EACH IN HIS OWN TRAIL
Since nothing in this world is absolutely immutable--the human emotions
least of all, perhaps--Billy Louise did not hold changeless her broken
faith in Ward. She saw it broken into fragments before the evidence of
her own eyes, and the fragments ground to dust beneath the weight of
what she knew of his past--things he had told her himself. So she
thought there was no more faith in him, and her heart went empty and
aching through the next few days.
But, since Billy Louise was human, and a woman--not altogether because
she was twenty!--she stopped, after awhile, gathered carefully the dust
of her dead faith, and, like God, she began to create. First she
fashioned doubts of her doubt. How did she know she had not made a
mistake, there at that corral? Other men wore gray hats and rode dark
bay horses; other men were slim and tall--and she had only had a
glimpse after all, and the light was deceptive down there in the
shadows. When that first doubt was molded, and she had breathed into
it the breath of life so that it stood sturdily before her, she took
heart and created reasons, a whole company of them, to tell her why she
ought to give Ward the benefit of the doubt. She remembered what
Charlie Fox had said about circumstantial evidence. She would not make
the mistake he had made.
So she spent other days and long, wakeful nights. And since it seemed
impossible to bring her faith to life again just as it had been, with
the glamor of romance and the sweetness of pity and the strength of her
own innocence to make it a beautiful faith indeed, she used all her
innocence and all her pity and a little of romance and created
something even sweeter than her untried faith had been. She had a new
element to strengthen it. She knew that she loved Ward; she had
learned that from the hurt it had given her to lose her faith in him.
That was the record of the inner Billy Louise which no one ever saw.
The Billy Louise which her little world knew went her way unchanged,
except in small details that escaped the notice of those nearest her.
A look in her eyes, for one thing; a hurt, questioning look that was
sometimes rebellious as well; a droop of her mouth, also, when she was
off her guard; a sad, tired little droop that told of the weight of
responsibility and worry she was carrying.
Ward observed both, the minute he saw her on the trail. He had come
across country on the chance that she might be riding out that way, and
he had come upon her unawares while she and Blue were staring out over
the desert from the height they had attained in the hills.
"'Lo, Bill!" he said, when he was quite close, and held himself ready
to meet whatever mood she might present.
She turned her head quickly and looked at him, and the hurt look was
still in her eyes, the droop still showed at her lips. And Ward knew
they had been there before she saw him.
"Wha's molla, Bill?" he asked, in the tone that was calculated to
invite an unburdening of her troubles.
"Ob, nothing in particular. Mommie's been awfully sick, and I'm always
worried when I'm away from the ranch, for fear she'll have another
spell while I'm gone. The doctor said she might have, any time. Were
you headed for our place? If you are, come on; I was just starting
back. I don't dare be away any longer." If that were a real
unburdening, Ward was an unreasonable young man. Billy Louise looked
at him again, and this time her eyes were clear and friendly.
Ward was not satisfied, for all the surface seemed smooth enough. He
was too sensitive not to feel a difference, and he was too innocent of
any wrongdoing or thinking to guess what was the matter. Guilt is a
good barometer of personal atmosphere, and Ward had none of it. The
worst of him she had known for more than a year; he had told her
himself, and she had healed the hurt--almost--of the past by her firm
belief in him and by her friendship. Could you expect Ward to guess
that she had seen her faith in him die a violent death no longer than
two weeks ago? Such a possibility never occurred to him.
For all that, he felt there was a difference somewhere. It chilled his
eagerness a little, and it blanketed his enthusiasm so that he did not
tell her the things he had meant to tell. He had ridden over with
another nugget in his pocket--a nugget the size of an almond. He had
come to give it to Billy Louise and to tell her how and where he had
found it.
It is too bad that he changed his mind again and kept that lump of gold
in his pocket. It would have explained so much, if he had given it to
Billy Louise to put in her blue plush treasure box. It would even have
brought to life that first faith in him. She might have told him--one
never can foresee the lengths to which a woman's confessional mood will
carry her--about that corral hidden in the canyon, and of her sickening
certainty that she had seen him ride stealthily away from it. If she
had, he would have convinced her that she was mistaken, and that he had
that afternoon been washing gold a good ten miles from there, until it
was too dark for him to work.
He took the nugget back home, and he took it sooner than he had
intended to return. He also carried back a fit of the blues which
seemed to have attacked him without cause or pretext, since he had not
quarreled with Billy Louise, and had been warmly welcomed by "mommie."
Poor mommie was looking white and frail, and her temples were too
distinctly veined with purple. Ward told himself that it was no wonder
his Wilhemina acted strained and unnatural. He meant to work harder
than ever and get his stake so that he could go and make her give him
the right to take care of her.
He began to figure the cost of commuting his homestead right away, so
that he would not have to "hold it down" for another three years.
Maybe she would not want to bring her mother so far off the main road.
In that case, he would go down and put that Wolverine place in shape.
He had no squeamishness about living on her ranch instead of his own,
if she wanted it that way. He meant to be better "hooked up"
financially than she was and have more cattle, when he put the gold
ring on her finger. Then he would do whatever she wanted him to do,
and he would not have to crucify his pride doing it.
You see, they could not have quarreled, since Ward carried castles as
well as the blues. In fact, their parting had given Ward an uneven
pulse for a mile, for Billy Louise had gone with him as usual as far as
the corral, when he started home. And when Ward had picked up his
reins and turned to put his toe in the stirrup, Billy Louise had come
close--to his very shoulder. Ward had turned his face toward her, and
Billy Louise--Billy Louise had impulsively taken his head between her
two hands, had looked deep into his eyes, and then had kissed him
wistfully on the lips. Then she had turned and fled up the path,
waving him away up the trail. And though Ward never guessed that to
her that kiss was a penitent vow of loyalty to their friendship and a
slap in the face of the doubt-devils that still pursued her weaker
moments, it set him planning harder than ever for that stake he must
win before he dared urge her further toward matrimony.
It's a wonder that the kiss did not wipe out completely the somber mood
that held him. That it did not, but served merely to tangle his
thoughts in a most hopeless manner, perhaps proves how greatly the
inner life of Billy Louise had changed her in those two weeks.
She changed still more in the next two months, however. There was the
strain of her mother's precarious health which kept Billy Louise always
on the alert and always trying to hide her fears. She must be quick to
detect the first symptoms of a return attack of the illness, and she
must not let her mother suspect that there was danger of a return.
That much the doctor had made plain to her.
Besides that, there was an undercurrent of gossip and rumors of cattle
stealing, whenever a man stopped at the ranch. It worried Billy
Louise, in spite of her rebuilt belief in Ward. Doubt would seize her
sometimes in spite of herself, and she did not see Ward often enough to
let his personality fight those doubts. She saw him just once in the
next two months, and then only for an hour or so.
A man rode up one night and stayed with them until morning, after the
open-handed custom of the range-land. Billy Louise did not talk with
him very much. He had shifty eyes and a coarse, loose-lipped mouth and
a thick neck, and, girl-like, she took a violent dislike to him. But
John Pringle told her afterwards that he was Buck Olney, the new stock
inspector, and that he was prowling around to see if he could find out
anything.
Billy Louise worried a good deal, after that. Once she rode out early
with the intention of going to Ward's claim to warn him. But three
miles of saner thought changed her purpose: she dared not leave her
mother all day, for one thing; and for another, she could scarcely warn
Ward without letting him see that she felt he needed warning; and even
Billy Louise shrank from what might follow.
The stock inspector stopped again, on his way back to the railroad.
Billy Louise was so anxious that she smothered her dislike and treated
him nicely, which thawed the man to an alarming amiability. She
questioned him artfully--trust Billy Louise for that!--and she decided
that the stock inspector was either a very poor detective or a very
good actor. He did not, for instance, mention any corral hidden in a
blind canyon away back in the hills, and Billy Louise did not mention
it, either. He had not found any worked brands, he said. And he did
not appear to know anything further about Ward than the mere fact of
his existence.
"There's a fellow holding down a claim, away over on Mill Creek," he
had remarked. "I'll look him up when I come back, though Seabeck says
he's all right."
"Ward is all right," asserted Billy Louise, rather unwisely.
"Haven't a doubt of it. I thought maybe he might have seen something
that might give us a clew." Perhaps the stock inspector was wiser than
she gave him credit for being. He did not at any rate pursue the
subject any farther, until he found an opportunity to talk to Mrs.
MacDonald herself. Then he artfully mentioned the fellow on Mill
Creek, and because she did not know any reason for caution, he got all
the information he wanted, and more, for mommie was in one of her
garrulous humors.
He went away in a thoughtful mood, and I may as well tell you why. Do
you remember that evening when Ward sat before the fire thinking so
intently of a man that he pulled a gun on Billy Louise when she
startled him? Well, this stock inspector was the man. And this man
went away from the Wolverine thinking of Ward quite as intently as Ward
sometimes thought of him. If Billy Louise had thrown a chip and hit
the stock inspector on the back of the neck, it is very likely that he
would have pulled a gun, also. I've an idea that Billy Louise might
have done something more than throw a chip at him if she had known who
he was; but she did not know, and she slept the sounder for her
ignorance.
After that the days drifted quietly for a month and grew nippier at
each end and lazier in the middle; which meant that the short summer
was over, and that fall was getting ready to paint the wooded slopes
with her gayest colors, and that one must prepare for the siege of
winter.
It was some time in the latter part of September that Billy Louise got
up in the middle of a frosty night because she heard her mother
moaning. That was the beginning. She sent John off before daylight
for the doctor, and before the next night she stood with her lips
pressed together and watched the doctor count mommie's pulse and take
mommie's temperature, and drew in her breath hardly when she saw how
long he studied the thermometer afterwards.
There was a month or so of going to and fro on her toes and of watching
the clock with a mind to medicine-giving. There were nights and nights
and nights when the cabin window winked like a star fallen into the
coulee, from dusk to red dawn. Ward rode over once, stayed all night,
and went home in a silent rage because he could not do a thing.
There was a week of fluctuating hope, and a time when the doctor said
mommie must go to a hospital--Boise, since she had friends there. And
there was a terrible, nerve-racking journey to the railroad. And when
Ward rode next to the Wolverine ranch, there was no Billy Louise to
taunt or tempt him. John Pringle and Phoebe told him in brief, stolid
sentences of the later developments and gave him a meal and offered him
a bed, which he declined.
When the suspense became maddening, after that, he would ride down to
the Wolverine for news. And the news was monotonously scant. Phoebe
could read and write, after a fashion, and Billy Louise sent her a
letter now and then, saying that mommie was about the same, and that
she wanted John to do certain things about the ranch. She could not
leave mommie, she said. Ward gathered that she would not.
Once when he was at the ranch, he wrote a letter to Billy Louise, and
told her that he would come to Boise if there was anything he could do,
and begged her to let him know if she needed any money. Beyond that he
worked and worked, and tried to crowd the lonesomeness out of his days
and the hunger from his dreams, with complete bone-weariness. He did
not expect an answer to his letter--at least he told himself that he
did not--but one day Phoebe gave him a thin little letter more precious
in his eyes than the biggest nugget he had found.
Billy Louise did not write much; she explained that she could only
scribble a line or two while mommie slept. Mommie was about the same.
She did not think there was anything Ward could do, and she thanked him
for offering to help. There was nothing, she said pathetically, that
anybody could do; even the doctors did not seem able to do much, except
tell her lies and charge her for them. No, she did not need any money,
"thank you just the same, Ward." That was about all. It did not sound
in the least like Billy Louise.
Ward answered the note then and there, and called her
Wilhemina-mine--which was an awkward name to write and cost him five
minutes of cogitation over the spelling. But he wanted it down on
paper where she could see it and remember how it sounded when he said
it, even if it did look queer. Farther along he started to call her
Bill Loo, but rubbed it out and substituted Lady Girl (with capitals).
Altogether he did better than he knew, for he made Billy Louise cry
when she read it, and he made her say "Dear Ward!" under her breath,
and remember how his hair waved over his left temple, and how he looked
when that smile hid just behind his lips and his eyes. And he made her
forget that she had lost faith in him. She needed to cry, and she
needed to remember and also to forget some things; for life was a hard,
dull drab in Boise, with nothing to lighten it, save a vicarious hope
that did not comfort.
Billy Louise was not stupid. She saw through the vagueness of the
doctors; and besides, she was so hungry for her hills that she felt
like beating the doctors with her fists, because they did nothing to
make her mommie well enough to go home. She grew to hate the nurse and
her neutral cheerfulness.
That is how the fall passed for Billy Louise, and the early part of the
winter.