The blackened prairie was fast hiding the mark of its fire torture under a
cloak of tender new grass, vividly green as a freshly watered, well-kept
lawn. Meadow larks hopped here and there, searching long for a sheltered
nesting place, and missing the weeds where they were wont to sway and
swell their yellow breasts and sing at the sun. They sang just as happily,
however, on their short, low flights over the levels, or sitting upon gray,
half-buried boulders upon some barren hilltop. Spring had come with lavish
warmth. The smoke of burning ranges, the bleak winter with its sweeping
storms of snow and wind, were pushed info the past, half forgotten in this
new heaven and new earth, when men were glad simply because they were
alive.
On a still, Sunday morning--that day which, when work does not press, is
set apart in the range land for slight errands, attention to one's personal
affairs, and to the pursuit of pleasure--Kent jogged placidly down the long
hill into Cold Spring Coulee and pulled up at the familiar little unpainted
house of rough boards, with its incongruously dainty curtains at the
windows and its tiny yard, green and scrupulously clean.
The cat with white spots on its sides was washing its face on the kitchen
doorstep. Val was kneeling beside the front porch, painstakingly stringing
white grocery twine upon nails, which she drove into the rough posts with a
small rock. The primitive trellis which resulted was obviously intended
for the future encouragement of the sweet-pea plants just unfolding their
second clusters of leaves an inch above ground. She did not see Kent at
first, and he sat quiet in the saddle, watching her with a flicker of
amusement in his eyes; but in a moment she struck her finger and sprang up
with a sharp little cry, throwing the rock from her.
“Didn't you know that was going to happen, sooner or later?” Kent inquired,
and so made known his presence.
“Oh--how do you do?” She came smiling down to the gate, holding the hurt
finger tightly clasped in the other hand. “How comes it you are riding this
way? Our trail is all growing up to grass, so few ever travel it.”
“We're all hard-working folks these days. Where's Man?”
“Manley is down to the river, I think.” She rested both arms upon the
gatepost and regarded him with her steady eyes. “If you can wait, he will
be back soon. He only went to see if the river is fordable. He thinks two
or three of our horses are on the other side, and he'd like to get them.
The river has been too high, but it's lowering rather fast. Won't you come
in?” She was pleasant, she was unusually friendly, but Kent felt vaguely
that, somehow, she was different.
He had not seen her for three months. Just after Christmas he had met her
and Manley in town, when he was about to leave for a visit to his people in
Nebraska. He had returned only a week or so before, and, if the truth were
known, he was not displeased at the errand which brought him this way. He
dismounted, and when she moved away from the gate he opened it and went in.
“Well,” he began lightly, when he was seated upon the floor of the porch
and she was back at her trellis, “and how's the world been using you? Had
any more calamities while I've been gone?”
She busied herself with tying together two pieces of string, so that the
whole would reach to a certain nail driven higher than her head. She stood
with both hands uplifted, and her face, and her eyes; she did not reply for
so long that Kent began to wonder if she had heard him. There was no reason
why he should watch her so intently, or why he should want to get up and
push back the one lock of hair which seemed always in rebellion and always
falling across her temple by itself.
He was drifting into a dreamy wonder that all women with yellow-brown hair
should not be given yellow-brown eyes also, and to wishing vaguely that it
might be his luck to meet one some time--one who was not married--when she
looked down at him quite unexpectedly. He was startled, and half ashamed,
and afraid that she might not like what he, had been thinking.
She was staring straight into his eyes, and he knew that she was thinking
of something that affected her a good deal.
“Unless it's a calamity to discover that the world is--what it is, and
people in it are--what they are, and that you have been a blind idiot. Is
that a calamity, Mr. Cowboy? Or is it a blessing? I've been wondering.”
Kent discovered, when he started to speak, that he had run short of breath.
“I reckon that depends on how the discovery pans out,” he ventured, after
a moment. He was not looking at her then. For some reason, unexplained to
himself, he felt that it wasn't right for him to look at her; nor wise; nor
quite pleasant in its effect. He did not know exactly what she meant, but
he knew very well that she meant something more than to make conversation.
“That,” she said, and gave a little sigh--“that takes so long--don't
you know? The panning out, as you call it. It's hard to see things very
clearly, and to make a decision that you know is going to stand the test,
and then--just sit down and fold your hands, because some sordid, petty
little reason absolutely prevents your doing anything. I hate waiting
for anything. Don't you? When I want to do a thing, I want to do it
immediately. These sweet-peas--now I've fixed the trellis for them to climb
upon, I resent it because they don't take hold right now. Nasty little
things--two inches high, when they should be two yards, and all covered
with beautiful blossoms.”
[Illustration: “Little woman, listen here,” he said. “You're playing hard
luck, and I know it”]
“Not the last of April,” he qualified. “Give 'em a fair chance, can't you?
They'll make it, all right; things take time.”
She laughed surrenderingly, and came and sat down upon the porch near him,
and tapped a slipper toe nervously upon the soft, green sod.
“Time! Yes--” She threw back her head and smiled at him brightly--and
appealingly, it seemed to Kent. “You remember what you told me once--about
sheep-herders and _such_ going crazy out here? The _such_ is sometimes
ready to agree with you.” She turned her head with a quick impatience.
“Such is learning to ride a horse,” she informed him airily. “Such does it
on the sly--and she fell off once and skinned her elbow, and she--well,
Such hasn't any sidesaddle--but she's learning, 'by granny!'”
Kent laughed unsteadily, and looked sidelong at her with eyes alight. She
matched the glance for just about one second, and turned her eyes away with
a certain consciousness that gave Kent a savage delight. Of a truth, she
was different! She was human, she was intolerably alluring. She was not the
prim, perfectly well-bred young woman he had met at the train. Lonesome
Land was doing its work. She was beginning to think as an individual--as a
woman; not merely as a member of conventional society.
“Such is beginning to be the proper stuff--'by granny,” he told her softly.
He was afraid his tone had offended her. She rose, and her color flared and
faded. She leaned slightly against the post beside her, and, with a hand
thrown up and half shielding her face, she stared out across the coulee to
the hill beyond.
“Did you--I feel like a fool for talking like this, but one sometimes
clutches at the least glimmer of sympathy and--and understanding, and
speaks what should be kept bottled up inside, I suppose. But I've been
bottled up for so _long_--” She struck her free hand suddenly against her
lips, as if she would apply physical force to keep them from losing all
self-control. When she spoke again, her voice was calmer. “Did you ever get
to the point, Mr. Cowboy, where you--you dug right down to the bottom of
things, and found that you must do something or go mad--and there wasn't a
thing you could do? Did you ever?” She did not turn toward him, but kept
her eyes to the hills. When he did not answer, however, she swung her head
slowly and looked down at him, where he sat almost at her feet.
Kent was leaning forward, studying the gashes he had cut in the sod with
his spurs. His brows were knitted close.
“I kinda think I'm getting there pretty fast,” he owned gravely when he
felt her gaze upon him. “Why?”
“Oh--because you can understand how one must speak sometimes. Ever since I
came, you have been--I don't know--different. At first I didn't like you at
all; but I could see you were different. Since then--well, you have now and
then said something that made me see one could speak to you, and you would
understand. So I--” She broke off suddenly and laughed an apology. “Am I
boring you dreadfully? One grows so self-centered living alone. If you
aren't interested--”
“I am.” Kent was obliged to clear his throat to get those two words out.
“Go on. Say all you want to say.”
She laughed again wearily. “Lately,” she confessed nervously, “I've taken
to telling my thoughts to the cat. It's perfectly safe, but, after all, it
isn't quite satisfying.” She stopped again, and stood silent for a moment.
“It's because I am alone, day after day, week in and week out,” she went
on. “In a way, I don't mind it--under the circumstances I prefer to be
alone, really. I mean, I wouldn't want any of my people near me. But one
has too much time to think. I tell you this because I feel I ought to let
you know that you were right that time; I don't suppose you even remember
it! But I do. Once last fall--the first time you came to the ranch--you
know, the time I met you at the spring, you seemed to see that this big,
lonesome country was a little too much for me. I resented it then. I didn't
want any one to tell me what I refused to admit to myself. I was trying so
hard to like it--it seemed my only hope, you see. But now I'll tell you you
were right.
“Sometimes I feel very wicked about it. Sometimes I don't care. And
sometimes I--I feel I shall go crazy if I can't talk to some one. Nobody
comes here, except Polycarp Jenks. The only woman I know really well in
the country is Arline Hawley. She's good as gold, but--she's intensely
practical; you can't tell her your troubles--not unless they're concrete
and have to do with your physical well-being. Arline lacks imagination.”
She laughed again shortly.
“I don't know why I'm taking it for granted you don't,” she said. “You
think I'm talking pore nonsense, don't you, Mr. Cowboy?” She turned full
toward him, and her yellow-brown eyes challenged him, begged him for
sympathy and understanding, held him at bay--but most of all they set his
blood pounding sullenly in his veins. He got unsteadily to his feet.
“You seem to pass up a lot of things that count, or you wouldn't say that,”
he reminded her huskily. “That night in town, just after the fire, for
instance. And here, that same afternoon. I tried to jolly you out of
feeling bad, both those times; but you know I understood. You know damn'
_well_ I understood! And you know I was sorry. And if you don't know, I'd
do anything on God's green earth--” He turned sharply away from her and
stood kicking savagely backward at a clod with his rowel. Then he felt
her hand touch his arm, and started. After that he stood perfectly still,
except that he quivered like a frightened horse.
“Oh, it doesn't mean much to you--you have your life, and you're a man, and
can do things when you want to. But I do so need a friend! Just somebody
who understands, to whom I can talk when that is the only thing will keep
me sane. You saved my life once, so I feel--no, I don't mean that. It isn't
because of anything you did; it's just that I feel I can talk to you more
freely than to any one I know. I don't mean whine. I hope I'm not a whiner.
If I've blundered, I'm willing to--to take my medicine, as you would say.
But if I can feel that somewhere in this big, empty country just one person
will always feel kindly toward me, and wish me well, and be sorry for we
when I--when I'm miserable, and--” She could not go on. She pressed her
lips together tightly, and winked back the tears.
Kent faced about and laid both his hands upon her shoulders. His face was
very tender and rather sad, and if she had only understood as well as he
did--. But she did not.
“Little woman, listen here,” he said. “You're playing hard luck, and I know
it; maybe I don't know just how hard--but maybe I can kinda give a guess.
If you'll think of me as your friend--your pal, and if you'll always tell
yourself that your pal is going to stand by you, no matter what comes,
why--all right.” He caught his breath.
She smiled up at him, honestly pleased, wholly without guile--and wholly
blind. “I'd rather have such a friend, just now, than anything I know,
except--. But if your sweetheart should object--could you--”
His fingers gripped her shoulders tighter for just a second, and he let her
go. “I guess that part'll be all right,” he rejoined in a tone she could
not quite fathom. “I never had one in m' life.”
“Why, you poor thing!” She stood back and tilted her head at him. “You
poor--_pal_. I'll have to see about that immediately. Every young man wants
a sweetheart--at least, all the young men I ever knew wanted one, and--”
“And I'll gamble they all wanted the same one,” he hinted wickedly, feeling
himself unreasonably happy over something he could not quite put into
words, even if he had dared.
“Oh, no. Hardly ever the same one, luckily. Do you know--pal, I've quite
forgotten what it was all about--the unburdening of my soul, I mean. After
all, I think I must have been just lonesome. The country is just as big,
but it isn't quite so--so _empty_, you see. Aren't you awfully vain, to see
how you have peopled it with your friendship?” She clasped her hands behind
her and regarded him speculatively. “I hope, Mr. Cowboy, you're in earnest
about this,” she observed doubtfully. “I hope you have imagination enough
to see it isn't silly, because if I suspected you weren't playing fair,
and would go away and laugh at me, I'd--scratch--you.” She nodded her head
slowly at him. “I've always been told that, with tiger eyes, you find the
disposition of a tiger. So if you don't mean it, you'd better let me know
at once.”
Kent brought the color into her cheeks with his steady gaze. “I was just
getting scared _you_ didn't mean it,” he averred. “If my pal goes back on
me--why, Lord help her!”
She took a slow, deep breath. “How is it you men ratify a solemn
agreement?” she puzzled. “Oh, yes.” With a pretty impulse she held out her
right hand, half grave, half playful. “Shake on it, pal!”
Kent took her hand and pressed it as hard as he dared. “You're going to be
a dandy little chum,” he predicted gamely. “But let me tell you right now,
if you ever get up on your stilts with me, there's going to be all kinds of
trouble. You call me Kent--that is,” he qualified, with a little, unsteady
laugh, “when there ain't any one around to get shocked.”
“I suppose this _isn't_ quite conventional,” she conceded, as if the
thought had just then occurred to her. “But, thank goodness, out here there
aren't any conventions. Every one lives as every one sees fit. It isn't the
best thing for some people,” she added drearily. “Some people have to
be bolstered up by conventions, or they can't help miring in their own
weaknesses. But we don't; and as long as we understand--” She looked to him
for confirmation.
“As long as we understand, why, it ain't anybody's business but our own,”
he declared steadily.
She seemed relieved of some lingering doubt. “That's exactly it. I don't
know why I should deny myself a friend, just because that friend happens to
be a man, and I happen to be--married. I never did have much patience with
the rule that a man must either be perfectly indifferent, or else make
love. I'm so glad you--understand. So that's all settled,” she finished
briskly, “and I find that, as I said, it isn't at all necessary for me to
unburden my soul.”
They stood quiet for a moment, their thoughts too intangible for speech.
“Come inside, won't you?” she invited at last, coming back to everyday
matters. “Of course you're hungry--or you ought to be. You daren't run away
from my cooking this time, Mr. Cowboy. Manley will be back soon, I think. I
must get some lunch ready.”
Kent replied that he would stay outside and smoke, so she left him with a
fleeting smile, infinitely friendly and confiding and glad. He turned and
looked after her soberly, gave a great sigh, and reached mechanically for
his tobacco and papers; thoughtfully rolled a cigarette, lighted it, and
held the match until it burned quite down to his thumb and fingers. “Pals!”
he said just under his breath, for the mere sound of the word. “All
right--pals it is, then.”
He smoked slowly, listening to her moving about in the house. Her steps
came nearer. He turned to look.
“What was it you wanted to see Manley about?” she asked him from the
doorway. “I just happened to wonder what it could be.”
“Well, the Wishbone needs men, and sent me over to tell him he can go to
work. The wagons are going to start to-morrow. He'll want to gather his
cattle up, and of course we know about how he's fixed--for saddle horses
and the like. He can work for the outfit and draw wages, and get his cattle
thrown back on this range and his calves branded besides. Get paid for
doing what he'll have to do anyhow, you see.”
“I see.” Val pushed back the rebellious lock of hair. “Of course you
suggested the idea to the Wishbone. You're always doing something--”
“The outfit is short-handed,” he reiterated. “They need him. They ain't
straining a point to do Man a favor--don't you ever think it! Well--he's
coming,” he broke off, and started to the gate.
Manley clattered up, vociferously glad to greet him. Kent, at his urgent
invitation, led his horse to the stable and turned him into the corral,
unsaddled and unbridled him so that he could eat. Also, he told his errand.
Manley interrupted the conversation to produce a bottle of whisky from a
cunningly concealed hole in the depleted haystack, and insisted that Kent
should take a drink. Kent waved it off, and Manley drew the cork and held
the bottle to his own lips.
As he stood there, with his face uplifted while the yellow liquor gurgled
down his throat, Kent watched him with a curiously detached interest. So
that's how Manley had kept his vow! he was thinking, with an impersonal
contempt. Four good swallows--Kent counted them.
“You're hitting it pretty strong, Man, for a fellow that swore off last
fall,” he commented aloud.
Manley took down the bottle, gave a sigh of pure, animal satisfaction, and
pushed the cork in with an unconsciously regretful movement.
“A fellow's got to get something out of life,” he defended peevishly. “I've
had pretty hard luck--it's enough to drive a fellow to most any kind of
relief. Burnt out, last fall--cattle scattered and calves running the range
all winter--I haven't got stock enough to stand that sort of a deal, Kent.
No telling where I stand now on the cattle question. I did have close to a
hundred head--and three of my best geldings are missing--a poor man can't
stand luck like that. I'm in debt too--and when you've got an iceberg in
the house--when a man's own wife don't stand by him--when he can't get
any sympathy from the very one that ought to--but, then, I hope I'm a
gentleman; I don't make any kick against _her_--my domestic affairs are
my own affairs. Sure. But when your wife freezes up solid--” He held the
bottle up and looked at it. “Best friend I've got,” he finished, with a
whining note in his voice.
Kent turned away disgusted. Manley had coarsened. He had “slopped down”
just when he should have braced up and caught the fighting spirit--the
spirit that fights and overcomes obstacles. With a tightening of his chest,
he thought of his “pal,” tied for life to this whining drunkard. No wonder
she felt the need of a friend!
“Well, are you going out with the Wishbone?” he asked tersely, jerking his
thoughts back to his errand. “If you are, you'll need to go over there
to-night--the wagons start out to-morrow. Maybe you better ride around by
Polly's place and have him come over here, once in a while, to look after
things. You can't leave your wife alone without somebody to kinda keep an
eye out for her, you know. Polycarp ain't going to ride this spring; he's
got rheumatism, or some darned thing. But he can chop what wood she'll
need, and go to town for her once in a while, and make sure she's all
right. You better leave your gentlest horse here for her to use, too. She
can't be left afoot out here.”
Manley was taking another long swallow from the bottle, but he heard.
“Why, sure--I never thought about that. I guess maybe I _had_ better get
Polycarp. But Val could make out all right alone. Why, she's held it down
here for a week at a time--last winter, when I'd forgot to come home”--he
winked shamelessly--“or a storm would come up so I couldn't get home. Val
isn't like some fool women, I'll say that much for her. She don't care
whether I'm around or not; fact is, sometimes I think she's better pleased
when I'm gone. But you're right--I'll see Polycarp and have him come over
once in a while. Sure. Glad you spoke of it. You always had a great head
for thinking about other people, Kent. You ought to get married.”
“No, thanks,” Kent scowled. “I haven't got any grudge against women.
The world's full of men ready and willing to give 'em a taste of pure,
unadulterated hell.”
Manley stared at him stupidly, and then laughed doubtfully, as if he felt
certain of having, by his dullness, missed the point of a very good joke.
After that the time was filled with the preparations for Manley's absence.
Kent did what he could to help, and Val went calmly about the house,
packing the few necessary personal belongings which might be stuffed into a
“war bag” and used during round-up. Beyond an occasional glance of friendly
understanding, she seemed to have forgotten the compact she had made with
Kent.
But when they were ready to ride away, Kent purposely left his gloves lying
upon the couch, and remembered them only after Manley was in the saddle.
So he went back, and Val followed him into the room. He wanted to say
something--he did not quite know what--something that would bring them a
little closer together, and keep them so; something that would make her
think of him often and kindly. He picked up his gloves and held out his
hand to her--and then a diffidence seized his tongue. There was nothing he
dared say. All the eloquence, all the tenderness, was in his eyes.
“Well--good-by, pal. Be good to yourself,” he said simply.
Val smiled up at him tremulously. “Good-by, my one friend. Don't--don't get
hurt!”
Their clasp tightened, their hands dropped apart rather limply. Kent went
out and got upon his horse, and rode away beside Manley, and talked of the
range and of the round-up and of cattle and a dozen other things which
interest men. But all the while one exultant thought kept reiterating
itself in his mind: “She never said that much to _him!_ She never said that
much to _him!_”