With each stop of the cross-continent train rain-coated men, with
occasionally a woman, entered the car and passed down the corridor to
disappear into the compartments. Porters wearing that air of authority
and responsibility for which one might justly look in a premier or
secretary of state, came and went; conductors punched tickets and
answered questions more or less amiably; the wheels rattled and roared
and ground ceaselessly; outside the rain descended with a persistence
worthy a better cause.
From the window of her compartment Geraldine Courtlandt looked out upon
a drenched world. There was nothing to see save a dense white sheet ten
feet beyond the window. In an hour she and Steve would reach their
destination, the first stop on the detour, she thought with a sudden
mist before her eyes. She hoped that the storm was not an omen of what
lay before them. She shook herself mentally. "Don't be silly and
superstitious," she admonished that Jerry Courtlandt who persisted in
having a queer lumpy feeling in the region of her throat whenever she
thought of the curious twist the apparently broad, straight road of her
marriage had taken.
Her father had maintained his attitude of angry aloofness. He had not
come to the station to see her off, she had waited on the platform until
the train started, hoping that he would relent at the last moment. He
had sent a curt typewritten note to the effect that if she and Steve
regained their common sense and returned to the Manor before the end of
the year he would double the income he had allowed them. There were a
dozen glorious American beauties in her compartment when she entered it.
The roses had set the atmosphere tingling with life and color and love.
Jerry laughed happily and kissed each one of them. How like her father
it was to write the note with one hand and send flowers with the other.
What difference would it make if her income were doubled if she were
disloyal to the promise she made when she married Steve, the girl
thought, as chin on her hand she gazed unseeingly out at the rain. "An
easy conscience is more to be desired than great riches," she
paraphrased to herself as she thought of the weeks when she had been
engaged to Greyson. Her heart still smarted with contrition as she
remembered how ashamed she had been that she could make so little
response to the love he lavished upon her. "Never again!" she said
aloud. "I've made two mistakes, Bruce and Steve. From now on I'll do
what I know to be right even if I hurt someone else and--and hate doing
it. But--but just what shall I do for money?" she questioned with
puckered brows.
She opened her beaded bag and poured the contents into her lap. "How are
the mighty fallen!" she quoted with a laugh as she looked down upon the
collection displayed. A handkerchief, one gold pencil, the key to her
safe-deposit box, the membership card of her club, a book of postage
stamps. Nothing else. She had carried out the terms of the will in
letter and spirit. After her bills had been paid she had transferred her
bank balance to her father and had dropped her remaining cash into the
box of a Salvation Army lassie as she entered the station to take the
west-bound train. The woman in the red-banded pokebonnet, standing on a
board to keep her stout boots from the dampness, had looked at the bills
crushed into her box, then after the donor incredulously. Such lavish
generosity was rare in her experience.
Jerry frowningly regarded the objects in her lap. Not one cent of money.
"Being marooned on a desert island has nothing on being marooned on a
ranch without a penny," she mused under her breath. She hastily stuffed
her belongings back into her bag as she heard an approaching whistle.
It was Steve. The queer merry-go-round of fortune had accomplished one
thing, it had restored Steve's spirits. Since leaving New York he had
been a different person from the morose, touchy individual she had known
since her engagement to him. He had been companionable, sympathetic in a
fraternal sort of way which had made her wish fervently that Fate had
given her a brother instead of a husband.
"Won't you come in?" she asked as Courtlandt stopped at the open door,
then as he entered, "Is it time to get on my coat?"
"Not for half an hour." He seated himself opposite her. There was a new
expression in his eyes which set the girl's heart to beating
uncomfortably. She couldn't define it, she couldn't meet it long enough
to define it.
"Jerry," there was an "'tention company" note in his voice which brought
her chin up defiantly, "I suppose--if you complied with the terms of
Uncle Nick's will you must be rather down and out financially--yes?" She
succumbed to the lure of his smile and the laughter in his eyes.
"Thought telepathy," she responded gayly. "I was taking account of stock
when you appeared. I have in this bag, one pencil, one handkerchief, one
perfectly good club-membership card--good, that is, until January
first--and a book of two-cent stamps. Those stamps won't imperil our
hopes of the inheritance, will they?" she asked with exaggerated
anxiety. "Caleb Lawson held me up before I boarded the train. I had to
sign a paper and show him my empty purse to prove that I was really the
Beggar-maid, bare-pursed instead of barefooted, following my King
Cophetua out into the cold, cold world."
"Your simile is faulty. As I remember it the Beggar-maid loved the
King."
"Also the King loved the Beggar-maid. You're right, the similarity
ceases with my lack of funds."
"I shall open an account for you in the bank at Slippy Bend. Until
then----" his hand went to his pocket. The girl's face whitened.
"Don't offer me money, Steve," she commanded tensely.
"I'm not offering money. I am giving you what belongs to you. Aren't you
earning what Uncle Nick left as well as I?"
"Weren't you earning your share of Father's money when you married me?"
"That's different."
"Why? You refused to take my money. I refuse to take yours."
"You will take it."
Jerry leaned forward, her face as colorless as his.
"Take that 'Hands up!' expression out of your eyes, Steve. I shall not
take a cent of your money. You will find that a Glamorgan has as much
pride as a Courtlandt if she hasn't several generations of aristocrats
behind her." Her angry eyes blazed as he retorted laughingly:
"You forget. You're not a Glamorgan now."
She shrugged lightly.
"More's the pity."
"Do you mean that?" Consternation banished the smile from his lips. He
caught her hands in his. "The day Uncle Nick arrived I heard you
say----"
"Nex' stop Slippy Bend, Miss. Porter for your bags," interrupted a
Jamaican voice with a Chicago accent. Jerry's face flushed with relief
as the black head with its gleaming eyes and teeth bobbed in at the
door. She pointed to the bags. As the man went out with them she turned
to Courtlandt with an embarrassed laugh.
"You've won this time, Steve. I had forgotten the porter. You'll have to
tip him and the maid for me. However, as this is really a deferred
wedding-trip the expenses naturally fall to the groom, don't they?" with
reckless daring.
He looked at her until her laughing eyes fell before the glow of his.
"You've said it--if this can be called a wedding-trip--but take it from
me, sometime, Mrs. Courtlandt, I'll show you what a real honeymoon can
be. Porter, here's another bag."
He followed the black man into the corridor. Jerry settled her smart
toque and pinned on her veil before the mirror, but she couldn't see her
own face, only Steve's with that curious I'm-biding-my-time look in his
eyes. What had he meant about a honeymoon? Did he mean that he and
Felice--no, _no_, Steve was not that kind. She looked about the
compartment to make sure that she had left nothing. Three roses still
glowing with beauty remained of the dozen. She pinned them to the front
of her coat. She would take so much of her father into her new life with
her.
The wooden shanty which served as a shelter for telegraph, freight and
passengers at Slippy Bend was as depressing as rain, flapping shingles
and a skewed roof could make it. The road which struggled up a slope to
hide between two shabby buildings was a river of mud. A knock-kneed man
with a string of slat-ribbed calico horses and cayuses following him,
waded downward through the middle of it. Every few steps he would stop
to yank a howling, red-eyed bulldog from a hole which had betrayed him.
Jerry valiantly blinked back the tears as she watched him. She had never
seen anything quite as sordid and depressing as her surroundings. The
only note of civilization in the dreary scene was the large, curtained
touring car by the platform. As she looked at it, two legs, which had
acquired Queen Anne curves from many hours spent in the saddle, wriggled
from under the curtains followed by a large body. A Belgian police dog,
tawny, noble, aloof, followed the man. Courtlandt who had been busy with
the luggage turned with a boyish laugh and held out his hand.
"It sure is great to be back, Pete. Down, Goober, down, boy!" to the dog
who, after an uncertain second, had leaped to lick his face. He kept one
hand on the animal's head as he turned to the girl beside him. "Jerry,
this is Pete Gerrish, who taught me all I know about ranching. He is
Uncle Nick's right-hand man. Pete, this is Mrs. Courtlandt."
"He's got me wrong, ma'am. I _was_ the old gentleman's right-hand man,
but Ranlett's in the saddle now. I'm sure pleased to meet you an' I hope
you'll be downright happy with us."
"Thank you, Mr. Gerrish." Jerry felt the tears absurdly near as she
looked up at him. He was regarding her with unqualified approval. His
large face was cross-currented with fine lines and smiles; his Stetson
came close to ears which looked as though the Almighty had designed them
as hat-rests and had made a surprisingly good job of it. He carried the
marks of his calling in the devil-may-care poise of his body, in his
clothing, in his rollicking Irish eyes.
"I'll give Baldy Jennings a hand with the trunks to get 'em out of the
rain till the boys get here for them. They're teamin' in. How the devil
did yer expect to get all them things out to the ranch over these spring
roads, Steve--I would say Chief? The boys has decided that even if they
did teach the new owner most of what he knows about ranchin', it won't
do to be familiar-like no more. So we've decided to call him chief,
ma'am," Gerrish inserted the bit of information to Jerry in the midst of
his dissertation on the condition of the roads. "I went up to the hubs
gettin' here with no load. By cripes, I don't know what'll happen goin'
back."
Jerry was tempted to echo that "By cripes!" later, when the big car
laboring through what seemed rivers of mud, foundered in a hole. She
unfastened the curtain and looked out. Goober on the running-board,
plastered with mud, looked like nothing so much as a model sketchily
done in clay as he peered down inquiringly. Gerrish expressed himself in
language which the girl was sure was being painfully expurgated because
of her. The wheels groaned and choked as they churned up fountains of
mud. As she watched the wheel under her Jerry could think of nothing
but a gigantic egg-beater gone mad from the futility of its efforts. The
back of Gerrish's neck had taken on a dangerous, apoplectic color
generated, doubtless, by restraint from the fullest self-expression.
"Would it help if I got out?" she ventured in the lull while the engine
rested.
"Haw! I guess if yer did we'd have to haul you out in a hurry or send a
rescue-party through to China," Gerrish discouraged while Courtlandt
commanded:
"Stay where you are! I'll take the wheel, Pete. We have nothing to put
under the back wheels; it would do no good if we had. The engine will
have to do the trick."
He threw on the switch. The engine started. The spinning wheels hitched
forward, he reversed, hitched forward, reversed, hitched forward till
Jerry experienced all of the discomforts, and none of the stimulation,
of being aboard ship on a high and choppy sea. Courtlandt grimly pursued
his tactics till with a roar from the motor and a lurch which sent
Jerry's teeth into her lower lip, the car, looking like an uncanny
prehistoric animal which had been wallowing in a mud bath, dragged
itself from its hole, skidded with hair-raising irresponsibility, came
back to the road and struggled on. The rain stopped. The sky showed
shapeless spots of light where the clouds were thinning. Vapors floated
lightly above the fields.
It was twilight, a crimson and gold twilight, when Courtlandt turned
into the avenue of cottonwoods which led to the ranch-house of the
Double O. The air was fragrant with fresh washed earth and the spicy
breath which the storm had beaten from the pines. From somewhere a
meadow-lark trilled an ecstatic greeting and as though frightened at its
temerity as suddenly subsided. The naming color in the west might have
been the glow from a blazing forest, but it was only the sun flinging
its good-night over sky and fields and mountains in the whole-hearted
Western way. Against the red light squatted the shadowy shape of the
ranch-house.
When the car stopped Goober sprang to the porch and stood as if awaiting
orders. In the background hovered two Chinese servants, a man and a
woman. Their slant-eyes in their moon faces were ludicrously alike. The
woman in her gay silks and embroideries looked like a painting on
rice-paper.
Pete and Hopi Soy carried in the bags. At a nod from Courtlandt the
woman followed. Steve held the door wide. With a curious choked feeling
Jerry entered the house. Then her emotion found vent in a little cry of
delight. After the grayness and mud of the ride out the great
living-room glowed like a jewel. The color stole through her senses like
an elixir and rested and refreshed her. Her eyes shone, her lips curved
in a faint smile as she looked about her. The servants had disappeared.
She and Steve were alone.
Logs blazed in the great stone fireplace. Safely out of scorching
distance a white cat dozed in front of it, her fluffy coat rosy in the
firelight, her wide eyes like blinking topaz as she regarded the
newcomers. Gorgeous serapes from old Mexico, Hopi saddle-blankets,
heavily beaded garments of the Blackfeet, Apache bows and quivers full
of arrows, Navaho blankets, skins of mountain lions and lynx there were,
each one placed in artistic relation to its neighbor. A profusion of
books and magazines, a baby-grand piano, a phonograph _de luxe_, softly
shaded lamps, added their note of civilization to the array of savage
trophies and over the mantel----
"Why, Steve! There's Mother!" whispered Jerry softly.
For a silent moment the man and girl standing side by side looked up at
the tender, laughing face of the woman in riding costume. She didn't
seem like a thing of paint and canvass, she was real, vital, alive and
welcoming. Jerry was the first to stir. She colored with confusion.
"Steve, I--I beg your pardon! I--I shouldn't have called her--mother.
But I was so--so surprised. It seemed for a moment as if she held out
welcoming arms to me." She turned away. Courtlandt gripped her shoulders
with a force which hurt.
"She is your mother--I----" he released her abruptly and threw open a
door. "These are your rooms. Mine are opposite. You see we have but one
story in the ranch-house. Your bags are in your room. Ming Soy will come
to help you when you ring." He put his two hands on her shoulders again.
"I'm glad that you wore my roses."
"Your roses! Why I thought--I thought----" Her voice was drenched with
disappointment. Steve's face was a mask, only his eyes seemed alive as
he removed his hands and asked crisply:
"That they came from Greyson?"
"No, Steve, no! How could you think such a thing? I thought that Dad had
relented and--and had sent the roses to----" she winked her lashes
furiously but not before Steve had seen the diamond-like drops that
beaded them. His voice was tender as he comforted:
"Your father will come round, Jerry. Just believe with old Doc Rand that
things have a way of coming marvelously, unbelievably right. You are not
sorry that you came, are you?"
"I'll say I'm not!" She had essayed an imitation of his voice and words
but the emotion which had threatened her all day surged in her heart and
betrayed her. Steve caught her hands in his.
"Don't look like that, little girl. You're going to love the life here
and the ranch and--and--and Goober," he added with a short laugh as the
dog bounded into the room.