THE OTHER LADY'S HUSBAND
Miss Knowles did not seem to observe Ashton's deflection. She remained
worshipfully downbent over the wriggling, chuckling baby until its
parents reappeared.
Mrs. Blake had changed to an easy and serviceable dress of plain,
strong material. The skirt, cut to walking length, showed that
her feet and ankles were protected by a pair of absurdly small
laced boots. Her husband had shifted to an equally serviceable
costume--flannel shirt, broad-brimmed felt hat, and surveyor's
boots.
"Crossing the plains we packed a trunk with what we considered most
necessary," said Mrs. Blake, as she took the baby. "It is not a large
one, and in addition there is only my satchel and the level and the
lunch my maid is putting up for us."
"There is room for more, if you wish," replied Isobel. "But we can
send over here for anything you need, any time."
"You're not going to let us really rough-it!" complained Mrs. Blake,
as her husband swung her to the ground. "Were it not for Thomas
Herbert--"
"--We'd go to Africa again and eat lions," Blake completed the
sentence. "Wait, though--we may have a chance at mountain lions."
The porter had gone to help a manservant fetch the trunk from the
other end of the car. Isobel untied the saddle horses from the rear of
the buckboard. The trunk was lifted in, and Blake lashed it on,
together with his level rod and tripod, using Ashton's lariat.
"Level is in the trunk," he explained, in response to Ashton's look of
inquiry. "I suppose we ride."
"I think it will be better if Lafe drives," objected Isobel. "I am so
reckless, and you don't know the road, as he does. The only thing is
Rocket--Lafe has about trained him out of his tricks. But I should
warn you that the hawss has been rather vicious."
"Tom will ride him," confidently stated Mrs. Blake.
Her husband took the bridle reins of the big horse and mounted him
with the agility of a cowboy. For a moment Rocket stood motionless.
Then, whether because of Blake's weight or the fact that he was a
stranger, all the beast's newly acquired docility vanished. He began
to plunge and buck even more violently than when first mounted by
Ashton.
Half a hundred Stockchuteites--all the residents of the town and
several floaters--had come down to inspect the palatial private car
and its passengers. At Rocket's first leap these highly interested
spectators broke into a murmur of joyful anticipation. They were about
to see the millionaire tenderfoot pull leather.
Yet somehow the event failed to transpire. Blake sat the flat saddle
as if glued fast to it. His knees and legs were crushing against the
sides of the leaping, whirling beast with the firmness of an iron
vise. He held both hands upraised, away from the "leather."
Presently Rocket's efforts began to flag. Instead of seeking to quiet
the frantic beast, Blake began to whoop and to strike him with his
hat. Thus taunted, Rocket resorted to his second trick. He took the
bit in his teeth and started to bolt. The crowd scattered before
the rush of the runaway. But they need not have moved. Blake
reached down on each side of the beast's outstretched neck and
pulled. Tough-mouthed as he was, Rocket could not resist that
powerful grip. His head was drawn down and backwards until his trumpet
nostrils blew against his deep chest. After half a dozen wild plunges,
he was forced to a stand, snorting but subdued.
"That's some riding, Miss Chuckie!" called the burly sheriff of the
county. "Your guest forks a hawss like a buster."
The girl rode forward beside Blake, her face radiant. She paid him the
highest of compliments by taking his riding as a matter of course; but
in her eyes was a look strangely like that of his wife's fond gaze,--a
look of pride at his achievement, rather than admiration.
"We'll ride ahead of the team to keep clear of the dust," she
remarked.
He twisted about and saw that Ashton was starting to drive after them.
His wife's elderly maid was waving her handkerchief from one of the
car windows. The porter and the manservant stood at attention. He
exchanged a nod and smile with his wife, patted Rocket's arched neck
and clicked to him to start.
"This is great, Miss Knowles!" he said. "I did not look for such fun,
first crack out of the box. And--if you don't mind my saying it--it's
such a jolly surprise your being what you are."
The girl blushed with pleasure. "I--we have been so eager to meet
you," she murmured. She added hurriedly, "On account of your wonderful
work as an engineer, you know."
"I wouldn't have suspected Ashton of bragging for me," he replied.
"Oh, he--he says you have a remarkable knack of hitting on the
solution of problems. But it's in the engineering journals and reports
that we've read about your work. Perhaps that is why you thought we
had met before. After reading about you so much, I felt that I already
knew you, and so my manner, you know--"
He shook his head at this seemingly ingenuous explanation. "No, there
is something about your voice and face--" His eyes clouded with
the grief of a painful memory; his head sank forward until his square
chin touched his broad chest. He muttered brokenly: "But that's
impossible.... Anyway--better for them they died--better than to
live after...."
Behind her veil the girl's face became deathly white. He raised his
head and looked at her with a wistful gleam of hope. She had averted
her face from him and was gazing off at the hills with dim unseeing
eyes.
"Pardon me, Miss Knowles," he said, "but do you mind if I ask what is
your first name?"
She hesitated almost imperceptibly before replying: "I am called
Chuckie--Chuckie Knowles. Doesn't that sound cowgirlish? We always
have a chuck-wagon on the round-ups, you know. But it's a name that
used to be quite common in the West."
"Yes, it comes from the Spanish Chiquita," he said. He repeated the
word with the soft caressing Spanish accent, "_Che-kee-tah!_"
A flood of scarlet swept up into the girl's pallid face, and slowly
subsided to her normal rich coloring. After a short silence she asked
in a conventional tone: "I suppose you are glad to get away from
Chicago. The last papers we received say that the East is sweltering
in one of those smothery heat waves."
"It's the humidity and close air that kills," said Blake. "I ought to
know. I lived for years in the slums."
"Oh, you--you really speak of it--openly!" the girl exclaimed.
"What of it?" he asked, astonished in turn at her lack of tact.
"Nothing--nothing," she hastened to disclaim. "Only I know--have read
about the dreadful conditions in the Chicago slums. It is--it must be
so painful to recall them--That was so rude of me to--"
"Not at all," he interrupted. To cover her evident confusion he held
up his white hand in the scorching sunrays and commented jovially:
"Talk about Eastern heat--this is a hundred and five Fahrenheit at the
very least! A-a-ah!" He drew in a deep breath of the dry pure air.
"This is something like! When you get your land under ditch, you'll
have a paradise."
"Oh, but you do not understand," she replied. "We want you to find out
and tell us that Dry Mesa _cannot_ be watered. Irrigation would break
up Daddy's range and put him out of business. It is just what we do
not want."
"I see," said Blake, with instant comprehension of the situation.
"I know it cannot be done. But there are so many reclamation projects,
and Daddy has read and read about them until he almost has a bee in
his bonnet."
"Yet you sent for me--an engineer."
"Because I knew that when _you_ told him our mesa couldn't be watered,
he would stop worrying. You know, you are quite a hero with us. We
have read all about your wonderful work."
Blake's pale eyes twinkled. "So I'm a hero. Will you dynamite my
pedestal if I figure out a way to water your range?"
She flashed him a troubled glance, but rallied for a quick rejoinder:
"Even you can't pump the water out of Deep Canyon, and Plum Creek is
only a trickle most of the year."
"I see you want me to make my report as dry as I can write it," he
bantered.
"No," she replied, suddenly serious. "We wish the exact truth, though
we hope you'll find it dry."
"Then you are to blame if the matter does not figure out your way," he
warned her. "You've given me a problem. If there is any possible way
for me to irrigate your mesa, I am bound to try my best to work it
out. Hadn't you better head me off before I start in? At present I
haven't the remotest desire to do this except to comply with your
wishes."
"It's as I told Daddy," she said. "If there really is a way, the
sooner we know it the better. It is the uncertainty that is bothering
Daddy. If your report is for us, all well and good; if against us, he
will stand up and fight and forget about worrying."
"Fight?" asked Blake.
"Fight the project, fight against the formation of any irrigation
district. He owns five sections. The reservoir might have to be on his
patented land. He'd fight fair and square and hard--to the last
ditch!"
"Isn't that a Dutchman's saying?" asked Blake humorously.
The girl's tense face relaxed, and she burst out in a ringing laugh.
She shifted the conversation to less serious subjects, and they
cantered along together, laughing and chatting like old friends.
By this time Ashton and Mrs. Blake had gradually come to the same
stage of pleasant comradeship. Ashton had started the drive in a
sullen mood, his manner half resentful and wholly embarrassed. Of this
the lady was tactfully oblivious. Avoiding all allusion to the
catastrophe that had befallen him, she told him the latest news of the
mutual friends and acquaintances in whom ordinarily he would have been
expected to be interested.
She even spoke casually of his father. His face contracted with pain,
but he showed no bitterness against the parent who had disowned him.
After that her graciousness towards him redoubled. With Isobel for
excuse, she gradually shifted the conversation to ranch life and his
employment as cowboy. In many subtle ways she conveyed to him her
admiration of the manner in which he had turned over a new leaf and
was making a clean fresh start in life.
After delicately intimating her feelings, she at once turned to less
personal topics. The last traces of his embarrassment and moodiness
left him, and he began to talk quite at his ease, though with a
certain reserve that she attributed to the vast change in his
fortunes. In return for her kindness, he repaid her by showing a real
interest in Thomas Herbert Vincent Leslie Blake.
That young man spent his time chuckling and crowing and kicking, until
overcome with sleep. Two hours out from Stockchute he awoke and
vociferously demanded nourishment. Promptly the party was brought to a
halt. They were among the pinyons on one of the hillsides. While the
baby took his dinner, Isobel laid out the lunch and the men burned
incense in the guise of a pair of Havana cigars produced by Blake.
The lunch might have been put up in the kitchen of a first-class
metropolitan hotel. The fruit was the most luscious that money could
buy; the sandwiches and cake would have tempted a sated epicure; the
mineral water had come out of an ice chest so nearly frozen that it
was still refreshingly cool. But--what was rather odd for a lunch
packed in a private car--it included no wine or whiskey or liqueur.
Blake caught Ashton's glance, and smiled.
"You see I'm still on the waterwagon," he remarked. "I've got a
permanent seat. There have been times when it looked as if I might be
jolted off, but--"
"But there's never been the slightest chance of that!" put in his
wife. She looked at Isobel, her soft eyes shining with love and pride.
"Once he gets a grip on anything, he never lets go."
"Oh, I can believe that!" exclaimed the girl with an enthusiasm that
brought a shadow into the mobile face of Ashton.
"A man can't help holding on when he has something to hold on for,"
said Blake, gazing at his wife and baby.
"That's true!" agreed Ashton, his eyes on the dimpled face of Isobel.
Refreshed by the delicious meal, the party prepared to start on. But
they did not travel as before. While Ashton was considerately washing
out the dusty nostrils of the horses with water from his canteen,
Isobel decided to drive with Mrs. Blake. Declaring that it would be
like old times to sit a cowboy saddle, the big engineer lengthened the
girl's stirrup leathers and swung on to the pony. This left Rocket to
his owner.
At first Ashton seemed inclined to be stiff with his new road-mate.
But as they jogged along, side by side, over the hills and across the
sagebrush flats, Blake restricted his talk to impersonal topics and
spared his companion from any allusion to their past difficulties.
Throughout the ride, however, the two men maintained a certain reserve
towards each other, and at no time approached the cordial intimacy
that developed between the girl and Mrs. Blake before the end of their
first mile together.
After telling merrily about her dual life as summer cowgirl and winter
society maiden, Isobel drifted around, by seemingly casual association
of ideas, to the troublesome question of irrigation on Dry Mesa, and
from that to Blake and his work as an engineer.
"I do so hope Mr. Blake finds that there is no project practicable,"
she went on. "He has warned me that if there seems to be any chance to
work out an irrigation scheme on our mesa he is bound to try to do
it."
"And he would do it," added Mrs. Blake with quiet confidence.
"Then I hope and pray he will find there is no chance, because Daddy
would have to oppose him. That would be such a pity! He and I have
read so much about Mr. Blake's work that we have come to regard him as
our--as one of our heroes."
Mrs. Blake smiled. It was very apparent, despite the quietness and
repression of her high-bred manner, that she was very much in love
with her husband.
The girl continued in a meekly deferential tone: "So you will not mind
my worshiping him. He is a hero, a real hero! Isn't he?"
The words were spoken with an earnestness and sincerity that won Mrs.
Blake to a like candor. "You are quite right," she said. "Lafayette
may have told you how Mr. Blake and I were wrecked on the most savage
coast of Africa. He saved me from wild beasts and tropical storms,
from fever and snakes,--from death in a dozen horrible forms. Then,
when he had saved me--and won me, he gave me up until he could prove
to himself that he was worthy of me."
"He did?" cried the girl. "But of course!--of course!"
"Yet that was nothing to the next proof of his strength and manhood,"
went on the proud wife. "He destroyed a monster more frightful than
any lion or tropical snake--he overcame the curse of drink that had
come down to him from--one of his parents."
"From--from his--" whispered the girl, her averted face white and
drawn with pain.
Mrs. Blake had bent over to kiss the forehead of her sleeping baby and
did not see. "If only all parents knew what terrible misfortunes,
what tortures, their transgressions are apt to bring upon their
innocent children!" she murmured.
"He told me that he won his way up out of the--the slums," said
Isobel. "It must be some men fail to do that because they have
relatives to drag them down--their families."
"It seems hard to say it, yet I do not know but that you are right, my
dear," agreed Mrs. Blake. "Strong men, if unhampered, have a chance to
fight their way up out of the social pit. But women and girls, even
when they escape the--the worst down there, can hardly hope ever to
attain--And of course those that fall!--Our dual code of morality is
hideously unjust to our sex, yet it still is the code under which we
live."
The girl drew in a deep, sighing breath. Her eyes were dark with
anguish. Yet she forced a gay little laugh. "Aren't we solemn
sociologists! All we are concerned with is that _he_ has won his way
up, and there's no one ever to drag him down or disgrace him; and--and
you won't be jealous if I set him up on a pedestal and bring incense
to him on my bended knees."
"Only you must give Thomas Herbert his share at the same time,"
stipulated the mother.
The girl burst into prolonged and rather shrill laughter that passed
the bounds of good breeding. Her emotion was so unrestrained that when
she looked about at her surprised companion her face was flushed and
her eyes were swimming with tears.
"Please, oh, do please forgive me!" she begged with a humility as
immoderate as had been her laughter. "I--I can't tell you why, but--"
"Say no more, my dear," soothed Mrs. Blake. "You are merely a bit
hysterical. Perhaps the excitement of our coming, after your months of
lonely ranch life--"
"You're so good!" sighed the girl. "Yes, it was due to--your coming.
But now the worst is over. I'll not shock you again with any more such
outbursts."
She smiled, and began to talk of other things, with somewhat unsteady
but persistent gayety.