LARRY GOES CALLING
RUTH and Mrs. Flanders sat on the porch at Elkhorn Lodge and watched a
rider descend a hill trail toward the ranch. It was late in the season.
Except a hunting party, only a few stray boarders remained, and these
would soon take flight for the cities. But in spite of the almanac the
day had been hot. Even after sunset it was pleasant outdoors.
The rider announced his coming with song. For a fortnight he had been on
the round-up, working sixteen hours a day, and now that it was nearly
over he was entitled to sing. The words drifted down to the women on the
porch:
“Foot in the stirrup and hand on the horn,
Best damned cowboy that ever was born.”
“It’s Larry Silcott,” announced Mrs. Flanders, brightening. She was a
born gossip. When the owner of the Open A N C was with her there was a
pair of them present.
“Yes,” assented Ruth. She had known for some moments that the
approaching rider was Larry.
He offered for their entertainment another selection.
“Sift along, boys, don’t ride so slow.
Haven’t got much time but a long round to go.
Quirt him on the shoulders and rake him down the hip,
I’ll cut you toppy mounts, boys, now pair off and rip.”
After a few moments of silence the wind brought more song to the women
on the porch:
“Bunch the herd at the old meet,
Then beat ’em on the tail;
Whip ’em up and down the side
And hit the shortest trail.”
The young man appeared to catch sight of the women and waved his
pinched-in felt hat at them, finishing his range ditty with a cowboy
cheer for a rider to the last stanza:
“Coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya youpy ya,
Coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya.”
He cantered up to the ranch, flung himself from the saddle without
touching the stirrups, grounded the reins, and came forward to the porch
with jingling spurs. Ruth did not deny that he was a most engaging
youth. The outdoor bloom on his cheeks, the sparkle in his eyes, the
nonchalant pose that had just a touch of boyish swagger, all carried
their appeal even with women old enough to be his mother.
“Is the round-up finished?” asked Mrs. Flanders.
“They’ve got to comb Eagle Creek yet and the Flat Tops.” He fell into
the drawl of the old cowman. “But I’m plumb fed up with the dust of the
drag driver. Me, I’m through. Enough’s plenty. The boys can finish
without Larry Silcott.”
“Oh, I’m going home
Bullwhacking for to spurn,
I ain’t got a nickel,
And I don’t give a dern.”
“You seem to have quite an attack of doggerel to-night,” suggested Ruth.
“Doggerel nothing. Every one of ’em is a range classic. I got them from
old Sam Yerby, who brought them up from Texas. I’ve been giving you the
genuwine, blown-in-the-bottle ballads of the man who wears leathers,”
defended Larry.
“Who is boss of the round-up this year?” asked Mrs. Flanders.
“Rowan is, and believe me he worked us to a fare-you-well. He’s some
driver, Mac is; one of your sixty-horsepower dynamos on two legs. He is
good for twenty-four hours a day himself, and he figures the rest of us
are made of leather and steel, too. I’m a wreck.”
“What’s that I hear about Falkner and Tait having some more trouble?”
“Trouble is right, Mrs. Flanders. They met over by the creek at Three
Willows. One thing led to another, and they both got down from their
horses and mixed it. Tait had one of his herders with him, and he took a
hand in the fracas. The two of them gave Falkner an awful beating. He
was just able to crawl to his horse.”
“Tait ought to be driven out of the country,” pronounced Mrs. Flanders
indignantly. “He’s always making trouble.”
“Joe is certainly a bad actor, but it would be some job to drive him
away. He hasn’t got sense enough to realize what is going to happen to
him. If Falkner ever gets him at the wrong end of a gun——” He left his
sentence unfinished. The imagination could supply the rest.
“They say Tait has driven his sheep across the dead line again.” Mrs.
Flanders put her statement as if it were a question.
Larry, recalling a warning he had been given, became suddenly discreet.
“Do they?”
“Will the Hill Creek cattlemen stand for it?”
There was a sullen, mulish look on his face that suggested he knew more
than he intended to tell. “Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t.”
Business called the Mistress of Elkhorn Lodge into the house.
Ruth, with a slant of dark eyes toward her guest, asked him a question:
“Do you call this two weeks?”
“I call it a month, reckoning by my feelings.”
She scoffed. “It’s a pity about your feelings. I told you not to come
again for two weeks.”
“I thought as I happened to be passing——”
“On your way to nowhere.”
“—that I’d drop in and say ‘_Buenas tardes_.’”
“Good of you, I’m sure.”
He settled himself comfortably on the porch against a pillar. “I want to
ask your advice. I’m just a plain cow-puncher and you’re a wise young
lady from a city. So you can tell me all about it. I’m getting old and
lonesome, and my mind has been running on a girl a heap.”
Her glance took in the slim, wiry youth at her feet. She smiled. “You’d
better ask Mrs. Flanders. I’m too young to advise you.”
“No. You’re just the right age. I’ll tell you about her. There never was
anybody prettier—not in Wyoming. She’s fresh and sweet, like those wild
roses we picked in Bear Creek Cañon. Her eyes are kind o’ rippled by a
laugh ’way down deep in them, then sometimes they are dark and still
and—sort of tender. She has the kindest heart in the world—and the
cruelest. I wouldn’t want a better partner, though she’s as wild as an
unbroken bronc sometimes. You never can tell when she’s going to bolt.”
There was a faint flush of pink in her cheeks, but her eyes danced. “You
don’t make her sound like a really _nice_ girl.”
“Oh, she’s nice enough, when she isn’t a little divvle. The trouble is
she isn’t foot-loose.”
“Of course she is tremendously in love with you.”
“She likes me a heap better than she pretends.”
“I’m sure she would adore you if she knew how modest you are,” Ruth
answered with amiable malice.
Silcott’s gaze absorbed her dainty sweetness. He spoke with an emphasis
of the cattleman’s drawl.
“I’d like right well to take her up on my hawss and ride away with her
like that Lochinvar fellow did in the poetry book y’u lent me onct—the
one that busted up the wedding of the laggard guy and went a-fannin’ off
with his gyurl behind him, whilst the no’count bridegroom and her paw
hollered ‘Help!’”
“Lochinvar. Oh, he’s out of date.”
“Maybe so. But it’s a great thing to know when to butt in.” He watched
her covertly as he spoke.
“And when not to,” added Ruth, with the insolent little tilt of her chin
that made men want to demonstrate. “Come on. Let’s go over to the mesa
and look at the desert in the moonlight.”
Beneath the stars this land of splintered peaks and ragged escarpments
always took on a glory denied to it by day. The obscuration of detail,
the vagueness of outline, lent magic to the hills. Below, the valley
swam in a sheen of gleaming silver.
Ruth drew a deep breath of sensuous delight and lifted her face to the
star-strewn sky. Her companion watched her, his eyes shining. She was
standing lance straight, everything forgotten but the beauty of the
night. In the air was a faint, murmurous stir of desert denizens.
“The world’s going to bed,” she whispered. “It always says its prayers
first—wonderful prayers full of the fragrance of roses and the sough of
wind just touching the pines, and the far, far song of birds. You have
to listen—oh, so still!—before you can hear them. The world is sad
because the lovely day is dead and because life is so short and so
filled with loss, and it’s just a wee bit afraid of the darkness. So God
lights up millions of candles in His sky as a sign that He’s up there
and all’s well with the universe.”
Larry had another Ruth to add to his list of portraits of her. It was
amazing how many women were wrapped up in her slim young body, not to
mention the Ruth that was a naughty child and the one that was all eager
boy. He had known her in the course of a morning grave and gay,
whimsical and coquettish, sulky and passionate. She was given to
generous impulses and unjust resentments. At times her soul danced on
the hilltops of life, and again she beat with her fists indignantly at
the bars that prisoned her. Of late he had more than once surprised her
with the traces of tears on her face.
He knew that all was not well between her and Rowan, but he did not know
what was amiss. Only Mrs. Flanders guessed that, and for once she kept
her own counsel.
Larry slipped his big brown hand over her little one.
“But you’re not happy just the same,” he told her.
He was one of those men whose attitude toward a young and attractive
woman is always that of the lover potential or actual. He was never
quite satisfied until the talk became personal and intimate, until he
had established an individual relationship with any woman who interested
him.
Ruth nodded agreement.
She let her hand lie in his. Since her break with Rowan she was often
the victim of moods when she craved a sympathy such as Larry offered,
one that took her trouble for granted without discussing it. There were
other times when her spirit flared into rebellion, when she was eager to
punish her husband’s faithlessness by letting Silcott make veiled love
to her with only a pretense of disapproval.
“Why don’t you chuck it all overboard and make a new start?” he asked
her abruptly.
She looked at him, a little startled. He had never before made so direct
a reference to her situation.
“I don’t care to talk about that.”
“But you’ll have to talk about it some time. You can’t go on like this
for ever, and—you know I love you, that I’d do anything in the world
for you.”
“I know you talk a lot of foolishness, Larry,” she retorted sharply. “I
may be a goose, but I’m not silly enough to take you seriously all the
time. Let’s go back to the house.”
“I don’t see why you can’t take me seriously,” he said sulkily.
“Because you’re only a boy. You think you want the moon, but you don’t;
at least the only reason you want it is because it’s in somebody else’s
yard.”
“It doesn’t need to stay there always, does it?”
“That isn’t a matter for you and me to discuss,” she flashed at him with
spirit. “Whenever I need your advice I’ll ask for it, my friend.”
She led the way to the house, her slender limbs moving rhythmically with
light grace. Larry walked beside her sullenly. What was the matter with
her to-night? Last week she had almost let him kiss her. If she had held
him back, still it had been with the promise in her manner that next
time he might be more successful. But now she had pushed him back into
the position of a friend rather than a lover.
Larry had no intention of being her friend. It was not in his horoscope
to be merely a friend to any charming woman. Moreover, he was as much in
love with Ruth as he could be with anybody except himself.
Just before they reached the porch she asked him a question: “When will
they be through with the round-up?”
“In two or three days. Why?”
“I just wondered.”
Her eyes evaded his. His annoyance flashed suddenly into words.
“If it’s Rowan you want, why don’t you go back to him like a good little
girl and say you’re sorry? I expect he would forgive you.”
Anger, sudden and imperious, leaped into her eyes. “I wish you’d learn,
Larry Silcott, to mind your own business.”
She turned and fled into the house.