"I Wish You'd Quit Believing in Me!"
A distant screaming roused Ford from his bitter mood of introspection.
He raised his head and listened, his heavy-lidded eyes staring blankly
at the wall opposite, before he sprang off the bunk, pulled on his
boots, and rushed from the room. Outside, he hesitated long enough to
discover which direction he must take to reach the woman who was
screaming inarticulately, her voice vibrant with sheer terror. The sound
came from the little, brown cottage that seemed trying modestly to hide
behind a dispirited row of young cottonwoods across a deep, narrow
gully, and he ran headlong toward it. He crossed the plank footbridge in
a couple of long leaps, vaulted over the gate which barred his way, and
so reached the house just as a woman whom he knew must be Mason's
"Kate," jerked open the door and screamed "Chester!" almost in his
face. Behind her rolled a puff of slaty blue smoke.
Ford pushed past her in the doorway without speaking; the smoke told its
own urgent tale and made words superfluous. She turned and followed him,
choking over the pungent smoke.
"Oh, where's Chester?" she wailed. "The whole garret's on fire--and I
can't carry Phenie--and she's asleep and can't walk anyway!" She rushed
half across the room and stopped, pointing toward a closed door, with
Ford at her heels.
"She's in there!" she cried tragically. "Save her, quick--and I'll find
Chester. You'd think, with all the men there are on this ranch, there'd
be some one around--oh, and my new piano!"
She ran out of the house, scolding hysterically because the men were
gone, and Ford laughed a little as he went to the door she had
indicated. When his fingers touched the knob, it turned fumblingly under
another hand than his own; the door opened, and he confronted the girl
whom he had tried to befriend the day before. She had evidently just
gotten out of bed, and into a flimsy blue kimono, which she was holding
together at the throat with one hand, while with the other she steadied
herself against the wall. She stared blankly into his eyes, and her face
was very white indeed, with her hair falling thickly upon either side in
two braids which reached to her hips.
Ford gave her one quick, startled glance, said "Come on," quite
brusquely, and gathered her into his arms with as little sentiment as he
would have bestowed upon the piano. His eyes smarted with the smoke,
which blinded him so that he bumped into chairs on his way to the door.
Outside he stopped, and looked down at the girl, wondering what he
should do with her. Since Kate had stated emphatically that she could
not walk, it seemed scarcely merciful to deposit her on the ground and
leave her to her own devices. She had closed her eyes, and she looked
unpleasantly like a corpse; and there was an insistent crackling up in
the roof, which warned Ford that there was little time for the weighing
of fine points. He was about to lay her on the bare ground, for want of
a better place, when he glimpsed Mose running heavily across the
bridge, and went hurriedly to meet him.
"Here! You take her down and put her in one of the bunks, Mose," he
commanded, when Mose confronted him, panting a good deal because of his
two hundred and fifty pounds of excess fat and a pair of
down-at-the-heel slippers which hampered his movements appreciably. Mose
looked at the girl and then at his two hands.
"I can't take her," he lamented. "I got m'hands full of aigs!"
Ford's reply was a sweep of the girl's inert figure against Mose's
outstretched hands, which freed them effectually of their burden of
eggs. "You darned chump, what's eggs in a case like this?" he cried
sharply, and forced the girl into his arms. "You take her and put her on
a bunk. I've got to put out that fire!"
So Mose, a reluctant knight and an awkward one, carried the girl to the
bunk-house, and left Ford free to save the house if he could.
Fortunately the fire had started in a barrel of old clothing which had
stood too close to the stovepipe, and while the smoke was stifling, the
flames were as yet purely local. And, more fortunately still, that day
happened to be Mrs. Mason's wash-day and two tubs of water stood in the
kitchen, close to the narrow stairway which led into the loft. Three or
four pails of water and some quick work in running up and down the
stairs was all that was needed. Ford, standing in the low, unfinished
loft, looked at the rafter which was burnt half through, and wiped his
perspiring face with his coat sleeve.
"Lordy me!" he observed aloud, "I sure didn't come any too soon!"
"Oh, it's all out! I don't know how I ever shall thank you in this
world! With Phenie in bed with a sprained ankle so she couldn't walk,
and the men all gone, I was just wild! I--why--" Kate, standing upon the
stairs so that she could look into the loft, stopped suddenly and stared
at Ford with some astonishment. Plainly, she had but then discovered
that he was a stranger--and it was quite as plain that she was taking
stock of his blackened eyes and other bruises, and that with the
sheltered woman's usual tendency to exaggerate the disfigurements.
"That's all right; I don't need any thanks." Ford, seeing no other way
of escape, approached her steadily, the empty bucket swinging in his
hand. "The fire's all out, so there's nothing more I can do here, I
guess."
"Oh, but you'll have to bring Josephine back!" Kate's eyes met his
straightforward glance reluctantly, and not without reason; for Ford had
dark, greenish purple areas in the region of his eyes, a skinned cheek,
and a swollen lip; his chin was scratched and there was a bruise on his
forehead where, on the night of his marriage, he had hit the floor
violently under the impact of two or three struggling male humans.
Although they were five days old--six, some of them--these divers
battle-signs were perfectly visible, not to say conspicuous; so that
Kate Mason was perhaps justified in her perfectly apparent diffidence in
looking at him. So do we turn our eyes self-consciously away from a
cripple, lest we give offense by gazing upon his misfortune.
"_I_ can't carry her, and she can't walk--her ankle is sprained
dreadfully. So if you'll bring her back to the house, I'll be ever so
much--"
"Certainly; I'll bring her back right away." Ford came down the stairs
so swiftly that she retreated in haste before him, and once down he did
not linger; indeed, he almost ran from the house and from her
embarrassed gratitude. On the way to the bunk-house it occurred to him
that it might be no easy matter, now, for Mason to conceal Ford's
identity and his sins. From the way in which she had stared wincingly at
his battered countenance, he realized that she did, indeed, have ideals.
Ford grinned to himself, wondering if Ches didn't have to do his smoking
altogether in the bunk-house; he judged her to be just the woman to wage
a war on tobacco, and swearing, and muddy boots, and drinking out of
one's saucer, and all other weaknesses peculiar to the male of our
species. He was inclined to pity Ches, in spite of his mental
acknowledgment that she was a very nice woman indeed; and he was half
inclined to tell Mason when he saw him that he'd have to look further
for a foreman.
He found the girl lying upon a bunk just inside the door, still with
closed eyes and that corpse-like look in her face. He was guilty of
hoping that she would remain in that oblivious state for at least five
minutes longer, but the hope was short-lived; for when he lifted her
carefully in his arms, her eyes flew open and stared up at him intently.
Ford shut his lips grimly and tried not to mind that unwinking gaze
while he carried her out and up the path, across the little bridge and
on to the house, and deposited her gently upon her own bed. He had not
spoken a word, nor had she. So he left her thankfully to Kate's tearful
ministrations and hurried from the room.
"Lordy me!" he sighed, as he closed the door upon them and went back to
the bunk-house, which he entered with a sigh of relief. One tribute he
paid her, and one only: the tribute of feeling perturbed over her
presence, and of going hot all over at the memory of her steady stare
into his face. She was a queer girl, he told himself; but then, so far
as he had discovered, all women were queer; the only difference being
that some women were more so than others.
He sat down on the bunk where she had lain, and speedily forgot the girl
and the incident in facing the problem of that foremanship. He could not
get away from the conviction that he was not to be trusted. He did not
trust himself, and there was no reason why any man who knew him at all
should trust him. Ches Mason was a good fellow; he meant well, Ford
decided, but he simply did not realize what he was up against. He meant,
therefore, to enlighten him further, and go his way. He was almost sorry
that he had come.
Mason, when Ford confronted him later at the corral and bluntly stated
his view of the matter, heard him through without a word, and did not
laugh the issue out of the way, as he had been inclined to do before.
"I'll be all right for a month, maybe," Ford finished, "and that's as
long as I can bank on myself. I tell you straight, Ches, it won't work.
You may think you're hiring the same fellow that came out of the North
with you--but you aren't. Why, damn it, there ain't a man I know that
wouldn't give you the laugh if they knew the offer you've made me! They
would, that's a fact. They'd laugh at you. You're all right, Ches, but I
won't stand for a deal like that. I can't make good."
Mason waited until he was through. Then he came closer and put both
hands on Ford's shoulders, so that they stood face to face, and he
looked straight into Ford's discolored eyes with his own shining a
little behind their encircling wrinkles.
"You can make good!" he said calmly. "I know it. All you need is a
chance to pull up. Seeing you won't give yourself one, I'm giving it to
you. You'll do for me what you won't do for yourself, Ford--and if
there's a yellow streak in you, I never got a glimpse of it; and the
yellow will sure come to the surface of a man when he's bucking a
proposition like you and me bucked for two months. You didn't lay down
on that job, and you were just a kid, you might say. Gosh, Ford, I'd
bank on you any old time--put you on your mettle, and I would! You can
make good here--and damn it, you will!"
"I wish I was as sure of that as you seem to be," Ford muttered
uneasily, and turned away. Mason's easy chuckle followed him, and Ford
swung about and faced him again.
"I haven't made any cast-iron promise--"
"Did I ask you to make any?" Mason's voice sharpened.
"But--Lordy me, Ches! How do you know I--"
"I know. That's enough."
"But--maybe I don't want the darned job. I never said--"
Mason was studying him, as a man studies the moods of an untamed horse.
"I didn't think you'd dodge," he drawled, and the blood surged
answeringly to Ford's cheeks. "You do want it."
"If I should happen to get jagged up in good shape, about the first
thing I'd do would be to lick the stuffing out of you for being such a
simple-minded cuss," Ford prophesied grimly, as one who knows well
whereof he speaks.
"Ye-es--but you won't get jagged."
"Oh, Lord! I wish you'd quit believing in me! You used to have some
sense," Ford grumbled. But he reached out and clenched his fingers upon
Mason's arm so tight that Mason set his teeth, and he looked at him
long, as if there was much that he would like to put into words and
could not. "Say! You're white clear down to your toes, Ches," he said
finally, and walked away hurriedly with his hat jerked low over his
eyes.
Mason looked after him as long as he was in sight, and afterwards took
off his hat, and wiped beads of perspiration from his forehead. "Gosh!"
he whispered fervently. "That was nip and tuck--but I got him, thank the
Lord!" Whereupon he blew his nose violently, and went up to his supper
with his hands in his pockets and his humorous lips pursed into a
whistle.
Before long he was back, chuckling to himself as he bore down upon Ford
in the corral, where he was industriously rubbing Rambler's sprained
shoulder with liniment.
"The wife says you've got to come up to the house," he announced
gleefully. "You've gone and done the heroic again, and she wants to do
something to show her gratitude."
"You go back and tell your wife that I'm a bold, bad man and I won't
come." Ford, to prove his sincerity, sat down upon the stout manger
there, and crossed his legs with an air of finality.
"I did tell her," Mason confessed sheepishly. "She wanted to know who
you was, and I told her before I thought. And she wanted to know what
was the matter with your face, 'poor fellow,' and I told her that,
too--as near as I knew it. I told her," he stated sweepingly, "that
you'd been on a big jamboree and had licked fourteen men hand-running.
There ain't," he confided with a twinkle, "any use at all in trying to
keep a secret from your wife; not," he qualified, "from a wife like
Kate! So she knows the whole darned thing, and she's sore as the deuce
because I didn't bring you up to the house right away when you came. She
thinks you're sufferin' from them wounds and she's going to doctor 'em.
That's the way with a woman--you never can tell what angle she's going
to look at a thing from. You're the man that packed me down out of the
Wrangel mountains on your back, and that's enough for her--dang it, Kate
thinks a lot of me! Besides, you done the heroic this afternoon. You've
got to come."
"There ain't anything heroic in sloshing a few buckets of water on a
barrel of burning rags," Ford belittled, seeking in his pockets for his
cigarette papers.
"How about rescuing a lady?" Mason twitted. "You come along. I want you
up there myself. Gosh! I want somebody I can talk to about something
besides dresses and the proper way to cure sprained ankles, and whether
the grocer sent out the right brand of canned peaches. Women are all
right--but a man wants some one around to talk to. You ain't married!"
"Oh. Ain't I?" Ford snorted. "And what if I ain't?"
"Say, there's a mighty nice girl staying with us; the one you rescued.
She's laid up now--got bucked off, or fell off, or something yesterday,
and hurt her foot--but she's a peach, all right. You'll--"
"I know the lady," Ford cut in dryly. "I met her yesterday, and we
commenced hating each other as soon as we got in talking distance. She
sent me to catch her horse, and then she pulled out before I got back.
She's a peach, all right!"
"Oh. You're the fellow!" Mason regarded him attentively. "Now, I don't
believe she said a word to Kate about that, and she must have known who
it was packed her out of the house. I wonder why she didn't say anything
about it to Kate! But she wasn't to blame for leaving you out there,
honest she wasn't. I went out to hunt her up--Kate got kinda worried
about her--and she told me about you, and we did wait a little while.
But it was getting cold, and she was hurt pretty bad and getting kinda
wobbly, so I put her on my horse and brought her home. But she left a
note for you, and I sent a man back after you with a horse. He come back
and said he couldn't locate you. So we thought you'd gone to some other
ranch." He stopped and looked quizzically at Ford. "So you're the man!
And you're both here for the winter--at least, Kate says she's going to
keep her all winter. Gosh! This is getting romantic!"
"Don't you believe it!" Ford urged emphatically. "I don't want to bump
into her again; a little of her company will last me a long while!"
"Oh, you won't meet Jo to-night; Josephine, her name is. She's in bed,
and will be for a week or so, most likely. You've just got to come,
Ford. Kate'll be down here after you herself, if I go back without
you--and she'll give me the dickens into the bargain. I want you to get
acquainted with my kid--Buddy. He's down in the river field with the
boys, but he'll be back directly. Greatest kid you ever saw, Ford! Only
seven, and he can ride like a son-of-a-gun, and wears chaps and spurs,
and can sling a loop pretty good, for a little kid! Come on!"
"Wel-ll, all right--but Lordy me! I do hate to, Ches, and that's a fact.
Women I'm plumb scared of. I never met one in my life that didn't hand
me a package of trouble so big I couldn't see around it. Why--" He shut
his teeth upon the impulse to confide to Mason his matrimonial
mischance.
"These two won't. My wife's the real goods, once you get to know her; a
little fussy, maybe, over some things--most all women are. But she's all
right, you bet. And Josephine's the proper stuff too. A little abrupt,
maybe--"
"Abrupt!" Ford echoed, and laughed over the word. "Yes, she is what you
might call a little--abrupt!"