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EWING'S LADY
_B_y
HARRY LEON WILSON
Author of "The Spenders"
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK
1907
COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY
AINSLEE MAGAZINE COMPANY
_Published, November, 1907_
To N. B. T.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--EWING'S KID 1
II.--A LADY LOSES HERSELF 12
III.--A PRIVATE VIEW 20
IV.--A PORTRAIT 32
V.--INTO THE PAST AND OUT 43
VI.--THE LADY AND THE PLAN 55
VII.--TWO SLEEPERS AWAKEN 64
VIII.--THE JOURNEY WONDER 71
IX.--A DINNER AT SEVEN-THIRTY 83
X.--THE WAY OF THE LITTLE MAN 97
XI.--A NIGHT AT THE MONASTERY 105
XII.--THE NEW MEMBER 124
XIII.--SEARCHING THE WILDERNESS 131
XIV.--THE TRICK OF COLOR 140
XV.--FLESH OF HER FLESH 147
XVI.--TEEVAN AS SPECIAL PROVIDENCE 156
XVII.--AN ELUSIVE VENUS 164
XVIII.--MRS. LAITHE IS IN 174
XIX.--THE UNBLAZED WAY 185
XX.--A LADY BLUSHES 196
XXI.--THE DRAMA IN NINTH STREET 203
XXII.--A REVOLT 211
XXIII.--THE LITTLE LAND 222
XXIV.--EWING INTERRUPTS 231
XXV.--MRS. LAITHE IS ENLIGHTENED 247
XXVI.--THE SUNSET TRAIL 256
XXVII.--THE HILLS OF REST 262
XXVIII.--THE WHITE TIME 273
XXIX.--THE AWAKENING 279
XXX.--THE HARDEST THING 290
XXXI.--THE MISSION OF EWING 304
XXXII.--THE TURNING OF COONEY 313
EWING'S LADY
CHAPTER I
EWING'S KID
Two weeks of instructive contact with the Bar-7 school of gallantry had
prepared Mrs. Laithe to be amazed at her first encounter with Ewing's
kid. Riding out from the ranch one afternoon and turning, for coolness,
up the wooded mesa that rises from the creek flat, she overwhelmed him
at a bend in the trail. Stricken motionless, he glared at the lady with
eyes in which she was compelled to believe that she read more horror
than admiration. There was a moment of this; then her pony neighed a
greeting to the statue--of dusty bronze--as if to say that things were
not so bad as they seemed, and the gazing youth broke the spell his
vision had laid upon him. He bowed his head doggedly and vanished beyond
some low-growing cedars that lined the way.
As he fled the lady laughed softly, yet was silent, with face austerely
set as she passed the point of his evanishment. His behavior recalled
that of a deer she had terrorized one day in this same green isle of the
woods; and she had laughed the same furtive laugh, as if in confidence
to herself, when the creature tossed its head in challenge, pawed the
earth with a dainty bravado, and then fled in such an ecstasy of panic
that she could hear it crashing through the underbrush long after it had
vanished. But this human woods-creature had gone silently; and no great
way, she suspected--far enough only to screen himself while his eyes
still held her through some opening in the green curtain. Wherefore let
us comprehend the mien of austerity as she passed.
Elusiveness in the male, be it bluntly said, was confounding to the
experience of Mrs. Laithe since she had ventured into the San Juan
Mountains under the nominal care of an inattentive brother, and her
belief was still firm that the men about her suffered little from
shyness. This latest specimen would be a single variation from type and
of slight value in determining the ways of his kind.
As her pony picked its way up the trail she mused over the not
unpleasant picture of the youth at bay. It was a thing to be caught at
the moment, for she would find him otherwise, she believed, at their
next meeting. She would come on him some day at Bar-7, or at one of the
ranches neighboring it, and find him quite like his fellows, rigidly
respectful, but with a self-confidence and a simple directness in his
gallantry that had entertained her not a little as practiced by local
courtiers. He would be like the others, from Beulah Pierce, owner of
Bar-7, down to Shane Riley, humble helper in the cookhouse.
An hour later, refreshed by the balsam-laden air of the upper reaches,
she left the woods at the foot of the mesa and rode out on the willow
flat, lush with grass for Bar-7's winter feeding. From the first bench
above the creek she descried the figures of two men in front of the
ranch house. One she saw to be Beulah Pierce, his incredible length
draped lazily over the gate that opened into his wife's flower garden.
Outside this gate, under the flow of his talk (Pierce would surely be
talking) stood one whom the lady, riding nearer, identified as the youth
who so lately had shirked a meeting with her. At this sight she warmed
with a little glow of pride in her powers of prophecy. Truly he had
waited no long time. His hat was off and he leaned restfully against the
withers of a saddled horse, a horse that drooped, head to the ground, in
some far low level of dejection.
She laughed again, comprehending the fellow at last. His variation from
type had been but seeming, due to an erratic but not constitutional
embarrassment. Brazenly enough now he contrived to await her coming,
craftily engaging the not difficult Pierce in idle talk. And Pierce, as
she rode up, would perform, with stiff importance, the orthodox ceremony
of presentation. Whereupon the youth would bow with visible effort,
shake her hand with a rigid cordiality, once up, once down, and remark,
after swallowing earnestly, "Pleased to meet you, ma'am!" or perhaps,
"Glad to make your acquaintance!" Then, tactfully affecting to ignore
her, he would demand if Pierce had seen anything of that buckskin mare
and colt that strayed off last Tuesday; or if anyone had brought mail up
from Pagosa Springs lately; or if Pierce happened to need two thousand
hemlock shakes. This query he would follow with a popular local
witticism concerning sheepmen or the Colorado climate--nominally
addressed to Pierce but intended for her own refreshment. And, in
readjusting the silk kerchief at his throat, he would manage a quick
side glance at her to see how she relished the jest. For Mrs. Laithe had
learned their ways in two weeks, and this was one of them--to favor one
another with witty sallies in her presence, and solely in her behalf.
All the men of Bar-7 practiced this amiable strategy. When a group of
them assembled within her hearing the swift exchange of repartee,
accompanied by the inevitable side glance, was a thing to wonder at.
Indeed, the lady had learned their ways. Even before she neared the gate
Alonzo Pierce, son of Beulah, appeared round the corner of the ranch
house to take her pony, sauntering with a flagrant _ennui_, in full
knowledge that Sandy Goodhue had started violently on the same gallant
mission, but from the farthest corral. Shane Riley, chained by his
labors to the doorway of the cookhouse, smirked genially out over a pot
that he polished; and Red Phinney, star rider at Bar-7, seated himself
on the step before the front door, so that he might have to arise with
flourishing apologies--a performance that would move the lady to ask
about his sprained wrist, now in bandage.
This familiar assembling of her court, professedly casual, was swiftly
detected by Mrs. Laithe. But she saw now, being near the gate, a quick
turning toward her of the strange youth. It was a brief, impersonal
survey that seemed not to disengage her from the background of gray road
and yellowish-green willows; but clearly it sufficed. With a curt nod to
Pierce he was mounted; in another breath his amazed and indignant horse,
spurred viciously from its trance, raged with protesting snorts over the
road to the east. As Mrs. Laithe reined up at the gate she beheld,
through a nimbus of dust, the rider's boots groping pathetically for
their stirrups.
She repressed a little gasp of astonishment in which the natural woman
might have betrayed her view of so headlong a retreat, although, had
Beulah Pierce been alone at the gate, she might have descended to speech
with him about this strangely retiring youth. But as 'Lon Pierce waited
for her pony, with a masterly taunt for Sandy Goodhue, who came up
breathless but late, and as Red Phinney had already risen from his
obstructive seat in the doorway, his wrist held cunningly forward to
provoke solicitous inquiry, the lady passed in with only such easy words
as the moment demanded. She was reflecting, with agreeable interest,
that the young man's avoidance of her would presently begin to seem
pointed.
This conjecture was to be abundantly confirmed. Returning from her ride
the following afternoon, she saw that the youth must pass her on the
public highway. They were out on the flat, with no arboreal sanctuary
for the timid one. The lady looked forward with genial malice to a
meeting which, it appeared, he was now powerless to avoid. But the
youth, perceiving his plight, instantly had trouble with a saddle girth.
Turning well out of the road, he dismounted on the farther side of his
horse and busied himself with the mechanics of proper cinching. As Mrs.
Laithe rode by she saw only the top of a wide-brimmed gray hat above the
saddle.
The day following, when, in an orderly sequence of events, they should
have met at the ford, he turned with admirable promptness down the
stream, where no trail was, sharply scanning the thinned edge of a wood
in the perfect manner of one absorbed in a search for lost stock.
Clearly, his was a mind fertile, if not subtle, in resource.
Not until a day later did he come truly to face her, and then only by
the circumstance of his being penned by her within the high-walled
corral where Red Phinney broke green horses to ride, work or carry.
Returning this day earlier than was her wont, and finding no one at the
front of the house to take her pony, she had ridden back to the corrals.
Here she delivered the animal to Phinney, but not before the timid one
had been compelled to pass her. He did this, she thought, only after
swiftly calculating the height of the walls that pent him. And though
his hat was doffed as he hurtled by, his eyes were on the ground. Mrs.
Laithe, feeling thus at liberty to stare brutally at him, felt a
prodigious heightening of that tower of amazement he had been rearing
within her mind, for she saw him blush most furiously; beheld it under
the brown of his beardless face.
Yet there was more in the young face than this flaunted banner of
embarrassment; and scanning it intently, she resolved forthwith to know
him.
Late that day she was pleased to come upon Beulah Pierce alone in the
big living room of the ranch house. Smoking a last pipe before the call
to supper, Beulah relaxed on the "lounge" after a toilsome season of
ditch-making.
"Oh, him?" he answered, luxuriously extending legs that seemed much too
long for any reasonable need of man, and pulling at his ragged red
mustache. "Why, that's Ewing's kid."
"Ewing?" retorted Mrs. Laithe, provocatively, winningly.
"Ewing," affirmed Pierce, with unaccustomed brevity, his mind at
dalliance with other matters.
"Ewing's kid," murmured the lady, as if in careless musing.
"Sure, Ewing's kid--Hi Mighty! I struck one o' them willow roots to-day,
on that piece o' ditch over on the west forty, an' say! it yanked me
clean over the plow handles. It did, fur a fact--straightened me out
like a whiplash. It scraped all the wall paper off'n this left shoulder
o' mine when I landed, too, say nothin' o' the jounce it give me. Ma,
whur's that embrycation fur man _and_ beast?" And Beulah laid a gentle
hand on the abraded member.
"After you've et a bite," called his wife from the next room. "Shane has
the things all on, so come along an' set up."
Beulah erected himself with an unctuous groan and spoke his favorite
jest: "Wa'al, le's go out an' see what the neighbors has brought in."
The meal over, Mrs. Laithe again found herself with Pierce in the living
room. She sat on the bearskin before the open fire, her hands clasped
about her knees. Through the dancing jets of flame she observed the kid
of Ewing with his downward, troubled face. Pierce, tucking shreds of
tobacco into the bowl of his pipe, glanced toward her, the light of
coming talk in his eyes.
"How'd you like that there little red roan you're ridin', Mis' Laithe?"
he began.
"Cooney? Oh, Cooney's a dear, generally. Sometimes he's stubborn and
pretends to know the way better than I do."
"Sound and kind, though, I bet you."
"Oh, yes; but when I want to ride down the east side of the valley, why
does he always try to go up that steep trail to the left? Sometimes I've
quite a struggle to keep him in the valley road."
"Wa'al, you see I bought him off'n Ewing's kid an' he wants to git back
home. Sure's ever we dast let him loose with the saddle band, he's over
to Ewing's place, come sun-up. You give him his head any time--he'll
carry you straight there."
"He will?"
"Surest thing _you_ know! When that kid breaks a pony he gits it all
gentled up so's it hones to git back to him."
"How interesting!"
"Naw--makes lashin's o' trouble fur them that buys off'n him. Say, Mis'
Laithe, you was askin' about Ewing's kid."
"Was I?" She looked politely blank.
"Sure you was--jest 'fore supper. Wa'al, Ewing's kid is the son of a man
named--now hear me _talk_! Course he's his father's son. Wa'al, anyway,
this man Ewing comes in here with this kid about fifteen, sixteen year
ago, an' takes that place over there by the lake to git cured up o' the
consumption. He was a painter, painted pitchers an' all sech,
understand?--puts up a big stoodio with a winder in it six feet high to
paint by. But he was puny. He couldn't fat up none. You never seen a
critter so gaunted as he was. Some said he never got over losin' his
wife. Anyway, 't wa'n't no surprise when he was took off, seven, eight
year ago. An' since he died that there kid has sort o' half run the
place along with a feller named Ben Crider that the old man had got fur
help. O' course we all kind o' looked in on the boy at first to make
sure he wa'n't in need, an' done a day's work now an' then, an' they
raised a few horses an' a few cattle an' one thing an' another. Trouble
with that boy, though, he's always putterin' round with his dad's paint
brushes, an' talkin' about portrayin' art an' all like that, understand?
I've told that kid time an' time again, 'Kid,' I says, 'never _you_ mind
about portrayin' art an' depictin' the linnerments an' the varied
aspecks o' nature,' I says; 'you jes' burn up them foolish little
long-shanked paint brushes in your Charter Oak cookstove,' I says, 'an'
ten' to portrayin' a good little bunch of cattle an' depictin' Ben
Crider to work also, an' you'll _git_ somewhur's,' I says. But him--why,
he jes' moons along. An' Ben Crider ain't much better. Ben ain't no
_stimulant_ to him. Ben had ort to been the only son of a tenderhearted
widow lady of means. That's what he'd ort to been. You give him a new
coon song out of a Sunday supplement an' his guitar, an' Ben's fixed fur
half a day at least. _He_ ain't goin' to worry none about a strayed
yearlin' or two. Why, one time, I rec'lect----"
"Then young Mr. Ewing is a painter, too?" she interrupted.
"Wa'al"--Pierce became judicial--"yes an' _no_. He ain't a reg'ler one,
like you might say--not like his pa was. Still, he can do hand
paintin'--if you want to call it that. Made a pitcher o' me this summer,
bein' buckjumped by old Tobe. Tobe was cert'n'y actin' high, wide an'
handsome, comin' down with his four hoofs in a bunch, an' me lookin'
like my works was comin' all apart the next minute. A _lively_
pitcher--yes; but, my Lord! it wa'n't a thing you could show! It made me
out that reediculous. Course, I ain't Mrs. Langtry, but you got to draw
the line somewhurs, hain't you? Now there"--Beulah pushed an informing
thumb toward crayon portraits of himself and Mrs. Pierce that graced the
opposite wall in frames of massive gilt, one on either side of the
organ--"that's what you can call art--drawn by a reg'ler one down to
Durango--everything showin' like it ort to, expressions _an'_ all, even
down to Ma Pierce's breastpin an' my watch chain, made out o' my own
mother's hair. They're _decent_ pitchers. That other one was plumb
indecent, I can tell you. Ma she up an' hid it away, quick as she seen
it."
"And has he done other things?"
"Hey?"
"Painted other pictures?"
"Slathers--horses an' animals an' Ben Crider with his gun an' all sech,
an' deer. Say now, I seen another artist down to the Durango fair last
fall that was a genuine wonder an' no mistake. He was writin' callin'
cards at a little table, an' he could draw a runnin' deer all in
flourishes an' curlycurves, without liftin' his pen from the card, all
slick an' natural as you'd want to----"
"Did you know his mother?"
"No-o-o--didn't even know him. I jest stopped to look an' he drawed a
fine big bird right while I watched, havin' a ribbon in its bill with my
name on it in red ink; about as tasty a thing as you'd care to see, fur
a quarter of a dollar. It's round the house somewhur now, I reckon, if
you----"
"Ewing's kid's mother?"
"Hey? Oh, no, I never knew that lady. She passed away sommers off up the
state before these other parties moved in."
"Does the boy resemble his father?"
"Ewing? Wa'al, not to _say_ resemble. In fact he didn't favor him, not
at all, that I can rec'lect. He must of been most like his ma."
The lady had been speaking as from a distance, staring fixedly into the
fire, with the distraction of one engaged in some hopeless feat of
memory. So intently aloof was she that Pierce had to repeat his next
remark.
"I say, you don't never want to let Cooney git you started up that trail
you was speakin' about. First place, it's steeper'n the side of a house.
Next place, ever let him git you to the top, he'd land you slambang over
to Ewing's, spite of all you could do."
"Thank you! I'll be sure to remember that. Good night!"
She left him, still with the far-centered, puzzled look on her face--the
shadow of some resemblance, indefinite, nameless, but insistent.