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Lonesome Land

by B. M. Bower · English · Gutenberg #8537 · 422,669 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Lonesome Land

Author: B. M. Bower


        
Release date: July 1, 2005 [eBook #8537]
                Most recently updated: March 9, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8537

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        Franks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
        
        HTML file produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LONESOME LAND ***




Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Charles
Franks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team







LONESOME LAND

By B. M. Bower


Author of “Chip, of the Flying U,” etc.


With Four Illustrations (not included)

By Stanley L. Wood



[Illustration: As he raced over the uneven prairie he fumbled
with the saddle string]


_Contents_

CHAPTER
    I. THE ARRIVAL OF VAL
   II. WELL-MEANT ADVICE
  III. A LADY IN A TEMPER
   IV. THE “SHIVAREE”
     V. COLD SPRING RANCH
   VI. MANLEY'S FIRE GUARD
  VII. VAL'S NEW DUTIES
 VIII. THE PRAIRIE FIRE
   IX. KENT TO THE RESCUE
    X. DESOLATION
   XI. VAL'S AWAKENING
  XII. A LESSON IN FORGIVENESS
 XIII. ARLINE GIVES A DANCE
  XIV. A WEDDING PRESENT
   XV. A COMPACT
  XVI. MANLEY'S NEW TACTICS
 XVII. VAL BECOMES AN AUTHOR
XVIII. VAL'S DISCOVERY
  XIX. KENT'S CONFESSION
   XX. A BLOTCHED BRAND
  XXI. VAL DECIDES
 XXII. A FRIEND IN NEED
XXIII. CAUGHT!
 XXIV. RETRIBUTION


_List of Illustrations_

As he raced over the uneven prairie he fumbled with the saddle string

He was jeered unmercifully by Fred De Garmo and his crowd

“Little woman, listen here,” he said. “You're playing hard luck, and I know
it”

To draw the red hot spur across the fresh VP did not take long




CHAPTER I. THE ARRIVAL OF VAL

In northern Montana there lies a great, lonely stretch of prairie land,
gashed deep where flows the Missouri. Indeed, there are many such--big,
impassive, impressive in their very loneliness, in summer given over to
the winds and the meadow larks and to the shadows fleeing always over the
hilltops. Wild range cattle feed there and grow sleek and fat for the fall
shipping of beef. At night the coyotes yap quaveringly and prowl abroad
after the long-eared jack rabbits, which bounce away at their hunger-driven
approach. In winter it is not good to be there; even the beasts shrink then
from the bleak, level reaches, and shun the still bleaker heights.

But men will live anywhere if by so doing there is money to be gained, and
so a town snuggled up against the northern rim of the bench land, where the
bleakness was softened a bit by the sheltering hills, and a willow-fringed
creek with wild rosebushes and chokecherries made a vivid green background
for the meager huddle of little, unpainted buildings.

To the passengers on the through trains which watered at the red tank near
the creek, the place looked crudely picturesque--interesting, so long as
one was not compelled to live there and could retain a perfectly impersonal
viewpoint. After five or ten minutes spent hi watching curiously the one
little street, with the long hitching poles planted firmly and frequently
down both sides--usually within a very few steps of a saloon door--and the
horses nodding and stamping at the flies, and the loitering figures
that appeared now and then in desultory fashion, many of them imagined
that they understood the West and sympathized with it, and appreciated its
bigness and its freedom from conventions.

One slim young woman had just told the thin-faced school teacher on a
vacation, with whom she had formed one of those evanescent traveling
acquaintances, that she already knew the West, from instinct and from
Manley's letters. She loved it, she said, because Manley loved it, and
because it was to be her home, and because it was so big and so free.
Out here one could think and grow and really live, she declared, with
enthusiasm. Manley had lived here for three years, and his letters, she
told the thin-faced teacher, were an education in themselves.

The teacher had already learned that the slim young woman, with the
yellow-brown hair and yellow-brown eyes to match, was going to marry
Manley--she had forgotten his other name, though the young woman had
mentioned it--and would live on a ranch, a cattle ranch. She smiled with
somewhat wistful sympathy, and hoped the young woman would be happy; and
the young woman waved her hand, with the glove only half pulled on, toward
the shadow-dappled prairie and the willow-fringed creek, and the hills
beyond.

“Happy!” she echoed joyously. “Could one be anything else, in such a
country? And then--you don't know Manley, you see. It's horribly bad form,
and undignified and all that, to prate of one's private affairs, but I just
can't help bubbling over. I'm not looking for heaven, and I expect to have
plenty of bumpy places in the trail--trail is anything that you travel
over, out here; Manley has coached me faithfully--but I'm going to be
happy. My mind is quite made up. Well, good-by--I'm so glad you happened
to be on this train, and I wish I might meet you again. Isn't it a funny
little depot? Oh, yes--thank you! I almost forgot that umbrella, and I
might need it. Yes, I'll write to you--I should hate to drop out of
your mind completely. Address me Mrs. Manley Fleetwood, Hope, Montana.
Good-by--I wish--”

She trailed off down the aisle with eyes shining, in the wake of the
grinning porter. She hurried down the steps, glanced hastily along the
platform, up at the car window where the faded little school teacher was
smiling wearily down at her, waved her hand, threw a dainty little kiss,
nodded a gay farewell, smiled vaguely at the conductor, who had been
respectfully pleasant to her--and then she was looking at the rear platform
of the receding train mechanically, not yet quite realizing why it was that
her heart went heavy so suddenly. She turned then and looked about her in
a surprised, inquiring fashion. Manley, it would seem, was not at hand to
welcome her. She had expected his face to be the first she looked upon in
that town, but she tried not to be greatly perturbed at his absence; so
many things may detain one.

At that moment a young fellow, whose clothes emphatically proclaimed him a
cowboy, came diffidently up to her, tilted his hat backward an inch or so,
and left it that way, thereby unconsciously giving himself an air of candor
which should have been reassuring.

“Fleetwood was detained. You were expecting to--you're the lady he was
expecting, aren't you?”

She had been looking questioningly at her violin box and two trunks
standing on their ends farther down the platform, and she smiled vaguely
without glancing at him.

“Yes. I hope he isn't sick, or--”

“I'll take you over to the hotel, and go tell him you're here,” he
volunteered, somewhat curtly, and picked up her bag.

“Oh, thank you.” This time her eyes grazed his face inattentively. She
followed him down the rough steps of planking and up an extremely dusty
road--one could scarcely call it a street--to an uninviting building with
crooked windows and a high, false front of unpainted boards.

The young fellow opened a sagging door, let her pass into a narrow hallway,
and from there into a stuffy, hopelessly conventional fifth-rate parlor,
handed her the bag, and departed with another tilt of the hat which placed
it at a different angle. The sentence meant for farewell she did not catch,
for she was staring at a wooden-faced portrait upon an easel, the portrait
of a man with a drooping mustache, and porky cheeks, and dead-looking eyes.

“And I expected bearskin rugs, and antlers on the walls, and big
fireplaces!” she remarked aloud, and sighed. Then she turned and pulled
aside a coarse curtain of dusty, machine-made lace, and looked after her
guide. He was just disappearing into a saloon across the street, and she
dropped the curtain precipitately, as if she were ashamed of spying. “Oh,
well--I've heard all cowboys are more or less intemperate,” she excused,
again aloud.

She sat down upon an atrocious red plush chair, and wrinkled her
nose spitefully at the porky-cheeked portrait. “I suppose you're the
proprietor,” she accused, “or else the proprietor's son. I wish you
wouldn't squint like that. If I have to stop here longer than ten minutes,
I shall certainly turn you face to the wall.” Whereupon, with another
grimace, she turned her back upon it and looked out of the window. Then she
stood up impatiently, looked at her watch, and sat down again upon the red
plush chair.

“He didn't tell me whether Manley is sick,” she said suddenly, with some
resentment. “He was awfully abrupt in his manner. Oh, you--” She rose,
picked up an old newspaper from the marble-topped table with uncertain
legs, and spread it ungently over the portrait upon the easel. Then she
went to the window and looked out again. “I feel perfectly sure that cowboy
went and got drunk immediately,” she complained, drumming pettishly upon
the glass. “And I don't suppose he told Manley at all.”

The cowboy was innocent of the charge, however, and he was doing his
energetic best to tell Manley. He had gone straight through the saloon and
into the small room behind, where a man lay sprawled upon a bed in one
corner. He was asleep, and his clothes were wrinkled as if he had lain
there long. His head rested upon his folded arms, and he was snoring
loudly. The young fellow went up and took him roughly by the shoulder.

“Here! I thought I told you to straighten up,” he cried disgustedly. “Come
alive! The train's come and gone, and your girl's waiting for you over to
the hotel. D' you hear?”

“Uh-huh!” The man opened one eye, grunted, and closed it again.

The other yanked him half off the bed, and swore. This brought both eyes
open, glassy with whisky and sleep. He sat wobbling upon the edge of the
bed, staring stupidly.

“Can't you get anything through you?” his tormentor exclaimed. “You want
your girl to find out you're drunk? You got the license in your pocket.
You're supposed to get spliced this evening--and look at you!” He turned
and went out to the bartender.

“Why didn't you pour that coffee into him, like I told you?” he demanded.
“We've got to get him steady on his pins _somehow!_”

The bartender was sprawled half over the bar, apathetically reading the
sporting news of a torn Sunday edition of an Eastern paper. He looked up
from under his eyebrows and grunted.

“How you going to pour coffee down a man that lays flat on his belly and
won't open his mouth?” he inquired, in an injured tone. “Sleep's all he
needs, anyway. He'll be all right by morning.”

The other snorted dissent. “He'll be all right by dark--or he'll feel a
whole lot worse,” he promised grimly. “Dig up some ice. And a good jolt of
bromo, if you've got it--and a towel or two.”

The bartender wearily pushed the paper to one side, reached languidly under
the bar, and laid hold of a round blue bottle. Yawning uninterestedly, he
poured a double portion of the white crystals into a glass, half filled
another under the faucet of the water cooler, and held them out.

“Dump that into him, then,” he advised. “It'll help some, if you get it
down. What's the sweat to get him married off to-day? Won't the girl wait?”

“I never asked her. You pound up some ice and bring it in, will you?” The
volunteer nurse kicked open the door into the little room and went in,
hastily pouring the bromo seltzer from one glass to the other to keep it
from foaming out of all bounds. His patient was still sitting upon the edge
of the bed where he had left him, slumped forward with his head in his
hands. He looked up stupidly, his eyes bloodshot and swollen of lid.

“'S the train come in yet?” he asked thickly. “'S you, is it, Kent?”

“The train's come, and your girl is waiting for you at the hotel. Here,
throw this into you--and for God's sake, brace up! You make me tired. Drink
her down quick--the foam's good for you. Here, you take the stuff in the
bottom, too. Got it? Take off your coat, so I can get at you. You don't
look much like getting married, and that's no josh.”

Fleetwood shook his head with drunken gravity, and groaned. “I ought to be
killed. Drunk to-day!” He sagged forward again, and seemed disposed to shed
tears. “She'll never forgive me; she--”

Kent jerked him to his feet peremptorily. “Aw, look here! I'm trying
to sober you up. You've got to do your part--see? Here's some ice in a
towel--you get it on your head. Open up your shirt, so I can bathe your
chest. Don't do any good to blubber around about it. Your girl can't hear
you, and Jim and I ain't sympathetic. Set down in this chair, where we can
get at you.” He enforced his command with some vigor, and Fleetwood groaned
again. But he shed no more tears, and he grew momentarily more lucid, as
the treatment took effect.

The tears were being shed in the stuffy little hotel parlor. The young
woman looked often at her watch, went into the hallway, and opened the
outer door several times, meditating a search of the town, and drew back
always with a timid fluttering of heart because it was all so crude and
strange, and the saloons so numerous and terrifying in their very bald
simplicity.

She was worried about Manley, and she wished that cowboy would come out
of the saloon and bring her lover to her. She had never dreamed of being
treated in this way. No one came near her--and she had secretly expected to
cause something of a flutter in this little town they called Hope.

Surely, young girls from the East, come out to get married to their
sweethearts, weren't so numerous that they should be ignored. If there were
other people in the hotel, they did not manifest their presence, save by
disquieting noises muffled by intervening partitions.

She grew thirsty, but she hesitated to explore the depths of this dreary
abode, in fear of worse horrors than the parlor furniture, and all the
places of refreshment which she could see from the window or the door
looked terribly masculine and unmoral, and as if they did not know there
existed such things as ice cream, or soda, or sherbet.

It was after an hour of this that the tears came, which is saying a good
deal for her courage. It seemed to her then that Manley must be dead. What
else could keep him so long away from her, after three years of impassioned
longing written twice a week with punctilious regularity?

He knew that she was coming. She had telegraphed from St. Paul, and had
received a joyful reply, lavishly expressed in seventeen words instead of
the ten-word limit. And they were to have been married immediately upon her
arrival.

That cowboy had known she was coming; he must also have known why Manley
did not meet her, and she wished futilely that she had questioned him,
instead of walking beside him without a word. He should have explained. He
would have explained if he had not been so very anxious to get inside that
saloon and get drunk.

She had always heard that cowboys were chivalrous, and brave, and
fascinating in their picturesque dare-deviltry, but from the lone specimen
which she had met she could not see that they possessed any of those
qualities. If all cowboys were like that, she hoped that she would not be
compelled to meet any of them. And _why_ didn't Manley come?

It was then that an inner door--a door which she had wanted to open, but
had lacked courage--squeaked upon its hinges, and an ill-kept bundle of
hair was thrust in, topping a weather-beaten face and a scrawny little
body. Two faded, inquisitive eyes looked her over, and the woman sidled in,
somewhat abashed, but too curious to remain outside.

“Oh yes!” She seemed to be answering some inner question. “I didn't know
you was here.” She went over and removed the newspaper from the portrait.
“That breed girl of mine ain't got the least idea of how to straighten up
a room,” she observed complainingly. “I guess she thinks this picture was
made to hang things on. I'll have to round her up again and tell her a few
things. This is my first husband. He was in politics and got beat, and so
he killed himself. He couldn't stand to have folks give him the laugh.” She
spoke with pride. “He was a real handsome man, don't you think? You mighta
took off the paper; it didn't belong there, and he does brighten up the
room. A good picture is real company, seems to me. When my old man gets on
the rampage till I can't stand it no longer, I come in here and set, and
look at Walt. 'T ain't every man that's got nerve to kill himself--with a
shotgun. It was turrible! He took and tied a string to the trigger--”

“Oh, please!”

The landlady stopped short and stared at her. “What? Oh, I won't go into
details--it was awful messy, and that's a fact. I didn't git over it for a
couple of months. He coulda killed himself with a six-shooter; it's always
been a mystery why he dug up that old shotgun, but he did. I always thought
he wanted to show his nerve.” She sighed, and drew her fingers across her
eyes. “I don't s'pose I ever will git over it,” she added complacently. “It
was a turrible shock.”

“Do you know,” the girl began desperately, “if Mr. Manley Fleetwood is in
town? I expected him to meet me at the train.”

“Oh! I kinda _thought_ you was Man Fleetwood's girl. My name's Hawley. You
going to be married to-night, ain't you?”

“I--I haven't seen Mr. Fleetwood yet,” hesitated the girl, and her eyes
filled again with tears. “I'm afraid something may have happened to him.
He--”

Mrs. Hawley glimpsed the tears, and instantly became motherly in her
manner. She even went up and patted the girl on the shoulder.

“There, now, don't you worry none. Man's all right; I seen him at dinner
time. He was--” She stopped short, looked keenly at the delicate face,
and at the yellow-brown eyes which gazed back at her, innocent of evil,
trusting, wistful. “He spoke about your coming, and said he'd want the use
of the parlor this evening, for the wedding. I had an idea you was coming
on the six-twenty train. Maybe he thought so, too. I never heard you come
in--I was busy frying doughnuts in the kitchen--and I just happened to come
in here after something. You'd oughta rapped on that door. Then I'd 'a'
known you was here. I'll go and have my old man hunt him up. He must be
around town somewheres. Like as not he'll meet the six-twenty, expecting
you to be on it.”

She smiled reassuringly as she turned to the inner door.

“You take off your hat and jacket, and pretty soon I'll show you up to a
room. I'll have to round up my old man first--and that's liable to take
time.” She turned her eyes quizzically to the porky-cheeked portrait. “You
jest let Walt keep you company till I get back. He was real good company
when he was livin'.”

She smiled again and went out briskly, came back, and stood with her hand
upon the cracked doorknob.

“I clean forgot your name,” she hinted. “Man told me, at dinner time, but
I'm no good on earth at remembering names till after I've seen the person
it belongs to.”

“Valeria Peyson--Val, they call me usually, at home.” The homesickness of
the girl shone in her misty eyes, haunted her voice. Mrs. Hawley read it,
and spoke more briskly than she would otherwise have done.

“Well, we're plumb strangers, but we ain't going to stay that way, because
every time you come to town you'll have to stop here; there ain't any other
place to stop. And I'm going to start right in calling you Val. We don't
use no ceremony with folk's names, out here. Val's a real nice name, short
and easy to say. Mine's Arline. You can call me by it if you want to. I
don't let everybody--so many wants to cut it down to Leen, and I won't
stand for that; I'm _lean_ enough, without havin' it throwed up to me. We
might jest as well start in the way we're likely to keep it up, and you
won't feel so much like a stranger.

“I'm awful glad you're going to settle here--there ain't so awful many
women in the country; we have to rake and scrape to git enough for three
sets when we have a dance--and more likely we can't make out more 'n two.
D' you dance? Somebody said they seen a fiddle box down to the depot, with
a couple of big trunks; d' you play the fiddle?”

“A little,” Valeria smiled faintly.

“Well, that'll come in awful handy at dances. We'd have 'em real often in
the winter if it wasn't such a job to git music. Well, I got too much to do
to be standin' here talkin'. I have to keep right after that breed girl all
the time, or she won't do nothing. I'll git my old man after your fellow
right away. Jest make yourself to home, and anything you want ask for it
in the kitchen.” She smiled in friendly fashion and closed the door with a
little slam to make sure that it latched.

Valeria stood for a moment with her hands hanging straight at her
sides, staring absently at the door. Then she glanced at Walt, staring
wooden-faced from his gilt frame upon his gilt easel, and shivered. She
pushed the red plush chair as far away from him as possible, sat down with
her back to the picture, and immediately felt his dull, black eyes boring
into her back.

“What a fool I must be!” she said aloud, glancing reluctantly over her
shoulder at the portrait. She got up resolutely, placed the chair where it
had stood before, and stared deliberately at Walt, as if she would prove
how little she cared. But in a moment more she was crying dismally.




CHAPTER II. WELL-MEANT ADVICE

Kent Burnett, bearing over his arm a coat newly pressed in the Delmonico
restaurant, dodged in at the back door of the saloon, threw the coat down
upon the tousled bed, and pushed back his hat with a gesture of relief at
an onerous duty well performed.

“I had one hell of a time,” he announced plaintively, “and that Chink will
likely try to poison me if I eat over there, after this--but I got her
ironed, all right. Get into it, Man, and chase yourself over there to the
hotel. Got a clean collar? That one's all-over coffee.”

Fleetwood stifled a groan, reached into a trousers pocket, and brought up a
dollar. “Get me one at the store, will you, Kent? Fifteen and a half--and a
tie, if they've got any that's decent. And hurry! Such a triple-three-star
fool as I am ought to be taken out and shot.”

He went on cursing himself audibly and bitterly, even after Kent
had hurried out. He was sober now--was Manley Fleetwood--sober and
self-condemnatory and penitent. His head ached splittingly; his eyes
were heavy-lidded and bloodshot, and his hands trembled so that he could
scarcely button his coat. But he was sober. He did not even carry the odor
of whisky upon his breath or his person; for Kent had been very thoughtful
and very thorough. He had compelled his patient to crunch and swallow many
nauseous tablets of “whisky killer,” and he had sprinkled his clothes
liberally with Jockey Club; Fleetwood, therefore, while he emanated odors
in plenty, carried about him none of the aroma properly belonging to
intoxication.

In ten minutes Kent was back, with a celluloid collar and two ties of
questionable taste. Manley just glanced at them, waved them away with
gloomy finality, and swore.

“They're just about the limit, and that's no dream,” sympathized Kent, “but
they're clean, and they don't look like they'd been slept in for a month.
You've got to put 'em on--by George, I sized up the layout in both those
imitation stores, and I drew the highest in the deck. And for the Lord's
sake, get a move on. Here, I'll button it for you.”

Behind Fleetwood's back, when collar and tie were in place, Kent grinned
and lowered an eyelid at Jim, who put his head in from the saloon to see
how far the sobering had progressed.

“You look fine!” he encouraged heartily. “That green-and-blue tie's just
what you need to set you off. And the collar sure is shiny and nice--your
girl will be plumb dazzled. She won't see anything wrong--believe _me_.
Now, run along and get married. Here, you better sneak out the back way; if
she happened to be looking out, she'd likely wonder what you were doing,
coming out of a saloon. Duck out past the coal shed and cut into the street
by Brinberg's. Tell her you're sick--got a sick headache. Your looks'll
swear it's the truth. Hike!” He opened the door and pushed Fleetwood out,
watched him out of sight around the corner of Brinberg's store, and turned
back into the close-smelling little room.

“Do you know,” he remarked to Jim, “I never thought of it before, but I've
been playing a low-down trick on that poor girl. I kinda wish now I'd put
her next, and given her a chance to draw outa the game if she wanted to.
It's stacking the deck on her, if you ask _me_!” He pushed his hat back
upon his head, gave his shoulders a twist of dissatisfaction, and told Jim
to dig up some Eastern beer; drank it meditatively, and set down the glass
with some force.

“Yes, sir,” he said disgustedly, “darn my fool soul, I stacked the deck on
that girl--and she looked to be real nice. Kinda innocent and trusting,
like she hasn't found out yet how rotten mean men critters can be.” He took
the bottle and poured himself another glass. “She's sure due to wise up a
lot,” he added grimly.

“You bet your sweet life!” Jim agreed, and then he reconsidered. “Still, I
dunno; Man ain't so worse. He ain't what you can call a real booze fighter.
This here's what I'd call an accidental jag; got it in the exuberance of
the joyful moment when he knew his girl was coming. He'll likely straighten
up and be all right. He--” Jim broke off there and looked to see who had
opened the door.

“Hello, Polly,” he greeted carelessly.

The man came forward, grinning skinnily. Polycarp Jenks was the outrageous
name of him. He was under the average height, and he was lean to the point
of emaciation. His mouth was absolutely curveless--a straight gash across
his face; a gash which simply stopped short without any tapering or any
turn at the corners, when it had reached as far as was decent. His nose was
also straight and high, and owned no perceptible slope; indeed, it seemed
merely a pendant attached to his forehead, and its upper termination was
indefinite, except that somewhere between his eyebrows one felt impelled to
consider it forehead rather than nose. His eyes also were rather long and
narrow, like buttonholes cut to match the mouth. When he grinned his face
appeared to break up into splinters.

He was intensely proud of his name, and his pleasure was almost pathetic
when one pronounced it without curtailment in his presence. His skinniness
was also a matter of pride. And when you realize that he was an
indefatigable gossip, and seemed always to be riding at large, gathering or
imparting trivial news, you should know fairly well Polycarp Jenks.

“I see Man Fleetwood's might' near sober enough to git married,” Polycarp
began, coming up to the two and leaning a sharp elbow upon the bar beside
Kent. “By granny, gitting married'd sober anybody! Dinner time he was so
drunk he couldn't find his mouth. I met him up here a little ways just now,
and he was so sober he remembered to pay me that ten I lent him t' other
day--_he-he!_ Open up a bottle of pop, James.

“His girl's been might' near crying her eyes out, 'cause he didn't show
up. Mis' Hawley says she looked like she was due at a funeral 'stid of a
weddin'. 'Clined to be stuck up, accordin' to Mis' Hawley--shied at hearin'
about Walt--_he-he!_ I'll bet there ain't been a transient to that hotel in
the last five year, man or woman, that ain't had to hear about Walt and the
shotgun--Pop's all right on a hot day, you bet!

“She's got two trunks and a fiddle over to the depot--don't see how 'n the
world Man's going to git 'em out to the ranch; they're might' near as big
as claim shacks, both of 'em. Time she gits 'em into Man's shack she'll
have to go outside every time she wants to turn around--_he-he!_ By
granny--two trunks, to one woman! Have some pop, Kenneth, on me.

“The boys are talkin' about a shivaree t'-night. On the quiet, y' know.
Some of 'em's workin' on a horse fiddle now, over in the lumber yard.
Wanted me to play a coal-oil can, but I dunno. I'm gittin' a leetle old for
sech doings. Keeps you up nights too much. Man had any sense, he'd marry
and pull outa town. 'Bout fifteen or twenty in the bunch, and a string of
cans and irons to reach clean across the street. By granny, I'm going to
plug m' ears good with cotton when it comes off--_he-he!_ 'Nother bottle of
pop, James.”

“Who's running the show, Polycarp?” Kent asked, accepting the glass of soda
because he disliked to offend. “Funny I didn't hear about it.”

Polycarp twisted his slit of a mouth knowingly, and closed one slit of an
eye to assist the facial elucidation.

“Ain't funny--not when I tell you Fred De Garmo's handing out the
_in_vites, and he sure aims to have plenty of excitement--_he-he!_
Betcher Manley won't be able to set on the wagon seat an' hold the lines
t'-morrow--not if he comes out when he's called and does the thing
proper--_he-he!_ An' if he don't show up, they aim to jest about pull the
old shebang down over his ears. Hope'll think it's the day of judgment,
sure--_he-he!_ Reckon I might's well git in on the fun--they won't be no
sleepin' within ten mile of the place, nohow, and a feller always sees the
joke better when he's lendin' a hand. Too bad you an' Fred's on the outs,
Kenneth.”

“Oh, I don't know--it suits me fine,” Kent declared easily, setting down
his glass with a sigh of relief; he hated “pop.”

“What's it all about, anyway?” quizzed Polycarp, hungering for the details
which had thus far been denied him. “De Garmo sees red whenever anybody
mentions your name, Kenneth--but I never did hear no particulars.”

“No?” Kent was turning toward the door. “Well, you see, Fred claims he
can holler louder than I can, and I say he can't.” He opened the door and
calmly departed, leaving Polycarp looking exceedingly foolish and a bit
angry.

Straight to the hotel, without any pretense at disguising his destination,
marched Kent. He went into the office--which was really a saloon--invited
Hawley to drink with him, and then wondered audibly if he could beg some
pie from Mrs. Hawley.

“Supper'll be ready in a few minutes,” Hawley informed him, glancing up at
the round, dust-covered clock screwed to the wall.

“I don't want supper--I want pie,” Kent retorted, and opened a door which
led into the hallway. He went down the narrow passage to another door,
opened it without ceremony, and was assailed by the odor of many
things--the odor which spoke plainly of supper, or some other assortment of
food. No one was in sight, so he entered the dining room boldly, stepped to
another door, tapped very lightly upon it, and went in. By this somewhat
roundabout method he invaded the parlor.

Manley Fleetwood was lying upon an extremely uncomfortable couch, of the
kind which is called a sofa. He had a lace-edged handkerchief folded upon
his brow, and upon his face was an expression of conscious unworthiness
which struck Kent as being extremely humorous. He grinned understandingly
and Manley flushed--also understandingly. Valeria hastily released Manley's
hand and looked very prim and a bit haughty, as she regarded the intruder
from the red plush chair, pulled close to the couch.

“Mr. Fleetwood's head is very bad yet,” she informed Kent coldly. “I really
do not think he ought to see--anybody.”

Kent tapped his hat gently against his leg and faced her unflinchingly,
quite unconscious of the fact that she regarded him as a dissolute, drunken
cowboy with whom Manley ought not to associate.

“That's too bad.” His eyes failed to drop guiltily before hers, but
continued to regard her calmly. “I'm only going to stay a minute. I came to
tell you that there's a scheme to raise--to 'shivaree' you two, tonight. I
thought you might want to pull out, along about dark.”

Manley looked up at him inquiringly with the eye which was not covered by
the lace-edged handkerchief. Valeria seemed startled, just at first. Then
she gave Kent a little shock of surprise.

“I have read about such things. A _charivari_, even out here in this
uncivilized section of the country, can hardly be dangerous. I really do
not think we care to run away, thank you.” Her lip curled unmistakably.
“Mr. Fleetwood is suffering from a sick headache. He needs rest--not a
cowardly night ride.”

Naturally Kent admired the spirit she showed, in spite of that eloquent
lip, the scorn of which seemed aimed directly at him. But he still faced
her steadily.

“Sure. But if I had a headache--like that--I'd certainly burn the earth
getting outa town to-night. _Shivarees_”--he stuck stubbornly to his own
way of saying it--“are bad for the head. They aren't what you could call
silent--not out here in this uncivilized section of the country. They're
plumb--” He hesitated for just a fraction of a second, and his resentment
of her tone melted into a twinkle of the eyes. “They've got fifty coal-oil
cans strung with irons on a rope, and there'll be about ninety-five
six-shooters popping, and eight or ten horse-fiddles, and they'll all be
yelling to beat four of a kind. They're going,” he said quite gravely, “to
play the full orchestra. And I don't believe,” he added ironically, “it's
going to help Mr. Fleetwood's head any.”

Valeria looked at him doubtingly with steady, amber-colored eyes before she
turned solicitously to readjust the lace-edged handkerchief. Kent seized
the opportunity to stare fixedly at Fleetwood and jerk his head meaningly
backward, but when, warned by Manley's changing expression, she glanced
suspiciously over her shoulder, Kent was standing quietly by the door with
his hat in his hand, gazing absently at Walt in his gilt-edged frame upon
the gilt easel, and waiting, evidently, for their decision.

“I shall tell them that Mr. Fleetwood is sick--that he has a horrible
headache, and mustn't be disturbed.”

Kent forgot himself so far as to cough slightly behind his hand. Valeria's
eyes sparkled.

“Even out here,” she went on cuttingly, “there must be some men who are
gentlemen!”

Kent refrained from looking at her, but the blood crept darkly into his
tanned cheeks. Evidently she “had it in for him,” but he could not see why.
He wondered swiftly if she blamed him for Manley's condition.

Fleetwood suddenly sat up, spilling the handkerchief to the floor. When
Valeria essayed to push him back he put her hand gently away. He rose and
came over to Kent.

“Is this straight goods?” he demanded. “Why don't you stop it?”

“Fred De Garmo's running this show. My influence wouldn't go as far--”

Fleetwood turned to the girl, and his manner was masterful. “I'm going out
with Kent--oh, Val, this is Mr. Burnett. Kent, Miss Peyson. I forgot you
two aren't acquainted.”

From Valeria's manner, they were in no danger of becoming friends. Her
acknowledgment was barely perceptible. Kent bowed stiffly.

“I'm going to see about this, Val,” continued Fleetwood. “Oh, my head's
better--a lot better, really. Maybe we'd better leave town--”

“If your head is better, I don't see why we need run away from a lot of
silly noise,” Valeria interposed, with merciless logic. “They'll think
we're awful cowards.”

“Well, I'll try and find out--I won't be gone a minute, dear.” After that
word, spoken before another, he appeared to be in great haste, and pushed
Kent rather unceremoniously through the door. In the dining room, Kent
diplomatically included the landlady in the conference, by a gesture of
much mystery bringing her in from the kitchen, where she had been curiously
peeping out at them.

“Got to let her in,” he whispered to Manley, “to keep her face closed.”

They murmured together for five minutes. Kent seemed to meet with some
opposition from Fleetwood--an aftermath of Valeria's objections to
flight--and became brutally direct.

“Go ahead--do as you please,” he said roughly. “But you know that bunch.
You'll have to show up, and you'll have to set 'em up, and--aw, thunder!
By morning you'll be plumb laid out. You'll be headed into one of your
four-day jags, and you know it. I was thinking of the girl--but if you
don't care, I guess it's none of my funeral. Go to it--but darned if I'd
want to start my honeymoon out like that!”

Fleetwood weakened, but still he hesitated. “If I didn't show up--” he
began hopefully. But Kent wittered him with a look.

“That bunch will be two-thirds full before they start out. If you don't
show up, they'll go up and haul you outa bed--hell, Man! You'd likely start
in to kill somebody off. Fred De Garmo don't love you much better than he
loves me. You know what him and his friends would do then, I should think.”
 He stopped, and seemed to consider briefly a plan, but shook his head
over it. “I could round up a bunch and stand 'em off, maybe--but we'd be
shooting each other up, first rattle of the box. It's a whole lot easier
for you to get outa town.”

“I'll tell somebody you got the bridal chamber,” hissed Arline, in a very
loud whisper. “That's number two, in front. I can keep a light going and
pass back 'n' forth once in a while, to look like you're there. That'll
fool 'em good. They'll wait till the light's been out quite a while before
they start in. You go ahead and git married at seven, jest as you was going
to--and if Kent'll have the team ready somewheres, I can easy sneak you out
the back way.”

“I couldn't get the team out of town without giving the whole deal away,”
 Kent objected. “You'll have to go horseback.”.

“Val can't ride,” Fleetwood stated, as if that settled the matter.

“Damn it, she's got to ride!” snapped Kent, losing patience. “Unless you
want to stay and go on a toot that'll last a week, most likely.”

“Val belongs to the W.C.T.U.,” shrugged Fleetwood. “She'd never--”

“Well, it's that or have a fight on your hands you maybe can't handle. I
don't see any sense in haggling about going, now you know what to expect.
But, of course,” he added, with some acrimony, “it's your own business. I
don't know what the dickens I'm getting all worked up over it for. Suit
yourself.” He turned toward the door.

“She could ride my Mollie--and I got a sidesaddle hanging up in the coal
shed. She could use that, or a stock saddle, either one,” planned Mrs.
Hawley anxiously. “You better pull out, Man.”

“Hold on, Kent! Don't rush off--we'll go,” Fleetwood surrendered. “Val
won't like it, but I'll explain as well as I can, without--Say! you stay
and see us married, won't you? It's at seven, and--”

Kent's fingers curled around the doorknob. “No, thanks. Weddings and
funerals are two bunches of trouble I always ride 'way around. Time enough
when you've got to be _it_. Along about nine o'clock you try and get out to
the stockyards without letting the whole town see you go, and I'll have the
horses there; just beyond the wings, by that pile of ties. You know the
place. I'll wait there till ten, and not a minute longer. That'll give you
an hour, and you won't need any more time than that if you get down to
business. You find out from her what saddle she wants, and you can tell me
while I'm eating supper, Mrs. Hawley. I'll 'tend to the rest.” He did not
wait to hear whether they agreed to the plan, but went moodily down the
narrow passage, and entered frowningly the “office.” Several men were
gathered there, waiting the supper summons. Hawley glanced up from wiping a
glass, and grinned.

“Well, did you git the pie?”

“Naw. She said I'd got to wait for mealtime. She plumb chased me out.”

Fred De Garmo, sprawled in an armchair and smoking a cigar, lazily fanned
the smoke cloud from before his face and looked at Kent attentively.




CHAPTER III. A LADY IN A TEMPER

To saddle two horses when the night has grown black and to lead them,
unobserved, so short a distance as two hundred yards or so seems a simple
thing; and for two healthy young people with full use of their wits and
their legs to steal quietly away to where those horses are waiting
would seem quite as simple. At the same time, to prevent the successful
accomplishment of these things is not difficult, if one but fully
understands the designs of the fugitives.

Hawley Hotel did a flourishing business that night. The two long tables in
the dining room, usually not more than half filled by those who hungered
and were not over-nice concerning the food they ate, were twice filled to
overflowing. Mrs. Hawley and the “breed” girl held hasty consultations in
the kitchen over the supply, and never was there such a rattling of dishes
hurriedly cleansed for the next comer.

Kent managed to find a chair at the first table, and eyed the landlady
unobtrusively. But Fred De Garmo sat down opposite, and his eyes were
bright and watchful, so that there seemed no possible way of delivering a
message undetected--until, indeed, Mrs. Hawley in desperation resorted to
strategy, and urged Kent unnecessarily to take another slice of bacon.

“Have some more--it's _side_!” she hissed in his ear, and watched anxiously
his face.

“All right,” said Kent, and speared a slice with his fork, although his
plate was already well supplied with bacon. Then, glancing up, he detected
Fred in a thoughtful stare which seemed evenly divided between the landlady
and himself. Kent was conscious of a passing, mental discomfort, which he
put aside as foolish, because De Garmo could not possibly know what Mrs.
Hawley meant. To ease his mind still further he glared insolently at Fred,
and then at Polycarp Jenks _te-hee_ing a few chairs away. After that he
finished as quickly as possible without exciting remark, and went his way.

He had not, however, been two minutes in the office before De Garmo
entered. From that time on through the whole evening Fred was never far
distant; wherever he went, Kent could not shake him off though De Garmo
never seemed to pay any attention to him, and his presence was always
apparently accidental.

“I reckon I'll have to lick that son of a gun yet,” sighed Kent, when a
glance at the round clock in the hotel office told him that in just twenty
minutes it would strike nine; and not a move made toward getting those
horses saddled and out to the stockyards.

There was much talk of the wedding, which had taken place quietly in the
parlor at the appointed hour, but not a man mentioned a _charivari_. There
were many who wished openly that Fleetwood would come out and be sociable
about it, but not a hint that they intended to take measures to bring him
among them. He had caused a box of cigars to be placed upon the bar of
every saloon in town, where men might help themselves at his expense.
Evidently he had considered that with the cigars his social obligations
were canceled. They smoked the cigars, and, with the same breath, gossiped
of him and his affairs.

At just fourteen minutes to nine Kent went out, and, without any attempt
at concealment, hurried to the Hawley stables. Half a minute behind him
trailed De Garmo, also without subterfuge.

Half an hour later the bridal couple stole away from the rear of the hotel,
and, keeping to the shadows, went stumbling over the uneven ground to the
stockyards.

“Here's the tie pile,” Fleetwood announced, in an undertone, when they
reached the place. “You stay here, Val, and I'll look farther along the
fence; maybe the horses are down there.”

Valeria did not reply, but stood very straight and dignified in the shadow
of the huge pile of rotting railroad ties. He was gone but a moment, and
came anxiously back to her.

“They're not here,” he said, in a low voice. “Don't worry, dear. He'll
come--I know Kent Burnett.”

“Are you sure?” queried Val sweetly. “From what I have seen of the
gentleman, your high estimate of him seems quite unauthorized. Aside from
escorting me to the hotel, he has been anything but reliable. Instead of
telling you that I was here, or telling me that you were sick, he went
straight into a saloon and forgot all about us both. You know that. If he
were your friend, why should he immediately begin carousing, instead of--”

“He didn't,” Fleetwood defended weakly.

“No? Then perhaps you can explain his behavior. Why didn't he tell me you
were sick? Why didn't he tell you I came on that train? Can you tell me
that, Manley?”

Manley, for a very good reason, could not; so he put his arms around her
and tried to coax her into good humor.

“Sweetheart, let's not quarrel so soon--why, we're only two hours married!
I want you to be happy, and if you'll only be brave and--”

“Brave!” Mrs. Fleetwood laughed rather contemptuously, for a bride. “Please
to understand, Manley, that I'm not frightened in the least. It's you and
that horrid cowboy--_I_ don't see why we need run away, like criminals.
Those men don't intend to _murder_ us, do they?” Her mood softened a
little, and she squeezed his arm between her hands. “You dear old silly,
I'm not blaming _you_. With your head in such a state, you can't think
things out properly, and you let that cowboy influence you against your
better judgment. You're afraid I might be annoyed--but, really, Manley,
this silly idea of running away annoys me much more than all the noise
those fellows could possibly make. Indeed, I don't think I would mind--it
would give me a glimpse of the real West; and, perhaps, if they grew
too boisterous, and I spoke to them and asked them not to be quite so
rough--and, really, they only mean it as a sort of welcome, in their crude
way. We could invite some of the nicest in to have cake and coffee--or
maybe we might get some ice cream somewhere--and it might turn out a very
pleasant little affair. I don't mind meeting them, Manley. The worst of
them can't be as bad as that--but, of course, if he's your friend, I
suppose I oughtn't to speak too freely my opinion of him!”

Fleetwood held her closely, patted her cheek absently, and tried to think
of some effective argument.

“They'll be drunk, sweetheart,” he told her, after a silence.

“I don't think so,” she returned firmly. “I have been watching the street
all the evening. I saw any number of men passing back and forth, and I
didn't see one who staggered. And they were all very quiet, considering
their rough ways, which one must expect. Why, Manley, you always wrote
about these Western men being such fine fellows, and so generous and
big-hearted, under their rough exterior. Your letters were full of it--and
how chivalrous they all are toward nice women.”

She laid her head coaxingly against his shoulder. “Let's go back, Manley.
I--_want_ to see a _charivari_, dear. It will be fun. I want to write all
about it to the girls. They'll be perfectly wild with envy.” She struggled
with her conventional upbringing. “And even if some of them are slightly
under the influence--of liquor, we needn't _meet_ them. You needn't
introduce those at all, and I'm sure they will understand.”

“Don't be silly, Val!” Fleetwood did not mean to be rude, but a faint
glimmer of her romantic viewpoint--a viewpoint gained chiefly from current
fiction and the stage--came to him and contrasted rather brutally with the
reality. He did not know how to make her understand, without incriminating
himself. His letters had been rather idealistic, he admitted to himself.
They had been written unthinkingly, because he wanted her to like this big
land; naturally he had not been too baldly truthful in picturing the place
and the people. He had passed lightly over their faults and thrown the
limelight on their virtues; and so he had aided unwittingly the stage and
the fiction she had read, in giving her a false impression.

Offended at his words and his tone, she drew away from him and glanced
wistfully back toward the town, as if she meditated a haughty return to the
hotel. She ended by seating herself upon a projecting tie.

“Oh, very well, my lord,” she retorted, “I shall try and not be silly, but
merely idiotic, as you would have me. You and your friend!” She was very
angry, but she was perfectly well-bred, she hoped. “If I might venture a
word,” she began again ironically, “it seems to me that your friend has
been playing a practical joke upon you. He evidently has no intention of
bringing any fleet steeds to us. No doubt he is at this moment laughing
with his dissolute companions, because we are sitting out here in the dark
like two silly chickens!”

“I think he's coming now,” Manley said rather stiffly. “Of course, I don't
ask you to like him; but he's putting himself to a good deal of trouble for
us, and--”

“Wasted effort, so far as I am concerned,” Valeria put in, with a chirpy
accent which was exasperating, even to a bridegroom very much in love with
his bride.

In the darkness that muffled the land, save where the yellow flare of lamps
in the little town made a misty brightness, came the click of shod hoofs.
Another moment and a man, mounted upon a white horse, loomed indistinct
before them, seeming to take substance from the night. Behind him trailed
another horse, and for the first time in her life Valeria heard the soft,
whispering creak of saddle leather, the faint clank of spur chains, and the
whir of a horse mouthing the “cricket” in his bit. Even in her anger, she
was conscious of an answering tingle of blood, because this was life in
the raw--life such as she had dreamed of in the tight swaddlings of a smug
civilization, and had longed for intensely.

Kent swung down close beside them, his form indistinct but purposeful. “I'm
late, I guess,” he remarked, turning to Fleetwood. “Fred got next, somehow,
and--I was detained.”

“Where is he?” asked Manley, going up and laying a questioning hand upon
the horse, by that means fully recognizing it as Kent's own.

“In the oats box,” said Kent laconically. He turned to the girl. “I
couldn't get the sidesaddle,” he explained apologetically. “I looked where
Mrs. Hawley said it was, but I couldn't find it--and I didn't have much
time. You'll have to ride a stock saddle.”

Valeria drew back a step. “You mean--a man's saddle?” Her voice was
carefully polite.

“Why, yes.” And he added: “The horse is dead gentle--and a sidesaddle's no
good, anyhow. You'll like this better.” He spoke, as was evident, purely
from a man's viewpoint.

That viewpoint Mrs. Fleetwood refused to share. “Oh, I couldn't ride a
man's saddle,” she protested, still politely, and one could imagine how her
lips were pursed. “Indeed, I'm not sure that I care to leave town at all.”
 To her the declaration did not seem unreasonable or abrupt but she felt
that Kent was very much shocked. She saw him turn his head and look back
toward the town, as if he half expected a pursuit.

“I don't reckon the oats box will hold Fred very long,” he observed
meditatively. He added reminiscently to Manley: “I had a deuce of a time
getting the cover down and fastened.”

“I'm very sorry,” said Valeria, with sweet dignity, “that you gave yourself
so much trouble--”

“I'm kinda sorry myself,” Kent agreed mildly, and Valeria blushed hotly,
and was glad he could not see.

“Come, Val--you can ride this saddle, all right. All the girls out here--”

“I did not come West to imitate all the girls. Indeed, I could never think
of such a thing. I couldn't possibly--really, Manley! And, you know, it
does seem so childish of us to run away--”

Kent moved restlessly, and felt to see if the cinch was tight.

Fleetwood took her coaxingly by the arm. “Come, sweetheart, don't be
stubborn. You know--”

“Well, really! If it's a question of obstinacy--You see, I look at the
matter in this way: You believe that you are doing what is best for my
sake; I don't agree with you--and it does seem as if I should be permitted
to judge what I desire.” Then her dignity and her sweet calm went down
before a flash of real, unpolished temper. “You two can take those nasty
horses and ride clear to Dakota, if you want to. I'm going back to the
hotel. And I'm going to tell somebody to let that poor fellow out of that
box. I think you're acting perfectly horrid, both of you, when I don't want
to go!” She actually started back toward the scattered points of light.

She did not, however, get so faraway that she failed to hear Kent's “Well,
I'll be damned!” uttered in a tone of intense disgust.

“I don't care,” she assured herself, because of the thrill of compunction
caused by that one forcible sentence. She had never before in her life
heard a man really swear. It affected her very much as would the accidental
touch of an electric battery. She walked on slowly, stumbling a little and
trying to hear what it was they were saying.

Then Kent passed her, loping back to the town, the led horse shaking his
saddle so that it rattled the stirrups like castanets as he galloped. “I
don't care,” she told herself again very emphatically, because she was
quite sure that she did care--or that she would care if only she permitted
herself to be so foolish. Manley overtook her then, and drew her hand under
his arm to lead her. But he seemed quite sullen, and would not say a word
all the way back.




CHAPTER IV. THE “SHIVAREE”

Kent jerked open the stable door, led in his horses, turned them into their
stalls, and removed the saddles with quick, nervous movements which told
plainly how angry he was.

“I'll get myself all excited trying to do her a favor again--I don't
think!” he growled in the ear of Michael, his gray gelding. “Think of me
getting let down on my face like that! By a woman!”

He felt along the wall in the intense darkness until his fingers touched
a lantern, took it down from the nail where it hung, and lighted it. He
carried it farther down the rude passage between the stalls, hung it high
upon another nail, and turned to the great oats box, from within which came
a vigorous thumping and the sound of muttered cursing.

Kent was not in the mood to see the humor of anything in particular. Had he
known anything about Pandora's box he might have drawn a comparison very
neatly while he stood scowling down at the oats box, for certainly he was
likely to release trouble in plenty when he unfastened that lid. He felt of
the gun swinging at his hip, just to assure himself that it was there
and ready for business in case Fred wanted to shoot, and rapped with his
knuckles upon the box, producing instant silence within.

“Don't make so much noise in there,” he advised grimly, “not unless you
want the whole town to know where you are, and have 'em give you the laugh.
And, listen here: I ain't apologizing for what I done, but, all the same,
I'm sorry I did it. It wasn't any use. I'd rather be shut up in an oats box
all night than get let down like I was--and I'm telling you this so as to
start us off even. If you want to fight about it when you come out, all
right; you're the doctor. But I'm just as sorry as you are it happened.
I lay down my hand right here. I hope you shivaree Man and his wife--and
shivaree 'em good. I hope you bust the town wide open.”

“Why this sudden change of heart?” came muffled from within.

“Ah--that's my own business. Well, I don't like you a little bit, and you
know it; but I'll tell you, just to give you a fair show. I wanted to keep
Man sober, and I tried to get him and his wife out of town before that
shivaree of yours was pulled off. But the lady wouldn't have it that way.
I got let right down on my face, and I'm done. Now you know just where I
stand. Maybe I'm a fool for telling you, but I seem to be in the business
to-night. Come on out.”

He unfastened the big iron hasp, which was showing signs of the strain put
upon it, and stepped back watchfully. The thick, oaken lid was pushed up,
and Fred De Garmo, rather dusty and disheveled and purple from the
close atmosphere of the box and from anger as well, came up like a
jack-in-the-box and glared at Kent. When he had stepped out upon the stable
floor, however, he smiled rather unpleasantly.

[Illustration: He was jeered unmercifully by Fred De Garmo and his crowd]

“If you've told the truth,” he said maliciously, “I guess the lady has
pretty near evened things up. If you haven't--if I don't find them both at
the hotel--well--Anyway,” he added, with an ominous inflection, “there'll
be other days to settle this in!”

“Why, sure. Help yourself, Fred,” Kent retorted cheerfully, and stood where
he was until Fred had gone out. Then he turned and closed the box. “Between
that yellow-eyed dame and the chump that went and left this box wide open
for me to tip Fred into,” he soliloquized, while he took down the lantern,
and so sent the shadows dancing weirdly about him, “I've got a bunch of
trouble mixed up, for fair. I wish the son of a gun would fight it out now,
and be done with it; but no, that ain't Fred. He'd a heap rather wait and
let it draw interest!”

Over in the hotel the “yellow-eyed dame” was doing her unsophisticated best
to meet the situation gracefully, and to realize certain vague and rather
romantic dreams of her life out West. She meant to be very gracious, for
one thing, and to win the chivalrous friendship of every man who came to
participate in the rude congratulations that had been planned. Just how
she meant to do this she did not know--except that the graciousness would
certainly prove a very important factor.

“I'm going to remain downstairs,” she told Manley, when they reached the
hotel. It was the first sentence she had spoken since he overtook her. “I'm
so glad, dear,” she added diplomatically, “that you decided to stay. I want
to see that funny landlady now, please, and get her to serve coffee and
cake to our guests in the parlor. I wish I might have had one of my trunks
brought over here; I should like to wear a pretty gown.” She glanced down
at her tailored suit with true feminine dissatisfaction. “But everything
was so--so confused, with your being late, and sick--is your head better,
dear?”

Manley, in very few words, assured her that it was. Manley was struggling
with his inner self, trying to answer one very important question, and to
answer it truthfully: Could he meet “the boys,” do his part among them, and
still remain sober? That seemed to be the only course open to him now, and
he knew himself just well enough to doubt his own strength. But if Kent
would help him--He felt an immediate necessity to find Kent.

“You'll find Mrs. Hawley somewhere around,” he said hurriedly. “I've got to
see Kent--”

“Oh, Manley! Don't have anything to do with that horrid cowboy! He's
not--nice. He--he swore, when he must have known I could hear him; and he
was swearing about _me_, Manley. Didn't you hear him?” She stood in the
doorway and clung to his arm.

“No,” lied Manley. “You must have been mistaken, sweetheart.”

“Oh, I wasn't; I heard him quite plainly.” She must have thought it a
terrible thing, for she almost whispered the last words, and she released
him with much reluctance. It seemed to her that Manley was in danger of
falling among low associates, and that she must protect him in spite of
himself. It failed to occur to her that Manley had been exposed to that
danger for three years, without any protection whatever.

She was thankful, when he came to her later in the parlor, to learn from
him that he had not held any speech with Kent. That was some comfort--and
she felt that she needed a little comforting, just then. Her consultation
with Arline had been rather unsatisfactory. Arline had told her bluntly
that “the bunch” didn't want any coffee and cake. Whisky and cigars, said
Arline, without so much as a blush, was what appealed to them fellows. If
Manley handed it out liberal enough, they wouldn't bother his bride. Very
likely, Arline had assured her, she wouldn't see one of them. That, on the
whole, had been rather discouraging. How was she to show herself a gracious
lady, forsooth, if no one came near her? But she kept these things
jealously tucked away in the remotest corner of her own mind, and managed
to look the relief she did not feel.

And, after all, the _charivari_, as is apt to be the case when the plans
are laid so carefully, proved a very tame affair. Valeria, sitting rather
dismally in the parlor with Mrs. Hawley for company, at midnight heard a
banging of tin cans somewhere outside, a fitful popping of six-shooters,
and an abortive attempt at a procession coming up the street. But the lines
seemed to waver and then break utterly at the first saloon, where drink was
to be had for the asking and Manley Fleetwood was pledged to pay, and the
rattle of cans was all but drowned in the shouts of laughter and talk which
came from the “office,” across the hall. For where is the pleasure or the
profit in _charivaring_ a bridal couple which stays up and waits quite
openly for the clamor?

“Is it always so noisy here at night?” asked Valeria faintly when Mrs.
Hawley had insisted upon her lying down upon the uncomfortable sofa.

“Well, no--unless a round-up pulls in, or there's a dance, or it's
Christmas, or something. It's liable to keep up till two or three o'clock,
so the sooner you git used to it, the better off you'll be. I'm going to
leave you here, and go to bed--unless you want to go upstairs yourself.
Only it'll be noisier than ever up in your room, for it's right over the
office, and the way sound travels up is something fierce. Don't you be
afraid--I'll lock this door, and if your husband wants to come in he can
come through the dining room.” She looked at Valeria and hesitated before
she spoke the next sentence. “And don't you worry a bit over him, neither.
My old man was in the kitchen a minute ago, when I was out there, and he
says Man ain't drinking a drop to-night. He's keeping as straight as--”

Valeria sat up suddenly, quite scandalized. “Oh--why, of course Manley
wouldn't drink with them! Why--who ever heard of such a thing? The idea!”
 She stared reproachfully at her hostess.

“Oh, sure! I didn't say such a thing was liable to happen. I just thought
you might be--worrying--they're making so much racket in there,” stammered
Arline.

“Indeed, no. I'm not at all worried, thank you. And please don't let me
keep you up any longer, Mrs. Hawley. I am quite comfortable--mentally and
physically, I assure you. Good night.”

Not even Mrs. Hawley could remain after that. She went out and closed the
door carefully behind her, without even finding voice enough to return
Valeria's sweetly modulated good night.

“She's got a whole lot to learn,” she relieved her feelings somewhat by
muttering as she mounted the stairs.

What it cost Manley Fleetwood to abstain absolutely and without even the
compromise of “soft” drinks that night, who can say? Three years of free
living in Montana had lowered his standard of morality without giving him
that rugged strength of mind which makes a man master of himself first of
all. He had that day lain, drunken and sleeping, when he should have been
at his mental and physical best to meet the girl who would marry him. It
was that very defection, perhaps, which kept him sober in the midst of his
taunting fellows. Now that Valeria was actually here, and was his wife, he
was possessed by the desire to make some sacrifice by which he might prove
his penitence. At any cost he would spare her pain and humiliation, he told
himself.

He did it, and he did it under difficulty. He was denied the moral support
of Kent Burnett, for Kent was sulking over his slight, and would have
nothing to say to him. He was jeered unmercifully by Fred De Garmo and his
crowd. He was “baptized” by some drunken reveler, so that the stench of
spilled whisky filled his nostrils and tortured him the night through.
He was urged, he was bullied, he was ridiculed. His head throbbed, his
eyeballs burned. But through it all he stayed among them because he feared
that if he left them and went to Val, some drunken fool might follow him
and shock her with his inebriety. He stayed, and he stayed sober. Val was
his wife. She trusted him, and she was ignorant of his sins. If he went to
her staggering and babbling incoherent foolishness, he knew it would break
her heart.

When the sky was at last showing faint dawn tints and the clamor had worn
itself out perforce--because even the leaders were, after all, but men, and
there was a limit to their endurance--Manley entered the parlor, haggard
enough, it is true, and bearing with him the stale odor of cigars long
since smoked, and of the baptism of bad whisky, but also with the air
of conscious rectitude which sits so comically upon a man unused to the
feeling of virtue.

As is so often the case when one fights alone the good fight and manages to
win, he was chagrined to find himself immediately put upon the defensive.
Val, as she speedily demonstrated, declined to look upon him as a hero, or
as being particularly virtuous. She considered herself rather neglected and
abused. She believed that he had stayed away because he was angry with her
on account of her refusal to leave town, and she thought that was rather
brutal of him. Also, her head ached from tears and lack of sleep, and she
hated the town, the hotel--almost she hated Manley himself.

Manley felt the rebuff of her chilling silence when he came in, and when
she twitched herself loose from his embrace he came near regretting his
extreme virtue. He spent ten minutes trying to explain, without telling all
of the truth, and he felt his good opinion of himself slipping from him
before her inexorable disfavor.

“Well, I don't blame you for not liking the town, Val,” he said at last,
rather desperately. “But you mustn't judge the whole country by it. You'll
like the ranch, dear. You'll feel as if you were in another world--”

“I hope so,” Val interrupted quellingly.

“We'll drive out there just as soon as we have breakfast.” He laid his hand
diffidently upon her tumbled hair. “I _had_ to stay out there with those
fellows. I didn't want to--”

“I don't want any breakfast,” said Val, getting up and going over to the
window--it would seem to avoid his caress. “The odor of that dining room is
enough to make one fast forever.” She lifted the grimy lace curtain with
her finger tips and looked disconsolately out upon the street. “It's just a
dirty, squalid little hamlet. I don't suppose the streets have been
cleaned or the garbage removed from the back yards since the place was
first--founded.” She laughed shortly at the idea of “founding” a wretched
village like that, but she had no other word at hand.

“_Arline_,” she remarked, in a tone of drawling recklessness. “Arline
swears. Did you know it? I suppose, of course, you do. She said something
that struck me as being shockingly true. She said I'm 'sure having a hell
of a honeymoon.'” Then she bit her lips hard, because her eyelids were
stinging with the tears she refused to shed in his presence.

“Oh, Val!” From the sofa Manley stared contritely at her back. She must
feel terrible, he thought, to bring herself to repeat that sentence--Val,
so icily pure in her thoughts and her speech.

Val was blinking her tawny eyes--like the eyes of a lion in color--at the
street. Not for the world would she let him see that she wanted to cry! A
figure, blurred to indistinctness, appealed in a doorway nearly opposite,
stood for a moment looking up at the reddened sky, and came across the
street. As the tears were beaten back she saw and recognized him, with a
curl of the lip.

“Here comes your cowboy friend--from a saloon, of course.” Her voice
was lazily contemptuous. “Only his presence in the street was needed to
complete the picture of desolation. He has been in a fight, judging from
his face. It is all bruised and skinned, and one eye is swollen--ugh! My
guide, my adviser--is it possible, Manley, that you couldn't find a _nice_
man to meet me at the train?” She turned from the disagreeable sight of
Kent and faced her husband. “Are all the men like that? And are all the
women like--Arline?”

Manley looked at her dumbly from the sofa. Would Val ever come to
understand the place, and the people, he was wondering.

She laughed suddenly. “I'm beginning to feel very sorry for Walt,” she said
irrelevantly, pointing to the easel and the expressionless crayon portrait
staring out from the gilt frame. “He has to stay in this room always. And
I believe another two hours would drive me hopelessly insane.” The word
caught her attention. “Hope!” she laughed ironically. “What imbecile ever
thought of hope in the same breath with this place? What they really ought
to do is paint that 'Abandon-hope' admonition across the whole front of the
depot!”

Manley, because he had lifted his head too suddenly and so sent white-hot
irons of pain clashing through his brain, turned sullen. “If you hate it as
bad as all that,” he said, “why, there'll be a train for the East in about
two hours.”

Val stiffened perceptibly, though the petulance in her face changed to
something wistful. “Do you mean--do you want me to go?” she asked very
calmly.

Manley pressed his fingers hard against his temples. “You know I don't. I
want you to stay and like the country, and be happy. But--the way you have
been talking makes it seem--a-ah!” He dropped his tortured head upon his
hands and did not trouble to finish what he had intended to say. Nervous
strain, lack of sleep, and a headache to begin with, were taking heavy toll
of him. He could not argue with her; he could not do anything except wish
he were dead, or that his head would stop aching.

Val took one of her unexpected changes of mood. She went up and laid her
cold fingers lightly upon his temples, where she could see the blood
beating savagely in the swollen veins. “What a little beast I am!” she
murmured contritely. “Shall I get you some coffee, dear? Or some headache
tablets, or--You know a cold cloth helped you last evening. Lie down for a
little while. There's no hurry about starting, is there? I--I don't hate
the place so awfully, Manley. I'm just cross because I couldn't sleep for
the noise. Here's a cushion, dear. I think it's stuffed with scrap iron,
for there doesn't seem to be anything soft about it except the invitation
to 'slumber sweetly,' in red and green silk; but anything is better than
the head of that sofa in its natural state.”

She arranged the cushion to her own liking, if not to his, and when it
was done she bent down impulsively and kissed him on the cheek, blushing
vividly the while.

“I won't be nasty and cross any more,” she promised. “Now, I'm going to
interview Arline. I hear dishes rattling somewhere; perhaps I can get a cup
of real coffee for you.” At the door she shook her finger at him playfully.
“Don't you dare stir off that sofa while I'm gone,” she admonished. “And,
remember, we're not going to leave town until your head stops aching--not
if we stay here a week!”

She insisted upon bringing him coffee and toast upon a tray--a battered old
tray, purloined for that purpose from the saloon, if she had only known
it--and she informed him, with a pretty, domestic pride, that she had made
the toast herself.

“Arline was going to lay slices of bread on top of the stove,” she
explained. “She said she always makes toast that way, and no one could tell
the difference! I never heard of such a thing--did you, Manley? But I've
been attending a cooking school ever since you left Fern Hill. I didn't
tell you--I wanted it for a surprise. I could have done better with the
toast before a wood fire--I think poor Arline was nearly distracted at the
way I poked coals down from the grate; but she didn't say anything. Isn't
it funny, to have cream in cans! I don't suppose it ever saw a cow--do you?
The coffee's pretty bad, isn't it? But wait until we get home! I can make
lovely coffee--if you'll get me a percolator. You will, won't you? And I
learned now to make the most delicious fruit salad, just before I left. A
cousin of Mrs. Forman's taught me how. Could you drink another cup, dear?”

Manley could not, and she deplored the poor quality, although she
generously absolved Arline from blame, because there seemed so much to do
in that kitchen. She refused to take any breakfast herself, telling him
gayly that the odor in the kitchen was both food and drink.

Because he understood a little of her loathing for the place, Manley lied
heroically about his headache, so that within an hour they were leaving
town, with the two great trunks roped securely to the buckboard behind the
seat, and with Val's suitcase placed flat in the front, where she could
rest her feet upon it. Val was so happy at the prospect of getting away
from the town that she actually threw a kiss in the direction of Arline,
standing with her frowsy head, her dough-spotted apron, and her tired face
in the parlor door.

Her mood changed immediately, however, for she had no more than turned from
waving her hand at Arline, when they met Kent, riding slowly up the street
with his hat tilted over the eye most swollen. Without a doubt he had seen
her waving and smiling, and so he must have observed the instant cooling of
her manner. He nodded to Manley and lifted his hat while he looked at her
full; and Val, in the arrogant pride of virtuous young womanhood, let her
golden-brown eyes dwell impersonally upon his face; let her white, round
chin dip half an inch downward, and then looked past him as if he were a
post by the roadside. Afterwards she smiled maliciously when she saw, with
a swift, sidelong glance, how he scowled and spurred unnecessarily his gray
gelding.




CHAPTER V. COLD SPRING RANCH

For almost three years the letters from Manley had been headed “Cold
Spring Ranch.” For quite as long Val had possessed a mental picture of the
place--a picture of a gurgly little brook with rocks and watercress and
distracting little pools the size of a bathtub, and with a great, frowning
boulder--a cliff, almost--at the head. The brook bubbled out and formed
a basin in the shadow of the rock. Around it grew trees, unnamed in the
picture, it is true, but trees, nevertheless. Below the spring stood a
picturesque little cottage. A shack, Manley had written, was but a synonym
for a small cottage, and Val had many small cottages in mind, from which
she sketched one into her picture. The sun shone on it, and the western
breezes flapped white curtains in the windows, and there was a porch where
she would swing her hammock and gaze out over the great, beautiful country,
fascinating in its very immensity.

Somewhere beyond the cottage--“shack,” she usually corrected herself--were
the corrals; they were as yet rather impressionistic; high, round,
mysterious inclosures forming an effective, if somewhat hazy, background to
the picture. She left them to work out their attractive details upon closer
acquaintance, for at most they were merely the background. The front yard,
however, she dwelt upon, and made aglow with sturdy, bright-hued flowers.
Manley had that spring planted sweet peas, and poppies, and pansies, and
other things, he wrote her, and they had come up very nicely. Afterward,
in a postscript, he answered her oft-repeated questions about the flower
garden:

The flowers aren't doing as well as they might. They need your tender care.
I don't have much time to pet them along. The onions are doing pretty well,
but they need weeding badly.

In spite of that, the flowers bloomed luxuriantly in her mental picture,
though she conscientiously remembered that they weren't doing as well as
they might. They were weedy and unkempt, she supposed, but a little time
and care would remedy that; and was she not coming to be the mistress of
all this, and to make everything beautiful? Besides, the spring, and the
brook which ran from it, and the trees which shaded it, were the chief
attractions.

Perhaps she betrayed a lack of domesticity because she had not been able
to “see” the interior of the cottage--“shack”--very clearly. Sunny rooms,
white curtains, bright cushions and books, pictures and rugs mingled
together rather confusingly in her mind when she dwelt upon the inside of
her future home. It would be bright, and cozy, and “homy,” she knew. She
would love it because it would be hers and Manley's, and she could do with
it what she would. She bothered about that no more than she did about the
dresses she would be wearing next year.

Cold Spring Ranch! Think of the allurement of that name, just as it
stands, without any disconcerting qualification whatever! Any girl with
yellow-brown hair and yellow-brown eyes to match, and a dreamy temperament
that beautifies everything her imagination touches, would be sure to build
a veritable Eve's garden around those three small words.

With that picture still before her mental vision, clear as if she had all
her life been familiar with it in reality, she rode beside Manley for three
weary hours, across a wide, wide prairie which looked perfectly level when
you viewed it as a whole, but which proved all hills and hollows when
you drove over it. During those three hours they passed not one human
habitation after the first five miles were behind them. There had been a
ranch, back there against a reddish-yellow bluff. Val had gazed upon it,
and then turned her head away, distressed because human beings could
consent to live in such unattractive surroundings. It was bad in its way as
Hope, she thought, but did not say, because Manley was talking about his
cattle, and she did not want to interrupt him.

After that there had been no houses of any sort. There was a barbed-wire
fence stretching away and away until the posts were mere pencil lines
against the blue, where the fence dipped over the last hill before the sky
bent down and kissed the earth.

The length of that fence was appalling in a vague, wordless way, Val
unconsciously drew closer to her husband when she looked at it, and
shivered in spite of the midsummer heat.

“You're getting tired.” Manley put his arm around her and held her there.

“We're over half-way now. A little longer and we'll be home.” Then he
bethought him that she might want some preparation for that home-coming.
“You mustn't expect much, little wife. It's a bachelor's house, so far.
You'll have to do some fixing before it will suit you. You don't look
forward to anything like Fern Hill, do you?”

Val laughed, and bent solicitously over the suitcase, which her feet had
marred. “Of course I don't. Nothing out here is like Fern Hill. I know our
ranch is different from anything I ever knew--but I know just how it will
be, and how everything will look.”

“Oh! Do you?” Manley looked at her a bit anxiously.

“For three years,” Val reminded him, “you have been describing things
to me. You told me what it was like when you first took the place. You
described everything, from Cold Spring Coulee to the house you built, and
the spring under the rock wall, and even the meadow lark's nest you found
in the weeds. Of _course_ I know.”

“It's going to seem pretty rough, at first,” he observed rather
apologetically.

“Yes--but I shall not mind that. I want it to be rough. I'm tired to death
of the smug smoothness of my life so far. Oh, if you only knew how I have
hated Fern Hill, these last three years, especially since I graduated. Just
the same petty little lives lived in the same petty little way, day in and
day out. Every Sunday the class in Sunday school, and the bells ringing
and the same little walk of four blocks there and back. Every Tuesday and
Friday the club meeting--the Merry Maids, and the Mascot, both just alike,
where you did the same things. And the same round of calls with mamma,
on the same people, twice a month the year round. And the little social
festivities--ah, Manley, if you only knew how I tong for something rough
and real in my life!” It was very nearly what she said to the tired-faced
teacher on the train.

“Well, if that's what you want, you've come to the right place,” he told
her dryly.

Later, when they drew close to a red coulee rim which he said was the far
side of Cold Spring Coulee, she forgot how tired she was, and felt every
nerve quiver with eagerness.

Later still, when in the glare of a July sun they drove around a low knoll,
dipped into a wide, parched coulee, and then came upon a barren little
habitation inclosed in a meager fence of the barbed wire she thought so
detestable, she shut her eyes mentally to something she could not quite
bring herself to face.

He lifted her out and tumbled the great trunks upon the ground before he
drove on to the corrals. “Here's the key,” he said, “if you want to go in.
I won't be more than a minute or two.” He did not look into her face when
he spoke.

Val stood just inside the gate and tried to adjust all this to her mental
picture. There was the front yard, for instance. A few straggling vines
against the porch, and a sickly cluster or two of blossoms--those were the
sweet peas, surely. The sun-baked bed of pale-green plants without so much
as a bud of promise, she recognized, after a second glance, as the poppies.
For the rest, there were weeds against the fence, sun-ripened grass trodden
flat, yellow, gravelly patches where nothing grew--and a glaring, burning
sun beating down upon it all.

The cottage--never afterward did she think of it by that name, but always
as a shack--was built of boards placed perpendicularly, with battens nailed
over the cracks to keep out the wind and the snow. At one side was a
“lean-to” kitchen, and on the other side was the porch that was just
a narrow platform with a roof over it. It was not wide enough for a
rocking-chair, to say nothing of swinging a hammock. In the first hasty
inspection this seemed to be about all. She was still hesitating before the
door when Manley came back from putting up the horses.

“I'm afraid your flowers are a lost cause,” he remarked cheerfully. “They
were looking pretty good two or three weeks ago. This hot weather has dried
them up. Next year we'll have water down here to the house. All these
things take time.”

“Oh, of course they do.” Val managed to smile into his eyes. “Let's see how
many dishes you left dirty; bachelors always leave their dishes unwashed on
the table, don't they?”

“Sometimes--but I generally wash mine.” He led the way into the house,
which smelled hot and close, with the odor of food long since cooked
and eaten, before he threw all the windows open. The front room was
clean--after a man's idea of cleanliness. The floor was covered with an
exceedingly dusty carpet, and a rug or two. Her latest photograph was
nailed to the wall; and when Val saw it she broke into hysterical laughter.

“You've nailed your colors to the mast,” she cried, and after that it was
all a joke. The home-made couch, with the calico cushions and the cowhide
spread, was a matter for mirth. She sat down upon it to try it, and was
informed that chicken wire makes a fine spring. The rickety table, with
tobacco, magazines, and books placed upon it in orderly piles, was
something to smile over. The chairs, and especially the one cane rocker
which went sidewise over the floor if you rocked in it long enough, were
pronounced original.

In the kitchen the same masculine idea of cleanliness and order obtained.
The stove was quite red, but it had been swept clean. The table was pushed
against the only window there, and the back part was filled with glass
preserve jars, cans, and a loaf of bread wrapped carefully in paper; but
the oilcloth cover was clean--did it not show quite plainly the marks of
the last washing? Two frying pans were turned bottom up on an obscure table
in an obscure corner of the room, and a zinc water pail stood beside them.

There were other details which impressed themselves upon her shrinking
brain, and though she still insisted upon smiling at everything, she stood
in the middle of the room holding up her skirts quite unconsciously, as if
she were standing at a muddy street crossing, wondering how in the world
she was ever going to reach the Other side.

“Isn't it all--deliciously--primitive?” she asked, in a weak little voice,
when the smile would stay no longer. “I--love it, dear.” That was a lie;
more, she was not in the habit of fibbing for the sake of politeness or
anything else, so that the words stood for a good deal.

Manley looked into the zinc water pail, took it up, and started for an
outer door, rattling the tin dipper as he went. “Want to go up to the
spring?” he queried, over his shoulder, “Water's the first thing--I'm
horribly thirsty.”

Val turned to follow him. “Oh, yes--the spring!” She stopped, however, as
soon as she had spoken. “No, dear. There'll be plenty of other times. I'll
stay here.”

He gave her a glance bright with love and blind happiness in her presence
there, and went off whistling and rattling the pail at his side.

Val did not even watch him go. She stood still in the kitchen and looked at
the table, and at the stove, and at the upturned frying pans. She watched
two great horseflies buzzing against a window-pane, and when she could
endure that no longer, she went into the front room and stared vacantly
around at the bare walls. When she saw her picture again, nailed
fast beside the kitchen door, her face lost a little of its frozen
blankness--enough so that her lips quivered until she bit them into
steadiness.

She went then to the door and stood looking dully out into the parched
yard, and at the wizened little pea vines clutching feebly at their
white-twine trellis. Beyond stretched the bare hills with the wavering
brown line running down the nearest one--the line that she knew was the
trail from town. She was guilty of just one rebellious sentence before she
struggled back to optimism.

“I said I wanted it to be rough, but I didn't mean--why, this is just
squalid!” She looked down the coulee and glimpsed the river flowing calmly
past the mouth of it, a majestic blue belt fringed sparsely with green.
It must be a mile away, but it relieved wonderfully the monotony of brown
hills, and the vivid coloring brightened her eyes. She heard Manley enter
the kitchen, set down the pail of water, and come on to where she stood.

“I'd forgotten you said we could see the river from here,” she told him,
smiling over her shoulder. “It's beautiful, isn't it? I don't suppose,
though, there's a boat within millions of miles.”

“Oh, there's a boat down there. It leaks, though. I just use it for ducks,
close to shore. Admiring our view? Great, don't you think?”

Val clasped her hands before her and let her gaze travel again over the
sweep of rugged hills. “It's--wonderful. I thought I knew, but I see I
didn't. I feel very small, Manley; does one ever grow up to it?”

He seemed dimly to catch the note of utter desolation. “You'll get used to
all that,” he assured her. “I thought I'd reached the jumping-off place, at
first. But now--you couldn't dog me outa the country.”

He was slipping into the vernacular, and Val noticed it, and wondered dully
if she would ever do likewise. She had not yet admitted to herself that
Manley was different. She had told herself many times that it would take
weeks to wipe out the strangeness born of three years' separation. He was
the same, of course; everything else was new and--different. That was all.
He seemed intensely practical, and he seemed to feel that his love-making
had all been done by letter, and that nothing now remained save the
business of living. So, when he told her to rest, and that he would get
dinner and show her how a bachelor kept house, she let him go with no reply
save that vague, impersonal smile which Kent had encountered at the depot.

While he rattled things about in the kitchen, she stood still in the
doorway with her fingers doubled into tight little fists, and stared out
over the great, treeless, unpeopled land which had swallowed her alive. She
tried to think--and then, in another moment, she was trying not to think.

Glancing quickly over her shoulder, to make sure Manley was too busy to
follow her, she went off the porch and stood uncertain in the parched
inclosure which was the front yard.

“I may as well see it all, and be done,” she whispered, and went stealthily
around the corner of the house, holding up her skirts as she had done in
the kitchen. There was a dim path beaten in the wiry grass--a path which
started at the kitchen door and wound away up the coulee. She followed it.
Undoubtedly it would lead her to the spring; beyond that she refused to let
her thoughts travel.

In five minutes--for she went slowly--she stopped beside a stock-trampled
pool of water and yellow mud. A few steps farther on, a barrel had been
sunk in the ground at the base of a huge gray rock; a barrel which filled
slowly and spilled the overflow into the mud. There was also a trough, and
there was a barrier made of poles and barbed wire to keep the cattle from
the barrel. One crawled between two wires, it would seem, to dip up water
for the house. There were no trees--not real trees. There were some
chokecherry bushes higher than her head, and there were other bushes that
did not look particularly enlivening.

With a smile of bitter amusement, she tucked her skirts tightly around her,
crept through the fence, and filled a chipped granite cup which stood upon
a rock ledge, and drank slowly. Then she laughed aloud.

“The water really _is_ cold,” she said. “Anywhere else it would be
delicious. And that's a spring, I suppose.” Mercilessly she was stripping
her mind of her illusions, and was clothing it in the harsher weave of
reality. “All these hills are Manley's--our ranch.” She took another sip
and set down the cup. “And so Cold Spring Ranch means--all this.”

Down the coulee she heard Manley call. She stood still, pushing back a
fallen lock of fine, yellow hair. She turned toward the sound, and the sun
in her eyes turned them yellow as the hair above them. She was beautiful,
in an odd, white-and-gold way. If her eyes had been blue, or gray--or even
brown--she would have been merely pretty; but as they were, that amber tint
where one looked for something else struck one unexpectedly and made her
whole face unforgettably lovely. However, the color of her eyes and her
hair did not interest her then, or make life any easier. She was quite
ordinarily miserable and homesick, as she went reluctantly back along the
grassy trails The odor of fried bacon came up to her, and she hated bacon.
She hated everything.

“I've been to the spring,” she called out, resolutely cheerful, as soon as
she came in sight of Manley, waiting in the kitchen door; she ran toward
him lightly. “However does the water keep so deliciously cool through this
hot weather? I don't wonder you call this Cold Spring Ranch.”

Manley straightened proudly. “I'm glad you like it; I was afraid you might
not, just at first. But you're the right stuff--I might have known it. Not
every woman could come out here and appreciate this country right at the
start.”

Val stopped at the steps, panting a little from her run, and smiled
unflinchingly up into his face.




CHAPTER VI. MANLEY'S FIRE GUARD

Hot sunlight, winds as hot, a shimmering heat which distorted objects at a
distance and made the sky line a dazzling, wavering ribbon of faded blue;
and then the dull haze of smoke which hung over the land, and, without
tempering the heat, turned the sun into a huge coppery balloon, which
drifted imperceptibly from the east to the west, and at evening time
settled softly down upon a parched hilltop and disappeared, leaving behind
it an ominous red glow as of hidden fires.

When the wind blew, the touch of it seared the face, as the smoke tang
assailed the nostrils. All the world was a weird, unnatural tint, hard to
name, never to be forgotten. The far horizons drew steadily closer as the
days passed slowly and thickened the veil of smoke. The distant mountains
drew daily back into dimmer distance; became an obscure, formless blot
against the sky, and vanished completely. The horizon crouched then upon
the bluffs across the river, moved up to the line of trees along its banks,
blotted them out one day, and impudently established itself half-way up the
coulee.

Time ceased to be measured accurately; events moved slowly in an unreal
world of sultry heat and smoke and a red sun wading heavily through the
copper-brown sky from the east to the west, and a moon as red which
followed meekly after.

Men rode uneasily here and there, and when they met they talked of prairie
fires and of fire guards and the direction of the wind, and of the faint
prospect of rain. Cattle, driven from their accustomed feeding grounds,
wandered aimlessly over the still-unburned range, and lowed often in the
night as they drifted before the flame-heated wind.

Fifteen miles to the east of Cold Spring Coulee, the Wishbone outfit
watched uneasily the deepening haze. Kent and Bob Royden were put to riding
the range from the river north and west, and Polycarp Jenks, who had taken
a claim where were good water and some shelter, and who never seemed to
be there for more than a few hours at a time, because of his boundless
curiosity, wandered about on his great, raw-boned sorrel with the white
legs, and seemed always to have the latest fire news on the tip of his
tongue, and always eager to impart it to somebody.

To the northwest there was the Double Diamond, also sleeping with both eyes
open, so to speak. They also had two men out watching the range, though
the fires were said to be all across the river. But there was the railroad
seaming the country straight through the grassland, and though the company
was prompt at plowing fire guards, contract work would always bear
watching, said the stockmen, and with the high winds that prevailed there
was no telling what might happen.

So Fred De Garmo and Bill Madison patrolled the country in rather desultory
fashion, if the truth be known. They liked best to ride to the north and
east--which, while following faithfully the railroad and the danger line,
would bring them eventually to Hope, where they never failed to stop as
long as they dared. For, although they never analyzed their feelings, they
knew that as long as they kept their jobs and their pay was forthcoming, a
few miles of blackened range concerned them personally not at all.
Still, barring a fondness for the trail which led to town, they were not
unfaithful to their trust.

One day Kent and Polycarp met on the brink of a deep coulee, and, as is the
way of men who ride the dim trails, they stopped to talk a bit.

Polycarp, cracking his face across the middle with his habitual grin,
straightened his right leg to its full length, slid his hand with
difficulty into his pocket, brought up a dirty fragment of “plug” tobacco,
looked it over inquiringly, and pried off the corner with his teeth. When
he had rolled it comfortably into his cheek and had straightened his leg
and replaced the tobacco in his pocket, he was “all set” and ready for
conversation.

Kent had taken the opportunity to roll a cigarette, though smoking on the
range was a weakness to be indulged in with much care. He pinched out the
blaze of his match, as usual, and then spat upon it for added safety before
throwing it away.

“If this heat doesn't let up,” he remarked, “the grass is going to blaze up
from sunburn.”

“It won't need to, if you ask me. I wouldn't be su'prised to see this hull
range afire any time. Between you an' me, Kenneth, them Double Diamond
fellers ain't watching it as close as they might. I was away over Dry Creek
way yesterday, and I seen where there was two different fires got through
the company's guards, and kited off across the country. It jest _happened_
that the grass give out in that red day soil, and starved 'em both out.
They wa'n't _put_ out. I looked close all around, and there wasn't nary a
track of man or horse. That's their business--ridin' line on the railroad.
The section men's been workin' off down the other way, where a culvert got
scorched up pretty bad. By granny, Fred 'n' Bill Madison spend might' nigh
all their time ridin' the trail to town. They're might' p'ticular about
watchin' the railroad between the switches--_he-he!_”

“That's something for the Double Diamond to worry over,” Kent rebuffed. He
hated that sort of gossip which must speak ill of somebody. “Our winter
range lays mostly south and east; we could stop a fire between here and the
Double Diamond, even if they let one get past 'em.”

Polycarp regarded him cunningly with his little, slitlike eyes. “Mebbe you
could,” he said doubtfully. “And then again, mebbe you couldn't. Oncet
it got past Cold Spring--” He shook his wizened head slowly, leaned, and
expectorated gravely.

“Man Fleetwood's keeping tab pretty close over that way.”

Polycarp gave a grunt that was half a chuckle. “Man Fleetwood's keeping tab
on what runs down his gullet,” he corrected. “I seen him an' his wife out
burnin' guards t' other day--over on his west line--and, by granny, it
wouldn't stop nothing! A toad could jump it--_he-he!_” He sent another
stream of tobacco juice afar, with the grave air as before.

“And I told him so. 'Man,' I says, 'what you think you're doing?'

“'Buildin' a fire guard,' he says. 'My wife, Mr. Jenks.'

“'Polycarp Jenks is my cognomen,' I says. 'And I don't want no misterin'
in mine. Polycarp's good enough for me,' I says, and I took off my hat and
bowed to 'is wife. Funny kinda eyes, she's got--ever take notice? Yeller,
by granny! first time I ever seen yeller eyes in a human's face. Mebbe it
was the sun in 'em, but they sure was yeller. I dunno as they hurt her
looks none, either. Kinda queer lookin', but when you git used to 'em you
kinda like 'em.

“'N' I says: 'Tain't half wide enough, nor a third'--spoke right up to 'im!
I was thinkin' of the hull blamed country, and I didn't care how he took
it. 'Any good, able-bodied wind'll jump a fire across that guard so quick
it won't reelize there was any there,' I says.

“Man didn't like it none too well, either. He says to me: 'That guard'll
stop any fire I ever saw,' and I got right back at him--_he-he!_ 'Man,' I
says, 'you ain't never saw a prairie fire'--just like that. 'You wait,' I
says, 'till the real thing comes along. We ain't had any fires since you
come into the country,' I says, 'and you don't know what they're like. Now,
you take my advice and plow another four or five furrows--and plow 'em out,
seventy-five or a hundred feet from here,' I says, 'an' make sure you
git all the grass burned off between--and do it on a still day,' I says.
'You'll burn up the hull country if you keep on this here way you're
doing,' I told him--straight out, just like that. 'And when you do it,' I
says, 'you better let somebody know, so's they can come an' help,' I says.
''Tain't any job a man oughta tackle alone,' I says to him. 'Git help, Man,
git help.'

“Well, by granny--_he-he!_ Man's wife brustled up at me like a--a--” He
searched his brain for a simile, and failed to find one. “'I have been
helping Manley, Mr. Polycarp Jenks,' she says to me, 'and I flatter myself
I have done as well as any _man_ could do.' And, by granny! the way them
yeller eyes of hern blazed at me--_he-he!_ I had to laugh, jest to look
at her. Dressed jest like a city girl, by granny! with ruffles on her
skirts--to ketch afire if she wasn't mighty keerful!--and a big straw hat
tied down with a veil, and kid gloves on her hands, and her yeller
hair kinda fallin' around her face--and them yeller eyes snappin' like
flames--by granny! if she didn't make as purty a picture as I ever want
to set eyes on! Slim and straight, jest like a storybook woman--_he-he!_
'Course, she was all smoke an' dirt; a big flake of burned grass was on her
hair, I took notice, and them ruffles was black up to her knees--_he-he!_
And she had a big smut on her cheek--but she was right there with her stack
of blues, by granny! Settin' into the game like a--a--” He leaned and
spat “But burnin' guards ain't no work for a woman to do, an' I told Man
so--straight out. 'You git help,' I says. 'I see you're might' near through
with this here strip,' I says, 'an' I'm in a hurry, or I'd stay, right
now.' And, by granny! if that there wife of Man's didn't up an' hit me
another biff--_he-he!_

“'Thank you very much,' she says to me, like ice water. 'When we need
your help, we'll be sure to let you know--but at present,' she says, 'we
couldn't think of troubling you.' And then, by granny! she turns right
around and smiles up at me--_he-he!_ Made me feel like somebody'd tickled
m' ear with a spear of hay when I was asleep, by granny! Never felt
anything like it--not jest with somebody smilin' at me.

“'Polycarp Jenks,' she says to me, 'we do appreciate what you've told us,
and I believe you're right,' she says. 'But don't insiniwate I'm not as
good a fighter as any man who ever breathed,' she says. 'Manley has another
of his headaches to-day--going to town always gives him a sick headache,'
she says, 'and I've done nearly all of this my own, lone self,' she says.
'And I'm horribly proud of it, and I'll never forgive you for saying I--'
And then, by granny! if she didn't begin to blink them eyes, and I felt
like a--a--” He put the usual period to his hesitation.

“Between you an' _me_, Kenneth,” he added, looking at Kent slyly, “she
ain't having none too easy a time. Man's gone back to drinkin'--I knowed
all the time he wouldn't stay braced up very long--lasted about six weeks,
from all I c'n hear. Mebbe she reely thinks it's jest headaches ails him
when he comes back from town--I dunno. You can't never tell what idees a
woman's got tacked away under her hair--from all I c'n gether. I don't
p'tend to know nothing about 'em--don't want to know--_he-he!_ But I
guess,” he hinted cunningly, “I know as much about 'em as you do--hey,
Kenneth? You don't seem to chase after 'em none, yourself--_he-he!_”

“Whereabouts did Man run his guards?” asked Kent, passing over the
invitation to personal confessions.

Polycarp gave a grunt of disdain. “Just on the west rim of his coulee.
About forty rod of six-foot guard, and slanted so it'll shoot a fire right
into high grass at the head of the coulee and send it kitin' over this way.
That's supposin' it turns a fire, which it won't. Six feet--a fall like
this here! Why, I never see grass so thick on this range--did you?”

“I wonder, did he burn that extra guard?” Kent was keeping himself rigidly
to the subject of real importance.

“No, by granny! he didn't--not unless he done it since yest'day. He went
to town for suthin, and he might' nigh forgot to go home--_he-he!_ He was
there yest'day about three o'clock, an' I says to him--”

“Well, so-long; I got to, be moving.” Kent gathered up the reins and went
his way, leaving Polycarp just in the act of drawing his “plug” from his
pocket, by his usual laborious method, in mental preparation for another
half hour of talk.

“If you're ridin' over that way, Kenneth, you better take a look at Man's
guard,” he called after him. “A good mile of guard, along there, would
help a lot if a fire got started beyond. The way he fixed it, it ain't no
account at all.”

Kent proved by a gesture that he heard him, and rode on without turning to
look back. Already his form was blurred as Polycarp gazed after him, and
in another minute or two he was blotted out completely by the smoke veil,
though he rode upon the level. Polycarp watched him craftily, though there
was no need, until he was completely hidden, then he went on, ruminating
upon the faults of his acquaintances.

Kent had no intention of riding over to Cold Spring. He had not been there
since Manley's marriage, though he had been a frequent visitor before, and
unless necessity drove him there, it would be long before he faced again
the antagonism of Mrs. Fleetwood. Still, he was mentally uncomfortable, and
he felt much resentment against Polycarp Jenks because he had caused that
discomfort. What was it to him, if Manley had gone bock to drinking? He
asked the question more than once, and he answered always that it was
nothing to him, of course. Still, he wished futilely that he had not been
quite so eager to cover up Manley's weakness and deceive the girl. He ought
to have given her a chance--

A cinder like a huge black snowflake struck him suddenly upon the cheek. He
looked up, startled, and tried to see farther into the haze which closed
him round. It seemed to him, now that his mind was turned from his musings,
that the smoke was thicker, the smell of burning grass stronger, and the
breath of wind hotter upon his face. He turned, looked away to the west,
fancied there a tumbled blackness new to his sight, and put his horse to a
run. If there were fire close, then every second counted; and as he raced
over the uneven prairie he fumbled with the saddle string that held a
sodden sack tied fast to the saddle, that he might lose no time.

The cinders grew thicker, until the air was filled with them, like a
snowstorm done in India ink. A little farther and he heard a faint
crackling; topped a ridge and saw not far ahead, a dancing, yellow line.
His horse was breathing heavily with the pace he was keeping, but Kent,
swinging away from the onrush of flame and heat, spurred him to a greater
speed. They neared the end of the crackling, red line, and as Kent swung in
behind it upon the burned ground, he saw several men beating steadily at
the flames.

He was hardly at work when Polycarp came running up and took his place
beside him; but beyond that Kent paid no attention to the others, though he
heard and recognized the voice of Fred De Garmo calling out to some one.
The smoke which rolled up in uneven volumes as the wind lifted it and bore
it away, or let it suck backward as it veered for an instant, blinded him
while he fought. He heard other men gallop up, and after a little some one
clattered up with a wagon filled with barrels of water. He ran to wet
his sack, and saw that it was Blumenthall himself, foreman of the Double
Diamond, who drove the team.

“Lucky it ain't as windy as it was yesterday and the day before,”
 Blumenthall cried out, as Kent stepped upon the brake block to reach a
barrel. “It'd sweep the whole country if it was.”

Kent nodded, and ran back to the fire, trailing the dripping sack after
him. As he passed Polycarp and another, he heard Polycarp saying something
about Man Fleetwood's fire guard; but he did not stop to hear what it was.
Polycarp was always talking, and he didn't always keep too closely to
facts.

Then, of a sudden, he saw men dimly when he glanced down the leaping fire
line, and he knew that the fire was almost conquered. Another frenzied
minute or two, and he was standing in a group of men, who dropped their
charred, blackened fragments of blanket and bags, and began to feel for
their smoking material, while they stamped upon stray embers which looked
live enough to be dangerous.

“Well, she's out,” said a voice, “But it did look for a while as if it'd
get away in spite of us.”

Kent turned away, wiping an eye which held a cinder fast under the lid. It
was Fred De Garmo who spoke.

“If somebody'd been watchin' the railroad a leetle might closer--” Polycarp
began, in his thin, rasping voice.

Fred cut him short. “I thought you laid it to Man Fleetwood, burning fire
guards,” he retorted. “Keep on, and you'll get it right pretty soon. This
never come from the railroad; you can gamble on that.”

Blumenthall had left his team and come among them. “If you want to know how
it started, I can tell you. Somebody dropped a match, or a cigarette, or
something, by the trail up here a ways. I saw where it started when I went
to Cold Spring after the last load of water. And if I knew who it was--”

Polycarp launched his opinion first, as usual. “Well, I don't _know_ who
done it--but, by granny! I can might' nigh guess who it was. There's jest
one man that I know of been traveling that trail lately when he wa'n't in
his sober senses--”

Here Manley Fleetwood rode up to them, coughing at the soot his horse
kicked up. “Say! you fellows come on over to the house and have something
to eat--and,” he added significantly, “something _wet_. I told my wife,
when I saw the fire, to make plenty of coffee, for fighting fire's hungry
work, let me tell. Come on--no hanging back, you know. There'll be lots of
coffee, and I've got a quart of something better cached in the haystack!”

As he had said, fighting fire is hungry work, and none save Blumenthall,
who was dyspeptic and only ate twice a day, and then of certain foods
prepared by himself, declined the invitation.




CHAPTER VII. VAL'S NEW DUTIES

To Val the days of heat and smoke, and the isolation, had made life seem
unreal, like a dream which holds one fast and yet is absurd and utterly
improbable. Her past was pushed so far from her that she could not even
long for it as she had done during the first few weeks. There were nights
of utter desolation, when Manley was in town upon some errand which
prevented his speedy return--nights when the coyotes howled much louder
than usual, and she could not sleep for the mysterious snapping and
creaking about the shack, but lay shivering with fear until dawn; but not
for worlds would she have admitted to Manley her dread of staying alone.
She believed it to be necessary, or he would not require it of her, and she
wanted to be all that he expected her to be. She was very sensitive, in
those days, about doing her whole duty as a wife--the wife of a Western
rancher.

For that reason, when Manley shouted to her the news of the fire as he
galloped past the shack, and told her to have something for the men to eat
when the fire was out, she never thought of demurring, or explaining to
him that there was scarcely any wood, and that she could not cook a meal
without fuel. Instead, she waved her hand to him and let him go; and when
he was quite out of sight she went up to the corrals to see if she could
find another useless pole, or a broken board or two which her slight
strength would be sufficient to break up with the axe. Till she came to
Montana, Val had never taken an axe in her hands; but its use was only
one of the many things she must learn, of which she had all her life been
ignorant.

There was an old post there, lying beside a rusty, overturned plow. More
than once she had stopped and eyed it speculatively, and the day before she
had gone so far as to lift an end of it tentatively; but she had found
it very heavy, and she had also disturbed a lot of black bugs that went
scurrying here and there, so that she was forced to gather her skirts close
about her and run for her life.

Where Manley had built his hayrack she had yesterday discovered some ends
of planking hidden away in the rank, ripened weeds and grass. She went
there now, but there were no more, look closely as she might. She circled
the evil-smelling stable in discouragement, picked up one short piece of
rotten board, and came back to the post. As she neared it she involuntarily
caught her skirts and held them close, in terror of the black bugs.

She eyed it with extreme disfavor, and finally ventured to poke it with her
slipper toe; one lone bug scuttled out and away in the tall weeds. With
the piece of board she turned it over, stared hard at the yellowed grass
beneath, discovered nothing so very terrifying after all, and, in pure
desperation, dragged the post laboriously down to the place where had been
the woodpile. Then, lifting the heavy axe, she went awkwardly to work
upon it, and actually succeeded, in the course of half an hour or so, in
worrying an armful of splinters off it.

She started a fire, and then she had to take the big zinc pail and carry
some water down from the spring before she could really begin to cook
anything. Manley's work, every bit of it--but then Manley was so very busy,
and he couldn't remember all these little things, and Val hated to keep
reminding him. Theoretically, Manley objected to her chopping wood or
carrying water, and always seemed to feel a personal resentment when he
discovered her doing it. Practically, however, he was more and more often
making it necessary for her to do these things.

That is why he returned with the fire fighters and found Val just laying
the cloth upon the table, which she had moved into the front room so that
there would be space to seat her guests at all four sides. He frowned when
he looked in and saw that they must wait indefinitely, and her cheeks took
on a deeper shade of pink.

“Everything will be ready in ten minutes,” she hurriedly assured him. “How
many are there, dear?”

“Eight, counting myself,” he answered gruffly. “Get some clean towels, and
we'll go up to the spring to wash; and try and have dinner ready when we
get back--we're half starved.” With the towels over his arm, he led the way
up to the spring. He must have taken the trail which led past the haystack,
for he returned in much better humor, and introduced the men to his wife
with the genial air of a host who loves to entertain largely.

Val stood back and watched them file in to the table and seat themselves
with a noisy confusion. Unpolished they were, in clothes and manner, though
she dimly appreciated the way in which they refrained from looking at her
too intently, and the conscious lowering of their voices while they talked
among themselves.

They did, however, glance at her surreptitiously while she was moving
quietly about, with her flushed cheeks and her yellow-brown hair falling
becomingly down at the temples because she had not found a spare minute in
which to brush it smooth, and her dainty dress and crisp, white apron. She
was not like the women they were accustomed to meet, and they paid her the
high tribute of being embarrassed by her presence.

She poured coffee until all the cups were full, replenished the bread plate
and brought more butter, and hunted the kitchen over for the can opener,
to punch little holes in another can of condensed cream; and she rather
astonished her guests by serving it in a beautiful cut-glass pitcher
instead of the can in which it was bought.

They handled the pitcher awkwardly because of their mental uneasiness,
and Val shared with them their fear of breaking it, and was guilty of an
audible sigh of relief when at last it found safety upon the table.

So perturbed was she that even when she decided that she could do no more
for their comfort and retreated to the kitchen, she failed to realize that
the one extra plate meant an absent guest, and not a miscount in placing
them, as she fancied.

She remembered that she would need plenty of hot water to wash all those
dishes, and the zinc pail was empty; it always was, it seemed to her, no
matter how often she filed it. She took the tin dipper out of it, so that
it would not rattle and betray her purpose to Manley, sitting just inside
the door with his back toward her, and tiptoed quite guiltily out of the
kitchen. Once well away from the shack, she ran.

She reached the spring quite out of breath, and she actually bumped into
a man who stood carefully rinsing a bloodstained handkerchief under the
overflow from the horse trough. She gave a little scream, and the pail went
rolling noisily down the steep bank and lay on its side in the mud.

Kent turned and looked at her, himself rather startled by the unexpected
collision. Involuntarily he threw out his hand to steady her. “How do you
do, Mrs. Fleetwood?” he said, with all the composure he could muster to his
aid. “I'm afraid I scared you. My nose got to bleeding--with the heat, I
guess. I just now managed to stop it.” He did not consider it necessary to
explain his presence, but he did feel that talking would help her recover
her breath and her color. “It's a plumb nuisance to have the nosebleed so
much,” he added plaintively.

Val was still trembling and staring at him with her odd, yellow-brown eyes.
He glanced at her swiftly, and then bent to squeeze the water from his
handkerchief; but his trained eyes saw her in all her dainty allurement;
saw how the coppery sunlight gave a strange glint to her hair, and how
her eyes almost matched it in color, and how the pupils had widened with
fright. He saw, too, something wistful in her face, as though life was
none too kind to her, and she had not yet abandoned her first sensation of
pained surprise that it should treat her so.

“That's what I get for running,” she said, still panting a little as she
watched him. “I thought all the men were at the table, you see. Your dinner
will be cold, Mr. Burnett.”

Kent was a bit surprised at the absence of cold hauteur in her manner; his
memory of her had been so different.

“Well, I'm used to cold grub,” he smiled over his shoulder. “And, anyway,
when your nose gets to acting up with you, it's like riding a pitching
horse; you've got to pass up everything and give it all your time and
attention.” Then, with the daring that sometimes possessed him like a
devil, he looked straight at her.

“Sure you intend to give me my dinner?” he quizzed, his lips' lifting
humorously at the corners. “I kinda thought, from the way you turned me
down cold when we met before, you'd shut your door in my face if I came
pestering around. How _about_ that?”

Little flames of light nickered in her eyes. “You are the guest of my
husband, here by his invitation,” she answered him coldly. “Of course I
shall give you your dinner, if you want any.”

He inspected his handkerchief critically, decided that it was not quite
clean, and held it again under the stream of water. “If I want it--yes,” he
drawled maliciously. “Maybe I'm not sure about that part. Are you a pretty
fair cook?”

“Perhaps you'd better interview your friends,” she retorted, “if you are so
very fastidious. I--” She drew her brows together, as if she was in doubt
as to the proper method of dealing with this impertinence. She suspected
that he was teasing her purposely, but still--

“Oh, I can eat 'most any old thing,” he assured her, with calm effrontery.
“You look as if you'd learn easy, and Man ain't the worst cook I ever ate
after. If he's trained you faithful, maybe it'll be safe to take a change.
How _about_ that? Can you make sour-dough bread yet?”

“No!” she flung the word at him. “And I don't want to learn,” she added, at
the expense of her dignity.

Kent shook his head disapprovingly. “That sure ain't the proper spirit to
show,” he commented. “Man must have to beat you up a good deal, if you talk
back to _him_ that way.” He eyed her sidelong. “You're a real little wolf,
aren't you?” He shook his head again solemnly, and sighed. “A fellow sure
must build himself lots of trouble when he annexes a wife--a wife that
won't learn to make sour-dough bread, and that talks back. I'm plumb sorry
for Man. We used to be pretty good friends--” He stopped short, his face
contrite.

Val was looking away, and she was winking very fast. Also, her lips were
quivering unmistakably, though she was biting them to keep them steady.

Kent stared at her helplessly. “Say! I never thought you'd mind a little
joshing,” he said gently, when the silence was growing awkward. “I ought to
be killed! You--you must get awful lonesome--”

She turned her face toward him quickly, as if he were the first person
who had understood her blank loneliness. “That,” she told him, in an
odd, hesitating manner, “atones for the--the 'joshing.' No one seems to
realize--”

“Why don't you get out and ride around, or do something beside stick right
here in this coulee like a--a cactus?” he demanded, with a roughness that
somehow was grateful to her. “I'll bet you haven't been a mile from the
ranch since Man brought you here. Why don't you go to town with him when
he goes? It'd be a whole lot better for you--for both of you. Have you got
acquainted with any of the women here yet? I'll gamble you haven't!” He was
waving the handkerchief gently like a flag, to dry it.

Val watched him; she had never seen any one hold a handkerchief by the
corners and wave it up and down like that for quick drying, and the
expedient interested her, even while she was wondering if it was quite
proper for him to lecture her in that manner. His scolding was even more
confusing than his teasing.

“I've been down to the river twice,” she defended weakly, and was angry
with herself that she could not find words with which to quell him.

“Really?” He down at her indulgently. “How did you ever manage to get so
far? It must be all of half a mile!”

“Oh, you're perfectly horrible!” she flashed suddenly. “I don't see how it
can possibly concern you whether I go anywhere or not.”

“It does, though. I'm a lot public-spirited. I hate to see taxes go up, and
every lunatic that goes to the asylum costs the State just that much more.
I don't know an easier recipe for going crazy than just to stay off alone
and think. It's a fright the way it gets sheep-herders, and such.”

“I'm _such_, I suppose!”

Kent glanced at her, approved mentally of the color in her cheeks and the
angry light in her eyes, and laughed at her quite openly.

“There's nothing like getting good and mad once in a while, to take
the kinks out of your brain,” he observed. “And there's nothing like
lonesomeness to put 'em in. A good fighting mad is what you need, now and
then; I'll have to put Man next, I guess. He's too mild.”

“No one could accuse you of that,” she retorted, laughing a little in spite
of herself. “If I were a man I should want to blacken your eyes--” And she
blushed hotly at being betrayed into a personality which seemed to her
undignified, and, what was worse, unrefined. She turned her back squarely
toward him, started down the path, and remembered that she had not filled
the water bucket, and that without it she could not consistently return to
the house.

Kent interpreted her glance, went sliding down the steep bank and recovered
the pail; he was laughing to himself while he rinsed and filled it at the
spring, but he made no effort to explain his amusement. When he came back
to where she stood watching him, Val gave her head a slight downward tilt
to indicate her thanks, turned, and led the way back to the house without
a word. And he, following after, watched her slim figure swinging lightly
down the hill before him, and wondered vaguely what sort of a hell her life
was going to be, out here where everything was different from what she had
been accustomed to, and where she did not seem to “fit into the scenery,”
 as he put it.

“You ought to learn to ride horseback,” he advised unexpectedly.

“Pardon me--you ought to learn to wait until your advice is wanted,” she
replied calmly, without turning her head. And she added, with a sort of
defiance: “I do not feel the need of either society or diversion, I assure
you; I am perfectly contented.”

“That's real nice,” he approved. “There's nothing like being satisfied with
what's handed out to you.” But, though he spoke with much unconcern, his
tone betrayed his skepticism.

The others had finished eating and were sitting upon their heels in the
shade of the house, smoking and talking in that desultory fashion common to
men just after a good meal. Two or three glanced rather curiously at Kent
and his companion, and he detected the covert smile on the scandal-hungry
face of Polycarp Jenks, and also the amused twist of Fred De Garmo's lips.
He went past them without a sign of understanding, set the water pail down
in its proper place upon a bench inside the kitchen door, tilted his hat
to Val, who happened to be looking toward him at that moment, and went out
again.

“What's the hurry, Kenneth?” quizzed Polycarp, when Kent started toward the
corral.

“Follow my trail long enough and you'll find out--maybe,” Kent snapped in
reply. He felt that the whole group was watching hum, and he knew that if
he looked back and caught another glimpse of Fred De Garmo's sneering face
he would feel compelled to strike it a blow. There would be no plausible
explanation, of course, and Kent was not by nature a trouble hunter; and so
he chose to ride away without his dinner.

While Polycarp was still wondering audibly what was the matter, Kent passed
the house on his gray, called “So-long, Man,” with scarcely a glance at his
host, and speedily became a dim figure in the smoke haze.

“He must be runnin' away from you, Fred,” Polycarp hinted, grinning
cunningly. “What you done to him--hey?”

Fred answered him with an unsatisfactory scowl. “You sure would be wise, if
you found out everything you wanted to know,” he said contemptuously, after
an appreciable Wait. “I guess we better be moving along, Bill.” He rose,
brushed off his trousers with a downward sweep of his hands, and strolled
toward the corrals, followed languidly by Bill Madison.

As if they had been waiting for a leader, the others rose also and prepared
to depart. Polycarp proceeded, in his usual laborious manner, to draw his
tobacco from his pocket, and pry off a corner.

“Why don't you burn them guards now, Manley, while you got plenty of help?”
 he suggested, turning his slit-lidded eyes toward the kitchen door, where
Val appeared for an instant to reach the broom which stood outside.

“Because I don't want to,” snapped Manley: “I've got plenty to do without
that.”

“Well, they ain't wide enough, nor long enough, and they don't run in the
right direction--if you ask me.” Polycarp spat solemnly off to the right.

“I don't ask you, as it happens.” Manley turned and went into the home.

Polycarp looked quizzically at the closed door. “He's mighty touchy about
them guards, for a feller that thinks they're all right--_he-he!_” he
remarked, to no one in particular. “Some of these days, by granny, he'll
wisht he'd took my advice!”

Since no one gave him the slightest attention, Polycarp did not pursue the
subject further. Instead, with both ears open to catch all that was said,
he trailed after the others to the corral. It was a matter of instinct,
as well as principle, with Polycarp Jenks, to let no sentence, however
trivial, slip past his hearing and his memory.




CHAPTER VIII. THE PRAIRIE FIRE

A calamity expected, feared, and guarded against by a whole community does
sometimes occur, and with a suddenness which finds the victims unprepared
in spite of all their elaborate precautions. Compared with the importance
of saving the range from fire, it was but a trivial thing which took nearly
every man who dwelt in Lonesome Land to town on a certain day when the wind
blew free from out the west. They were weary of watching for the fire which
did not come licking through the prairie grass, and a special campaign
train bearing a prospective President of our United States was expected to
pass through Hope that afternoon.

Since all trains watered at the red tank by the creek, there would be a
five-minute stop, during which the prospective President would stand upon
the rear platform and deliver a three-minute address--a few gracious words
to tickle the self-esteem of his listeners--and would employ the other two
minutes in shaking the hand of every man, woman, and child who could reach
him before the train pulled out. There would be a cheer or two given as he
was borne away--and there would be something to talk about afterward in the
saloons. Scarce a man of then had ever seen a President, and it was worth
riding far to look upon a man who even hoped for so exalted a position.

Manley went because he intended to vote for the man, and called it an act
of loyalty to his party to greet the candidate; also because it took very
little, now that haying was over and work did not press, to start him down
the trail in the direction of Hope.

At the Blumenthall ranch no man save the cook remained at home, and he only
because he had a boil on his neck which sapped his interest in all things
else. Polycarp Jenks was in town by nine o'clock, and only one man remained
at the Wishbone. That man was Kent, and he stayed because, according to his
outraged companions, he was an ornery cuss, and his bump of patriotism was
a hollow in his skull. Kent had told them, one and all, that he wouldn't
ride twenty-five miles to shake hands with the Deity Himself--which,
however, is not a verbatim report of his statement. The prospective
President had not done anything so big, he said, that a man should want to
break his neck getting to town just to watch him go by. He was dead sure
he, for one, wasn't going to make a fool of himself over any swell-headed
politician.

Still, he saddled and rode with his fellows for a mile or two, and called
them unseemly names in a facetious tone; and the men of the Wishbone
answered his taunts with shrill yells of derision when he swung out of the
trail and jogged away to the south, and finally passed out of sight in the
haze which still hung depressingly over the land.

Oddly enough, while all the able-bodied men save Kent were waiting
hilariously in Hope to greet, with enthusiasm, the brief presence of the
man who would fain be their political chief, the train which bore him
eastward scattered fiery destruction abroad as it sped across their range,
four minutes late and straining to make up the time before the next stop.

They had thought the railroad safe at last, what with the guards and the
numerous burned patches where the fire had jumped the plowed boundary and
blackened the earth to the fence which marked the line of the right of way,
and, in some places, had burned beyond. It took a flag-flying special train
of that bitter Presidential campaign to find a weak spot in the guard, and
to send a spark straight into the thickest bunch of wiry sand grass, where
the wind could fan it to a blaze and then seize it and bend the tall flame
tongues until they licked around the next tuft of grass, and the next,
and the next--until the spark was grown to a long, leaping line of fire,
sweeping eastward with the relentless rush of a tidal wave upon a low-lying
beach.

Arline Hawley was, perhaps, the only citizen of Hope who had deliberately
chosen to absent herself from the crowd standing, in perspiring
expectation, upon the depot platform. She had permitted Minnie, the “breed”
 girl, to go, and had even grudgingly consented to her using a box of
cornstarch as first aid to her complexion. Arline had not approved,
however, of either the complexion or the occasion.

“What you want to go and plaster your face up with starch for, gits me,”
 she had criticised frankly. “Seems to me you're homely enough without
lookin' silly, into the bargain. Nobody's going to look at you, no matter
what you do. They're out to rubber at a higher mark than you be. And what
they expect to see so great, gits me. He ain't nothing but a man--and, land
knows, men is common enough, and ornery enough, without runnin' like a band
of sheep to see one. I don't see as he's any better, jest because he's
runnin' for President; if he gits beat, he'll want to hide his head in a
hole in the ground. Look at my Walt. _He_ was the biggest man in Hope, and
so swell-headed he wouldn't so much as pack a bucket of water all fall, or
chop up a tie for kindlin'--till the day after 'lection. And what was he
then but a frazzled-out back number, that everybody give the laugh--till he
up and blowed his brains out! Any fool can _run_ for President--it's the
feller that gits there that counts.

“Say, that red-white-'n'-blue ribbon sure looks fierce on that green
dress--but I reckon blood will tell, even if it's Injun blood. G'wan, or
you'll be late and have your trouble for your pay. But hurry back soon's
the agony's over; the bread'll be ready to mix out.”

Even after the girl was gone, her finery a-flutter in the sweeping west
wind, Arline muttered aloud her opinion of men, and particularly of
politicians who rode about in special trains and expected the homage of
their fellows.

She was in the back yard, taking her “white clothes” off the line, when the
special came puffing slowly into town. To emphasize her disapproval of the
whole system of politics, she turned her back square toward it, and laid
violent hold of a sheet. There was a smudge of cinders upon its white
surface, and it crushed crisply under her thumb with the unmistakable feel
of burned grass.

“Now, what in time--” began Arline aloud, after the manner of women whose
tongues must keep pace with their thoughts. “That there feels fresh
and”--with a sniff at the spot--“_smells_ fresh.”

With the wisdom of much experience she faced the hot wind and sniffed
again, while her eyes searched keenly the sky line, which was the ragged
top of the bluff marking the northern boundary of the great prairie land. A
trifle darker it was there, and there was a certain sullen glow discernible
only to eyes trained to read the sky for warning signals of snow, fire, and
flood.

“That's a fire, and it's this side of the river. And if it is, then the
railroad set it, and there ain't a livin' thing to stop it. An' the wind's
jest right--” A curdled roll of smoke showed plainly for a moment in the
haze. She crammed her armful of sheets into the battered willow basket,
threw two clothespins hastily toward the same receptacle, and ran.

The special had just come to a stop at the depot. The cattlemen, cowboys,
and townspeople were packed close around the rear of the train, their backs
to the wind and the disaster sweeping down upon them, their browned faces
upturned to the sleek, carefully groomed man in the light-gray suit, with a
flaunting, prairie sunflower ostentatiously displayed in his buttonhole and
with his campaign smile upon his lips and dull boredom looking out of his
eyes.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he was saying, as he smiled, “you favoured ones
whose happy lot it is to live in the most glorious State of our glorious
union, I greet you, and I envy you--”

Arline, with her soiled kitchen apron, her ragged coil of dust-brown hair,
her work-drawn face and faded eyes which blazed with excitement, pushed
unceremoniously through the crowd and confronted him undazzled.

“Mister Candidate, you better move on and give these men a chancet to save
their prope'ty,” she cried shrilly. “They got something to do besides stand
around here and listen at you throwin' campaign loads. The hull country's
afire back of us, and the wind bringin' it down on a long lope.”

She turned from the astounded candidate and glared at the startled crowd,
every one of whom she knew personally.

“I must say I got my opinion of a bunch that'll stand here swallowin' a lot
of hot air, while their coat tails is most ready to ketch afire!” Her voice
was rasping, and it carried to the farthest of them. “You make me _tired!_
Political slush, all of it--and the hull darned country a-blazin' behind
you!”

The crowd moved uneasily, then scattered away from the shelter of the depot
to where they could snuff inquiringly the wind, like dogs in the leash.

“That's right,” yelled Blumenthall, of the Double Diamond. “There's a fire,
sure as hell!” He started to run.

The man behind him hesitated but a second, then gripped his hat against the
push of the wind, and began running. Presently men, women, and children
were running, all in one direction.

The prospective President stood agape upon the platform of his
bunting-draped car, his chosen allies grouped foolishly around him. It
was the first time men had turned from his presence with his gracious,
flatteringly noncommittal speech unuttered, his hand unshaken, his smiling,
bowing departure unmarked by cheers growing fainter as he receded. Only
Arline tarried, her thin fingers gripping the arm of her “breed girl,” lest
she catch the panic and run with the others.

Arline tilted back her head upon her scrawny shoulders and eyed the
prospective President with antagonism unconcealed.

“I got something to say to you before you go,” she announced, in her
rasping voice, with its querulous note. “I want to tell you that the
chances are a hundred to one you set that fire yourself, with your engine
that's haulin' you around over the country, so you can jolly men into
votin' for you. Your train's the only one over the road since noon, and
that fire started from the railroad. The hull town's liable to burn, unless
it can be stopped the other side the creek, to say nothing of the range,
that feeds our stock, and the hay, and maybe houses--and maybe _people!_”

She caught her breath, and almost shrieked the last three words, as a
dreadful probability flashed into her mind.

“I know a woman--just a girl--and she's back there twenty mile--_alone_,
and her man's here to look at you go by! I hope you git beat, just for
that!

“If this town ketches afire and burns up, I hope you run into the ditch
before you git ten mile! If you was a man, and them fellers with you was
men, you'd hold up your train and help save the town. Every feller counts,
when it comes to fightin' fire.”

She stopped and eyed the group keenly. “But you won't. I don't reckon you
ever done anything with them hands in your life that would grind a little
honest dirt into your knuckles and under them shiny nails!”

The prospective President turned red to his ears, and hastily removed his
immaculate hands from where they had been resting upon the railing. And he
did not hold up the train while he and his allies stopped to help save the
town. The whistle gave a warning toot, the bell jangled, and the train slid
away toward the next town, leaving Arline staring, tight-lipped, after it.

“The darned chump--he'd 'a' made votes hand over fist if he'd called my
bluff; but, I knew he wouldn't, soon as I seen his face. He ain't man
enough.”

“He's real good-lookin',” sighed Minnie, feebly attempting to release her
arm from the grasp of her mistress. “And did you notice the fellow with the
big yellow mustache? He kept eyin' me--”

“Well, I don't wonder--but it ain't anything to your credit,” snapped
Arline, facing her toward the hotel, “You do look like sin a-flyin', in
that green dress, and with all that starch on your face. You git along to
the house and mix that bread, first thing you do, and start a fire. And if
I ain't back by that time, you go ahead with the supper; you know what to
git. We're liable to have all the tables full, so you set all of 'em.”

She was hurrying away, when the girl called to her.

“Did you mean Mis' Fleetwood, when you said that about the woman burning?
And do you s'pose she's really in the fire?”

“You shut up and go along!” cried Arline roughly, under the stress of her
own fears. “How in time's anybody going to tell, that's twenty miles away?”

She left the street and went hurrying through back yards and across vacant
lots, crawled through a wire fence, and so reached, without any roundabout
method, the trail which led to the top of the bluff, where the whole town
was breathlessly assembling. Her flat-chested, un-corseted figure merged
into the haze as she half trotted up the steep road, swinging her arms like
a man, her skirts flapping in the wind. As she went, she kept muttering to
herself:

“If she really is caught by the fire--and her alone--and Man more'n half
drunk--” She whirled, and stood waiting for the horseman who was galloping
up the trail behind her. “You going home, Man? You don't think it could
git to your place, do you?” She shouted the questions at him as he pounded
past.

Manley, sallow white with terror, shook his head vaguely and swung his
heavy quirt down upon the flanks of his horse. Arline lowered her head
against the dust kicked into her face as he went tearing past her, and
kept doggedly on. Some one came rattling up behind her with empty barrels
dancing erratically in a wagon, and she left the trail to make room. The
hostler from their own stable it was who drove, and at the creek ahead of
them he stopped to fill the barrels. Arline passed him by and kept on.

At the brow of the hill the women and children were gathered in a
whimpering group. Arline joined them and gazed out over the prairie, where
the smoke was rolling toward them, and, lifting here and there, let a flare
of yellow through.

“It'll show up fine at dark,” a fat woman in a buggy remarked. “There's
nothing grander to look at than a prairie fire at night. I do hope,” she
added weakly, “it don't do no great damage!”

“Oh, it won't,” Arline cut in, with savage sarcasm, panting from her climb.
“It's bound to sweep the hull country slick an' clean, and maybe burn us
all out--but that won't matter, so long as it looks purty after dark!”

“They say it's a good ten mile away yet,” another woman volunteered
encouragingly. “They'll git it stopped, all right. There's lots of men here
to fight it, thank goodness!”

Arline moved on to where a plow was being hurriedly unloaded from a wagon,
the horses hitched to it, and a man already grasping the handles in an
aggressive manner. As she came up he went off, yelling his opinions and
turning a shallow, uneven furrow for a back fire. Within five minutes
another plow was tearing up the sod in an opposite direction.

“If it jumps here, or they can't turn it, the creek'll help a lot,” some
one was yelling.

The plowed furrows lengthened, the horses sweating and throwing their heads
up and down with the discomfort of the pace they must keep. Whiplashes
whistled and the drivers urged them on with much shouting. Blumenthall, cut
off, with his men, from reaching his own ranch, was directing a group
about to set a back fire. His voice boomed as if he were shouting across a
milling herd. A roll of his eye brought his attention momentarily from the
work, and he ran toward a horseman who was gesticulating wildly and seemed
on the point of riding straight toward the fire.

“Hi! Fleetwood, we need you here!” he yelled. “You can't get home now, and
you know it. The fire's past your place already; you'd have to ride through
it, you fool! Hey? Your wife home alone--_alone!_”

He stood absolutely still and stared out to the southwest, where the smoke
cloud was rolling closer with every breath. He drew his fingers across his
forehead and glanced at the men around him, also stunned into inactivity by
the tragedy behind the words.

“Well--get to work, men. We've got to save the town. Fine time to burn
guards--when a fire's loping up on you! But that's the way it goes,
generally. This ought to've been done a month ago. Put it off and put it
off--while they haggle over bids--Brinberg, you and I'll string the fire.
The rest of you watch it don't jump back. And, say!” he shouted to the
group around Manley. “Don't let that crazy fool start off now. Put him to
work. Best thing for him. But--my God, that's awful!” He did not shout the
last sentence. He spoke so that only the nearest man heard him--heard, and
nodded dumb assent.

Manley raged, sitting helpless there upon his horse. They would not let him
ride out toward that sweeping wave of fire. He could not have gone five
miles toward home before he met the flames. He stood in the stirrups
and shook his fists impotently. He strained his eyes to see what it was
impossible for him to see--his ranch and Val, and how they had fared. He
pictured mentally the guard he had burned beyond the coulee to protect them
from just this danger, and his heart squeezed tight at the realization of
his own shiftlessness. That guard! A twelve-foot strip of half-burned sod,
with tufts of grass left standing here and there--and he had meant to burn
it wider, and had put it off from day to day, until now. _Now!_

His clenched fist dropped upon the saddle horn, and he stared dully at the
rushing, rolling smoke and fire. It was not _that_ he saw--it was Val, with
cinder-blackened ruffles, grimy face, and yellow hair falling in loose
locks upon her cheeks--locks which she must stop to push out of her eyes,
so that she could see where to swing the sodden sack while she helped
him--him, Manley, who had permitted her to do work it for none but a man's
hard muscles, so that he might finish the sooner and ride to town upon some
flimsy pretext. And he could not even reach her now--or the place where she
had been!

The group had thinned around him, for there was something to do besides
give sympathy to a man bereaved. Unless they bestirred themselves, they
might all be in need of sympathy before the day was done. Manley took his
eyes from the coming fire and glanced around him, saw that he was alone,
and, with a despairing oath, wheeled his horse and raced back down the hill
to town, as if fiends rode behind the saddle.

At the saloon opposite the Hawley Hotel he drew up; rather, his horse
stopped there of his own accord, as if he were quite at home at that
particular hitching pole. Manley dismounted heavily and lurched inside. The
place was deserted save for Jim, who was paid to watch the wares of his
employer, and was now standing upon a chair at the window, that he might
see over the top of Hawley's coal shed and glimpse the hilltop beyond. Jim
stepped down and came toward him.

“How's the fire?” he demanded anxiously. “Think she'll swing over this
way?”

But Manley had sunk into a chair and buried his face in his arms, folded
upon a whisky-spotted card table.

“Val--my Val!” he wailed, “Back there alone--get me a drink,” he added
thickly, “or I'll go crazy!”

Jim hastily poured a full glass, and stood over him anxiously.

“Here it is. Drink 'er down, and brace up. What you mean? Is your wife--”

Manley lifted his head long enough to gulp the whisky, then dropped it
again upon his arms and groaned.




CHAPTER IX. KENT TO THE RESCUE

The fire had been burning a possible half-hour when Kent, jogging aimlessly
toward a log ridge with the lazy notion of riding to the top and taking
a look at the country to the west before returning to the ranch, first
smelled the stronger tang of burned grass and swung instinctively into the
wind. He galloped to higher ground, and, trained by long watching of the
prairie to detect the smoke of a nearer fire in the haze of those long
distant, saw at once what must have happened, and knew also the danger. His
horse was fresh, and he raced him over the uneven prairie toward the blaze.

It was tearing straight across the high ground between Dry Creek and Cold
Spring Coulee when he first saw it plainly, and he altered his course
a trifle. The roar of it came faintly on the wind, like the sound of
storm-beaten surf pounding heavily upon a sand bar when the tide is out,
except that this roar was continuous, and was full of sharp cracklings and
sputterings; and there was also the red line of flame to visualize the
sound.

When his eyes first swept the mile-long blaze, he felt his helplessness,
and cursed aloud the man who had drawn all the fighting force from the
prairie that day. They might at least have been able to harry it and hamper
it and turn the savage sweep of it into barren ground upon some rock-bound
coulee's rim. If they could have caught it at the start, or even in the
first mile of its burning--or, even now, if Blumenthall's outfit were on
the spot--or if Manley Fleetwood's fire guards held it back--He hoped some
of them had stayed at home, so that they could help fight it.

In that brief glimpse before he rode down into a hollow and so lost sight
of it, he knew that the fire they had fought and vanquished before had been
a puny blaze compared with this one. The ground it had burned was not broad
enough to do more than check this fire temporarily. It would simply burn
around the blackened area and rush on and on, until the bend of the river
turned it back to the north, where the river's first tributary stream would
stop it for good and all. But before that happened it would have done its
worst--and its worst was enough to pale the face of every prairie dweller.

Once more he caught sight of the fire as he was riding swiftly across
the level land to the east of Cold Spring Coulee. He was going to see if
Manley's fire guards were any good, and if anyone was there ready to fight
it when it came up; they could set a back fire from the guards, he thought,
even if the guards themselves were not wide enough to hold the main fire.

He pounded heavily down the long trail into the coulee, passed close by the
house with a glance sidelong to see if anybody was in sight there, rounded
the corral to follow the trail which wound zigzag up the farther coulee
wall, and overtook Val, running bareheaded up the hill, dragging a wet sack
after her. She was panting already from the climb, and she had on thin
slippers with high heels, he noticed, that impeded her progress and
promised a sprained ankle before she reached the top. Kent laughed grimly
when he overtook her; he thought it was like a five-year-old child running
with a cup of water to put out a burning house.

“Where do you think you're going with that sack?” he called out, by way of
greeting.

She turned a pale, terrified face toward him, and reached up a hand
mechanically to push her fair hair out of her eyes. “So much smoke was
rolling into the coulee,” she panted, “and I knew there must be a fire. And
I've never felt quite easy about our guards since Polycarp Jenks said--Do
you know where it is--the fire?”

“It's between here and the railroad. Give me that sack, and you go on back
to the house. You can't do any good.” And when she handed the sack up to
him and then kept on up the hill, he became autocratic in his tone. “Go on
back to the house, I tell you!”

“I shall not do anything of the kind,” she retorted indignantly, and Kent
gave a snort of disapproval, kicked his horse into a lunging gallop, and
left her.

“You'll spoil your complexion,” he cried over his shoulder, “and that's
about all you will do. You better go back and get a parasol.”

Val did not attempt to reply, but she refused to let his taunts turn her
back, and kept stubbornly climbing, though tears of pure rage filled her
eyes and even slipped over the lids to her cheeks. Before she had reached
the top, he was charging down upon her again, and the pallor of his face
told her much.

“All hell couldn't stop that fire!” he cried, before he was near her, and
the words were barely distinguishable in the roar which was growing louder
and more terrifying. _“Get back!_ You want to stand there till it comes
down on you?” Then, just as he was passing, he saw how white and trembling
she was, and he pulled up, with Michael sliding his front feet in the loose
soil that he might stop on that steep slope.

“You don't want to go and faint,” he remonstrated in a more kindly tone,
vaguely conscious that he had perhaps seemed brutal. “Here, give me your
hand, and stick your toe in the stirrup. Ah, don't waste time trying to
make up your mind--up you come! Don't you want to save the house and
corrals--and the haystacks? We've got our work cut out, let me tell you, if
we do it.”

He had leaned and lifted her up bodily, helped her to put her foot in the
stirrup from which he had drawn his own, and he held her beside him while
he sent Michael down the trail as fast as he dared. It was a good deal of
a nuisance, having to look after her when seconds were so precious, but
he couldn't go on and leave her, though she might easily have reached the
bottom as soon as he if she had not been so frightened. He was afraid to
trust her; she looked, to him, as if she were going to faint in his arms.

“You don't want to get scared,” he said, as calmly as he could. “It's back
two or three miles on the bench yet, and I guess we can easy stop it from
burning anything but the grass. It's this wind, you see. Manley went to
town, I suppose?”

“Yes,” she answered weakly. “He went yesterday, and stayed over. I'm all
alone, and I didn't know what to do, only to go up and try--”

“No use, up there.”

They were at the corral gate then, and he set her down carefully, then
dismounted and turned Michael into the corral and shut the gate.

“If we can't step it, and I ain't close by, I wish you'd let Michael out,”
 he said hurriedly, his eyes taking in the immediate surroundings and
measuring the danger which lurked in weeds, grass, and scattered hay. “A
horse don't have much show when he's shut up, and--Out there where that dry
ditch runs, we'll back-fire. You take this sack and come and watch out my
fire don't jump the ditch. We'll carry it around the house, just the other
side the trail.” He was pulling a handful of grass for a torch, and while
he was twisting it and feeling in his pocket for a match, he looked at her
keenly. “You aren't going to get hysterics and leave me to fight it alone,
are you?” he challenged.

“I hope I'm not quite such a silly,” she answered stiffly, and he smiled to
himself as he ran along the far side of the ditch with his blazing tuft
of grass, setting fire to the tangled, brown mat which covered the coulee
bottom.

Val followed slowly behind him, watching that the blaze did not blow back
across the ditch, and beating it out when it seemed likely to do so. Now
that she could actually do something, she was no more excited than he, if
one could judge by her manner. She did look sulky, however, at his way of
treating her.

To back-fire on short notice, with no fresh-turned furrow of moist earth,
but only a shallow little dry ditch with the grass almost meeting over its
top in places, is ticklish business at best. Kent went slowly, stamping out
incipient blazes that seemed likely to turn unruly, and not trusting
Val any more than he was compelled to do. She was a woman, and Kent's
experience with women of her particular type had not been extensive enough
to breed confidence in an emergency like this.

He had no more than finished stringing his line of fire in the irregular
half circle which enclosed house, corral, stables, and haystacks, and had
for its eastern half the muddy depression which, in seasons less dry, was
a fair-sized creek fed by the spring, when a jagged line of fire with an
upper wall of tumbling, brown smoke, leaped into view at the top of the
bluff.

One thing was in his favor: The grass upon the hillside was scantier
than on the level upland, and here and there were patches of yellow soil
absolutely bare of vegetation, where a fire would be compelled to halt and
creep slowly around. Also, fire usually burns slower down a hill than over
a level. On the other hand, the long, seamlike depressions which ran to the
top were filled with dry brush, and even the coulee bottom had clumps of
rosebushes and wild currant, where the flames would revel briefly.

But already the black, smoking line which curved around the haystacks to
the north, and around the house toward the south, was widening with every
passing second.

Val had a tub half filled with water at the house, and that helped
amazingly by making it possible to keep the sacks wet, so that every blow
counted as they beat out the ragged tongues of flame which, in that wind,
would jump here and there the ditch and the road, and go creeping back
toward the stacks and the buildings. For it was a long line they were
guarding, and there was a good deal of running up and down in their
endeavor to be in two places at once.

Then Val, in turning to strike a new-born flame behind her, swept her
skirt across a tuft of smoldering grass and set herself afire. With the
excitement of watching all points at once, and with the smoke and smell of
fire all about her, she did not see what had happened, and must have paid a
frightful penalty if Kent had not, at that moment, been running past her to
reach a point where a blaze had jumped the ditch.

He swerved, and swung a newly wet sack around her with a force which would
have knocked her down if he had not at the same time caught and held her.
Val screamed, and struggled in his arms, and Kent knew that it was of
him she was afraid. As soon as he dared, he released her and backed away
sullenly.

“Sorry I didn't have time to say please--you were just ready to go up in
smoke,” he flung savagely over his shoulder. But he found himself shaking
and weak, so that when he reached the blaze he must beat out, the sack was
heavy as lead. “Afraid of _me_--women sure do beat hell!” he told himself,
when he was a bit steadier. He glanced back at her resentfully. Val was
stooping, inspecting the damage done to her dress. She stood up, looked
at him, and he saw that her face was white again, as it had been upon the
hillside.

A moment later he was near her again.

“Mr. Burnett, I'm--ashamed--but I didn't know, and you--you startled me,”
 she stopped him long enough to confess, though she did not meet his eyes.
“You saved--”

“You'll be startled worse, if you let the fire hang there in that bunch of
grass,” he interrupted coolly. “Behind you, there.”

She turned obediently, and swung her sack down several times upon a
smoldering spot, and the incident was closed.

Speedily it was forgotten, also. For with the meeting of the fires, which
they stood still to watch, a patch of wild rosebushes was caught fairly
upon both sides, and flared high, with a great snapping and crackling.
The wind seized upon the blaze, flung it toward them like a great, yellow
banner, and swept cinders and burning twigs far out over the blackened
path of the back fire. Kent watched it and hardly breathed, but Val was
shielding her face from the searing heat with her arms, and so did not
see what happened then. A burning branch like a long, flaming dagger flew
straight with the wind and lighted true as if flung by the hand of an
enemy. A long, neatly tapered stack received it fairly, and Kent's cry
brought Val's arms down, and her scared eyes staring at him.

“That settles the hay,” he exclaimed, and raced for the stacks knowing all
the while that he could do nothing, and yet panting in his hurry to reach
the spot.

Michael, trampling uneasily in the corral, lifted his head and neighed
shrilly as Kent passed him on the run. Michael had watched fearfully the
fire sweeping down upon him, and his fear had troubled Val not a little.
When she saw Kent pass the gate, she hurried up and threw it open,
wondering a little that Kent should forget his horse. He had told her to
see that he was turned loose if the fire could not be stopped--and now he
seemed to have forgotten it.

Michael, with a snort and an upward toss of his head to throw the dragging
reins away from his feet, left the corral with one jump, and clattered
away, past the house and up the hill, on the trail which led toward home.
Val stood for a moment watching him. Could he out-run the fire? He was
holding his head turned to one side now, so that the reins dangled away
from his pounding feet; once he stumbled to his knees, but he was up in a
flash, and running faster than ever. He passed out of sight over the hill,
and Val, with eyes smarting and cheeks burning from the heat, drew a long
breath and started after Kent.

Kent was backing, step by step, away from the heat of the burning stacks.
The roar, and the crackle, and the heat were terrific; it was as if the
whole world was burning around them, and they only were left. A brand flew
low over Val's head as she ran staggeringly, with a bewildered sense that
she must hurry somewhere and do something immediately, to save something
which positively must be saved. A spark from the brand fell upon her hand,
and she looked up stupidly. The heat and the smoke were choking her so that
she could scarcely breathe.

A new crackle was added to the uproar of flames. Kent, still backing from
the furnace of blazing hay, turned, and saw that the stable, with its roof
of musty hay, was afire. And, just beyond, Val, her face covered with her
sooty hands, was staggering drunkenly. He reached her as she fell to her
knees.

“I--can't--fight--any more,” she whispered faintly.

He picked her up in his arms and hesitated, his face toward the house; then
ran straight away from it, stumbled across the dry ditch and out across the
blackened strip which their own back fire had swept clean of grass. The hot
earth burned his feet through the soles of his riding boots, but the wind
carried the heat and the smoke away, behind them. Clumps of bushes were
still burning at the roots, but he avoided them and kept on to the far side
hill, where a barren, yellow patch, with jutting sandstone rocks, offered
a resting place. He set Val down upon a rock, placed himself beside her so
that she was leaning against him, and began fanning her vigorously with his
hat.

“Thank the Lord, we're behind that smoke, anyhow,” he observed, when he
could get his breath. He felt that silence was not good for the woman
beside him, though he doubted much whether she was in a condition to
understand him. She was gasping irregularly, and her body was a dead weight
against him. “It was sure fierce, there, for a few minutes.”

He looked out across the coulee at the burning stables, and waited for the
house to catch. He could not hope that it would escape, but he did not
mention the probability of its burning.

“Keep your eyes shut,” he said. “That'll help some, and soon as we can
we'll go to the spring and give our faces and hands a good bath.” He untied
his silk neckerchief, shook out the cinders, and pressed it against her
closed eyes. “Keep that over 'em,” he commanded, “till we can do better. My
eyes are more used to smoke than yours, I guess. Working around branding
fires toughens 'em some.”

Still she did not attempt to speak, and she did not seem to have energy
enough left to keep the silk over her eyes. The wind blew it off without
her stirring a finger to prevent, and Kent caught it just in time to save
it from sailing away toward the fire. After that he held it in place
himself, and he did not try to keep talking. He sat quietly, with his arm
around her, as impersonal in the embrace as if he were holding a strange
partner in a dance, and watched the stacks burn, and the stables. He saw
the corral take fire, rail by rail, until it was all ablaze. He saw hens
and roosters running heavily, with wings dragging, until the heat toppled
them over. He saw a cat, with white spots upon its sides, leave the bushes
down by the creek and go bounding in terror to the house.

And still the house stood there, the curtains flapping in and out through
the open windows, the kitchen door banging open and shut as the gusts of
wind caught it. The fire licked as close as burned ground and rocky creek
bed would let it, and the flames which had stayed behind to eat the
spare gleanings died, while the main line raged on up the hillside and
disappeared in a huge, curling wave of smoke. The stacks burned down
to blackened, smoldering butts. The willows next the spring, and the
chokecherries and wild currants withered in the heat and waved charred,
naked arms impotently in the wind. The stable crumpled up, flared, and
became a heap of embers. The corral was but a ragged line of smoking,
half-burned sticks and ashes. Spirals of smoke, like dying camp fires, blew
thin ribbons out over the desolation.

Kent drew a long breath and glanced down at the limp figure in his arms.
She lay so very still that in spite of a quivering breath now and then he
had a swift, unreasoning fear she might be dead. Her hair was a tangled
mass of gold upon her head, and spilled over his arm. He carefully picked a
flake or two of charred grass from the locks on her temples, and discovered
how fine and soft was the hair. He lifted the grimy neckerchief from her
eyes and looked down at her face, smoke-soiled and reddened from the heat.
Her lips were drooped pitifully, like a hurt child. Her lashes, he noticed
for the first time, were at least four shades darker than her hair. His
gaze traveled on down her slim figure to her ringed fingers lying loosely
in her lap, a long, dry-looking blister upon one hand near the thumb; down
to her slippers, showing beneath her scorched skirt. And he drew another
long breath. He did not know why, but he had a strange, fleeting sense of
possession, and it startled him into action.

“You gone to sleep?” he called gently, and gave her a little shake. “We can
get to the spring now, if you feel like walking that far; if you don't, I
reckon I'll have to carry you--for I sure do want a drink!”

She half lifted her lashes and let them drop again, as if life were not
worth the effort of living. Kent hesitated, set his lips tightly together,
and lifted her up straighter. His eyes were intent and stern, as though
some great issue was at stake, and he must rouse her at once, in spite of
everything.

“Here, this won't do at all,” he said--but he was speaking to himself and
his quivering nerves, more than to her.

She sighed, made a conscious effort, and half opened her eyes again. But
she seemed not to share his anxiety for action, and her mental and physical
apathy were not to be mistaken. The girl was utterly exhausted with
fire-fighting and nervous strain.

“You seem to be all in,” he observed, his voice softly complaining. “Well,
I packed you over here, and I reckon I better pack you back again--if you
_won't_ try to walk.”

She muttered something, of which Kent only distinguished “a minute.” But
she was still limp, and absolutely without interest in anything, and so,
after a moment of hesitation, he gathered her up in his arms and carried
her back to the house, kicked the door savagely open, took her in through
the kitchen, and laid her down upon the couch, with a sigh of relief that
he was rid of her.

The couch was gay with a bright, silk spread of “crazy” patchwork, and
piled generously with dainty cushions, too evidently made for ornamental
purposes than for use. But Kent piled the cushions recklessly around her,
tucked her smudgy skirts close, went and got a towel, which he immersed
recklessly in the water pail, and bathed her face and hands with clumsy
gentleness, and pushed back her tangled hair. The burn upon her hand showed
an angry red around the white of the blister, and he laid the wet towel
carefully upon it. She did not move.

He was a man, and he had lived all his life among men. He could fight
anything that was fightable. He could save her life, but after this slight
attention to her comfort he had reached the limitations set by his purely
masculine training. He lowered the shades so that the room was dusky and as
cool as any other place in that fire-tortured land, and felt that he could
no do more for her.

He stood for a moment looking down at the inert, grimy little figure
stretched out straight, like a corpse, upon the bright-hued couch, her eyes
closed and sunken, with blue shadows beneath, her lips pale and still with
that tired, pitiful droop. He stooped and rearranged the wet towel on her
burned hand, held his face close above hers for a second, sighed, frowned,
and tiptoed out into the kitchen, closing the door carefully behind him.




CHAPTER X. DESOLATION

For more than two hours Kent sat outside in the shade of the house, and
stared out over the black desolation of the coulee. His horse was gone, so
that he could not ride anywhere--and there was nowhere in particular to
ride. For twenty miles around there was no woman whom he could bring to
Val's assistance, even if he had been sure that she needed assistance.
Several times he tiptoed into the kitchen, opened the door into the front
room an inch or so, and peered in at her. The third time, she had relaxed
from the corpselike position, and had thrown an arm up over her face, as if
she were shielding her eyes from something. He took heart at that, and went
out and foraged for firewood.

There was a hard-beaten zone around the corral and stables, which had kept
the fire from spreading toward the house, and the wind had borne the sparks
and embers back toward the spring, so that the house stood in a brown oasis
of unburned grass and weeds, scanty enough, it is true, but yet a relief
from the dead black surroundings.

The woodpile had not suffered. A chopping block, a decrepit sawhorse,
an axe, and a rusty bucksaw marked the spot; also three ties, hacked
eloquently in places, and just five sticks of wood, evidently chopped from
a tie by a man in haste. Kent looked at that woodpile, and swore. He had
always known that Manley had an aversion to laboring with his hands, but he
was unprepared for such an exhibition of shiftlessness.

He savagely attacked the three ties, chopped them into firewood, and piled
them neatly, and then, walking upon his toes, he made a fire in the kitchen
stove, filled the woodbox, the teakettle, and the water pail, sat out in
the shade until he heard the kettle boiling over on the stove, took another
peep in at Val, and then, moving as quietly as he could, proceeded to cook
supper for them both.

He had been perfectly familiar with the kitchen arrangements in the days
when Manley was a bachelor, and it interested him and filled him with a
respectful admiration for woman in the abstract and for Val in particular,
to see how changed everything was, and how daintily clean and orderly.
Val's smooth, white hands, with their two sparkly rings and the broad
wedding band, did not suggest a familiarity with actual work about a house,
but the effect of her labor and thought confronted him at every turn.

“You can see your face in everything you pick up that was made to shine,”
 he commented, standing for a moment while he surveyed the bottom of a
stewpan. “She don't look it, but that yellow-eyed little dame sure knows
how to keep house.” Then he heard her cough, and set down the stewpan
hurriedly and went to see if she wanted anything.

Val was sitting upon the couch, her two hands pushing back her hair, gazing
stupidly around her.

“Everything's all ready but the tea,” Kent announced, in a perfectly
matter-of-fact tone. “I was just waiting to see how strong you want it.”

Val turned her yellow-brown eyes upon him in bewilderment. “Why, Mr.
Burnett--maybe I wasn't dreaming, then. I thought there was a fire. Was
there?”

Kent grinned. “Kinda. You worked like a son of a gun, too--till there
wasn't any more to do, and then you laid 'em down for fair. You were all
in, so I packed you in and put you there where you could be comfortable.
And supper's ready--but how strong do you want your tea? I kinda had an
idea,” he added lamely, “that women drink tea, mostly. I made coffee for
myself.”

Val let herself drop back among the pretty pillows. “I don't want any. If
there was a fire,” she said dully, “then it's true. Everything's all burned
up. I don't want any tea. I want to die!”

Kent studied her for a moment. “Well, in that case--shall I get the axe?”

Val had closed her eyes, but she opened them again. “I don't care what you
do,” she said.

“Well, I aim to please,” he told her calmly. “What _I'd_ do, in your place,
would be to go and put on something that ain't all smoked and scorched like
a--a ham, and then I'd sit up and drink some tea, and be nice about it.
But, of course, if you want to cash in--”

Val gave a sob. “I can't help it--I'd just as soon be dead as alive. It
was bad enough before--and now everything's burned up--and all Manley's
nice--ha-ay--”

“Well,” Kent interrupted mercilessly, “I've heard of women doing all kinds
of fool things--but this is the first time I ever knew one to commit
suicide over a couple of measly haystacks!” He went out and slammed the
door so that the house shook, and tramped three times across the kitchen
floor. “That'll make her so mad at me she won't think about anything else
for a while,” he reasoned shrewdly. But all the while his eyes were shiny,
and when he winked, his lashes became unaccountably moist. He stopped and
looked out at the blackened coulee. “Shut into this hole, week after week,
without a woman to speak to--it must be--damned tough!” he muttered.

He tiptoed up and laid his ear against the inner door, and heard a
smothered sobbing inside. That did not sound as if she were “mad,” and he
promptly cursed himself for a fool and a brute. With his own judgment to
guide him, he brewed some very creditable tea, sugared and creamed it
lavishly, browned a slice of bread on top of the stove--blowing off the
dust beforehand--after Arline's recipe for making toast, buttered it until
it dripped oil, and carried it in to her with the air of a man who will
have peace even though he must fight for it. The forlorn picture she made,
lying there with her face buried in a pink-and-blue cushion, and with her
shoulders shaking with sobs, almost made him retreat, quite unnerved. As it
was, he merely spilled a third of the tea and just missed letting the toast
slide from the plate to the floor; when he had righted his burden he had
recovered his composure to a degree.

“Here, this won't do at all,” he reproved, pulling a chair to the couch by
the simple method of hooking his toe under a round and dragging it toward
him. “You don't want Man to come and catch you acting like this. He's
liable to feel pretty blue himself, and he'll need some cheering up--don't
you think? I don't know for sure--but I've always been kinda under the
impression that's what a man gets a wife for. Ain't it? You don't want to
throw down your cards now. You sit up and drink this tea, and eat this
toast, and I'll gamble you'll feel about two hundred per cent better.

“Come,” he urged gently, after a minute. “I never thought a nervy little
woman like you would give up so easy. I was plumb ashamed of myself, the
way you worked on that back fire. You had me going, for a while. You're
just tired out, is all ails you. You want to hurry up and drink this,
before it gets cold. Come on. I'm liable to feel, insulted if you pass up
my cooking this way.”

Val choked back the tears, and, without taking her face from the pillow,
put out the burned hand gropingly until it touched his knee.

“Oh, you--you're good,” she said brokenly. “I used to think you
were--horrid, and I'm a--ashamed. You're good, and I--”

“Well, I ain't going to be good much longer, if you don't get your head
outa that pillow and drink this tea!” His tone was amused and half
impatient. But his face--more particularly his eyes--told another story,
which perhaps it was as well she did not read. “I'll be dropping the blamed
stuff in another minute. My elbow's plumb getting a cramp in it,” he added
complainingly.

Val made a sound half-way between a sob and a laugh, and sat up. With more
haste than the occasion warranted, Kent put the tea and toast on the chair
and started for the kitchen.

“I was bound you'd eat before I did,” he explained, “and I could stand a
cup of coffee myself. And, say! If there's anything more you want, just
holler, and I'll come on the long lope.”

Val took up the teaspoon, tasted the tea, and then regarded the cup
doubtfully. She never drank sugar in her tea. She wondered how much of it
he had put in. Her head ached frightfully, and she felt weak and utterly
hopeless of ever feeling different.

“Everything all right?” came Kent's voice from the kitchen.

“Yes,” Val answered hastily, trying hard to speak with some life and cheer
in her tone. “It's lovely--all of it.”

“Want more tea?” It sounded, out there, as though he was pushing back his
chair to rise from the table.

“No, no, this is plenty.” Val glanced fearfully toward the kitchen door,
lifted the teacup, and heroically drank every drop. It was, she considered,
the least that she could do.

When he had finished eating he came in, and found her nibbling
apathetically at the toast. She looked up at him with an apology in her
eyes.

“Mr. Burnett, don't think I am always so silly,” she began, leaning back
against the piled pillows with a sigh. “I have always thought that I could
bear anything. But last night I didn't sleep much. I dreamed about fires,
and that Manley was--dead--and I woke up in a perfect horror. It was only
ten o'clock. So then I sat up and tried to read, and every five minutes I
would go out and look at the sky, to see if there was a glow anywhere.
It was foolish, of course. And I didn't sleep at all to-day, either. The
minute I would lie down I'd imagine I heard a fire roaring. And then it
came. But I was all used up before that, so I wasn't really--I must have
fainted, for I don't remember getting into the house--and I do think
fainting is the silliest thing! I never did such a thing before,” she
finished abjectly.

“Oh, well--I guess you had a license to faint if you felt that way,” he
comforted awkwardly. “It was the smoke and the heat, I reckon; they were
enough to put a crimp in anybody. Did Man say about when he would be back?
Because I ought to be moving along; it's quite a walk to the Wishbone.”

“Oh--you won't go till Manley comes! Please! I--I'd go crazy, here alone,
and--and he might not come--he's frequently detained. I--I've such a
horror of fires--” She certainly looked as if she had. She was sitting up
straight, her hands held out appealingly to him, her eyes big and bright.

“Sure I won't go if you feel that way about it.” Kent was half frightened
at her wild manner. “I guess Man will be along pretty soon, anyway. He'll
hit the trail as soon as he can get behind the fire, that's a cinch. He'll
be worried to death about you. And you don't need to be afraid of prairie
fires any more, Mrs. Fleetwood; you're safe. There can't be any more fires
till next year, anyway; there's nothing left to burn.” He turned his face
to the window and stared out somberly at the ravaged hillside. “Yes--you're
dead safe, now!”

“I'm such a fool,” Val confessed, her eyes also turning to the window, “If
you want to go, I--” Her mouth was quivering, and she did not finish the
sentence.

“Oh, I'll stay till Man comes. He's liable to be along any time, now.” He
glanced at her scorched, smoke-stained dress. “He'll sure think you made a
hand, all right!”

Val took the hint, and blushed with true feminine shame that she was not
looking her best. “I'll go and change,” she murmured, and rose wearily.
“But I feel as if the world had been 'rolled up in a scroll and burned,' as
the Bible puts it, and as if nothing matters any more.”

“It does, though. We'll all go right along living the same as ever, and
the first snow will make this fire seem as old as the war--except to the
cattle; they're the ones to get it in the neck this winter.”

He went out and walked aimlessly around in the yard, and went over to the
smoking remains of the stable, and to the heap of black ashes where the
stacks had been. Manley would be hard hit, he knew. He wished he would
hurry and come, and relieve him of the responsibility of keeping Val
company. He wondered a little, in his masculine way, that women should
always be afraid when there was no cause for fear. For instance, she had
stayed alone a good many times, evidently, when there was real danger of a
fire sweeping down upon her at any hour of the day or night; but now, when
there was no longer a possibility of anything happening, she had turned
white and begged him to stay--and Val, he judged shrewdly, was not the sort
of woman who finds it easy to beg favors of anybody.

There came a sound of galloping, up on the hill, and he turned quickly.
Dull dusk was settling bleakly down upon the land, but he could see three
or four horsemen just making the first descent from the top. He shouted a
wordless greeting, and heard their answering yells. In another minute or
two they were pulling up at the house, where he had hurried to meet them.
Val, tucking a side comb hastily into her freshly coiled hair, her pretty
self clothed all in white linen, appeased eagerly in the doorway.

“Why--where's Manley?” she demanded anxiously.

Blumenthall was dismounting near her, and he touched his hat before he
answered. “We were on the way home, and we thought we'd better ride around
this way and see how you came out,” he evaded. “I see you lost your hay and
buildings--pretty close call for the house, too, I should judge. You must
have got here in time to do something, Kent.”

“But where's Manley?” Val was growing pale again. “Has anything happened?
Is he hurt? Tell me!”

“Oh, he's all right, Mrs. Fleetwood.” Blumenthall glanced meaningly at
Kent--and Fred De Garmo, sitting to one side of his saddle, looked at
Polycarp Jenks and smiled slightly. “We left town ahead of him, and knocked
right along.”

Val regarded the group suspiciously. “He's coming, then, is he?”

“Oh, certainly. Glad you're all right, Mrs. Fleetwood. That was an awful
fire--it swept the whole country clean between the two rivers, I'm afraid.
This wind made it bad.” He was tightening his cinch, and now he unhooked
the stirrup from the horn and mounted again. “We'll have to be getting
along--don't know, yet, how we came out of it over to the ranch. But our
guards ought to have stopped it there.” He looked at Kent. “How did the
Wishbone make it?” he inquired.

“I was just going to ask you if you knew,” Kent replied, scowling because
he saw Fred looking at Val in what he considered an impertinent manner. “My
horse ran off while I was fighting fire here, so I'm afoot. I was waiting
for Man to show up.”

“You'll git all of that you want--_he-he!_” Polycarp cut in tactlessly.
“Man won't git home t'-night--not unless--”

“Aw, come on.” Fred started along the charred trail which led across the
coulee and up the farther side. Blumenthall spoke a last, commonplace
sentence or two, just to round off the conversation and make the
termination not too abrupt, and they rode away, with Polycarp glancing
curiously back, now and then, as though he was tempted to stay and gossip,
and yet was anxious to know all that had happened at the Double Diamond.

“What did Polycarp Jenks mean--about Manley not coming to-night?” Val was
standing in the doorway, staring after the group of horsemen.

“Nothing, I guess, Polycarp never does mean anything half the time; he just
talks to hear his head roar. Man'll come, all right. This bunch happened to
beat him out, is all.”

“Oh, do you think so? Mr. Blumenthall acted as if there was something--”

“Well, what can you expect of a man that lives on oatmeal mush and toast
and hot water?” Kent demanded aggressively. “And Fred De Garmo is always
grinning and winking at somebody; and that other fellow is a Swede and got
about as much sense as a prairie dog--and Polycarp is an old granny gossip
that nobody ever pays any attention to. Man won't stay in town--hell be too
anxious.”

“It's terrible,” sighed Val, “about the hay and the stables. Manley will
be so discouraged--he worked so hard to cut and stack that hay. And he was
just going to gather the calves together and put them in the river field,
in a couple of weeks--and now there isn't anything to feed them!”

“I guess he's coming; I hear somebody.” Kent was straining his eyes to see
the top of the hill, where the dismal sight shadows lay heavily upon the
dismal black earth. “Sounds to me like a rig, though. Maybe he drove out.”
 He left her, went to the wire gate which gave egress from the tiny, unkempt
yard, and walked along the trail to meet the newcomer.

“You stay there,” he called back, when he thought he heard Val following
him. “I'm just going to tell him you're all right. You'll get that white
dress all smudged up in these ashes.”

In the narrow little gully where the trail crossed the half-dry channel
from the spring he met the rig. The driver pulled up when he caught sight
of Kent.

“Who's that? Did she git out of it?” cried Arline Hawley, in a breathless
undertone, “Oh--it's you, is it, Kent? I couldn't stand it--I just had to
come and see if she's alive. So I made Hank hitch right up--as soon as we
knew the fire wasn't going to git into all that brush along the creek, and
run down to the town--and bring me over. And the way--”

“But where's Man?” Kent laid a hand upon the wheel and shot the question
into the stream of Arline's talk.

“Man! I dunno what devil gits into men sometimes. Man went and got drunk
as a fool soon as he seen the fire and knew what coulda happened out here.
Started right in to drownd his sorrows before he made sure whether he had
any to drown! If that ain't like a man, every time! Time we all got back to
town, and the fire was kiting away from us instead of coming up toward
us, he was too drunk to do anything. He must of poured it down him by the
quart. He--”

“Manley! Is that you, dear?” It was Val, a slim, white figure against the
blackness all around her, coming down the trail to see what delayed them.
“Why don't you come to the house? There _is_ a house, you know. We aren't
quite burned out. And I'm all right, so there's no need to worry any more.”

“Now, ain't that a darned shame?” muttered Arline wrathfully to Kent. “A
feller that'll drink when he's got a wife like that had oughta be hung!

“It's me, Arline Hawley!” She raised her voice to its ordinary shrill
level. “It ain't just the proper time to make a call, I guess, but it's
better late than never. Man, he was took with one of his spells, so I told
him I'd come on out and take you back to town. How are you, anyhow? Scared
plumb to death, I'll bet, when that fire come over the hill. You needn't
'a' tramped clear down here--we was coming on to the house in a minute. I
got to chewin' the rag with Kent. Git in; you might as well ride back to
the house, now you're here.”

“Manley didn't come?” Val was standing beside the rig, near Kent. Her
white-clothed figure was indistinct, and her face obscured in the dark. Her
voice was quiet--lifelessly quiet. “Is he sick?”

“Well--of course has nerves was all upset--”

“Oh! Then he _is_ sick?”

“Well--nothing dangerous, but--he wasn't feelin' well, so I thought I'd
come out and take you back with me.”

“Oh!”

“Man was awful worried; you mustn't think he wasn't. He was pretty near
crazy, for a while.”

“Oh, yes, certainly.”

“Get in and ride. And you mustn't worry none about Man, nor feel hurt that
he didn't come. He felt so bad--”

“I'll walk, thank you; it's only a few steps. And I'm not worried at all. I
quite understand.”

The team started on slowly, and Mrs. Hawley turned in the seat so that she
could continue talking without interruption to the two who walked behind.
But it was Kent who answered her at intervals, when she asked a direct
question or appeared to be waiting for some comment. Betweenwhiles he was
wondering if Val did, after all, understand. She knew so little of the West
and its ways, and her faith in Manley was so firm and unquestioning,
that he felt sure she was only hurt at what looked very much like an
indifference to her welfare. He suspected shrewdly that she was thinking
what she would have done in Manley's place, and was trying to reconcile
Mrs. Hawley's assurances that Manley was not actually sick or disabled with
the blunt fact that he had stayed in town and permitted others to come out
to see if she were alive or dead.

And Kent had another problem to solve. Should he tell her the truth? He had
never ceased to feel, in some measure, responsible for her position. And
she was sure to discover the truth before long; not even her innocence
and her ignorance of life could shield her from that knowledge. He let
a question or two of Arline's go unanswered while he struggled for a
decision, but when they reached the house, only one point was dearly
settled in his mind. Instead of riding as far as he might, and then walking
across the prairie to the Wishbone, he intended to go on to town with
them--“to see her through with it.”




CHAPTER XI. VAL'S AWAKENING

Val stood just inside the door of the hotel parlor and glanced swiftly
around at the place of unpleasant memory.

“No, I must see Manley before I can tell you whether we shall want to stay
or not,” she replied to Arline's insistence that she “go right up to a
room” and lie down. “I feel quite well, and you must not bother about me at
all. If Mr. Burnett will be good enough to send Manley to me--I must see
him first of all.” It was Val in her most unapproachable mood, and Arline
subsided before it.

“Well, then, I'll go and send word to Man, and see about some supper for
us. I feel as if _I_ could eat ten-penny nails!” She went out into the
hall, hesitated a moment, and then boldly invaded the “office.”

“Say! have you got Man rounded up yit?” she demanded of her husband. “And
how is he, anyhow? That girl ain't got the first idea of what ails him--how
anybody with the brains and education she's got can be so thick-headed gits
me. Jim told me Man's been packing a bottle or two home with him every trip
he's made for the last month--and she don't know a thing about it. I'd like
to know what 'n time they learn folks back East, anyhow; to put their eyes
and their sense in their pockets, I guess, and go along blind as bats.
Where's Kent at? Did he go after him? She won't do nothing till she sees
Man--”

At that moment Kent came in, and his disgust needed no words. He answered
Mrs. Hawley's inquiring look with a shake of the head.

“I can't do anything with him,” he said morosely. “He's so full he don't
know he's got a wife, hardly. You better go and tell her, Mrs. Hawley.
Somebody's got to.”

“Oh, my heavens!” Arline clutched at the doorknob for moral support. “I
could no more face them yellow eyes of hern when they blaze up--you go tell
her yourself, if you want her told. I've got to see about some supper for
us. I ain't had a bite since dinner, and Min's off gadding somewheres--”
 She hurried away, mentally washing her hands of the affair. “Women's got to
learn some time what men is,” she soliloquized, “and I guess she ain't
no better than any of the rest of us, that she can't learn to take her
medicine--but _I_ ain't goin' to be the one to tell her what kinda fellow
she's tied to. My stunt'll be helpin' her pick up the pieces and make the
best of it after she's told.”

She stopped, just inside the dining room, and listened until she heard Kent
cross the hall from the office and open the parlor door. “Gee! It's like a
hangin',” she sighed. “If she wasn't so plumb innocent--” She started
for the door which opened into the parlor from the dining room, strongly
tempted to eavesdrop. She did yield so far as to put her ear to the
keyhole, but the silence within impressed her strangely, and she retreated
to the kitchen and closed the door tightly behind her as the most practical
method of bidding Satan begone.

The silence in the parlor lasted while Kent, standing with his back against
the door, faced Val and meditated swiftly upon the manner of his telling.

“Well?” she demanded at last. “I am still waiting to see Manley. I am not
quite a child, Mr. Burnett. I know something is the matter, and you--if you
have any pity, or any feeling of friendship, you will tell me the truth.
Don't you suppose I know that Arline was--_lying_ to me all the time about
Manley? You helped her to lie. So did that other man. I waited until I
reached town, where I could do something, and now you must tell me the
truth. Manley is badly hurt, or he is dead. Tell me which it is, and take
me to him.” She spoke fast, as if she was afraid she might not be able to
finish, though her voice was even and low, it was also flat and toneless
with her effort to seem perfectly calm and self-controlled.

Kent looked at her, forgot all about leading up to the truth by easy
stages, as he had intended to do, and gave it to her straight. “He ain't
either one,” he said. “He's drunk!”

Val stared at him. “Drunk!” He could see how even her lips shrank from the
word. She threw up her head. “That,” she declared icily, “I know to be
impossible!”

“Oh, do you? Let me tell you that's _never_ impossible with a man, not when
there's whisky handy.”

“Manley is not that sort of a man. When he left me, three years ago, he
promised me never to frequent places where liquor is sold. He never had
touched liquor; he never was tempted to touch it. But, just to be doubly
sure, he promised me, on his honor. He has never broken that promise; I
know, because he told me so.” She made the explanation scornfully, as
if her pride and her belief in Manley almost forbade the indignity of
explaining. “I don't know why you should come here and insult me,” she
added, with a lofty charity for his sin.

“I don't see how it can insult you,” he contended. “You're got a different
way of looking at things, but that won't help you to dodge facts. Man's
drunk. I said it, and I mean it. It ain't the first time, nor the second.
He was drunk the day you came, and couldn't meet the train. That's why I
met you. I ought to've told you, I guess, but I hated to make you feel bad.
So I went to work and sobered him up, and sent him over to get married.
I've always been kinda sorry for that. It was a low-down trick to play on
you, and that's a fact. You ought to've had a chance to draw outa the game,
but I didn't think about it at the time. Man and I have always been pretty
good friends, and I was thinking of _his_ side of the case. I thought he'd
straighten up after he got married; he wasn't such a hard drinker--only
he'd go on a toot when he got into town, like lots of men. I didn't think
it had such a strong hold on him. And I knew he thought a lot of you, and
if you went back on him it'd hit him pretty hard. Man ain't a bad fellow,
only for that. And he's liable to do better when he finds out you know
about it. A man will do 'most anything for a woman he thinks a lot of.”

“Indeed!” Val was sitting now upon the red plush chair. Her face was
perfectly colorless, her manner frozen. The word seemed to speak itself,
without having any relation whatever to her thoughts and her emotions.

Kent waited. It seemed to him that she took it harder than she would have
taken the news that Manley was dead. He had no means of gauging the horror
of a young woman who has all her life been familiar with such terms as “the
demon rum,” and who has been taught that “intemperance is the doorway to
perdition”; a young woman whose life has been sheltered jealously from all
contact with the ugly things of the world, and who believes that she might
better die than marry a drunkard. He watched her unobtrusively.

“Anyway, it was worrying over you that made him get off wrong to-day,” he
ventured at last, as a sort of palliative. “They say he was going to start
home right in the face of the fire, and when they wouldn't let him, he
headed straight for a saloon and commenced to pour whisky down him. He
thought sure you--he thought the fire would--”

“I see,” Val interrupted stonily. “For the very doubtful honor of shaking
the hand of a politician, he left me alone to face as best I might
the possibility of burning alive; and when it seemed likely that the
possibility had become a certainty, he must celebrate his bereavement by
becoming a beast. Is that what you would have me believe of my husband?”

“That's about the size of it,” Kent admitted reluctantly. “Only I wouldn't
have put it just that way, maybe.”

“Indeed! And how would you pit it, then?”

Kent leaned harder against the door, and looked at her curiously. Women, it
seemed to him, were always going to extremes; they were either too soft and
meek, or else they were too hard and unmerciful.

“How would you put it? I am rather curious to know your point of view.”

“Well, I know men better than you do, Mrs. Fleetwood. I know they can do
some things that look pretty rotten on the surface, and yet be fairly
decent underneath. You don't know how a habit like that gets a fellow just
where he's weakest. Man ain't a beast. He's selfish and careless, and he
gives way too easy, but he thinks the world of you. Jim says he cried like
a baby when he came into the saloon, and acted like a crazy man. You don't
want to be too hard on him. I've an idea this will learn him a lesson. If
you take him the right way, Mrs. Fleetwood, the chances are he'll quit
drinking.”

Val smiled. Kent thought he had never before seen a smile like that, and
hoped he never would see another. There was in it neither mercy nor mirth,
but only the hard judgment of a woman who does not understand.

“Will you bring him to me here, Mr. Burnett? I do not feel quite equal
to invading a saloon and begging him, on my knees, to come--after the
conventional manner of drunkards' wives. But I should like to see him.”

Kent stared. “He ain't in any shape to argue with,” he remonstrated. “You
better wait a while.”

She rested her chin upon her hands, folded upon the high chair back, and
gazed at him with her tawny eyes, that somehow reminded Kent of a lioness
in a cage. He thought swiftly that a lioness would have as much mercy as
she had in that mood.

“Mr. Burnett,” she began quietly, when Kent's nerves were beginning to feel
the strain of her silent stare, “I want to see Manley _as he is now_. I
will tell you why. You aren't a woman, and you never will understand, but I
shall tell you; I want to tell _somebody_.

“I was raised well--that sounds queer, but modesty forbids more. At any
rate, my mother was very careful about me. She believed in a girl marrying
and becoming a good wife to a good man, and to that end she taught me and
trained me. A woman must give her all--her life, her past, present, and
future--to the man she marries. For three years I thought how unworthy I
was to be Manley's wife. _Unworthy_, do you hear? I slept with his letters
under my pillow.” The self-contempt in her tone! “I studied the things I
thought would make me a better companion out here in the wilderness. I
practiced hours and hours every day upon my violin, because Manley had
admired my playing, and I thought it would please him to have me play in
the firelight on winter evenings, when the blizzards were howling about the
house! I learned to cook, to wash clothes, to iron, to sweep, and to scrub,
and to make my own clothes, because Manley's wife would live where
she could not hire servants to do these things. I lived a beautiful,
picturesque dream of domestic happiness.

“I left my friends, my home, all the things I had been accustomed to all my
life, and I came out here to live that dream!” She laughed bitterly.

“You can easily guess how much of it has come true, Mr. Burnett. But you
don't know what it costs a girl to come down from the clouds and find that
reality is hard and ugly--from dreaming of a cozy little nest of a home,
and the love and care of--of Manley, to the reality--to carrying water and
chopping wood and being left alone, day after day, and to find that his
love only meant--Oh, you don't know how a woman clings to her ideals! You
don't know how I have dung to mine. They have become rather tattered, and I
have had to mend them often, but I have clung to them, even though they do
not resemble much the dreams I brought with me to this horrible country.

“But if it's true, what you tell me--if Manley himself is another
disillusionment--if beyond his selfishness and his carelessness he is a
drunken brute whom I can't even respect, then I'm done with my ideals. I
want to see him just as he is. I want to see him once without the halo I
have kept shining all these months. I've got my life to live--but I want to
face facts and live facts. I can't go on dreaming and making believe, after
this.” She stopped and looked at him speculatively, absolutely without
emotion.

“Just before I left home,” she went on in the same calm quiet, “a girl
showed me some verses written by a very wicked man. At least, they say he
is very wicked--at any rate, he is in jail. I thought the verses horrible
and brutal; but now I think the man must be very wise. I remember a few
lines, and they seem to me to mean Manley.

         “For each man kills the thing he loves--
         Some do it with a bitter look,
         Some with a flattering word;
         The coward does it with a kiss,
         The brave man with a sword.

“I don't remember all of it, but there was another line or two:

  

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