HAZEL MALLINSBEE'S CAMPAIGN
The seductive mystery of the hills was beyond all words. A wonderful
outlook of wide valleys, bounded in almost every direction by the vast
incline of wood-clad hills, opened out a world that seemed to terminate
abruptly everywhere, yet to go on and on in an endless series of great
green valleys and mountain streams. Darkling wood-belts crept up the
great hillsides, deep in mysterious shadows, stirring imagination, and
carrying it back to all those haunting dreams of early childhood. For
the most part these were all untrodden by human foot, and so their
mystery deepened. Then above, often penetrating into the low-lying
clouds, the crowning glory of alabaster peaks whose snowy sheen dazed
the wondering eyes raised towards them.
In the valleys below, the green, the wonderful green, bright and
delicate, and quite unfaded by the scorching sun of the prairie away
beyond. Pastures beyond the dreams of all animal imagination in their
humid richness. Water, too, and low, broken scrubs and woodland
bluffs--one vast panorama of verdant beauty, such as only the eye of an
artist or the heart of a ranchman could appreciate.
It was the setting of Silas Mallinsbee's ranch, that ranch which was
more to him than all the world, except his motherless daughter. Gordon
had seen it all as he rode out to spend the week-end on a ranch horse,
placed by Mallinsbee at his disposal. He had marveled then at the
delights spread out before his eyes. Now, on the Sunday morning, while
he awaited breakfast, he wondered still more as he examined, even more
closely, that wealth of natural splendor spread out for his delight.
He was lounging on the deep sun-sheltered veranda which faced the
south. The ranch house was perched high up on the southern slope of
one of the lesser hills. Above him the gentle morning breeze sighed in
the rustling tree-tops of a great crowning woodland. Below him, and
all around him, were the widespreading buildings and corrals of a great
ranching enterprise. It seemed incredible to him that within twenty
miles of him, away to the east, there could exist so mundane and sordid
an undertaking as the Bude and Sideley Coal Company, and the vicious
chorus of ground sharks which haunted Snake's Fall. He felt as though
he were gazing out upon some enchanted valley of dreamland, where the
soft breezes and glinting sunlight possessed a magic to rest the
teeming energy of modern highly tuned brain and nerves.
Its seductiveness lulled him to a profound meditation, and into his
dreaming stole the figure of the mistress of these miles of perfect
beauty. Now he had some understanding of that fascinating buoyancy of
spirit, the simple devotion with which she contemplated the life that
claimed her. How could it be otherwise? Here was nature in all its
wonders of simplicity, shedding upon the life sheltering at its bosom
an equal simplicity, an equal strength, an equal singleness of mind
with which it was itself endowed. He felt that if he, too, had been
brought up in such surroundings no city flesh-pots could ever have
offered him any fascination. He, too, must have felt that this--this
alone was the real life of man.
The play of the dancing sunlight through the distant trees held his
gaze. He forgot to smoke, he forgot everything except the beauty about
him, the stirring ranch life below him, and the girl whose fascination
was daily possessing a greater and greater hold upon him.
Then, quite gently, something else subtly merged itself with the
pleasant tide of his meditations. It was the deep note of a voice
which came from close beside him in a rolling bass that afforded no jar.
"A picture that's mighty hard to beat," it said.
Gordon nodded without turning.
"Sure."
"Kind of holds you till you wonder why folks ever build cities and
things."
"Sure."
"There ain't a muck hole in miles and miles around that you could fall
into, and not come out of with a clean conscience an' a wholesome mind.
Kind of different to a city."
Gordon stirred. He turned and looked into Silas Mallinsbee's smiling
eyes.
"It's--all yours?" he inquired.
"For miles an' miles around. I got nigh a hundred miles of grazing in
these hills--and nobody else don't seem to want it. Makes you wonder."
Gordon laughed.
"Say, set a spade into the ground and find a marketable mineral and
tell somebody. Then see."
Mallinsbee chewed an unlit cigar, and his chin beard twisted absurdly.
"That's it," he said slowly. "There's nothing to these hills as they
are, except to a cattleman, I guess. Cattle don't suit the modern man.
Your profitable crop's a three years' waiting, and that don't mean a
thing to folk nowadays, except a dead loss of time on the round-up of
dollars. They don't figure that once you're good and going that three
years' crop comes around once every year. So they miss a deal."
"Yes, they'd reckon it slow, I guess," Gordon agreed. "But," he went
on with enthusiasm, "the life of it. The air." He took a deep breath
of the sparkling mountain atmosphere. "It's champagne. The champagne
of life. Say, it's good to be alive in such a place. And you," he
gazed inquiringly into the man's strong face, "you began it from--the
beginning?"
"I built the first ranch house with my own hands. My old wife an' I
built up this ranch and ran it. And now it's rich and big--she's gone.
She never saw it win out. Hazel's took her place, and it's been for
her to see it grow to what it is. She helped me ship my first single
year's crop of twenty thousand beeves to the market ten years ago. She
was a small kiddie then, and she cried her pretty eyes out when I told
her they were going to the slaughter yards of Chicago. You see, she'd
known most of 'em as calves."
"The work of it must be enormous," meditated Gordon, after a pause in
which he had pictured that small child weeping over her lost calves.
"So," rumbled Mallinsbee. "We're used to it. I run thirty boys all
the year round, and more at round-up. Guess if I was missing Hazel
wouldn't be at a loss to carry on. She's a great ranchman. She knows
it all."
"Wonderful," Gordon cried in admiration. "It's staggering to think of
a girl like that handling this great concern."
"There's two foremen, though. They've been with us years," said the
other simply.
But Gordon's wonder remained no less, and Mallinsbee went on--
"After breakfast we'll take a gun and get up into those woods yonder.
Maybe we'll put up a jack rabbit, or a blacktail deer. Anyway, I guess
there's always a bunch of prairie chicken around."
"Fine," cried Gordon, all his sporting instincts banishing every other
thought. "Which----"
But Hazel's voice interrupted him, summoning them both to breakfast.
"Come along, folks," she cried, "or the coffee 'll be cold."
The men hurried into the house. Gordon felt that there was nothing and
no power on earth that could keep him from his breakfast in that
delicious mountain air, with Hazel for his hostess.
The meal was all he anticipated. Simple, ample, wholesome country
fare, with the accompaniment of perfect cooking. He ate with an
appetite that set Hazel's merry eyes dancing, and her tongue
accompanying them with an equally merry banter. And all the time Silas
Mallinsbee looked on, and smiled, and rumbled an occasional remark.
After breakfast the two men set out with their guns.
"We're sure making Sunday service," said Hazel's father, glancing into
the breech of his favorite gun.
Gordon concurred.
"Up in the woods there," he laughed.
"With a congregation of fur and feather," laughed Hazel.
"Which is as wholesome as petticoats an' swallowtails," said her
father, "an' a good deal more healthy fer our bodies."
"But what about your souls?" inquired Hazel slyly.
"Souls?" Her father snapped the breech closed. "A soul's like a good
sailin' ship. If she's driving on a lee shore it's through bad
seamanship and the winds of heaven, and you can't save it anyway. If
she ain't driving on a lee shore--well, I don't guess she needs saving."
"It's a great big scallywag," came through the open doorway after them,
as they departed. The tenderness and affection in the manner of the
girl's parting words made Gordon feel that his great host had some
compensation for the absence of that mother who had blessed him with
such a pledge of their love.
The two men were returning with their bag. It was not extensive, but
it was select. A small blacktail was lying across Mallinsbee's broad
shoulders. Gordon was carrying a large jack-rabbit, and several brace
of prairie chicken. The younger man was enthusiastic over their sport.
"Talk to me of a city! Why, I could do this twice a day and every day,
till I was blind and silly, and deaf and dumb. I sort of feel life
don't begin to tell you things till you get out in the open, at the
right end of a gun. Makes you feel sorry for the fellows chasing
dollars in a city."
They were approaching the limits of a woodland bluff, from the edge of
which the ranch would be in view.
"Guess that's how I've always felt--till little Hazel got without a
mother," replied Mallinsbee. "After that--well, I just guess I needed
other things to fill up spare thoughts."
Gordon's enthusiasm promptly lessened out of sympathy. Something of
the loneliness of the ranch life--when one of the partners was
taken--now occurred to him.
"Yes," he said earnestly, "the right woman's just the whole of a man's
world. I guess there are circumstances when--this sun don't shine so
bright. When a man feels something of the vastness and solitude of
these hills, when their mystery sort of gets hold of him. I can get
that--sure."
"Yep. It's just about then when a bit of coal makes all the
difference," Mallinsbee smiled. "I wouldn't just call coal the gayest
thing in life. But it's got its uses. When the summer's past, why, I
guess the stoves of winter need banking."
Gordon nodded his understanding.
"But your daughter is just crazy on this life," he suggested.
The old man's smile had passed.
"Sure." Then he sighed. "She's been my partner ever since, sort of
junior partner. But sometime she 'll be--going." Then his slow smile
crept back into his eyes. "Then it'll be winter all the time. Then
it'll have to be coal, an' again coal--right along."
They emerged from the woods, and instinctively Gordon gazed across at
the distant ranch. In a moment he was standing stock still staring
across the valley. And swiftly there leaped into his eyes a dangerous
light. Mallinsbee halted, too. He shaded his eyes, and an ominous
cloud settled upon his heavy brows.
"Some one driven out," he muttered, examining narrowly a team and buggy
standing at the veranda.
Gordon emitted a sound that was like a laugh, but had no mirth in it.
"It's a man, and he's talking to Miss Mallinsbee on the veranda. It
don't take me guessing his identity. That suit's fixed right on my
mind."
"David Slosson," muttered Mallinsbee, and he hurried on at an increased
pace.
It was after the midday dinner which David Slosson had shared with them.
When her father and Gordon arrived, and before objection could be
offered by anybody, Hazel asked her uninvited guest to stay to dinner.
David Slosson, without the least hesitation, accepted the invitation.
In this manner all opposition from her father was discounted, all
display of either man's displeasure avoided. She contrived, with
subtle feminine wit, to twist the situation to the ends she had in
view. She disliked the visitor intensely. The part she had decided to
play troubled her, but she meant to carry it through whatever it cost
her, and she felt that an opportunity like the present was not to be
missed.
Her father accepted the cue he was offered, but Gordon was obsessed
with murderous thoughts which certainly Hazel read, even in the smile
with which he greeted the man he had decided was to be his enemy.
To Gordon, David Slosson was even more detestable socially than in
business. Here his obvious vulgarity and commonness had no opportunity
of disguise. He displayed it in the very explanation of his visit.
"Say," he cried, "Snake's Fall is just the bummest location this side
of the Sahara on a Sunday. I was lyin' around the hotel with a grouch
on I couldn't have scotched with a dozen highballs. I was hatin'
myself that bad I got right up an' hired a team and drove along out
here on the off-chance of hitting up against some one interestin'."
Then he added, with a glance at Hazel, which Gordon would willingly
have slain him for: "Guess I hit."
This was on the veranda. But later, throughout the meal, his offenses,
in Gordon's eyes, mounted up and up, till the tally nearly reached the
breaking strain.
The man put himself at his ease to his own satisfaction from the start.
He addressed all his talk either to Hazel or to her father, and, by
ignoring Gordon almost entirely, displayed the fact that antagonism was
mutual.
He criticised everything he saw about him, from the simple furnishing
of the room in which they were dining, and the food they were partaking
of, and its cooking, even to the riding-costume Hazel was wearing. He
lost no opportunity of comparing unfavorably the life on the ranch, the
life, as he put it, to which her father condemned Hazel, with the life
of the cities he knew and had lived in. He passed from one rudeness to
another under the firm conviction that he was making an impression upon
this flower of the plains. The men mattered nothing to him. As far as
Mallinsbee was concerned, he felt he held him in the palm of his hand.
Never in his life had Gordon undergone such an ordeal as that meal,
which he had so looked forward to, in the pleasant company of father
and daughter. Never had he known before the real meaning of
self-restraint. More than all it was made harder by the fact that he
felt Hazel was aware of something of his feelings. And the certainty
that her father understood was made plain by the amused twinkle of his
eyes when they were turned in his direction.
Then came the _denouement_. It was at the finish of the meal that
Hazel launched her bombshell. Slosson, in a long, coarse disquisition
upon ranching, had been displaying his most perfect ignorance and
conceit. He finished up with the definite statement that ranching was
done, "busted." He knew. He had seen. There was nothing in it. Only
in grain or mixed farming. He had had wide experience on the prairie,
and you couldn't teach him a thing.
"You must let me show you how fallible is your opinion," said Hazel,
with more politeness of language than intent. There was a subtle
sparkle in her eyes which Gordon was rejoiced to detect. "Let me see,"
she went on, "it's light till nearly nine o'clock. You see, I mustn't
keep you driving on the prairie after dark for fear of losing
yourself." She laughed. "Now, I'll lend you a saddle horse--if you
can ride," she went on demurely, "and we'll ride round the range till
supper. That'll leave you ample time to get back to Snake's Fall
without losing yourself in the dark."
Gordon wanted to laugh, but forced himself to refrain. Mallinsbee
audibly chuckled. David Slosson looked sharply at Hazel with his
narrow black eyes, and his face went scarlet. Then he forced a
boisterous laugh.
"Say, that's a bet, Miss Hazel," he cried familiarly. "If you can lose
me out on the prairie you're welcome, and when it comes to the saddle,
why, I guess I can ride anything with hair on."
"Better let him have my plug, Sunset," suggested Mallinsbee gutturally.
But Hazel's eyes opened wide. She shook her head.
"I wouldn't insult a man of Mr. Slosson's experience by offering him a
cushy old thing like Sunset," she expostulated. Then she turned to
Slosson. "Sunset's a rocking-horse," she explained. "Now, there's a
dandy three-year-old I've just finished breaking in the barn. He's a
lifey boy. Wouldn't you rather have him?" she inquired wickedly.
Slosson's inclination was obvious. He would have preferred Sunset.
But he couldn't take a bluff from a prairie girl, he told himself.
Forthwith he promptly demanded the three-year-old, and his demand
elicited the first genuine smile Gordon had been able to muster since
he had become aware of Slosson's presence on the ranch.
Within half an hour one of the ranch hands brought the two horses to
the veranda. Hazel's mare, keen-eyed, alert and full of life, was a
picture for the eye of a horseman. The other horse, shy and wild-eyed,
was a picture also, but a picture of quite a different type.
Hazel glanced keenly round the saddle of the youngster. Then she
approached Slosson, who was stroking his black mustache pensively on
the veranda, and looked up at him with her sweetest smile.
"Shall I get on him first?" she inquired. "Maybe he'll cat jump some.
He's pretty lifey. I'd hate him to pitch you."
But to his credit it must be said that Slosson possessed the courage of
his bluff. With a half-angry gesture he left the veranda and took the
horse from the grinning, bechapped ranchman. He knew now that he was
being "jollied."
"Guess you can't scare me that way, Miss Hazel," he cried, but there
was no mirth in the harsh laugh that accompanied his words.
He was in the saddle in a trice, and, almost as quickly, he was very
nearly out of it. That cat jump had come on the instant.
"Stick to him," Hazel cried.
And David Slosson did his best. He caught hold of the horn of the
saddle, his heels went into the horse's sides, and, in two seconds, his
attitude was much that of a shipwrecked mariner trying to balance on a
barrel in a stormy sea. But he stuck to the saddle, although so nearly
wrecked, and though the terrified horse gave a pretty display of
bucking, it could not shed its unwelcome burden. So, in a few moments,
it abandoned its attempt.
Then David Slosson sat up in triumph, and his vanity shone forth upon
his pale face in a beaming smile.
"He's some horseman," rumbled Mallinsbee, loud enough for Slosson to
hear as the horses went off.
"Quite," returned Gordon, in a still louder voice. "If there's one
thing I like to see it's a fine exhibition of horsemanship."
Then as the horses started at a headlong gallop down towards the
valley, the two men left behind turned to each other with a laugh.
"He called Hazel's bluff," said the girl's father, with a wry thrust of
his chin beard.
"Which makes it all the more pleasant to think of the time when my turn
comes," said Gordon sharply.
David Slosson was more than pleased with himself. He was so delighted
that, by a miraculous effort, he had stuck to his horse, that his
vanity completely ran away with him. He would show this girl and her
mossback father. They wanted to "jolly" him. Well, let them keep
trying.
Once the horses had started he gave his its head, and set it at a hard
gallop. He turned in the saddle with a challenge to his companion.
"Let's have a run for it," he cried.
The girl laughed back at him.
"Where you go I'll follow," she cried.
Her words were well calculated. The light of vainglory was in the
man's eyes, and he hammered his heels into his horse's flanks till it
was racing headlong. But Hazel's mare was at his shoulder, striding
along with perfect confidence and controlled under hands equally
perfect.
"We'll go along this valley and I'll show you our next year's crop of
beeves," cried Hazel, later. "They're away yonder, beyond that
southern hill, guess we'll find half of them around there. You said
ranching was played out, I think."
"Right ho," cried the man, with a sneering laugh. "Guess you'll need
to convince me. Say, this is some hoss."
"Useful," admitted Hazel, watching with distressed eyes the man's
lumbering seat in the saddle.
They rode on for some moments in silence. Then Hazel eased her hand
upon the Lady Jane, and drew up on the youngster like a shot from a gun.
"We'll have to get across this stream," she declared, indicating the
six-foot stream along which they were riding. "There's a cattle bridge
lower down which you'd better take. There it is, away on. Guess you
can see it from here."
"What are you goin' to do?" asked the man sharply. He was expecting
another bluff, and was in the right mood to call it, since his success
with the first.
But Hazel had calculated things to a nicety. She owed this man a good
deal already for herself. She owed him more for his impertinent
ignoring of Gordon, and also for his disparagement of the ranch life
she loved.
Without a word she swung her mare sharply to the left. A dozen
strides, a gazelle-like lifting of the round, brown body, and the Lady
Jane was on the opposite bank of the stream.
Before David Slosson was aware of her purpose, and its accomplishment,
his racing horse, still uneducated of mouth, had carried him thirty or
forty yards beyond the spot where Hazel had jumped the stream. At
length, however, he contrived to pull the youngster up.
He smiled as he saw the girl on the other side of the stream. He
remembered her suggestion of the bridge, and he shut his teeth with a
snap. The stream was narrower here, so he had an advantage which, he
believed, she had miscalculated. He took his horse back some distance
and galloped at the stream. Hazel sat watching him with a smile, just
beyond where he should land. His horse shuffled its feet as it came up
to the bank. Then it lifted. Slosson clung to the horn of the saddle.
Then the horse landed, stumbled, fell, hurling its rider headlong in a
perfect quagmire of swamp.
Slosson gathered himself up, a mass of mud and pretty well wet through.
Hazel was out of the saddle in a moment and offering him assistance
with every expression of concern. She came to the edge of the swamp
and reached out her quirt. The man ignored it. He ignored her, and
scrambled to dry ground without assistance.
"I told you to take the bridge," Hazel cried shamelessly. "You knew
you were on a young horse. Oh dear, dear! What a terrible muss you're
in. My, but my daddy will be angry with me for--for letting this
happen."
Her apparently genuine concern slightly mollified the man.
"I thought you were putting up another bluff at me, Miss Hazel," he
said, still angrily. "Say, you best quit bluffing me. I don't take
'em from anybody."
"Bluff? Why, Mr. Slosson, I couldn't bluff you. I--I warned you.
Same as I did about the cat-jumping your horse put up. Say, this is
just dreadful. We'll have to get right back, and get you dried out and
cleaned. I guess that horse is too young for a--city man. I ought to
have given you Sunset. He'd have jumped that stream a mile--if you
wanted him to. Say--there, I'll have to round up your horse, he's
making for home."
In a moment Hazel was in the saddle again, and the man alternately
watched her and scraped the thick mud off his clothes.
He was decidedly angry. His pride was outraged. But even these things
began to pass as he noted the ease and skill with which she rounded up
the runaway horse. She was doing all she could to help him out, and
the fact helped to further mollify him. After all, she _had_ warned
him to take the bridge. Perhaps he had been too ready to see a bluff
in what she had suggested. After all, why should she attempt to bluff
him? He remembered how powerful he was to affect her father's
interests, and took comfort from it.
She came back with the horse and dismounted.
"Say," she cried, in dismay, "that dandy suit of yours. It's all
mussed to death. I'm real sorry, Mr. Slosson. My word, won't my daddy
be angry."
The man began to smile under the girl's evident distress, and, his
temper recovered, his peculiar nature promptly reasserted itself.
"Say, Miss Hazel--oh, hang the 'miss.' You owe me something for this,
you do, an' I don't let folks owe me things long."
"Owe?" Hazel's face was blankly astonished.
"Sure." The man eyed her in an unmistakable fashion.
Suddenly the girl began to laugh. She pointed at him.
"Guess we'll need to get you home and cleaned down some before we talk
of anything else I owe. That surely is something I owe you. Here, you
get up into the saddle. I'll hold your horse, he's a bit scared.
We'll talk of debts as we ride back."
But Slosson was in no mood to be denied just now. Although his anger
had abated, he felt that Hazel was not to go free of penalty. He came
to her as though about to take the reins from her hand, but, instead,
he thrust out an arm to seize her by the waist.
Then it was that a curious thing happened. The young horse suddenly
jumped backwards, dragging the girl with it out of the man's reach. It
had responded to the swift flick of Hazel's quirt, and left the man
without understanding, and his amorous intentions quite unsatisfied.
The next moment the girl was in her own saddle and laughing down at him.
"I forgot," she cried, "you'd just hate to have your horse held by
a--girl. You best hurry into the saddle, or you'll contract lung
trouble in all that wet."
Slosson cursed softly. But he knew that she was beyond his reach in
the saddle. A tacit admission that, at least here, on the ranch, she
dominated the situation.
"And I've never been able to show you those beeves, and convince you
about ranching," Hazel sighed regretfully later on, as they rode back
towards the ranch. But her sigh was sham and her heart was full of
laughter.
She was thinking of the delight she would witness in Gordon's eyes,
when he beheld the much besmirched suit of this man, to whom he had
taken such a dislike.