“It’s the devil’s own hole for desolation that he’s come to.” Peter

looked about the cup-shaped valley that was but a _cul-de-sac_ in the

mountains. Its approach was between the high rock walls of a cañon.

Passing between them, the rise of temperature was almost incredible.

The great barrier of mountain-range, that cut it off from the rest of

the world, seemed also to cut it off from light and air. The atmosphere

hung lifeless, the occasional bellow of range-cattle sounded far-off

and muffled. Vegetation was scant, the sage-brush grew close and

scrubby, even the brilliant cactus flowers seemed to have abandoned the

valley to its fate. A lone group of dead cotton-woods grew like

sentinels close to the rocky walls. Their twisted branches, gaunt and

bare, writhed upward as if in dumb supplication. There was about them a

something that made Judith come closer to Peter as they passed them by.

The night wind sang in their leafless branches with a long-drawn,

shuddering sigh. The despair of a barren, deserted thing seemed to have

settled on them.

“Those frightful trees, how can Alida stand them?” She looked back.

“Oh, I wish they were cut down!”

Before them was the cabin, its ruined condition pitifully apparent even

by night. It had been deserted ten years before Jim brought his family

to it. Rumor said it was haunted. Grim stories were told of the death

of a woman who had come there with a man, and had not lived to go away

with him. The roof of the adjoining stable had fallen in, the bars of

the corral were missing. The house was dark but for a feeble light that

glimmered in one window, the beacon that had been lighted, night after

night, against Jim’s coming. It added a further note of apprehension,

peering through the dark, still valley like a wakeful, anxious eye,

keeping a long and unrewarded vigil. Judith felt the consummation of

the threatening tragedy after her first glimpse of the sentinel trees.

She could not explain, but her heart cried, even as the wind in them

had sung of death. Perhaps her mother’s spirit spoke to her, just as

she had said, on that memorable drive, that the Great Mystery spoke to

his people in the earth, the sky, and the frowning mountains.

“Peter”—she had slid from her horse and was clinging to his arm—“when

it happens, Peter, you will have no part in it?”

“It won’t happen, Judith, if I can help it.”

She kissed his hand as it held the loose reins.

“Lord, I am not worthy!” was the thought in his heart. He sat graven in

the saddle. Sir Knight of the Joyous Heart though he was, the unsought

kiss of trust gifted him with a self-reverence that would not soon

forsake him.

Judith was rapping on the door and calling to Alida not to be

frightened. And presently it was opened. Peter wanted to leave Judith,

now that she was safely at the end of her journey, but she would not

hear of it till he had eaten.

“You would have had your comfortable supper five hours ago had you not

been playing cavalier to me all over the wilderness.” And Peter

yielded.

Judith busied herself about the kitchen. Her mood of racking

apprehension had disappeared. Indian stoicism had again the guiding

hand. She waved Peter from the fire that she was kindling, as if he

were a blundering incompetent. But she let him slice the bacon and

grind the coffee as one lets a child help. Alida came in, white-faced

and anxious over the long absence of her husband, but conscientiously

hospitable nevertheless. Peter noticed that Judith made a gallant

pretence of eating, crumbling her bread and talking the meanwhile. The

pale wife, who had little to say at the best of times, was put to the

test to say anything at all. But, withal, their intent was so genuinely

hospitable that Peter himself could not speak with the pity of it.

Accustomed as he was to the roughness of these frontier cabins, never

had he seen a human habitation so desolate as this. The mud plaster had

fallen away from between the logs, showing cross sections of the

melancholy prospect. An atmosphere of tragedy brooded over the place.

Whether from its long period of emptiness, or from the vaguely hinted

murder of the woman who had died there, or whether it took its

character from the prevailing desolation, the cabin in the valley was

an unlovely thing. Nor did the cleanliness, the conscientious making

the best of things, soften the woful aspect of the place. Rather was

the appeal the more poignant to the seeing eye, as the brave makeshift

of the self-respecting poor strikes deeper than the beggar’s whine. The

house was bare but for the few things that Alida could take in the

wagon in which they made their flight. And all through the pinch of

poverty and grinning emptiness there was visible the woman-touch, the

brave making the best of nothing, the pitiful preparation for the

coming of the man. Wild roses from the creek bloomed against the

gnarled and weather-warped logs of the walls. Sprays of clematis

trailed their white bridal beauty from cans rescued from the ashes of a

camp-fire. But Alida was a strategist when it came to adorning her

home, and the rusty receptacle was hid beneath trailing green leaves.

There was at the window a muslin curtain that in its starched and

ruffled estate was strongly suggestive of a child’s frock hastily

converted into a window drapery. The curtain was drawn aside that the

lamp might shed its beam farther on the way of the traveller who came

not. There was but one other light in the place, a bit of candle. Alida

apologized for the poor light by which they must eat, but she did not

offer to take the lamp from the window.

Peter was no longer Sir Knight of the Joyous Heart as he watched the

little, white-faced woman, who went so often to the door to look

towards the road that entered the valley that she was no longer aware

of what she did. He saw her wide eyes full of fear, the bow of the

mouth strained taut with anxiety, her unconscious fear of him as one of

the alien faction, and withal her concern for his comfort. Judith’s

control was far greater, but though she hid it skilfully, he knew the

sorrow that consumed her.

There was a cry from the room beyond, and Judith, snatching up the

candle, went in to the children. All three of them were sleeping

cross-ways in one bed, their small, round arms and legs striking out

through the land of dreams as swimmers breasting the waves. She gave a

little cry of delight and appreciation, and called Peter to look.

Little Jim, who had cried in some passing fear, sat up sleepily. He

stretched out his small arms to Peter, whom he had never seen before.

Peter took him, and again he settled to sleep, apparently assured that

he was in friendly hands.

The warm, small body, giving itself with perfect confidence, strongly

affected Peter’s heightened susceptibilities. In the very nature of the

situation he could be no friend to Jim Rodney, yet here in his arms lay

Jim Rodney’s son, loving, trusting him instinctively. Judith noticed

that his face paled beneath its many coats of tan. He was afraid of the

little sleeping boy, afraid that his unaccustomed touch might hurt him,

and yet loath to part with the small burden. Judith took the boy from

Peter and placed him between the two little girls on the bed.

Through the window they could see Alida’s dress glimmering, like a

phantom in the darkness, as she strained her eyes towards the path.

Peter hated to leave the women and children in this desolate place. The

night was far spent. To reach the round-up in season, he could at best

snatch a couple of hours’ sleep and be again in the saddle while the

stars still shone. His saddle and saddle blanket were enough for him.

The broad canopy of heaven, the bosom of mother earth, had given him

sound, dreamless sleep these many years. He bade the women good-night,

and made his bed where the cañon gave entrance to the valley. But sleep

was slow to come. Now, in that vague, uncertain world where we fall

through oceans of space, and the waking is the dream, the dream the

waking, Peter caught pale flashes of Kitty’s gold head as she ran and

ran, ever in the pursuit of something, she knew not what. And as she

ran hither and thither, she would turn her head and beckon to Peter,

and as he followed he felt the burden of years come upon him. And then

he saw Judith’s eyes, still and grave. He turned and wakened. No, it

was not Judith’s eyes, but the stars above the mountain-tops.

XII.

The Round-up

The stars were still shining when Peter Hamilton looked at his watch

next morning, but he sternly fought the temptation to lie another two

minutes by remembering the day’s work before him, and went in search of

the horse that he had not picketed overnight, as the beast required a

full belly after the hard night’s ride he had given him. Peter had

rolled out of his blankets with a keen anticipatory relish for the day

ahead. It was well, he knew, that there was ample work of a definite

nature for Peter the cow-puncher; as for Peter the man, he was

singularly at sea. Had Judith Rodney been his desert comrade all these

cheerful years for him to get his first belated insight into the real

Judith only a few little hours back? Or was it, he wondered, her

seeming unconsciousness of him, as she rode brave and sorrowful through

the night, to avert, if might be, her brother’s death—at all events, to

comfort and inspirit the frightened woman and her little children—that

had freshly tinged the friendship he had so long felt for her? Many

were the questions that Peter vaguely put to himself as he started out

for his long day in the saddle; and none of them he answered. Indeed,

he could not satisfactorily explain to himself why he should think of

Judith at all in this way—Judith, whom he had known so long, and upon

whom he counted so securely—Judith, who understood things, and was as

good a comrade as a man. Surely it was a strange thing that he should

discover himself in a sentimental dream of Judith!

For it was in such dreams that Katherine Colebrooke had figured ever

since Peter could remember. For years, indeed—and Judith knew it!—he

had stood, tame and tractable, waiting for Chloe to throw her dainty

lariat. But Chloe had intimated that her graceful fingers were engaged

with the inkpot and her head with schemes for further sonneting. Chloe

was becoming famous. To Peter, who was unmodern, there was little to be

gained in arguing against a state of affairs so crassly absurd as

career-getting for women. At such seasons it behooved sane men to pray

for patience rather than the gift of tongues. When the disheartened

fair should weary of the phantom pursuit, then might the man of

patience have his little day. Peter winced at the picture. To the world

he knew that his long waiting on the brink of the bog, while his

ambitious lady floundered after false lights, was, in truth, no more

impressive a spectacle than the anguished squawking of a hen who

watches a brood of ducklings, of her own hatching, try their luck in

the pond.

And there was Judith the great-hearted, Judith who was as inspiring as

a breath of hill air, Judith with no thought of careers beyond the

loyal doing of her woman’s part, Judith, trusty and loyal—and Judith

with that accursed family connection!

Peter tightened his cinch and turned his horse westward. The stars had

grown dim in the sky. The world that the night before had seemed to

float in a silvery effulgence looked gray and old. The cabin in the

valley flaunted its wretched squalor, like a beggar seeking alms on the

highway. Riding by, Peter lifted his sombrero. “Sweet dreams, gentle

lady!” He dug the rowel into his horse’s side and began his day at no

laggard pace. Nor did he spare his horse in the miles that lay between

him and breakfast. The beast would have no more work to do that day,

when once he reached camp, and Peter was not in his tenderest mood as

he spurred through the gray of the morning. The pale, chastened world

was all his own at this hour. Not a creature was stirring. The

mountains, the valleys, the softly huddled hills slept in the deep hush

that is just before the dawn. He looked about with questioning eyes.

Last night this very road had been a pale silver thread winding from

the mountain crests into a world of dreams. To-day it was but a trail

across the range. “Where are the snows of yester year?” he quoted, with

a certain early-morning grimness. At heart he was half inclined to

believe Judith responsible for the vanished world; Judith, Judith—he

was riding away from her as fast as his horse could gallop, and yet his

thoughts perversely lingered about the cabin in the valley.

After a couple of hours’ hard riding he could dimly make out specks

moving on that huge background of space, and presently his horse

neighed and put fresh spirit into his gait, recognizing his fellows in

moving dots on the vast perspective. And being a beast of some

intelligence, for all his heavy-footed failings, he reasoned that food

and rest would soon be his portion. Peter had no further use for the

rowel.

Breakfast was already well under way when he reached camp. The outfit,

seated on saddles in a semicircle about the chuck wagon, ate with that

peculiar combination of haste and skill that doubtless the life of the

saddle counteracts, as digestive troubles are apparently unknown among

plainsmen. The cook, in handing Peter his tin plate, cup, spoon, and

black-handled fork, asked him if “he would take overland trout or

Cincinnati chicken, this morning?” The cook never omitted these jocular

inquiries regarding the various camp names for bacon. He seemed to

think that a choice of alias was as good as a change of menu. There was

little talk at breakfast, and that bearing chiefly on the day’s work.

Every one was impatient for an early start. The horse wrangler had his

string waiting, the cook was scouring his iron pots, saddles were

thrown over horses fresh from a long night’s good grazing, cinches were

tightened, slickers and blankets were adjusted, and camp melted away in

a troup of horsemen winding away through the gray of early morning.

The scene of the beef round-up was a mighty plain, affording limitless

scope for handling the cattle of a thousand hills. In the distance rose

the first undulations of the mountains, that might be likened to the

surplusage of space that rolled the length of the sweeping levels, then

heaped high to the blue. The specks in the far distance began to grow

as if the screw of a field-glass were bringing them nearer, turning

them into horsemen, bunches of cattle, “chuck-wagons” of the different

outfits, reserves of horses restrained by temporary rope-corrals, all

the equipment of a great round-up. Dozens of men, multitudes of horses,

hordes of cattle—the mighty plain swallowed all the little, prancing,

galloping, bellowing things, and still looked mighty in its loneliness.

Fling a handful of toys from a Noah’s Ark—if they make such simple toys

now—in an ordinary field, and the little, wooden men, horses and cows,

will suggest the round-up in relation to its background. Men darted

hither and thither, yelling shrilly; cows—born apparently to be

leaders—broke from the bunches to which they had been assigned and

started at a clumsy run, followed by kindred susceptible to example.

Cow-punchers, waiting for just such manifestations of individuality,

whirled after them like comets, and soon they were again in the pawing,

heaving, sweltering bunch to which they belonged.

Peter Hamilton, whose particular skill as a cow-puncher lay in that

branch of the profession known as “cutting out,” found that the work of

the rustlers had been carried on with no unsparing hand since the early

spring round-up. Calves bearing the “H L” brand—that claimed by a

company known to be made up of cattle-thieves—followed mothers bearing

almost every brand that grazed herds in that part of the State. The

Wetmore outfit, that used a “W” enclosed in a square, were apparently

the heaviest losers. The cows and calves were herded at the right of

the plain, convenient to the branding-pen, the steers well away to the

opposite side. As Peter drove a “W-square” cow, followed by a little,

white-faced calf, whose brand had plainly been tampered with, he heard

one of his associates say:

“There’s nothing small about the ‘H L’ except their methods.”

“What’s ‘H L’ stand for, anyway?” the other cow-puncher asked.

“Why, Hell, or, How Long; depends whether you’re with ’em or again

’em.”

Peter wheeled from the men and headed for the bunch he was cutting out.

He fancied that the man had looked at him strangely as he offered a

choice of meanings for the “H L”—and yet he could not have known that

Peter had gone to Rodney’s cabin last night. He flung himself heart and

soul into his work, dashing full tilt at the snorting, stamping bedlam,

enveloped in clouds of dust that dimmed the very daylight. Calves

bleated piteously as they were jammed in the thickening pack. Peter

shouted, swung the rope right and left, thinning the bunch about him,

and a second later emerged, driving before him a cow, followed by a

calf. These were turned over to cow-boys waiting for them. Time after

time Hamilton returned to that mass of unconscious power, that with a

single rush could have annihilated the little band of horsemen that

handled them with the skill of a dealer shuffling, cutting, dealing a

pack of cards.

To the left were the steers, pawing and tearing up the earth in a very

ecstasy of impotent fury. Picture the giant propeller of an ocean liner

thrashing about in the sands of the desert and you will have an

approximate knowledge of the dust raised by a thousand steers. Their

long-drawn, shrieking bellow had a sinister note. Horns, hoofs, tails

beat the air, their bloodshot eyes looked menacingly in every

direction; but a handful of cow-boys kept them in check, circling round

and round them on ponies who did their work without waiting for quirt

or rowel.

The noonday sun looked down upon a scene that to the eye unskilled in

these things was as confusion worse confounded. Cow-boys dashed from

nowhere in particular and did amazing things with a bit of rope,

sending it through the air with snaky undulations after flying cattle.

The rope, taking on lifelike coils, would pursue the flying beast like

an aerial reptile, then the noose would fall true, and the thing was

done. A second later a couple of cow-boys would be examining the

disputed brand on the prone animal.

The smell of burning flesh and hair rose from the branding-pen and

mingled with the stench of the herds in one noisome compound. The yells

of the cow-punchers, each having its different bearing on the work in

hand, were all but lost in the dull, steady roar of the cattle,

bellowing in a chorus of fear, rage, and pain. And still the work of

sorting, branding, cutting-out, went steadily on. Though an outsider

would not have perceived it, the work was as crisp-cut and exact in its

methods as the work in a counting-house. One of the cow-boys, in hot

pursuit of a fractious heifer, encountered a gopher-hole, and horse and

rider were down in a heap. In a second a dozen helping hands were

dragging him from under the horse. He limped painfully, but stooped to

examine his horse. The beast had broken a leg, and turned on the man

eyes almost human in their pain.

“Bob, Bob!” The cow-puncher went down on his knees and put his arms

about the neck of his pet. “My God!” he said, “me and Bob was just like

brothers. Everybody knowed that.” He uncinched the saddle with clumsy

tenderness; not a man thought a whit less of him because he could not

see well at the moment. He turned his head away, that he might not see

the well-aimed shot that would release his pet from pain. Then he

limped away after another horse—it was all in the day’s work.

The beef contract called for a thousand steers, four and five years

old, and these having been well and duly counted, and some dozen extra

head added in case of accident, they were immediately started on the

trail, as they could accomplish some seven or eight miles before being

bedded down for the night. Hamilton, who had crossed to the beef side

of the round-up to have a necessary word with the “Circle-Star”

foreman, was amazed to find Simpson making ready to start with the

trail herd. Peter inquired, with a few expletives, “how long he had

been a cow-man, in good and regular standing?”

“As far as the regularity is concerned, that would be a pretty hard

thing to answer, but he’s had an interest in the ‘XXX’ since—since—”

“He drove Rodney’s sheep over the cliff?”

“Ain’t you a little hard on the beginning of his cattle career? It

usually goes by a more business-like name, but—” he shrugged his

shoulders—“it’s up to the ‘XXX.’ We wouldn’t have him help to pull

bogged cattle out of a creek.”

The beeves, hidden in a simoom of their own stamping, were gradually

being pressed forward on the trail, a huge pawn, ignorant of its own

strength, manipulated by a handful of men and horses. Its bellowing,

like the tuning of a thousand bass-fiddles, shook the stillness like

the long, sullen roar of the sea, as out of the plain they thundered,

to feed the multitude.

“Well, there goes as pretty a bunch of porterhouses as I’d want to put

tooth to. If I get away from here within the next two months, as I’m

expecting, doubtless I’ll meet some of you again with your personality

somewhat obscured by reason of fried onions.”

The foreman of the “Circle-Star” waved his hand after the slowly moving

herd that gradually pressed forward like an army in loose marching

order. Outriders galloped ahead, like darting insects, and pointing the

lumbering mass that trailed its half-mile length at a snail’s-pace. The

great column steadily advanced, checked, turned, led as easily as a

child trails his little steam-cars after him on the nursery floor, and

always by the little force of a handful of men and a few horses.

After supper came general relaxation around the camp-fire. The men, who

had all day been strung to a keen pitch of nervous energy, lounged in

loose, picturesque uncouthness, while each began to unravel his own

lively miscellany of information or invention. There was jest,

laughter, spinning of yarns, singing of songs. As Peter lay in the

fire-light, smoking his brier-wood, he noticed that the man next him

spent a great deal of time poring over a letter, holding it close to

the blaze, now at arm’s-length, which was hardly surprising,

considering the penmanship of the more common variety of _billet-doux_.

The man was plainly disappointed that Peter would not notice or

comment. Finally he folded it up, and with sentimental significance

returned it to the left side pocket of his flannel shirt, and remarked

to Peter, “It’s from her.”

“Indeed,” said Peter, who had not the faintest notion who “her” could

be. “Let me congratulate you.”

“Yes, sir,” and there was conviction in the cow-puncher’s tone; “it’s

from old man Kinson’s girl, up to the Basin, and the parson’s goin’ to

give us the life sentence soon. A man gets sick o’ helling it all over

creation.” He rolled a cigarette, lit it, took a puff or two, then

turned to Peter, as one whose acquaintance with the broader side of

life entitled him to speak with a certain authority. “Is it that, or is

it that we’re getting on, a little long in the tooth, logy in our

movements?”

“I think we’re just sick of helling it.” Peter looked towards the star

that last night had been the beacon towards which he and Judith had

scaled the heights. “Yes, we get sick of helling it after we’ve turned

thirty.”

“Then I can’t be making a mistake. If I thought it was because I was

getting on, I’d stampede this here range. It don’t seem fair to a girl

to allow that you’re broke, tamed, and know the way to the corral, when

it’s just that you’re needin’ to go to an old man’s home.”

“Now this is really love,” said Peter to himself, with interest. “This

is humility.” A sympathetic liking for the self-distrustful lover

surged hot and generous into Peter’s heart, and he continued to

himself: “Now that’s what Judith would appreciate in a man, some

directness, some humility!” Poor Judith! Poor burden-bearer! Who was to

love her as she deserved to be loved, even as old man Kinson’s girl, of

the Basin, was loved? Yet suppose some one did love her in such fashion

and she returned it? It was a picture Peter had never conjured up

before. Nonsense! he was accustomed to think of Judith a great deal,

and that was not the way to think of her. “Dear Judith!” said Peter,

half unconsciously to himself, and looked again at the fellow, who had

gone back to his dingy letter and continued to reread it in the

fire-light as if he hoped to extract some further meaning from the now

familiar words. Nature had fitted him out with a rag-bag assortment of

features—the nose of a clown, the eyes of a ferret, the mouth that

hangs agape like a badly hinged door, the mouth of the incessant

talker. And withal, as he lounged in the fire-light, dreamily turning

his love-letter, he had a sort of superphysical beauty, reflected of

the glow that many waters cannot quench.

Costigan, who had led the merriment against Simpson at Mrs. Clark’s

eating-house, was playing “mumbly-peg” with Texas Tyler. They had been

working like Trojans all day at the round-up, but they pitched their

pocket-knives with as keen a zest as school-boys, bickering over points

in the game, accusing each other of cheating, calling on the rest of

the company to umpire some disputed point.

But presently, from the opposite side of the fire, some one began to

sing, in a rich barytone, a dirgelike thing that caught the attention

of first one then another of the men, making them stop their yarning

and knife-throwing to listen. The tune, in its homely power to evoke

the image of the ceremonial of death, was more or less familiar to most

of them. There was a conscious funeral pageantry in the ring of its

measured phrases that recalled to many burials of the dead that had

taken place in their widely scattered homes. Mrs. Barbauld’s hymn,

“Flee as a Bird to the Mountain,” are the words usually sung to the

air.

Costigan presently cut across the dirgelike refrain with: “Phwat th’

divil is ut about that chune that Oi’m thinkin’ of?”

“This,” said the man with the barytone voice, “is the tune that Nick

Steele saved his neck to.”

“Begorra, that’s ut. I wasn’t there mesilf, but Oi’ve heard th’ story

told more times than Oi’ve years to me credit.”

“My father was in that necktie party,” spoke up a young cow-puncher,

“and I’ve heard him tell the story scores of times, and he always

wondered why the devil they let Steele off. Never could understand it

after the thing was done. He was talking of it once to a man who was a

sharp on things like mesmerism, and the man called it hypnotic

suggestion. Said that Steele got control of the whole outfit and

mesmerized ’em so they couldn’t do a thing to him.”

Several of the men asked for the story, echoes of which had come down

through all the forty years since its happening. And the cow-puncher,

lighting a cigarette, began:

“It was in the good old forty-nine days in California, when gold was

sometimes more plentiful than bread, and women were so scarce that one

day when they found a girl’s shoe on the trail they fitted a gold heel

to it and put it up in camp to worship. But sentiment wasn’t exactly

their long suit, and any little difficulties that cropped up were

straightened out by the vigilance committee—and a rope. One day a

saddle, or maybe it was a gun, that didn’t belong to him, was found

among this man Steele’s traps, and though he swore that some one had

put it there for a grudge, the committee thought that a hemp necktie

was the easiest way out of the argument. And this here Steele party

finds himself, at the age of twenty-four, with something like thirty

minutes of life to his credit. He don’t take on none, nor make a play

for mercy, nor try any fancy speech-making. He just waits round, kinder

pale, but seemin’ indifferent, considerin’ it was his funeral that was

impendin’. I’ve heard my father say that he was a tall, slim boy, with

a kind of girlish prettiness, and the committee looked some for

hysterics and they didn’t get none. The noose was made ready and they

told Steele he could have five minutes to pray, if he wanted to, or he

could take it out in cursing, just as he chose. The boy said he felt

that he hadn’t quite all that was coming to him in the way of

enjoyment, and that while he was far from criticising the vigilance

committee, he was not altogether partial to the nature of his demise,

and if it was just the same to them, instead of praying or cursing,

he’d take that five minutes for a song.

“They was agreeable, and he up and steps on the scaffold, what they was

mighty proud of, it bein’ about the only substantial structure the town

could boast. He began to sing that thing you’ve all been listening to,

and he had a voice like water falling light and fine in a pool below.

They crowded up close about the scaffold and listened. The words he put

to it were his own story, just like those old minstrels that you read

about, and at the end of each verse came the chorus, slow and solemn as

the moment after something great has happened. There wasn’t a

hangin’-face in the crowd after he was started. At some time or other

every man had heard somebody he thought a heap of, buried to that tune,

and his voice got to workin’ on their imaginations and turned their

hearts to water. I don’t remember anything but the chorus—that went

like this:

“‘Who’ll weep for me, on the gallows tree,

As I sway in the wind and swing?

Is there never a tear to be shed for me,

As I swing by a hempen string?

Who’ll weep, who’ll keep

Watch, as I’m rocked to sleep,

Rocked by a hempen string?’”

There was a long silence, broken only by the crackle of the logs in the

camp-fire and the night sounds of the lonely plain. The leaping flames

showed a group of thoughtful faces. Finally, Costigan broke the silence

with:

“Begorra, ’tis some av thim ’ud be doin’ well to be lukin’ to their

music-lessons about here, Oi’m thinkin’, afther th’ day’s wurruk.”

The Irishman, with his instinctive loquacity, had expressed what none

of the rest would have considered politic to hint. It was like the

giving way of the pebble that starts the avalanche. Soon they were deep

in tales of lynchings. Peter knew only too well the trend of their

talk, the “XXX” men were feeling the public pulse, as it were. Now,

according to the unwritten code of the plains, lynching was “meet,

right, just, and available” for the cattle-thief. And Peter felt

himself false to his creed, false to his employer, false to himself, in

seeking to evade the question. And yet that pitiful cabin, the

white-faced woman running to the door so often that she knew not what

she did, and the little rosy boy, who had put out his arms so

trustfully! Peter broke into their grewsome yarning. “Lord, but you’re

like a lot of old women just come from a funeral!”

“Whin the carpse died hard, and th’ wake was a success.” Costigan

turned over. “Werra, werra, but we’ll be seein’ fairies the night!”

A “XXX” man turned his head with a deliberate slowness and regarded

Peter with narrowing eyes: “If the subject of cattle-thieves and their

punishment is unpleasant to the gentleman from New York, perhaps he

will favor us with something more cheerful.” It was the same man who

had given the two definitions of the “H L” brand that morning at the

round-up.

“Delighted,” said Peter, affecting not to notice the significance of

the man’s remark. “Did you ever hear of the time that Tony Neville was

burned with snow?”

The “XXX” man yawned long and audibly. No one seemed especially

interested in Tony Neville’s having been burned with snow, but Peter

struck out manfully, just in time to head off a man who said that he

had seen Jim Rodney or some one who looked like him, following the

trail-herd.

“Once on a time, when it paid to be a cattle-man,” began Peter, “there

was an outfit near Laramie that hailed from the United Kingdom, every

mother’s son of them. A fine, manly lot of fellows, but wedded to

calamity along of their cooks—not the revered range article,” and Peter

waved his hand towards the “W-square” cook, who was one of the party,

“but the pampered ranch article that boasts a real stove, planted in a

real kitchen, the spoiled darling that never has to light a fire out of

wet wood in the rain.

“These unhappy Britons had every species of ill luck that could befall

an outfit, in the way of cooks; they were of every nationality, age,

and sex, and they stole, drank, quarrelled, till the outfit determined

to sweep the house clear of them and do its own cooking. Every man was

to have a turn at it for a week. There was a Scotchman, who gave them

something called ‘pease bannocks,’ three times a day; followed by an

Irishman, who breakfasted them on potatoes and whiskey. There was an

Englishman, who had a beef slaughtered every time he fancied a

tenderloin. There was a Welshman, who sang as he cooked. There were as

many different kinds of indigestion as there were men in the outfit.

They would beg to do night-herding, anything to get them away from that

ranch. Finally, when their little tummies got so bad that their

overcoats thickened, or wore through, or whatever happens to stomachs’

overcoats that are treated unkindly, some one’s maiden aunt sent him a

tract saying that rice was the salvation of the human race, as witness

the Chinese. Whosever turn it was to cook that week determined to try

the old lady’s prescription. Rice was procured, about a peck, I think;

and the man who was cooking, pro tem, put the entire quantity on to

boil in a huge ham-boiler, over a slow fire, as per the directions of

the maiden aunt. The rice seemed to be doing nicely, when some one came

in and said that a bunch of antelope was over on the hills and there

was a good chance to get a couple. Every man got his gun, all but the

cook, and he looked at the rice, that hadn’t done a thing over the slow

fire, in a way that would melt your heart. ‘Just my luck that it should

be my week to pot-wrestle when there’s good hunting right at one’s

front door.’

“‘Oh, come on,’ some one said. ‘Didn’t Kellett’s aunt say the rice

ought to be cooked over a slow fire? Kellett, get your aunt’s letter

and read the directions for cooking that rice again.’

“The cook didn’t need a second invitation, and they got into their

saddles, cook and all, and went for the antelope.

“Now antelope are not like stationary wash-tubs; they move about. And

when that particular outfit arrived at the spot where those antelope

were last seen, they had moved, but the boys found traces of them, and

continued on their trail. They went in the foot-hills and they searched

for those antelope all day. They caught up with old man Hall’s outfit

at dinner-time and were invited to take a bite. Coming home by way of

the ‘Circle-Star’ ranch, Colonel Semmes asked them in to have a

mint-julep; the colonel was a South Carolinian, and he had just

succeeded in raising some mint. They had several—I fear more than

several—drinks before leaving for home, with never a trace of antelope

nor a thought of the rice cooking over the slow fire. The colonel

remembered some hard cider that he had, and topping off on that, they

set out. The weather was pretty warm, and on their way home they

experienced some remorse over the hard cider. Now hard cider is an

accumulative drink; it piles up interest like debt or unpaid taxes. And

by the time those Englishmen had turned the little lane leading into

their home corral, they saw a sight that made their sombreros rise. As

I have said before, it was hot, being somewhere in the month of August.

Gentlemen, I hardly expect you to believe me when I say it was snowing

on their house, and not on another God blessed thing in the landscape.

“The blame thing about it was, that every man took the phenomenon to be

his own private view of snakes, or their bibulous equivalent,

manifested in another and more terrifying form. Here was the August sun

pouring down on the plain where their ranch-house was situated;

everything in sight hot and dry as a lime-kiln, grasshoppers chirping

in a hot-wave prophecy, and snow covering the house and the ground,

about to what seemed a depth of four inches. Every one of them felt

sensitive about mentioning what he saw to the others. You see,

gentlemen, being unfamiliar with American drinks, and especially old

Massachusetts cider, they merely looked to keep their saddles and no

questions asked.

“But when they got a bit closer the horror increased. Flying right out

of their windows were perfect drifts of snow, banks of it, gentlemen,

and the thermometer up past a hundred. One of the men looked about him

and noticed the pallor on the faces of the rest:

“‘Do you notice anything strange, old chap? These cursed American

drinks!’

“‘Strange!’—the boy he had spoken to was about eighteen, a nice,

red-cheeked English lad out with his uncle learning the cattle

business. ‘Good God!’ the boy said. ‘I’ve always tried to lead a good

life, and here I am a paretic before I’ve come of age.’

“They halted their horses and held a consultation. The boss came to the

conclusion that since they had all seen it, there was nothing to do but

continue the investigation and send the details to the ‘Society for

Psychical Research,’ when he got down from his horse and walked towards

the door of the house. At his approach, as if to rebuke his wanton

curiosity, a great blast of snow blew out of the window and got him

full in the face. He howled—the snow was scalding hot.

“Then they remembered the rice.”

“Is that all?” demanded the man who had wanted to talk about rustling.

“Isn’t it enough?” said Peter, who could afford to be magnanimous, now

that he had accomplished his point.

“When I first heard that story, ’bout ten years ago, it ended with the

Britishers riding like hell over to the Wolcott ranch to borrow

umbrellas to keep off the hot rice while they got into the house,” said

the man, still sulky.

“That’s the way they tell it to tenderfeet,” and Peter turned on his

heel. The story-telling for the evening was over, the boys got their

blankets and set about making their beds for the night.

XIII.

Mary’s First Day In Camp

The first day spent as governess to the family of Yellett reminded Mary

Carmichael of those days mentioned in the opening chapter of Genesis,

days wherein whole geological ages developed and decayed. Any era,

geological or otherwise, she felt might have had its rise, decline, and

fall during that first day spent in a sheep camp.

She awoke to the sound of faint tinklings, and accepted the towering

peaks of the Wind River mountains, with their snowy mantles all shadowy

in the whitening dawn, and the warmer grays of huddling foot-hills, as

one receives, without question, the fantastic visions of sleep. The

faint tinkling grew nearer, mingled with a light pitter patter and a

far off baa-ing and bleating; then, as shadowy as the sheep in dreams,

a great flock came winding round the hill; in and out through the

sage-brush they went and came, elusive as the early morning shadows

they moved among. The air was crystalline and sparkling; creation’s

first morning could not have promised more. It would have been

inconsistent in such a place to waken in a house; the desert, that

seemed a lifeless sea, the sheep moving like gray shadows, were all

parts of a big, new world that had no need of houses built by hands.

Ben, oldest of the Brobdingnag tribe, who had greeted Mary’s request to

be directed to “the house” as a bit of dry Eastern humor, led the herd

to pasture. Ben’s right-hand man was “Stump,” the collie, so named

because he had no tail worth mentioning, but otherwise in full

possession of his faculties. Stump was newly broken to his official

duties and authority sat heavily on him. Keenly alert, he flew hither

and thither, first after one straying member of the herd, then another,

barking an early morning roll-call as he went. Two other male

Brobdingnags came from some sequestered spot in the landscape and

joined Ben—Mary recognized two more pupils.

Mrs. Yellett then unrolled the pillow constructed the night previous of

such garments as she had been willing to dispense with, and put them

on. The vastness of her surroundings did not prevent her from locating

the minutest article, and Mary gave her the respectful admiration of a

woman who has spent a great deal of time searching for things in an

infinitely smaller space. The matriarch then called the remaining

members of her household officially—the Misses Yellett accomplished

their early morning toilets with the simplicity of young robins. Only

the new governess hung back, but finally mustered up enough courage to

say that if such a thing was possible she would like to have a bath.

Mrs. Yellett greeted her request with the amused tolerance of one who

has never given such a trifle a thought.

“The habit of bathing,” she commented, “is shore like religion: them

that observes it wonders how them that neglects it gets along.” She

beckoned Mary to follow, and led the way to a bunch of willows that

grew about a stone’s-throw from the camp. “Here be a whole creek full

of water, if you don’t lack the fortitood. It’s cold enough to sell for

ten cents a glass down to Texas.”

Somewhat dismayed, Mary stepped gingerly into the creek. Its intense

cold numbed her at first, but a second later awoke all her young

lustiness, and she returned to camp in a fine glow of courage to

encounter whatever else there might be of novelty. Mrs. Yellett was

preparing breakfast at a sheet-iron stove, assisted by Cacta and

Clematis.

“Your hankering after a bath like this”—she added another handful of

flour to the biscuit dough—“do shore remind me of an Englishman who

come to visit near Laramie in the days of plenty, when steers had

jumped to forty-five. This yere Britisher was exhibit stock, shore

enough, being what’s called a peer of the realm, which means, in his

own country, that he is just nacherally entitled from the start to

h’ist his nose high.

“The outfit he was goin’ to visit wasn’t in the habit of havin’ peers

drop in on them casual, but they aimed to make him feel that he wasn’t

the first of the herd that headed that way by a quart”—she cut four

biscuits with a tin cup, and resumed—“to which end they rounded up

every specimen of canned food that’s ever come across the Rockies.

“‘Let him ask for “salmon esplinade,” let him ask for “chicken

marine-go,” let him ask for plum-pudding, let him ask for hair-oil or

throat lozengers, this yere outfit calls his bluff,’ says Billy Ames,

who owns the ‘twin star’ outfit and is anticipatin’ this peer as a

guest.

“Well, just as everything is ready, the can-opener, sharp as a razor,

waitin’ to open up such effete luxuries as the peer may demand, Bill

Ames gets called to California by the sickness of his wife. He feels

mean about abandonin’ the peer, but he don’t seem to have no choice,

his wife bein’ one of them women who shares her bad health pretty

impartially round the family. So Billy he departs. But before he goes

he expounds to Joplin Joe, his foreman, the nature of a peer and how

his wants is apt to be a heap fashionable, and that when he asks for

anything to grasp the can-opener and run to the store-house—Cacta, you

put on the coffee!

“That peer arrives in the afternoon, and he never makes a request any

more than a corpse. Beyond a marked disposition to herd by himself and

to maintain the greatest possible distance between his own person and a

six-shooter, he don’t vary none from the bulk of tenderfeet. At night,

when all parties retires, and Joplin Joe ponders on them untouched,

effete luxuries in the store-room, and how the can-opener ’ain’t once

been dimmed in the cause of hospitality, it frets him considerable, and

he feels he ain’t doin’ his duty to the absent Billy Ames.

“At sunrise he can stand it no longer. He thunders on the Britisher’s

door with the butt of his six-shooter, calling out:

“‘Peer, peer, be you awake?’

“The peer allowed he was, though his teeth was rattling like broken

crockery.

“‘Peer, would you relish some “salmon esplinade”?’

“The peer allowed he wouldn’t.

“‘Peer, would you relish some “chicken marine-go”?’

“The peer allowed he shore wouldn’t, and the crockery rattled harder

than ever. Joplin Joe then tried him on the hair-oil and the throat

lozengers, the peer declining each with thanks.

“‘Peer,’ said Joplin Joe, fair busting with hospitality, ‘is there

anything in this Gawd’s world that you do want?’

“The crockery rattled an interlood, then Joplin Joe made out:

“‘Thanks, very much. I should like a ba-ath’—Clematis, you see if them

biscuits is brownin’.

“Joe he ran to the store-room, and his eye encountered a barrel of

corned-beef. He calls to a couple of cow-punchers, and the first thing

you know that late corned steer is piled onto the prairie and them

cow-punchers is hustling the empty barrel in to the peer. Next they

detaches the steps from the kitchen door, ropes ’em to the barrel and

introduces the peer to his bath. He’s good people all right, and when

he sees they calls his bluff he steps in all right and lets ’em soak

him a couple of buckets. This here move restores all parties to a

mutual understanding, and the peer he bathes in the corned-beef barrel

regular durin’ his stay—you see the habit had cinched him.”

Ned had shot an antelope a day or two previous, and antelope steak,

broiled over a glowing bed of wood coals, with black coffee, stewed

dried apples, and soda biscuit made up what Mary found to be an

unexpectedly palatable breakfast. As camp did not include a cow, no

milk or butter was served with meals. Nevertheless, the hungry

tenderfoot was quite content, and missed none of the appurtenances she

had been brought up to believe essential to a civilized meal, not even

the little silver jug that Aunt Martha always insisted came over with

William the Conqueror—Aunt Martha scorned the _May-flower_ contingent

as parvenus.

The family sat on the grass, tailor fashion, and every one helped

himself to what appetite prompted, in a fashion that suggested

brilliant gymnastic powers. To pass a dish to any one, the governess

discovered, was construed as an evidence of mental weakness and

eccentricity. The family satisfied its appetite without assistance or

amenities, but with the skill of a troupe of jugglers.

Breakfast was half over when Mrs. Yellett laid down her knife, which

she had handled throughout the meal with masterly efficiency. Mary

watched her in hopeless embarrassment, and wondered if her own timid

use of a tin fork could be construed as an unfriendly comment upon the

Yelletts’ more simple and direct code of table etiquette.

“Land’s sakes! I just felt, all the time we’ve been eating, we was

forgettin’ something. You children ought to remember, I got so much on

my mind.”

All eyes turned anxiously to the cooking-stove, while an expression of

frank regret began to settle over the different faces. The backbone of

their appetites had been broken, and there was something else, perhaps

something even more appetizing, to come.

Interpreting the trend of their glance and expression, up flared Mrs.

Yellett, with as great a show of indignation as if some one had set a

match to her petticoats.

“I declare, I never see such children; no more nacheral feelin’s than a

herd of coyotes; never thinks of a plumb thing but grub. No, make no

mistake about the character of the objec’ we’ve forgot. ’Tain’t sweet

pertaters, ’tain’t molasses, ’tain’t corn-bread—it’s paw! It’s your

pore old paw—him settin’ in the tent, forsook and neglected by his own

children.”

All started up to remedy their filial neglect without loss of time, but

Mrs. Yellett waved them back to their places.

“Don’t the whole posse of you go after him, like he’d done something

and was to be apprehended. Ben, you go after your father.”

Ben strode over to the little white tent that Mary had noticed

glimmering in the moonlight the preceding evening, and presently

emerged, supporting on his arm a partially paralyzed old man, who might

have been Rip Van Winkle in the worst of tempers. His white hair and

beard encircled a shrivelled, hawklike face, the mouth was sucked back

in a toothless eddy that brought tip of nose and tip of chin into

whispering distance, the eyes glittered from behind the overhanging,

ragged brows like those of a hungry animal searching through the brush

for its prey.

“If you’ve done eatin’,” whispered Mrs. Yellett to Miss Carmichael,

“you’d better run on. Paw’s langwidge is simply awful when we forget to

bring him to meals.” Mary ran on.

When, after the lapse of some thirty minutes or so, the stentorian

voice of Mrs. Yellett recalled Mary to camp, she found that the tin

breakfast service had been washed and returned to the mess-box, the

beds had been neatly folded and piled in one of the wagons—in fact, the

extremely simple tent-hold, to coin a word, was in absolute order. It

was just 6 A.M., and Mrs. Yellett thought it high time to begin school.

Mary tried to convey to her that the hour was somewhat unusual, but she

seemed to think that for pupils who were beginning their tasks

comparatively late in life it would be impossible to start sufficiently

early in the morning. So at this young and tender hour, with many

misgivings, Mary set about preparing her _al fresco_ class-room.

She chose a nice, flat little piece of the United States, situated in

the shade of the clump of willows that bordered a trickling creek not

far from her sylvan bath-room of the early morning. How she was to sit

on the ground all day and yet preserve a properly pedagogical demeanor

was the first question to be settled. That there was nothing even

remotely resembling a chair in camp she felt reasonably assured, as

“paw” was sitting on an inverted soap-box under a pine-tree, and “paw,”

by reason of age and infirmity, appropriated all luxuries. Mrs.

Yellett, with her usual acumen, grasped the situation.

“I’m figgerin’,” she commented, “that there must be easier ways of

governin’ than sittin’ up like a prairie-dog while you’re at it.”

Mrs. Yellett took a hurried survey of the camp, lessening the distance

between herself and one of the light wagons with a gait in which grace

was entirely subservient to speed; then, with one capacious wrench of

the arms, she loosened the spring seat from the wagon and bore it to

the governess with an artless air of triumph. It was difficult, under

these circumstances, to explain to Mrs. Yellett that without that

symbol of scholastic authority, a desk, the wagon seat was useless.

Nevertheless, Mary set forth, with all her eloquence, the mission of a

desk. Mrs. Yellett was genuinely depressed. Had she imported the

magician without his wand—Aladdin without his lamp? She proposed a

bewildering choice—an inverted wash-tub, two buckets sustaining the

relation of caryatides to a board, the sheet-iron cooking-stove. In an

excess of solicitude she even suggested robbing “paw” of his soap-box.

Mary chose the wash-tub on condition that Mrs. Yellett consented to

sacrifice the handles in the cause of lower education. She felt that an

inverted tub that was likely to see-saw during class hours would tend

rather to develop a sense of humor in her pupils than to contribute to

her pedagogical dignity.

The camp, as may already have been inferred, enjoyed a matriarchal form

of government. Its feminine dictator was no exception to the race of

autocrats in that she was not an absolute stranger to the rosy byways

of self-indulgence. There was a strenuous quality in her pleasuring

perhaps not inconsistent in one whose daily tasks included

sheep-herding, ditch-digging, varied by irrigating and shearing in

their proper seasons. Under the circumstances, it was not surprising

that her wash-tub bore about the same relationship to her real duties

as does the crochet needle or embroidery hoop to the lives of less

arduously engaged women. It was at once her fad and her relaxation, the

dainty feminine accomplishment with which she whiled away the hours

after a busy day spent with pick and shovel. Of all this Mary was

ignorant when she proposed that Mrs. Yellett saw off the tub-handles in

the cause of culture. However, Mrs. Yellett procured a saw, yet the

hand that held it lingered in its descent on the handles. She

contemplated the tub as affectionately as Hamlet regarding the skull of

“Alas, poor Yorick!”

“This,” she observed, “is the only thing about camp that reminds me I’m

a woman. I’d plumb forget it many a time if it warn’t for this little

tub. The identity of a woman is mighty apt to get mislaid when dooty

compels her to assoome the pants cast aside by the nacheral head of the

house in sickness or death. It’s ben six years now since paw’s done a

thing but set ’round and wait for meals.” Mrs. Yellett sighed

laboriously. “Not that I’m holdin’ it agin him none. When a man sees

eighty, it’s time he bedded himself down comfortable and waited for the

nacheral course of events to weed him out. But when the boys get old

enough to tend to herdin’, irrigatin’, and the work that God A’mighty

provided that man might get the chance to sweat hisself for bread,

accordin’ to the Scriptures, I aim to indulge myself by doin’ a wash of

clothes every day, even if I have to take clean clothes and do ’em over

again.”

The poor “gov’ment’s” tender heart could not resist this presentation

of the case.

“We won’t touch the handles, Mrs. Yellett,” she laughed. “I’m glad you

told me you had a personal sentiment for the tub. There are some things

I should feel the same way about—my hoe and rake, for instance, that I

care for my garden with, at home. And that suggests to me, why not dig

two little trenches for the handles and plant the tub? Then I shall

have an even firmer foundation on which to arrange the—the—the

educational miscellany.”

The suggestion of this harmless expedient was gratefully received, and

the “desk” duly implanted, whereupon Mary pathetically sought to

embellish her “class-room” from such scanty materials as happened to be

at hand. A hemstitched bureau scarf that she had tucked in her trunk,

in unquestioning faith in the bureau that was to be part of the ranch

equipment, took the “raw edge,” as it were, off the desk. A bunch of

prairie flowers, flaming cactus blossoms in scarlet and yellow, ox-eyed

daisies, white clematis from the creek, seemed none the less decorative

for the tin cup that held them. Mary grimly told herself that her

school was to have refining influences, even if it had no furniture.

The books, pencils, and paper arranged in decorous little piles, Miss

Carmichael announced to her patroness that school was ready to open.

Mrs. Yellett, who had never heard that “a soft voice is an excellent

thing in woman,” and whose chest-notes were not unlike those of a

Durham in sustained volume of sound, made the valley of the Wind River

echo with the summons of the pupils to school, upon which the teacher

herself was overcome by the absurdity of the situation and had barely

time to escape back of the willows, where she laughed till she cried.

As the pupils trooped obediently to school, Mary noted that they

carried no flowers to their dear teacher, but that Ben, the oldest

pupil, twenty-one years old, six feet four inches in height and deeply

saturnine in manner, carried a six-shooter in his cartridge-belt. The

teacher felt that she was the last to deny a pupil any reasonable

palliative of the tedium of class-hours—the nearness of her own

school-days inclined her to leniency in this particular—but she was

hardly prepared to condone a six-shooter, and confided her fears to

Mrs. Yellett, who received them with the indulgent tolerance a

strong-minded woman might extend to the feminine flutter aroused by a

mouse. She explained that Ben did not shoot for “glory,” but to defend

the herd from the casual calls of mountain-lions, bears, and coyotes.

Jack and Ned, who were very nearly as tall as their older brother,

carried similar weapons. Mary prayed that a fraternal spirit might

dwell among her pupils.

The Misses Yellett were hardly less terrifying than their brothers.

They had their father’s fierce, hawklike profile, softened by youth,

and the appalling height and robustness due to the freedom and fresh

air of a nomadic existence. Their costumes might, Mary thought, have

been fashioned out of gunny-sacks by the simple expedient of cutting

holes for the head and arms. The description of the dress worn by the

charcoal-burner’s daughter in any mediaeval novel of modern

construction would approximate fairly well the school toilets of these

young lady pupils. The boys wore overalls and flannel shirts, which, in

contrast to the sketchy effects of their sisters’ costumes, seemed

almost modish. Mrs. Yellett then left the “class-room,” saying she must

take Ben’s place with the sheep.

The Brobdingnags, huge of stature, sinister of aspect, deeply

distrustful of the rites in which they were about to participate,

closed in about their teacher. From the pigeon-holes of memory Mary

drew forth the academic smile with which a certain teacher of hers had

invariably opened school. The pupils greeted the academic smile with

obvious suspicion. No one smiled in camp. When anything according with

their conception of the humorous happened, they laughed uproariously.

Thus, early in the morning, on his way to breakfast, Ned had stumbled

over an ax and severely cut his head. Every one but Ned saw the point

of this joke immediately, and hearty guffaws testified to their

appreciation.

Miss Carmichael took her place behind the upturned tub.

“Will you please be seated?” she said.

The class complied with the instantaneous precision of automata newly

greased and in excellent working order. Their abrupt obedience was

disconcerting. Some one must have been drilling them, thought their

anxious teacher, in the art of simultaneous squatting. The temper of

the class respecting scholastic deportment leaned towards rigidity

bordering on self-torture.

Mary made out a roll-call, and by unanimous consent it was agreed to

arrange the class as it then stood, or rather squatted, with the

Herculean Ben at the top, and gradually diminishing in size till it

reached the vanishing point with Cacta, who was ten and the least

terrifying of all.

“And now,” ventured the teacher, with the courage of a white rabbit,

“what have you been in the habit of studying?”

Absolute silence on the part of the class, which confronted its

questioner straight as a row of bottles, presenting faces imperturbable

as so many sphinxes.

Other questions met with an equally disheartening response. Miss

Carmichael sat up straight, pushed back the persistent curls from her

face, and bent every energy towards the achievement of a “firm”

demeanor.

“Clematis,” said she, wisely selecting perhaps the least formidable of

the class, “I want you to give me some idea of the kind of work you

have been doing, so that we may all be able to understand each other.

Now, in your mathematics, for instance, which of you have finished with

your arithmetic, and which—”

“What do you mean?” begged Clematis, somewhat tearful.

“Where are you in your arithmetic?

“Nowhere, ma’am.”

“Do you mean you have never learned any?” Mary Carmichael shuddered as

she icily put the question.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Is that the case with all of you?”

Emphatic nods left no room for doubt.

“Then we’ll leave that for the present. If you will tell me, Clematis,

what kind of work you have been doing in your history and English, we

will get to work on those to-day. What books have you been using?”

Not unnaturally, Clematis, who was emotional and easily impressed,

began to feel as though she were a criminal. She sobbed in a helpless,

feminine way. Ben spoke up, fearsomely, from the top of the class.

“We ’ain’t got no books,” said he, in grim rebuke, as though to put an

end to a profitless discussion.

“Do you wish me to understand,” quavered Mary, “that you have had no

studies—that you—can’t read?—that you—don’t know—anything?”

“That’s it,” said Ben, with the nearest approach to cheerfulness he had

yet manifested.

Meanwhile there lay on the teacher’s “desk” copies of Clodd’s

_Childhood of the World_, two of that excellent series of _History

Primers_, and _The Young Geologist_, all carefully selected, in the

fulness of Mary’s ignorance, for the little pupils of her imagination.

She had brought no primer, as Mrs. Yellett’s letter had distinctly said

that the youngest child was ten and that all were comparatively

advanced in their studies. More than ever Mary longed to penetrate the

mystery of that Irish linen decoy, for without doubt it was to be her

melancholy fate to conduct this giant band through the alphabet!

Accordingly she wrote out the letters of the alphabet with large

simplicity and a sublime renunciation of flourish. The class received

it tepidly. Mary grew eloquent over its unswerving verities. The class

remained lukewarm. The difference between a and b was a matter of

indifference to the house of Yellett. They regarded their teacher’s

strenuous efforts to furnish a key to the acquirement of the alphabet

with the amused superiority of “grown-ups” watching infant antics with

pencil and paper. Meanwhile her fear of the class increased in

proportion as her ability to hold its attention diminished. The

backbone of the school was plainly wilting. The little scholars, armed

to the teeth, no longer sat up straight as tenpins. After twenty-five

minutes of educational experience, satiety bowled them over.

A single glance had convinced Ben that the alphabet was beneath

contempt. He yawned automatically at regular intervals—long, dismal

yawns that threatened to terminate in a howl, the unchecked, primitive

type of yawn that one hears in the cages of the zoological gardens on a

dull day. Miss Carmichael raised interrogatory eyebrows, but she might

as well have looked reproof at a Bengal tiger.

The class was rapidly promoted to c-a-t, cat; but these dizzy

intellectual heights left them cold and dull. Ben began to clean his

revolver, and on being asked why he did not pay attention to his

lessons, answered, briefly:

“It’s all d——d foolishness.”

Cacta and Clem were pulling each other’s hair. Mary affected not to see

this sisterly exchange of torture. Ned whittled a stick; and, in

chorus, when their teacher told them that d-o-g spelled dog, they

shouted derision, and affirmed that they had no difficulty in

compelling the obedience of Stump even without this particular bit of

erudition. Though Mary had always abhorred corporal punishment, she

began to see arguments in its favor.

With the handleless tub as an elbow-rest the teacher took counsel with

herself. Strategy must be employed with the intellectual conquest of

the Brobdingnags. Summoning all the pedagogical dignity of which she

was capable, she asked:

“Boys, don’t you want to know how to read?”

“Noap,” responded the head of the class.

“Don’t you want to know how to write?”

“Noap.”

“But, my dear boy, what would you do if you left here and went out into

the world, where every one knows these things and your ignorance would

be evident at every turn. What would you do?”

“Slug the whole blamed outfit!”

Mary looked at her watch. School had lasted just forty-five minutes.

Had time become petrified?

XIV.

Judith Adjusts The Situation

Mary had been a member of the Yellett household for something over a

week, and the intellectual conquest of her Brobdingnag pupils seemed as

hopeless as on that first day. School seemed to be regarded by them as

a sort of neutral territory, admirably adapted for the settlement of

long-standing grudges, the pleasant exchange of practical jokes, peace

and war conferences; also as a mart of trade, where fire-arms, knives,

bear and elk teeth might be swapped with a greater expenditure of time

and conversation than under the maternal eye. “Teacher,” as she was

understood and accepted by the house of Yellett, undoubtedly filled a

long-felt want. Presiding over a school of six-imp power for a week,

however, had humbled Mary to the point of seriously considering a

letter to the home government, meekly asking for return transportation.

But this was before feminine wile had struggled with feminine vanity,

and feminine wile won the day. School still continued to open at six,

from which early and unusual hour it continued, without recess or

interruption, till noon, when dinner pleasantly invaded the scholastic

monotony, to the infinite relief of all parties concerned.

Mary had dismissed her pupils a few minutes before the usual hour, on a

particularly bad day, that she might rally her scattered faculties and

present something of a countenance to the watchful eye of Mrs. Yellett.

Every element of humor had vanished from the situation. The inverted

tub was no longer a theme for merriment in her diary; home-life without

a house was no longer a diverting epigram; she had closed her eyes that

she might not see the mountains in all their grandeur. In her present

mood of abject homesickness the white-capped peaks were part and parcel

of the affront. With head sunk in the palms of her hands, and elbows

resting on the inverted tub, Mary presented a picture of woe, in which

the wicked element of comedy was not wholly lacking. Looking up

suddenly, she saw Judith Rodney advancing. The first glimpse of her put

Mary in a more rational mood.

“I’m so glad to see you! Behold my class-room appointments! They may

seem a trifle novel, but, for that matter, so are my pupils,” began

Mary, determining to present the same front to Judith that she had to

Mrs. Yellett. But Judith was not to be put off. She looked into Mary’s

eyes and did not relax her gaze until she was rewarded with an

answering twinkle. Then Mary laughed long and merrily, the first good,

hearty laugh since the beginning of her teaching.

“Tell me,” Mary broke out, suddenly, “or the suspense will kill me, who

wrote that lovely letter—on such good quality Irish linen, too? Snob

that I was, it was the letter that did it.”

“So you have your suspicions that it was not a home product?”

“You didn’t do it, did you?”

“Oh no; though I was asked, and so was Miss Wetmore, I believe. Of

course poor Mrs. Yellett had no other recourse, as I suppose you know.

I chose to be disobliging that time, and was sorry for it

afterwards—sorry when I heard about the letter that really went! Do you

find the sheep-wagon so very dreadful?”

“I thought,” laughed Mary, “that it was going to be like a picture I

saw in a magazine, Mexican hammocks, grass cushions, and a lady pouring

tea from a samovar; instead it was the sheep-wagon and ‘Do you sleep

light or dark?’ There is Mrs. Yellett calling us to dinner. Shall I

have a chance to talk to you alone afterwards?”

“I’ve come all the way from Dax’s to see you,” explained Judith, with

characteristic directness. “We have all the afternoon.”

“Really!” Mary displayed a flash of school-girl enthusiasm. “I feel as

if I could almost bear the scenery.”

Presumably Judith was a favorite guest of the Yellett household, and

not without reason. She took her place in the circle about the homely,

steaming fare, with an ease and grace that suggested that dining off

the ground was an every-day affair with her, and chairs and tables

undreamed-of luxuries. Mary envied her ready tact. Why could she not

meet these people with Judith’s poise—bring out the best of them, as

she did? The boys talked readily and naturally—there was even a flavor

to what they said. As for herself, try never so conscientiously and she

would be confronted by frank amusement or shy distrust. Even “paw”

beamed at Judith appreciatively as he consumed his meal with infinite,

toothless labor. The Spartan family became almost sprightly under the

pleasantly stimulating influence of its guest.

“What kind of basques are they wearing this summer, Judy?” inquired

Mrs. Yellett, regarding her guest’s trim shirt-waist judicially. “I

reckon them loose, meal-sack things must be all the go since you and

Miss Mary both have ’em; but give me a good, tight-fittin’ basque,

every time. How’s any one to know whether you got a figure or not, in a

thing that never hits you anywhere?” questioned the matriarch, not

without a touch of pride anent her own fine proportions.

“You really ought to have a shirt-waist, Mrs. Yellett. You’ve no idea

of the comfort of them, till you’ve worn them.”

“I don’t see but I’ll have to come to it.” Her tone was frankly

regretful, as one who feels obliged to follow the behests of fashion,

yet, in so doing, sacrifices a cherished ideal. Mary Carmichael choked

over her coffee in an abortive attempt to restrain her audible

hilarity. Judith, without a trace of amusement, was discussing

materials, cut, and buttons; the plainswoman had proved herself the

better gentlewoman of the two.

“Get me a spotty calico, white, with a red dot, will you, the next time

you’re over to Ervay? Buttons accordin’ to your judgment; but if you

could get some white chiny with a red ring, I think they’d match it

handsome.” She frowned reflectively. “You’re sure one of them loose,

hangy things ’d become me? Then you can bring it over Tuesday, when you

come to the hunt.”

“What hunt?” asked Judith, in all simplicity.

“Why, the wolf-hunt. Peter Hamilton come here three days ago and made

arrangements for ’em all to have supper here after it was done. ’Lowed

there was a young Eastern lady in the party, Miss Colebrooke, who

couldn’t wait to meet me. Course you’re goin’, Judy? You’ve plumb

forgot it, or somethin’ happened to the messenger. Who ever hyeard tell

of anythin’ happenin’ in this yere county ’thout you bein’ the very

axle of it?”

Judith had not betrayed her chagrin by the least change of countenance.

To the most searching glance every faculty was intent on the

shirt-waist with the ringed buttons. Yet both women felt—by a species

of telepathy wholly feminine—that Judith was deeply wounded. Loyal

Sarah Yellett decided that Hamilton’s guests would get but a scant

supper from her if her friend Judith was to be unfavored with an

invitation, while Judith, in her own warm heart, resented as deeply as

Peter’s slight of herself, his tale of Miss Colebrooke’s impatience to

meet Mrs. Yellett. The matriarch’s dominant personality evoked many a

smile even from those most deeply conscious of her worth; but it wasn’t

like Peter to make a spectacle of his ruggedly honest neighbor.

Nevertheless she remarked, coolly:

“I sha’n’t be able to bring your shirt-waist things up Tuesday, I’m

afraid, Mrs. Yellett, but I’ll try to bring them towards the end of the

week.” Then, with a swift change of subject, “How are the boys getting

on with their education, Miss Carmichael?”

The boys looked at Mary out of the corners of their eyes. Their prowess

in the field of letters had not been publicly discussed before. Mary

Carmichael, emboldened by Judith’s presence, looked at her tormentors

with a judicious glance.

“The girls are doing fairly well,” she replied, suppressing the

mischief in her eyes, “but the boys, poor fellows, I think something

must be the matter with them. Did they ever fall on their heads when

they were babies, Mrs. Yellett?”

“Not more than common. All babies fall on their heads; it’s as common

as colic.”

“Poor boys!” said Mary, with a manner that suggested they were miles

away, rather than within a few feet of her. “Poor boys! I’ve never seen

anything like it. They try so hard, too, yet they can make nothing of

work that would be play for a child of three. They must have fallen on

their heads harder than you supposed, Mrs. Yellett.”

“Perhaps their skulls were a heap frailer than I allowed for at the

time,” said Mrs. Yellett, with similar remoteness, yet with a twinkle

that showed Mary she understood the situation.

“An infant’s skull doesn’t stand much knocking about, I suppose, Mrs.

Yellett?”

“Not a great deal, if there ain’t plenty of vinegar and brown paper

handy, and I seldom had such fancy fixings in camp. It’s too bad my

boys should be dumb ’n account of a little thing like vinegar and brown

paper.”

“Maw, they be dumb as Injuns,” declared Cacta, preening herself, while

the Messrs. Yellett reapplied themselves to their dinner with

ostentatious interest.

“Well, well!” said Mrs. Yellett; “it be a hard blow to me to know that

my sons are lackings; there’s mothers I know as would give vent to

their disapp’inted ambition in ways I’d consider crool to the

absent-minded. Now hearken, the whole outfit of you! Any offspring of

mine now present and forever after holding his peace, who proves

feebleminded by the end of the coming week, takes over all the work,

labor, and chores of such offspring as demonstrates himself in full

possession of his faculties, the matter to be reported on by the

gov’ment.”

No sovereign, issuing a proclamation of war, could have assumed a more

formidable mien than Mrs. Yellett, squatting erect on the prairie,

crowned by her rabbit-skin cap. Mary and Judith, with bland, impassive

expressions, noted the effect of the mandate. There was not the

faintest symptom of rebellion; each Brobdingnag accepted the

matriarch’s edict without a murmur.

With an air of further meditation on the efficacy of brown paper and

vinegar at the crucial moment, Mrs. Yellett suddenly observed:

“The lacking, like the dog, may be taught to fetch and carry a book;

but to learn it he is unable.”

“Maw, does it say that in the Book of Hiram?” asked Clematis.

“It says that, an’ more, too. It says, ‘The words of the wise are an

expense, but the lovin’ parent don’t grudge ’em.’”

Mary Carmichael had noticed, as her alien presence came to be less of a

check on Mrs. Yellett’s natural medium of expression, that she was much

addicted to a species of quotation with which she impartially adorned

her conversation, pointed family morals, or administered an occasional

reproof. These family aphorisms were sometimes semi-legal, sometimes

semi-scriptural in turn of phrase, and built on a foundation of homely

philosophy. They were ascribed to the “Book of Hiram” and never failed

of salutary effect in the family circle. But the apt quotations that

she had just heard piqued Mary’s curiosity more than before.

“Do you happen to have a copy of the Book of Hiram, Mrs. Yellett?” she

asked, in all innocence, supposing that the ‘homely apothegms were to

be found at the back of some patent-medicine almanac. Judith Rodney

listened in wonder. The question had never before been asked in her

hearing.

“I lost mine.” Mrs. Yellett folded her arms and looked at her

questioner with something of a challenging mien.

“What a pity! I’ve been so interested in the quotations I’ve heard you

make from it.”

“What’s the matter with ’em?” she demanded, pride and apprehension

equally commingled.

Judith Rodney rushed to the rescue:

“Nothing is the matter with them, Mrs. Yellett,” she said, with her

disarming smile, “except that there is not quite enough to go around.”

The matriarch had the air of gathering herself together for something

really worth while. Then she tossed off:

“‘’Tain’t always the quality of the grub that confers the flavor, but

sometimes the scarcity thereof.’”

Perhaps it has been the good-fortune of some of us to say a word of

praise to an author, while unconscious of his relationship to the book

praised. Mark the genial glow radiating from every feature of our

auditor! How we feel ourselves anointed with his approval, our good

taste and critical faculty how commended! It is a luxury that goes a

long way towards mitigating the discomfitures caused by the reverse of

this unctuous blunder.

“The Book of Hiram,” said Mrs. Yellett, angling for time, “is a book—it

do surprise me that it escapes your notice back East. You ever heard

tell of the Book of Mormon?”

Mary assented.

“Well, the Book of Hiram is like the Book of Mormon, only a heap more

undefiled. The youngest child can read it without asking a single

embarrassing question of its elder, and the oldest sinner can read it

without having any fleshly meditations intrudin’ on his piety.”

The Yellett family had by this time dispersed itself for the afternoon,

and the matriarch and the two girls started in to clear away the meal

and wash the dishes.

“That’s the kind of book for me,” continued Mrs. Yellett, vigorously

swishing about in the soapy water. “Story-books don’t count none with

me these days. It’s my opinion that things are snarled up a whole lot

too much in real life without pestering over the anguish of print

folks. Flesh and blood suffering goes without a groan of sympathy from

the on-lookers, while novel characters wade to the neck in compassion.

I’ve pondered on that a whole lot, seem’ a heap of indifference to

every-day calamity, and the way I assay it is like this: print folks

has terrible fanciful layouts given to their griefs and worriments by

the authors of their being. The trimmings to their troubles is mighty

attractive. Don’t you reckon I’d be willin’ to have a spell of trouble

if I had a sweeping black velvet dress to do it in? Yes, indeed, I’d be

willin’ to turn a few of them shades of anguish, ‘gray’s ashes,’ ‘pale

as death,’ and so on, if they’d give me the dress novel ladies seems to

have for them special occasions.”

“But you used to like novels, you know you did, Mrs. Yellett,” observed

Judith Rodney.

“Yes, I didn’t always entertain these views concernin’ romance. You

wouldn’t believe it, but there was a time when I just nacherally went

careerin’ round enveloped in fantasies. I was young then—just about the

time I married paw. Every novel that was read to me, I mean that I

read”—Mrs. Yellett blushed a deep copper color through her many coats

of tan—“convinced me that I was the heroine thereof. And, nacherally, I

turned over to paw the feachers and characteristics of the hero in said

book I happened to be enjoyin’ at the time. Paw never knew it, but

sometimes he was a dook, and it was plumb hard work. Just about as hard

as ropin’ a mountain-lion an’ sayin’, ‘remember, you are a sheep from

this time henceforth, and trim your action accordin’.’ I’d say to paw,

‘Let’s walk together in the gloaming, here in this deserted garden’;

and paw would say, ‘Name o’ Gawd, woman, have you lost your mind? It’s

plumb three hundred and fifty miles to the Tivoli beer-garden in

Cheyenne, and it ain’t deserted, either!’

“Then I’d wring my hands in anguish, same as the Lady Mary, an’ paw

would declare I was locoed. He seemed a heap more nacheral when I

pretended he was ‘Black Ranger, the Pirate King.’ His language came in

handy, and his cartridge-belt and pistol all came in Black Ranger’s

outfit. Yes, it was a heap easier playing he was a pirate than a dook.

All this happened back to Salt Lake, where me an’ paw was married.”

Mrs. Yellett looked towards the mountain-range that separated her from

the Mormon country, and her listeners realized that she was verging

perilously close to confidences. Mary Carmichael, who dreaded missing

any detail of the chronicle that dealt with paw in the rôle of

apocryphal duke, hastened to say:

“And you lost your taste for romance, finally?”

“In Salt Lake I was left to myself a whole lot-there was reasons why I

didn’t mingle with the Mormon herd. Paw was mighty attentive to me, but

them was troublous times for paw. I pastures myself with the fleetin’

figures of romance the endoorin’ time and enjoys myself a heap. When

paw wasn’t a dook or a pirate king, unbeknownst to himself, like as not

he was Sir Marmaduke Trevelyun, or somebody entitled to the same amount

of dog.

“’Bout this time a little stranger was due in our midst, and the woman

who came to take care of me was plumb locoed over novels, same as me,

only worse. She just hungered for ’em, same as if she had a longin’ for

something out of season. She brought a batch of them with her in her

trunk, we borrowed her a lot more, some I don’t know how she come by.

But they didn’t have no effect; it was like feedin’ an’ Injun—you

couldn’t strike bottom. She read out of ’em to me with disastrous

results happenin’, an’ that cured me. The brand on this here book that

effected my change of heart was _The Bride of the Tomb_. I forget the

name of the girl in that romance, but she was in hard luck from the

start. She couldn’t head off the man pursooin’ her, any way she turned.

She’d wheel out of his way cl’ar across country, but he’d land thar

fust an’ wait for her, a smile on his satanine feachers.

“I got so wrought up along o’ that book, an’ worried as to the outcome,

’most as bad as the girl. Think of it! An’ me with only three

baby-shirts an’ a flannel petticoat made at the time! Seemed ’s if I

couldn’t hustle my meals fast enough, I just hankered so to know what

was goin’ to happen next! I plumb detested the man with the handsome

feachers, same as the girl. Me an’ her felt precisely alike about him.

And when he shut her up in the family vault I just giv’ up an’ was took

then an’ there, an’ me without so much as finishin’ the flannel

petticoat! I never could endure the sight of a novel since. Perhaps

that’s why Ben is so dumb about his books—just holds a nacheral grudge

against ’em along of my havin’ to borrow slips for him.”

“Has the Book of Hiram anything to say against the habit of novel

reading, Mrs. Yellett?” inquired Judith, demurely.

She paused for a moment. “It’s mighty inconvenient that I should have

mislaid that book, but rounding up my recollections of it, I recall

something like this: ‘Romance is the loco-weed of humanity.’”

“So you don’t approve of the Mormon Bible?” ventured Mary.

“I jest nacherally execrates Mormonism, spoken, printed, or in action,”

she said, with an emphasis that suggested the subject had a strong

personal bearing. “I recall a text from the Book of Hiram touching on

Mormon deportment in particklar an’ human nature at large. It says,

‘Where several women and one man are gathered together for the purpose

of serving the Lord, the man gets the bulk of the service.”

She broke off suddenly, as if she feared she had said too much. “Judy,”

she demanded, “is Mis’ Dax busy with Leander now?”

“Not more than usual,” smiled Judith.

“Jest tell her for me, will you, that I want to hire her husband to do

some herdin’; Leander’s handy, ’n’ can work good an’ sharp, if he is an

infidel. An’ I like to have him over now an’ then, as you know, Judy.

As the Book of Hiram says, ‘It’s neighborly to ease the check-rein of a

gentled husband.’ But you tell him I don’t want to hear any of his

ever-lastin’ fool argufyin’ ’bout religion. Leander ’d stop in the

middle of shearin’ a sheep to argue that Jonah never came out o’ the

whale’s belly. I ain’t no use for infidels, ’less they’re muzzled,

which Leander mos’ generally is.”

With the feeling that there was an excellent though unspoken

understanding between them, the two girls walked together to the top of

the path that wandered away from camp towards a bluff overlooking wave

after wave of foot-hills, lying blue and still like a petrified sea.

“I’m still dying to know who wrote that letter,” begged Mary.

“It was written by a lady who is very anxious to return to Washington,

and she took that means of getting one more vote. Her husband is going

to run for the Senate next term. We hear a good deal of that side of

politics, you know.”

“It was certainly convincing,” remarked the victim of the letter. “My

aunts detected many virtues in the handwriting.”

“But now that you are really here, isn’t it splendid? Mountains are

such good neighbors. They give you their great company and yet leave

you your own little reservations.”

“But I fear I can never feel at home out-of-doors,” Mary announced,

with such a rueful expression that they both smiled.

“Perhaps, then, it depends on the frame of mind. I’ve had longer than

you to cultivate it.”

Mary looked towards the mountains, serene in their strength. “Awesome

as they are,” she laughed, “they don’t frighten me nearly as much as

Ben and Ned. They are really very difficile, my pupils, and I feel so

ridiculous sitting up back of that tub, teaching them letters and the

spelling of foolish words, when they know things I’ve never dreamed of.

The other day, out of a few scratches in the dust that I should never

have given a second glance, one of them made out that some one’s horses

had broken the corral and one was trailing a rope. Whereupon my pupil

got on a horse, went in search of the strays, and returned them to men

going to a round-up. After that, the spelling of cat didn’t seem quite

so much of an achievement as it had before.”

“But they need the spelling of cat so much more than you need to

understand trail-marks. Why don’t you try a little strategy with them?

Perhaps a bribe, even? It seems to me I remember something in history

about the part played in colonization by the bright-colored bead.”

Sundry wood-cuts from a long-forgotten primer history of the United

States came back to Mary. In that tear-stained, dog-eared volume, all

explorers, from Columbus down to Lewis and Clarke, were unfailingly

depicted in the attitude of salesmen displaying squares of cloth to

savages apparently in urgent need of them.

“How stupid of me not to remember Father Marquette concluding

negotiations with a necklace!”

“Frankly plagiarize the terms of your treaty from Père Marquette, and

there you are!”

“You are so splendid!” said Mary, impulsively, remembering Judith’s own

sorrows and the smiling fortitude with which she kept them hidden. “You

make me feel like a horrid little girl that has been whining.”

Judith looked towards the mountains a long time without speaking.

“When you know them well, they whisper great things that little folk

can’t take away.”

She turned back towards camp, walking lightly, with head thrown back.

Mary watched her. Yes, the mountains might have admitted her to their

company.

XV.

The Wolf-hunt

Judith awakened with all the starry infinitude of sky for a canopy. In

the distance loomed the foot-hills, watchful sentinels of her slumbers;

and, sloping gently away from them, rolled the plain, like some smooth,

dark sea flowing deep and silently. Judith, a solitary figure adrift in

that still ocean of space, sat up and watched the stars fade and saw

the young day peer timorously at the world that lay before it. Her

mind, refreshed by long hours of dreamless sleep, turned to the problem

of impending things, serenely contemplative. The passing of many

mornings and many peoples had the mountains seen as the wreathed mists

came and went about their brows, and to all who knew the value of the

gift they gave their great company, and to such as could hear, they

told their great secrets. Judith’s prayer was an outflowing of soul to

the great forces about her, a wish to be in harmony with them, to

remember her kinship, to keep some measure of their serenity in the

press of burdens. The way of the Indian was ever her way when

circumstance raised no barriers; the four walls of a house were a

prison to her after the days lengthened and the summer nights grew

warm. To the infinite disapproval of that custodian of propriety, Mrs.

Dax, she would make her bed beneath the stars, night after night, and

bathe in the cold, clear waters of the stream that purled from the

white-capped crest of the mountains.

“Nasty Injun ways!” scoffed Leander’s masterful lady, consciously

superior from the intrenchment of her stuffy bedroom, that boasted

crochet-work on the backs of the chairs and a scant lace curtain at its

solitary window.

Judith, going to her favorite pool to bathe, saw that it had shrunk

till it seemed but a fairy well hid among the willows. A quarter of a

mile above was another pool, hidden like a jewel in its case of green,

broidered with scarlet roseberries and white clematis; and towards this

she bent her steps, as time was a-plenty that morning. She kept to the

stones of the creek for a pathway, jumping lightly from those that were

moss-grown to those that hid their nakedness in the dark, velvet

shadows of early morning, her white feet touching the shallow stream

like pale gulls that dipped and skimmed. “Diana’s Pool,” as she called

it, was always clear. It lay half hid beneath a shelving rock, a fount

for the tiny, white fall that crooned and sang as it fell. And here she

bathed, as the east flamed where the mountains blackened against it.

Gold halos tipped the clouds, that melted presently into fiery waves,

then burst into one great aureole through which the sun rode

triumphant, and it was day.

She had kept post-office the day before, and it would not be till day

after to-morrow that the squires of the lariat would come again to

offer their hearts, their worldly goods, their complete reformation, if

she would only change her mind. It was all such an old story that she

had grown to regard them with a tenderness almost maternal. But to-day

was all her own, and the spirit of adventure swelled high in her bosom

as she thought of what she had planned. It was warm and close and still

in the Dax house as Judith made her way softly to her own room and

began her preparations for the long journey she was to take afoot. To

walk in the abominations devised by the white man for the purpose of

cramping his feet would have been a serious handicap to Judith. The

twenty miles that she would walk before nightfall was no very great

undertaking to her, but it was part of her primitive directness to

accomplish it with as little expenditure of fatigue and comfort as

possible. Moreover, who could steal through the forest in those heeled

things without announcing his coming and frightening the forest folk,

and sending them skurrying? And Judith loved to surprise them and see

them busy with their affairs—to creep along in her soft, elk-hide

moccasins and catch their watchful eyes and see the things that were

not for the heavy-booted white man.

She might have inspired Kitty Colebrooke to a sonnet as she stepped out

into the glad morning light, in short skirt and jacket, green-clad as

the pines that girdled the mountains, with a knapsack with rations of

bread and meat and the wherewithal to build a fire should she wander

belated. She softly closed the door, not to awaken Leander and his

slumbering lady, and broke into the running gait that the Indians use

on their all-day journeys, the elk-hide moccasins falling soft as

snow-flakes on the trail. Dolly she missed chiefly for her

companionship, for Judith had not the white man’s utter helplessness

without a horse in this country of high altitudes. When she walked she

breathed, carried herself, covered ground like her mother’s people, and

loved the inspiration of it.

The eerie shadows of the desert drew back and hid themselves in the

mountains. The day began with splendid promise—the day of the

wolf-hunt, of which no word had been spoken to her by Peter. She, too,

was going hunting, but silently and unbidden she would steal through

the forest and see this mysterious woman who played fast and loose with

Peter, who loved her apparently all the better for the game she played.

What manner of woman could do these things? What manner of woman could

be indifferent to Peter? Judith was consumingly curious to see. And,

apart from this naked and unashamed curiosity, there was the

possibility that at sight of Miss Colebrooke there might come a

relaxation of Peter’s tyrannous hold upon her thoughts, her life, her

very heart’s blood. Would her loyalty bear the test of seeing Peter

made a fool of by a woman she could dismiss with a shrug—a softly

speaking shrew, perhaps, who played a waiting game with her finger on

the pulse of Peter’s prospects? For there was talk of a partnership

with the Wetmores. Or a fool, perhaps, for all her sonneting, for there

are men who relish a weak headpiece as the chiefest ornament of women,

especially when its indeterminate vagaries boast an escape-valve

remotely connected with the fine arts. Or a devil-woman, perhaps—an

upright wanton who could think no wrong from very poverty of

temperament, yet kept him dangling. The possibility of Kitty’s honesty,

Judith in her jealousy would not admit. Had she gone to the devil for

him, stood and faced the drift of opinion for his sake, that Judith

could have understood. But what was the spinning of verses to a woman’s

portion of loving and being loved? Even Alida, through all her

distracting anxieties, had in her heart the thrice-blessed leaven,

reasoned the woman of the plains, who might, according to modern

standards, be reckoned a trifle primitive in her psychological

deductions. And, withal, Judith was forced to admit that there was

something simple and true about a man who would let a woman make a fool

of him, whoever the woman was.

Perhaps with this hunting would end the long reign of Peter as a

divinity. Judith was tired, not in her vigorous young body, because

that was strong and healthful as the hill wind, but tired in heart and

mind and life. Her destiny had not been beautiful or happy before he

invaded it, but it had been calm, and now serenity seemed the worthiest

gift of the gods. It was not that she loved him less, but that she had

so long reflected upon him that her imagination was numb; her thoughts,

arid, unfruitful as the desert, turned from him to the problems that

beset her, and from them back to him again, in dull, subconscious

yearning. She could no longer project an anguished consciousness to

those scenes wherein he walked and talked with Kitty. Her Indian

fatalism had intervened. “Life was life,” to be lived or left. And yet

she felt herself a poor creature, one who had lived long on illusion,

who had bent her neck to the yoke of arid unrealities. The pale-haired

woman who kept him with her miserliness of self, who intruded no sombre

tragedy of loving, was well worth a trip across the foot-hills to see.

And yet, Judith reflected, it was the portion of her mother’s daughter

to make of loving the whole business of life, even if she rebelled and

fought against it as an accursed destiny. It was in her inheritance to

know and live for the wild thrill of ecstasy in her pulses, to feel

trembling joy and despair and frantic hope, that exacted its tribute

hardly less poignant; as it was, also, to feel a shivering

sensitiveness in regard to the loneliness and bitterness of her life,

to have the same measureless capacity for sorrow that she had for

loving, to have a soul attuned to the tragedy of things, to love the

mighty forces about her, to feel the reflection of all their moods in

her heart, and, lastly, it was her destiny to be the daughter of a

half-Sioux and a border adventurer, and to feel the counter influences

of the two races make forever of her heart a battleground.

Her light feet scarcely touched the ground as she sped swiftly through

all the network of the hills; and more than once her woman’s heart

asked the question, “And, prithee, Judith, if from henceforth you are

only to hold fellowship with the stars and have no part in the ways of

men, why do you walk a day’s journey to catch a glimpse of a

pale-haired woman?”

She knew the probable course of the wolf-hunt. She had been on scores

of them, galloped with Peter after the fleeing gray thing that swept

along the ground like the nucleus of a whirling dust-devil. At least

she was sure of the place of their nooning—a limpid stream that ran

close to many young pine-trees. Here was a pause in the rugged ascent,

a level space of open green, thick with buffalo grass. Many times had

she been here with Peter, sometimes with many other people on the

chase—sometimes, and these occasions were enshrined in her memory, each

with its own particular halo, with Peter alone; and they had fished for

trout and cooked their supper on the grassy levels. It was in Judith’s

planning to arrive before the hunting-party, to hide among the thickets

of scrub pine that grew along the steep cliffs and overlooked the

grassy level, to take her fill of looking at the pale-haired girl and

the hunters at their merrymaking, and, when she had seen, to steal back

across the trail to the Daxes’. They would not penetrate the thickets

where she meant to hide, and, should they, she was prepared for that

contingency, too. She had brought with her a bright-colored shawl that

she would throw over her head, and with the start of them she could

outrun them all, even Peter. Had she not outdistanced him easily, many

times, in fun? Through the tangle of tree-trunks that grew not far from

the thicket, they would think she was but a poor Shoshone squaw lying

in wait for the broken meat of the revellers.

By crossing and recrossing the tiny creeks that trickled slow and

obstructed through the gaunt levels of plain and foot-hill, she had

come by a direct route to the fringes of the pine country. And here she

found a world dim, green, and mysterious. It was wellnigh inconceivable

that the land of sage-brush and silence could, within walking distance

of desolation, show such wealth of young timber, such shade and beauty.

Her noiseless footfalls scarce startled a sage-hen that, realizing too

late her presence, froze to the dead stump—a ruffled gray excrescence

with glittering bead eyes that stared at her furtively, the one live

thing in the tense body.

The sun wanted an hour of noon when Judith rested by the stream, bathed

her face and hands, flushed from the long walk, ate the bread and meat,

then lay on the bed of pine-needles, brown and soft from the weathering

of many suns and snows. She had been all day in the company she loved

best—the earth, the sky, the sun and wind—and in her heart at last was

a deep tranquillity. Thus she could face life and ask nothing but to

watch the cloud fleeces as they are spun and heaped high in the long

days of summer; in soberer moods to watch the thoughts of the Great

Mystery as He reveals them in the shifting cloud shapes; to penetrate

further and further into the councils of the great forces. Thus did she

dream the moments away till the sun was high in the blue and threw

long, yellow splashes of light on her still body, on the soft

pine-needles, beneath the boughs. But there was no time for further

day-dreams if she intended to forestall the hunters at the place of

nooning. She followed a game trail that lay along the stream, ascending

through the dense growths till she reached the top of the jutting

rocks. Her hair was loosened, her skirt awry, and the pine-needles

stood out from it as from a cushion. Much of the way she gained by

creeping beneath the low branches on her hands and knees. No white

woman would be likely to follow her reasoned the daughter of the

plains. It would be a little too hard on her appearance. And here, by

lying flat and hanging over the jutting knob of rock, with a pine

branch in her hand, she could see this mysterious woman and Peter and

the hunters.

She broke a branch to shade her face, she looked down on the grassy

level. She waited, but there was no sound of hoofs falling muffled on

the soft ground. The shadows of the pines contended with the splashes

of sunlight for the little world beneath the trees. They trembled in

mimic battle, then the shadows stole the sunlight, bit by bit, till all

was pale-green twilight, and there was no sound of the hunters.

The hunters, meanwhile, had not been altogether successful in the

chase. The necessary wolf had been coy, and they, perforce, had to

compromise with his poor relation, the coyote—a poor relation, indeed,

whose shabby coat, thinned by the process of summer shedding, made it

an unworthy souvenir to Miss Colebrooke. But it was not the lack of a

wolf that robbed the hunting-party of its zest for Kitty. She could not

tell what it was, but something seemed to have gone wrong with the day

from the beginning. She rode beside her cavalier in a habit the like of

which the country had never before seen, and Peter, usually the most

observant of men, had no word for its multitude of perfections. In the

first realization of disappointment with the day, the hunt, the

hardships of the long ride, her perturbed consciousness took up the

problem of this missing element and tried to adjust itself to the

irritating absence. Kitty wondered if it were something she had

forgotten. No, there were her two little cambric pocket-handkerchiefs,

remotely suggestive of orris, and bearing her monogram delicately

wrought and characteristic. It was not her watch, the ribbon fob of

which fluttered now and then in the breeze. It was not veil nor

scarf-pin nor any of the paraphernalia of the properly garbed

horsewoman. And yet there was something missing, something she should

have had with her, something the absence of which was taking the savor

from the day’s hunting.

It must be the very bigness of this great, splendid world that gave her

the sense of being alone at sea. Intuitively she turned and looked at

Peter riding beside her. There was something in his face that made her

look again before accepting the realization at first incredulously,

then with frank amusement. Peter had scarcely spoken since they left

the ranch. She had come down to breakfast so sure of her new

riding-habit. The Wetmore girls had been moved to hyperboles about its

cut and fit and the trim shortness of the skirt—short riding-skirts

were something of a novelty then. The fine gold hair, twisted tight at

the back of the shapely head, was like a coiled mass of burnished

metal, some safe-keeping device of mint or gold-worker till the season

of coining or fashioning should come round. The translucent

flesh-tints, pearl-white flushing into pink—“Bouguereau realized at

last,” as Nannie Wetmore was in the habit of summing up her cousin’s

complexion—was as marvellous as ever. The delicate firmness of profile

gave to the face the artificial perfection of an old miniature, rather

than of a flesh-and-blood countenance, and all these were there as of

yore, but the marvel of them failed of the customary tribute. Kitty, on

scanty reflection, was at no loss to translate Peter’s reserve into a

language at once flattering and retributive. In her scheme of life he

was always to be her devoted cavalier, as indeed he had been from the

beginning. She loved her own small eminence too well to imperil her

tenure of it by sharing its pretty view of men and things with any one.

In country house parties she loved the mild wonder that the successful

_littérateuse_ could fight and play and win her social triumphs so

well. She loved the star part, and next to playing it she enjoyed

wresting it from other women or eclipsing them completely in some

conspicuously minor rôle, while, in the matter of dress, Miss

Colebrooke went beyond the point decreed by the most exigent mandates

of fashion. When hats were worn over the face, her admirers had to

content themselves with a glimpse of her charming mouth and chin. When

they flared, hers fairly challenged the laws of equilibrium. She danced

with the same facility with which she rode, swam, and played tennis. In

doing these things supremely well she felt that she vindicated the

position of the woman of letters. Why should one be a frump because one

wrote?

Her friendship with Peter was to endure to greenest old age, more

platonic, perhaps, than that of Madame Récamier and Chateaubriand. It

was to be fruitful in letters that would compare favorably with the

best of the seventeenth century series. Even now her own letters to

Peter were no sprightly scrawl of passing events, but efforts whose

seriousness suggested, at least in their carefully elaborated stages of

structure, the letters of the ladies of Cranford.

But in the course of these Western wanderings, undertaken not wholly

without consideration of Peter, there had appeared in the maplike

exactness of her plans an indefinite territory that threatened

undreamed-of proportions. It menaced the scheme of the letters, it

shook the foundations of the Chateaubriand-Récamier friendship. The

unknown quantity was none other than the frequent and irritating

mention of one Judith Rodney, who, from all accounts, appeared a

half-breed. Her name, her beauty, some intrinsic charm of personality

made her an all too frequent topic, except in the case of Peter. He had

been singularly keen in scenting any interrogatory venue that led to

the mysterious half-breed; when questioned he persistently refused to

exhibit her as a type.

Kitty knew that she had treated her long-suffering cavalier with scant

consideration the day he had spurred across the desert to see her.

True, she had written him on her arrival, but, with feminine perversity

of logic, thought it a trifle inconsiderate of him to come so soon

after that trying railroad journey. An ardent resumption of his

suit—and Peter could be depended on for renewing it early and often—was

farthest from her inclination at that particular time. She intended to

salve her conscience at the wolf-hunt for her casual reception of his

impetuous visit. But apparently Peter did not intend to be prodigal of

opportunity.

“How garrulous you people are this morning!” Nannie Wetmore challenged

them. Peter came out of his brown study with the look of one who has

again returned to earth.

“You don’t find it like the drop-curtain of a theatre, now that you’ve

seen it?” he questioned Kitty. For she had doubted her pleasure in the

mountains, in the conviction that they would be too dramatic for her

simple taste.

Kitty closed her eyes and sighted the peaks as if she were getting the

color scheme for an afternoon toilet.

“Mass, bulk, rather than line—no, it’s not like a drop-curtain, but

it’s distinctly ‘hand-painted.’ All it needs is a stag surveying the

prospect from that great cliff. It’s the kind of thing that would sound

well in a description. Oh, I assure you I intend to make lavish use of

it, but it leaves nothing to one’s poor imagination!”

Peter had a distinct feeling of being annoyed. No, she could not

appreciate the mountains any more than they could appreciate her. They

were incongruous, antipathetic, antipodal. Kitty, in her pink and white

and flaxen prettiness and her trim habit, was in harmony with the

bridle-path of a city park; in this great, lonely country she was an

alien. He thought of Judith and the night they had climbed Horse-Thief

Trail, of her quiet endurance, her keen pleasure in the wild beauty of

the night, her quality of companionship, her loyalty, her silent

bearing of many burdens. Yet until he had seen them both against the

same relentless background, he had never been conscious of comparing

the two women.

Nannie Wetmore had fallen behind. She was riding with a bronzed young

lieutenant from Fort Washakie. The two ahead rode long without

speaking. Then Peter broke the silence impatiently:

“You did not really mean that, did you?” He was boyishly hurt at her

flippant summing up of his beloved blue country. And Kitty, tired with

the long, hard ride, and missing that something in Peter that had

always been hers, turned on him a pair of blue eyes in which the tears

were brimming suspiciously. They were well out of sight of the others,

and had come to the heavy fringes of a pine wood. Was it the

psychological moment at last? Then suddenly their horses, that had been

sniffing the air suspiciously, stopped. Kitty’s horse, which was in

advance of Peter’s, rushed towards the thicker growth of pines as if

all Bedlam were in pursuit. Peter’s horse, swerving from the cause of

alarm, bolted back across the trail over which they had just made their

way. A large brown bear, feeding with her cub, and hidden by the trees

till they were directly in front of her, had caused the alarm.

And presently the hush of the shadowy green world in which Judith lay

was broken by a light, sobbing sound. It had been so still that, lying

on her bed of pine-needles, she had likened it to great waves of

silence, rolling up from the valley, breaking over her and sweeping

back again, noiseless, green from the billowing ocean of pine branches,

and sunlit. Judith bent over the rocky ledge and saw a girl making her

way down the game trail, dishevelled and tearful. Her hat was gone, her

pale-yellow hair, that in shadow had the greenish tinge of corn-silk,

blew about her shoulders, her trim skirt was torn and dusty, and she

looked about, bewildered, hardly realizing that through the unexpected

course of things she had been stranded in this great world of sunlit

splendor and loneliness. She closed her eyes. The awful vastness and

solitude oppressed her with a deepening sense of calamity. Suppose they

never found her? How could she find her way in this endless wilderness,

afoot? She sank to the turf and began to cry hysterically.

Judith knew in a flash of instant cognition that this was Miss

Colebrooke. Amazement seemed to have dulled her powers of

action—amazement that she, who had stolen to this place and crouched

close to earth that she might see the triumph of this preferred woman,

and, having seen and paid her grievous dole, steal away and take up the

thread of endless little things that spun for her the web of life, was

forced instead to be an unwilling witness of the other’s distress.

Judith had risen with her first impulse, which had been to go to Kitty,

but half-way through the thicket she hesitated and reconsidered.

Undoubtedly Peter would come soon, and Peter’s consolation would be

more potent than any she could offer. She shrank in shuddering

self-consciousness at the thought of her presence at their meeting, the

uninvited guest, the outgrown friend and confidante, blundering in at

such a time, pitifully full of good intentions. She recoiled from the

picture as from a precipice that all unwittingly she had escaped. What

madness had induced her to come on this expedition? A sudden panic at

the possibility of discovery possessed her; suppose Peter should find

her skulking like a beggar, waiting for broken meats? She looked at the

image of herself that she carried in her heart. It was that of a proud

woman who made no moan at the scourge of the inevitable. Many burdens

had she carried in her proud, lonely heart, but of them her lips gave

no sign. In her contemplative stoicism she felt with pride that she was

no unworthy daughter of her mother’s people, and catching a glimpse

through the trees of the abjectly waiting woman who, though safe and

sound, could but wait, wretched and dispirited, for some one to come

and adjust her to the situation, Judith felt for her a wondering pity

at her helplessness. She waited, expectant, for the sound of Peter’s

horse. Surely he must come at any moment, overcome with apologies, and

she—Judith hid her face in her hands at the thought—she would steal

away through the thicket at the first sound of hoofs. But as the

minutes slipped by and still no sign of Peter, a sickening anxiety

began to gnaw at her heart. Had something happened to him?

She did not wait to ask herself the question twice. She crawled the

length of the thicket with incredible rapidity, gained the pine forest,

and made her way beneath the low-hanging boughs; without stopping to

protect herself from them she gained the open space and ran quickly to

Kitty.

“Are you hurt? What has happened?”

Kitty looked up, startled at the voice. She had not heard the sound of

the moccasined feet. Her wandering, forlorn thoughts crystallized at

sight of the woman before her. A new lightning leaped into her eyes as

she recognized Judith. There was between them a thrilling consciousness

that gave to their mutual perception a something sharp and fine, that

grasped the drama of the moment with the precision and fidelity of a

camera. And through all the wonder of the meeting there was in the

heart of each an outflowing that met and mingled and understood the

potential tragedy element of the situation.

“You are Miss Rodney, I believe?”

Kitty was conscious of something strange in her voice as she looked

into the dark eyes, wide with questioning fear. Ah, but she had amazing

beauty, and a something that seemed of the very essence of deep-souled

womanliness! The two women presented a fine bit of antithesis, Kitty,

flower-like, small, delicately wrought, the finished product of the

town, exotic as some rare transplanted orchid growth. And in Judith

there was a gemlike quality: it was in the bloom of her skin, the

iridescent radiance of her hair, that was bluish, like a plum in

sunlight; it was in the warm, red life in her lips, in the pulsing

vitality of the slim, brown throat; in every line was sensuous force

restrained by spiritual passion.

Kitty told of the accident in which her horse had thrown her and

disappeared in the pine fringes, leaving her stunned for a moment or

two; and how she had finally pulled herself together and followed what

appeared to be a trail, in the hope of finding some one. She dwelt long

on the details of the accident.

“Yes, but Peter, what has happened him?” Judith chose her words

impatiently. She was racked with anxiety at his long delay, and now she

hung over Kitty, waiting for her answer, without the semblance of a

cloak for her alarm.

There was reproof in Kitty’s amendment. “I don’t know which way Mr.

Hamilton’s horse went. It started back over the trail, I think.”

Judith clasped her hands. “Let us go and look for him. Why do we waste

time?” But Kitty hung back. She was shaken from her fall, and upset by

the events of the morning. Besides, her faith in Peter’s ability to

cope with all the exigencies of this country was supreme. And chiefest

reason of all for her not going was a something within her that winced

at the thought of this fellowship that had for its object the quest of

Peter.

“Oh, don’t you see,” pleaded Judith, “that if something had not

happened to him he would have been here long ago?”

Judith’s anxiety awoke in Kitty a new consciousness. What was she to

him, that at the possibility of harm, a fear not shared by Kitty, she

should throw off a reserve that every line of her face pronounced

habitual? In her very energy of attitude, an energy that all

unconsciously communicated itself to Kitty, there was the power that

belongs to all elemental human emotion—the power that compels. Kitty

rose to follow Judith, then hesitated.

“I’m sure nothing has happened him. No, I’m really too unstrung by my

fall to walk.” She sank again to the bowlder on which she had been

sitting.

To the woman of the world, Judith’s ingenuous display of feeling had in

its very sincerity a something pitiable. How could she strip from her

soul every fold of reserve and stand unloved and unashamed, sanctified,

as it were, by the very hopelessness of her passion? How could women

make of their whole existence a thing to be rejected, reflected Kitty,

who, giving nothing, could not understand. She looked again at the

bronzed face beside her, so bold in outline, so expressive in detail.

Yes, she was beautiful, and yet, what had her beauty availed her? The

thought that she herself was the preferred woman throbbed through her

for a moment with a sense of exaltation. The next moment a haunting

doubt laid hold of her heart, held up mockingly the little that she and

Peter had lived through together, the lofty plane of friendship along

which she had tried to lead his unwilling feet sedately, his protests,

his frank amusement at her serious pretensions to a career. How much

fuller might not have been the intercourse between him and this woman,

who, in all probability, had been his comrade for years? And she had

been idealizing him, and his love for her, and his loneliness! Kitty

stood with eyes cast down, while images crowded upon her, leaving her

cold and smiling.

“But think,” pleaded Judith; “if you don’t come it will take me longer

to search the trail-marks. You could show me just where the horses

ran—”

Kitty’s eyes were still on the ground. She did not lift them, and

Judith, realizing that further appeal was but a waste of time, turned

and ran swiftly down the trail.

“He is her lover,” said Kitty; and all the wilderness before her was no

lonelier than her heart.

Swift, intent, Judith traced Kitty’s footprints. They followed the game

trail, the one she herself had taken earlier in the day. She traced

them back through the pine wood about a hundred rods, and then the

trail-marks grew confused. This was unquestionably the place where the

horses had taken fright, circled, reared, then dashed in different

directions. She traced the other horse, whose tracks led under

low-hanging boughs. It would have been a difficult matter for a horse

with a rider to clear; and now the impression of the horse’s shoes grew

fainter, from the lighter footfalls of a horse at full gallop.

“Ah!” A cry broke from her as she saw the marks had become almost

eliminated by something that had dragged, something heavy. Those

long-drawn lines were finger-prints, where a hand had dragged in its

vain endeavor to grasp at something. A sickening image came

persistently before her eyes—Peter’s upturned face, blood-smeared and

disfigured.

“Sh-sh-sh!” She put her hand to her breast to still the beating of her

heart. She could hear the sound of hoofs falling muffled on the soft

ground, and a man’s voice speaking in a soothing sing-song. She

listened. It was Peter’s voice, reassuring the horse, asking him what

kind of a bag of nerves he was for a cow pony, to get frightened at a

bear? Judith stood tall and straight among the pines. Surely he could

not blindly pass her by. He must feel the joy in her heart that all was

well with him. The hoofs came nearer, the man’s voice sounded but

intermittently, as he got his horse under better control. She felt as

if he must come to her, as if some overpowering consciousness of her

presence would speak from her heart to his; but his eyes scanned the

distant trail for a glimpse of Kitty or Kitty’s horse. Judith saw that

his head was bound in something white and that it bore a red stain, but

he held himself well in the saddle. He was not the man to heed a

tumble. He urged the horse forward, never looking towards the

tree-trunks, his face white and strained with anxiety as he scoured the

trail for evidences of Kitty. The horse, with a keener sense than his

master, shied slightly as he passed the group of pines where Judith

stood; but Peter’s glance was for the open trail, and as she heard him

canter by, so close that she could have touched his stirrup with her

hand, it seemed as if he must hear the beating of her heart.

“Oh, blind eyes, and ears that will not hear, and heart that has

forgotten how to beat! Yes, go to that pale, cold girl! You speak one

language, and life for you is the way of little things!”

She waited till the last sound of the horse’s hoofs had died away and

all was still in the tremulous green of the forest. Judith’s mind was

busy with the image of their meeting, the man bringing the joy of his

youth to the calm divinity who could feel no thrill of fear in his

absence. She broke into the running gait and hurried through the forest

to the Daxes’.

XVI.

In The Land Of The Red Silence

The beef-herd, that had been the pivotal point of the round-up and had

made the mighty plain echo to its stampings and bellowings, beating up

simooms that choked it with thirst, blinded it with dust, confounding

itself on every side by the very fury of its blind force, had trailed

for a week, tractable as toys in the hands of children. Little had

happened to vary the monotony for the cow-punchers that handled the

herd—they grazed, guarded, watered, night-herded the cattle day after

day, night after night. Pasturage had been sufficient, if not abundant.

The creeks were running low and slimy with the advance of summer, but

there had been sufficient water to let the herd drink its fill at least

once a day.

The outfit ate its “sow-belly,” soda-biscuit, and coffee three times a

day, and smoked its pipes, but was a little shy on yarns round the

camp-fire.

“This yere outfit don’t lather none,” commented the cook to the

horse-wrangler, over the smoke of an early morning fire.

“Don’t lather no more than a chunk of wood,” agreed the horse-wrangler.

“That’s the trouble with a picked-up outfit like this. Catch ‘W-square’

men kowtowing to a ‘XXX’ boss, even if he is only acting foreman.”