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[Illustration: "UNDER THE HAT BRIM DRAWN FORWARD TO HIS LINE OF
VISION HIS EYES ... GAZED FORTH KEEN AND OBSERVANT"]
THE IRON
FURROW
BY GEORGE C. SHEDD
FRONTISPIECE BY
HENRY A. BOTKIN
A.L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with Doubleday, Page & Company
COPYRIGHT, 1919, 1920, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
THE IRON FURROW
THE IRON FURROW
CHAPTER I
The Ventisquero Range stretches across the circumference of one's
vision in a procession of mountains that come tall and blue out of the
distant north and seemingly march past to vanish in the remote south
like azure phantoms. The mountains wall the horizon and dominate the
mesa, their black forest-clad flanks crumpled and broken and gashed by
cañons, lifting above timber-line peaks of bare brown rock that pierce
the clouds floating along the range. At sunrise they cast immense
shadows upon the mesa spreading westward from their base; and at
sunset they reflect golden and purple glows upon the plain until the
earth appears swimming in some iridescent sea of ether; while over
them from dawn till dusk, traversed by a few fleecy clouds, lies the
turquoise sky of New Mexico.
At a certain point in the range a small cañon opens upon the mesa with
a gush of gravel and sand that flows a short way into the sagebrush
and forms a creek bed. Tucked back in the little cañon there is a
considerable growth of bushes and trees, cool and fresh-looking in the
shadow of the gorge during the summer season, a splash of vivid green
there at the bottom of the dusty gray mountain, but at the cañon's
mouth this verdure ceases.
Only an insignificant stream of water ran, one day, in the stony creek
bed that meandered out upon the mesa, and it appeared under the hot
July sun and among the hot stones for all the world like a rivulet of
liquid glass. That was all the mesa had to show, only its endless gray
sagebrush and the creek bed almost dry--unless one should reckon the
three parched cottonwood trees beside the stream, a little way down
from the cañon, and the flat-roofed adobe house near by, and the empty
corral behind built of aspen poles. In that immensity of mountain and
mesa the house looked like a brick of sun-baked mud, the corral like a
child's device of straws, the three cottonwoods like three twigs stuck
in the earth. Or, at any rate, that is how they appeared to a horseman
regarding them from the main mesa trail a mile away.
The rider, a slender tanned young fellow of about twenty-eight, sat in
the saddle with the relaxed ease of habit which allowed his body to
accommodate itself to the steady jogging trot of his horse. A roll
comprising clothes wrapped in a black rubber coat was tied behind the
cantle. His Stetson hat was tilted up at the rear and down in front
almost on his nose--a thin, bony nose, slightly curved and with the
suggestion of a hook in the tip, just the sort of nose to accord with
his lean, sunburnt cheeks and clean-cut chin and straight-lipped
mouth. Under the hat brim drawn forward to his line of vision his
eyes, notwithstanding his air of lounging indolence, gazed forth keen
and observant. He had the appearance of a man who might be seeking a
few stray cattle, or riding to town for mail, and in no particular
hurry about it, either, this hot afternoon; but, for all that, Lee
Bryant was proceeding on important business--important for him,
anyhow. When everything one possesses is about to be risked on a
venture, the matter is naturally vital; and at this moment he was
moving straight to the initiative of his enterprise.
Where the road crossed the creek bed to continue northward, a trail
branched off and followed up the stream to the little ranch house by
the three cottonwood trees. Here the creek had not yet begun to cut an
arroyo and had washed merely a course five or six feet deep and some
fifty feet wide through the mesa, so that from a distance the shallow
gash was invisible and the ground appeared unbroken. It was because of
the flat character of the mesa, too, that Bryant on reaching the bank
of the stream was able to see on the opposite side two persons a
quarter of a mile off riding toward him; women, he perceived. Far
north of them on the road, a black spot in a haze of dust, seemingly
motionless but as one could guess advancing rapidly, was an
automobile.
Bryant rode his horse down into the creek bed and turned him aside to
a small pool on the upper side of the crossing, under the cut-bank,
where the horse thrust his muzzle into the water and drank greedily.
The rider swung himself out of the saddle, knelt a pace beyond, where
the rivulet trickled into the pool, and also drank.
"Wet anyway, even if warm, eh, Dick?" he remarked, when done. "Don't
drink it all, old scout; leave a swallow for the ladies." Still on his
knees he looked appraisingly down the creek and then up it, and added
derisively, "Some stream, this Perro, some stream!"
After rolling and lighting a cigarette, he meditated for a time in
the same kneeling position. His horse finished drinking and moved a
step nearer his master, where he stood with head lowered, water
dripping from his lip, body inert. But presently he pricked his ears
and turning his head toward the other bank gave a low whinny. Bryant
got to his feet.
The two women he had beheld at a distance had now reached the ford.
Their ponies snuffing water immediately dipped into the creek bed and
crossed its sandy bottom with quickened steps. Young women the riders
were, scarcely more than girls, it seemed to Bryant; wearing divided
khaki skirts and white shirt waists and wide-brimmed straw hats tied
with thongs under their chins. In this region where white men were
none too numerous, and women of their own kind scarcer yet, and girls
scarcest of all, the presence here of the pair aroused in the young
fellow a lively interest.
He led Dick aside that their ponies might approach the pool.
"Thank you; they are very thirsty," said the nearer girl, with a nod.
The ponies plunged forefeet into the water and stood thus with noses
buried, drinking with eager gulps. "The afternoon is so hot and the
road so dusty," the speaker continued, "that the poor things were
almost choked."
She was the smaller of the pair, of medium height and having a
graceful, well-molded figure, with frank gray eyes, a nose showing a
few freckles, smooth soft cheeks slightly reddened by sun, and an
expressive mouth. Bryant judged that she had small, firm hands, but
could not see them as she wore gauntlets. He further decided that she
was neither plain nor pretty: just average good-looking, one might
say. An air of friendliness was in her favour, though what might or
might not be a prepossessing trait, depending on circumstances, was
the suggested obstinacy in her round chin.
"Don't you yourselves wish a drink? You must be thirsty, too," Bryant
addressed the young ladies. "If your ponies won't stand, I'll look
after them."
"Oh, they'll not run off, unless we forget to let the reins hang, as
has happened once or twice," said the girl who previously had spoken.
"For they're regular cow-ponies. At first we had a hard time
remembering just to drop the lines when we dismounted instead of tying
them to a post somewhere; and for a while we had a feeling that they
certainly would gallop off if we did let the reins hang, as we'd been
instructed. But they never did." She turned to her companion. "Imo,
aren't you thirsty? I'm going to get down and have a drink." With
which she swung herself down from her saddle upon the sand.
The second girl was tall and thin, lacking both the spirits and
stamina of the other; a crown of fluffy golden hair was hinted by the
little of it the young fellow could see under the brim of her big hat;
her eyes were of a soft blue colour, probably weak; while her face,
the skin of which was exceedingly white with but a tinge of the sun's
fiery burn, was regular of feature and delicately formed.
She walked to the rill languidly, where stooping she drank from her
palm. Most of the water that she dipped escaped before reaching her
lips; and Bryant doubted if she were really successful in quenching
her thirst. The heat, the dust, and the ride appeared to have been
almost too much for her strength, exhausting her slender store of
vitality. The other girl, who had coiled herself down by the
trickling stream and bent forward resting her hands in the water,
drank directly from the rivulet.
"There, that's the way to do it, Imo," she declared, when she had
straightened up, hat-brim, nose, chin, all dripping. "Like the ponies!
I hope I haven't lost my handkerchief." And she began to search about
her waist.
"I'd fall flat in the water if I tried it, as sure as the world," the
taller girl responded.
They rose to their feet and joined Bryant.
"You're the young ladies who are homesteading just south of here,
aren't you?" he inquired, politely.
"Yes, two miles south on Sarita Creek," the smaller answered. Then
after an appraising regard of him she continued, "We took our claims
only last April. And they're not very good claims, either, we're
beginning to fear; the creek goes dry about this time. That's why no
one had filed on the locations before. Have you a ranch somewhere
near?"
"No. That is, not yet. I'm a civil engineer, but I'm thinking strongly
of settling down here. If I do, we shall be neighbours. My name is Lee
Bryant; this is my horse Dick; and I've a dog called Mike, which
stopped aways back on the road to investigate a prairie dog hole. Now
you know who we are," he concluded, with a smile.
The girl thereupon told him her name was Ruth Gardner and that of her
companion Imogene Martin.
"We'll be very glad to have you call at our little ranch when you're
riding by," Ruth Gardner said, graciously. "Aside from Imogene's uncle
and aunt, who live in Kennard and who've come to see us several
times, we've not had a single visitor in the three months and a half
we've been there, except once an old Mexican who was herding sheep
near by and came to ask for matches. Of course, not many people know
we're there, I imagine. From the road one can't see our cabins--we had
to have two, you know, one for each claim, and they sit side by
side--because they're in the mouth of the cañon among the trees. It's
really cool and pleasant there during the heat of the day. Any time
you come, you'll be welcome."
"Yes, Mr. Bryant," Imogene Martin affirmed. "A man now and then in the
scenery will help out wonderfully."
"I'll stop the first time I'm passing," he stated.
Lee Bryant understood the significance of the invitation: they were
starved for company and would be grateful for the society of a person
they believed respectable. He had seen a good deal of homesteading
conditions in the West; he knew the hardships involved in "holding
down" claims, of which the dreary monotony and loneliness of the life
were not the least. One earned ten times over every bit one got of a
free government homestead. For men it was bad enough; but for woman,
for girls like these, who had probably come from the East in trustful
ignorance and with rosy visions, the homestead venture impressed him
not only as pitiful but as tragic.
"I'll certainly ride down to see you," he assured them again.
"And perhaps, being an engineer, you'll show us why the water doesn't
run downhill in our bean patch, as it ought to do," Imogene Martin
remarked.
Bryant laughed and nodded agreement.
"You'll find that it's your eyes, and not the water, that have been
playing tricks," he said. "Ground levels and ditch grades are
deceiving things close to the mountains, because the latter tilt one's
natural line of vision. That's why water seems to run uphill when you
look toward the range. I'll soon fix your ditch line when I set an
instrument in your bean patch and sight through it once or twice. The
water will behave after that, I promise you."
They continued to chat of this and of the failing of Sarita Creek,
until the automobile that Bryant had earlier sighted shot into view on
the northern bank of the creek, whence at decreased speed it descended
into the bottom and ground its way across through sand and gravel.
Driving the hooded car was a man of about thirty years, of slim figure
and with a pale olive skin that betrayed an admixture of American and
Mexican blood. Beside him in the front seat sat a girl whose clear
pink complexion made plain that in her was no mingling of races; her
hat held by a streaming blue veil and her form incased in a silk dust
coat. The tonneau was occupied by two men: one an American with a van
dyke beard sprinkled with gray, the other a short, stout, swarthy
Mexican, whose sweeping white moustache was in marked contrast to his
coffee-coloured face.
The car, with radiator steaming and hissing, was stopped at a spot
close to where Lee Bryant and his companions stood. The young man at
the wheel, unlatching the door, stepped out.
"I'll bet the stop-cock of the radiator is open," he addressed the
girl with the blue veil, "or the engine wouldn't be so hot." After
making an examination of the faucet, he returned to the door and
procured a folding canvas bucket, saying, "That's the trouble, and the
radiator is empty."
But the young lady scarcely heeded him. She had loosened the blue veil
knotted at her throat and pushed it back from her cheeks to free them
to the air; she sat regarding with interested eyes the group of three
standing a few paces off by the horses. In her gaze, too, there was a
faint curiosity, as if she wondered who the persons might be, and what
they were doing here, and of what they had been conversing when
interrupted. An exceedingly lovely girl she was, as the engineer had
instantly perceived; her features molded in soft lines and curves that
enchanted, a tint like that of peach petals in her cheeks, with warm,
sensitive lips and brown, shining eyes--a radiant, intelligent face.
Against the background of the place, the creek bed of sand and stones
and the banks fringed with dusty sagebrush, she glowed with the
freshness of a desert rose.
The driver of the car took a step toward Bryant, extending the bucket.
"Dip me some water out of that hole while I look at my tires, will
you?" he said.
At the words, which were rather more of a command than a request, the
engineer regarded him fixedly while the blood stirred beneath his tan,
but finally took the bucket. The other turned back to the car, where
he made a pretense of inspecting a front wheel and then, with a foot
on the running-board and elbow resting on knee, twisting indolently a
point of his small moustache, he began to converse with his companion
of the blue veil.
Bryant filled the radiator. Two trips to the pool were necessary to
obtain enough water for that purpose, but he finished the job with the
same thoroughness that he went through with any business once
undertaken, whether pleasant or otherwise. As he poured the contents
of the bucket into the radiator's spout, he took stock of the
automobile party. His face hardened with a slight contempt when he
considered the effeminate-appearing young Mexican who had bade him
bring water and the girl talking with him; which she must have noticed
and taken to herself, for when their eyes met he saw that a flush dyed
her cheeks and that she bit her lip nervously.
He snapped the radiator cap shut. At the click the man stopped
fingering his moustache, ended his talk, mounted to his seat, and
started the engine. Bryant handed him the bucket, folded flat again,
which the recipient tossed down by his feet.
"Here, my man," said the olive-skinned young fellow at the wheel, with
a forefinger and thumb searching a waistcoat pocket as the car began
slowly to move forward.
He tossed a quarter to the engineer. Bryant instinctively caught it,
as one catches any suddenly thrown object. For an instant he remained
transfixed, incredulous, astounded, then the blood flamed in his face
and he cast the coin back at its donor.
"No Mexican can throw money to me!" he exclaimed.
For answer he received an angry look and snarled word from the driver.
Beyond the man Bryant beheld the startled, embarrassed, and yet
interested face of the girl with the veil, her lips a little parted,
her eyes intent on him. Then the car lurched out of the sand, splashed
through the rivulet, ascended the inclined roadway of the creek bank,
and sped from view.
The sudden spark of antagonism flashing between the engineer and the
young Mexican made the two girls by the ponies acutely aware that the
horseman after all was a stranger, a man of whom they knew nothing, an
unknown quantity. And so the two exchanged a glance and drew on their
gauntlets and said they must be riding home. Thereupon Bryant assisted
them to mount.
As he separated from them to follow the trail up the creek to the
ranch house by the three cottonwoods, Ruth Gardner called to him not
to forget his promised visit to their cabins. He assured them he
should remember. When the girls were some distance off, they waved
across the sagebrush at him and he swung his hat in reply. Off then
the pair went at a gallop, with the automobile on the road far south
of them leaving a hazy streamer of dust above the earth; the riders
going farther and farther away, becoming smaller and smaller on the
mesa, until at last they were but bobbing specks in the golden
sunshine.