Produced by Al Haines
[Illustration: Cover art]
THE RANCH AT
THE WOLVERINE
By B. M. BOWER
Author of "The Lonesome Land," Etc.
A. L. BURT COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
114-120 East Twenty-third Street ---- New York
Published by Arrangement with Little, Brown and Company
Copyright, 1914,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. LET US START AT THE BEGINNING
II. A STORM AND A STRANGER
III. A BOOK, A BANNOCK, AND A BED
IV. "OLD DAME FORTUNE'S USED ME FOR A FOOTBALL"
V. MARTHY BURIES HER DEAD AND GREETS HER NEPHEW
VI. A MATTER OF TWELVE MONTHS OR SO
VII. WARD HUNTS WOLVES
VIII. HELP FOR THE COW BUSINESS
IX. WHEN EMOTIONS ARE BOTTLED
X. THIS PAL BUSINESS
XI. WAS IT THE DOG?
XII. THE LITTLE DEVILS OF DOUBT
XIII. THE CORRAL IN THE CANYON
XIV. EACH IN HIS OWN TRAIL
XV. "YOU WON'T GET ME AGAIN"
XVI. "I'M GOING TO TAKE YOU OUT AND HANG YOU"
XVII. "SO-LONG, BUCK!"
XVIII. FORTUNE KICKS AGAIN
XIX. THE BRAVE BUCKAROO
XX. "WE BEEN SORRY FOR YOU"
XXI. SEVEN LEAN KINE
XXII. THE BILLY OF HER
XXIII. BILLY LOUISE GETS A SURPRISE
XXIV. THE HOOKIN'-COUGH MAN
XXV. THE WOLF JOKE
XXVI. "HM-MM!"
XXVII. MARTHY
XXVIII. ALL RIGHT AND COMFY
_The Ranch at the Wolverine_
CHAPTER I
LET US START AT THE BEGINNING
Four trail-worn oxen, their necks bowed to the yoke of patient
servitude, should really begin this story. But to follow the trail
they made would take several chapters which you certainly would
skip--unless you like to hear the tale of how the wilderness was tamed
and can thrill at the stern history of those who did the taming while
they fought to keep their stomachs fairly well filled with food and
their hard-muscled bodies fit for the fray.
There was a woman, low-browed, uncombed, harsh of voice and speech and
nature, who drove the four oxen forward over lava rock and rough
prairie and the scanty sage. I might tell you a great deal about
Marthy, who plodded stolidly across the desert and the low-lying hills
along the Blackfoot; and of her weak-souled, shiftless husband whom she
called Jase, when she did not call him worse.
They were the pioneers whose lurching wagon first forded the singing
Wolverine stream just where it greens the tiny valley and then slips
between huge lava-rock ledges to join the larger stream. Jase would
have stopped there and called home the sheltered little green spot in
the gray barrenness. But Marthy went on, up the farther hill and
across the upland, another full day's journey with the sweating oxen.
They camped that night on another little, singing stream, in another
little valley, which was not so level or so green or so wholly pleasing
to the eye. And that night two of the oxen, impelled by a surer
instinct than their human owners, strayed away down a narrow, winding
gorge and so discovered the Cove and feasted upon its rich grasses. It
was Marthy who went after them and who recognized the little, hidden
Eden as the place of her dreams--supposing she ever had dreams. So
Marthy and Jase and the four oxen took possession, and with much labor
and many hard years for the woman, and with the same number of years
and as little labor as he could manage on the man's part, they tamed
the Cove and made it a beauty spot in that wild land. A beauty spot,
though their lives held nothing but treadmill toil and harsh words and
a mental horizon narrowed almost to the limits of the grim, gray, rock
wall that surrounded them.
Another sturdy-souled couple came afterwards and saw the Wolverine and
made for themselves a home upon its banks. And in the rough little log
cabin was born the girl-child I want you to meet; a girl-child when she
should have been a boy to meet her father's need and great desire; a
girl-child whose very name was a compromise between the parents. For
they called her Billy for sake of the boy her father wanted, and Louise
for the girl her mother had longed for to lighten that terrible
loneliness which the far frontier brings to the women who brave its
stern emptiness.
Do you like children? In other words, are you human? Then I want you
to meet Billy Louise when she was ten and had lived all her life among
the rocks and the sage and the stunted cedars and huge, gray hills of
Idaho. Meet her with her pink sunbonnet hanging down the back of her
neck and her big eyes taking in the squalidness of Marthy's crude
kitchen in the Cove, and her terrible directness of speech hitting
squarely the things she saw that were different from her own immaculate
home. Of course, if you don't care for children, you may skip a
chapter and meet her later when she was eighteen--but I really wish you
would consent to know her at ten.
"Mommie makes cookies with a raising in the middle. She gives me two
sometimes when the Bill of me has been workin' like the deuce with dad;
one for Billy and one for Louise. When I'm twelve, Mommie's goin' to
let the Louise of me make cookies all myself and put a raising on top.
I'll put two on top of one and bring it over for you, Marthy. And--"
Billy Louise was terribly outspoken at times--"I'll put four raisings
on another one for Jase, 'cause he don't have any nice times with you.
Don't you ever make cookies with raisings on 'em, Marthy? I'm hungry
as a coyote--and I ain't used to eating just bread and the kinda butter
you have. Mom says you don't work it enough. She says you are too
scared of water, and the buttermilk ain't all worked out, so that's why
it tastes so funny. Does Jase like that kind of butter, Marthy?"
"If your mother had to do the outside work as well as the inside, mebbe
she wouldn't work her butter so awful much, either. I dunno whether
Jase likes it or not. He eats it," Marthy stated grimly.
Billy Louise sighed. "Well, of course he's awful lazy. Daddy says so.
I guess I won't put but one raising on Jase's cookie when I'm twelve.
Has Jase gone fishing again, Marthy?"
A gleam of satisfaction brightened Marthy's hard, blue eyes. "No, he
ain't. He's in the root suller. You want some bread and some nice,
new honey, Billy Louise? I jest took it outa the hive this morning.
When you go home, I'll send some to your maw if you can carry it."
"Sure! I can carry anything that's good. If you put it on thick, so I
can't taste the bread, I'll eat it. Say, you like me, don't you,
Marthy?"
"Yes," said Marthy, turning her back on the slim, wide-eyed girl, "I
like yuh, Billy Louise."
"You sound like you wish you didn't," Billy Louise remarked. Even at
ten Billy Louise was keenly sensitive to tones and glances and that
intangible thing we call atmosphere. "Are you sorry you like me?"
"No-o, I ain't sorry. A person's got to like something that's alive
and human, or--" Marthy was clumsy with words, and she was always
coming to the barrier between her powers of expression and the thoughts
that were prisoned and dumb. "Here's your bread 'n' honey."
"What makes you sound that way, Marthy? You sound like you had tears
inside, and they couldn't get out your eyes. Are you sad? Did you
ever have a little girl, Marthy?"
"What makes you ask that?" Marthy sat heavily down upon a box beside
the rough kitchen table and looked at Billy Louise queerly, as if she
were half afraid of her.
"I dunno--but that's the way mommie sounds when she says something
about angel-brother. Did you ever--"
"Billy Louise, I'm going to tell you this oncet, and then I don't want
you to ast me any more questions, nor talk about it. You're the
queerest young one I ever seen, but you don't hurt folks on
purpose--I've learnt that much about yuh." Marthy half rose from the
box, and with her dingy, patched apron shooed an investigative hen out
of the doorway. She knew that Billy Louise was regarding her fixedly
over the huge, uneven slice of bread and honey, and she felt vaguely
that a child's grave, inquiring eyes may be the hardest of all eyes to
meet.
"I never meant--"
"I know yuh never, Billy Louise. Now don't tell your maw this. Long
ago--long before your maw ever found you, or your paw ever found your
ranch on the Wolverine, I had a little girl, 'bout like you. She was a
purty child--her hair was like silk, and her eyes was blue, and--we was
Mormons, and we lived down clost to Salt Lake. And I seen so much
misery amongst the women-folks--you can't understand that, but mebby
you will when you grow up. Anyway, when little Minervy kep' growin'
purtyer and sweeter, I couldn't stand it to think of her growin' up and
bein' a Mormon's wife. I seen so many purty girls... So I made up my
mind we'd move away off somewheres, where Minervy could grow up jest as
sweet and purty as she was a mind to, and not have to suffer fer her
sweetness and her purtyness. When you grow up, Billy Louise, you'll
know what I mean. So me and Jase packed up--we kinda had to do it on
the sly, on account uh the bishops--and we struck out with a four-ox
team.
"We kep' a-goin' and kep' a-goin', fer I was scared to settle too
clost. I seen how they keep spreadin' out all the time, and I wanted
to git so fur away they wouldn't ketch up. And we got into bad
country, where there wasn't no water skurcely. We swung too fur north,
and got into the desert back there. And over next them three buttes
little Minervy took sick. We tried to git outa the desert--we headed
over this way. But before we got to Snake river she--died, and I had
to leave 'er buried back there. We come on. I hated the church worse
than ever, and I wanted to git clear away from 'em. Why, Billy Louise,
we camped one night by the Wolverine, right about where your paw's got
his big corral! We didn't stay there, because it was an Injun
camping-ground then, and they wasn't no use getting mixed up in no
fuss, first thing. In them days the Injuns wasn't so peaceable as they
be now. So we come on here and settled in the Cove.
"And so--I like yuh," said Marthy, in a tone that was half defiance,
"because I can't help likin' yuh. You're growin' up sweet and purty,
jest like I wanted my little Minervy to grow up. In some ways you
remind me of her, only she was quieter and didn't take so much notice
of things a young one ain't s'posed to notice. Now I don't want you
askin' no more questions about her, 'cause I ain't going to talk about
it ag'in; and if yuh pester me, I'll send yuh home and tell your maw to
keep yuh there. If you're the nice girl I think yuh be, you'll be good
to Marthy and not talk about--"
Billy Louise opened her eyes still wider, and licked the honey off one
whole corner of the slice without really tasting anything. Marthy's
square, uncompromising chin was actually quivering. Billy Louise was
stricken dumb by the spectacle. She wanted to go and put her arms
around Marthy's neck and kiss her; only Marthy's neck had a hairy mole,
and there was no part of her face which looked in the least degree
kissable. Still, Billy Louise felt herself all hot inside with remorse
and sympathy and affection. Physical contact being impossible because
of her fastidious instincts, and speech upon the subject being so
sternly forbidden, Billy Louise continued to lick honey and stare in
fascinated silence.
"I'll wash the dishes for you, Marthy," she offered irrelevantly at
last, as a supreme sacrifice upon the altar of sympathy. When that
failed to stop the slow procession of tears that was traveling down the
furrows of Marthy's cheeks, she added ingratiatingly: "I'll put six
raisings on the cookie I'm going to make for you."
Whereupon Marthy did an unprecedented, an utterly amazing thing. She
got up and gathered Billy Louise into her arms so unexpectedly that
Billy Louise inadvertently buried her nose in the honey she had not yet
licked off the bread. Marthy held her close pressed to her big, flabby
bosom and wept into her hair in a queer, whimpering way that somehow
made Billy Louise think of a hurt dog. It was only for a minute that
Marthy did this; she stopped almost as suddenly as she began and went
outside, wiping her eyes and her nose impartially upon her dirty apron.
Billy Louise sat paralyzed with the mixture of unusual emotions that
assailed her. She was exceedingly sticky and uncomfortable from honey
and tears, and she shivered with repugnance at the odor of Marthy's
unbathed person. She was astonished at the outburst from phlegmatic
Marthy Meilke, and her pity was now alloyed with her promise to wash
all those dirty dishes. Billy Louise felt that she had been a trifle
hasty in making promises. There was not a drop of water in the house
nor a bit of wood, and Billy Louise knew perfectly well that the
dishpan would have a greasy, unpleasant feeling under her fastidious
little fingers.
She sighed heavily. "Well, I s'pose I might just as well get to work
at 'em," she said aloud, as was her habit--being a child who had no
playmates. "I hate to dread a thing I hate."
She looked at the messy slice of sour bread and threw it out to the
speckled hen that had returned and was standing with one foot lifted
tentatively--ready for a forward step if the fates seemed kind--and was
regarding Billy Louise fixedly with one yellow eye. "Take it and go!"
cried the donor, impatient of the scrutiny. She picked up the wooden
pail and went down to the creek behind the house, by a pathway bordered
thickly with budding rosebushes and tall lilacs.
Billy Louise first of all washed her face slowly and with a methodic
thoroughness which characterized her--having lived for ten full years
with no realization of hours and minutes as a measure for her actions.
She dried her face quite as deliberately upon her starched calico
apron. Then she spent a few minutes trying to catch a baby trout in
her cupped palms. Never had Billy Louise succeeded in catching a baby
trout in her hands; therefore she never tired of trying. Now, however,
that rash promise nagged at her and would not let her enjoy the game as
completely as usual. She took the wooden pail, and squatting on her
heels in the wet sand, waited until a small school swam incautiously
close to the bank, and scooped suddenly, with a great splash. She
caught three tiny, speckled fish the length of her little finger, and
she let the half-full pail rest in the shallow stream while she watched
the fry swimming excitedly round and round within.
There was no great fun in that. Billy Louise could catch baby trout in
a pail at home, from the waters of the Wolverine, whenever she liked.
Many a time she had kept them in a big bottle until she tired of
watching them, or they died because she forgot to change the water
often enough. She could not get even a languid enjoyment out of them
now, because she could not for a minute forget that she had promised to
wash Marthy's dishes--and Marthy always had so many dirty dishes! And
Marthy's dishpan was so greasy! Billy Louise gave a little shudder
when she thought of it.
"I wish her little girl hadn't died," she said, her mind swinging from
effect back to cause. "I could play with her. And she'd wash the
dishes herself. I'm going to name my new little pig Minervy. I wish
she hadn't died. I'd show her my little pig, if Marthy'd let her come
over to our place. We could both ride on old Badger; Minervy could
ride behind me, and we'd go places together." Billy Louise
meditatively stirred up the baby trout with a forefinger. "We'd go up
the canyon and have the caves for our play-houses. Minervy could have
the secret cave away up the hill, and I'd have the other one across
from it; and we'd have flags and wigwag messages like daddy tells about
in the war. And we'd play the rabbits are Injuns, and the coyotes are
big-Injun-chiefs sneaking down to see if the forts are watching. And
whichever seen a coyote first would wigwag to the other one..." A baby
trout, taking advantage of the pail tipping in the current, gave a flip
over the edge and interrupted Billy Louise's fancies. She gave the
pail a tilt and spilled out the other two fish. Then she filled it as
full as she could carry and started back to pay the price of her
sympathy.
"I don't see what Minervy had to go and die for!" she complained,
dodging a low-hanging branch of bloom-laden lilac. "She could wash the
dishes and I'd wipe 'em--and I s'pose there ain't a clean dish-towel in
the house, either! Marthy's an awful slack housekeeper."
Billy Louise, being a young person with a conscience--of a sort--washed
the dishes, since she had given her word to do it. The dishpan was
even more unpleasant than experience had foretold for her; and of
Marthy's somewhat meager supply there seemed not one clean dish in the
house. The sympathy of Billy Louise therefore waned rapidly; rather,
it turned in upon itself. So that by the time she felt morally free to
spend the rest of the afternoon as she pleased, she was not at all
sorry for Marthy for having lost Minervy; instead, she was sorry for
herself for having been betrayed into rashness and for being deprived
of a playmate.
"I don't s'pose Marthy doctored her right, at all," she considered
pitilessly, as she returned down the lilac-bordered path. "If she had,
I guess she wouldn't have died. I'll bet she never gave her a speck of
sage tea, like mommie always does when I'm sick--only I ain't ever,
thank goodness. I'm just going to ask Jase if Marthy did."
On the way to the root cellar, which was dug into the creek-bank well
above high-water mark, Billy Louise debated within herself the ethics
of speaking to Jase upon a forbidden subject. Jase had been Minervy's
father, and therefore knew of her existence, so that mentioning Minervy
to him could not in any sense be betraying a secret. She wondered if
Jase felt badly about it, as Marthy seemed to do. On the heels of that
came the determination to test his emotional capacity.
At the root cellar her attention was diverted. The cellar door was
fastened on the outside, with the iron hasp used to protect the store
of vegetables from the weather. Jase must be gone. She was turning
away when she heard him clear his throat with that peculiar little
hacking, rasping noise which sounded exactly as one would expect a Jase
to sound. Billy Louise puckered her eyebrows, pressed her lips
together understandingly--and disapprovingly--and opened the door.
Jase, humped over a heap of sprouting potatoes, blinked up
apathetically into the sudden flood of sweet, spring air and sunshine.
"Why, hello, Billy Louise," he mumbled, his eyes brightening a bit.
"Say, you was locked in here!" Billy Louise faced him puzzled. "Did
you know you was locked in?"
"Yes-s, I knowed it. Marthy, she locked the door." Jase reached out a
bony hand covered with carrot-colored hairs and picked up a shriveling
potato with long, sickly sprouts proclaiming life's persistence in
perpetuating itself under adverse circumstances. He broke off the
sprouts with a wipe of his dirty palm and threw the potato into a heap
in the corner.
"What for?" Billy Louise demanded, watching Jase reach languidly out
for another potato.
"She seen me diggin' bait," Jase said tonelessly. "I did think some of
ketchin' a mess of fish before I went to sproutin' p'tatoes, but Marthy
she don't take no int'rest in nothin' but work."
"Are the fish biting good?" Billy Louise glanced toward the wider
stream, where it showed through a gap in the alders.
"Yes-s, purty good now. I caught a nice mess the other day; but
Marthy, she don't favor my goin' fishin'." The lean hands of Jase
moved slowly at his task. Billy Louise, watching him, wondered why he
did not hurry a little and finish sooner. Still, she could not
remember ever seeing Jase hurry at anything, and the Cove with its
occupants was one of her very earliest memories.
"Say, I'll dig some more bait, and then we'll go fishing; shall we?"
"I--dunno as I better--" Jase's hand hovered aimlessly over the potato
pile. "I got quite a lot sprouted, though--and mebby--"
"I'll lock you in till I get the bait dug," suggested Billy Louise
craftily. "And you work fast; and then I'll let you out, and we'll
lock the door agin, so Marthy'll think you're in there yet."
"You're sure smart to think up things," Jase admired, smiling
loose-lipped behind his scraggly beard, that was fading with the years.
"I dunno but what it'd serve Marthy right. She ain't got no call to
lock the door on me. She hates like sin t' see me with a fish-pole in
m' hand--but she's always et her share uh the messes I ketch. She
ain't a reasonable woman, Marthy ain't. You git the bait. I'll show
Marthy who's boss in this Cove!"
He might have encouraged himself into defying Marthy to her face, in
another five minutes of complaining. But the cellar door closed upon
him with a slam. Billy Louise was not interested in his opinion of
Marthy; with her, opinions were valueless if not accompanied by action.
"I never thought to ask him about Minervy," occurred to her while she
was relentlessly dragging pale, fleshly fishworms from the loose black
soil of Marthy's onion bed. "But I know she was mean to Minervy.
She's awful mean to Jase--locking him up in the root cellar just 'cause
he wanted to go fishing. If I was Jase I wouldn't sprout a single old
potato for her. My goodness, but she'll be mad when she opens the
cellar door and Jase ain't in there; I--guess I'll go home early,
before Marthy finds it out."
She really meant to do that, but the fish were hungry fish that day,
and the joy of having a companion to exclaim with her over every hard
tug--even though that companion was only Jase--enticed her to stay on
and on, until a whiff of frying pork on the breeze that swept down the
Cove warned Billy Louise of the near approach of supper-time.
"I guess mebby I might as well go back to the suller," Jase remarked,
his defiance weakening as he climbed the bank. "You come and lock the
door agin, Billy Louise, and Marthy won't know I ain't been there all
the time. She'll think you caught the fish." He looked at her with a
weak leer of conscious cunning.
Billy Louise, groping vaguely for the sunbonnet that was dangling
between her straight shoulder-blades, stared at him with wide eyes that
held disillusionment and with it a contempt all the keener because it
was the contempt of a child, whose judgment is merciless.
"I should thing you'd be ashamed!" she said at last, forgetting that
the idea had been born in her own brain. "Cowards do things and then
sneak about it. Daddy says so. I don't care if Marthy is mad 'cause I
let you out, and I don't care if she knows we went fishing. I thought
you wanted Marthy to see she ain't so smart, locking you up in the
cellar. I ain't going to bake you a single cookie with raisings on it,
like I was going to."
"Marthy's got a sharp tongue in 'er head," Jase wavered, his eyes
shifting from Billy Louise's uncompromising stare.
"Daddy says when you do a thing that's mean, do it and take your
medicine," Billy Louise retorted. "The boy of me that belongs to dad
ain't a sneak, Jase Meilke. And," she added loftily, "the girl of me
that belongs to mommie is a perfeck lady. Good day, Mr. Meilke. Thank
you for a pleasant time fishing."
Whereupon the perfect lady part switched short skirts up the path and
held a tousled head high with disdain.
Jase, thus deserted, went shambling back to the cellar and fell to
sprouting potatoes with what might almost be termed industry.
It pained Jase later to discover that Marthy was not interested in the
open door, but in the very small heap of potatoes which he had
"sprouted" that afternoon. There was other work to be done in the
Cove, and there were but two pairs of hands to do it; that one pair was
slow and shiftless and inefficient was bitterly accepted by Marthy, who
worked from sunrise until dark to make up for the shirking of those
other hands.
It was the trail experience over again, and it was an experience that
dragged through the years without change or betterment. Marthy wanted
to "get ahead." Jase wanted to sit in the sun with his knees drawn up,
just--I don't know what, but I suppose he called it thinking. When he
felt unusually energetic, he liked to dangle an impaled worm over a
trout pool. Theoretically he also wanted to get ahead and to have a
fine ranch and lots of cattle and a comfortable home. He would plan
these things sometimes in an expansive mood, whereupon Marthy would
stare at him with her hard, contemptuous look until Jase trailed off
into mumbling complaints into his beard. He was not as able-bodied as
she thought he was, he would say, with vague solemnity. Some uh these
days Marthy'd see how she had driven him beyond his strength.
When one is a Marthy, however, with ambitions and a tireless energy and
the persistence of a beaver, and when one listens to vague mutterings
for many hard laboring years, one grows accustomed to the complainings
and fails to see certain warning symptoms of which even the complainer
is only vaguely aware.
She kept on working through the years, and as far as was humanly
possible she kept Jase working. She did not soften, except toward
Billy Louise, who rode sometimes over from her father's ranch on the
Wolverine to the flowery delights of the Cove. The place was a perfect
jungle of sweetness, seven months of each year; for Marthy owned and
indulged a love of beauty, even if she could not realize her dream of
prosperity. Wherever was space in the house-yard for a flower or a
fruit tree or a berry bush, Marthy planted one or the other. You could
not see the cabin from April until the leaves fell in late October,
except in a fragmentary way as you walked around it. You went in at a
gate of pickets which Marthy herself had split and nailed in place; you
followed a narrow, winding path through the sweet jungle--and if you
were tall, you stooped now and then to pass under an apple branch. And
unless you looked up at the black, lava-rock rim of the bluff which
cupped this Eden incongruously, you would forget that just over the
brim lay parched plain and barren mountain.
When Billy Louise was twelve, she had other ambitions than the making
of cookies with "raisings" on them. She wanted to do something big,
though she was hazy as to the particular nature of that big something.
She tried to talk it over with Marthy, but Marthy could not seem to
think beyond the Cove, except that now and then Billy Louise would
suspect that her mind did travel to the desert and Minervy's grave.
Marthy's hair was growing streaked with yellowish gray, though it never
grew less unkempt and dusty looking. Her eyes were harder, if
anything, except when they rested on Billy Louise.
When she was thirteen, Billy Louise rode over with a loaf of bread she
had baked all by herself, and she put this problem to Marthy:
"I've been thinking I'd go ahead and write poetry, Marthy--a whole book
of it with pictures. But I do love to make bread--and people have to
eat bread. Which would you be, Marthy; a poet, or a cook?"
Marthy looked at her a minute, lent her attention briefly to the
question, and gave what she considered good advice.
"You learn how to cook, Billy Louise. Yuh don't want to go and get
notions. Your maw ain't healthy, and your paw likes good grub. Po'try
is all foolishness; there ain't any money in it."
"Walter Scott paid his debts writing poetry," said Billy Louise
argumentatively. She had just read all about Walter Scott in a
magazine which a passing cowboy had given her; perhaps that had
something to do with her new ambition.
"Mebby he did and mebby he didn't. I'd like to see our debts paid off
with po'try. It'd have to be worth a hull lot more 'n what I'd give
for it."
"Oh. Have you got debts too, Marthy?" Billy Louise at thirteen was
still ready with sympathy. "Daddy's got lots and piles of 'em. He
bought some cattle and now he talks to mommie all the time about debts.
Mommie wants me to go to Boise to school, next winter, to Aunt Sarah's.
And daddy says there's debts to pay. I didn't know you had any,
Marthy."
"Well, I have got. We bought some cattle, too--and they ain't done 's
well 's they might. If I had a man that was any good on earth, I could
put up more hay. But I can't git nothing outa Jase but whines. Your
paw oughta send you to school, Billy Louise, even if he has got debts.
I'd 'a' sent--"
She stopped there, but Billy Louise knew how she finished the sentence
mentally. She would have sent Minervy to school.
"Your paw ain't got any right to keep you outa school," Marthy went on
aggressively. "Debts er no debts, he'd see 't you got schoolin'--if he
was the right kinda man."
"Daddy is the right kinda man. He ain't like Jase. He says he wishes
he could, but he don't know where the money's coming from."
"How much's it goin' to take?" asked Marthy heavily.
"Oh, piles." Billy Louise spoke airily to hide her pride in the
importance of the subject. "Fifty dollars, I guess. I've got to have
some new clothes, mommie says. I'd like a blue dress."
"And your paw can't raise fifty dollars?" Marthy's tone was plainly
belligerent.
"Got to pay interest," said Billy Louise importantly.
Marthy said not another word about debts or the duties of parents.
What she did was more to the point, however, for she hitched the mules
to a rattly old buckboard next day and drove over to the MacDonald
ranch on the Wolverine. She carried fifty dollars in her pocket--and
that was practically all the money Marthy possessed, and had been saved
for the debts that harassed her. She gave the money to Billy Louise's
mother and said that it was a present for Billy Louise, and meant for
"school money." She said that she hadn't any girl of her own to spend
the money on, and that Billy Louise was a good girl and a smart girl,
and she wanted to do a little something toward her schooling.
A woman will sacrifice more pride than you would believe, if she sees a
way toward helping her children to an education. Mrs. MacDonald took
the money, and she promised secrecy--with a feeling of relief that
Marthy wished it. She was astonished to find that Marthy had any
feelings not directly connected with work or the shortcomings of Jase,
but she never suspected that Marthy had made any sacrifice for Billy
Louise.
So Billy Louise went away to school and never knew whose money had made
it possible to go, and Marthy worked harder and drove Jase more
relentlessly to make up that fifty dollars. She never mentioned the
matter to anyone. The next year it was the same; when, in August, she
questioned Billy Louise clumsily upon the subject of finances, and
learned that "daddy" still talked about debts and interest and didn't
know where the money was coming from, she drove over again with money
for the "schooling." And again she extracted a promise of silence.
She did this for four years, and not a soul knew that it cost her
anything in the way of extra work and extra harassment of mind. She
bought more cattle and cut more hay and went deeper into debt; for as
Billy Louise grew older and prettier and more accustomed to the ways of
town, she needed more money, and the August gift grew proportionately
larger. The mother was thankful beyond the point of questioning. An
August without Marthy and Marthy's gift of money would have been a
tragedy; and so selfish is mother-love sometimes that she would have
accepted the gift even if she had known what it cost the giver.
At eighteen, then, Billy Louise knew some things not taught by the wide
plains and the wild hills around her. She was not spoiled by her
little learning, which was a good thing. And when her father died
tragically beneath an overturned load of poles from the mountain at the
head of the canyon, Billy Louise came home. The Billy of her tried to
take his place, and the Louise of her attempted to take care of her
mother, who was unfitted both by nature and habit to take care of
herself. Which was, after all, a rather big thing for anyone to
attempt.