A BOOK, A BANNOCK, AND A BED
Blue led the way straight to the low, dirt-roofed stable of logs and
stopped with his nose against the closed door. Billy Louise herself
was deceived by the whirl of snow and would have missed the stable
entirely if the leadership had been hers. She patted Blue gratefully
on the shoulder when she unsaddled him. She groped with her fingers
for the wooden peg in the wall where the saddle should hang, failed to
find it, and so laid the saddle down against the logs and covered it
with the blanket.
"Just turn your horse in loose," she directed the man shortly. "Blue
won't fight, and I think the rest of the horses are in the other part.
And come on to the house."
It pleased her a little to see that he obeyed her without protest; but
she was not so pleased at his silence, and she led the way rather
indignantly toward the winking eye which was the cabin's window.
At the sound of their feet on the wide doorstep, her mother pulled open
the door and stood fair in the light, looking out with the anxious look
which had lived so long in her face that it had lines of its own
chiseled deep in her forehead and at the sides of her mouth.
"Is that you, Billy Louise? Oh, ain't Peter Howling Dog with you?
What makes you so terrible late, Billy Louise? Come right in,
stranger. I don't know your name, but I don't need to know it. A
storm like this is all the interduction a fellow needs, I guess." She
smiled, at that. She had a nice smile, with a little resemblance to
Billy Louise, except that the worried, inquiring look never left her
eyes; as if she had once waited long for bad news, and had met everyone
with anxious, eager questioning, and her eyes had never changed
afterwards. Billy Louise glanced at her with her calm, measuring look,
making the contrast very sharp between the two.
"What about Peter?" she asked. "Isn't he here?"
"No, and he ain't been since an hour or so after you left. He saddled
up and rode off down the river--to the reservation, I reckon."
"Then the chores aren't done, I suppose." Billy Louise went over and
took a lantern down from its nail, turning up the wick so that she
could light it with the candle. "Go up to the fire and thaw out," she
invited the man. "We'll have supper in a few minutes."
Instead he reached out and took the lantern from her as soon as she had
lighted it. "You go to the fire yourself," he said. "I'll do what's
necessary outside."
"Why-y--" Billy Louise, her fingers still clinging to the lantern,
looked up at him. He was staring down at her with that intent look she
had objected to on the trail, but she saw his mouth, and the little
smile that hid just back of his lips. She smiled back without knowing
it. "I'll have to go along, anyway. There are cows to milk and you
couldn't very well find the cow-stable alone."
"Think not?"
Billy Louise had been perfectly furious at that tone, out on the trail.
Now that she could see his lips and their little twitching to keep back
the smile, she did not mind the tone at all. She had turned away to
get the milk pails, and now she gave him a sidelong look, of the kind
that had been utterly wasted upon Marthy. The man met it and
immediately turned his attention to the lantern wick, which needed nice
adjustment before its blaze quite pleased him; he was not a Marthy to
receive such a look unmoved.
Together they went out again into the storm they had left so eagerly.
Billy Louise showed him where was the pitchfork and the hay, and then
did the milking while he piled full the mangers. After that they went
together and turned the shivering work horses into the stable from the
corral where they huddled, rumps to the storm; and the man lifted great
forkfuls of hay and carried it into their stalls, while Billy Louise
held the lantern high over her head like a western Liberty. They did
not talk much, except when there was need for speech; but they were
beginning to feel a little glow of companionship by the time they were
ready to fight their way against the blizzard to the house, Billy
Louise going before with the lantern, while the man followed close
behind, carrying the two pails of milk that was already freezing in
little crystals to the tin.
"Did you get everything done? You must be half froze--and starved into
the bargin." Mrs. MacDonald, as is the way of some women who know the
weight of isolation, had a habit of talking with a nervous haste at
times, and of relapsing into long, brooding silences afterwards. She
talked now, while she pulled a pan of hot, brown biscuits from the
oven, poured the tea, and turned crisp, browned potatoes out of a
frying-pan into a deep, white bowl. She wondered, over and over, why
Peter Howling Dog had left and why he did not return. She said that
was the way, when you depended on Indians for anything. She did wish
there was a white man to be had. She asked after Marthy and Jase and
gave Billy Louise no opportunity to tell her anything.
Billy Louise glanced often at the man, who did not look in the least as
she had fancied, except that he really did have a high nose and
terribly keen eyes with something behind the keenness that baffled her.
And his mouth was pleasant, especially when that smile hid just behind
his lips; also, she liked his hair, which was thick and brown, with
hints of red in it here and there, and a strong inclination to curl
where it was longest. She had known he was tall when he stepped into
the light of the door; now she saw that he was slim to the point of
leanness, with square shoulders and a nervous quickness when he moved.
His fingers were never idle; when he was not eating, he rolled bits of
biscuit into tiny, soggy balls beside his plate, or played a soft
tattoo with his fork.
"I didn't quite catch your name, mister," her mother said finally.
"But take another biscuit, anyway."
"Warren is my name," returned the man, with that hidden smile because
she had never before given him any opportunity to tell it. "Ward
Warren. I've got a claim over on Mill Creek."
Billy Louise gave a little gasp and distractedly poured two spoons of
sugar in her tea, although she hated it sweetened.
I've got to tell you why, even at the price of digression. Long ago,
when Billy Louise was twelve or so, and lived largely in a dream world
of her own with Minervy for her "pretend" playmate, she had one day
chanced upon a paragraph in a paper that had come from town wrapped
around a package of matches. It was all about Ward Warren. The name
caught her fancy, and the text of the paragraph seized upon her
imagination. Until school filled her mind with other things, she had
built adventures without end in which Ward Warren was the central
figure. Up the canyon at the caves, she sometimes pretended that Ward
Warren had abducted Minervy and that she must lead the rescue.
Sometimes, when she rode in the hills, Ward Warren abducted her and led
her into strange places where she tried to shiver in honest dread.
Often and often, however, Ward Warren was a fugitive who came to her
for help; then she would take him to Minervy's cave and hide him,
perhaps; or she would mount her horse and lead him, by devious ways, to
safety, and upon some hilltop from which she could point out the route
he must follow, she would bid him a touching adieu and beseech him, in
the impossible language of some old romancer, to go and lead a
blameless life. Sitting there at the table opposite him, stirring the
sugar heedlessly into her tea, one favorite exhortation returned from
her dream-world, clear as if she had just spoken it aloud. "Go, and
sin no more; and if perchance you will in some distant far land send me
a kind thought, that will be reward enough for what I have done this
day. Farewell, Ward Warren--Kismet."
The lips of Billy Louise smiled and stopped just short of laughter, and
she looked across at Ward Warren as if she expected him to laugh also
at that frightfully virtuous though stilted adieu. She found him
looking straight at her in that intent fashion that seemed as if he
would see through and all around her and her thoughts. He was not
smiling at all. His mouth was pulled into a certain bitter
understanding; indeed, he looked exactly as if Billy Louise had dealt
him a deliberate affront which he could neither parry nor fling back at
her, but must endure with what stoicism he might.
Billy Louise blushed guiltily, took an unpremeditated swallow of tea,
and grimaced over the sickish sweetness of it. She got up and emptied
the tea into the slop bucket, and loitered over the refilling of the
cup so that when she returned to the table she was at least outwardly
calm. She felt another quick, keen glance from across the table, but
she helped herself composedly to the cream and listened to her mother
with flattering attention.
"Jase has got all-gone feelings now, mommie," she remarked irrelevantly
during a brief pause and relapsed into silence again. She knew that
was good for at least five minutes of straight monologue, with her
mother in that talking mood. She finished her supper while Warren
listened abstractedly to a complete biography of the Meilkes and
learned all about Marthy's energy and Jase's shiftlessness.
"Ward Warren!" Billy Louise was saying to herself. "Did you ever in
your life--it's exactly as if Minervy should come to life and walk in.
Ward Warren! There couldn't possibly be two Ward Warrens; it's such an
odd name. Well!"
Then she went mentally over that paragraph. She wished she did not
remember every single word of it, but she did. And she was afraid to
look at him after that. And she wanted to, dreadfully. She felt as
though he belonged to her. Why, he was her old playmate! And she had
saved his life hundreds of times, at immense risks to herself; and he
had always been her devoted slave afterwards, and never failed to
appear at the precise moment when she was beset by Indians or robbers
or something, and in dire need. The blood he had shed in her behalf!
At that point Billy Louise startled herself and the others by suddenly
laughing out loud at the memory of one time when Ward Warren had killed
enough Indians to fill a deep washout so that he might carry her across
to the other side!
"Is there anything funny about Jase Meilke dying, Billy Louise?" her
mother asked her in a perfectly shocked tone.
"No--I was thinking of something else." She glanced at the man eyeing
her so distrustfully from across the table and gurgled again. It was
terribly silly, but she simply could not help seeing Ward Warren calmly
filling that washout with dead Indians so that he might carry her
across it in his arms. The more she tried to forget that, the funnier
it became. She ended by leaving the table and retiring precipitately
to her own tiny room in the lean-to where she buried her face as deep
as it would go in a puffy pillow of wild duck feathers.
He, poor devil, could not be expected to know just what had amused her
so; he did know that it somehow concerned himself, however. He took up
his position--mentally--behind the wall of aloofness which stood
between himself and an unfriendly world, and when Billy Louise came out
later to help with the dishes, he was sitting absorbed in a book.
Billy Louise got out her algebra and a slate and began to ponder the
problem of a much-handicapped goat's feeding-ground. Ward Warren read
and read and read and never looked up from the pages. Never in her
life had she seen a man read as he read; hungrily, as a starved man
eats; rapidly, his eyes traveling like a shuttle across the page; down,
down--flip a leaf quickly and let the shuttle-glance go on. Billy
Louise let her slate, with the goat problem unsolved, lie in her lap
while she watched him. When she finally became curious enough to
decipher the name of the book--she had three or four in that dull,
brown binding--and saw that he was reading _The Ring and the Book_, she
felt stunned. She read Browning just as she drank sage tea; it was
supposed to be good for her. Her English teacher had given her that
book. She never would have believed that any living human could read
it as Ward Warren was reading it now; avidly, absorbedly, lost to his
surroundings--to her own presence, if you please! Billy Louise glanced
at her mother. That lady, having discovered that her guest's gloves
needed mending, was working over them with pieces of Indian-tanned
buckskin and beeswaxed thread, the picture of domestic content.
Billy Louise sighed. She shifted her chair. She got up and put a
heavy chunk of wood on the fire and glanced over her shoulder at the
man to see if he were going to take the hint and offer to help. She
came back and stood close to him while she selected, with great
deliberation, a book from the shelf beside his head. And Ward Warren,
perfectly normal and not over twenty-five or so, pushed his chair out
of her way with a purely mechanical movement, and read and read, and
actually was too absorbed to feel her nearness. And he really was
reading _The Ring and the Book_; Billy Louise was rude enough to look
over his shoulder to make sure of that. She gave up, then, and though
she picked a book at random from the shelf, she did not attempt to read
it. She went to her room and made it ready for their guest, and after
that she went to bed in her mother's room; and she thought and thought
and did a lot of wondering about Life and about Ward Warren. She heard
him go to bed, after a long while, and she wondered if he had finished
the book first.
The next morning the blizzard raged so that he stayed as a matter of
course. Peter Howling Dog had not returned, so Warren did the chores
and would not let Billy Louise help with anything. He filled the
wood-box, piled great chunks of wood by the fireplace, and saw that the
water-pails were full to the icy brims. He talked a little, and Billy
Louise discovered that he was quick to see a joke, and that he simply
could not be caught napping, but had always a retort ready for her.
That was true until after dinner, when he picked up a book again. When
that happened, he was dead to the world bounded by the coulee walls,
and he did not show any symptoms of consciousness until he had reached
the last page, just when the light was growing dim and blurring the
lines so that he must hold the pages within six inches of his eyes. He
closed the book with a long breath, placed it accurately upon the shelf
where it had stood since Billy Louise came home from school, and picked
up his hat and gloves. It was time to wade out through the snow and
feed the stock and bring in more wood.
"I wish we could get him to stay all winter, instead of that Peter
Howling Dog," Mrs. MacDonald said anxiously, after he had gone out. "I
just know Peter's off drinking. I don't think he's a safe man to have
around, Billy Louise. I didn't when you hired him. I haven't felt
easy a minute with him on the place. I wish you'd hire Mr. Warren,
Billy Louise. He's nice and quiet--"
"And he's got a ranch of his own. He doesn't strike me as a man who
wants a job milking two cows and carrying slop to the pigs, mommie."
"Well, I'd feel a lot easier if we had him instead of that breed; only
we ain't even got the breed, half the time. This is the third time
he's disappeared, in the two months we've had him. I really think you
ought to speak to Mr. Warren, Billy Louise."
"Speak to him yourself. You're the one that wants him," Billy Louise
answered somewhat sharply. She adored her mother; but if she had to
run the ranch, she did wish her mother would not interfere and give
advice just at the wrong time.
"Well, you needn't be cross about it; you know yourself that Peter
can't be depended on a minute. There he went off yesterday and never
fed the pigs their noon slop, and I had to carry it out myself. And my
lumbago has bothered me ever since, just like it was going to give me
another spell. You can't be here all the time, Billy Louise--leastways
you ain't; and Peter--"
"Oh, good gracious, mommie! I told you to hire the man if you want
him. Only Ward Warren isn't--"
Ward Warren pushed open the door and looked from one to the other, his
eyes two question marks. "Isn't--what?" he asked and shut the door
behind him with the air of one who is ready for anything.
"Isn't the kind of man who wants to hire out to do chores," Billy
Louise finished and looked at him straight. "Are you? Mommie wants to
hire you."
"Oh. Well, I was just about to ask for the job, anyway." He laughed,
and the distrust left his eyes. "As a matter of fact, I was going over
to Jim Larson's to hang out for the rest of the winter and get away
from the lonesomeness of the hills. The old Turk's a pretty good
friend of mine. But it looks to me as if you two needed something
around that looks like a man a heap more than Jim does. I know Peter
Howling Dog to a fare-you-well; you'll be all to the good if he forgets
to come back. So if you'll stake me to a meal now and then, and a
place to sleep, I'll be glad to see you through the winter--or until
you get some white man to take my place." He took up the two
water-pails and waited, glancing from one to the other with that
repressed smile which Billy Louise was beginning to look for in his
face.
Now that matters had approached the point of decision, her mother stood
looking at her helplessly, waiting for her to speak. Billy Louise drew
herself up primly and ended by contradicting the action. She gave him
the sidelong glance which he was least prepared to withstand--though in
justice to Billy Louise, she was absolutely unconscious of its general
effectiveness--and twisted her lips whimsically.
"We'll stake you to a book, a bannock, and a bed if you want to stay,
Mr. Warren," she said quite soberly. "Also to a pitchfork and an axe,
if you like, and regular wages."
His eyes went to her and steadied there with the intent expression in
them. "Thanks. Cut out the wages, and I'll take the offer just as it
stands," he told her and pulled his hat farther down on his head.
"She's going to be one stormy night, lay-dees," he added in quite
another tone, on his way to the door. "Five o'clock by the town clock,
and al-ll's well!" This last in still another tone, as he pushed out
against the swooping wind and pulled the door shut with a slam. They
heard him whistling a shrill, rollicking air on his way to the creek;
at least, it sounded rollicking, the way he whistled it.
"That's _The Old Chisholm Trail_ he's whistling," Billy Louise observed
under her breath, smiling reminiscently. "The very song I used to
pretend he always sang when he came down the canyon to rescue Minervy
and me! But of course--I knew all the time he's a cowboy; it said so--"
The whistling broke and he began to sing at the top of a clear,
strong-lunged voice, that old, old trail song beloved of punchers the
West over:
"Oh, it's cloudy in the West and a-lookin' like rain,
And my damned old slicker's in the wagon again,
Coma ti yi youpy, youpy-a, youpy-a,
Coma ti yi youpy, youpy-a!"
"What did you say, Billy Louise? I'm sure it's a comfort to have him
here, and you see he was glad and willing--"
But Billy Louise was holding the door open half an inch, listening and
slipping back into the child-world wherein Ward Warren came singing
down the canyon to rescue her and Minervy. The words came gustily from
the creek down the slope:
"No chaps, no slicker, and a-pourin' down rain,
And I swear by the Lord I'll never night-herd again,
Coma ti yi youpy, youpy-a, youpy-a,
Coma ti yi youpy, youpy-a!
"Feet in the stirrups and seat in the saddle,
I hung and rattled with them long-horn cattle,
Coma ti yi--"
"Do shut the door, Billy Louise! What you want to stand there like
that for? And the wind freezing everything inside! I can feel a
terrible draught on my feet and ankles, and you know what that leads
to."
So Billy Louise closed the door and laid another alder root on the
coals in the fireplace, the while her mind was given over to dreamy
speculations, and the words of that old trail song ran on in her memory
though she could no longer hear him singing. Her mother talked on
about Peter and the storm and this man who had ridden straight from the
land of daydreams to her door, but the girl was not listening.
"Now ain't you relieved, yourself, that he's going to stay?"
Billy Louise, kneeling on the hearth and staring abstractedly into the
fire, came back with a jerk to reality. The little smile that had been
in her eyes and on her lips fled back with the dreams that had brought
it. She gave her shoulders an impatient twitch and got up.
"Oh--I guess he'll be more agreeable to have around than Peter," she
admitted taciturnly; which was as close to her real opinion of the man
as a mere mother might hope to come.