THE world continued to be otherwise uninhabited and to glow rosily for
almost a fortnight. Ginger’s Aunt Fan received a very satisfactory
letter from Jim Featherstone; the Wolcott Family was as solid as
Plymouth Rock, and contemporaneous with it. Dean Wolcott was a young
man of excellent lineage, character, and achievement--known already, at
twenty-eight, for unusual and original work in his line. He had gone in
mildly for athletics at Harvard, topped his classes, made two of the
best clubs. He had been popular in a quiet and discriminating fashion.
At the end of his letter Aunt Fan’s ex-husband allowed himself a
bit of facetiousness. “I’ve sleuthed the lad down very thoroughly.
But--Tremont Street and Dos Pozos! Well, it may work out, if he likes
paprika on his Boston beans!”
Mrs. Featherstone was extremely pleased with this report, but she was
likewise thorough, so she sent out a hurry call for her good friend,
Doctor Gurney Mayfield. This was the doctor with whom they should
have supped at Tait’s on the night of Ginger’s shabby arrival in San
Francisco, and he had known Aunt Fan since she was nineteen years old
and weighed ninety-eight pounds and she would always be Miss Fanny to
him. He had taken care of her first husband through his last illness,
the more zealously and devotedly because he had always considered him a
rival, and he had thought then, after a decent interval, to renew his
suit (that was what he called it in his courtly and chivalrous heart)
but his Miss Fanny, some time before his idea of that interval had
elapsed, met and married Jim Featherstone and went with him to New York
and lived unhappily ever after. He was honestly regretful and soberly
elated to have her back in California again, and calling on him as
always for escort and counsel, and now he came at once at her summons,
driving down from the prosperous ranch where he spent his time after
retiring from a beloved and almost boundless practice.
Ginger was a great favorite with him; he was keenly concerned about
her choice. The thought of her marriage had always made him a little
anxious; she was her father and her mother--truly, as her lover had
said in his rhapsodic moment, Scotch granite and Spanish flame. The
doctor had seen something of the home life of Rosalía Valdés and
Alexander McVeagh; it had been quite lyrically perfect, but very high
keyed, and he had wondered if it would--or could--last down the years.
The Spanish woman had a small velvet voice, convent-trained, and she
sat often at the rosewood spinnet which had belonged to her mother
before her and sang the songs of the period. They were very sweet and
very sentimental and packed with pathos, and some one invariably died
in the second verse. He remembered that she had loved best one which
ran something after this fashion--
_Perhaps it is better we lived as we did,
The summer of love together,
And that one of us tired and lay down to rest,
Ere the coming of wintry weather--_
and always turned away from the spinnet with her dark eyes wet.
That was exactly what she had done, herself, and Alexander McVeagh had
followed her, ten years later, contentedly, for all his devotion to his
son and daughter. He wasn’t at all sure, in his rugged and unadorned
version of his forbears’ belief, that he should find her again in the
world to come, but he was very sure that the world he was leaving was
not much of a world without her. Aleck, the son, had been a simple
and uncomplex creature; all McVeagh. It was the girl who combined her
father and her mother in a baffling and intricate fashion. The doctor
wondered; it would have been simpler and safer, he considered, for
Virginia Valdés McVeagh to marry a neighboring rancher--even Jerome
Ojeda--though he lacked a little of the fineness the doctor wanted for
her--than a Wolcott of Boston.
Doctor Mayfield’s opportunities for studying them together were
limited; when they were together--save at meal-times--they took
excellent care to be alone together. They motored all over the
surrounding landscape by day and by night--it was, by a special
dispensation of Providence, a time of white and silver moonlight--and
tramped high into the hills. This in itself was an amazing
spectacle--Ginger McVeagh afoot; from her tiny childhood she had
never walked except on her way to a horse. Dean Wolcott loved walking,
however, and she loved Dean Wolcott and the thing was accomplished.
Besides, by an odd and dramatically arranged combination of
circumstances, she had not, for that period, a horse to offer him.
Aleck’s horse, Felipe, which she usually rode, had a wrenched foot,
and was turned out, and she was riding her own horse Diablo, about the
business of the ranch. Estrada and his men were using all the others,
bringing in the stock from the farther feeding pastures. Ordinarily,
she would have borrowed a mount for him from a neighbor, but it was
a part of the newness and strangeness of things to be motoring and
tramping with her strange new lover.
At such times, however, as she had to be about the business of Dos
Pozos, the doctor held satisfying converse with Dean Wolcott. He liked
him heartily, and reported to Aunt Fan as favorably as Jim Featherstone
had done, and after five days he went north again, satisfied with the
newcomer as an individual, hopeful about him as Ginger’s husband, and
Aunt Fan was left alone.
“Well, it’s ‘_the summer of love_’ they’re living now, Miss Fanny,” he
told her at leaving. “We can only hope it’ll be big enough to see them
through ‘_the coming of wintry weather_.’” But he shook his head. Since
he had given up the patching and mending of bodies he had given a lot
of thought to minds and souls and temperaments; he was rather well up
on them.
* * * * *
Ginger jumped up from the dinner table one day and flew to the
telephone. “I _must_ get you a horse,” she said, excitedly. “I don’t
know what I’ve been thinking about!” Then she colored hotly and
suddenly; she knew very well what she had been thinking about. “You’ve
been here nearly two weeks and we haven’t had a ride together, and
Friday’s the big day!” She gave her number and stood waiting, the
receiver in her hand.
“But--look here,” said Dean Wolcott. “I don’t ride, you know. I’ve told
you that before, haven’t I?”
He had told her several times, but it simply didn’t register. For a
man--a hundred per cent man, who had been a soldier and her brother’s
comrade, who was, above all, _her_ man--not to ride was--ridiculous.
He was using a phrase which didn’t mean anything; he probably didn’t
care especially about riding (Boston was without doubt a wretched
place in which to ride) or didn’t ride especially well; city men
didn’t as a rule. But to say he didn’t _ride_-- She was speaking into
the telephone. “Hello! Hello! Oh, ’Rome, is that you? How are you?...
’Rome, can you lend us a horse? Felipe’s turned out with a bad foot,
and we haven’t a thing for Dean to ride.... Oh, fine,’Rome! Thanks a
lot! Bring him over with you Friday morning, will you?” She came back
to the table radiant. “’Rome says he’s got just the thing for you; I
knew he’d help us out.”
(’Rome Ojeda had heard, as all the countryside had heard, of Ginger’s
eastern suitor; it was the chief topic in a land which was ordinarily
bare of conversational thrills, but he had taken it quite coolly. He
wasn’t, he had been quoted as saying, “worrying none.” Ginger hadn’t
given him any thought. He had not, to be sure, telephoned to her or
ridden over with congratulations as others had done, but he had been
gay and good-natured when they met up on horseback.)
Dean looked at her quizzically. He was beginning, in the last day or
two, to look at her with his mind instead of his heart, and he had
made several discoveries. One of these was that she was as high-handed
and autocratic as a feudal duchess; it was not only that she always
wanted and took her own way--she was unaware that there was any other
way to want, or to take. But, up to that time, he was not worrying
any more than ’Rome Ojeda was. It was picturesque, it was pretty--her
high-handedness.
The night before the “big day” she refused to walk or motor or even sit
on the veranda, but told him a resolute good night at eight o’clock.
“Ling will call you at three, and breakfast’s at three-thirty.”
“We attack at dawn, I see,” said Dean, steering her cleverly into an
alcove and out of her aunt’s range of vision. “Then, if my evening is
to end at eight instead of ten or eleven, I certainly consider myself
entitled to something in the way of recompense.” He swept her into his
arms and kissed her.
“Honey,” said Ginger, persuasively, “let me go! And you must get to
sleep yourself--we’ve got a big day ahead of us!”
“My dear, I’ve told you several times, though you’ve seemed not to
listen to me, that I’m no horseman. I rather think you’d better let me
off, to-morrow; it’s highly probable that I’d cut a sorry figure in the
saddle.”
Ginger drew back in his arms, wide-eyed. “But you’ll _have_ to ride,
Dean! You couldn’t possibly drive the car--we go by trail and straight
over the hills--and you couldn’t walk.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’ll be a forty-mile trip, and--why, it wouldn’t be safe,
goose! You _are_ a tenderfoot, aren’t you? The steers are all right
when you’re on horseback, but they’d rush over you in a wink, afoot.”
“Forty miles,” said Dean, thoughtfully. “It sounds rather a large
order, Ginger, dear. Suppose I don’t go?”
“Suppose you don’t--_go_?” She stared at him and her voice was cold
with astonishment. “Why--what’ll everybody think?”
“I don’t understand you.”
“What’ll everybody think about _you_, if you don’t go--when it’s my
ranch and my cattle, and everybody coming back here for the big feed at
night and the dance?” she wanted hotly to know.
Dean Wolcott colored slowly. “I fail to see where it is any one’s
affair but my own--and yours, of course. If we decide that it is
wiser----”
“But we haven’t and we aren’t going to!” she flamed out at him. “Oh,
can’t you see how it is? Everybody, Estrada and his men and all the
neighbors and people I’ve known ever since I was born, think it’s
funny and queer, my being--engaged to you. They think easterners are
just like _foreigners_. I did, too,” she was gentle for an instant,
“before you came! And if you ditch the ride, and just sit around the
house and wait for the big feed and the dance, they’ll say--anyhow,
’Rome Ojeda’ll say--that you’re bluffed out. ’Rome Ojeda’s been trying
to make me say I’d marry him ever since I was fifteen; _he_’ll say
you’re--afraid.”
He did not speak at once, and Ginger, watching him, breathing fast
after her long speech, saw that he was looking a lot like the other Mr.
Wolcott. “And what will you say, Ginger, if I tell you that I won’t
ride? What will you say?” He was very quiet about it. “It doesn’t
matter in the least to me what a lot of ranchers and cowboys think or
say--Ojeda or any one else. But--what will you say?”
Even a resemblance to the cousin who had convoyed him disapprovingly
across the continent made her truculent, and his voice was even more
like the other than his expression. “I’ll say you _must_--” she caught
herself midway, aghast to find how nearly she had said the unforgivable
thing. She came close to him again and put her arms around his neck and
clasped her hands behind his head, and pulled his grave face down to
her. “I won’t have to say anything, because I know you’re going to do
it for me--aren’t you, Dean--_dearest_?”
It was the first time she had ever, alone and unassisted--uninvited--
kissed him upon the mouth. He caught her hard against him with
a strength which seemed ready for any feats of prowess. “I’ll
ride--anything--anywhere--you ask me,” he said, unsteadily.
Ling called him at three o’clock. It was dark and unbelievably cold,
and he dressed himself with stiff fingers and went heavy-eyed into the
dining room. He felt old and jaded and depressed; unhappily conscious
of all the strength which hadn’t yet come back to him.
Ginger was there before him, dressed in her oldest riding things, a
worn old Stetson on her head, a scarlet bandanna tied, cowboy fashion,
about her neck, and she was warm and glowing. She looked as if she had
just emerged from the conclusion of their ardent little scene of the
night before; Dean felt as if it were something which had happened to
him in his youth, and as if his youth had passed a long time ago. He
had no appetite, and could barely manage a cup of coffee, and he was
almost annoyed with her for eating with excellent relish. They spoke in
low tones, remembering Aunt Fan’s earnest pleas that she should not be
wakened, but before they left the table there was a pounding of hoofs
and a shout from the front of the house.
“There’s ’Rome!” said Ginger, jumping up. “Come along!” She ran out
onto the veranda and he followed her slowly.
’Rome Ojeda had ridden in from his ranch the night before and stayed
with Ginger’s nearest neighbor, and his horses--the one he rode and
the one he was leading--were quite fresh. He swung himself to the
ground, dropped the reins, pulled off a buckskin gauntlet and strode
over to Dean, holding out his hand. “Mighty pleased to make your
acquaintance,” he said, displaying very briefly his white smile in his
brown face. “Here’s your mount, Mr. Wolcott,” he nodded toward the red
roan.
“Very good of you,” said Dean, stiffly. He felt stiff, body and brain,
aching for sleep, cramped and cold.
“Oh--the lunches!” cried Ginger. “Almost forgot them!” She bolted into
the house.
Dean Wolcott looked at his horse and hunted wearily through his mind
for something sapient to say about him. The fact was that he had not
been astride a horse six times in his twenty-eight years. Others of
the Wolcott family rode--several of his friends rode; it had merely
happened that he had gone in, instead, in what leisure he had from
school and college and later, the office, for tennis and golf and
walking trips. He had very nearly made tackle in his junior year; three
years on the squad. Now he would have traded all these glad activities
for a good working knowledge of horseflesh.
One of Ginger’s men brought up her Diablo; there were a dozen riders in
the distance, coming nearer at a swinging lope.
The _vaquero_ looked at the roan. “I see you got new horse, Meester
Ojeda, no?”
“Yeh,” Ojeda nodded. “Mr. Wolcott’s ridin’ him to-day.” Then he said,
very slowly, “Only been rode a coup’la saddles.”
Dean Wolcott pulled himself up. “What do you call him, Ojeda?”
’Rome Ojeda rolled a cigarette. “I call him ‘Snort,’” he said. “He
mostly does.”
Ginger’s suitor walked down the shallow steps and went up to the horse
with outstretched hand. “Hello, Snort, old chap! Do you----”
The animal pulled back sharply, flinging up his head with a sound
vividly descriptive of his name, and ’Rome Ojeda grinned, enjoyingly.
“Aside from that, he’s as gentle as a kitten,” he drawled. “Look here,
Mr. Wolcott--where’s your spurs?”
“Oh, I sha’n’t need spurs,” said Dean, easily. Just as Ginger had
disliked his correct cousin in less than five minutes of acquaintance,
so now did he detest this brown and beautiful ’Rome Ojeda with his
appalling bigness, his flashing smile, and his crude sureness. He
loathed the whole commonplace, rubber-stamp situation in which he found
himself--competent wild westerner, eastern tenderfoot, cattle-queen
heroine, mob scene of cow-punchers; it was like finding himself placed
on the printed page of a tawdry story--like seeing himself on the
screen in a cheap and stupid moving picture; like seeing himself in the
rôle of unwitting comedian. He knew that, unescapably, he was about to
be made to appear ridiculous; and that was a thing no Wolcott ever was.
They had reverses, disappointments; they were ill, they suffered, they
died; they were never ridiculous. And now Dean Wolcott, whose mother
kept his Congressional Medal and his Croix de Guerre in the box with
her delicate handkerchiefs, so that, with no parade of them, she could
see and touch them every day, was about to afford rude mirth to yokels.
He went again and firmly to his mount, clutched at the mane and the
reins, got one foot into the jerking stirrup, scrambled and clawed his
way up. The horse, simultaneously with these motions on his part,
noisily demonstrating the aptness of his cognomen, did incredibly swift
and sudden things with his head, his neck, all four of his legs and
his torso. Dean Wolcott, just as the riders came loping up and Ginger
stepped out on to the veranda with the packets of lunch in her hands,
rose clear of the saddle, appeared to hang an instant in mid-air,
sailed over the head of his steed and fell heavily to the sun-baked
earth.