famous shooting-matches. Elizabeth learned to milk the cows and make
butter, to saddle her bronco and mount him from the ground. They taught
the pups tricks, they tamed a family of prairie-dogs, they had a plan
for painting the windmill. By the end of a week Stanwood was in such
good humor, that he made a marked concession.
One of the glowing, glimmering sunsets they both delighted in was going
on, beautifying the prairie as warmly as the sky. Stanwood came from the
shed where he had been feeding the horses, and found his visitor seated
in the doorway. He stood observing her critically for a few moments. She
made an attractive picture there in the warm sunset light. Before he
could check himself he found himself wishing that her mother could see
her. Ah! If her mother were here too, it would be almost worth while to
begin life over again.
The girl, unconscious of his scrutiny, sat gazing at the view he loved.
As he watched her tranquil happy face he felt reconciled and softened.
Her hands lay palm downward on her lap. They were shapely hands, large
and generous; a good deal tanned and freckled now. There was something
about them which he had not noticed before; and almost involuntarily his
thoughts got themselves spoken.
"Do you know, Elizabeth, your _thumbs_ are like your mother's!"
Elizabeth felt that it was a concession, but she had learned wisdom. She
did not turn her eyes from the range, and she only said quietly, "I am
glad of that, papa."
Emboldened by the consciousness of her own discretion, she ventured,
later in the evening, to broach a subject fraught with risks. Having
armed herself with a piece of embroidery, and placed the lamp between
herself and the object of her diplomacy, she remarked in a casual
manner:
"I suppose, papa, that Uncle Nicholas has told you how rich we are."
"Nick wrote me with his usual consciousness of virtue that his
investments for you had turned out well."
"Our income is twice what it was ten years ago."
"I congratulate you, my dear. I only regret the moral effect upon Nick."
"And I congratulate _you_, papa. Of course it's really yours as long as
you live."
"I think you have been misinformed, my dear. It was your mother's
property, and is now yours."
"Oh, no, papa! You have a life-interest in it. I am surprised that you
did not know that."
"And I am surprised that you should be, or pretend to be, ignorant that
the property stands in your name. I have no more concern in it
than--Miss Hunniman."
"But, papa!"
"We won't discuss the matter, if you please, my dear. We can gain
nothing by discussion."
"I don't want to discuss it, papa," taking a critical survey of her
embroidery; "but if you won't go snacks, I won't. Uncle Nicholas told me
never to say 'go snacks,'" she added, with a side glance around the edge
of the lamp-shade.
His face relaxed so far that she ventured to add: "Uncle Nicholas would
be furious if we were to go snacks."
Stanwood smiled appreciatively.
"Nothing could be more painful to me than to miss an opportunity of
making Nick furious," he said; "but I have not lived fifty years without
having learned to immolate myself and my dearest ambitions upon the
appropriate altars."
After which eloquent summing-up, he turned the conversation into another
channel.
It was not long after this that Stanwood found himself experiencing a
peculiar depression of spirits, which he positively refused to trace to
its true source. He told himself that he wanted his freedom; he was
getting tired of Elizabeth; he must send her home. It was nonsense for
her to stay any longer, spoiling her complexion and his temper; it was
really out of the question to have this thing go on any longer. Having
come to which conclusion, it annoyed him very much to find himself
enjoying her society. His depression of spirits was intermittent.
One morning, when he found her sitting on the saw-horse, with the new
bronco taking his breakfast from a bag she held in her lap, the sun
shining full in her clear young face, health and happiness in every line
of her figure, a positive thrill of fatherly pride and affection seized
him. But the reaction was immediate.
He turned on his heel, disgusted at this refutation of his theories. He
was wretched and uncomfortable as he had never been before, and if it
was not this intruding presence that made him so, what was it? Of course
he was getting tired of her; what could be more natural? For fifteen
years he had not known the pressure of a bond. Of course it was irksome
to him! He really must get rid of it.
His moodiness did not escape Elizabeth, nor did she fail to note the
recent accentuating of those lines in his face, which had at first
struck her painfully, but which she had gradually become accustomed to.
In her own mind she concluded that her father had lived too long at this
high altitude, and that she must persuade him to leave it.
"Papa," she said, as they stood for a moment in the doorway after
supper, "don't you think it would be good fun to go abroad this autumn?"
His drooping spirit revived; she was getting tired of ranching.
"A capital plan, my dear. Just what you need," he replied, with more
animation than he had shown since morning.
"Let us start pretty soon," she went on persuasively, deceived by his
ready acquiescence.
"Us? My dear, what are you thinking of? I' m tired to death of Europe!
Nothing would induce me to go."
"Oh, well. Then I don't care anything about it," she said. "We'll stay
where we are, of course. I am as happy and contented as I could be
anywhere."
Stanwood turned upon her with a sudden, fierce irritation.
"This is nonsense!" he cried. "You are not to bury yourself alive out
here! I won't permit it! The sooner you go, _the better for both of
us_!"
His voice was harsh and strained; it was the tone of it more than the
words themselves that cut her to the heart. He did not want her; it had
all been a miserable failure. She controlled herself with a strong
effort. Her voice did not tremble; there was only the pathos of
repression in it as she answered: "Very well, papa; perhaps I have had
my share."
Stanwood thought, and rebelled against the thought, that he had never
seen a finer thing than her manner of replying. For himself, he felt as
if he had come to the dregs of life and should like to fling the cup
away.
They occupied themselves that evening a good deal with the collies, and
they parted early; and then it was that Stanwood was brought face to
face with himself.
For half an hour or more he made a pretence of reading the papers, and
looking at the pictures in a stray magazine, thus keeping himself at
arm's length, as it were. But after a while even that restraint became
unendurable. He went to the back door of the house and opened it. The
collies appeared in a delighted group to rush into the house. He
suffered them to do so, and then, stepping out, he closed the door upon
them and stood outside. There was a strong north wind, and, for a
moment, its breath refreshed him like a dash of cold water. Only for a
moment, however. The sense of oppression returned upon him, and he felt
powerless to shake it off. With the uncertain, wavering step of a
sleep-walker, he moved across to the spot where he had poured his
libation three weeks ago. He stood there, strangely fascinated, glancing
once or twice, furtively over his shoulder. Then, hardly knowing what he
did, he got down on his knees and put his face to the ground. Was it the
taste or the smell that he craved? He could not have told. He only knew
that he knelt there and pressed his face to the earth, and that a
sickening sense of disappointment came over him at finding all trace of
it gone.
He got up from his knees, very shaky and weak, and then it was that he
looked himself in the face and knew what the ignominious craving meant.
He slunk into the house, cowed and shamed. The sight of the dogs,
huddled about the door inside, gave him a guilty start, and he drove
them angrily out. Then he got himself to bed in the dark. He lay there
in the dark, wondering foolishly what Jacob Stanwood would say if he
knew what had happened; till, suddenly, he became aware that his mind
was wandering, upon which he laughed harshly. Elizabeth heard the laugh,
and a vague fear seized upon her. She got up and listened at her door,
but the noise was not repeated. Perhaps it was a coyote outside; they
sometimes made strange noises.
She went to the window and drew back the Persian altar-cloth. The wind
came from the other side of the house; she had been too preoccupied to
notice it before. Now it shook the house rudely, and then went howling
and roaring across the plains. It was strange to hear it and to feel its
force, and yet to see no evidence of it: not a tree to wave its
branches, not a cloud to scurry through the sky; only the vast level
prairie and the immovable hills, and up above them a sky, liquid and
serene, with steady stars shining in its depths, all unconcerned with
the raving wind. She felt comforted and strengthened, and when she went
back to bed she rested in the sense of comfort. But she did not sleep.
She was hardly aware that she was not sleeping, as the hours passed
unmarked, until, in a sudden lull of the wind, a voice struck her ear; a
voice speaking rapidly and eagerly. She sprang to her feet. The voice
came from her father's room. Had some one lost his way in the night, and
had her father taken him in? It did not sound like a conversation; it
was monotonous, unvarying, unnatural. She hastily threw on a
dressing-gown, and crept to her father's door. She recognized his voice
now, but the words were incoherent. He was ill, he was delirious. There
was no light within. She opened the door and whispered "Papa," but he
did not hear her. In a moment she had lighted a lamp; another moment,
and she stood beside him. He was sitting straight up in his bed, talking
and gesticulating violently; his eyes glittered in the lamp-light, his
face showed haggard and intense.
Elizabeth placed the lamp upon a stand close at hand.
"Papa," she said, "don't you know me? I'm Elizabeth."
He caught at the name.
"You lie!" he cried shrilly. "Elizabeth's dead! I won't have her talked
about! She's dead, I say! Hush-sh! Hush-sh! Don't wake her up. Sleep's a
good thing--a good thing."
On the table where she had placed the lamp was a tiny bottle marked
"chloral." There was also a glass of water upset upon the table.
Stanwood's clothing and other belongings lay scattered upon the floor.
She had never before seen his room disordered. Well! he was ill, and
here she was to take care of him.
He was not talking so fast now, but what he said was even more
incoherent. The light and the presence of another person in the room
seemed to confuse and trouble him. She took his hand and felt the pulse.
The hand was hot, and grasped hers convulsively. She put his coat over
his shoulders, and then she sat with her arm about him, and gradually he
stopped talking, and turned his face to hers with a questioning look.
"What can I do for you, papa? Tell me if there is anything I can do for
you."
"Do for me?" he repeated.
"Yes, dear. Is there nothing I can do, nothing I can get for you?"
"Get for me?"
He drew off from her a little, and a crafty look, utterly foreign to the
man's nature, came into the tense face.
"I don't suppose you've got a drop of whisky!" he said insinuatingly.
The sound of the word upon his own lips seemed to bring the excitement
back on him. "Whisky! Yes, that's it! I don't care who knows it! Whisky!
Whisky!" He fairly hissed the words.
For the first time since she came into the room Elizabeth was
frightened.
"I think you ought to have a doctor," she said.
She felt him lean against her again, and she gently lowered him to the
pillow. His head sank back, and he lay there with white lips and closed
lids. She knelt beside him, watching his every breath. After a few
minutes he opened his eyes. They were dull, but no longer wild.
"Ought you not to have a doctor, papa dear?" she asked.
Intelligence came struggling back into his face.
"No, my dear," he said, gathering himself for a strong effort. "I have
had attacks like this before."
"And a stimulant is all you need?"
"All I need," he muttered. His eyes closed, and his breath came even and
deep.
Elizabeth knelt there, thankful that he slept. How white his lips were!
How spent he looked! He had asked for whisky. Perhaps even in his
delirium he knew what he wanted; perhaps a stimulant was all he needed.
Of course it was! How stupid not to have understood!
She hurried to her room and got a small brandy-flask that had been given
her for the journey. She had emptied it for a sick man on the train.
She went back to her father. He was sleeping heavily. She glanced at his
watch lying upon the table beside the chloral bottle. One o'clock! She
wondered whether the "store" would be open. She should hate to go to a
saloon. But then, that was no matter. If her father needed a stimulant
he must have it. She dressed herself quickly, and put her purse and the
brandy-flask into her pocket. Then she hurried to the shed, where she
saddled the bronco. Her father had once told her that she would have
made a first-rate cowboy. Well, now was her chance to prove it.
The collies, who had taken refuge from the wind on the south side of the
shed, came trotting in at the open door, and assembled, a curious little
shadowy group, about her. But they soon dropped off to sleep, and when
she led the bronco out and closed the door upon them, a feeble wag of a
tail or two was all the evidence of interest they gave.
She twisted the bridle round a post and slipped into the house for one
more look at her patient. He was sleeping profoundly. She placed the
lamp upon the floor in a corner, so that the bed was in shadow. Then she
came back to the bedside and watched the sleeper again for a moment. She
touched his forehead and found it damp and cool. The fever was past.
Perhaps he was right; there was no need of a doctor--it was nothing
serious. Perhaps the stuff in that little bottle had done something
queer to him. A stimulant was all he needed. But he needed that, for his
face was pitifully pallid and drawn.
A moment later the bronco was bearing her swiftly through the night, his
hoof-falls echoing in a dull rhythm. The wind still came in gusts,
blowing straight into her face, but it was warm and pleasant. When she
had passed through the gate of the ranch the road went between wire
fences, straight north to Cameron City. Now and then a group of horses,
roused, perhaps, by her approach, stood with their heads over the fence
watching her pass, while the wind stretched their manes and tails out
straight to one side. She wished she could stop and make friends with
them, but there was no time for that. Her father might wake up and call
for her. So on they sped, she and the bronco, waking the cattle on
either side of the road, startling more than one prowling coyote,
invisible to them, causing more than one prairie-dog, snug in his hole,
to fancy it must be morning. And the great night, encompassing the
world, gleaming in the heavens, brooding upon the earth, made itself
known to her for the first time. Elizabeth never forgot that ride
through the beautiful brooding night. Nature seemed larger and deeper
and grander to her ever after.
As they came among the houses of the town she reined in the bronco and
went quietly, lest she should wake the people. There was a light burning
in the room over the store, and the window was open. A woman answered
her summons. It was the wife of the storekeeper. Her husband was absent,
she said, and she was up with a sick baby. She readily filled the little
flask, and was sympathetic and eager to help. Shouldn't she send
somebody over to the ranch? There wasn't any doctor in Cameron City, but
Cy Willows knew a heap about physic.
No. Elizabeth said her father was better already, only he seemed in
need of a stimulant. No, she did not want an escort. The night was
lovely, and she wouldn't miss her solitary ride home for anything. She
was so glad Mrs. Stiles had the whisky. It would be just what her father
needed when he waked up.
And when, some hours later, Jacob Stanwood awoke, he found his daughter
sitting beside him in the gray dawn.
"Why, Elizabeth!" he said, "is anything the matter? Did I disturb you?"
She leaned toward him, and laid her hand on his.
"You were ill in the night, papa, and asked for a stimulant, and I got
it for you."
"A stimulant?" he repeated vaguely. "What stimulant? Where did you get
it?"
"I got it at the store. It's whisky."
"Whisky?" he cried, with a sudden, eager gleam.
Elizabeth was enchanted to find that she had done the right thing.
"Here it is, papa," she said, drawing the flask from her pocket, and
pouring a little of the contents into a glass that stood ready.
He watched her with that intense, eager gleam.
"Fill it up! Fill it up!" he cried impatiently. "A drop like that is no
good to a man."
He was sitting straight up again, just as she found him in the night. He
reached his thin hand for the glass, which he clutched tightly. The
smell of the liquor was strong in the room. His eyes were glittering
with excitement.
The girl stood beside him, contemplating with affectionate delight the
success of her experiment. Her utter innocence and unsuspiciousness
smote him to the heart. Something stayed his hand so that he did not
even lift the glass to his lips. Slowly, with his eyes fixed upon the
sweet, young face, he extended his arm out over the side of the bed, the
glass shaking plainly in his hold. She did not notice it; she was
looking into his face which had softened strangely.
"Elizabeth," he said.
There was a sound of breaking glass, and a strong smell of liquor
pouring out upon the floor.
"O papa!" she cried, distressed.
He had sunk back against the pillows, pale with exhaustion. But when she
lifted the fragments of the glass, saying: "Isn't it a pity, papa?" he
only answered in his usual tone, "There's no harm done, my dear. I
don't believe it was just what I needed, after all."
He smiled with a new, indescribable sweetness and weariness.
"I think I could sleep, now," he said.
At noon Stanwood was quite himself again; himself and more, he thought,
with some surprise. He would not have owned that it was a sense of
victory that had put new life into his veins. Victory over a vulgar
passion must partake somewhat of the vulgarity of the passion itself.
No, Stanwood was not the man to glory in such a conquest. But he could,
at last, glory in this daughter of his.
As she told him with sparkling eyes of her beautiful ride through the
night, through the beautiful brooding night, her courage and her
innocence seemed to him like a fair, beneficent miracle. But he made no
comment upon her story. He only sat in the doorway, looking down the
road where he had watched her approach a few weeks ago, and when she
said, noting his abstraction, "A penny for your thoughts, papa!" he
asked, in a purely conversational tone, "Elizabeth,"--she always loved
to hear him say "Elizabeth,"--"Elizabeth, do you think it would make
Nick very mad indeed if we were to go snacks?"
"Mad as hops!" she cried.
"Then let's do it!"
Elizabeth beamed.
"And Elizabeth, there's no place like Switzerland in summer. Let's pack
up and go!"
"Let us!" she answered, very softly, with only a little exultant tremor
on the words.
She never guessed all that she had won that day; she only knew that life
stretched on before her, a long, sunny pathway, where she and her father
might walk together in the daily and hourly good-comradeship that she
loved.
IV.
AT THE KEITH RANCH.
The dance was in full swing--a vehement, rhythmic, dead-in-earnest
ranch dance. Eight couples on the floor tramped or tiptoed, as the case
might be, but always in perfect time with the two unmelodious fiddles.
The tune, if tune it might be called, went over and over and over again,
with the monotonous persistency of a sawmill, dominating the rhythmic
tread of the dancers, but not subduing the fancy of the caller-out.
The caller-out for the moment was a curly-headed lad of twenty, with a
shrewd, good-humored face. He stood in a slouching attitude, one
shoulder much higher than the other, and as he gave forth, in a singsong
voice, his emphatic rhymed directions, his fingers played idly with the
red-silk lacings of his brown flannel shirt. To an imaginative
looker-on those idly toying fingers had an indefinable air of being
very much at home with the trigger of the six-shooter at the lad's belt.
So, at least, it struck Lem Keith.
"Swing him round for old Mother Flannigan!
You've swung him so nice, now swing him again, again!
On to the next, and swing that gent!
Now straight back, and swing your own man again!"
Tramp, tramp, tramp went the rhythmic feet; diddle-diddle-dee went the
fiddles. There was not much talking among either dancers or sitters-out.
Occasionally one of the babies in the adjoining bedroom waked and
wailed, but on the whole they were well-behaved babies. There they lay
on the bed, six in a row, while their mothers eagerly snatched their bit
of pleasure at the cost of a night's sleep.
Lemuel Keith, joint host with his brother on this occasion, sat on a
bench against the wall, contemplating with wonder the energy of these
overworked women. Beside him sat the husband of one of them, a tall,
gaunt ranchman, with his legs crossed, poising upon a bony knee an atom
of humanity in a short plaided woollen frock.
"How old is your baby?" asked Lem, mindful of his duties as host.
"Four months," was the laconic reply; and as though embarrassed by the
personal nature of the inquiry, the man rose and repaired to a remote
corner, where he began a solemn waltz with his offspring in his arms.
It was an April evening, and the windows were open to the south. A cool
night-breeze came in, grateful alike to dancers and lookers-on. Lem sat
watching his twin brother Joe, who was taking his turn at the dance. Lem
usually watched Joe when he had the chance; for if the brothers were
bewilderingly alike in appearance, they were animated by a spirit so
unlike, that Joe's every look and action was a source of interest to
Lem. Indeed, it was his taste for Joe's society that had made a Colorado
ranchman of him. Nature had intended Lemuel Keith for a student, and
then, by a strange oversight, had made him the twin-brother of a
fascinating daredevil for whom the East was too narrow.
Lem sat and watched Joe, and observed the progress of the dance,
philosophizing over the scene in a way peculiar to himself. For his own
part, he never danced if he could help himself, but he found the dancing
human being a fruitful subject of contemplation. Joe's partner, in
particular, amused and interested him. She was a rather dressy young
person, with a rose-leaf complexion and a simpering mouth. Rose-leaf
complexions are rare on the sun-drenched, wind-swept prairies, and the
more effective for that. The possessor of this one, fully aware of her
advantage, was displaying, for her partner's delectation, the most
wonderful airs and graces. She glided about upon the points of her toes;
she gave him her delicately poised finger-tips with a birdlike coyness
which the glance of her beady black eyes belied. Joe was in his element,
playing the bold yet insinuating cavalier.
Lem Keith found a fascination in this first ranch dance of his. He liked
the heartiness of the whole performance; he enjoyed the sharp-cut
individuality of the people, their eccentricities of costume and
deportment; he was of too sensitive a fibre not to feel the dramatic
possibilities of the occasion. "Tenderfoot" as he was, the fact could
not escape him that a man in a flannel shirt, with a pistol at his
belt,--and most of the men were thus equipped,--was more than likely to
have a touch of lawlessness about him.
[Illustration: THE KEITH RANCH.]