"You've hit it. She's started right in to polish us all up to city
standards."
"We need it," commented Cavanagh, in admiration of the girl's prompt
action. "This room is almost civilized, still we'll sort o' miss the
flies."
Lize apologized. "Well, you know a feller gits kind o' run down like a
clock, and has to have some outsider wind him up now and again. First I
was mad, then I was scared, but now I'm cheerin' the girl on. She can run
the whole blame outfit if she's a mind to--even if I go broke for it. The
work she got out o' them slatter-heels of girls is a God's wonder."
Ross looked round for Virginia, but could not find her. She had seen him
come in, and was out in the kitchen doing what she could to have his food
brought in and properly served.
Redfield reassured the perturbed proprietor of "the joint." "No fear of
going broke, madam--quite the contrary. A few little touches like this,
and you'll be obliged to tear down and build bigger. I don't believe I'd
like to see your daughter run this eating-house as a permanent job, but if
she starts in I'm sure she'll make a success of it."
Lee Virginia came in flushed and self-conscious, but far lighter of spirit
than at breakfast; and stood beside the table while the waitress _laid_
the dishes before her guests with elaborate assumption of grace and
design. Hitherto she had bumped them down with a slash of slangy comment.
The change was quite as wonderful as the absence of the flies.
"Do we owe these happy reforms to you?" asked Cavanagh, admiring
Virginia's neat dress and glowing cheeks.
"Partly," she answered. "I was desperate. I had to do something, so I took
to ordering people around."
"I understand," he said. "Won't you sit at our table again?"
"Please do," said Redfield. "I want to talk with you."
She took a seat--a little hesitantly. "You see, I studied Domestic Science
at school, and I've never had a chance to apply it before."
"Here's your opportunity," Redfield assured her. "My respect for the
science of domestics is growing--I marvel to think what another week will
bring forth. I think I'll have to come down again just to observe the
improvement in the place."
"It can't last," Lize interjected. "She'll catch the Western
habits--she'll sag, same as we all do."
"No she won't," declared Ross, with intent to encourage her. "If you give
her a free hand, I predict she'll make your place the wonder and boast of
the county-side."
"When do you go back to the mountains?" Lee Virginia asked, a little
later.
"Immediately after my luncheon," he replied.
She experienced a pang of regret, and could not help showing it a little.
"Your talk helped me," she said; "I've decided to stay, and be of use to
my mother."
Redfield overheard this, and turned toward her.
"This is a rough school for you, Lee Virginia, and I should dislike seeing
you settle down to it for life: but it can't hurt you if you are what I
think you are. Nothing can soil or mar the mind that wills for good. I
want Mrs. Redfield to know you; I'm sure her advice will be helpful. I
hope you'll come up and see us if you decide to settle in Sulphur--or if
you don't."
"I should like to do so," she said, touched by the tone as well as by the
words of his invitation.
"Redfield's house is one of the few completely civilized homes in the
State," put in Cavanagh. "When I get so weary of cuss-words and poaching
and graft that I can't live without killing some one, I go down to Elk
Lodge and smoke and read the Supervisor's London and Paris weeklies and
recover my tone."
Redfield smiled. "When I get weak-kneed or careless in the service and
feel my self-respect slipping away, I go up to Ross's cabin and talk with
a man who represents the impersonal, even-handed justice of the Federal
law."
Cavanagh laughed. "There! Having handed each other reciprocal bouquets, we
can now tell Miss Wetherford the truth. Each of us thinks very well of
himself, and we're both believers in the New West."
"What do you mean by the New West?" asked the girl.
"Well, the work you've been doing here this morning is a part of it,"
answered Redfield. "It's a kind of housecleaning. The Old West was
picturesque and, in a way, manly and fine--certain phases of it were
heroic--and I hate to see it all pass, but some of us began to realize
that it was not all poetry. The plain truth is my companions for over
twenty years were lawless ruffians, and the cattle business as we
practiced it in those days was founded on selfishness and defended at the
mouth of the pistol. We were all pensioners on Uncle Sam, and fighting to
keep the other fellow off from having a share of his bounty. It was all
wasteful, half-savage. We didn't want settlement, we didn't want law, we
didn't want a State. We wanted free range. We were a line of pirates from
beginning to end, and we're not wholly, reformed yet."
He was talking to the whole table now, for all were listening. No other
man on the range could say these things with the same authority, for Hugh
Redfield was known all over the State as a man who had been one of the
best riders and ropers in his outfit--one who had started in as a common
hand at herding, and who had been entirely through "the war."
Lee Virginia listened with a stirring of the blood. Her recollections of
the range were all of the heroic. She recalled the few times when she was
permitted to go on the round-up, and to witness the breaking of new
horses, and the swiftness, grace, and reckless bravery of the riders, the
moan and surge of herds, the sweep of horsemen, came back and filled her
mind with large and free and splendid pictures. And now it was passing--or
past!
Some one at the table accused Redfield of being more of a town-site boomer
than a cattle-man.
He was quite unmoved by this charge. "The town-site boomer at least
believes in progress. He does not go so far as to shut out settlement. If
a neat and tidy village or a well-ordered farmstead is not considered
superior to a cattle-ranch littered with bones and tin cans, or better
than even a cow-town whose main industry is whiskey-selling, then all
civilized progress is a delusion. When I was a youngster these
considerations didn't trouble me. I liked the cowboy life and the careless
method of the plains, but I've some girls growing up now, and I begin to
see the whole business in a new light. I don't care to have my children
live the life I've lived. Besides, what right have we to stand in the way
of a community's growth? Suppose the new life _is_ less picturesque than
the old? We don't like to leave behind us the pleasures and sports of
boyhood; but we grow up, nevertheless. I'm far more loyal to the State as
Forest Supervisor than I was when I was riding with the cattle-men to
scare up the nester."
He uttered all this quite calmly, but his ease of manner, his absolute
disregard of consequences, joined with his wealth and culture, gave his
words great weight and power. No one was ready with an answer but Lize,
who called out, with mocking accent: "Reddy, you're too good for the
Forest Service, you'd ought 'o be our next Governor."
This was a centre shot. Redfield flushed, and Cavanagh laughed. "Mr.
Supervisor, you are discovered!"
Redfield recovered himself. "I should like to be Governor of this State
for about four years, but I'm likelier to be lynched for being in command
of twenty 'Cossacks.'"
At this moment Sam Gregg entered the room, followed by a young man in an
English riding-suit. Seeing that "the star-boarder table" offered a couple
of seats, they pointed that way. Sam was plainly in war-like frame of
mind, and slammed his sombrero on its nail with the action of a man
beating an adversary.
"That is Sam Gregg and his son Joe--used to be ranch cattle-man, now one
of our biggest sheepmen," Cavanagh explained. "He's bucking the cattle-men
now."
Lee Virginia studied young Gregg with interest, for his dress was that of
a man to whom money came easy, and his face was handsome, though rather
fat and sullen. In truth, he had been brought into the room by his father
to see "Lize Wetherford's girl," and his eyes at once sought and found
her. A look of surprise and pleasure at once lit his face.
Gregg was sullen because of his interview with Cavanagh, which had been in
the nature of a grapple; and in the light of what Redfield had said, Lee
Virginia was able to perceive in these two men a struggle for supremacy.
Gregg was the greedy West checked and restrained by the law.
Every man in the room knew that Gregg was a bitter opponent of the Forest
Service, and that he "had it in" for the ranger; and some of them knew
that he was throwing more sheep into the forest than his permits allowed,
and that a clash with Redfield was sure to come. It was just like the
burly old Irishman to go straight to the table where his adversary sat.
Virginia's eyes fell before the gaze of these two men, for they had none
of the shyness or nothing of the indirection of the ruder men she had met.
They expressed something which angered her, though she could not have told
precisely why.
Redfield did not soften his words on Gregg's account; on the contrary he
made them still more cutting and to the line.
"The mere fact that I live near the open range or a national forest does
not give me any _rights_ in the range or forest," he was saying, as Gregg
took his seat. "I enjoy the _privilege_ of these Government grazing
grounds, and I ought to be perfectly willing to pay the fee. These forests
are the property of the whole nation; they are public lands, and should
yield a revenue to the whole nation. It is silly to expect the Government
to go on enriching a few of us stockmen at the expense of others. I see
this, and I accept the change."
"After you've got rich at it," said Gregg.
"Well, haven't you?" retorted Redfield. "Are you so greedy that nothing
will stop you?"
Lize threw in a wise word. "The sporting-houses of Kansas City and Chicago
keep old Sam poor."
A roar of laughter followed this remark, and Gregg was stumped for a
moment; but the son grinned appreciatively. "Now be good!"
Cavanagh turned to Virginia in haste to shield her from all that lay
behind and beneath this sally of the older and deeply experienced woman.
"The Supervisor is willing to yield a point--he knows what the New West
will bring."