Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Charles
Franks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
LONESOME LAND
By B. M. Bower
Author of “Chip, of the Flying U,” etc.
With Four Illustrations (not included)
By Stanley L. Wood
[Illustration: As he raced over the uneven prairie he fumbled
with the saddle string]
_Contents_
CHAPTER
I. THE ARRIVAL OF VAL
II. WELL-MEANT ADVICE
III. A LADY IN A TEMPER
IV. THE “SHIVAREE”
V. COLD SPRING RANCH
VI. MANLEY'S FIRE GUARD
VII. VAL'S NEW DUTIES
VIII. THE PRAIRIE FIRE
IX. KENT TO THE RESCUE
X. DESOLATION
XI. VAL'S AWAKENING
XII. A LESSON IN FORGIVENESS
XIII. ARLINE GIVES A DANCE
XIV. A WEDDING PRESENT
XV. A COMPACT
XVI. MANLEY'S NEW TACTICS
XVII. VAL BECOMES AN AUTHOR
XVIII. VAL'S DISCOVERY
XIX. KENT'S CONFESSION
XX. A BLOTCHED BRAND
XXI. VAL DECIDES
XXII. A FRIEND IN NEED
XXIII. CAUGHT!
XXIV. RETRIBUTION
_List of Illustrations_
As he raced over the uneven prairie he fumbled with the saddle string
He was jeered unmercifully by Fred De Garmo and his crowd
“Little woman, listen here,” he said. “You're playing hard luck, and I know
it”
To draw the red hot spur across the fresh VP did not take long
CHAPTER I. THE ARRIVAL OF VAL
In northern Montana there lies a great, lonely stretch of prairie land,
gashed deep where flows the Missouri. Indeed, there are many such--big,
impassive, impressive in their very loneliness, in summer given over to
the winds and the meadow larks and to the shadows fleeing always over the
hilltops. Wild range cattle feed there and grow sleek and fat for the fall
shipping of beef. At night the coyotes yap quaveringly and prowl abroad
after the long-eared jack rabbits, which bounce away at their hunger-driven
approach. In winter it is not good to be there; even the beasts shrink then
from the bleak, level reaches, and shun the still bleaker heights.
But men will live anywhere if by so doing there is money to be gained, and
so a town snuggled up against the northern rim of the bench land, where the
bleakness was softened a bit by the sheltering hills, and a willow-fringed
creek with wild rosebushes and chokecherries made a vivid green background
for the meager huddle of little, unpainted buildings.
To the passengers on the through trains which watered at the red tank near
the creek, the place looked crudely picturesque--interesting, so long as
one was not compelled to live there and could retain a perfectly impersonal
viewpoint. After five or ten minutes spent hi watching curiously the one
little street, with the long hitching poles planted firmly and frequently
down both sides--usually within a very few steps of a saloon door--and the
horses nodding and stamping at the flies, and the loitering figures
that appeared now and then in desultory fashion, many of them imagined
that they understood the West and sympathized with it, and appreciated its
bigness and its freedom from conventions.
One slim young woman had just told the thin-faced school teacher on a
vacation, with whom she had formed one of those evanescent traveling
acquaintances, that she already knew the West, from instinct and from
Manley's letters. She loved it, she said, because Manley loved it, and
because it was to be her home, and because it was so big and so free.
Out here one could think and grow and really live, she declared, with
enthusiasm. Manley had lived here for three years, and his letters, she
told the thin-faced teacher, were an education in themselves.
The teacher had already learned that the slim young woman, with the
yellow-brown hair and yellow-brown eyes to match, was going to marry
Manley--she had forgotten his other name, though the young woman had
mentioned it--and would live on a ranch, a cattle ranch. She smiled with
somewhat wistful sympathy, and hoped the young woman would be happy; and
the young woman waved her hand, with the glove only half pulled on, toward
the shadow-dappled prairie and the willow-fringed creek, and the hills
beyond.
“Happy!” she echoed joyously. “Could one be anything else, in such a
country? And then--you don't know Manley, you see. It's horribly bad form,
and undignified and all that, to prate of one's private affairs, but I just
can't help bubbling over. I'm not looking for heaven, and I expect to have
plenty of bumpy places in the trail--trail is anything that you travel
over, out here; Manley has coached me faithfully--but I'm going to be
happy. My mind is quite made up. Well, good-by--I'm so glad you happened
to be on this train, and I wish I might meet you again. Isn't it a funny
little depot? Oh, yes--thank you! I almost forgot that umbrella, and I
might need it. Yes, I'll write to you--I should hate to drop out of
your mind completely. Address me Mrs. Manley Fleetwood, Hope, Montana.
Good-by--I wish--”
She trailed off down the aisle with eyes shining, in the wake of the
grinning porter. She hurried down the steps, glanced hastily along the
platform, up at the car window where the faded little school teacher was
smiling wearily down at her, waved her hand, threw a dainty little kiss,
nodded a gay farewell, smiled vaguely at the conductor, who had been
respectfully pleasant to her--and then she was looking at the rear platform
of the receding train mechanically, not yet quite realizing why it was that
her heart went heavy so suddenly. She turned then and looked about her in
a surprised, inquiring fashion. Manley, it would seem, was not at hand to
welcome her. She had expected his face to be the first she looked upon in
that town, but she tried not to be greatly perturbed at his absence; so
many things may detain one.
At that moment a young fellow, whose clothes emphatically proclaimed him a
cowboy, came diffidently up to her, tilted his hat backward an inch or so,
and left it that way, thereby unconsciously giving himself an air of candor
which should have been reassuring.
“Fleetwood was detained. You were expecting to--you're the lady he was
expecting, aren't you?”
She had been looking questioningly at her violin box and two trunks
standing on their ends farther down the platform, and she smiled vaguely
without glancing at him.
“Yes. I hope he isn't sick, or--”
“I'll take you over to the hotel, and go tell him you're here,” he
volunteered, somewhat curtly, and picked up her bag.
“Oh, thank you.” This time her eyes grazed his face inattentively. She
followed him down the rough steps of planking and up an extremely dusty
road--one could scarcely call it a street--to an uninviting building with
crooked windows and a high, false front of unpainted boards.
The young fellow opened a sagging door, let her pass into a narrow hallway,
and from there into a stuffy, hopelessly conventional fifth-rate parlor,
handed her the bag, and departed with another tilt of the hat which placed
it at a different angle. The sentence meant for farewell she did not catch,
for she was staring at a wooden-faced portrait upon an easel, the portrait
of a man with a drooping mustache, and porky cheeks, and dead-looking eyes.
“And I expected bearskin rugs, and antlers on the walls, and big
fireplaces!” she remarked aloud, and sighed. Then she turned and pulled
aside a coarse curtain of dusty, machine-made lace, and looked after her
guide. He was just disappearing into a saloon across the street, and she
dropped the curtain precipitately, as if she were ashamed of spying. “Oh,
well--I've heard all cowboys are more or less intemperate,” she excused,
again aloud.
She sat down upon an atrocious red plush chair, and wrinkled her
nose spitefully at the porky-cheeked portrait. “I suppose you're the
proprietor,” she accused, “or else the proprietor's son. I wish you
wouldn't squint like that. If I have to stop here longer than ten minutes,
I shall certainly turn you face to the wall.” Whereupon, with another
grimace, she turned her back upon it and looked out of the window. Then she
stood up impatiently, looked at her watch, and sat down again upon the red
plush chair.
“He didn't tell me whether Manley is sick,” she said suddenly, with some
resentment. “He was awfully abrupt in his manner. Oh, you--” She rose,
picked up an old newspaper from the marble-topped table with uncertain
legs, and spread it ungently over the portrait upon the easel. Then she
went to the window and looked out again. “I feel perfectly sure that cowboy
went and got drunk immediately,” she complained, drumming pettishly upon
the glass. “And I don't suppose he told Manley at all.”
The cowboy was innocent of the charge, however, and he was doing his
energetic best to tell Manley. He had gone straight through the saloon and
into the small room behind, where a man lay sprawled upon a bed in one
corner. He was asleep, and his clothes were wrinkled as if he had lain
there long. His head rested upon his folded arms, and he was snoring
loudly. The young fellow went up and took him roughly by the shoulder.
“Here! I thought I told you to straighten up,” he cried disgustedly. “Come
alive! The train's come and gone, and your girl's waiting for you over to
the hotel. D' you hear?”
“Uh-huh!” The man opened one eye, grunted, and closed it again.
The other yanked him half off the bed, and swore. This brought both eyes
open, glassy with whisky and sleep. He sat wobbling upon the edge of the
bed, staring stupidly.
“Can't you get anything through you?” his tormentor exclaimed. “You want
your girl to find out you're drunk? You got the license in your pocket.
You're supposed to get spliced this evening--and look at you!” He turned
and went out to the bartender.
“Why didn't you pour that coffee into him, like I told you?” he demanded.
“We've got to get him steady on his pins _somehow!_”
The bartender was sprawled half over the bar, apathetically reading the
sporting news of a torn Sunday edition of an Eastern paper. He looked up
from under his eyebrows and grunted.
“How you going to pour coffee down a man that lays flat on his belly and
won't open his mouth?” he inquired, in an injured tone. “Sleep's all he
needs, anyway. He'll be all right by morning.”
The other snorted dissent. “He'll be all right by dark--or he'll feel a
whole lot worse,” he promised grimly. “Dig up some ice. And a good jolt of
bromo, if you've got it--and a towel or two.”
The bartender wearily pushed the paper to one side, reached languidly under
the bar, and laid hold of a round blue bottle. Yawning uninterestedly, he
poured a double portion of the white crystals into a glass, half filled
another under the faucet of the water cooler, and held them out.
“Dump that into him, then,” he advised. “It'll help some, if you get it
down. What's the sweat to get him married off to-day? Won't the girl wait?”
“I never asked her. You pound up some ice and bring it in, will you?” The
volunteer nurse kicked open the door into the little room and went in,
hastily pouring the bromo seltzer from one glass to the other to keep it
from foaming out of all bounds. His patient was still sitting upon the edge
of the bed where he had left him, slumped forward with his head in his
hands. He looked up stupidly, his eyes bloodshot and swollen of lid.
“'S the train come in yet?” he asked thickly. “'S you, is it, Kent?”
“The train's come, and your girl is waiting for you at the hotel. Here,
throw this into you--and for God's sake, brace up! You make me tired. Drink
her down quick--the foam's good for you. Here, you take the stuff in the
bottom, too. Got it? Take off your coat, so I can get at you. You don't
look much like getting married, and that's no josh.”
Fleetwood shook his head with drunken gravity, and groaned. “I ought to be
killed. Drunk to-day!” He sagged forward again, and seemed disposed to shed
tears. “She'll never forgive me; she--”
Kent jerked him to his feet peremptorily. “Aw, look here! I'm trying
to sober you up. You've got to do your part--see? Here's some ice in a
towel--you get it on your head. Open up your shirt, so I can bathe your
chest. Don't do any good to blubber around about it. Your girl can't hear
you, and Jim and I ain't sympathetic. Set down in this chair, where we can
get at you.” He enforced his command with some vigor, and Fleetwood groaned
again. But he shed no more tears, and he grew momentarily more lucid, as
the treatment took effect.
The tears were being shed in the stuffy little hotel parlor. The young
woman looked often at her watch, went into the hallway, and opened the
outer door several times, meditating a search of the town, and drew back
always with a timid fluttering of heart because it was all so crude and
strange, and the saloons so numerous and terrifying in their very bald
simplicity.
She was worried about Manley, and she wished that cowboy would come out
of the saloon and bring her lover to her. She had never dreamed of being
treated in this way. No one came near her--and she had secretly expected to
cause something of a flutter in this little town they called Hope.
Surely, young girls from the East, come out to get married to their
sweethearts, weren't so numerous that they should be ignored. If there were
other people in the hotel, they did not manifest their presence, save by
disquieting noises muffled by intervening partitions.
She grew thirsty, but she hesitated to explore the depths of this dreary
abode, in fear of worse horrors than the parlor furniture, and all the
places of refreshment which she could see from the window or the door
looked terribly masculine and unmoral, and as if they did not know there
existed such things as ice cream, or soda, or sherbet.
It was after an hour of this that the tears came, which is saying a good
deal for her courage. It seemed to her then that Manley must be dead. What
else could keep him so long away from her, after three years of impassioned
longing written twice a week with punctilious regularity?
He knew that she was coming. She had telegraphed from St. Paul, and had
received a joyful reply, lavishly expressed in seventeen words instead of
the ten-word limit. And they were to have been married immediately upon her
arrival.
That cowboy had known she was coming; he must also have known why Manley
did not meet her, and she wished futilely that she had questioned him,
instead of walking beside him without a word. He should have explained. He
would have explained if he had not been so very anxious to get inside that
saloon and get drunk.
She had always heard that cowboys were chivalrous, and brave, and
fascinating in their picturesque dare-deviltry, but from the lone specimen
which she had met she could not see that they possessed any of those
qualities. If all cowboys were like that, she hoped that she would not be
compelled to meet any of them. And _why_ didn't Manley come?
It was then that an inner door--a door which she had wanted to open, but
had lacked courage--squeaked upon its hinges, and an ill-kept bundle of
hair was thrust in, topping a weather-beaten face and a scrawny little
body. Two faded, inquisitive eyes looked her over, and the woman sidled in,
somewhat abashed, but too curious to remain outside.
“Oh yes!” She seemed to be answering some inner question. “I didn't know
you was here.” She went over and removed the newspaper from the portrait.
“That breed girl of mine ain't got the least idea of how to straighten up
a room,” she observed complainingly. “I guess she thinks this picture was
made to hang things on. I'll have to round her up again and tell her a few
things. This is my first husband. He was in politics and got beat, and so
he killed himself. He couldn't stand to have folks give him the laugh.” She
spoke with pride. “He was a real handsome man, don't you think? You mighta
took off the paper; it didn't belong there, and he does brighten up the
room. A good picture is real company, seems to me. When my old man gets on
the rampage till I can't stand it no longer, I come in here and set, and
look at Walt. 'T ain't every man that's got nerve to kill himself--with a
shotgun. It was turrible! He took and tied a string to the trigger--”
“Oh, please!”
The landlady stopped short and stared at her. “What? Oh, I won't go into
details--it was awful messy, and that's a fact. I didn't git over it for a
couple of months. He coulda killed himself with a six-shooter; it's always
been a mystery why he dug up that old shotgun, but he did. I always thought
he wanted to show his nerve.” She sighed, and drew her fingers across her
eyes. “I don't s'pose I ever will git over it,” she added complacently. “It
was a turrible shock.”
“Do you know,” the girl began desperately, “if Mr. Manley Fleetwood is in
town? I expected him to meet me at the train.”
“Oh! I kinda _thought_ you was Man Fleetwood's girl. My name's Hawley. You
going to be married to-night, ain't you?”
“I--I haven't seen Mr. Fleetwood yet,” hesitated the girl, and her eyes
filled again with tears. “I'm afraid something may have happened to him.
He--”
Mrs. Hawley glimpsed the tears, and instantly became motherly in her
manner. She even went up and patted the girl on the shoulder.
“There, now, don't you worry none. Man's all right; I seen him at dinner
time. He was--” She stopped short, looked keenly at the delicate face,
and at the yellow-brown eyes which gazed back at her, innocent of evil,
trusting, wistful. “He spoke about your coming, and said he'd want the use
of the parlor this evening, for the wedding. I had an idea you was coming
on the six-twenty train. Maybe he thought so, too. I never heard you come
in--I was busy frying doughnuts in the kitchen--and I just happened to come
in here after something. You'd oughta rapped on that door. Then I'd 'a'
known you was here. I'll go and have my old man hunt him up. He must be
around town somewheres. Like as not he'll meet the six-twenty, expecting
you to be on it.”
She smiled reassuringly as she turned to the inner door.
“You take off your hat and jacket, and pretty soon I'll show you up to a
room. I'll have to round up my old man first--and that's liable to take
time.” She turned her eyes quizzically to the porky-cheeked portrait. “You
jest let Walt keep you company till I get back. He was real good company
when he was livin'.”
She smiled again and went out briskly, came back, and stood with her hand
upon the cracked doorknob.
“I clean forgot your name,” she hinted. “Man told me, at dinner time, but
I'm no good on earth at remembering names till after I've seen the person
it belongs to.”
“Valeria Peyson--Val, they call me usually, at home.” The homesickness of
the girl shone in her misty eyes, haunted her voice. Mrs. Hawley read it,
and spoke more briskly than she would otherwise have done.
“Well, we're plumb strangers, but we ain't going to stay that way, because
every time you come to town you'll have to stop here; there ain't any other
place to stop. And I'm going to start right in calling you Val. We don't
use no ceremony with folk's names, out here. Val's a real nice name, short
and easy to say. Mine's Arline. You can call me by it if you want to. I
don't let everybody--so many wants to cut it down to Leen, and I won't
stand for that; I'm _lean_ enough, without havin' it throwed up to me. We
might jest as well start in the way we're likely to keep it up, and you
won't feel so much like a stranger.
“I'm awful glad you're going to settle here--there ain't so awful many
women in the country; we have to rake and scrape to git enough for three
sets when we have a dance--and more likely we can't make out more 'n two.
D' you dance? Somebody said they seen a fiddle box down to the depot, with
a couple of big trunks; d' you play the fiddle?”
“A little,” Valeria smiled faintly.
“Well, that'll come in awful handy at dances. We'd have 'em real often in
the winter if it wasn't such a job to git music. Well, I got too much to do
to be standin' here talkin'. I have to keep right after that breed girl all
the time, or she won't do nothing. I'll git my old man after your fellow
right away. Jest make yourself to home, and anything you want ask for it
in the kitchen.” She smiled in friendly fashion and closed the door with a
little slam to make sure that it latched.
Valeria stood for a moment with her hands hanging straight at her
sides, staring absently at the door. Then she glanced at Walt, staring
wooden-faced from his gilt frame upon his gilt easel, and shivered. She
pushed the red plush chair as far away from him as possible, sat down with
her back to the picture, and immediately felt his dull, black eyes boring
into her back.
“What a fool I must be!” she said aloud, glancing reluctantly over her
shoulder at the portrait. She got up resolutely, placed the chair where it
had stood before, and stared deliberately at Walt, as if she would prove
how little she cared. But in a moment more she was crying dismally.