THE FAILURE
Before noon Shorty, that lightweight and tireless rider, unwearied, to
all appearance, by his efforts of that night, had started towards
Glosterville with her letter to Perris, but it was not until the next
day that she confessed what she had done to Hervey. Certainly he had
done more than his share in his effort to get back the Coles horses and
she had no wish to needlessly hurt his feelings by letting him know that
the business was to be taken out of his hands and given into those of a
more efficient worker. But Hervey surprised her by the complaisance with
which he heard the tidings.
"Never in my life hung out a shingle as a hoss-catcher," he assured her.
"He's welcome to the job. Me and the boys won't envy him none. It'll be
a long trail and a tolerable lonely one, most like."
After that she settled down to wait with as great a feeling of security
as though the mares were already safely back in the corral. If he came,
the death-warrant of Alcatraz was as good as signed. But when the third
day of waiting ended without bringing Shorty and Perris, as it should
have done, the "if" began to assume greater proportions, and by late
afternoon of the fourth day she had made up her mind that Perris was
gone from Glosterville and that Shorty was on a wild goose chase after
him. So great was her gloom that even her father, usually blind to all
emotions around him, delayed a moment after he had been helped into his
buckboard and stared thoughtfully down at her.
The habit had grown on Oliver Jordan of late. When the westering sun
lost most of its heat and threw slant shadows and a yellow light over
the mountains, Oliver would have a pair of ancient greys, patient as
burros and hardly faster, hitched to a buckboard and then drive off into
the evening and perhaps, long after the dinner hour. Only foul weather
kept him in from these lonely jaunts on which he never took a companion.
To Marianne they were a never-ending source of wonder and sorrow, for
she saw her father slowly withdrawing himself from the life about him
and dwelling in a gentle, uninterrupted melancholy. She met his stare,
on this evening, with eyes clouded with tears.
Truly he had aged woefully in the past years. The accident which
robbed him of his physical freedom seemed, at the same time, to destroy
all spirit of youth. Whether walking or sitting he was bowed. His eyes
were dull. Beside his mouth and between his eyes deep lines gave a sad
dignity to his expression. And though, as his cowpunchers swore, his
hand was as swift to draw a gun as ever and his eye as steady on a
target, he had gradually lost interest in even his revolvers. Indeed,
what real interest remained to him in the world, Marianne was unable to
tell. He lived and moved as one in a dream surrounded by a world of
dreams. His eyes were dull from looking into the dim distance of strange
thoughts, and the smile which was rarely away from his lips was rather
whimsically enduring than a sign of mirth.
But as he looked down at her from the buckboard, Marianne saw his
expression clear to awareness of her. He even reached out and rested his
hand on her head so that her face was tilted up to him.
"Honey," he said, "you're eating your heart out about something. How
come?"
"Red Perris is overdue," she said. "But I don't want to bother you with
my troubles, Dad."
"Red Perris? Who's he?"
"Don't you remember? I told you how he rode Rickety. And now I've sent
for him to come and hunt Alcatraz--because once that man-killing horse
is dead, it will be easy to get the mares back. And every day counts--
every day the mares are getting wilder!"
"What mares?" Then he nodded. "I remember. And they ain't nothing but
that worrying you, Marianne."
His expression of concern vanished; his glance wandered far east where
the shades were already brimming the valleys.
"I'll be getting on, then, honey."
All at once, for pity at thought of him driving into the lonely
silences, she caught his hand. It was still lean, hard of palm, sinewy
with strength of which most extreme age, indeed, would never entirely
rob it. And the touch of those strong fingers called back to her mind
the picture of Oliver Jordan as he had been, a kingly man among men.
Tears came into the eyes of Marianne.
"But where are you going?" she asked him gently. "And why do you never
let me go with you, dear?"
"You?" he chuckled. "Waste time driving out nowheres with an old codger
like me? I didn't give you all that schooling to have you throw your
life away doing things like that. Don't you bother about me, Marianne.
I'm just going to drift over yonder around Jackson Peak. You see?"
"But who is there, and what is there?"
He merely rubbed his knuckles across his forehead and then shook his
head. "I dunno. Nothing much. It's tolerable quiet, though. And you get
the smell of the pines the minute the trail starts climbing. Sort of a
lazy place to go, but then I've turned into a lazy man, honey. Just
sitting and thinking is about all I'm good for, or most like just the
sitting without the thinking. Why, Marianne, where'd you get them
tears?"
She choked them back.
"I wish--I wish--" she began.
"That's right," he nodded. "Keep right on wishing things. That's what I
been doing lately. And wishing things is better than doing them. The way
kids are, that's the best way to be. S'long, Marianne."
She stepped back, trying valiantly to smile, and he raised a cautioning
finger, chuckling: "Look here, now, don't you go to bothering your head
about me. Just save your worrying for this Perris gent."
He clucked to the greys and their sudden start threw him violently
against the back of the seat.
The promise of that start, however, was by no means borne out by the
pace into which they immediately fell, which was a dog-trot executed
with trailing hoofs that raised little wisps of dust at every stride.
She saw the lines slacken and hang loosely to every swing of the
buckboard. Had she not, ten years before, trembled at the sight of this
same team dashing into the road, high-headed, eyes of fire, and the
reins humming with the strength of Oliver Jordan's pull?
The buckboard jolted slowly down the road and swung out of sight, but
Marianne Jordan remained for long moments, staring after her father.
Every time they passed through one of these interviews--and today's
talk had been longer than most--she always felt that she had been pushed
a little farther away from him. At the very time of his life when his
daughter should have become a comfort to him, Oliver Jordan withdrew
himself more and more from the world, and she could not but feel that
his evening drives through the silences of the hill were dearer and
closer to him than his daughter. The buckboard reappeared, lurching up a
farther knoll, and then rolled out of sight to be seen no more. And
Marianne felt again, what she had often felt before, seeing her father
drive away in this fashion, that some day Oliver Jordan would never come
back from the hills.
A moment later half a dozen of the cowpunchers came into view with the
unmistakable form of Lew Hervey in the lead. He was a big-looking man in
the saddle and he showed himself to the greatest advantage by riding
rigidly erect with his head thrown a little back, so that the loose brim
of his sombrero was continually in play about his face. For all her
dislike of him she could not but admit that he was the beau ideal of the
fine horseman. The dominant leader showed in every line and it was no
wonder that the cowpunchers feared and respected him. Besides, there
were many tales of his prowess with rifle and revolver to make him stand
out in bolder relief.
She saw the riders disappear in the direction of the corrals and then
turned back towards the house. Unquestionably it was to avoid sight of
his men returning from their day's work that Oliver Jordan usually drove
off at this time of the day; it brought home to him too keenly the many
times when he himself had ridden back by the side of Lew Hervey from a
day of galloping in the wind; it crushed him with a sense of the
impotence into which his life had fallen. Indeed, unless some vital
change came, her father must soon mourn himself into a grave. For the
first time Marianne clearly perceived this. Oliver Jordan was wasting
for grief over his lost freedom just as some youthful lover might
decline because of the death of his mistress. The shock of this
perception brought Marianne to a halt. When she looked up Shorty and Red
Perris were not a hundred yards away, swinging along at a steady lope!
All sad thoughts were whisked from her mind as a gust whirls dead leaves
away and shows the green grass beneath, newly growing. How it lifted her
heart to see him. But she looked down, with a cold falling of gloom, at
her blue gingham dress. That was not as she wished to appear. She could
be in her riding costume, with the rather mannish blouse and loosely
tied cravat, spurs on her boots and quirt in her hand as became the
mistress and ruling force of a big ranch. Then she received sudden and
convincing proof that mere outward appearances meant nothing in the life
of Red Jim Perris. He took off his hat and swung it in greeting. There
was a white flash of his teeth as he laughed, a red flash of his amazing
hair in the sunset light. Then he was pulling up and swinging down to
the ground. He came to meet her with his hat dangling in one hand and
the other extended.
Typically Western, she thought, that in their second meeting he should
act like an old friend. Delightfully Western, too! Under his
straight-glancing eyes, his open smile of pleasure, new confidence came
in Marianne, new self-reliance. The grip of his hand sent strength up her
arm and into her heart.
"I'd given you up," she admitted.
"Mighty sorry it took so long," said Perris. "You see, I was right in
the middle of a little poker game that hung on uncommon long. But when
it finished up, me and Shorty come as fast as we could. Eh, Shorty?"
"Huh!" grunted Shorty. Marianne looked to her messenger for the first
time.
He sat his saddle loosely, one hand falling heavily on the pommel, and
his head bent. He did not raise it to meet her glance, but rolled his
eyes up in a gloomy scowl which flitted over her face and then came to a
rest on the face of Red Jim Perris. A frown of weariness puckered the
brow of Shorty. Purple, bruised places of sleeplessness surrounded his
eyes. And every line of age or worry or labor was graven more deeply on
his face.
"Huh!" grunted Shorty again, mumbling his words very much like a
drunkard. "I've killed my Mamie hoss, that's all!"
And with this gloomy retort, he urged the mare to a down-headed trot. In
fact, the staunch little brown mare staggered on tired legs and her
sides heaved like bellows. The grey horse of Red Jim Perris was in
hardly better condition.
"I wanted you quickly," said Marianne, a little horrified. "But I didn't
ask you to kill your horses coming."
"Kill 'em?" said Perris, and he cast a sharp glance of disapproval at
her. "Not much! That hoss of mine is a pile fagged. I aim to get her
that way. But she'll be fit as a fiddle in the morning. I ride her till
she's through and never a step more. I know the minute she's through
working on muscle and starts working on her nerve, and when that time
comes, I stop. I've put up in the middle of nowheres to let her get back
her wind. Kill her? Nope, lady, and the only reason Shorty's hoss was so
used up was because he plumb insisted on keeping up with us!"
And Marianne nodded. Ordinarily such a speech would have drawn argument
from her. Indeed, her own submissiveness startled her as she found
herself gently inviting the fire eater to come into the house and learn
in detail the work which lay before him.