"Ned McCann owned the Double Star 'way back in the early days;
He had come out here with a sickly wife and a kid he hoped to raise
Where the climate suited the feeble-lunged, but life was scarce at
its brim,
Till a little mound by a prairie hill held half of the world for
him;
And his double love would have spoiled the child had she been like
me or you,
But her only thought was for her dad and the mother she scarcely
knew."
_Prairie Born._
The sun was setting on their second day's drive when Burton and Mr.
McKay crested a ridge behind which lay the farmer's buildings and his
sweeping fields of grain, already glowing yellowish in the long bars of
amber sunlight that bathed their gently rustling mass. Before them
stretched the prairie trail, down a gentle incline until it lost itself
in a little gulley; there was the plain bald scar where it climbed out
at the other side, and immediately beyond was the farmhouse. Burton's
eyes drank in the magnitude and peace of the scene with a sense that
here at least was a haven where his troubles might not follow him. And
he mentally blessed the old farmer, for whom he already felt a strong
friendship.
"Waal, thar she be, all the same as we left her," proclaimed the farmer,
jerking his whip-hand forward. "Yep, thar she be, all right."
The farmer was not emotional, and the words seemed a very commonplace
statement of fact, but Burton guessed that beneath his rough exterior
the old man carried a heart that turned to his home with that fervent
loyalty to place so often found among the rural classes. It was his
home--his own home, chopped from the bush and dug from the hillside,
largely by the force of his own right arm. And between the home that is
built and the home that is acquired is a gulf as broad as between birth
and adoption.
"So that is your home," the young man ventured. "What a beautiful
place!"
"It is purty, haint it?" said the farmer, looking around, and there was
a light of gratification in his eye. "An' yet," he continued, "yu'll
find men 'at wonder how a man can live in a place like this. They think
electric lights an' telephones and movin' pictures an'--an' the left foot
on the rail most uv the time--they think that's what makes life. Well, by
hang, Ah spend a little money myself when Ah go to town." The farmer
paused and chuckled meditatively for a minute or two. "Yep. Some of 'em
holler 'Ol' Sport' soon's they see me comin'. But Ah take my spice as an
appetiser, not as a food. Why, hang it, youngster, Ah wouldn't live in a
city if they let me sleep in the Crystal Palace and sent my breakfast up
with the mayor! Ah got twelve hundred and eighty acres of land here, an'
more cattle 'an it's worth while countin'; Ah got all outdoors to
stretch myself, and Ah ain't wantin' tuh trade with nobody."
The farmer shaded his eyes with his hand. The rays of the sun, now
almost horizontal, blinded their vision of the valley.
"Yep," he said at last, with a sigh of satisfaction. "There's Kid
comin'. Ah reckoned she'd be watchin' fer us."
A cloud of dust rose lazily from the ravine; then stretched in a thin
ribbon along the hot prairie trail. Burton's eye was not trained to
horsemanship, but it needed no experienced observer to know that the
rider was approaching furiously. The streak of dust lengthened out as
though shot from a gun.
"That's my daughter," the old man said, and Burton was conscious of a
deep thrill of pride in his voice. "She allus rides like thet. She's the
girl fer a rusty cayuse, an' don't forget it. By hang, she'd ride a
rabbit if she could saddle it. Yep, she's a-comin' to meet us."
"To meet _you_, I guess," corrected Burton.
The old man looked at him quizzically. "Waal, Ah guess thet is more
technically keerect," he admitted. "Ah ain't sayin' she's comin' out
particular to meet you _this trip_."
There was an emphasis on the last words which Burton had not fathomed
when a chestnut horse swung up beside the wagon, and a young girl, as
brown and lithe as her beautiful mount, brought her gauntletted hand
down with a resounding smack on Mr. McKay's shoulder.
"Ho, Dad," she cried, "you're a sight for the angels."
"Yep," assented the old man, "fer my angel, Ah reckon that's right."
"I declare," laughed the girl, "how you do learn those cunning speeches
when you go to town! Tell me, now, who taught you that?"
"You're gettin' a bigger tease than ever, Kid. Tell me, how's ever'thing
goin' on the farm?"
"Oh, that's too big an order. I know I have been all right--fine--fit. But
say, Dad, haven't you forgotten something?"
"Waal, that might be, easy enough," said the farmer, looking back and
surveying the heavy load. "There's the binder twine and the groceries
and machine oil an' the mail----"
"Dad, you're a chump. Here you let me live in the wilderness, with
nothing more exciting than bronchoes and mustangs, and when a real
live--possibility--comes along you--you won't even introduce me!" The
sentence ended in a burst of mimic sobbing.
"Waal, by hang, one does sorta ferget his sassiety manners, usin' 'em so
little. This is my daughter Kid----"
"Not Kid!" exclaimed the girl. "Kath----"
"All right. Kath-er-een. Kate for short. Kid fer shorter. She allus gets
shorter----"
But by this time the chestnut had flashed around to the other side of
the wagon, and the girl had ridden up beside Burton.
"All right, Dad," she interrupted. "I am sufficiently designated. Now
tell me _his_ name."
"Waal, thet's just what Ah'm kinda killin' time over. Ah did hear his
name too, but hang me if Ah ain't plumb fergot it."
Burton looked up in the bright face now close by his side. "I find I
must always assist your father in a case of this kind," he said,
smiling. "And as he does not appear to be much of a formalist--just call
me Ray."
"That sounds like starting in the middle of a book," laughed the girl.
"The first chapters are only preliminary, anyway," said Burton.
"All right, Ray," she said, extending her hand. "This eliminates the
first ten chapters. Now I must gallop home and have your suppers ready."
And almost before he knew he had released her hand the cloud of dust
trailed again down the valley.
The McKay farmhouse was built of logs, with an upper story over the main
section. The board floors were white and bare, save where a wolf skin or
other trophy of the chase served as ornament and carpet. The hard, clean
floors, the whitewashed, bulging logs, the bare joists and rafters,
afforded a charm of rustic simplicity which no display of wealth can
provide. Even as he ate his supper with a relish of his long drive
Burton's eyes stole about into the shadowy corners of the room, where
the firelight from the wood stove flickered along the floor and lost
itself in the darkness. There was everywhere an air of comfort; of
peace; of simplicity; yet what tales might those lurking corners repeat
of the pioneers who for twenty years had shared the McKay hospitality as
they related exploits of the early days more wonderful than any fiction!
The meal was ended. Burton felt that at least he had not been a bright
conversationalist. Several times the farmer's daughter had addressed a
remark to him a second time, and he answered almost in monosyllables.
His mind was too busy with the past--with the far, vague, distant past,
when he sat before the wood fire and felt his young frame thrill as he
listened to tales of adventure in the shanties of the Madawaska--tales of
the river drive and the faction-fight, of the cry of the wolverine by
lonely moonlit shores and the weird romances of loup-garou and windigo.
How he thrilled with a deep wonder of the mystery of the untrod path
which lay before him, leading into the far, strange fields of manhood,
where he too should do great deeds and win great victories and fear
nothing. But even as he dreamed of future bravery he would snuggle
nearer to the centre of the group. He could almost hear the wolverine
baying out beyond the stables!... Then there was the evening prayer and
the good-night kiss, and the ascent up the creaking stairs; the bed
under the bare rafters, where through the broken shingles a single star
watched until his eyes closed with the sweet weariness of early
childhood, and he knew that the angels were guarding his sleep. God! How
far had he travelled since then!
"You are tired, Ray," said the girl. "Let me show you to your room."
"Yep," added the farmer. "The sleepin' sickness has got you. We have it
just as bad as in Africa. It don't kill anybody here, but there's no
cure 'cept to sleep it off. Trouble is, the new-comer allus gets the
sleepin' sickness an' the eatin' sickness tugether, which makes it
powerful hard on the proprietor. It's twenty-one years since Ah struck
these diggin's, an' Ah mind yet how Ah et an' slep' that first year.
Your mother use to say there wa'n't no use cookin' agin an appetite like
that. Yep, Kid, that was twenty-one years ago. You was born the next
spring."
"That's how Dad betrays a woman's secret," bantered the girl. But the
farmer was leaning forward in his chair, his eyes staring at the sparks
as they dropped from the grate. His elbows rested on his knees, his
palms stretched straight before him, the fingers touching at the tips.
There was a strange tenderness in the weather-worn face; a misty light
in those honest old eyes. He was thinking of a little mound, just up the
hillside, on which the grass had grown for twenty years.
The girl touched Burton's arm. He looked in her face, and she raised her
eyebrows a hair's-breadth. No word was spoken as he followed her
silently up the stairs.
At the door of his room she placed the lamp in his hand. Then in a low
voice she said, "Dad never forgets. Dear old Dad!"
She remained lost in thought for a few moments, and Burton surveyed her.
She had removed the brown riding habit in which he first saw her, and
stood revealed in a modest black dress. Her fair face, brown with the
summer winds, seemed almost to fade into the masses of her brown hair,
as the calm sea fades into the shore-line. The only shade of colour she
wore was a string of scarlet ribbon drawing the dark garment together at
her throat. She was rather under average height, and at first he thought
her slim, but a second glance convinced him that the perfection of her
proportions and her strong, athletic life gave an impression that the
scales would quickly dissipate. The upper lip rose slightly in the
centre, as though alert to smile; the nose, strong but not over large,
caught the vision for a moment, but immediately it was stolen by the
eyes. What eyes they were! The warmth of the chinook, the freedom of the
great plains, the wonder of sunset and dawn, the mystery of the deep,
starless night, the courage of the white, fearless winter--all were
blended in their hazel depths; or was it brown, or amber-grey? The lamp
tricked him; he would see in daylight.
Her wits came back from their wanderings with a suddenness that caused
her to start.
"You were dreaming at supper-time," she said. "I am dreaming now."
"God bless the world's dreamers," said Burton, fervently. "How often in
Bible history He revealed himself to His people in a dream! And shall He
not do it still? Can we suppose the Father of thought has lost the key
to the midnight chambers of the brain? But practical men despise
dreamers."
Her eyes had opened wider as he spoke; she was leaning slightly toward
him when he finished. Thoughts are such mighty magnets that they attract
even the material bodies that encase them. There was an appreciation in
her look and her partly opened lips that Burton did not fail to notice.
"Practical men are fools," she said. "Good night."
For some days Burton did not find himself assigned to any regular duties
about the farm. Grain-growing was only a small part of Mr. McKay's
business, and was, indeed, still regarded as largely experimental; the
real wealth of the farm was represented by the herds of ranch cattle
which fed in the heavy grass of the valley or roamed the unsettled
plains for miles around. With these herds Burton had no concern; they
were under the care of two cowboys long in Mr. McKay's employ. Decent
fellows Burton found them to be, yet while they treated him with frank
familiarity they could not altogether disguise their inbred conviction
that the cow-puncher is of better clay than the sod-buster. He envied
them their wild free life, their rides over the limitless plains, their
"leave and liking to shout," while he sharpened the binder knives and
tacked new slats on the canvases, and made fly-blankets for the horses
out of twine sacks. The ancient war of the herdsman and the grainman was
being fought out again in his own breast, and he secretly admitted a
sense of envy. To ride the plains seemed a greater thing than to till
them.
But if the cattlemen excited a measure of envy in the breast of Burton,
he soon discovered that he had unwittingly aroused their jealousy.
Although their feeling toward him took no unkind form of expression, he
became more and more conscious that he was regarded as an intruder, an
unwelcome person tolerated simply for courtesy's sake. And the boy knew,
by a kind of intuition, that the farmer's daughter was largely
responsible for this. With the cattlemen she chatted flippantly, giving
them word for word and laughing at their smartest sallies; but with
Burton she talked slowly in the dusk of the long, cool evenings, when
the work inside and out was finished, and the farmer smoked his pipe on
the kitchen porch. The cowboys, whom she had known for years, she still
held saucily at a safe distance; but with Burton, on a week's
acquaintance, she spoke of things whereof her soul hungered for
conversation. She had taken the boy at his word. She had started in the
middle of the book.
And to himself Burton confessed that to him she was a new relevation of
womanhood. At times, out of the nightmare of the past, he would conjure
up that face which, in all his wanderings and through all his
associations, still hedged his soul about on every side, so that he
could follow no emotion far until he met it. He saw her as she rode home
on her pony along the pasture path, while the gathering dusk raised the
willows very tall about them; he saw her as they sat by the water's edge
that never to-be-forgotten Sunday at the Crossing; he saw her again,
half-reclining against a wall, her face drawn as though with pain and
yet flushed as in excitement, the flickering light of an uncertain fire
falling upon her fine features. He stood her before him and he tried to
compare, but he could not compare. It was as though one would compare
form with colour, or sound with sight. She was, he knew, everything that
was "pure womanly," but this daughter of the prairie was something more.
Although clothed in all the delicacy of her sex, she seemed to hide
nothing, to conceal nothing, behind that distinction of nature which has
been so grossly misused by convention. At times she spoke to him as a
sister might speak; at other times it might have been the voice of his
mother; again, she was a child at his feet; but most of all it seemed
she spoke as a brother. It was this spirit of comradeship, this attitude
of equality, this frankness so sincere that it seemed the only natural
thing--the inevitable thing--it was these that drew his soul out to her
with the affection of a brother. And yet he marvelled that the face
still hedged him about; that every new experience, every new confidence,
seemed to paint it still clearer on his mind's horizon.
The season wore on. Presently the wheat fields were ripe, and Burton
found himself so lost in work that thoughts of his past, his present,
and his future seemed crowded out of the busy hours. His practical
knowledge of farm work and farm machinery, and the genuine personal
interest he took in everything that fell to his lot, won for him a
regard by the old farmer that was almost paternal. Indeed, more than
once Mr. McKay dropped remarks about his advancing years, intimating
that he felt the time must soon come when he should place the active
management of his affairs in younger hands, and on such occasions Burton
felt his heart bound as the thought of a possibility fired his pulses.
But then the face rose, calm and thoughtful, and the possibility died
away amid the mist of dreams.
And then, one Sunday afternoon, after the wheat was all in stook, came
another incident to change the course of his career. The cowboys, with a
number of friends, were riding to neighbouring ranches; Mr. McKay dozed
over an old newspaper as he sat in the shade of the kitchen porch; and
Burton and Kate lounged on the front verandah, reading little excerpts
from their magazines, but most of the time staring with dreaming eyes
across the hot prairies.
"Pshaw," said Burton, after his fourth attempt to centre his interest in
a story, "I can't read to-day. Let's go for a walk, Kate." He called her
Kate now, although he had not been able to bring himself to the more
familiar name by which the other hands addressed her. And yet he knew
that he was much better acquainted with her than were they.
The girl clasped her hands above her head and yawned leisurely. Then she
looked long and intently at the fringe of willows along the gulley.
"It's too hot," she said at length.
"What, you a prairie girl and afraid of the heat?" Burton bantered.
"I'm not afraid of it," she answered, laughing, "but I respect it. And I
can't walk in the grass in this skirt. And most of all," she confessed,
bringing her elbows to her knees and resting her chin on her hands--"most
of all, I'm lazy."
"I admire lazy people," said Burton.
"Oh, how gallant you are! I suppose if I had said I was lame you would
have admired lame people?"
"But I spoke seriously," he protested. "I don't say I admire one who is
chronically lazy, but I do respect the man or woman who can forget the
rush of life now and again and lapse into a period of laziness.
'Leisure,' some people call it, and it is closely identified with
culture, which brings us around to the poets and the painters and art
generally."
"Speaking of art, did I ever let you see my pictures? I have a few I
gathered when I was East at college. Oh, yes, and my photographs. That
is where so many acquaintances start, you know, over the family album,
while one expounds to someone who doesn't care the tribal history of
people he doesn't know."
The sentence was ended on the stairs. In a minute she was down with a
basketful of photographs.
"Now, Mr. Ray, you shall behold the friends of my girlhood--up to date.
By the way, when are you going to let me into the mystery of your
surname? One of these days some of the neighbours will call, and I shall
have to introduce you as 'Our man Ray.' Here I have told you my history
from Alpha to Omega, and all I know about you is that your first name is
Ray. When, please sir, will I be sufficiently established in your
confidence to be entrusted with your name?"
For a moment he hesitated. What she said was true. She had given large
confidences and received little. Why should he not tell his name? Why,
indeed, should he not tell her all? He was sure that it could not change
her attitude toward him; he was sure that his trust would never be
betrayed, and the weight of his secret was hanging heavy about his life.
That strange human instinct which demands the right of confidence the
privilege of confession, was becoming irresistibly strong within him.
"I have a reason for concealing my name," he said at length. "I do not
wish to tell the name until I can tell the reason also."
"And when will that be, may I ask?" It was a respectful question, not a
demand for information.
"Oh, perhaps the next time we chat together," he laughed, anxious to
shelve the matter for the moment. "Now, let us see these photographs."
She sat on a stool beside his chair, passing up the photographs for his
scrutiny. With each she had a word of comment, but Burton looked at them
mechanically. They were nothing to him but strange faces, in which he
felt only a reflected interest. At length she raised a photograph which
she held a moment longer than usual. "This," she said, "is a picture of
my particular college chum--my best girl friend. She is pure gold."
She placed the pasteboard in his fingers. His eyes wandered to the face,
and then his head shot forward as though he had been magnetised. He
instantly attempted to recover his composure, but his fingers trembled
and his breath came hard. It was the face of Myrtle Vane!