ranch, Ralston hinted at hunting stray horses; and casually expressed a
hope that he might be able to pick up a bunch of good ponies at a
reasonable figure--which explanation was entirely satisfactory to all save
Smith. The latter frequently voiced the opinion that Ralston lingered
solely for the purpose of courting the Schoolmarm, an opinion which the
grub-liners agreed was logical, since they too, along with the majority of
unmarried males for fifty miles around, cherished a similar ambition.
Dora had long since ceased to consider as extraordinary the extended
visits which strangers paid to the ranch; therefore, she saw nothing
unusual in the fact that Ralston stayed on.
If furtive-eyed and restless passers-by arrived after dark, slept in the
hay near their unsaddled horses, and departed at dawn, assuredly no person
at the MacDonald ranch was rude enough to ask reasons for their haste. Its
hospitality was as boundless, as free, as the range itself; and if upon
leaving any guest had happened to express gratitude for food and shelter,
it is doubtful if any incident could more have surprised Susie and her
mother, unless, mayhap, it might have been an offer of payment for the
same.
Ralston told himself that, since he could remain without comment, the
ranch was much better situated for his purpose than Colonel Tolman's home;
but the really convincing point in its favor, though one which he refused
to recognize as influencing him in the least, was that he was nearer Dora
by something like eight miles than he would have been at the Bar C. Then,
too, though there was nothing tangible to justify his suspicions, Ralston
believed that his work lay close at hand.
Like Colonel Tolman, he had come to think that it was not the Indians who
were killing; and the nesters, though a spiritless, shiftless lot, had
always been honest enough. But the bunk-house on the MacDonald ranch was
often filled with the material of which horse and cattle thieves are made,
and Ralston hoped that he might get a clue from some word inadvertently
dropped there.
He often thought that he never had seen a more heterogeneous gathering
than that which assembled at times around the table. And with Longfellow
in the dining-room, ethnological dissertations in one end of the
bunk-house, and personal reminiscences and experiences in gun-fights and
affairs of the heart in the other end, there was afforded a sufficient
variety of mental diversion to suit nearly any taste.
McArthur in the rôle of desperado seemed preposterous to Ralston; yet he
remembered that Ben Reed, a graduate of a theological seminary, who could
talk tears into the eyes of an Apache, was the slickest stock thief west
of the Mississippi. He was well aware that a pair of mild eyes and gentle,
ingenuous manners are many a rogue's most valuable asset, and though the
bug-hunter talked frankly of his pilgrimages into the hills, there was
always a chance that his pursuit was a pose, his zeal counterfeit.
One evening which was typical of others, Ralston sat on the edge of his
bunk, rolling an occasional cigarette and listening with huge enjoyment to
the conversation of a group around the sheet-iron stove, of which McArthur
was the central figure.
McArthur, riding his hobby enthusiastically, quite forgot the character of
his listeners, and laid his theories regarding the interchange of
mammalian life between America and Asia during the early Pleistocene
period, before Meeteetse Ed, Old Man Rulison, Tubbs, and others, in the
same language in which he would have argued moot questions with
colleagues engaged in similar research. The language of learning was as
natural to McArthur as the vernacular of the West was to Tubbs, and in
moments of excitement he lapsed into it as a foreigner does into his
native tongue under stress of feeling.
"I maintain," asserted McArthur, with a gesture of emphasis, "that the
Paleolithic man of Europe followed the mastodon to North America and here
remained."
Meeteetse Ed, whose cheeks were flushed, laid his hot hand upon his
forehead and declared plaintively as he blinked at McArthur:
"Pardner, I'm gittin' a headache from tryin' to see what you're talkin'
about."
"Air you sayin' anything a-tall," demanded Old Man Rulison, suspiciously,
"or air you joshin'?"
"Them's words all right," said Tubbs. "Onct I worked under a section boss
over on the Great Northern what talked words like them. He believed we
sprung up from tuds and lizards--and the likes o' that. Yes, he did--on
the square."
"There are many believers in the theory of evolution," observed McArthur.
"That's it--that's the word. That's what he was." Then, in the tone of one
who hands out a clincher, Tubbs demanded: "Look here, Doc, if that's so
why ain't all these ponds and cricks around here a-hatchin' out children?"
"Guess that'll hold him for a minute," Meeteetse Ed whispered to his
neighbor.
But instead of being covered with confusion by this seemingly unanswerable
argument, McArthur gazed at Tubbs in genuine pity.
"Let me consider how I can make it quite clear to you. Perhaps," he said
thoughtfully, "I cannot do better than to give you Herbert Spencer's
definition. Spencer defines evolution, as nearly as I can remember his
exact words, as an integration of matter and concomita, dissipation of
motion; during which the matter passes from an indefinite heterogeneity to
a definite, incoherent heterogeneity, and during which the retained motion
undergoes a parallel transformation. Materialistic, agnostic, and theistic
evolution----"
Meeteetse Ed fell off his chair in a mock faint and crashed to the floor.
Susie, who had entered, saw McArthur's embarrassment, and refused to join
in the shout of laughter, though her eyes danced.
"Don't mind him," she said comfortingly, as she eyed Meeteetse, sprawled
on his back with his eyes closed. "He's afraid he'll learn something. He
used to be a sheep-herder, and I don't reckon he's got more'n two hundred
and fifty words in his whole vocabulary. Why, I'll bet he never _heard_ a
word of more'n three syllables before. Get up, Meeteetse. Go out in the
fresh air and build yourself a couple of them sheep-herder's monuments.
It'll make you feel better."
The prostrate humorist revived. Susie's jeers had the effect of a bucket
of ice-water, for he had not been aware that this blot upon his
escutcheon--the disgraceful epoch in his life when he had earned honest
money herding sheep--was known.
"My enthusiasm runs away with me when I get upon this subject," said
McArthur, in blushing apology to the group. "I am sorry that I have bored
you."
"No bore a-tall," declared Old Man Rulison magnanimously. "You cut loose
whenever you feel like it: we kin stand it as long as you kin."
After McArthur had gone to his pneumatic mattress in the patent tent
pitched near the bunk-house, Ralston said to Susie:
"You and the bug-hunter are great friends, aren't you?"
"You bet! We're pardners. Anybody that gets funny with him has got me to
fight."
"Oh, it's like that, is it?" Ralston laughed.
"We've got secrets--the bug-hunter and me."
"You're rather young for secrets, Susie."
"Nobody's too young for secrets," she declared. "Haven't you any?"
"Sure," Ralston nodded.
"I like you," Susie whispered impulsively. "Let's swap secrets."
He looked at her and wished he dared. He would have liked to tell her of
his mission, to ask her help; for he realized that, if she chose, no one
could help him more. Like Smith, he recognized that quality in her they
each called "gameness," and even more than Smith he appreciated the
commingling of Scotch shrewdness and Indian craft. He believed Susie to be
honest; but he had believed many things in the past which time had not
demonstrated to be facts. No, the chance was too great to take; for should
she prove untrustworthy or indiscreet, his mission would be a failure. So
he answered jestingly:
"My secrets are not for little girls to know."
Susie gave him a quick glance.
"Oh, you don't look as though you had that kind," and turned away.
Ralston felt somehow that he had lost an opportunity. He could not rid
himself of the feeling the entire evening; and he made up his mind to
cultivate Susie's friendship. But it was too late; he had made a mistake
not unlike Dora's. Susie had felt herself rebuffed, and, like the
Schoolmarm, Ralston had laughed at her with his eyes. It was a great
thing--a really sacred thing to Susie--this secret that she had offered
him. The telling of it to McArthur had been so delightful an experience
that she yearned to repeat it, but now she meant never to tell any one
else. Any way, McArthur was her "pardner," and it was enough that he
should know. So it came about that afterwards, when Ralston sought her
company and endeavored to learn something of the workings of her mind, he
found the same barrier of childish reserve which had balked Dora, and no
amount of tact or patience seemed able to break it down.
The young deputy sheriff's interest in Dora increased in leaps and bounds.
He experienced an odd but delightful agitation when he saw the sleepy
white pony plodding down the hill, and the sensation became one easily
defined each time that he observed Smith's horse ambling in the road
beside hers. The feeling which inspired Tubbs's disgruntled comment,
"Smith rides herd on the Schoolmarm like a cow outfit in a bad wolf
country," found an echo in Ralston's own breast. Truly, Smith guarded the
Schoolmarm with the vigilance of a sheep-dog.
He saw a possible rival in every new-comer, but most of all he feared
Ralston; for Smith was not too blinded by prejudice to appreciate the fact
that Ralston was handsome in a strong, man's way, younger than himself,
and possessed of the advantages of education which enabled him to talk
with Dora upon subjects that left him, Smith, dumb. Such times were
wormwood and gall to Smith; yet in his heart he never doubted but that he
would have Dora and her love in the end. Smith's faith in himself and his
ability to get what he really desired was sublime. The chasm between
himself and Dora--the difference of birth and education--meant nothing to
him. It is doubtful if he recognized it. He would have considered himself
a king's equal; indeed, it would have gone hard with royalty, had royalty
by any chance ordered Smith to saddle his horse. He judged by the
standards of the plains: namely, gameness, skill, resourcefulness; to him,
there _were_ no other standards. After all, Dora Marshall was only a
woman--the superior of other women, to be sure, but a woman; and if he
wanted her--why not?
He would have been amazed, enraged through wounded vanity, if it had been
possible for him to see himself from Dora's point of view: a subject for
reformation; a test for many trite theories; an erring human to be
reclaimed by a woman's benign influence. Naturally, these thoughts had not
suggested themselves to Smith.
Ralston looked forward eagerly to the evening meal, since it was almost
the only time at which he could exchange a word with Dora. Breakfast was a
hurried affair, while both she and Susie were absent from the midday
dinner. The shy, fluttering glances which he occasionally surprised from
her, the look of mutual appreciation which sometimes passed between them
at a quaint bit of philosophy or naïve remark, started his pulses dancing
and set the whole world singing a wordless song of joy.
Somehow, eating seemed a vulgar function in the Schoolmarm's presence,
and he wished with all his heart that the abominable grammar lessons which
filled her evenings might some time end; in which case he would be able to
converse with her when not engaged in rushing bread and meat to and fro.
His most carefully laid plans to obtain a few minutes alone with her were
invariably thwarted by Smith. And from the heights to which he had been
transported by some more than passing friendly glance at the table, he was
dragged each evening to the depths by the sight of Dora and Smith with
their heads together over that accursed grammar.
He commenced to feel a distaste for his bunk-house associates, and took
to wandering out of doors, pausing most frequently in his meanderings
just outside the circle of light thrown through the window by the
dining-room lamp. Dora's guilelessness in believing that Smith's interest
in his lessons was due to a desire for knowledge did not make the
tableau less tantalizing to Ralston, but it would have been against every
tenet in his code to suggest to Dora that Smith was not the misguided
diamond-in-the-rough which she believed him.
Smith, on the contrary, had no such scruples. He lost no opportunity to
sneer at Ralston. When he discovered Dora wearing one of the first flowers
of spring, which Ralston had brought her, Smith said darkly:
"That fresh guy is a dead ringer for a feller that quit his wife and five
kids in Livingston and run off with a biscuit-shooter."
Dora laughed aloud. The clean-cut and youthful Ralston deserting a wife
and five children for a "biscuit-shooter" was not a convincing picture.
That she did not receive his insinuation seriously but added fuel to the
unreasoning jealousy beginning to flame in Smith's breast.
Yet Smith treated Ralston with a consideration which was surprising in
view of the wanton insults he frequently inflicted upon those whom he
disliked. Susie guessed the reason for his superficial courtesy, and
Ralston, perhaps, suspected it also. In his heart, Smith was afraid. First
and always, he was a judge of men--rather, of certain qualities in men. He
knew that should he give intentional offense to Ralston, he would be
obliged either to retract or to back up his insult with a gun. Ralston
would be the last man to accept an affront with meekness.
Smith did not wish affairs to reach this crisis. He did not want to force
an issue until he had demonstrated to his own satisfaction that he was the
better man of the two with words or fists or weapons. But once he found
the flaw in Ralston's armor, he would speedily become the aggressor. Such
were Smith's tactics. He was reckless with caution; daring when it was
safe.
The rôle he was playing gave him no concern. Though the Indian woman's
spells of sullenness irritated him, he conciliated her with endearing
words, caresses, and the promise of a speedy marriage. He appeased her
jealousy of Dora by telling her that he studied the foolish book-words
only that he might the better work for her interests; that he was fitting
himself to cope with the shrewd cattlemen with whom there were constant
dealings, and that when they were married, the Schoolmarm should live
elsewhere. Like others of her sex, regardless of race or color, the Indian
woman believed because she wanted to believe.
Just where his actions were leading him, Smith did not stop to consider.
He had no fear of results. With an overweening confidence arising from
past successes, he believed that matters would adjust themselves as they
always had. Smith wanted a home, and the MacDonald cattle, horses, and
hay; but more than any of them he wanted Dora Marshall. How he was going
to obtain them all was not then clear to him, but that when the time came
he could make a way, he never for a moment doubted.
Smith's confidence in himself was supreme. If he could have expressed his
belief in words, he might have said that he could control Destiny, shape
events and his own life as he liked. He had been shot at, pursued by
posses, all but lynched upon an occasion, and always he had escaped in
some unlooked-for manner little short of miraculous. As a result, he had
come to cherish a superstitious belief that he bore a charmed life, that
no real harm could come to him. So he courted each woman according to her
nature as he read it, and waited blindly for success.
IX
SPEAKING OF GRASSHOPPERS----
It was Saturday, and, there being no school, both Susie and Dora were at
home. Ralston was considering in which direction he should ride that day
when Susie came to him and after saying to Smith with elaborate
politeness, "Excuse me, Mr. Smith, for whispering, but I have something
very private and confidential to say to Mr. Ralston," she shielded her
mouth with her hand and said:
"Teacher and I are going fishing. We are going up on the side-hill now to
catch grasshoppers for bait, and I thought maybe you'd like to help, and
to fish with us this afternoon." She tittered in his ear.
Susie's action conveyed two things to Ralston's mind: first, that he had
not been so clever as he had supposed in dissembling his feelings; and
second, that Susie, recognizing them, was disposed to render him friendly
aid.
Smith noted Ralston's brightening eye with suspicion, jumping to the very
natural conclusion that only some pleasing information concerning the
Schoolmarm would account for it. When, a few minutes later, he saw the
three starting away together, each with a tin or pasteboard box, he
realized that his surmise was correct.
Glowering, Smith walked restlessly about the house, ignoring the Indian
woman's inquiring, wistful eyes, cursing to himself as he wandered through
the corrals and stables, hating with a personal hatred everything which
belonged to Ralston: his gentle-eyed brown mare; his expensive Navajo
saddle-blanket; his single-rigged saddle; his bridle with the wide cheek
pieces and the hand-forged bit. It would have been a satisfaction to
destroy them all. He hated particularly the little brown mare which
Ralston brushed with such care each morning. Smith's mood was black
indeed.
But Ralston, as he walked between Dora and Susie to the side-hill where
the first grasshoppers of spring were always found, felt at peace with all
the world--even Smith--and it was in his heart to hug the elfish
half-breed child as she skipped beside him. Dora's frequent, bubbling
laughter made him thrill; he longed to shout aloud like a schoolboy given
an unexpected holiday.
Each time that his eyes sought Dora's, shadowed by the wide brim of her
hat, her eyelids drooped, slowly, reluctantly, as though they fell against
her will, while the color came and went under her clear skin in a fashion
which filled him with delighted wonder.
It may be said that there are few things in life so absorbing as catching
grasshoppers. While Ralston previously had recognized this fact, he never
had supposed that it contained any element of pleasure akin to the
delights of Paradise. To chase grasshoppers by oneself is one thing; to
pursue them in the company of a fascinating schoolmarm is another; and
when one has in his mind the thought that ultimately he and the schoolmarm
may chance to fall upon the same grasshopper, the chase becomes a sport
for the gods to envy.
Anent grasshoppers. While the first grasshopper of early spring has not
the devilish agility of his August descendant, he is sufficiently alert to
make his capture no mean feat. It must be borne in mind that the
grasshopper is not a fool, and that he appears to see best from the rear.
Though he remains motionless while the enemy is slipping stealthily upon
him, it by no means follows that he is not aware of said enemy's approach.
The grasshopper has a more highly developed sense of humor than any other
known insect. It is an established fact that after a person has fallen
upon his face and clawed at the earth where the grasshopper was but is
not, the grasshopper will be seen distinctly to laugh from his coign of
vantage beyond reach.
Furthermore, it is quite impossible to fathom the mind of the grasshopper,
his intentions or habits; particularly those of the small, gray-pink
variety. He is as erratic in his flight as a clay pigeon, though it is
tolerably safe to assume that he will not jump backward. He may not jump
at all, but, with a deceptive movement, merely sidle under a sage-leaf.
Where questions concerning his personal safety are concerned, he shows
rare judgment, appearing to recognize exactly the psychological moment in
which to fly, jump, or sit still.
No sluggard, be it known, can hope to catch grasshoppers with any degree
of success. It requires an individual nimble of mind and body, whose
nerves are keyed to a tension, who is dominated by a mood which refuses to
recognize the perils of snakes, cactus, and prairie-dog holes; forgetful
of self and dignity, inured to ridicule. Such a one is justified in making
the attempt.
The large, brownish-black, grandfatherly-looking grasshopper is the most
easily captured, though not so satisfactory for bait as the pea-green or
the gray-pink. It was to the first variety that Dora and Ralston devoted
themselves, while Susie followed the smaller and more sprightly around the
hill till she was out of sight.
Ralston became aware that no matter in which direction the grasshopper he
had marked for his own took him, singularly enough he always ended in
pursuit of Dora's. As a matter of fact, her grasshopper looked so much
more desirable than his, that he could not well do otherwise than abandon
the pursuit of his own for hers.
Her low "Oh, thank you so much!" was so heartfelt and sincere when he
pushed the insect through the slit in her pasteboard box that he truly
believed he would have run one all the way to the Middle Fork of Powder
River only to hear her say it again. And then her womanly aversion to
inflicting pain, her appealing femininity when she brought a bulky-bodied,
tobacco-chewing grasshopper for him to pinch its head into insensibility!
He liked this best of all, for, of necessity, their fingers touched in the
exchange, and he wondered a little at his strength of will in refraining
from catching her hand in his and refusing to let go.
Finally a grasshopper of abnormal size went up with a whir. Big he was, in
comparison with his kind, as the monster steer in the side-show, the
Cardiff giant, or Jumbo the mammoth.
"Oh!" cried Dora; "we must have him!" and they ran side by side in wild,
determined pursuit.
The insect sailed far and fast, but they could not lose sight of him, for
he was like an aeroplane in flight, and when in an ill-advised moment he
lit to gather himself, they fell upon him tooth and nail--to use a phrase.
Dora's hand closed over the grasshopper, and Ralston's closed over Dora's,
holding it tight in one confused moment of delicious, tongue-tied
silence.
Her shoulder touched his, her hair brushed his cheek. He wished that they
might go on holding down that grasshopper until the end of time. She was
panting with the exertion, her nose was moist like a baby's when it
sleeps, and he noticed in a swift, sidelong glance that the pupils of her
eyes all but covered the iris.
"He--he's wiggling!" she said tremulously.
"Is he?" Ralston asked fatuously, at a loss for words, but making no move
to lift his hand.
"And there's a cactus in my finger."
"Let me see it." Immediately his face was full of deep concern.
He held her fingers, turning the small pink palm upward.
"We must get it out," he declared firmly. "They poison some people."
He wondered if it was imagination, or did her hand tremble a little in
his? His relief was not unmixed with disappointment when the cactus spine
came out easily.
"They hurt--those needles." He continued to regard the tiny puncture with
unabated interest.
"Tra! la! la!" sang Susie from the brow of the hill. "Old Smith is
comin'."
Ralston dropped Dora's hand, and they both reddened, each wondering how
long Susie had been doing picket duty.
"Out for your failin' health, Mister Smith?" inquired Susie, with
solicitude.
"I'm huntin' horses, and hopin' to pick up a bunch of ponies cheap," he
replied with ugly significance as he rode by.
And while the soft light faded from Ralston's eyes, the color leaped to
his face; unconsciously his fists clenched as he looked after Smith's
vanishing back. It was the latter's first overt act of hostility; Ralston
knew, and perhaps Smith intended it so, that the clash between them must
now come soon.
X
MOTHER LOVE AND SAVAGE PASSION CONFLICT
It was Sunday, a day later, when Susie came into the living-room and
noticed her mother sewing muskrat around the top of a moccasin. It was a
man's moccasin. The woman had made no men's moccasins since her husband's
death. The sight chilled the girl.
"Mother," she asked abruptly, "what do you let that hold-up hang around
here for?"
"Who you mean?" the woman asked quickly.
"That Smith!" Susie spat out the word like something offensive.
The Indian woman avoided the girl's eyes.