A STORM AND A STRANGER
Jase began to complain of having "all-gone" feelings during the winter
after Billy Louise came home and took up the whole burden of the
Wolverine ranch. He complained to Billy Louise, when she rode over one
clear, sunny day in January; he said that he was getting old--which was
perfectly true--and that he was not as able-bodied as he might be, and
didn't expect to last much longer. Billy Louise spoke of it to Marthy,
and Marthy snorted.
"He's able-bodied enough at mealtimes, I notice," she retorted. "I've
heard that tune ever since I knowed him; he can't fool me!"
"Not about the all-goneness, have you?" Billy Louise was preparing to
wipe the dishes for Marthy. "I know he always had 'cricks' in
different parts of his anatomy, but I never heard about his feeling
all-gone, before. That sounds mysterious, don't you think?"
"No; and he never had nothin' the matter with his anatomy, neither; his
anatomy's just as sound as mine. Jase was born lazy, is all ails him."
"But, Marthy, haven't you noticed he doesn't look as well as he used
to? He has a sort of gray look, don't you think? And his eyes are so
puffy underneath, lately."
"No, I ain't noticed nothing wrong with him that ain't always been
wrong." Marthy spoke grudgingly, as if she resented even the
possibility of Jase's having a real ailment. "He's feelin' his years,
mebby. But he ain't no call to; Jase ain't but three years older 'n I
be, and I ain't but fifty-nine last birthday. And I've worked and
slaved here in this Cove fer twenty-seven years, now; what it is I've
made it. Jase ain't ever done a hand's turn that he wasn't obliged to
do. I've chopped wood, and I've built corrals and dug ditches, and
Jase has puttered around and whined that he wasn't able-bodied enough
to do no heavy lifting. That there orchard out there I planted and
packed water in buckets to it till I got the ditch through. Them
corrals down next the river I built. I dug the post-holes, and Jase
set the posts in and held 'em steady while I tamped the dirt! In
winter I've hauled hay and fed the cattle; and Jase, he packed a bucket
uh slop, mebby, to the pigs! If he ain't as able-bodied as I be, it's
because he ain't done nothing to git strong on. He can't come around
me now with that all-gone feeling uh his; I know Jase Meilke like a
book."
There was more that she said about Jase. Standing there, a squat,
unkempt woman with a seamed, leathery face and hard eyes now quite
faded to gray, she told Billy Louise a good deal of the bitterness of
the years behind; years of hardship and of slavish toil and no love to
lighten it. She spoke again of Minervy, and the name brought back to
Billy Louise poignant memories of her own lonely childhood and of her
"pretend" playmate.
Half shyly, because she was still sometimes touched with the
inarticulateness of youth, Billy Louise told Marthy a little of that
playmate. "Why, do you know, every time I rode old Badger anywhere,
after that day you told me about Minervy, I used to pretend that
Minervy rode behind me. I used to talk to her by the hour and take her
places. And up our canyon is a cave that I used to play was Minervy's
cave. I had another one, and I used to go over and visit Minervy. And
I had another pretend playmate--a boy--and we used to have adventures.
It's a queer place; I just found that cave by accident. I don't
believe there's another person in the country who knows it's there at
all. Well, that's Minervy's cave to me yet. And, Marthy--" Billy
Louise giggled a little and eyed the old woman with a sidelong look
that would have set a young man's blood a-jump--"I hope you won't be
mad; I was just a kid, and I didn't know any better. But just to show
you how much I thought: I had a little pig, and I named it Minervy,
after you told me about her. And mommie told me that was no name for
it; it was--it wasn't a girl pig, mommie said. So I called it
Man-ervy, as the next best thing." She gave Marthy another wasted
glance from the corners of her eyes. "Oh, Marthy!" she cried
remorsefully, setting down the gravy bowl that she might pat Marthy on
her fat, age-rounded shoulder. "What a little beast I am! I shouldn't
have told that; but honest, I thought it was an honor. I--I just
worshiped that pig!"
Jase maundered in at that moment, and Marthy, catching up a corner of
her dirty apron--Billy Louise could not remember ever seeing Marthy in
a perfectly clean dress or apron--wiped away what traces of emotion her
weathered face could reveal. Also, she turned and glared at Jase with
what Billy Louise considered a perfectly uncalled-for animosity. In
reality, Marthy was covertly looking for visible symptoms of the
all-goneness. She shut her harsh lips together tightly at what she
saw; Jase certainly was puffy under his watery, pink-rimmed eyes, and
the withered cheeks above his thin graying beard really did have a
pasty, gray look.
"D' you turn them calves out into the corral?" she demanded, her voice
harder because of her secret uneasiness.
"I was goin' to, but the wind's changed into the north, 'n' I thought
mebby you wouldn't want 'em out." Jase turned back aimlessly to the
door. His voice was getting cracked and husky, and the deprecating
note dominated pathetically all that he said. "You'll have to face the
wind goin' home," he said to Billy Louise. "More 'n likely you'll be
facin' snow, too. Looks bad, off that way."
"You go on and turn them calves out!" Marthy commanded him harshly.
"Billy Louise ain't goin' home if it storms; I sh'd think you'd know
enough to know that."
"Oh, but I'll have to go, anyway," the girl interrupted. "Mommie can't
be there alone; she'd worry herself to death if I didn't show up by
dark. She worries about every little thing since daddy died. I ought
to have gone before--or I oughtn't to have come. But she was worrying
about you, Marthy; she hadn't seen or heard of you for a month, and she
was afraid you might be sick or something. Why don't you get someone
to stay with you? I think you ought to."
She looked toward the door, which Jase had closed upon his departure.
"If Jase should--get sick, or anything--"
"Jase ain't goin' to git sick," Marthy retorted glumly. "Yuh don't
want to let him worry yuh, Billy Louise. If I'd worried every time he
yowled around about being sick, I'd be dead or crazy by now. I dunno
but maybe I'll have somebody to help with the work, though," she added,
after a pause during which she had swiped the dish-rag around the sides
of the pan once or twice, and had opened the door and thrown the water
out beyond the doorstep like the sloven she was. "I got a nephew that
wants to come out. He's been in a bank, but he's quit and wants to git
on to a ranch. I dunno but I'll have him come, in the spring."
"Do," urged Billy Louise, perfectly unconscious of the potentialities
of the future. "I hate to think of you two down here alone. I don't
suppose anyone ever comes down here, except me--and that isn't often."
"Nobody's got any call to come down," said Marthy stolidly. "They sure
ain't going to come for our comp'ny and there ain't nothing else to
bring 'em."
"Well, there aren't many to come, you know," laughed Billy Louise,
shaking out the dish towel and spreading it over two nails, as she did
at home. "I'm your nearest neighbor, and I've got six miles to
ride--against the wind, at that. I think I'd better start. We've got
a halfbreed doing chores for us, but he has to be looked after or he
neglects things. I'll not get another chance to come very soon, I'm
afraid; mommie hates to have me ride around much in the winter. You
send for that nephew right away, why don't you, Marthy?" It was like
Billy Louise to mix command and entreaty together. "Really, I don't
think Jase looks a bit well."
"A good strong steepin' of sage'll fix him all right, only he ain't
sick, as I see. You take this shawl."
Billy Louise refused the shawl and ran down the twisted path fringed
with long, reaching fingers of the hare berry bushes. At the stable
she stopped for an aimless dialogue with Jase and then rode away, past
the orchard whose leafless branches gave glimpses of the low,
sod-roofed cabin, with Marthy standing rather disconsolately on the
rough doorstep watching her go.
Absently she let down the bars in the narrowest place in the gorge and
lifted them into their rude sockets after she had led her horse
through. All through the years since Marthy had gone down that rocky
gash in search of Buck and Bawley, no human being had entered or left
the Cove save through that narrow opening. The tingle of romance which
swept always the nerves of the girl when she rode that way fastened
upon her now. She wished the Cove belonged to her; she thought she
would like to live in a place like that, with warlike Indians all
around and that gorge to guard day and night. She wished she had been
Marthy, discovering that place and taming it, little by little, in
solitary achievement the sweeter because it had been hard.
"It's a bigger thing," said Billy Louise aloud to her horse, "to make a
home here in this wilderness, than to write the greatest poem in the
world or paint the greatest picture or--anything. I wish..."
Blue was climbing steadily out of the gorge, twitching an ear backward
with flattering attention when his lady spoke. He held it so for a
minute, waiting for that sentence to be finished, perhaps; for he was
wise beyond his kind--was Blue. But his lady was staring at the rock
wall they were passing then, where the winds and the cold and heat had
carved jutting ledges into the crude form of cabbages; though Billy
Louise preferred to call them roses. Always they struck her with a new
wonder, as if she saw them for the first time. Blue went on, calmly
stepping over this rock and, around that as if it were the simplest
thing in the world to find sure footing and carry his lady smoothly up
that trail. He threw up his head so suddenly that Billy Louise was
startled out of her aimless dreamings, and pointed nose and ears toward
the little creek-bottom above, where Marthy had lighted her camp-fire
long and long ago.
A few steps farther, and Blue stopped short in the trail to look and
listen. Billy Louise could see the nervous twitchings of his muscles
under the skin of neck and shoulders, and she smiled to herself.
Nothing could ever come upon her unaware when she rode alone, so long
as she rode Blue. A hunting dog was not more keenly alive to his
surroundings.
"Go on, Blue," she commanded after a minute. "If it's a bear or
anything like that, you can make a run for it; if it's a wolf, I'll
shoot it. You needn't stand here all night, anyway."
Blue went on, out from behind the willow growth that hid the open. He
returned to his calm, picking a smooth trail through the scattered
rocks and tiny washouts. It was the girl's turn to stare and
speculate. She did not know this horseman who sat negligently in the
saddle and looked up at the cedar-grown bluff beyond, while his horse
stood knee-deep in the little stream. She did not know him; and there
were not so many travelers in the land that strangers were a matter of
indifference.
Blue welcomed the horse with a democratic nicker and went forward
briskly. And the rider turned his head, eyed the girl sharply as she
came up, and nodded a cursory greeting. His horse lifted its head to
look, decided that it wanted another swallow or two, and lowered its
muzzle again to the water.
Billy Louise could not form any opinion of the man's age or
personality, for he was encased in a wolfskin coat which covered him
completely from hatbrim to ankles. She got an impression of a thin,
dark face, and a sharp glance from eyes that seemed dark also. There
was a thin, high nose, and beyond that Billy Louise did not look. If
she had, the mouth must certainly have reassured her somewhat.
Blue stepped nonchalantly down into the stream beside the strange horse
and went across without stopping to drink. The strange horse moved on
also, as if that were the natural thing to do--which it was, since
chance sent them traveling the same trail. Billy Louise set her teeth
together with the queer little vicious click that had always been her
habit when she felt thwarted and constrained to yield to circumstances,
and straightened herself in the saddle.
"Looks like a storm," the fur-coated one observed, with a perfectly
transparent attempt to lighten the awkwardness.
Billy Louise tilted her chin upward and gazed at the gray sweep of
clouds moving sullenly toward the mountains at her back. She glanced
at the man and caught him looking intently at her face.
He did not look away immediately, as he should have done, and Billy
Louise felt a little heat-wave of embarrassment, emphasized by
resentment.
"Are you going far?" he queried in the same tone he had employed before.
"Six miles," she answered shortly, though she tried to be decently
civil.
"I've about eighteen," he said. "Looks like we'll both get caught out
in a blizzard."
Certainly, he had a pleasant enough voice--and after all it was not his
fault that he happened to be at the crossing when she rode out of the
gorge. Billy Louise, in common justice, laid aside her resentment and
looked at him with a hint of a smile at the corners of her lips.
"That's what we have to expect when we travel in this country in the
winter," she replied. "Eighteen miles will take you long after dark."
"Well, I was sort of figuring on putting up at some ranch, if it got
too bad. There's a ranch somewhere ahead, on the Wolverine, isn't
there?"
"Yes." Billy Louise bit her lip; but hospitality is an unwritten law
of the West--a law not to be lightly broken. "That's where I live.
We'll be glad to have you stop there, of course."
The stranger must have felt and admired the unconscious dignity of her
tone and words, for he thanked her simply and refrained from looking
too intently at her face.
Fine siftings of snow, like meal flung down from a gigantic sieve,
swept into their faces as they rode on. The man turned his face toward
her after a long silence. She was riding with bowed head and face half
turned from him and the wind alike.
"You'd better ride on ahead and get in out of this," he said curtly.
"Your horse is fresh. It's going to be worse and more of it, before
long; this cayuse of mine has had thirty miles or so of rough going."
"I think I'd better wait for you," she said primly. "There are bad
places where the trail goes close to the bluff, and the lava rock will
be slippery with this snow. And it's getting dark so fast that a
stranger might go over."
"If that's the case, the sooner you are past the bad places the better.
I'm all right. You drift along."
Billy Louise speculated briefly upon the note of calm authority in his
voice. He did not know, evidently, that she was more accustomed to
giving commands than to obeying them; her lips gave a little quirk of
amusement at his mistake.
"You go on. I don't want a guide." He tilted his head peremptorily
toward the blurred trail ahead.
Billy Louise laughed a little. She did not feel in the least
embarrassed now. "Do you never get what you don't want?" she asked him
mildly. "I'd a lot rather lead you past those places than have you go
over the edge," she said, "because nobody could get you up, or even go
down and bury you decently. It wouldn't be a bit nice. It's much
simpler to keep you on top."
He said something, but Billy Louise could not hear what it was; she
suspected him of swearing. She rode on in silence.
"Blue's a dandy horse on bad trails and in the dark," she observed
companionably at last. "He simply can't lose his footing or his way."
"Yes? That's nice."
Billy Louise felt like putting out her tongue at him, for the cool
remoteness of his tone. It would serve him right to ride on and let
him break his neck over the bluff if he wanted to. She shut her teeth
together and turned her face away from him.
So, in silence and with no very good feeling between them, they went
precariously down the steep hill (the hill up which Marthy and the oxen
and Jase had toiled so laboriously, twenty-seven years before) and
across the tiny flat to where the cabin window winked a welcome at them
through the storm.