Silver-Thatch
Molly Marton sat leaning over the horn of her saddle. One elbow was
propped upon it, while her brown hand supported her chin. The other
hand was reaching down holding her mare’s reins, while the thirsty
creature buried its muzzle in the speeding waters of the creek.
The afternoon was well advanced, and the sun was already approaching
the crystal peaks of the more distant hills. Molly calculated there was
a good three hours to complete darkness yet, and she could reasonably
expect to reach home in less time than that. So far her search had been
fruitless. She had discovered no sign of her missing cows. But she was
quite undisturbed, and not a whit nearer agreement with Lightning as to
the meaning of her loss.
The excuse of her search, however, had served Molly well enough.
Ranging these hills, with Nature bursting into renewed life, was a joy
that never failed in its appeal. Molly loved it all with a youthful
passion. She loved the radiant sunlight--the immensity, the complete
solitude, of this world of forest, and hill, and sheltered valley.
The scented spruce came right down to the grass-grown banks of the
creek. Where she had entered the water was a boulder-strewn gap. It was
clearly the bed of one of those swiftly passing spring torrents. Now it
was almost dry, and had served as her approach to the shallow ford.
The happy waters surged about Rachel’s sturdy legs. Beyond, across the
creek, the hills rose sharply, clad with a woven pattern in every
shade of green. Molly had no intention of crossing the creek. Her
homeward way lay back over her tracks, and down through the endless
woods which lined almost the entire course of the creek.
But the girl had no thought just now for the beauty of her
surroundings, or the business of returning home, or even the object of
her search. She was all unconcerned that she had some fifteen miles
to cover before she again saw her snug homestead. She was thinking of
the dark, good-looking face of the man who had offered himself as her
escort to a real dance.
For long weeks, and even months, thought of Andy McFardell had
preoccupied her. There had been times when she had had no realisation
of how deep was the appeal he made to her. Then there had been other
times when she knew, and the youthful blood had swiftly swept to her
head, and a sort of delirium of longing had left her a little horrified
and ashamed.
There had been moments of doubt, when she had longed for the father
who was dead. But all these emotions had been passing, lost in her
healthy-mindedness. But now it seemed to her as if the whole combined
strength and weakness of those past moments had descended upon her in
an overwhelming rush. A passionate love for Andy McFardell was sweeping
through her. And she knew and understood the wonderful thing that had
befallen.
She knew none of the old earlier shame now. The woman in her had
suddenly become dominant. In a wondrous revelation, all the innocence
of childhood had been swept away like some obscuring mist, yielding
in its place that splendid spectacle of a golden love wherein every
emotion, every hope, every purpose in life, becomes definitely focused
upon one single glorified human creature.
Molly gazed out upon this vision while her pinto drank. A deep emotion
held her. Her unseeing gaze was upon the water-race. Her ears were deaf
to everything, but the rush of happy thought passing headlong through
her brain. She was ecstatically absorbed in her love for the man, with
his warm, dark eyes, his splendid courage in adversity, and she longed
for him. There were no reservations. In Molly there could be none.
At that moment no less could satisfy her than to yield everything to
him--everything that was hers, everything she herself might be.
The clatter of hoofs upon the boulders behind her left her wholly
unaware of any approach, and it was not till her mare flung up her head
that she awoke to realities. Rachel had quenched her thirst, and the
girl reluctantly turned her about to regain the bank.
Molly sat like a statue on her unmoving mare. Her dream had tumbled
headlong. She was alert and searching as she gazed upon the
white-haired figure of a horseman in the act of watering his horse a
few yards away.
She took the man in from head to foot, even to the last detail of the
splendid, coal-black horse he was riding. And the man returned her
stare with smiling interest. His wide-brimmed prairie hat cast a shadow
over his eyes, and so hid something of the strength that looked out of
them. Molly beheld the broad pattern of his tweed jacket, and the cord
riding-breeches which terminated in his soft-topped boots. She noted
that he was wearing a waistcoat; and, curiously enough, this was the
thing that perhaps attracted her most. Right across it stretched the
yellow links of a gold watch-chain.
Just for an instant a flutter of very natural apprehension disturbed
her. She was alone. She was still miles from her home in the heart of
the hills. Then she remembered. After all, these hills were her home.
She had been born and bred to them. A stranger, clad in garments such
as she associated with a city, need only excite her interest. Besides,
there was something very pleasant looking out of his eyes.
* * * * *
Jim Pryse had seen Molly as he approached the water on his way from
Dan Quinlan’s; but he had failed to recognise her sex until she turned
her pinto to return to the river bank. For a moment he had hesitated,
doubtful of the wisdom of revealing himself. Then he had dismissed the
thought. His horse must be watered, and this was the only suitable
place along the whole of the densely wooded river. So he had passed on
down to the ford.
Molly’s surprise as she faced him was no greater than that of the man.
Jim could scarcely believe his senses as he gazed into the pretty face,
with its big, grey, innocent eyes. He had been prepared for some rough
cattleman; he had expected such. In the coated, divided riding-suit he
had never for a moment looked for a girl. A white girl alone in these
hills was a thought that had never entered his head. Now he was glad he
had flung caution to the winds.
It was Molly who offered greeting, and it came in an impulsive
expression of surprise.
“Why,” she exclaimed, “I just hadn’t a notion----” And she broke off in
a little laugh of embarrassment.
“It doesn’t seem I had either, till--you turned your pinto around.”
Both were laughing. To Molly the man’s tone matched the expression of
his eyes. It was deep and resonant, and reminded her of the organ she
remembered to have heard at the Catholic church in Hartspool when she
used to visit it during her father’s life. To the man the moment was
one of sheer enjoyment. Beyond his sister, and the dusky wife of Dan
Quinlan, he had not encountered a woman in many months.
His horse flung up its head and investigated the pinto. In a moment the
man was forgotten in Molly’s admiration of the horse he was riding.
“My!” she cried. “What a lovely, lovely beast.”
Pryse leant over and patted the sweat-dried neck of his horse.
“Beelzebub’s quite a dandy,” he admitted, with smiling pride. “He
was raised on a race-track down Kentucky way. But say, they’ve both
finished watering, and the creek’s ice-cold.”
Molly nodded and urged her mare. And they both passed up the
boulder-littered bed of the mountain torrent.
Molly led the way, her sure-footed mare infinitely more nimble than the
other amongst the boulders. Neither spoke a word. Both were thinking
hard. Molly was quietly making up her mind to ascertain the stranger’s
identity, and then leave him while she continued her way alone. Jim
Pryse was, on the other hand, deliberately intent upon riding with her
just as far as she would permit him.
The girl drew rein at the edge of the forest, and Beelzebub gallantly
came to a halt beside the pinto and rubbed his muzzle against her white
neck.
“My way lies east,” she said quietly, as again she encountered the
smile of the man.
“Mine, too, for a mile or so,” Jim said casually. “Then I break west up
Three-Way Creek. There’s no get-out of this valley before that. We best
ride on. We’re mostly lonesome folk. Company’s swell when we happen on
it.”
Molly’s resolve was scattered to the winds. The man’s smile was
irresistible. Besides, there could be no harm. And, anyway, what he
said was perfectly true. This valley went on with only a break here and
there right down to her home. The creek was the same that supplied
the water-front on her farm, miles away on. If he were riding east, it
would be simply churlish to refuse to ride with him.
“You know,” she said, with a frank laugh, “I’d just fixed it in my mind
to quit you right here. You see, you’re a stranger.”
Jim nodded, watching the light in her eyes.
“That’s dead right, too,” he said. And then his eyes sobered
admonishingly. “It doesn’t do riding around these hills with stranger
men. Now you can’t tell. Maybe I’m a ‘hold-up,’ looking around for
young gals on the ‘stray.’ Maybe I’m a ‘two-gun’ man. Or a cattle
thief. Maybe I get around eating up any old thing in the human way all
the time. You surely can’t tell. The more I think of all the things I
might be the tougher it makes me feel. Now, say, hadn’t you best make
me ride ahead of you, and hand out my talk over my shoulder, while
you keep a gun pushed up against my spine? It ’ud help make things
safe--for you.”
Molly broke into a peal of happy laughter.
“I like fool talk,” she cried. “But you hit things right in a way, too.
Still, my gun, which is right here in my coat pocket, can stay where it
is, and we can ride aside each other. Let’s get on. I need to make home
by sundown. There’s all of fifteen miles of this valley to make. And I
haven’t located a sight of my fool cows yet.”
“Your cows?” Jim asked curiously, as his horse moved along beside the
sedate mare.
Molly’s gaze searched the distance through the tree-trunks as they
loped over the rotting underlay of the woods.
“Yes. I’m out after ‘strays,’” she said, in explanation. “They got
away two days back. The fool dears didn’t know better than to quit our
corral for the open and the timber wolves. It makes you reckon they
got no sort of sense,” she laughed. “Here we’re doing the best we know
for them; we’re handing them feed, and shelter, and water. Then--do you
reckon they’re thankful an’ pleased? No. It’s sure like us human folk,
isn’t it? We just must do the things we want, an’ not what’s good for
us. Lightning guesses they’ve been stole by rustlers. But----”
Jim listened to the girl’s explanation in wonder, and broke in as she
hesitated.
“Do you live hereabouts?” he asked quickly. “You got a farm? I hadn’t a
notion there was a soul around this valley but Dan Quinlan, away back
there where I’ve just come from.”
Molly turned, soberly speculative as she studied the face beside her.
“Then you surely must be quite a stranger,” she said. “Marton’s farm
has stood right down at the mouth of this valley twenty years. I was
born on it, and I’m twenty,” she concluded in her precise fashion.
Jim soothed the impatient Beelzebub with a restraining hand. As the
beast modified its gait he looked round.
“Marton’s farm?” he inquired, with an effort to conceal the excitement
he was labouring under.
Molly nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s my name. Molly Marton. You see,” she added,
“father’s dead. He’s been dead two years now. I run the farm with
Lightning. He’s my hired man. At least, he calls himself that way. But
he’s more than that. He’s a queer old tough. He’s been a cattleman all
his life. He’s getting very old, but--he’s good to me. An’--an’ I guess
I couldn’t run the farm right without him.”
But Jim was paying no heed to Molly’s eulogy of Lightning. In a moment
his mind had leapt back to a time in his life when the name of Marton
had meant complete salvation to him.
“I hadn’t a notion,” he muttered. Then, as they galloped silently
down an incline towards a wide break in the forest that lay ahead,
he bestirred himself under the girl’s scrutiny and laughed. “And you
are Molly Marton?” he said. “And your father was George Marton a--a
French-Canadian?”
“Then you do know us?” Molly swung her mare wide to avoid a fallen
tree-trunk. But Beelzebub took it in his stride, and the girl noted the
ease of the man’s seat in the saddle. As they came together again she
went on. “Yes. He was my father,” she said, and waited.
Jim shook his head, and the silver whiteness of his bushy hair
fascinated the girl.
“It beats everything,” he said. “I’d forgotten George Marton had a
daughter. And yet I shouldn’t have,” he added, with an enigmatic smile.
“But I only saw your father once. I hadn’t a ghost of an idea his farm
was hereabouts.”
“Where did you know him?”
“That’s what I’ve been asking myself--months. It was somewhere around
this hill country. But the particular locality?” He laughed and
shrugged. “You can search me.”
Molly accepted his reply with all the trust of her unsuspicious nature.
She nodded.
“That’s the way of things,” she said. “We meet folks, and pass
right on. Don’t we? Then, when they happen into our lives again,
we--we--just sit an’ wonder, an’ guess we must be dreaming. Maybe even
you didn’t meet him in these hills at all. Maybe it was Hartspool,
or--or--Calford. He used to go there.”
“Maybe.”
Jim drew a deep breath. They were nearing the edge of a wide break in
the forest. Beyond lay a stretch of grass. Away beyond that the forest
continued, but there was a definite change in its nature. It was low
and sparse. Then away to the right of them lay the creek down which
they had been riding. Silver stretches of water showed up. The valley
was changing its course eastwards. Just behind an abutment of hill
ahead was the opening that would take him westwards. Jim knew that the
moment of parting was drawing near.
As they rode into the open Beelzebub strove fiercely to break into a
race. But the man held him down.
In this fashion they rode on in silence. Jim was absorbed in the memory
of a time when his fortunes had been at their lowest ebb, and he had
been running a neck-and-neck race with disaster, and even death. His
more spectacular association with Dan Quinlan had claimed his interest
to the exclusion of that other. And yet he knew he owed just as deep a
debt of gratitude to George Marton. This girl was his daughter--this
child, with her innocent eyes, her pretty, dark face. It was she who
had packed up that food that had kept him from sheer starvation for
days.
Again they were in full sunlight, which transformed the valley, and the
blue grass they were riding over, into something very wonderful. To the
man it was like an omen--an omen of delight. He abruptly checked his
horse, so that Molly came abreast of him.
“You know, Molly,” he said, using her first name without realising it,
“it’s queer the tricks life plays about us. You’ve told me something
I’m more glad about than I can say.”
“You mean--about father? Why?”
“Why?” Jim echoed. Then he shook his head. “No. It’s too long a
yarn now.” He pointed out ahead at the break in the hillside, where
Three-Way Creek debouched. “There lies my way now. Yours is ahead down
the valley. The sun’s dropping fast, and we’ll both need to hustle or
get benighted. Some time I’ll---- Say, look right down there amongst
those spruce bluffs at the river. What’s that moving? It’s--say,
there’s one--two--three--four--five--six. And they’re Pole-Angus cows.
Were yours Pole-Angus?”
Molly turned in the direction he was pointing. And instantly her face
became radiant.
“Why, say!” she cried. “Look at them! The foolish old dears! They’ve
handed me a nightmare. And there they are gawking around like a bunch
of foolishness eating stray grass in a spruce bluff when there’s all
this swell feed right here. No, they’ve no sense. They just haven’t.
Lightning’ll be crazy mad to think there’s no rustler around.”
* * * * *
Molly was alone with her truant cows. She was herding them before her
along the creek bank. She had driven them across the stream that came
out of the westerly gap with the aid of the white-haired man on his
black horse. Then, at her bidding, the stranger had taken himself off.
In the moment of the discovery of her lost cows the girl had forgotten
everything else. There had been the perverse work of rounding them up,
which mainly devolved upon her. Beelzebub had missed all that sort of
thing in his education. Then had come the passage of the creek. And
then a hurried farewell. It was not until she had lost sight of the
stranger that she remembered her unfulfilled purpose. She had let him
go. And she knew no more whence he came, or his name, or whither he was
going, than she had at the moment of their meeting at the water-hole.
It was absurd. It was something outrageous. She was angry with herself,
and not without resentment against him. For a moment she had thought
to recall him. But she restrained the impulse. No. Why should she?
She had been a fool. And he--he might at least have enlightened her
in exchange for the enlightenment she had so foolishly afforded him.
Evidently he could not have wanted to do so. Evidently he had no desire
to discover himself. Well, let him go, with his coal-black horse and
his queer white hair.
Her cows preoccupied her, and quickly enough her ill-humour passed in
the business of driving the foolish, hornless creatures, whose antics
so often made her want to laugh. Anyway, her long day had been more
than successful, and as the valley opened out, and the woods gave way
to the broad open as she drew near her home, the cows seemed to realise
whither they were being herded, and to welcome a return to the shelter
of their familiar corral. They hurried along almost frantically.
As she neared the end of her journey Molly’s thoughts were no longer
dominated by the all-absorbing emotions which had been inspired by the
man McFardell. It was not that they had undergone any change. On the
contrary. It was simply the natural claim of the life that was hers.
The solitude of the hills had been broken for her. A fresh interest had
suddenly tumbled headlong into it. And she found herself thinking of
the white-haired creature on his coal-black horse.
How came it that the stranger’s hair was so white? He was young--quite
young. She was certain of that. She had heard that trouble sometimes
whitened the hair. Yet there was no trouble in his smiling eyes. It
was all very strange. It was---- What wonderful hair! It was like
silver--polished silver. And as thick as a thatch.
She laughed aloud as she came in sight of the smoke rising from the
chimney of her homestead. A sudden thought had flashed through her
mind. It was a childish thought, that pleased her immensely. He
had refused to reveal his identity. Well, it was of no consequence.
She would very likely never see him again, and, anyway, she had
coined a name for him. It was a good name, too--better than he
deserved--Silver-Thatch.