With a blood-red sun at his back and a rosy tinge upon all the hills before
him, Manley rode slowly down the western rim of Cold Spring Coulee, driving
five rebellious calves that had escaped the branding iron in the spring.
Though they were not easily driven in any given direction, he was
singularly patient with them, and refrained from bellowing epithets and
admonitions, as might have been expected. When he was almost down the hill,
he saw Val standing in the kitchen door, shading her eyes with her hands
that she might watch his approach.
“Open the corral gate!” he shouted to her, in the tone of command. “And
stand back where you can head 'em off if they start up the coulee!”
Val replied by doing as she was told; she was not in the habit of wasting
words upon Manley; they seemed always to precipitate an unpleasant
discussion of some sort, as if he took it for granted she disapproved of
all he did or said, and was always upon the defensive.
The calves came on, lumbering awkwardly in a half-hearted gallop, as if
they had very little energy left. Their tongues protruded, their mouths
dribbled a lathery foam, and their rough, sweaty hides told Val of the long
chase--for she was wiser in the ways of the range land than she had been.
She stood back, gently waving her ruffled white apron at them, and when
they dodged into the corral, rolling eyes at her, she ran up and slammed
the gate shut upon them, looped the chain around the post, and dropped the
iron hook into a link to fasten it. Manley galloped up, threw himself off
his panting horse, and began to unsaddle.
“Get some wood and start a fire, and put the iron in, Val,” he told her
brusquely.
Val looked at him quickly. “Now? Supper's all ready, Manley. There's no
hurry about branding them, is there?” And she added: “Dear me! The round-up
must have just skimmed the top off this range last spring. You've had to
brand a lot of calves that were missed.”
“What the devil is it to you?” he demanded roughly. “I want that fire,
madam, and I want it _now_. I rather think I knew when I want to brand
without asking your advice.”
Val curved her lips scornfully, shrugged and obeyed She was used to that
sort of thing, and she did not mind very much. He had brutalized by
degrees, and by degrees she had hardened. He could rouse no feeling now but
contempt.
“If you'll kindly wait until I put back the supper,” she said coldly. “I
suppose in your zeal one need not sacrifice your food; you're still rather
particular about that. I observe.”
Manley was leading his horse to the stable, and, though he answered
something, the words were no more than a surly mumble.
“He's been drinking again,” Val decided dispassionately, on the way to the
house. “I suppose he carried a bottle in his pocket--and emptied it.”
She was not long; there was a penalty of profane reproach attached to
delay, however slight, when Manley was in that mood. She had the fire going
and the VP iron heating by the time he had stabled and fed his horse, and
had driven the calves into the smaller pen. He drove a big, line-backed
heifer into a corner, roped and tied her down with surprising dexterity,
and turned impatiently.
“Come! Isn't that iron ready yet?”
Val, on the other side of the fence, drew it out and inspected it
indifferently.
“It is not, Mr. Fleetwood. If you are in a very great hurry, why not apply
your temper to it--and a few choice remarks?”
“Oh, don't try to be sarcastic--it's too pathetic. Kick a little life into
that fire.”
“Yes, sir--thank you, sir.” Val could be rather exasperating when she
chose. She always could be sure of making Manley silently furious when
she adopted that tone of respectful servility--as employed by butlers and
footmen upon the stage. Her mimicry, be it said, was very good.
“'Ere it is, sir----thank you, sir--'ope I 'aven't kept you wyting, sir,”
she announced, after he had fumed for two minutes inside the corral, and
she had cynically hummed her way quite through the hymn which begins “Blest
be the tie that binds.” She passed the white-hot iron deftly through the
rails to him, and fixed the fire for another heating.
Really, she was not thinking of Manley at all, nor of his mood, nor of his
brutal coarseness. She was thinking of the rebuilt typewriter, advertised
as being exactly as good as a new one, and scandalously cheap, for which
she had sold her watch to Arline Hawley to get money to buy. She was
counting mentally the days since she had sent the money order, and was
thinking it should come that week surely.
She was also planning to seize upon the opportunity afforded by Manley's
next absence for a day from the ranch, and drive to Hope on the chance of
getting the machine. Only--she wished she could be sure whether Kent would
be coming soon. She did not want to miss seeing him; she decided to sound
Polycarp Jenks the next time he came. Polycarp would know, of course,
whether the Wishbone outfit was in from round-up. Polycarp always knew
everything that had been done, or was intended, among the neighbors.
Manley passed the ill-smelling iron back to her, and she put it in the
fire, quite mechanically. It was not the first time, nor the second, that
she had been called upon to help brand. She could heat an iron as quickly
and evenly as most men, though Manley had never troubled to tell her so.
Five times she heated the iron, and heard, with an inward quiver of pity
and disgust, the spasmodic blat of the calf in the pen when the VP went
searing into the hide on its ribs. She did not see why they must be branded
that evening, in particular, but it was as well to have it done with. Also,
if Manley meant to wean them, she would have to see that they were fed and
watered, she supposed. That would make her trip to town a hurried one, if
she went at all; she would have to go and come the same day, and Arline
Hawley would scold and beg her to stay, and call her a fool.
“Now, how about that supper?” asked Manley, when they were through, and the
air was clearing a little from the smoke and the smell of burned hair.
“I really don't know--I smelled the potatoes burning some time ago. I'll
see, however.” She brushed her hands with her handkerchief, pushed back the
lock of hair that was always falling across her temple, and, because she
was really offended by Manley's attitude and tone, she sang softly all the
way to the house, merely to conceal from him the fact that he could move
her even to irritation. Her best weapon, she had discovered long ago, was
absolute indifference--the indifference which overlooked his presence and
was deaf to his recriminations.
She completed her preparations for his supper, made sure that nothing was
lacking and that the tea was just right, placed his chair in position,
filled the water glass beside his plate, set the tea-pot where he could
reach it handily, and went into the living room and closed the door
between. In the past year, filed as it had been with her literary ambitions
and endeavors, she had neglected her music; but she took her violin from
the box, hunted the cake of resin, tuned the strings, and, when she heard
him come into the kitchen and sit down at the table, seated herself upon
the front doorstep and began to play.
There was one bit of music which Manley thoroughly detested. That was the
“Traumerei.” Therefore, she played the “Traumerei” slowly--as it should,
of course, be played--with full value given to all the pensive, long-drawn
notes, and with a finale positively creepy in its dreamy wistfulness. Val,
as has been stated, could be very exasperating when she chose.
In the kitchen there was the subdued rattle of dishes, unbroken and
unhurried. Val went on playing, but she forgot that she had begun in a
half-conscious desire to annoy her husband. She stared dreamily at the hill
which shut out the world to the east, and yielded to a mood of loneliness;
of longing, in the abstract, for all the pleasant things she was missing in
this life which she had chosen in her ignorance.
When Manley flung open the inner door, she gave a stifled exclamation; she
had forgotten all about Manley.
“By all the big and little gods of Greece!” he swore angrily. “Calves
bawling their heads off in the corral, and you squalling that whiny stuff
you call music in the house--home's sure a hell of a happy place! I'm going
to town. You don't want to leave the place till I come back--I want those
calves looked after.” He seemed to consider something mentally, and then
added:
“If I'm not back before they quit bawling, you can turn 'em down in the
river field with the rest. You know when they're weaned and ready to settle
down. Don't feed 'em too much hay, like you did that other bunch; just give
'em what they need; you don't have to pile the corral full. And don't keep
'em shut up an hour longer than necessary.”
Val nodded her head to show that she heard, and went on playing. There was
seldom any pretense of good feeling between them now. She tuned the violin
to minor, and poised the bow over the strings, in some doubt as to her
memory of a serenade she wanted to try next.
“Shall I have Polycarp take the team and haul up some wood from the river?”
she asked carelessly. “We're nearly out again.”
“Oh, _I_ don't care--if he happens along.” He turned and went out, his
mind turning eagerly to the town and what it could give him in the way of
pleasure.
Val, still sitting in the doorway, saw him ride away up the grade and
disappear over the brow of the hill. The dusk was settling softly upon the
land, so that his figure was but a vague shape. She was alone again; she
rather liked being alone, now that she had no longer a blind, unreasoning
terror of the empty land. She had her thoughts and her work; the presence
of Manley was merely an unpleasant interruption to both.
Some time in the night she heard the lowing of a cow somewhere near. She
wondered dreamily what it could be doing in the coulee, and went to sleep
again. The five calves were all bawling in a chorus of complaint against
their forced separation from their mothers, and the deeper, throaty tones
of the cow mingled not inharmoniously with the sound.
Range cattle were not permitted in the coulee, and when by chance they
found a broken panel in the fence and strayed down there, Val drove them
out; afoot, usually, with shouts and badly aimed stones to accelerate their
lumbering pace.
After she had eaten her breakfast in the morning she went out to
investigate. Beyond the corral, her nose thrust close against the rails,
a cow was bawling dismally. Inside, in much the same position, its tail
waving a violent signal of its owner's distress, a calf was clamoring
hysterically for its mother and its mother's milk.
Val sympathized with them both; but the cow did not belong in the coulee,
and she gathered two or three small stones and went around where she could
frighten her away from the fence without, however, exposing herself too
recklessly to her uncertain temper. Cows at weaning time did sometimes
object to being driven from their calves.
“Shoo! Go on away from there!” Val raised a stone and poised it
threateningly.
The cow turned and regarded her, wild-eyed. It backed a step or two,
evidently uncertain of its next move.
“Go on away!” Val was just on the point of throwing the rock, when she
dropped it unheeded to the ground and stared. “Why, you--you--why--the
_idea!_” She turned slowly white. Certain things must filter to the
understanding through amazement and disbelief; it took Val a minute or two
to grasp the significance of what she saw. By the time she did grasp it,
her knees were beading weakly beneath the weight of her body. She put out
a groping hand and caught at the corner of the corral to keep herself from
falling. And she stared and stared.
“It--oh, surely not!” she whispered, protesting against her understanding.
She gave a little sob that had no immediate relation to tears.
“Surely--_surely_--not!” It was of no use; understanding came, and came
clearly, pitilessly. Many things--trifles, all of them--to which she had
given no thought at the time, or which she had forgotten immediately, came
back to her of their own accord; things she tried _not_ to remember.
The cow stared at her for a minute, and, when she made no hostile move,
turned its attention back to its bereavement. Once again it thrust
its moist muzzle between two rails, gave a preliminary, vibrant
_mmm--mmmmm--m_, and then, with a spasmodic heaving of ribs and of flank,
burst into a long-drawn _baww--aw--aw--aw_, which rose rapidly in a
tremulous crescendo and died to a throaty rumbling.
Val started nervously, though her eyes were fixed upon the cow and she knew
the sound was coming. It served, however, to release her from the spell of
horror which had gripped her. She was still white, and when she moved she
felt intolerably heavy, so that her feet dragged; but she was no longer
dazed. She went slowly around to the gate, reached up wearily and undid the
chain fastening, opened the gate slightly, and went in.
Four of the calves were huddled together for mutual comfort in a corner.
They were blatting indefatigably. Val went over to where the fifth one
still stood beside the fence, as near the cow as it could get, and threw
a small stone, that bounced off the calf's rump. The calf jumped and ran
aimlessly before her until it reached the half-open gate, when it dodged
out, as if it could scarcely believe its own good fortune. Before Val could
follow it outside, it was nuzzling rapturously its mother, and the cow was
contorting her body so that she could caress her offspring with her tongue,
while she rumbled her satisfaction.
Val closed and fastened the gate carefully, and went back to where the cow
still lingered. With her lips drawn to a thin, colorless line, she drove
her across the coulee and up the hill, the calf gamboling close alongside.
When they had gone out of sight, up on the level, Val turned back and went
slowly to the house. She stood for a minute staring stupidly at it and at
the coulee, went in and gazed around her with that blankness which follows
a great mental shock. After a minute she shivered, threw up her hands
before her face, and dropped, a pitiful, sorrowing heap of quivering
rebellion, upon the couch.