorgan Courtlandt, fail to fulfil any one of these
conditions said property shall be divided as follows:'"

The lawyer laid down his papers and looked over the edge of his
spectacles at Stephen Courtlandt.

"There is no need of my reading that long list of beneficiaries until I
know your decision, Stephen. If your father will take me to his study
we'll leave you and Mrs. Courtlandt to talk it over."

"You may proceed with the reading. I refuse to accede to the
conditions," Steve announced with grim lips.

"Steve," his father protested, "think it over before you say that." He
looked imploringly at the girl beside him but her eyes were fixed on the
interlacing fingers which lay passively on the lap of her black gown.
"Talk with him, Jerry. Don't let him fling this away recklessly," he
pleaded. "Come, Lawson, we'll leave the young people to thresh this
thing out."

He followed the lawyer from the room and closed the door. Stephen poked
viciously at the coals in the fireplace till a fountain of sparks
sputtered up the chimney. Then he backed up against the mantel and with
a face from which every drop of color had drained, looked down at the
bent head of the girl he had married. He laughed shortly.

"Old Nick had a genius for messing things up, hadn't he? When I heard
the first clause of that will, which related to me, even when the
condition followed that I was to live on the ranch for a year--nothing
but a mad sense of freedom thrilled me. I would be my own man once more,
rich enough to pay back to your father every cursed cent he had loaned
on the Courtlandt property and then have a living income. I could----"

His eyes burned, the veins stood out on his forehead. Jerry realized for
the first time the sacrifice of pride and happiness he had made for his
family name. She finished the sentence for him:

"You could have your marriage annulled."

He looked at her steadily.

"That did not enter into my plan. Why, oh why, did Uncle Nick have to
wreck the whole thing by involving you? I wouldn't take you if you would
go. You married me for what I could give you socially. A lot I could
give you out there in the wilderness."

"Nevertheless, I shall go with you."

"What! Why, by your own confession you would starve for people in a
wilderness."

"Do you want this fortune?"

"More than I ever wanted anything--except one--in my life."

Jerry whitened at his amendment.

"I suppose that one thing was Felice. In spite of that I shall go with
you. I shall fulfil my part of the conditions and after you have
fulfilled yours then--then we'll consider."

He strode over to her, seized her hands and pulled her to her feet
beside him. His face was white, his eyes searching.

"Peg said that you would walk over burning ploughshares if you thought
duty called; she's right. But--but I shan't let you make the sacrifice."

"You can't help yourself if I am determined to go. You don't want to
start a scandal in high society, do you, by refusing to take me? I don't
care to go any more than you care to have me," bitterly, "but--but I
promised. Uncle Nick knew what he was doing when he made me read that
marriage service, 'and forsaking all others'--I shall be doing that all
right. But it was not a fair-weather vow. If your interests take you to
the ranch I shall go with you."

"What will your father say?"

She shrank away from him but he still had her hands in his and drew her
back. Her lips curved in a disdainful smile.

"I think--I think we shall have what the miners used to call a
'helofarow.'"

"He will never consent to your going."

"What difference will that make? How can he prevent it? He cannot take
back what he has given your father. That is all that need concern you,"
with exasperated frankness. He flushed darkly at her tone, dropped her
hands, and touched a bell. When the butler opened the door he commanded
curtly, "Judson, ask Mr. Lawson and my father to come here."

When the two men appeared in answer to the summons Glamorgan was with
them. His face was deeply flushed, his little green eyes snapped with
anger.

"Look here, Jerry, what's this I hear about your going off on a ranch?
It can't be done, I tell you. Steve doesn't need that--that old
mischief-maker's money," his voice broke queerly, but he steadied it and
went on, "Why doesn't he stay here and spend mine?"

"You are quite right, Mr. Glamorgan. I have been trying to impress your
daughter with the fact that she need not take her marriage vows
literally. I am content to eat the crumbs which fall from my rich
father-in-law's table."

"Steve!" Peter Courtlandt protested brokenly.

Jerry faced her father. Her black gown brought out the pallor of her
face and throat. The only color about her was the vivid curves of her
lips; even her usually brown eyes were black.

"I'm sorry if it hurts you, Dad, but I shall go with Steve. He is
entitled to his uncle's fortune. What is a year out of our lives?
Nothing. I--married to please you. Now I shall interpret my marriage
vows to please myself." She was most lovely as she defied him. His green
eyes contracted to emerald sparks. The veins stood out on his forehead
like cords. Jerry remembered that it was the first time one of his
children had gone contrary to his command.

"What will you do for money? That infernal will strips you of
everything. Ask Steve for it? I can see you. Come, Jerry, give this
thing up. Settle down here at the Manor and be happy."

For the first time since she had come into the lives of the Courtlandts
Jerry looked like her father. There was the same determination about her
eyes, about her lips.

"Be happy! Does smooth going necessarily mean happiness? Does jogging
along on the path beaten by our social set mean happiness? Do you know
how I feel, Dad? It is as though Steve and I had come up against an
enormous sign-post bearing the startling information, ROAD CLOSED:
DETOUR. The detour may be hard going, detours usually are, but they also
offer more thrills and adventures than the broad highway. I'm willing to
take a sporting chance if--if Steve wants me----"

Young Courtlandt laid his hands lightly on her shoulders and looked down
at her with inscrutable eyes.

"I do want you, but remember, if I win out, half of what I have will be
settled unreservedly on you. You will have earned it." She looked up at
him for a moment.

"Then when you have rewarded me for being a good girl and have paid back
Father, you will consider yourself in a position to snap your fingers at
the Glamorgans?" He looked down at her with disconcerting steadiness as
he answered cryptically:

"I shall consider myself in a position to dictate terms to one member of
the family. Mr. Lawson, I accept the conditions of my uncle's will."




CHAPTER VII


With each stop of the cross-continent train rain-coated men, with
occasionally a woman, entered the car and passed down the corridor to
disappear into the compartments. Porters wearing that air of authority
and responsibility for which one might justly look in a premier or
secretary of state, came and went; conductors punched tickets and
answered questions more or less amiably; the wheels rattled and roared
and ground ceaselessly; outside the rain descended with a persistence
worthy a better cause.

From the window of her compartment Geraldine Courtlandt looked out upon
a drenched world. There was nothing to see save a dense white sheet ten
feet beyond the window. In an hour she and Steve would reach their
destination, the first stop on the detour, she thought with a sudden
mist before her eyes. She hoped that the storm was not an omen of what
lay before them. She shook herself mentally. "Don't be silly and
superstitious," she admonished that Jerry Courtlandt who persisted in
having a queer lumpy feeling in the region of her throat whenever she
thought of the curious twist the apparently broad, straight road of her
marriage had taken.

Her father had maintained his attitude of angry aloofness. He had not
come to the station to see her off, she had waited on the platform until
the train started, hoping that he would relent at the last moment. He
had sent a curt typewritten note to the effect that if she and Steve
regained their common sense and returned to the Manor before the end of
the year he would double the income he had allowed them. There were a
dozen glorious American beauties in her compartment when she entered it.
The roses had set the atmosphere tingling with life and color and love.
Jerry laughed happily and kissed each one of them. How like her father
it was to write the note with one hand and send flowers with the other.

What difference would it make if her income were doubled if she were
disloyal to the promise she made when she married Steve, the girl
thought, as chin on her hand she gazed unseeingly out at the rain. "An
easy conscience is more to be desired than great riches," she
paraphrased to herself as she thought of the weeks when she had been
engaged to Greyson. Her heart still smarted with contrition as she
remembered how ashamed she had been that she could make so little
response to the love he lavished upon her. "Never again!" she said
aloud. "I've made two mistakes, Bruce and Steve. From now on I'll do
what I know to be right even if I hurt someone else and--and hate doing
it. But--but just what shall I do for money?" she questioned with
puckered brows.

She opened her beaded bag and poured the contents into her lap. "How are
the mighty fallen!" she quoted with a laugh as she looked down upon the
collection displayed. A handkerchief, one gold pencil, the key to her
safe-deposit box, the membership card of her club, a book of postage
stamps. Nothing else. She had carried out the terms of the will in
letter and spirit. After her bills had been paid she had transferred her
bank balance to her father and had dropped her remaining cash into the
box of a Salvation Army lassie as she entered the station to take the
west-bound train. The woman in the red-banded pokebonnet, standing on a
board to keep her stout boots from the dampness, had looked at the bills
crushed into her box, then after the donor incredulously. Such lavish
generosity was rare in her experience.

Jerry frowningly regarded the objects in her lap. Not one cent of money.
"Being marooned on a desert island has nothing on being marooned on a
ranch without a penny," she mused under her breath. She hastily stuffed
her belongings back into her bag as she heard an approaching whistle.
It was Steve. The queer merry-go-round of fortune had accomplished one
thing, it had restored Steve's spirits. Since leaving New York he had
been a different person from the morose, touchy individual she had known
since her engagement to him. He had been companionable, sympathetic in a
fraternal sort of way which had made her wish fervently that Fate had
given her a brother instead of a husband.

"Won't you come in?" she asked as Courtlandt stopped at the open door,
then as he entered, "Is it time to get on my coat?"

"Not for half an hour." He seated himself opposite her. There was a new
expression in his eyes which set the girl's heart to beating
uncomfortably. She couldn't define it, she couldn't meet it long enough
to define it.

"Jerry," there was an "'tention company" note in his voice which brought
her chin up defiantly, "I suppose--if you complied with the terms of
Uncle Nick's will you must be rather down and out financially--yes?" She
succumbed to the lure of his smile and the laughter in his eyes.

"Thought telepathy," she responded gayly. "I was taking account of stock
when you appeared. I have in this bag, one pencil, one handkerchief, one
perfectly good club-membership card--good, that is, until January
first--and a book of two-cent stamps. Those stamps won't imperil our
hopes of the inheritance, will they?" she asked with exaggerated
anxiety. "Caleb Lawson held me up before I boarded the train. I had to
sign a paper and show him my empty purse to prove that I was really the
Beggar-maid, bare-pursed instead of barefooted, following my King
Cophetua out into the cold, cold world."

"Your simile is faulty. As I remember it the Beggar-maid loved the
King."

"Also the King loved the Beggar-maid. You're right, the similarity
ceases with my lack of funds."

"I shall open an account for you in the bank at Slippy Bend. Until
then----" his hand went to his pocket. The girl's face whitened.

"Don't offer me money, Steve," she commanded tensely.

"I'm not offering money. I am giving you what belongs to you. Aren't you
earning what Uncle Nick left as well as I?"

"Weren't you earning your share of Father's money when you married me?"

"That's different."

"Why? You refused to take my money. I refuse to take yours."

"You will take it."

Jerry leaned forward, her face as colorless as his.

"Take that 'Hands up!' expression out of your eyes, Steve. I shall not
take a cent of your money. You will find that a Glamorgan has as much
pride as a Courtlandt if she hasn't several generations of aristocrats
behind her." Her angry eyes blazed as he retorted laughingly:

"You forget. You're not a Glamorgan now."

She shrugged lightly.

"More's the pity."

"Do you mean that?" Consternation banished the smile from his lips. He
caught her hands in his. "The day Uncle Nick arrived I heard you
say----"

"Nex' stop Slippy Bend, Miss. Porter for your bags," interrupted a
Jamaican voice with a Chicago accent. Jerry's face flushed with relief
as the black head with its gleaming eyes and teeth bobbed in at the
door. She pointed to the bags. As the man went out with them she turned
to Courtlandt with an embarrassed laugh.

"You've won this time, Steve. I had forgotten the porter. You'll have to
tip him and the maid for me. However, as this is really a deferred
wedding-trip the expenses naturally fall to the groom, don't they?" with
reckless daring.

He looked at her until her laughing eyes fell before the glow of his.

"You've said it--if this can be called a wedding-trip--but take it from
me, sometime, Mrs. Courtlandt, I'll show you what a real honeymoon can
be. Porter, here's another bag."

He followed the black man into the corridor. Jerry settled her smart
toque and pinned on her veil before the mirror, but she couldn't see her
own face, only Steve's with that curious I'm-biding-my-time look in his
eyes. What had he meant about a honeymoon? Did he mean that he and
Felice--no, _no_, Steve was not that kind. She looked about the
compartment to make sure that she had left nothing. Three roses still
glowing with beauty remained of the dozen. She pinned them to the front
of her coat. She would take so much of her father into her new life with
her.

The wooden shanty which served as a shelter for telegraph, freight and
passengers at Slippy Bend was as depressing as rain, flapping shingles
and a skewed roof could make it. The road which struggled up a slope to
hide between two shabby buildings was a river of mud. A knock-kneed man
with a string of slat-ribbed calico horses and cayuses following him,
waded downward through the middle of it. Every few steps he would stop
to yank a howling, red-eyed bulldog from a hole which had betrayed him.
Jerry valiantly blinked back the tears as she watched him. She had never
seen anything quite as sordid and depressing as her surroundings. The
only note of civilization in the dreary scene was the large, curtained
touring car by the platform. As she looked at it, two legs, which had
acquired Queen Anne curves from many hours spent in the saddle, wriggled
from under the curtains followed by a large body. A Belgian police dog,
tawny, noble, aloof, followed the man. Courtlandt who had been busy with
the luggage turned with a boyish laugh and held out his hand.

"It sure is great to be back, Pete. Down, Goober, down, boy!" to the dog
who, after an uncertain second, had leaped to lick his face. He kept one
hand on the animal's head as he turned to the girl beside him. "Jerry,
this is Pete Gerrish, who taught me all I know about ranching. He is
Uncle Nick's right-hand man. Pete, this is Mrs. Courtlandt."

"He's got me wrong, ma'am. I _was_ the old gentleman's right-hand man,
but Ranlett's in the saddle now. I'm sure pleased to meet you an' I hope
you'll be downright happy with us."

"Thank you, Mr. Gerrish." Jerry felt the tears absurdly near as she
looked up at him. He was regarding her with unqualified approval. His
large face was cross-currented with fine lines and smiles; his Stetson
came close to ears which looked as though the Almighty had designed them
as hat-rests and had made a surprisingly good job of it. He carried the
marks of his calling in the devil-may-care poise of his body, in his
clothing, in his rollicking Irish eyes.

"I'll give Baldy Jennings a hand with the trunks to get 'em out of the
rain till the boys get here for them. They're teamin' in. How the devil
did yer expect to get all them things out to the ranch over these spring
roads, Steve--I would say Chief? The boys has decided that even if they
did teach the new owner most of what he knows about ranchin', it won't
do to be familiar-like no more. So we've decided to call him chief,
ma'am," Gerrish inserted the bit of information to Jerry in the midst of
his dissertation on the condition of the roads. "I went up to the hubs
gettin' here with no load. By cripes, I don't know what'll happen goin'
back."

Jerry was tempted to echo that "By cripes!" later, when the big car
laboring through what seemed rivers of mud, foundered in a hole. She
unfastened the curtain and looked out. Goober on the running-board,
plastered with mud, looked like nothing so much as a model sketchily
done in clay as he peered down inquiringly. Gerrish expressed himself in
language which the girl was sure was being painfully expurgated because
of her. The wheels groaned and choked as they churned up fountains of
mud. As she watched the wheel under her Jerry could think of nothing
but a gigantic egg-beater gone mad from the futility of its efforts. The
back of Gerrish's neck had taken on a dangerous, apoplectic color
generated, doubtless, by restraint from the fullest self-expression.

"Would it help if I got out?" she ventured in the lull while the engine
rested.

"Haw! I guess if yer did we'd have to haul you out in a hurry or send a
rescue-party through to China," Gerrish discouraged while Courtlandt
commanded:

"Stay where you are! I'll take the wheel, Pete. We have nothing to put
under the back wheels; it would do no good if we had. The engine will
have to do the trick."

He threw on the switch. The engine started. The spinning wheels hitched
forward, he reversed, hitched forward, reversed, hitched forward till
Jerry experienced all of the discomforts, and none of the stimulation,
of being aboard ship on a high and choppy sea. Courtlandt grimly pursued
his tactics till with a roar from the motor and a lurch which sent
Jerry's teeth into her lower lip, the car, looking like an uncanny
prehistoric animal which had been wallowing in a mud bath, dragged
itself from its hole, skidded with hair-raising irresponsibility, came
back to the road and struggled on. The rain stopped. The sky showed
shapeless spots of light where the clouds were thinning. Vapors floated
lightly above the fields.

It was twilight, a crimson and gold twilight, when Courtlandt turned
into the avenue of cottonwoods which led to the ranch-house of the
Double O. The air was fragrant with fresh washed earth and the spicy
breath which the storm had beaten from the pines. From somewhere a
meadow-lark trilled an ecstatic greeting and as though frightened at its
temerity as suddenly subsided. The naming color in the west might have
been the glow from a blazing forest, but it was only the sun flinging
its good-night over sky and fields and mountains in the whole-hearted
Western way. Against the red light squatted the shadowy shape of the
ranch-house.

When the car stopped Goober sprang to the porch and stood as if awaiting
orders. In the background hovered two Chinese servants, a man and a
woman. Their slant-eyes in their moon faces were ludicrously alike. The
woman in her gay silks and embroideries looked like a painting on
rice-paper.

Pete and Hopi Soy carried in the bags. At a nod from Courtlandt the
woman followed. Steve held the door wide. With a curious choked feeling
Jerry entered the house. Then her emotion found vent in a little cry of
delight. After the grayness and mud of the ride out the great
living-room glowed like a jewel. The color stole through her senses like
an elixir and rested and refreshed her. Her eyes shone, her lips curved
in a faint smile as she looked about her. The servants had disappeared.
She and Steve were alone.

Logs blazed in the great stone fireplace. Safely out of scorching
distance a white cat dozed in front of it, her fluffy coat rosy in the
firelight, her wide eyes like blinking topaz as she regarded the
newcomers. Gorgeous serapes from old Mexico, Hopi saddle-blankets,
heavily beaded garments of the Blackfeet, Apache bows and quivers full
of arrows, Navaho blankets, skins of mountain lions and lynx there were,
each one placed in artistic relation to its neighbor. A profusion of
books and magazines, a baby-grand piano, a phonograph _de luxe_, softly
shaded lamps, added their note of civilization to the array of savage
trophies and over the mantel----

"Why, Steve! There's Mother!" whispered Jerry softly.

For a silent moment the man and girl standing side by side looked up at
the tender, laughing face of the woman in riding costume. She didn't
seem like a thing of paint and canvass, she was real, vital, alive and
welcoming. Jerry was the first to stir. She colored with confusion.

"Steve, I--I beg your pardon! I--I shouldn't have called her--mother.
But I was so--so surprised. It seemed for a moment as if she held out
welcoming arms to me." She turned away. Courtlandt gripped her shoulders
with a force which hurt.

"She is your mother--I----" he released her abruptly and threw open a
door. "These are your rooms. Mine are opposite. You see we have but one
story in the ranch-house. Your bags are in your room. Ming Soy will come
to help you when you ring." He put his two hands on her shoulders again.
"I'm glad that you wore my roses."

"Your roses! Why I thought--I thought----" Her voice was drenched with
disappointment. Steve's face was a mask, only his eyes seemed alive as
he removed his hands and asked crisply:

"That they came from Greyson?"

"No, Steve, no! How could you think such a thing? I thought that Dad had
relented and--and had sent the roses to----" she winked her lashes
furiously but not before Steve had seen the diamond-like drops that
beaded them. His voice was tender as he comforted:

"Your father will come round, Jerry. Just believe with old Doc Rand that
things have a way of coming marvelously, unbelievably right. You are not
sorry that you came, are you?"

"I'll say I'm not!" She had essayed an imitation of his voice and words
but the emotion which had threatened her all day surged in her heart and
betrayed her. Steve caught her hands in his.

"Don't look like that, little girl. You're going to love the life here
and the ranch and--and--and Goober," he added with a short laugh as the
dog bounded into the room.




CHAPTER VIII


Jerry Courtlandt sent her horse up the slope and came out on a bluff
above the Double O. As the girl sat motionless looking off over the
plain, an artist would have labeled the picture she made, "A Study in
Browns," before he slipped it into his mental portfolio. Her mount,
Patches, was a deep mahogany in color, her riding boots were but a shade
lighter than his satin skin, her breeches and long coat were of khaki,
her blouse was fawn color, her eyes were deeply, darkly bronze.
Rebellious tendrils of lustrous brown hair escaped from under the broad
brim of the campaign hat she wore, one of Steve's army hats with its
gold and black cord. He had insisted upon her using it. The hats she had
brought to the ranch had been urban affairs, not designed to shade her
eyes from the glare of white roads. As she had had no money with which
to buy another she had taken it.

Jerry pulled it off as she took a deep breath of the glorious air
asparkle with bubbles of life. She loved the spot. Every day that she
rode she stopped to look down upon the valley. Far away among the
foot-hills a silver stream cleft rocky bluffs, then coiled and foamed
its way until it broadened and flashed in gleaming waterfalls. In places
where it boiled and frothed rustic bridges had been thrown across.
Toward the east lay the sturdily built stock corrals, storehouses spick
and span with whitewash, towering silos. Toward the west were fenced-off
alfalfa fields and beyond them a mosaic of varicolored pasture-lands,
dotted with grazing herds, stretched out to the foot-hills.

Beyond the foot-hills loomed mountains darkly green with pine and spruce
to the timberline, above which reared sombre, forbidding rock until
against the ragged edge of gold-lined clouds, white peaks flamed crimson
in the slanting sun. Toward the north she could see the gap in the
mountains through which the railroad cut. The gap was known as the
Devil's Hold-up because of the natural facilities it had offered--and
still offered for that matter,--to the class whose pleasing pastime it
had been to maintain their divine right in the other man's property at
the point of a gun.

Almost beneath her, approached by a broad, well-graded road, lay the
ranch-house. Telephone wires from all directions rounded up the
activities of the Double O at the office near by. The house was a
rambling structure of rudely squared timbers set in fieldstone and
cement. Its one story was built around a court on which many doors
opened and which was gayly brocaded with shrubs and plants in blossom
this late June day.

Where was Steve, Jerry wondered, as her eyes lingered on the office
building. She saw him less and less as the days passed, as more and more
he assumed the responsibilities of the Double O. He was off before she
was up in the morning riding the range or in the dairies or barns until
night. She had hardly believed her eyes when on the evening after her
arrival, she had seen Steve and Tommy Benson, his secretary, come into
the living-room in dinner coats. Courtlandt had answered her unspoken
question with the explanation that it had been Nicholas Fairfax's
unvarying rule to shed ranch problems at night, and he had found that
getting into the dress of the city helped. A man just naturally would
curb an impulse to toddle down to the corral if he were in dinner
clothes. The two didn't seem to go together.

Steve had appointed Tommy Benson her squire, he himself had so little
time to give her. A laugh curved Jerry's lips as she thought of Tommy.
He was a slight youth with a face of one of Raphael's cherubs grown up
and a book for his inseparable companion. His almost yellow hair was
short and wavy, his eyes were a brilliant blue, his skin was as nearly
pink and white as human skin can be after it has been ranch-seasoned,
his lips seemed made for laughter. He and Steve had been officers in
the same company and when they returned from overseas the two had gone
to the ranch to recuperate. Tommy had remained there to please his
mother. He was in the throes of a virulent attack of stage fever and
Mrs. Benson had begged him to wait a few years before he decided upon
acting as his career. She had assured him that if after reflection he
still felt that it was the profession for him she would attend his
premiere without a qualm. So he had stayed at the Double O. There was
plenty of money back of him and he had grown to love the ranch life,
apparently.

Tommy was taking the responsibility of training the lady of the ranch
seriously, that is as seriously as a boy could who was forever
expressing his emotions and convictions in the words of the immortals,
Jerry thought with a smile. She had ridden since she was a little girl
but Tommy was making her proficient in some hair-raising stunts. Steve
didn't know of those but he had ordained that she was to learn to saddle
Patches, that she must be able to fasten and unfasten gates securely
while mounted, that she was to rope and shoot from her horse's back.

Her days were full but filled with her own pleasures. She did nothing
for others, she thought ruefully as she gazed down upon the smoke rising
from the cook-house chimney. Her only link with the outside world was
Sandy, the carrier, whose appearance sent her imagination winging into
the past whenever she saw him. The queer little postman wore a tall gray
hat which, Tommy Benson insisted, was a left-over from the wardrobe of
Gentleman Rick whose zeal as a promoter of pleasure in Slippy Bend in
the nineties had lured men through miles of wilderness. Jerry often sat
on the wall beside the mail-box to await his coming. He always had news
and a quaint bit of philosophy if he hadn't letters. Letters! There
weren't many for her. She had had hosts of friends in school and college
but she heard from them seldom now. Her conscience administered a
vicious pinch. Yes, it was quite all her fault, she answered it. The
girls apparently had adored her, but she had been unable to accept their
devotion with single-minded pleasure. Always in the back of her mind had
skulked the ghost of that first home near the coal-fields. Would they
have cared for her could they have seen that? After her marriage events
had moved too rapidly for her to pick up the scattered lines of her
correspondence. However, she no longer had that excuse, her days now
were long and uneventful. She would write to every friend she had. It
would be like sending out a fleet of ships. How eagerly she would await
the return cargoes.

She broke into her own good resolutions with a laugh. To send out
letters one must have stamps. She had used the last one she possessed
yesterday and to get more she must have money. "Money!" Jerry laughed
again as she repeated the word aloud. Conditions were reversed now as to
money, she thought as she stared unseeingly off at the mountain tops
which pricked the crimsoning sky. Steve had the income from his uncle's
large property as long as he remained on the ranch. It would not be his
unreservedly until a year from the day they had arrived at the Double O.
She had persistently refused to accept money from him. If she wrote to
the girls she would need a regiment of postage stamps. If she could
earn----

Her eyes flashed earthward from the mountains as she heard the click of
a hoof against rock and the creak of saddle leather. A horse and rider
topped the slope. It was Courtlandt on his favorite mount, Blue Devil, a
horse all spirit, shining blue-black satin. He was a regal creature from
his flowing mane to his silken fetlock. He nosed Patches who showed an
undignified haste to snuggle up to him in return.

"Did you think you had lost me, Steve?" Jerry asked gayly as she noted
the seriousness of his blue eyes and the crease in his forehead which
his broad-brimmed Stetson was not drawn low enough to hide. How
unnecessarily good looking he was in his riding clothes, she thought. He
wore a black tie with his khaki shirt, his heavy riding breeches were
tucked into the tops of high boots which laced up the front and had
curious sloping heels. He had removed one of his riding gloves and the
dark stone of his ring, which bore the seal of the Courtlandts, made the
browned hand seem white in contrast. He gave the impression of being
absolute master of his horse and of any situation which might arise.
Jerry's heart unaccountably skipped a beat as he answered her question.

"No, I saw you from the road. You looked like one of Dallin's bronzes.
Where is Tommy?" with quick displeasure.

"Don't glower. I sent him back. I don't want him always at my heels. I
love to come up here alone and, figuratively speaking, look down upon my
blessings."

"Was that what you were doing when I came up? Your expression belied
you. Instead of looking beatific, you looked worried."

She laughed up at him with warm friendliness as she bent forward and
confided in a theatrical whisper:

"You are right. I was figuring finances. I have just----" The color
flew to her face as she thought of what he might infer. She stumbled on
quite conscious that she was making matters worse. "I'm about at the end
of my stamp book and--and--I've developed a sudden fervor for letter
writing and--and----" she broke off her breathless explanation as he
laid his finely-shaped hand on her saddle-bow. Even back in the Manor
days his hands had fascinated her.

"I'm glad that you've brought up the subject of finances, Jerry. The
money question between you and me has got to be cleared up, and cleared
up now. You've had your way long enough. Don't be foolish any longer,
little girl, I----"

"I shall not take your money, Steve. Would you take mine?" then as his
eyes darkened stormily, "Oh, truly, I didn't mean to rouse sleeping
dogs--but--but I won't take it. I do nothing for you--if I even had
anything to do about the house but Ming and Hopi Soy run the household
motor noiselessly, perfectly, with every cylinder hitting. If there was
anything I could do----"

"There is something you can do."

Jerry's heart flew to her throat. What did he mean? He looked grim and
determined.

"W-what is it?" she asked faintly. She put on her hat, tightened her
reins unconsciously.

Courtlandt laughed. The sternness left his face. There was an
expression in his eyes which she couldn't translate as he teased:

"Don't run, Jerry. You don't trust me over much, do you? To return to
finances, if you want to help you can do so tremendously by taking over
the accounts and my correspondence. Tommy's had that job but I need him
outside. Ranlett's leaving. You'll soon get the hang of the accounting
and it won't take much of your time."

"But if it took all I'd love to do it, Steve. Shall I have a desk in the
office?" she asked eagerly.

"If you agree to accept a salary."

"But I don't want to be paid for helping."

He turned his horse's head toward the slope.

"That settles it. I shall send to the agency to-morrow for a private
secretary." As she did not answer he looked at her with a smile which
lighted eyes and lips. "Now will you be good?"

She regarded him with oblique scrutiny. With an adorable imitation of
Pete Gerrish she drawled:

"You're sure puttin' it straight, Chief. You win. Now shall we mosey
'long home?" With a touch of spurs she wheeled Patches and headed him
down the slope.

"Why is Ranlett leaving?" she asked as their horses trotted side by side
along the hard white ranch road. Courtlandt's face reddened darkly.

"Because I thought it time to determine the status of the alien on
Double O ranch. Ranlett had a couple of men in the outfit who have not
taken out first naturalization papers, even, who had been pointing out
to my boys deficiencies of the government. They're flares set here to
ignite any chaff of discontent which may be blowing about."

"But you're not against freedom of speech, Steve?"

"You bet I am against the inflammatory brand on the tongue of an alien.
What is he in this country but a guest? If a man came to stay in my home
and began a systematic undermining of the ideas and ideals on which that
home was built, what do you think I'd do to him?"

"I'll say you'd sure put him out, Chief," with Gerrish's drawl and a
little rush of laughter.

"I'll say I would. So quick he'd wonder what struck him. Why should the
government put up with their vicious patter? It's bad enough when an
honest-to-God citizen breaks loose and turns red, but for a man who is
here by courtesy--well, as I remarked before, there is no place for him
on the Double O ranch. Aliens will keep their jobs here only so long as
they conform to my ideas of fitness."

"You're right, Steve. I have never thought of agitators in that light
but they are a sort of human slow-match timed to fire a mine of
discontent, aren't they? And half the time the mine doesn't know what
it is blowing-up about. How do the men feel about Ranlett's defection?"

"I haven't asked them. What's the infernal row?" he demanded as they
drew rein at the gate of the court. Jerry looked at him in surprise. His
tone was that of a man whose nerves were taut to snapping point. She
slid from her horse and dropped the reins. Patches loped quietly but
determinedly in the direction of the corral and supper. Blue Devil, with
a reproachful glance at the deserter, followed daintily in the steps of
his master as Courtlandt and the girl entered the garden. The court was
a riot of plants and shrubs. The air was sweet with the fragrance of
roses just coming into bloom and rent by agitated yelps and a hoarse,
croaking voice.

When Jerry and Steve reached storm centre they saw a combination of
scarlet, blue and green, swaying precariously on the top of a shutter.
It was Jose's parrot, Benito, flinging to the breeze the most
vituperative epithets a rich and racy vocabulary could suggest. Below
him Goober sat on his haunches. Between barks his tongue dripped, his
mouth hung open as though in riotous laughter. His tawny eyes flashed
ruby light. Tommy Benson, his finger between the pages of a book, his
hair rampant, his blue eyes sparkling with mirth, egged on the two as
he quoted from his favorite "Ancient Mariner":

    "'The wedding guest sat on a stone,
      He could not choose but hear;
    And thus spake on that ancient man,
      The bright-eyed mariner.'"

His eloquence incited the bird to renewed effort to express his
sentiments. Jerry clapped her hands over her ears and dashed into the
house. Steve whistled. The dog bounded in his direction, his quarry
forgotten in the joy of seeing his master. Courtlandt seized him by the
collar.

"What do you mean, you sinner?" he demanded sternly. Goober looked as
though he were about to offer an explanation when the gaudy parrot, who
had been rocking back and forth on the shutter, croaked:

"Lick him, Bo! Lick him!"

Tommy dropped to the ground and rolled with laughter. Jose came hurrying
out of the house. He swept off his hat with a wide bow. His face had the
look of a much-shriveled mummy, his solitary tooth waggled precariously
as he talked.

"_Que hay! Senor!_ One teeng I tell you. It ees that wild devil of a dog
that makes my leetle Benito to curse. _Madre de Dios_, but he ees
one--one----"

"You've said it, Jose," encouraged Benson as he sat up and wiped his
eyes. He took his knees in an affectionate embrace. "He sure is one
little curser, that Benito of yours. Want me to help get him down?"

"No--no, Senor Tommee. He come to me." He reached up and after a few
protesting squawks the parti-colored bird settled on the Mexican's
shoulder. As Jose left the court with him, the parrot shivered, flapped
his wings, winked at Tommy and croaked hoarsely:

"What's all the shootin'?"

Tommy gave vent to a whoop of appreciation before he turned to
Courtlandt, who was regarding the ranch-house door unseeingly. He gave
him a resounding whack on the shoulder as he ranted:

    "'How is't with you
    That you do bend your eye on vacancy?'"

"Quit your histrionics, Tommy. Has Pete Gerrish been here for me?"

"Nope. Nothing doing." Benson stroked Blue Devil's satiny nose and
rested his face against it as he asked in a low tone, "Any news of those
stray calves?"

Courtlandt's brows met in a quick frown.

"No, but of course we'll find them. It's absurd to think a man can get
away with rustling in this enlightened twentieth century, that we've
got to revert to shooting and----"

"That's what the majority of the world claimed in 1914," interrupted
Benson dryly.

"Don't be a blamed pessimist, Tommy. I'm going to take you off the books
and use you outside."

"Oh boy!" he voiced the twentieth century equivalent to the nineteenth
century "Great Scott!" in delighted approval. "If you do that and
Ranlett has been crooked, he hasn't a prayer. I'm the original Sherlock
Holmes. Watch me get him! Pete's boys have all they can do now without
turning detectives. You'd think that Gerrish had just been put in charge
of a new outfit. He's on location every minute, reestimating the number
of head each pasture should carry, weighing up the stock, sifting out
the undesirables. Take it from me, old dear, he knows every calf by
name, what it's worth now and what it will bring one year from now. He
claims that Ranlett has been underselling. I'll ride the fences
to-morrow. If you say the word I'll take Jerry along and we'll have a
corking time."

"You and Jerry usually have a corking time together, don't you?" Benson
showed his teeth in a flashing smile.

"I'll say we do. I don't like to talk about myself, but----"

Courtlandt laughed.

"You don't care for yourself one little bit, do you, Tommy? By all means
take Jerry if she cares to go. Beat it down to the corral with Blue
Devil, will you? That is if you dare ride him," Steve amended with a
laugh.

Tommy mounted with the agility of a monkey, wheeled his horse and
declaimed theatrically:

    "I dare do all that may become a man
    Who dares do more is none!"




CHAPTER IX

     "Work is the grandest cure for all the maladies and miseries
     that ever beset mankind.--CARLYLE."


Jerry nodded approvingly at the quotation above her desk in the office.
It had been hung there in Old Nick's day and was quite as pertinent in
her case as it might have been in his. To be sure, their maladies
differed. His couldn't by the remotest possibility have been lack of
money, she thought with a laugh.

Steve had installed her at her desk two weeks ago and had then forgotten
her, presumably. Tommy Benson was giving her instructions as to her
duties, but even his attentions were episodic. Ranlett had departed
swearing vengeance in the good old nineteenth century style and Steve
and Gerrish were out from morning till night taking account of stock and
checking up. Tommy was riding range and being general utility man.
Neither he nor Steve knew how closely she had remained at her desk. She
must make good and she must accomplish it without taking too much of
Tommy's time. As Steve had insisted upon paying her a month's salary in
advance she had surreptitiously sent for a correspondence course on
bookkeeping. She was making Sandy's life miserable because the material,
which she expected would make her efficient in twenty-four hours, had
not arrived.

Arms on the back of her swivel-chair, one knee in the seat she twisted
slowly about. The room inspired the same sense of breathless interest it
had the first time she entered it. Two walls were encased in glass.
Behind the glass hung a collection of riding equipment and firearms.
Some of the pieces dated back to the epoch-making journey of the
pathfinders, Lewis and Clark, some to the first white settlers in the
region west of the Mississippi. There were saddles rich in silver
filigree which had come from the southwest of the cattle country; there
were saddles with short round skirts, open stirrups, narrow and rimmed
with iron; some had borders and emblems stamped on the leather, some had
dark stains. There were chaps, fringed and unfringed, in infinite
variety. There were coiled ropes of rawhide and of well worn grass;
there were guns and knives and tomahawks, there was a stained and
tattered Stars and Stripes.

"You fairly ooze atmosphere." Jerry mused aloud, her dreamy brown eyes
on the saddles. "If you could speak what couldn't you tell of romance
and comedy and tragedy. Herds, bad men, _voyageurs_, rustlers, settlers,
prairie-schooners and Indians, you must have seen them all." Her voice
had dropped to a whisper. Its tenseness roused her from what was fast
becoming a vermilion orgy of imagination. She swung her chair round and
dropped into it with a laugh and the reflection, "Pete Gerrish says that
when a person talks to himself he's sure in for adventure."

She picked up a typewritten letter and regarded it with vainglorious
elation. Not so bad! There was a spiral effect at the end of one
sentence but on the whole it was a creditable affair for a person who
had never used a typewriter till the week before and who was relying on
the hunt-and-punch method for progress. Her already flushed cheeks took
on a deeper tinge as she looked at the filing cases. Would she ever
acquire a feeling of even bowing acquaintance with them, she wondered;
they were most awe-inspiring.

The sun lay warmly on the fields outside, a gay little breeze spiced
with pine danced in at the open window, stirred the curls at the nape of
the girl's neck and whisked out again. Jerry looked out longingly, shook
her head. "Remember, you're a daughter of toil now," she adjured the
vagabond impulse which urged her to be up and away on her horse. She
resolutely turned her back on the tempting out-of-doors and picked up
her letter.

"'Gentlemen,'" she read aloud, "'We are shipping'--now why should I have
typed that slipping--'thirty head of Guernseys on the----'" A shadow
from the open door fell on her paper. Absorbed in her corrections, she
spoke without looking up from her desk:

"You are wanted at the Lower Field, Pete. The Chief just 'phoned that
more calves are missing. That----" as no colorful ejaculation followed
her announcement, Gerrish swore with fascinating facility when he was
deeply moved, she looked up in surprise. The smile which the thought of
Pete had brought stiffened on her lips. She sprang to her feet and
pushed back her chair. A man leaned against the door, a giant of a man
fully six feet two. In a flash she sized him up. He was of different
caliber from the "boys" of the outfit. No one of them would have stood
with his hat on in her presence. The stranger's Mexican sombrero, pushed
far back on his head, revealed rough red hair; his eyes were a hard
blue; his nose suggested the beak of a hawk; his mouth was his best
feature, it looked as though it might have been tender before the
insidious processes of discouragement and recklessness got in their
work. One temple gave the impression of having been knocked in and from
the dent to the corner of his lips ran an angry, wrinkled scar. It
contributed a curiously saturnine expression to what in youth might have
been a pleasing face. From feet to waist his clothing was reminiscent of
the army; from the belt up it might have belonged to a rider, even to
the gay purple and crimson bandana at his neck. The stranger smiled
boldly as his eyes met the girl's. Jerry's heart did a handspring and
righted. A fleeting cloud of apprehension dimmed the brilliance of her
eyes.

"If you are looking for a job you'll have to come back after five," she
volunteered with her best in-charge-of-the-office manner. "The manager
is off on the range." She could have cheerfully bitten out her tongue as
she noted the smile with which the man received the information.

"I'm no cow-puncher," he answered disdainfully. "I'm not hunting a job
here. I'm looking for the railroad. I took the ranch road by mistake,
but, now that I am here----" He straightened his great shoulders, pulled
his soft hat jauntily over one ear with his big hairy hand, and took a
step into the room. "Well, you're too pretty a girl to be left alone,
_sabe_? I always had a taste for stenogs."

Jerry's heart did another turn. She hated the man's eyes. Hers flashed
to the desk. There was no use trying to telephone, he might stop her;
besides, the ranch was an affair of magnificent distances; it would take
time for anyone she called to reach the office. Ming and Hopi would be
of as much assistance as two Chinese dolls. She must depend upon herself
to get rid of the creature. She swiftly computed the relative splashing
values of the ink-well and the pot of paste. The ink had it. Her hand
crept along the desk.

"Don't come any nearer. If you're wise you'll go at once."

"I get you. Here's-your-hat-what's-your-hurry stuff, yes? But I think
I'll stay. I've just come up from the border. You're the handsomest
white girl I've seen in months. Come on, be friends. I like that
gilt-edged effect in your hair and eyes. Take it from me----"

Jerry was white to the lips. She lifted the ink-well.

"You'd better go or I----"

"What's your business here?" a crisp voice interrupted from the door.

"Steve!"

With the startled whisper the stiffening departed from Jerry's knees.
She sank back in her chair. The stranger wheeled with military precision
then, in a startled voice laden with pride and affection, cried:

"_Comment ca va, mon Lieutenant!_"

"Carl! Oh boy, Carl, where did you come from?"

The undertone in Courtlandt's voice brought the tears stinging to
Jerry's eyes. Steve gripped the stranger's hand as though he would never
let it go. The two patted one another's shoulders with their free hands
and beamed with suspiciously bright eyes.

"What good wind blew you here, Beechy?" Steve demanded. "Jerry, this is
Carl Beechy, who was my top sergeant in France. That scar he wears was
intended for me, and--and--he took it. Carl, this is my--this is Mrs.
Courtlandt."

"Mrs. Courtlandt! Your wife, Lieutenant? _C'est drole, ca!_
I--I--thought----" The girl had never seen such contrition as clouded
Beechy's eyes as they met hers. There was not a trace of recklessness in
them now; they were frankly pleading. She hesitated for a moment, then
smiled.

"I'm glad that you came to the Double O, Sergeant Beechy. It was
fortunate that you arrived when you did, Steve. Mr. Beechy was just
going. You--you might not have recognized him had you met him on the
road." Her lips twitched traitorously as her glance flashed to the
ink-well on the desk.

Beechy's eyes sent her a wireless of passionate gratitude and
admiration. Then he turned to Courtlandt.

"You are the last person I expected to see here, Lieutenant."

"Weren't you looking for me, Carl? I told you----"

"I know, you told me to look you up, but--two years is a long time and
I've found men forget. I went to Mexico after I left hospital. I've been
drifting till now----" He broke off the sentence sharply. His face had
the curious look which tanned skin has when the blood has been drawn
away from it. Jerry could have sworn that there was fright in his eyes.
Did Steve see what she saw? Evidently not, for he exclaimed:

"When you didn't turn up I thought you'd re-enlisted."

"Me! Nothing doing, Lieutenant. The next time my country calls it'll
have to call so loud that I'll hear it at the other end of the world.
No, me and the U.S.A. is through."

"That's fool talk, Beechy. I've heard it before. If you were needed you
and every man who talks like you would be the first to answer the call
to the colors. I know you. You jumped in at the first sign of trouble.
You'd do it again. Well, there's a job for you right here."

The man's lips stiffened. A look of dog-like devotion flooded his eyes.

"That's just like you, but--but I can't take it, Lieutenant. I've signed
up for--for something else, and you know--there's--there's honor among
thieves," with a strained attempt at levity which was belied by his
eyes. He looked at Jerry. "I never knew what a man could be till I met
the Lieutenant, Mrs. Courtlandt. I'd always thought that a rich guy was
bound to be soft, but he's tested steel. I've got to beat it this
minute. I--I was telling your wife when I came in, Lieutenant, that I
was looking for the railroad and took the ranch road by mistake."

"But you can't go, Beechy. Good Lord, man, you've got to eat somewhere,
at least stop for chow. Come along to the bunk-house. I want the boys to
know you." He turned to Jerry. "Did you get hold of Pete?"

"No, I couldn't reach him. I--I thought that it was he when Mr. Beechy
appeared."

"Let it go then." He looked at her keenly. "Have you been out of the
office this week? I thought not," as she colored faintly. "Don't do any
more work to-day--please. Let's go, Carl."

Beechy turned to Jerry. He twisted his hat awkwardly in his big hands.

"Good-bye, Mrs. Courtlandt. I hope that you'll--you'll----"

Jerry held out her hand with a smile.

"I shall always remember what you did for your lieutenant, Sergeant
Beechy. Good luck; if you don't like the railroad come back to us." He
gripped the hand she extended. Jerry gave his a warning pressure as she
looked up and saw Steve regarding them intently. With a squeeze which
made her see fifty-seven varieties of stars and their collateral
branches, Beechy released her hand.

"Let's go, Lieutenant."

Jerry looked after the two as they strode away broad shoulder almost
touching broad shoulder. Had they been girls they would have their arms
around each other's waists, she was sure. What strange friendships the
war had welded. Braggadocio had slipped from Beechy like a garment the
instant he recognized Courtlandt's voice. He had assumed an entirely
different personality. Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. The soldier was a much
safer citizen than the man of peace, she told herself with a reminiscent
shiver.

She picked up the papers on her desk, then dropped them. Steve had been
emphatic about her going out. Suddenly she felt that she couldn't endure
four walls a moment longer. She must be in the open. She pulled down the
top of her desk and dashed through the flowering court to the house.
She called Ming Soy to bring lunch to her room. She telephoned the
corral to send up Patches.

In her cool, silvery gray linen riding clothes Jerry drew an ecstatic
breath as she gave Patches his head. He pirouetted for a moment then
settled to a steady canter. On all sides spread fields and pastures in
luxuriant greenness. Beyond them mountains swept to hazy, purple
heights. In one of the fields a rider turned and looked at her as she
passed. She leaned forward in her saddle, opened a gate and closed it;
she hoped the man had noticed with what ease it had been accomplished.
Great blooded Shorthorns turned ruminative eyes upon her; she had seen
women with that same expression when at a society function another
entered as to whose social status they were in doubt. Off in a pen a
perfect specimen of pure-blooded Ayreshire bull pawed the ground and
sent showers of earth spraying on his satiny back. Where the trail left
the flower-dotted meadow a spring bubbled from under a mushroom-shaped
rock. Jerry dismounted and knelt for a drink, more for the feel of the
sparkling water against her lips than because of thirst.

Where should she go, she wondered as she mounted Patches. She had an
inspiration. She would make a neighborly call on the wife of the
ex-service man at Bear Creek ranch. Jerry had never seen her, but Sandy
the Carrier, who was the artery for news in the county, had told her
that she was lonely.

The water was high in the stream. The banks were pink with wild roses
and among their denseness the meadow-larks kept up an invisible chorus.
Jerry forced Patches to a coquettish prance across the rustic bridge. It
was there that the apex of the B C triangle of land forced its way
between the Double O and the X Y Z. She knew the place; Tommy had shown
her the dividing fences. From where the rushing water narrowed and
whitened over a rocky bed an aged pack-trail staggered into a cuplike
ravine. Rejuvenated by the sunshine in the hollow it straightened and
sprinted straight as an arrow for the foot-hills. The sun shone warmly
on lustrous fields. The air was spicy with the breath of pines. A rabbit
hopped from cover and skurried back again.

As Patches, with ears pricked, silky neck preened, stepped daintily
along the trail the girl sang happily:

    "'My road calls me, lures me
    West, east, south and north;

    "'Most roads lead me homeward,
    But my road leads men forth--
    To add more miles to the tal----'"

The last word was broken in the middle as they rounded a clump of
cottonwoods and came suddenly upon a horseman with a small bunch of
sheep. He jerked his hat low over his eyes as the girl hailed him.

"Good-afternoon! I am looking for Bear Creek ranch. Will you direct me?"

Without answering in words the man pointed toward a clutter of buildings
in a slight depression. Back of them a scantily timbered hill, in places
rich with grass dotted with grazing sheep, gave the impression of an
animated Corot. Before Jerry could speak the stranger had galloped off.

"A responsive party," she soliloquized. "Was he afraid of me, I wonder?
He registered guilt, all right. If he is the owner of B C ranch Uncle
Nick and Bruce Greyson were buncoed. That man is hiding something."

A woman flung open the cabin door as Jerry rode up. She was young and
pretty. Her clear, full eyes reminded the girl of Ox-eyed Juno. She was
dressed in a bungalow apron of hectic design but scrupulous neatness. A
wistful smile trembled on her lips as she asked:

"Have--have you lost your way?"

Jerry Courtlandt shook her head and slipped from the saddle. The gold in
her brown eyes predominated as she fastened Patches to a post and
approached the door.

"Lost? No, I came to call. I am Geraldine Courtlandt, your neighbor at
the Double O."

The woman's face colored a delicate shell pink. Her expression was
radiance tempered by incredulity.

"How--how nice of you, Mrs. Courtlandt, how human. I--I am Mrs. Jim
Carey. Nell Carey. Won't you come in?"

Jerry liked her dignity. She showed no consciousness of the difference
between her three-room shack and the luxurious ranch-house from which
the visitor had come. "Thoroughbred," thought the girl as she preceded
her hostess into a small but immaculately clean room. With a happy laugh
tinged with excitement, Nell Carey waved her to a seat.

"Do make yourself comfortable. If you'll excuse me for a moment I'll
bring some tea. The kettle has just boiled. You won't vanish while I'm
gone, will you? Promise. I have a horrible fear that your being here may
be nothing but an iridescent dream."

Jerry's heart smarted with self-reproach. What heathen people can be and
yet be neighbors, she thought. Here was this girl, and she was a girl in
spite of that betraying heap of white sewing on the machine in the
corner, craving companionship, and she spent hours and hours riding
about the country with never a thought of being neighborly. She looked
about the room. What part of it wasn't taken up by a roll-top desk was
filled by a table fairly groaning under its load of magazines. Three
chairs and the machine completed the furnishings; that is, unless a worn
violin case in a corner came under that head. She hastily cleared an end
of the table as Nell Carey entered with a tea-tray.

"Thank you. You are the first woman who has been inside my house since I
came here a year ago," she announced breathlessly. Her eyes glowed, her
cheeks were flushed. "Of course Jim has flivvered me to town, but--but I
haven't met anyone whom I cared to have here. Cream?"

The loneliness of it, Jerry thought, as she watched her hostess pour
thick cream into the fragrant tea with hands that trembled. Then she
remembered that she had been at the Double O three months, and that
except for Ming Soy and Mrs. Simms, the foreman's wife at Upper Farm,
she had not seen a woman. Curious that she had not missed them. Doc Rand
had been as neighborly as his busy life permitted; Bruce Greyson had
been away from the X Y Z since her arrival. With Steve and Tommy she had
been absolutely content. Why? Her thoughts bolted on a tour of
investigation; she dragged them back to answer a question from her
hostess:

"Not another cookie, thank you. I've been a gourmand, but they are
delicious."

"Jim likes them."

"I wonder if I saw your husband by the stream?"

"No. Jim left yesterday on a hunt for help. He'll only be away four days
but it seems years to look forward to. You must have met our
range-rider, Bill Small. He dropped from the sky, figuratively speaking,
ten months ago. I call him the Man of Mystery. He never talks about
himself, never mentions his people, never has letters, but he's a shark
for work and he plays beautifully. That is his." She nodded toward the
violin case in the corner. "The boys from the Double O and the X Y Z hit
the trail for the Bear Creek every chance they can get to hear him
play."

The sun topped the cap of a mountain like a mammoth red button as Jerry
leaned from the saddle and held out her hand.

"You will come and see me, won't you?"

Nell Carey's lips quivered betrayingly.

"Of course, if you really want me. But it will be after----" Jerry gave
the hand she held an impulsive squeeze.

"I'll come here again before that. Aren't you madly happy? I must hurry
or they'll have the entire outfit hunting for me. Good-bye!"

As she reached the pack-trail she turned and waved and the woman
standing alone by her door waved back. What an atom she seemed in the
wide spaces about her. As she rode Jerry's mind was full of the home she
had left behind. What courage Nell Carey had had to follow her man into
a wilderness like that. And now a little child was coming. She thought
of her father, of his anger because his daughter had insisted upon
accompanying the man she had married to the Double O ranch with all its
luxury. Men were curious creatures.

The sun had disappeared, fluffy islands of cloud, pink, lemon and
violet, floated above the tops of the mountains, the sky was fast
purpling, there was a suspicion of razor-edge in the crystal-clear air
as Jerry unlatched the gate by the road and closed it after her. She
gave Patches his head and raced toward the ranch-house. In the distance
she saw two horsemen galloping toward her. Steve and Pete Gerrish! She
glanced guiltily at her wrist watch. She was late. Did Steve care enough
to be anxious? The thought gave a tingling sense of excitement. As she
came near the two riders she touched Patches with her spurs, then pulled
him up suddenly. He stop-slid on his haunches, a bit of circus-variety
of horsemanship which Tommy had taught her. She pulled off her
broad-brimmed hat with a sweep reminiscent of Jose at his best and
called gayly:

"_Que hay, senors! Buenos dias!_ La senora has been on a wild devil of a
ride, yes?"

She laughed up into Steve's white face. He moistened his lips as though
they were stiff. She had worried him then. Pete Gerrish's eyes regarded
her with frank admiration.

"Can she ride, Chief? I want to know! Can she ride! Steve is scared,
ma'am. There's a lot of strangers snooping round and he----"

"Where have you been, Jerry?" Courtlandt had recovered his voice.

"Don't beat me, Steve!" Patches was loping along between Blue Devil and
Gerrish's big sorrel. Encouraged by the foreman's quickly suppressed
"Haw-haw" at her pleasantry, she went on, "I've been to Bear Creek ranch
for tea."

"To the B C alone?"

"Do I look as though I carried concealed escorts?" with tormenting
charm. "I had an acute attack of conscience. It occurred to me that I
had been something of a heathen to ignore little Mrs. Carey, though I
didn't know that she was little when I went. I only knew what Sandy had
told me, that there was a woman at Bear Creek hungering for someone of
her own sex to talk to."

"You are to be commended more for your conscience than your common
sense," retorted Courtlandt dryly. "Don't do it again." They reached the
ranch-house steps as he spoke. He slipped to the ground and before Jerry
could protest had lifted her from the saddle. She felt the muscles of
his arms twitch in the second he held her. Before she could speak he had
gathered up the bridles of the horses and started for the corral. The
brown depths of the girl's eyes were troubled as she looked after him.
What menaced the good-comradeship which their arrival at the Double O
had established between herself and Steve? Now he reminded her of a wary
foe thrusting and retreating on the slightest pretext. What could she
have done to change him so? She looked up at Gerrish, a puzzled question
in her eyes. He shook his head as his met them.

"We mustn't mind if the Chief does act a little locoed, ma'am. He's
walkin' right into trouble. It's Ranlett the Skunk, saving your
presence. Somebody's cayuse got rid of some hobbles when the fence was
cut where the Double O and the X Y Z join, and a bunch of calves has
disappeared. There ain't hide nor hair of 'em to be seen. But, shucks,
don't tell the Chief I told you. I'll mosey 'long now."

Jerry looked after him with narrowed eyes. "Where the Double O and the X
Y Z join," Pete had said. That was where Bear Creek ranch came in! Like
a movie close-up came a vision of the solitary horseman she had hailed,
the man who had dropped from the air, who never talked about himself or
his people, who never received letters, the Man of Mystery.




CHAPTER X


Courtlandt backed his horse suddenly into the shadow of the quaking
aspens which were fluttering their gold in the sunshine. He adjusted the
field-glasses which he carried slung from his saddle-fork and looked
intently at the bluff which reared from the western bank of the stream.
He was right. There were two men there. The day being Sunday, ordinarily
he would have thought nothing of it, but disturbing things were
happening every day now and Instinct and Caution were riding close to
his saddle-bow. He had the sense of living on the thin crust of a
simmering volcano. He couldn't distinguish their faces, but he would be
willing to swear that the men belonged to the Double O outfit.

Above the roar of the stream as it made its way through the canyon formed
by the bluff he heard another sound. There was no mistaking it. Steve
had heard the curious whirr of a plane too often not to recognize it
now. It was not uncommon to have one pass over the Double O, but for
some unaccountable reason Courtlandt linked this one to those two
skulking figures at the foot of the bluff. He heard its approach for
some minutes before it came in sight above the hill which he knew was
back of the B C ranch.

"That's queer! Looks as though it came out of Buzzard's Hollow," he
muttered as he watched the approaching aeroplane. He focussed his
glasses on the men again. They were waving something. Something white.
As though in answer to the signal the huge mechanical bird went
wing-over-wings and slid gracefully into a barrel-roll, then sailed off
into the distance. When Courtlandt's eyes returned from their journey
with the plane the two men had disappeared.

Motionless, deep in thought, Steve sat his horse. What baneful force was
at work on the ranch? Calves had vanished as completely as though
conjured into thin air, curiously enough, though they were the least
valuable in the herd. The man who had taken them couldn't know much
about cattle. Some of the boys appeared surly and disgruntled. The stand
he had taken on the alien question couldn't account for it all. The
trouble had started a few weeks after his arrival at the ranch. He had
expected that Ranlett would resent having a much younger man than
himself in possession, but he had looked for no such series of
complications as had presented themselves.

The situation had one compensating side. He had been too occupied with
Double O affairs to have much time for Jerry. He said something under
his breath. Blue Devil nosed round at him inquiringly. Courtlandt looked
at the sun and touched the horse lightly with his heels. It was time to
meet her now. To-day they were resuming a custom that Nicholas Fairfax
had inaugurated, which was to have luncheon beside the stream on Sunday.
Old Nick, young Nick he was then, had announced that the ceremony would
stand for church, that he would worship God through nature. He and Doc
Rand had provided the fish which were cooked on forked sticks over a
fire on the bank of the stream. The work-logged physician's weekly
holiday came to be respected in Slippy Bend. Men, women and children
endured to the limit before they would disturb the doctor's fishing
trip.

Opposite the rendezvous Courtlandt drew rein and looked across the
stream. Benson, on his knees on the pebbly beach, was struggling with a
fire. He was in khaki riding clothes. A small book protruded from his
hip pocket. Steve smiled. To think of Tommy without a book would be like
thinking of an elephant without his trunk. Beyond the firemaker a spring
bubbled out of the bank in a clear, pure stream, above him the land
sloped smoothly, greenly up to a clump of cottonwoods. In the middle of
the clearing knelt Jerry. A lovely Jerry in riding coat and breeches,
hatless, with millions of golden motes glinting in her hair where the
sunlight rested. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes glowed with
friendliness as she talked eagerly with the man who knelt on the other
side of the cloth spread between them.

Bruce Greyson! Steve's jaws set ominously. The owner of the X Y Z was
passing something to the girl and it seemed to the prejudiced eyes of
the looker-on that their fingers touched and lingered. The two had
evidently been preparing the feast, for with a satisfied nod Jerry sank
back on her heels. She made a megaphone of her hands and called:

"Coo-e-e! Coo-e-e-e!"

From around a bend of the river came an answering shout. In spite of the
unaccountable fury which the sight of Greyson in just that spot had
roused in Courtlandt, he laughed as his eyes rested on the figure which
came splashing down the middle of the stream. It was Doc Rand attired in
his usual ministerial black frock coat, with the unusual addition of hip
boots of rubber. The effect of the combination would have tickled the
risibilities of a stoic, if a stoic has the luck to be blessed with
risibilities. A fish basket was slung from one shoulder, his white hair
bushed beneath the brim of his Stetson; the sun on his glasses added an
uncanny touch. His broad black tie, which he usually wore in a Byronic
bow, streamed back over his shoulders. He waved and shouted as
Courtlandt rode his horse down the bank and forded the stream. When
Steve reached the improvised table Greyson and Jerry sat at discreet
distances from it.

"When did you get back, Bruce?" he asked as with cordial friendliness
the owner of the X Y Z sprang to his feet and gripped his extended hand.
In that instant Courtlandt saw that the whiteness of the hair about the
older man's temples was more noticeable, that it added to his fine,
upright air of distinction.

"Yesterday. Brought my sister Paula, Vance, her husband, and a friend of
hers along. I want you all to dine with us to-morrow night. We'll show
these blown-in-the-glass New Yorkers that we are not entirely devoid of
the social graces even if we are not in the Dude-ranch neighborhood. Got
half-way to the Double O before I remembered that it was the old custom
to lunch here Sundays. You'll come, won't you?"

"Come!" Jerry's eyes were starry with excitement. "Yes, thank--oh, what
beauties!" as Doc Rand puffed up the bank dangling a string of trout for
her inspection.

"Take 'em, Steve. You and the Benson boy can cook 'em. Isn't that an
equitable division of labor, Mrs. Jerry? I caught them." He dropped to
the ground beside her and pulled off his hat. "These--these fishing
trips aren't what they were. I miss Nick," he confided as he mopped his
hot brow. Jerry's eyes were tender with sympathy. They wandered dreamily
to the illimitable spaces above the purple mountains as she asked
softly:

"Where is he, Doctor Rand? Death is such a strange thing. I--I try to
keep a brave front to Peggy but--but I don't care to think about it."

"Why should you at your age? All your thought should be on making your
life count for something. It is different with me. I find it profoundly
interesting to wonder and imagine what follows this world. For instance,
look at the question in this way. At this moment I can send my mind to
the Manor; in spirit I'm pacing the terrace with Sir Peter. I can see
the boats chugging up and down the river, can smell the queer fragrance
which the sun is baking out of the box hedge in the garden, can hear the
birds twittering among the vines. If I can do all that now, what will it
be when the spirit is not hampered by the body? It will be like flying,
won't it? That reminds me! Oh, Steve!"

Courtlandt poked his head above the bank beneath which he and Benson
were cooking the fish. A tiny spiral of smoke rose and with it the aroma
of sizzling bacon and frying trout.

"Did you see the plane that went over?"

"Yes, Doc."

"I wonder where it came from. It wasn't one of the government flyers. I
know their marks. Did you see the pilot do those stunts above the bluff?
Curious that he should pull off that cut-up stuff there, infernally
risky I call it. He couldn't have been doing it for my benefit. What do
you make of it, Steve?"

"Probably some crazy, reckless flier getting ready for a contest,"
Courtlandt observed, and disappeared below the bank.

Doc Hand and Greyson left directly after luncheon. Benson packed the
basket which some of the boys would take back to the ranch before he
rode off to Upper Farm on an errand for Courtlandt. Steve helped Jerry
mount and swung into the saddle. The girl tightened her rein then held
up an arresting finger.

"Listen! The Kreutzer Sonata," she whispered.

From somewhere up-stream came the notes of a violin. There was a rare
brightness, an aerial quality to the music that most artists take too
gravely. The variations of the slow movements gave the sense of a
glorified voice. Jerry drew a long, tremulous breath as the last note
died away.

"That must have been the Man of Mystery," she confided in a low voice,
as though fearful even at that distance of disturbing the musician. "I
don't care if he did drop from the sky, if he never receives letters, he
plays like--like an angel--if angels can play," with a laugh. Courtlandt
looked up-stream as though mystified.

"I knew a man who played that sonata, just like that, but--but it can't
possibly be he. Who did you say you thought it was?"

"Bill Small, the range-rider at the B C. Mrs. Carey told me about him
when I called there yesterday. She said that the boys of the Double O
and X Y Z outfits trailed over there every chance they could get to hear
him play. That reminds me," her beautiful face glowed with enthusiasm,
"I--I wonder if--if the boys of our outfit would care to have me play
and sing for them? I should so love to do it."

"Care! I know they would. Pete says that they line up outside the court
wall after dinner on the chance of hearing you sing."

"Really--really, Steve? I'd rather have that tribute than--than my name
in electric lights on the Great White Way. Ask them up this afternoon.
We'll have an honest-to-goodness musicale with Signora Geraldina
Courtlandta as head-liner. Hurry!" She touched her horse with her heels.
"It's a pity that Bruce Greyson didn't wait. He----"

"Your proposition was to sing for the Double O outfit. Greyson doesn't
come in on that."

"Ogre! I can hear my bones scrunch between those strong white teeth of
yours when you look at me like that."

"Then remember that you're married."

"Are you sure that the ceremony wasn't a dream?" with a provocative
ripple of laughter. "Do you know, Steve, somehow I never can think of
you as Benedick the married man. You--you are such a good-looking boy."
She was the incarnation of girlish diablerie indulging an irresistible
desire to torment. The color burned to Courtlandt's temples. He caught
the bridle and drew Patches close. His eyes compelled Jerry's.

"Do you know what happens to a person who rocks a boat, Mrs.
Courtlandt?" he demanded autocratically.

"Do you know what happens when a person gets unbearably dictatorial, Mr.
Courtlandt? This!" She slapped her horse smartly on the hip. Patches
threw up his head and broke from Steve's hold. The girl looked over her
shoulder. Lips and eyes challenged in unison as she sang mischievously:

    "'My road calls me, lures me
    West, east, south and north;
    Most roads lead me homewards,
    But my road leads----'"

Patches stepped in a gopher hole, which, feat brought the song to an
abrupt termination.

When she met him in the late afternoon on the terrace which overlooked
the court Jerry was as coolly friendly as though the little
passage-at-arms, which had left Steve's pulses hammering, had never
taken place. The piano had been moved out and the outfit, in its Sunday
best, occupied the rustic seats and benches and overflowed to the turf
paths. The girl felt choky as the men rose to greet her. They looked so
big and fine, so like eager, wistful boys. She smiled at them through a
mist.

"I'll sing what I think you'll like, then you must ask for anything you
want. Please smoke," she added, as she realized what it was that had
made them seem so unfamiliar. They looked from her to Steve. He nodded.
With delighted grins they dropped back to their places and proceeded
with the business of rolling cigarettes.

Courtlandt and Benson took their places on the edge of the terrace.
Overhead the sky spread like a flawless turquoise; cameoed against the
blue were snow-tipped mountains. The court was gay and fragrant with
blossoms. In the dark shadow of the open doorway Ming and Hopi Soy made
a patch of Oriental brilliance. Jerry in her filmy pink frock looked not
unlike a flower herself, against the rosewood background of the raised
piano top, Courtlandt thought. He looked from her to the rapt,
weather-browned faces of his men. His gaze came back and rested in
fascinated interest on her foot in its pink slipper on the pedal of the
instrument.

Jerry sang as she had never sung before, ballads, rollicking melodies.
The men drew nearer. When she stopped a swarthy Italian stepped as near
the piano as the terrace would permit. His black eyes seemed too big for
his thin face, his plastered-down hair suggested infinite labor with
brush and pomade.

"What is it, Tony?" Jerry asked with a smile.

"Hava you the one grand opera song?" he asked shyly. Jerry was
nonplussed. She had not thought of opera for these men. As she turned
over her music she asked:

"You like opera, Tony?"

"Vera much, Signora. At home we taka the leetle seester to grand opera
even if we have not mucha to eat. We feel that eef the leetle seester
hear great music, she be fine lady, not common, not bad--never." His
earnest voice broke as he realized that he was being stared at in
amazement by the outfit. He mumbled an apology and hurried back to his
seat. With a smile at Tony, Jerry placed Tales of Hoffmann on the rack.
She sang the Barcarole. As the exquisite, langorous notes floated out
over the court the shadows lengthened, the sun dropped behind the
mountains. There was no applause when she finished, no one was smoking,
the men sat motionless. Where were their thoughts, the girl wondered.
With a glance at the crimsoning foot-hills she struck a few chords and
sang softly:

    "'Day is dying in the west;
    Heaven is touching earth with rest;
    Wait and worship while the night
    Sets her evening lamps alight
    Thro' all the sky.'"

With the second verse the men took up the song. To most of them it
brought a vivid picture of mother and home and the village church at
sunset. They sang until with the last line mountains and foot-hills took
up the words and sent them pealing into space.

That closed the musicale. One by one the men came forward and thanked
Jerry as she stood between Courtlandt and Benson. As the last one left
the court Tommy turned to the girl.

"I'll say that was a wonderful thing to do, Mrs. Steve." With a quick
change of tone he spoke to Courtlandt. "Marks and Schoeffleur weren't
here; did you miss them?"

"Would you expect them to be here?"

"I should have expected it until to-day. Ever since Marks blew in here
from nowhere two months ago I've been wondering where the dickens I'd
seen him. When that airplane passed over to-day memory flipped into
place the missing piece of the puzzle. He was a mechanician at the
hangar where I tried to develop wings in 1917."

"You are sure of that, Tommy?"

"Sure as shootin'. What's up? Why that 'Fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell the
blood of an Englishman' scowl, old dear?"

"Nothing, except that your information confirms me in my suspicion that
Marks and Schoeffleur signaled to that pilot when he went over."

    "'And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew
    That one small head could carry all he knew,'"

contributed Benson in mock amazement.

Up from the corral floated a chorus of men's voices singing:

    "'Wait and worship while the night
    Sets her evening lamps alight
    Thro' all the sky.'"




CHAPTER XI


Courtlandt's fine brow puckered in a thoughtful crease as he waited in
the living-room of the Double O for Jerry the next evening. Benson, on
the arm of a chair, bent forward to get the light from the lamp on the
book he had picked up. Through the open windows came the scent of pine
and dewy fields, the murmur of the distant stream as it thundered and
rippled its never-ending triumphal march to the sea, the occasional soft
lowing of cattle.

Jerry had been tremendously pleased and excited over Greyson's
invitation to dine, Steve thought as he lighted a cigarette and blew the
smoke toward Goober. The dog was regarding him with an air of watchful
waiting. Was he to be invited to jump on the running-board of the
automobile which stood in the drive outside the front door? Courtlandt
remembered as clearly as though it had been yesterday what she had
answered the first night they met when he had asked her if she liked the
city. He could see her eyes now with their golden lights, hear her
musical voice:

"I love it. It is so big, so beautiful, so faulty. I--I like people; I
should starve for companionship, not food, in a wilderness."

And this was the girl who had been on the Double O ranch for over three
months and not a person outside it, except Doc Rand and some neighboring
ranchmen, had she seen before she made the trip to the B C. He had been
too busy to think of it before and--and he had intentionally kept out of
her way. He had thought that he had his course set to avoid danger, but
he had come mighty near going to pieces on an uncharted rock yesterday.
He tossed away his cigarette as Jerry's door opened. He took an
involuntary step forward, then thrust his hands into his pockets. Lord,
how impellingly beautiful she was! Her gold-color gown, all film where
it wasn't glistening paillettes, was as simple as the most expensive
modiste in New York could make it. Her lovely arms were bare. The ranch
life had deepened the coloring of her face and throat till her shoulders
looked startlingly white in contrast. Steve noted, with a surge of
primitive triumph, that the only jewels she wore were a string of softly
gleaming pearls and her wedding ring. Sir Peter had given her the pearls
when she was married. They had been worn by his wife and before that by
his mother. Steve heard Tommy give vent to a sound that was a cross
between a swallow and a gasp before he struck an attitude and
paraphrased theatrically:

    "But soft! What light through yonder doorway breaks?
    It is the east and Juliet is the sun."

Jerry laughed and blew him a kiss. Her teeth rivaled in beauty the
pearls below them. Ming Soy, more rice-papery than ever in the
resplendent embroideries she wore in the evening, followed the girl from
her room with a shimmering wrap over her arm.

"Were you casting aspersions on the brilliancy of my costume, Mr. Tommy
Benson? This is the first invitation I have received to dine since I
left the metropolis and I acknowledge I have splurged. Do--do you like
me, Steve?" Her attitude was demure but her smile was adorably
mischievous. Courtlandt's eyes flamed, then smoldered.

"You'll do," with an edge of sarcasm. He hated himself as he saw her
smile fade. Oh, why the dickens couldn't they have met--Tommy swept into
the breach:

"Oh boy, hear the lady, Steve. 'Will I do?' just as though she didn't
know that

    "'Alack there lies more peril in thine eyes
    Than twenty of their swords.'"

"_Gracias, senor!_ Alas, if it weren't for you, Tommy, I should go down
to my grave unwept, unhonored and unsung. Now that you have fully
absorbed the glory of my raiment hold my cloak for me, that's a dear.
Now this maline over my hair. I don't wish to appear before the guests
from the effete East like a Meg Merriles."

"You couldn't," encouraged Benson fervently. "You'd----"

"Let's go!" cut in Courtlandt sharply, and led the way to the
automobile. He sent the leaping, barking dog back with a curt command
which caused Goober to regard him in drooping, tawny-eyed reproach. He
took the wheel of the roadster. He kept his eyes resolutely on the road
as he drove though he felt as though a magnet of the nth power was
drawing his eyes to the girl who snuggled down between him and Benson.
At the door of the X Y Z ranch-house Greyson met them.

"It's mighty good of you all to come." His voice was nervous, hurried.

"Good of us! Bruce, you're a public benefactor. You're a candidate for a
specially designed, specially gilded halo. Do you realize what a risk
you have taken introducing me to your city friends? It is so long since
I have dined in state that I am quite capable of committing some
horrible social blunder."

Steve's anger flared. Why did she have to admit to Greyson that she had
been bored? It was still flickering as he entered the big living-room, a
room lined with books from floor to ceiling, with color only in the
crimson rug and heavy hangings.

"You see I've come to help you bear your exile, Steve!" greeted a
laughing voice. Jerry and Tommy, who had preceded Courtlandt, turned
involuntarily. He met the girl's startled eyes. He reddened furiously
before he turned to answer the golden-haired woman who had stepped from
behind a screen.

"Felice! Where did you come from?" His tone was dazed and strugglingly
cordial.

"Have you lost both manners and memory, Stevie? You haven't offered to
shake hands; you have apparently forgotten that I wrote you that while
he was at the Manor Mr. Greyson discovered that I had been at school
with his sister. Paula has come out for the summer and brought me with
her. I adore the ranch. Steve, we'll have some rides that will make
those we used to have take on a pale anemic blue." She linked her arm
within his and smiled up at him beguilingly.

"Hmp, vamp-stuff!" Courtlandt heard Tommy confide to Jerry before he
disengaged his arm from Mrs. Denbigh's clasp and reminded:

"Have you seen Mrs. Courtlandt, Felice? Jerry, you remember Mrs.
Denbigh?"

"Perfectly. She is one of those persons one never forgets. Mrs. Denbigh,
may I present Mr. Benson? Mr. Greyson, back up your statement, show me
that Hopi saddle-blanket which you claimed yesterday had Uncle Nick's
licked to a finish. That phrase is your bit of choice Americana, not
mine, remember."

Steve's eyes followed Jerry as she moved away with her host. There was a
slightly scornful tilt to her lips. Greyson looked as though he had been
caught stealing sheep, he decided. Was there a sinister undercurrent at
the X Y Z as well as a Double O? If there were he'd get to the bottom of
that, too. Regardless of Benson's proximity he burst out:

"Why did you intimate that I had been corresponding with you, Felice?"

The woman's super decollete frock was no greener than her eyes, her
elaborately coiffured yellow hair glittered; it hadn't the satiny sheen
of Jerry's; her hands were frosty with diamonds. Even her laugh had a
metallic ring as she answered:

"What a literal person you are, Stevie. Have you been bitten with the
nothing-but-the-truth mania? Can't I interest you in a saddle-blanket?
It makes an excellent smoke-screen for a tete-a-tete." Her laugh tinkled
maliciously as she nodded toward the corner where her host stood with
Jerry Courtlandt. Steve deliberately turned his back and inquired
irrelevantly:

"How was little ol' New York when you left, Felice?"

It wasn't to be wondered at that Jerry liked people, people so evidently
adored her, Courtlandt thought as coffee was being served in the
living-room after dinner. Paula Vance, who though no older than Felice
Denbigh, already showed symptoms of middle-age curves, was officiating
behind the massive silver tray with its rare, antique appointments. Her
husband, with those three unmistakable L's, liquor, lobster and leisure
writ large on his portly person from his terraced chin to his shining
patent leathers, Greyson and Benson were listening to Jerry as, with
eyes like stars, cheeks flushed, she sat at the piano. She played a low,
rippling accompaniment as, in answer to a question from her host, she
gave an account of her visit to Bear Creek ranch. Felice Denbigh also
had her eyes on the group. She divided her attention between it and her
coffee. Her light lashes swept her cheeks as she tapped her cigarette
against her thumb-nail and drawled:

"Better give young Benson his time, Steve. Isn't that ranch parlance for
discharge? He's in love with Mrs. Courtlandt." The man beside her
reddened angrily.

"Don't bring your tainted ideas out into this clean, glorious country,
Felice. Benson is----" he broke off to watch Greyson's Jap, a little man
with a face like the mask of tragedy who was speaking to Jerry.

"Are you sure that he said Mrs. Courtlandt?" Steve heard her ask in
surprise. Then as the man reiterated his message she excused herself to
the men about her and left the room. Tommy looked after her anxiously
before his eyes flashed to Steve. The latter gave an imperceptible nod
and with a murmured excuse to Felice followed Jerry. As he stepped to
the porch he saw the golden gleam of the girl's gown at the farther end.
She was talking earnestly with a man, a man who was holding a saddled
horse. The moon shone down upon the animal's wet sides; he had evidently
been ridden hard. What did it mean? Had Glamorgan, by any chance, sent
for his daughter? As he strode toward them he heard the girl say
breathlessly:

"No! No! Don't wait! Ride as fast as you can. I'll get there some way."

"Jerry!" in his anxiety Steve sent his voice ahead of him. At the sound
the man leaped to the horse's back and galloped away into the dusk of
the road. The girl strained her eyes after him before she turned.

"There is something queer about that man, Steve; he is a man of
mystery," she confided as though Courtlandt's materialization out of the
dark was quite what she expected.

"What did he want?"

"He wanted me. Don't look so incredulous. I may be an acquired taste
like olives but--some people like me." She abandoned her teasing tone
and hurried on, "That man is the range-rider at Bear Creek ranch. Mrs.
Carey has been taken suddenly ill, there,--there is a baby coming, you
know, Steve. He wanted me to go to her. Her husband is away. They
haven't had a telephone put in and it may take hours to get the doctor
and nurse from town, he may not be able to get them at all and so--and
so he asked me to go and stay with her until he could get help."

"But you can't go, girl, at this time of night."

"Oh, yes, I can, Steve. I'm going. Please ask Tommy to drive me. We'll
make better time going in the machine even by the roundabout wagon road.
If I rode I'd have to go home first and change my clothes. He can come
back for you. Hurry!"

"Back for me! Do you think you go off this ranch to-night with anyone
but me? It's rank folly for you to go----"

She caught the lapel of his coat and looked up at him with dewy eyes.

"Suppose,--suppose that it were I, Steve----"

Even in the dim light he could see the soft color steal to her hair. He
turned away with a sharp:

"Get your wrap while I go for the car, and give Benson his orders. He'll
have to keep a date for me."

The star-spangled night was clear and still as Courtlandt slowed down in
front of the Bear Creek ranch-house. The girl beside him shivered as she
looked at the lighted windows. He laid one hand on hers.

"Steady, little girl, steady. You won't be able to help if you lose your
nerve."

"I know, Steve, I'll be all right as soon as I get busy. I have never
seen----" She sprang from the car and ran up the path, her golden gown
gleaming in the dim light. As she opened the door Courtlandt heard a
sound which sent him from the car. He couldn't sit still. Lips set he
paced back and forth, back and forth while a voice inside his head,
which didn't seem his voice at all, kept repeating, "Suppose--just
suppose it were I, Steve?"

Other thoughts crowded in upon him as he paced like a sentinel, a
sentinel in dinner clothes, before the little house. The dawn crept
slowly up in the east spraying the dark sky overhead with gorgeousness.
It transformed the world into the fairyland of the pantomimes of his
boyhood, a world full of magic passwords and talismans. He almost
expected to see a shimmering, masked Harlequin tap on the cabin door
with his supple wand and a dainty Columbine pirouette out in response.

Whatever it might be outside, there was no illusion behind that closed
door. It was raw reality. What wonders women were, some of them, Steve
amended. He thought of the girls with whom he had dined and danced in
the last two years. Many of them sensation-seeking privateers. Was it
after-war reaction which made them so recklessly, flagrantly determined
in their attempts to lure? They had succeeded only in repelling him but
they had plenty of victims. How they crackled the glaze of their
reputations. How they married and unmarried, those people whom he knew,
and with what tragic consequences to their children. Felice was a
product of the atmosphere in which she lived. He realized now that she
would have no scruples in coming between him and the girl he had married
if she could. A fragment from Kant which had been the text for a college
theme teased at the tip Of his tongue. He had it! "No one of us can do
that, which if done by all, will destroy society." If this divorce
business kept up it would destroy society. Did luxurious social life
breed inconstancy of purpose, contempt of covenants?

As though in answer to his question came a vision of Jerry as she had
knelt beside Old Nick's bed. He could see her face, the hint of tears
under the steadiness of her gaze, hear her voice as she repeated
reverently the marriage service.

She would keep her marriage vow at any cost to herself, Courtlandt
thought, no matter how she might care for someone else. She was the sort
of woman who would stand the wear and tear of daily companionship,
making allowance for a man's moods but never knuckling to them. She'd
bring him up with a round turn, but she'd laugh while she did it. He
couldn't imagine her irritable or fretty or snappy. She had the saving
grace of humor. If women could only learn the persuasive value of a
laugh as against tears or sulks how many marriages would be saved from
the scrap-heap. After all, any poor dumb-bell could get married; it was
staying married which proved one's metal.

The color overhead spread with increasing beauty. The last friendly star
high up above a mountain twinkled out. Somewhere toward the barns a
shrill-voiced, enterprising cock "hailed the smiling morn." A curl of
smoke rose lazily from the cabin chimney. The sun shot up through a
fleece of clouds; it painted the fields and sloping hillside with
radiance. A horse whinnied in the corral, a light breeze sprang up and
brought with it the odor of barns, the strong scent of wool. From the
road came the labored breathing of a flivver.

"Thank God, someone's coming!" Courtlandt thought. He looked toward the
cabin, transformed in the morning light into a habitation of gold. As he
looked the lights in the windows went out. What was Jerry doing? Could
he have helped? A flivver rattled up and stopped. In the exuberance of
his relief Steve opened the door of the car before either of the
occupants had a chance. "Mother" Egan, a portly woman whose clothing
suggested a starch and soap advertisement, it was so immaculate and
standoutish, nodded as she stepped heavily out. Her face beamed with
kindliness and sympathetic understanding as she lumbered up to the door.
Doc Rand regarded Courtlandt with an incredulous grin:

"For the love of Mike, Steve, what you doing here? This isn't your
party----" with a hardened chuckle.

"Cut out the comedy, Doc. I brought Mrs. Courtlandt over to stay until
you came. For God's sake get in there and stop those sounds. Send Jerry
out."

"What you say goes, Steve. Out she comes. Run the flivver round to the
barn, will you? I'm likely to stay here most of the day."

Worn black bag in hand he disappeared inside the house. As Steve started
the car a horseman galloped into sight on the road. He stopped his horse
with a suddenness that threw the animal back on his haunches, then,
after an instant's hesitation he went on toward the huddle of buildings.
Steve looked after him curiously. Was he Jerry's Man of Mystery? He
deliberately followed the horseman. When he dismounted Steve shut off
his engine and jumped to the ground. The rider turned. Steve stared.

"Phil Denbigh!" he exclaimed incredulously.




CHAPTER XII


The two men faced each other silently. The morning light accentuated the
lines on Denbigh's thin, ascetic face, revealed the brooding sorrow in
his eyes. After his involuntary halt of surprise Courtlandt sprang
forward with outstretched hand.

"Phil, old scout, it's good to see you! But--but what the dickens are
you doing here? I know Jim Carey but you're--not----"

"The same. I'm Bill Small, range-rider of the Bear Creek outfit, which
extensive outfit consists at present of the owner and yours truly. It
has taken some dexterity to keep out of your way, Steve. Your Uncle Nick
got me the job. Curious that I should have turned to him in my despair,
but--but he was the first person I thought of. I had heard Mother rail
about his caustic tongue. I concluded if she thought that, he must have
a keen sense of justice and fair-dealing. Mrs. Carey thinks that I
dropped from the air or any old place. Jim went away three days ago and
left me in charge. We didn't think that this--this--was coming so soon.
My first thought when Mrs. Carey called me last evening was to get hold
of the nearest woman and--and Mrs. Courtlandt seemed to be it. I went
to your ranch, first and they sent me on to the X Y Z."

"I can't make you seem real yet, Phil. I'm dazed with the succession of
surprises. Saturday, Beechy, my late sergeant walked in and----"

"Beechy!"

"Say, 'The Devil!' and be done with it, that's what your tone implied.
What do you know about Carl Beechy?"

"I've run across him in Slippy Bend. A regular fella with the ladies,
isn't he?"

"So that's it! I'll have to admit that Carl is an easy mark with the
fair sex, but he's all there when it comes to fighting. I wanted to keep
him at the Double O, but he insisted that he must keep his contract with
the railroad."

"Oh, he did. You're fond of Beechy, Steve?"

"He saved my life, Phil. I was as sure of the man's loyalty as I was
that the sun would rise in the morning."

"Have patience, Steve, you'll get him back. Sadder and wiser, perhaps a
bit damaged, but you'll get him back."

"Damaged! What do you mean?"

"Nothing specific. I'm judging from what I've seen the railroads do. I
hear Ranlett has left you. Take it from me, you're in luck."

"I'll say you're right. I haven't had a chance to talk it over with
Greyson yet; he came back from the East only a few days ago. Uncle Nick
relied on his judgment. Good Lord!"--as remembrance of the evening
before flashed clear in his mind, "do you know who came with him?
Your--your wife."

Denbigh leisurely lighted a cigarette and as leisurely drew a long whiff
of it.

"My wife! I haven't a wife. Felice will have her divorce in a few
months. Desertion. Mamma Peyton's master-mind directed the campaign.
Trust an old-timer like her to know the ropes. Felice didn't love me
when she married me; she merely contracted a virulent attack of the
war-marriage epidemic. I found that out when you came home. I'm through
with women, Steve, that is until I've proved myself a man whose sense of
right and justice can't be twisted by them. If I hadn't been weak Mother
couldn't have--oh, why go into it? It wasn't her fault; life had been
too easy for her; she couldn't bear to be hurt. Well, she has lost me as
effectually as though I had been shot to pieces in the Argonne where so
many of my friends lie. The effects of gas and shot and shell aren't in
it with the intolerable sense of shame which a man, who didn't do his
best to get into the war, will carry through the years. God knows, I'm
paying for my weakness. Don't mind this outburst, Steve. Forget it!
You're the first person I've seen from home. It--it just surged out."

He leaned his head upon his horse's neck. The animal which had been
pawing impatiently settled into bronze immobility at his touch. Only his
sensitive nostrils quivered. Courtlandt laid a sympathetic hand on
Denbigh's shoulder. His voice was unsteady as he protested:

"You're torturing yourself unnecessarily, Phil. The world has almost
forgotten----"

"I haven't, Steve, but we'll let it go at that. Don't let Felice know
that I am here. When she gets her divorce----"

"But, Phil, can't you and she patch things up? Divorce is a hard thing
for a woman to live down."

"Not in our set. Good Lord, man, Felice thinks no more of it than she
would of discarding an unbecoming gown. It's in her blood. It's in mine.
Her mother had changed husbands once before Felice was born. Mine
changed hers when he was young and unsuccessful. She had the money. When
the Fates want to hand it to a man good and plenty they marry him to a
girl who has slathers more money than he has." Steve's face whitened.
"Was that a door closing? Go quick, Steve. If it is Mrs. Courtlandt I
don't want her to see me. Don't tell her who I am." He seized his horse
by the bridle and vanished into the barn.

Steve met Jerry beside his car. His jaw set in the manner dreaded by his
father as he looked at the girl's face. It was white with violet shadows
under the wide, strained eyes. Her exquisite frock was torn where she
had caught it on a hook. A long angry burn was visible on the wrist
which the sleeve of her wrap didn't cover. Her lips quivered
traitorously as she saw Steve's eyes on it. She hastily concealed it
behind her back with a valiant attempt at a laugh.

"It's nothing. I hoped that it would escape your ruthless managerial
eye. I tried to heat water and I'm not used to a kitchen range. In fact,
I don't know what I can do that's vitally useful. When--when I go back
to civilization I shall take a course in nursing, then I won't be so
absolutely useless at a time like this." Her voice was pitched in a key
of nervous excitement, and she shivered as she spoke.

"Come here!" Courtlandt's face was as white as the girl's as he picked
her up in his arms and put her into the car. He drew her wrap closer
about her shoulders and tucked a light robe about her knees. She sat
there tense, unresponsive, but as he started the car she suddenly
relaxed with a stifled sob and covered her face with her hands. Steve
stopped the car. With quiet determination he put his arm about her.

"Cry it out, child," he encouraged tenderly. When the storm broke he
wondered if he had been wise in the recommendation. He was frightened at
the tempest of sobs which shook the slender body. He tightened his arm.
Then after a few moments, "Was it as bad as that, girl?"

She sat up with a start and drew as far away from him as the limited
space would permit. He laid his arm across the back of the seat. She
pushed the hair from her forehead and looked up at him through drenched
eyes.

"Bad!" she controlled a shudder. "Bad only because I was so powerless to
help. An angel from heaven wouldn't have looked as good to me as Doc
Rand." There was an hysterical note of laughter in her voice as she
continued, "He must have thought I had gone suddenly mad for when he
opened the door I flew at him and kissed him." She made furtive dabs at
her eyes. "Don't think that I'm constitutionally a cry-baby," she
laughed up at Courtlandt shamefacedly. He turned away from her quickly,
removed his arm from the back of the seat and started the car.

"Now that you've got your grip again we'll go on. I'm famished," he
announced prosaically.

"Now that I think of it, so am I," she agreed with gay camaraderie, but
her breath came in a little sob as a child's might after crying,
"and--and so are they! Look, Steve! Over on that hillside--look!"

She gripped his arm with one hand as she pointed with the other. On the
top of a low hill, outlined like shadow pictures against the morning
sky, so near that their hanging tongues were plainly visible, were three
dark, sinister shapes.

"Coyotes?" the girl whispered as though even at that distance they might
hear.

"Timber wolves. See those sheep grazing in the coulee below? They are
after them."

"Oh, Steve, can't we do something?"

For answer Courtlandt reached into the pocket of the car and drew his
automatic. The shots rang through the morning quiet, the echoes
ricochetted back from the hills. The sheep kicked up their heels and
scampered off. The wolves stood like creatures of stone for an instant,
then slowly, quite without panic, turned and disappeared over the brow
of the hill. Jerry shivered.

"Wolves! I thought you were rid of them in this country."

"We are almost. Occasionally the boys bring in reports of the trail of a
wolf or a mountain lion. We have a pest of coyotes though, this year. If
you want to insult a ranchman or cowboy to fighting mad, call him a
coyote; it means the most despicable creature in the animal world.
They're cowards. If that bunch of sheep turned and faced a coyote they
would terrify him."

"Ranch life is just one problem after another, isn't it?"

"No more than any life which is packed with interest."

"My mistake! Didn't the little boy want his little ranch found fault
with? Then he shan't be teased."

As he turned and looked at her she caught her breath, colored richly and
apologized. "Don't mind me, Steve. The sudden release from
responsibility and the elixir of the morning air have gone to my head.
I'll be good, really I will. Did you see the Man of Mystery? I--I
somehow have a feeling that he may know something of the missing
calves."

"You're wrong. He's all right, he's doing a man's job--_he_ isn't
troubling me but--but I wish I knew what Beechy had up his sleeve. What
had he said to you before I came in that day in the office?" with quick
suspicion. His tone sent the color flying to the girl's hair.

"Why--why--nothing--but----"

"Don't perjure yourself," dryly. "Much as I think of Carl I'm not blind
to his ways with women. He couldn't have been unbearably raw or you
wouldn't have shaken hands with him, would you? I--didn't like his eyes
when he said he had work on the railroad."

"Steve, you are developing nerves; your imagination is running wild. One
would think that we were back in the days of armed bandits, when masked
men held up trains at the point of a gun. That isn't done now, you
know," with gay patronage.

"Perhaps--look up on the hill! The boys are bringing down the horses."

The girl's eyes followed his pointing finger. Nose to tail, close herded
by riders, the animals trailed toward the corral after their night of
feeding in the hillside pastures. They tossed their manes, they made
sportive attempts to escape their keepers.

"How well our boys ride." Steve's pulses responded to that possessive
"our."

"They ought to. They are as near old-timers as can be found now. The
Double O was Uncle Nick's master-passion. He took up the land when it
was the ranchman's paradise, in the years before fence-posts and barbed
wire, when cowboys packed guns and drank and gambled away their pay. He
adapted himself with amazing success to changing conditions though, and
hung on to all the real boys whom he could tempt with pay and the pride
of raising thoroughbreds."

As Courtlandt stopped the car in front of the ranch-house, the door was
flung open and a girl ran down the steps. Jerry stared incredulously.
"Peggy! Peggy!" she was out of the car in a flash and had her sister in
her arms. Steve heard one more muffled "Peggy!" before the two entered
the house. The surprise following so close upon her night's vigil might
be too much for Jerry, he feared. When Peg had written him and begged
him to keep her coming a surprise he had weakly consented. He had
intended to meet her train but had had to delegate Tommy to take his
place.

Jerry had quite recovered her poise when she appeared for breakfast in
the court. If there was a trace of _vibrato_ in her voice only
Courtlandt noticed it. She and Peg had stopped talking long enough to
get two hours' sleep. Overhead the sky spread like a Della Robbia glaze,
the atmosphere was so clear that the snow-tipped mountains seemed
reachable. A tractor in a distant field sounded but a few feet away. The
air was sweet with the fragrance of roses, the fountain tinkled
musically. Benito, yellow eyes blinking, his gay plumage ruffled till he
looked like an animated feather-duster, sidled round and round the rim
of the basin.

Peggy regarded her sister with elfish, hazel eyes as she took her seat
at the table.

"Ye gods, Jerry, but I'm glad to see you clothed and in your right mind.
That green skirt and sweater is a little bit of all right and I'm crazy
about your frills; they make me think of the soap-suds you see in the
demonstration electric washers, they're so--so fleecy. When you drove up
in that vampish gold gown this morning I thought it must be the custom
of the country to breakfast in evening clothes and I could have wept.
I'd been disillusioned enough. I thought that every honest-to-goodness
he-man on a ranch wore chaps and tore about with his six-shooter
'spittin' death and damnation,' but the man who brought out my trunks
evidently has a passion for overalls, and Mr. Benson met me at the train
looking like a model of the Well-Dressed Man."

Her sister laughed.

"You've been reading Zane Gray et als. Please understand that we are
ultra civilized on this ranch after six o'clock."

"Then you'll eat up my news. That smitten salesman of yours at Tiffany's
told me before I left New York that he was on the trail of the
Alexandrite ring you'd been wanting. It belonged to one of the late
royalties. He says that it is a wonder, beautifully set and only two
thousand dollars! You'd better write him about it. Of course he can't
hold it indefinitely."

"Two thousand dollars!" Jerry regretted the shocked exclamation as soon
as it left her lips. She glanced furtively at Steve. His eyes, clear and
clean and shining from his out-of-door life, disconcertingly direct, met
hers. She looked away hastily. "I'm--I'm not buying jewels now, Peg."

"You're not! Growing miserly in your old age, Geraldine?" with
patronizing surprise. "You've been talking of that Alexandrite for----"

"Will you ride the range with your ancient brother-in-law this morning,
Peg-o'-my-heart?" broke in Courtlandt. "We'll have lunch at Upper Farm."

"I'll say I'd love it. Will you come, Jerry?"

"No, I have work to do. Behold your erstwhile humble sister the private
secretary of the owner of Double O ranch," with laughing empressement.

"Don't work. Sleep, or ride with Peg," cut in Steve sharply. "Remember
you were out all night."

"O King Live Forever!" mocked Geraldine gayly. "Just as though I hadn't
danced all night many a time and ridden in the park all morning. I
shall----"

"Pete Glellish tlell you dat Ranlett make bad pidgin in Lower Flield,"
interrupted Ming Soy's soft voice at Courtlandt's elbow. "He say,
'Hully--hully--hully!'"

Steve sprang from his chair and caromed into Tommy Benson who had just
entered the court and stood beaming upon Peggy Glamorgan.

"What, down already, Miss Peg? Methinks

    "'This morning, like the spirit of a youth
    That means to be of note, begins betimes.'

Why the glassy-eye and furrowed-brow effect, Steve? I hope that you've
left me a taste of the honey, Miss Glamorgan?" he reproached as he took
his place at the table beside the girl.

"As soon as you've had a bite, Tommy, join me at Lower Field. Bring Peg
along. Jerry," Steve Courtlandt's voice was peremptory, "remember, no
work in the office and if you don't go with Peg and Tommy stay in sight
of the ranch-house if you ride. Don't expect me until you see me. I may
not be at home to-night."

He didn't wait for her answer. In his own room he picked up a Colt 45,
spun the cylinder, slipped a box of cartridges into his pocket and
hurried to the side door. Gerrish, mounted on the big sorrel, held Blue
Devil by the bridle. Both horses were prancing nervously, for the
parrot, who had climbed to the gutter under the roof, was clucking and
calling:

"Gid-dap! Go-long!"

"That bird ought to be shot," Steve growled as with some difficulty he
mounted. "What's to pay now, Pete, Ranlett?"

"You've got your rope on the right pair of horns this time, Chief. The
fences of Lower Field have been cut."

"Toward the railroad?"

"By cripes, no. Toward the mountains. If 't been the railroad side we
might have stood a chance of corralling the Shorthorns, but if they once
get into the mountains--Lord-ee, I believe yer uncle'll rise out of his
grave an' go after 'em. Them critters was the pride of his life. Ranlett
was a low-down dawg to turn a trick like this. Say, do you know anything
about thet range-rider at Bear Creek?"

"Why--why--I've spoken to him. You don't suspect him of being in this
deal, do you?"

"I ain't suspectin' nothin', but after I'd saw him twice talkin' to
Ranlett I sort of got his number."

"You've got it wrong, then, Pete. I happen to know that the man is white
clear through."

"Well, I ain't shootin' off my mouth careless when I say that the
range-rider's got somethin' up his sleeve. It's my best bet there's
going to be fifty-seven varieties of hell blowin' up round this ranch
before we get through. If you ask me, I'll say that the crime-wave
that's been lappin' the coast has swashed out here in a flood."

"But, Pete, it's impossible for rustlers to get away with their old
stuff now."

"You're shoutin', Chief, it sure is, but--they'll find some new ways. I
got it doped out your way too, but if it ain't rustlin', what fool thing
is that coyote Ranlett up to?"

"Giving us a run for our cattle, I guess. Spite. How many boys can we
spare to round up the Shorthorns?"

"I've sent fer the bunch. There's somethin' else phoney that I haven't
told yer. It's been open and shut in my mind whether I'd better."

"Shoot, old-timer!" commanded Courtlandt curtly.

"Well, since you fed Ranlett his time he's been moseyin' round Slippy
Bend. The other day when I rode over there to see Baldy Jennings, 'bout
shippin' them steer, I just naturally dropped into the Lazy Wolf. Our
late manager was settin' at a table with two girls and a man. It wasn't
my butt-in and I wouldn't have specially noticed the stranger if he
hadn't been makin' goo-goo eyes at one of the females out of all
proportion to her good looks. She hed----"

"Let's pass up what she looked like. Who was the man?"

"I didn't know then, but Saturday you brought the ol' son-of-a-gun of a
lady-killer to the bunk-house yourself. Savvy?"

"You don't mean Beechy?"

"Sorry, Chief, but he's the same. An' unless I'm locoed Ranlett's got
the feller's hide nailed to his stable door; he's got him an' he's got
him tight."




CHAPTER XIII


Bubbles the roan, own brother to Patches, and Peggy Glamorgan on his
back were radiant youth incarnate. The horse arched his graceful head as
though proudly conscious of the loveliness of his burden; the corded
muscles of shoulder, flank and leg flexed sensitively under his satin
skin with every move of his pliant body. The girl's sombrero had the
true ranchero tilt. Her khaki riding costume was as perfect a thing as
the cinema-fed imagination of a fashionable habit-maker could conceive;
it was only by exercising superhuman restraint that he had refrained
from adding buckskin fringe and a six-shooter. Tommy Benson regarded her
as though hypnotized. He caught a quizzical expression in Jerry's eyes
as she stood on the porch, and colored hotly. He swallowed hard and
sprang to the saddle. With obvious effort to regain his poise, he
touched his horse with his heels and with a theatrical sweep of his
right arm declaimed:

"Let's go! 'Once more into the breach dear friends, once more.'"

Peggy lingered.

"You are sure that you won't come with us, Jerry?" Her sister smilingly
shook her head.

"No, I must finish some work. Come back, Goober!" to the dog who had
been jumping up to lick the noses of the horses, and who with short
joyous barks was preparing to follow them. He threw her a glance replete
with injured dignity and flopped down on the porch with head on his
outstretched paws. Peggy threw a hasty "I'm sorry!" over her shoulder
and urged Bubbles to a gallop. Tommy bore down upon her as she reached
the ranch road. He seized the bridle of her horse and pulled him down.

"Where's the fire?" he demanded. "What's the big idea in burning up the
road? I want to make this ride last."

"I thought you wanted to get to Lower Field to help Steve,"
reproachfully.

"Sure thing, but if I break my neck getting there it won't prove much,
will it? I wonder why your sister didn't come."

The horses stepped daintily side by side, their glossy coats shining in
the sunlight. Peggy's brows met in a suspicion of a frown.

"Tommy--you don't mind if I call you Tommy, do you?" with just the right
suggestion of hesitation and a glance from under curling lashes which
fanned a spark in the man's eyes to fire.

"I'll say that I don't," fervently. "Formality is silly in a great,
God's-own-country like this. What's on your mind?"

"Jerry. I was wondering. There is something queer about Steve and Jerry,
Tommy. They don't seem a bit like married lovers; have you noticed it?"

Benson bent far forward to examine the bit in his horse's mouth. When he
settled back in the saddle his face was flushed.

"'I never knew so young a lady with so old a head,'" he quoted gayly.
"What does a child like you, just out of the nursery, know about
lovers?" he teased.

She regarded him with lofty condescension.

"I shall be nineteen my next birthday and I'll have you understand that
boys have been plentiful in my career, Mr. Benson. Of course if you
don't care to talk with me----"

"I do--I do, Peg-o'-my-heart!" Courtlandt's name for her slipped
unconsciously from Tommy's lips. He looked at her apologetically but the
girl was too engrossed in her troubled thoughts to notice what he called
her. Reassured he answered her question. "I think that Steve and Jerry
are bully pals."

"Pals! Ye gods, and that's all. Honest now, Tommy, have you ever seen
Steve catch Jerry's hand as though he just couldn't help it?" Benson
met her triumphant glance with a sternly accusing eye.

"Oh, the precocity and sophistication of twentieth century youth! Look
here, young woman, what have you been reading?"

"Reading! Tommy, you're overdoing it. You're too innocent to be true,"
with a little rush of laughter. "Now I ask you, would you want a wife
who was as distantly friendly to you as Jerry is to Steve?"

"I should not," with convincing emphasis. "But why should your sister
have married Courtlandt if she didn't love him? I can't conceive of his
not bein

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