A LADY LOSES HERSELF
Only a few miles separate Bar-7 from the Ewing place; but they are
interesting miles and at least one of them will be found exciting by the
town-bred novice. There is a stretch where the trail leaves the valley
road and zigzags up the face of the east bench to a height from which
one may survey the whole sleeping valley of the Wimmenuche as through a
reducing glass. The way seems no broader than one's hand, and to Mrs.
Laithe, who approached it from across the flat and studied it for the
first time as a practicable thoroughfare, it looked to be impossibly
perpendicular; a climb that no horse in its right mind would attempt, an
angle of elevation that no rider could sustain.
Brought to incredulity by this survey, she pulled Cooney to a walk as
she neared the parting of the ways. Then, indecisively, she let the
bridle rein fall on his neck. The little horse loitered on, splashing
through the creek with a few leisurely sips of its icy water (taken
merely in the spirit of a connoisseur), and a moment later halted where
the bench trail turned out. At the beginning of his intimacy with his
present rider he had adopted rushing tactics at this point, leaping at
the trail in a fine pretense that no other way could have been thought
of, and showing a hurt bewilderment when the sudden pull brought him
about and into the valley road. For that was a road that led nowhere,
since it led away from his home. Day after day he had played this game,
seemingly with an untouched faith that some time he would win. Day after
day had he exercised all his powers of astonished protest when the
frustrating tug was felt. But these tugs had become sharper, to betoken
the rider's growing impatience, and it may be surmised that on this day
Cooney had lost his faith. If it were inevitable that one should be
whirled back into the broad, foolish way, one might save effort by
omitting that first futile rush; one might stop and let evil come.
Cooney stopped now, drooping in languid cynicism.
His rider waited, wishing that he had not stopped; wishing he had rushed
the trail as always before. She felt the need of every excuse for daring
the hazards of that climb. Cooney waited--and waited--morosely
anticipating the corrective jerk of a rider who refused to guide him
properly by pressing a rein across his neck. The shock was delayed.
Cooney thrilled, aspiring joyously. He waited still another uncertain
moment, bracing his slim legs. At last, with a quick indrawing of
breath, he sprang up the only desirable trail in all the world, with an
energy of scurrying hoofs that confined his rider's attention wholly to
keeping her seat. She hardly dared look down even when the little horse
stopped on a narrow ledge to breathe. Nor did Cooney tarry. Still
fearful, perhaps, of that deadly backward jerk, he stopped but once
again before the summit was reached. Doubtless he suspected that the
most should be made of this probably fleeting mood of compliance in one
who had hitherto shown herself inveterately hostile to his most
cherished design.
Looking back over the ascent while the stanch little animal panted under
her, Mrs. Laithe discovered that the thing had been worth while. The
excitement had been pleasurable and the view was a thing to climb for.
On the north the valley narrowed to a canyon, its granite sides muffled
in clouds of soft green spruce. To the south it widened away until,
beyond a broad plain, quickened with flying cloud shadows, a long,
low-lying range of blue hills showed hazily, far over the New Mexico
border. Straight before her, across the valley, were mountains whose
rough summits leaped gray and barren above their ragged hemming of
timber--mountains not to be seen from the ranch because of the
intervening mesa.
But the picture was not long to be enjoyed--no longer a time than Cooney
needed to recover his wind. He was presently off through a sparse grove
of aspen, breaking by his own will into a lope as they crossed a wide,
grassy meadow, level between the wooded hills that sloped to its edge on
either side. And this was the horse who, when he bore her lazily up and
down the valley, constantly cropped the good green stuff to right and
left, a horse always before willing to loiter, or to stand motionless
for an hour with his bridle rein on the ground, while she adventured
beyond him on foot. The rider caught his new spirit and laughed as she
felt herself hurried to the consummation of this mild adventure; hurried
up the long ridge, over a cross system of sudden gullies, through
another wide meadow of the mountains where strange cattle paused to
regard her rather disconcertingly; on through the gloom of other woods,
the trail worrying itself up another ascent, and then out upon an open
summit that looked down upon a tiny lake set in a cup of the hills. On
one side the water, its shining surface pierced only by the heaps of
hungry trout, flashed the green of chrysoprase up to the spruce trees
that crept to its edge; on the other it mirrored a scarred wall of rock
that rose sheer from the water to some far, incalculable height, its
summit carved into semblances of buttressed castles with gray and
splendid battlements.
But Cooney was still loath to linger over mere scenery. He hurried his
rider down the ridge and out on a flat of marshy grass, thickly starred
with purple gentians. Here he delayed only to recall, as it later
appeared, a duty familiar to him in the days before he was sold into
bondage. Standing across the trail where it neared the margin of the
lake, a sedate-looking cow grazed and was at peace with the world.
Looking up as the horse bore down upon her, and observing that she was
expected to move, the cow did so with but slight signs of annoyance in
the shaking of her head. The incident, however, was not thus simply to
be closed, for now began that which enabled the lady to regard the day
as one of red adventure. Cooney swerved from the trail with a suddenness
that was like to have unseated his rider. Then as the cow halted, head
down and forefeet braced, he swerved once more, heading so obviously for
the beast that she turned and trotted off on the trail, mumbling
petulant remonstrance. With a knowing shake of his head Cooney fell in
behind her.
His intention might no longer be mistaken. He meant to drive the cow.
Did she turn aside, Cooney turned aside, ever alert for her slightest
deviation. The trail now lay through a grove of spruce and balsam
that had been partially cleared, but the trees were still too many
for the lady to relish being hurtled among them by a volatile and
too-conscientious cow pony. She found herself eying their charge as
alertly as did Cooney himself, praying that the driven beast might
prove less reluctant. When she did break from the trail Mrs. Laithe
braced herself to meet Cooney's simultaneous detour, and thereafter,
until the indignant animal was again in the beaten way, the rider was
engaged in avoiding fearful impact with trees and entanglement with
low-growing branches. She debated the wisdom of dropping from the saddle
and abandoning herself to the more seemly fate of starvation in this
wooded fastness. To be sure, there was a chance that Cooney would rush
on to find his late master, who might return to solve the problem of the
empty saddle. But even so, that young man would only glance at her and
run swiftly away, after he had blushed. Moreover Cooney, whom she now
believed to be demented, had increased his speed, despite her
restraining pulls, while the cow, in a frenzy of desperation, became
more daring in her sorties.
Then, to the glad relief of the rider, an opening showed through the
trees close ahead, and in another moment Cooney had galloped her out
into an extensive clearing. Swiftly about its edge he circled, to thwart
a last dash of his prey for the glad, free grazing life from which she
had so summarily been withdrawn. Half round the clearing they went in
the startled gaze of a person who had been at work over a deer hide in
the shade of a mighty hemlock. Then, with lightning swerve pursued and
pursuers fled straight and swiftly across the clearing--Cooney close on
the flanks of his prize--into the astounded vision of Ewing's kid, who
had sauntered to the open door at the sound of flying hoofs.
Hereupon the little roan abandoned his task, halting before the figure
in the doorway. The halt was so abrupt that Mrs. Laithe never knew
whether she dismounted or was thrown.
They looked at each other helplessly, the lady's eyes still wide with
the dismay that had been growing in them since Cooney's mysterious
seizure. She felt herself trembling and she tried to smile. The young
man released the arm he had seized to support her and stepped back,
putting a hand up to Cooney, who had been mouthing his sleeve with
little whinnies of rejoicing.
Then the lady heard the voice of Ewing's kid, heard him say with quick,
embarrassed utterance, "It's too bad you went to all that trouble. We're
not milking Clara any more."
Still breathing rapidly, she turned half away, confused by this cryptic
utterance.
"Clara?--I didn't know--I don't--I beg your pardon, but I'm afraid I
don't understand."
"Yes, we don't drive her in any more. Midge came in fresh a few weeks
ago, and we let Clara run along with her calf again."
Pondering this item, she put her hands to her head. One of them found
her cap which a low branch had raked awry; the other grasped a tangle of
hair that muffled the other side of her head, regrettably out of place.
From this surprising touch of things she divined the picture she must be
making. More, she saw herself dash into this sylvan opening apparently
in mad pursuit of a frenzied cow; for, as a requisite to keeping her
seat in the saddle, she had been compelled to seem as eager in the chase
as Cooney himself. She sank--collapsed, rather--upon the broad slab of
stone before the door, laughing weakly.
The youth looked down at her with puzzled eyes in which she saw alarm
rising.
"But I didn't try to chase your cow--I didn't want to," she broke out.
"It was your horse; _his_ idea, his alone."
There was such fine, shy commiseration in his face as she rose that she
laughed again.
"Of course it must have been Cooney's fault," he said. "I might have
known that. He used to have to drive her in every day." He regarded her
for a moment with a sort of dumb chivalry, then politely offered his
hand, saying, with a curious little air of taught formality: "I'm very
glad to see you. Thank you so much for coming!"
In avoiding each other's eyes, as their hands fell apart, they both
looked out to the person who stooped busily over a deer hide in the
shade of the big hemlock. His view of the circumstance was revealing
itself. Only his rounded back could be seen, but this rose and fell in
the rapid, rhythmic convulsions of silent laughter. They turned quickly
back to each other and smiled in a sudden sympathy with his mirth.
"If I may have a glass of water--" she suggested, as a device for
establishing ease between them.
"Of course!" He called to the person under the tree, arresting the back
at the height of one of its recurrent spasms. The face turned upon them
was rigidly sad, a face of almost saturnine solemnity, the face of one
who has been brought to view life as an engine of woe. As he ambled
dejectedly toward them, his head bowed from his work-bent shoulders, the
lines of grief in his face seemed to deepen, and a gnarled hand tugged
at the already drooping ends of his long mustache, as if he would be
assured that they, also, testified to the world's objectionableness.
"Mr. Crider, this is Mrs. Laithe--she has come to see us." The youth
achieved this with austere formality. The sad one nodded and put forth
his hand with a funereal "Glad to know you, ma'am!" as if they met at
the open grave of a friend.
"Ben, won't you go to the spring and get her some fresh water? She's
thirsty. She's had a hard ride."
The other turned quickly away, and there was a sound as if he had
manfully stifled a sob. Ewing faced his guest with eyes that twinkled a
bit, she thought, beneath their apologetic droop.
"I'd be glad to have you come inside," he ventured.