The next morning Graham learned further the ways of the Big House. Oh
My had partly initiated him in particular things the preceding day and
had learned that, after the waking cup of coffee, he preferred to
breakfast at table, rather than in bed. Also, Oh My had warned him that
breakfast at table was an irregular affair, anywhere between seven and
nine, and that the breakfasters merely drifted in at their convenience.
If he wanted a horse, or if he wanted a swim or a motor car, or any
ranch medium or utility he desired, Oh My informed him, all he had to
do was to call for it.
Arriving in the breakfast room at half past seven, Graham found himself
just in time to say good-by to the _Gazette_ man and the Idaho buyer,
who, finishing, were just ready to catch the ranch machine that
connected at Eldorado with the morning train for San Francisco. He sat
alone, being perfectly invited by a perfect Chinese servant to order as
he pleased, and found himself served with his first desire--an
ice-cold, sherried grapefruit, which, the table-boy proudly informed
him, was "grown on the ranch." Declining variously suggested breakfast
foods, mushes, and porridges, Graham had just ordered his soft-boiled
eggs and bacon, when Bert Wainwright drifted in with a casualness that
Graham recognized as histrionic, when, five minutes later, in boudoir
cap and delectable negligee, Ernestine Desten drifted in and expressed
surprise at finding such a multitude of early risers.
Later, as the three of them were rising from table, they greeted Lute
Desten and Rita Wainwright arriving. Over the billiard table with Bert,
Graham learned that Dick Forrest never appeared for breakfast, that he
worked in bed from terribly wee small hours, had coffee at six, and
only on unusual occasions appeared to his guests before the
twelve-thirty lunch. As for Paula Forrest, Bert explained, she was a
poor sleeper, a late riser, lived behind a door without a knob in a
spacious wing with a rare and secret patio that even he had seen but
once, and only on infrequent occasion was she known to appear before
twelve-thirty, and often not then.
"You see, she's healthy and strong and all that," he explained, "but
she was born with insomnia. She never could sleep. She couldn't sleep
as a little baby even. But it's never hurt her any, because she's got a
will, and won't let it get on her nerves. She's just about as tense as
they make them, yet, instead of going wild when she can't sleep, she
just wills to relax, and she does relax. She calls them her `white
nights,' when she gets them. Maybe she'll fall asleep at daybreak, or
at nine or ten in the morning; and then she'll sleep the rest of the
clock around and get down to dinner as chipper as you please."
"It's constitutional, I fancy," Graham suggested.
Bert nodded.
"It would be a handicap to nine hundred and ninety-nine women out of a
thousand. But not to her. She puts up with it, and if she can't sleep
one time--she should worry--she just sleeps some other time and makes
it up."
More and other things Bert Wainwright told of his hostess, and Graham
was not slow in gathering that the young man, despite the privileges of
long acquaintance, stood a good deal in awe of her.
"I never saw anybody whose goat she couldn't get if she went after it,"
he confided. "Man or woman or servant, age, sex, and previous condition
of servitude--it's all one when she gets on the high and mighty. And I
don't see how she does it. Maybe it's just a kind of light that comes
into her eyes, or some kind of an expression on her lips, or, I don't
know what--anyway, she puts it across and nobody makes any mistake
about it."
"She has a ... a way with her," Graham volunteered.
"That's it!" Bert's face beamed. "It's a way she has. She just puts
it over. Kind of gives you a chilly feeling, you don't know why. Maybe
she's learned to be so quiet about it because of the control she's
learned by passing sleepless nights without squealing out or getting
sour. The chances are she didn't bat an eye all last night--excitement,
you know, the crowd, swimming Mountain Lad and such things. Now
ordinary things that'd keep most women awake, like danger, or storm at
sea, and such things, Dick says don't faze her. She can sleep like a
baby, he says, when the town she's in is being bombarded or when the
ship she's in is trying to claw off a lee shore. She's a wonder, and no
mistake. You ought to play billiards with her--the English game. She'll
go some."
A little later, Graham, along with Bert, encountered the girls in the
morning room, where, despite an hour of rag-time song and dancing and
chatter, he was scarcely for a moment unaware of a loneliness, a lack,
and a desire to see his hostess, in some fresh and unguessed mood and
way, come in upon them through the open door.
Still later, mounted on Altadena and accompanied by Bert on a
thoroughbred mare called Mollie, Graham made a two hours' exploration
of the dairy center of the ranch, and arrived back barely in time to
keep an engagement with Ernestine in the tennis court.
He came to lunch with an eagerness for which his keen appetite could
not entirely account; and he knew definite disappointment when his
hostess did not appear.
"A white night," Dick Forrest surmised for his guest's benefit, and
went into details additional to Bert's of her constitutional inaptitude
for normal sleep. "Do you know, we were married years before I ever saw
her sleep. I knew she did sleep, but I never saw her. I've seen her go
three days and nights without closing an eye and keep sweet and
cheerful all the time, and when she did sleep, it was out of
exhaustion. That was when the _All Away_ went ashore in the Carolines
and the whole population worked to get us off. It wasn't the danger,
for there wasn't any. It was the noise. Also, it was the excitement.
She was too busy living. And when it was almost all over, I actually
saw her asleep for the first time in my life."
A new guest had arrived that morning, a Donald Ware, whom Graham met at
lunch. He seemed well acquainted with all, as if he had visited much in
the Big House; and Graham gathered that, despite his youth, he was a
violinist of note on the Pacific Coast.
"He has conceived a grand passion for Paula," Ernestine told Graham as
they passed out from the dining room.
Graham raised his eyebrows.
"Oh, but she doesn't mind," Ernestine laughed. "Every man that comes
along does the same thing. She's used to it. She has just a charming
way of disregarding all their symptoms, and enjoys them, and gets the
best out of them in consequence. It's lots of fun to Dick. You'll be
doing the same before you're here a week. If you don't, we'll all be
surprised mightily. And if you don't, most likely you'll hurt Dick's
feelings. He's come to expect it as a matter of course. And when a
fond, proud husband gets a habit like that, it must hurt terribly to
see his wife not appreciated."
"Oh, well, if I am expected to, I suppose I must," Graham sighed. "But
just the same I hate to do whatever everybody does just because
everybody does it. But if it's the custom--well, it's the custom,
that's all. But it's mighty hard on one with so many other nice girls
around."
There was a quizzical light in his long gray eyes that affected
Ernestine so profoundly that she gazed into his eyes over long, became
conscious of what she was doing, dropped her own eyes away, and flushed.
"Little Leo--the boy poet you remember last night," she rattled on in a
patent attempt to escape from her confusion. "He's madly in love with
Paula, too. I've heard Aaron Hancock chaffing him about some sonnet
cycle, and it isn't difficult to guess the inspiration. And
Terrence--the Irishman, you know--he's mildly in love with her. They
can't help it, you see; and can you blame them?"
"She surely deserves it all," Graham murmured, although vaguely hurt in
that the addle-pated, alphabet-obsessed, epicurean anarchist of an
Irishman who gloried in being a loafer and a pensioner should even
mildly be in love with the Little Lady. "She is most deserving of all
men's admiration," he continued smoothly. "From the little I've seen of
her she's quite remarkable and most charming."
"She's my half-sister," Ernestine vouchsafed, "although you wouldn't
dream a drop of the same blood ran in our veins. She's so different.
She's different from all the Destens, from any girl I ever knew--though
she isn't exactly a girl. She's thirty-eight, you know--"
"Pussy, pussy," Graham whispered.
The pretty young blonde looked at him in surprise and bewilderment,
taken aback by the apparent irrelevance of his interruption.
"Cat," he censured in mock reproof.
"Oh!" she cried. "I never meant it that way. You will find we are very
frank here. Everybody knows Paula's age. She tells it herself. I'm
eighteen--so, there. And now, just for your meanness, how old are you?"
"As old as Dick," he replied promptly.
"And he's forty," she laughed triumphantly. "Are you coming swimming?
--the water will be dreadfully cold."
Graham shook his head. "I'm going riding with Dick."
Her face fell with all the ingenuousness of eighteen.
"Oh," she protested, "some of his eternal green manures, or hillside
terracing, or water-pocketing."
"But he said something about swimming at five."
Her face brightened joyously.
"Then we'll meet at the tank. It must be the same party. Paula said
swimming at five."
As they parted under a long arcade, where his way led to the tower room
for a change into riding clothes, she stopped suddenly and called:
"Oh, Mr. Graham."
He turned obediently.
"You really are not compelled to fall in love with Paula, you know. It
was just my way of putting it."
"I shall be very, very careful," he said solemnly, although there was a
twinkle in his eye as he concluded.
Nevertheless, as he went on to his room, he could not but admit to
himself that the Paula Forrest charm, or the far fairy tentacles of it,
had already reached him and were wrapping around him. He knew, right
there, that he would prefer the engagement to ride to have been with
her than with his old-time friend, Dick.
As he emerged from the house to the long hitching-rails under the
ancient oaks, he looked eagerly for his hostess. Only Dick was there,
and the stable-man, although the many saddled horses that stamped in
the shade promised possibilities. But Dick and he rode away alone. Dick
pointed out her horse, an alert bay thoroughbred, stallion at that,
under a small Australian saddle with steel stirrups, and double-reined
and single-bitted.
"I don't know her plans," he said. "She hasn't shown up yet, but at any
rate she'll be swimming later. We'll meet her then."
Graham appreciated and enjoyed the ride, although more than once he
found himself glancing at his wrist-watch to ascertain how far away
five o'clock might yet be. Lambing time was at hand, and through home
field after home field he rode with his host, now one and now the other
dismounting to turn over onto its feet rotund and glorious Shropshire
and Ramboullet-Merino ewes so hopelessly the product of man's selection
as to be unable to get off, of themselves, from their own broad backs,
once they were down with their four legs helplessly sky-aspiring.
"I've really worked to make the American Merino," Dick was saying; "to
give it the developed leg, the strong back, the well-sprung rib, and
the stamina. The old-country breed lacked the stamina. It was too much
hand-reared and manicured."
"You're doing things, big things," Graham assured him. "Think of
shipping rams to Idaho! That speaks for itself."
Dick Forrest's eyes were sparkling, as he replied:
"Better than Idaho. Incredible as it may sound, and asking forgiveness
for bragging, the great flocks to-day of Michigan and Ohio can trace
back to my California-bred Ramboullet rams. Take Australia. Twelve
years ago I sold three rams for three hundred each to a visiting
squatter. After he took them back and demonstrated them he sold them
for as many thousand each and ordered a shipload more from me.
Australia will never be the worse for my having been. Down there they
say that lucerne, artesian wells, refrigerator ships, and Forrest's
rams have tripled the wool and mutton production."
Quite by chance, on the way back, meeting Mendenhall, the horse
manager, they were deflected by him to a wide pasture, broken by wooded
canyons and studded with oaks, to look over a herd of yearling Shires
that was to be dispatched next morning to the upland pastures and
feeding sheds of the Miramar Hills. There were nearly two hundred of
them, rough-coated, beginning to shed, large-boned and large for their
age.
"We don't exactly crowd them," Dick Forrest explained, "but Mr.
Mendenhall sees to it that they never lack full nutrition from the time
they are foaled. Up there in the hills, where they are going, they'll
balance their grass with grain. This makes them assemble every night at
the feeding places and enables the feeders to keep track of them with a
minimum of effort. I've shipped fifty stallions, two-year-olds, every
year for the past five years, to Oregon alone. They're sort of
standardized, you know. The people up there know what they're getting.
They know my standard so well that they'll buy unsight and unseen."
"You must cull a lot, then," Graham ventured.
"And you'll see the culls draying on the streets of San Francisco,"
Dick answered.
"Yes, and on the streets of Denver," Mr. Mendenhall amplified, "and of
Los Angeles, and--why, two years ago, in the horse-famine, we shipped
twenty carloads of four-year geldings to Chicago, that averaged
seventeen hundred each. The lightest were sixteen, and there were
matched pairs up to nineteen hundred. Lord, Lord, that was a year for
horse-prices--blue sky, and then some."
As Mr. Mendenhall rode away, a man, on a slender-legged, head-tossing
Palomina, rode up to them and was introduced to Graham as Mr. Hennessy,
the ranch veterinary.
"I heard Mrs. Forrest was looking over the colts," he explained to his
employer, "and I rode across to give her a glance at The Fawn here.
She'll be riding her in less than a week. What horse is she on to-day?"
"The Fop," Dick replied, as if expecting the comment that was prompt as
the disapproving shake of Mr. Hennessy's head.
"I can never become converted to women riding stallions," muttered the
veterinary. "The Fop is dangerous. Worse--though I take my hat off to
his record--he's malicious and vicious. She--Mrs. Forrest ought to ride
him with a muzzle--but he's a striker as well, and I don't see how she
can put cushions on his hoofs."
"Oh, well," Dick placated, "she has a bit that _is_ a bit in his mouth,
and she's not afraid to use it--"
"If he doesn't fall over on her some day," Mr. Hennessy grumbled.
"Anyway, I'll breathe easier when she takes to The Fawn here. Now
_she's_ a lady's mount--all the spirit in the world, but nothing
vicious. She's a sweet mare, a sweet mare, and she'll steady down from
her friskiness. But she'll always be a gay handful--no riding academy
proposition."
"Let's ride over," Dick suggested. "Mrs. Forrest'll have a gay handful
in The Fop if she's ridden him into that bunch of younglings.--It's her
territory, you know," he elucidated to Graham. "All the house horses
and lighter stock is her affair. And she gets grand results. I can't
understand it, myself. It's like a little girl straying into an
experimental laboratory of high explosives and mixing the stuff around
any old way and getting more powerful combinations than the graybeard
chemists."
The three men took a cross-ranch road for half a mile, turned up a
wooded canyon where ran a spring-trickle of stream, and emerged on a
wide rolling terrace rich in pasture. Graham's first glimpse was of a
background of many curious yearling and two-year-old colts, against
which, in the middleground, he saw his hostess, on the back of the
bright bay thoroughbred, The Fop, who, on hind legs, was striking his
forefeet in the air and squealing shrilly. They reined in their mounts
and watched.
"He'll get her yet," the veterinary muttered morosely. "That Fop isn't
safe."
But at that moment Paula Forrest, unaware of her audience, with a sharp
cry of command and a cavalier thrust of sharp spurs into The Fop's
silken sides, checked him down to four-footedness on the ground and a
restless, champing quietness.
"Taking chances?" Dick mildly reproached her, as the three rode up.
"Oh, I can manage him," she breathed between tight teeth, as, with ears
back and vicious-gleaming eyes, The Fop bared his teeth in a bite that
would have been perilously near to Graham's leg had she not reined the
brute abruptly away across the neck and driven both spurs solidly into
his sides.
The Fop quivered, squealed, and for the moment stood still.
"It's the old game, the white man's game," Dick laughed. "She's not
afraid of him, and he knows it. She outgames him, out-savages him,
teaches him what savagery is in its intimate mood and tense."
Three times, while they looked on, ready to whirl their own steeds away
if he got out of hand, The Fop attempted to burst into rampage, and
three times, solidly, with careful, delicate hand on the bitter bit,
Paula Forrest dealt him double spurs in the ribs, till he stood,
sweating, frothing, fretting, beaten, and in hand.
"It's the way the white man has always done," Dick moralized, while
Graham suffered a fluttery, shivery sensation of admiration of the
beast-conquering Little Lady. "He's out-savaged the savage the world
around," Dick went on. "He's out-endured him, out-filthed him,
out-scalped him, out-tortured him, out-eaten him--yes, out-eaten him.
It's a fair wager that the white man, in extremis, has eaten more of
the genus homo, than the savage, in extremis, has eaten."
"Good afternoon," Paula greeted her guest, the ranch veterinary, and
her husband. "I think I've got him now. Let's look over the colts. Just
keep an eye, Mr. Graham, on his mouth. He's a dreadful snapper. Ride
free from him, and you'll save your leg for old age."
Now that The Fop's demonstration was over, the colts, startled into
flight by some impish spirit amongst them, galloped and frisked away
over the green turf, until, curious again, they circled back, halted at
gaze, and then, led by one particularly saucy chestnut filly, drew up
in half a circle before the riders, with alert pricking ears.
Graham scarcely saw the colts at first. He was seeing his protean
hostess in a new role. Would her proteanness never end? he wondered, as
he glanced over the magnificent, sweating, mastered creature she
bestrode. Mountain Lad, despite his hugeness, was a mild-mannered pet
beside this squealing, biting, striking Fop who advertised all the
spirited viciousness of the most spirited vicious thoroughbred.
"Look at her," Paula whispered to Dick, in order not to alarm the saucy
chestnut filly. "Isn't she wonderful! That's what I've been working
for." Paula turned to Evan. "Always they have some fault, some miss, at
the best an approximation rather than an achievement. But she's an
achievement. Look at her. She's as near right as I shall probably ever
get. Her sire is Big Chief, if you know our racing register. He sold
for sixty thousand when he was a cripple. We borrowed the use of him.
She was his only get of the season. But look at her! She's got his
chest and lungs. I had my choices--mares eligible for the register. Her
dam wasn't eligible, but I chose her. She was an obstinate old maid,
but she was the one mare for Big Chief. This is her first foal and she
was eighteen years old when she bred. But I knew it was there. All I
had to do was to look at Big Chief and her, and it just had to be
there."
"The dam was only half thoroughbred," Dick explained.
"But with a lot of Morgan on the other side," Paula added instantly,
"and a streak along the back of mustang. This shall be called Nymph,
even if she has no place in the books. She'll be my first unimpeachable
perfect saddle horse--I know it--the kind I like--my dream come true at
last."
"A hoss has four legs, one on each corner," Mr. Hennessy uttered
profoundly.
"And from five to seven gaits," Graham took up lightly,
"And yet I don't care for those many-gaited Kentuckians," Paula said
quickly, "--except for park work. But for California, rough roads,
mountain trails, and all the rest, give me the fast walk, the fox trot,
the long trot that covers the ground, and the not too-long,
ground-covering gallop. Of course, the close-coupled, easy canter; but
I scarcely call that a gait--it's no more than the long lope reduced to
the adjustment of wind or rough ground."
"She's a beauty," Dick admired, his eyes warm in contemplation of the
saucy chestnut filly, who was daringly close and alertly sniffing of
the subdued Fop's tremulous and nostril-dilated muzzle.
"I prefer my own horses to be near thoroughbred rather than all
thoroughbred," Paula proclaimed. "The running horse has its place on
the track, but it's too specialized for mere human use."
"Nicely coupled," Mr. Hennessy said, indicating the Nymph. "Short
enough for good running and long enough for the long trot. I'll admit I
didn't have any faith in the combination; but you've got a grand animal
out of it just the same."
"I didn't have horses when I was a young girl," Paula said to Graham;
"and the fact that I can now not only have them but breed them and mold
them to my heart's desire is always too good to be true. Sometimes I
can't believe it myself, and have to ride out and look them over to
make sure."
She turned her head and raised her eyes gratefully to Forrest; and
Graham watched them look into each other's eyes for a long half-minute.
Forrest's pleasure in his wife's pleasure, in her young enthusiasm and
joy of life, was clear to Graham's observation. "Lucky devil," was
Graham's thought, not because of his host's vast ranch and the success
and achievement of it, but because of the possession of a wonder-woman
who could look unabashed and appreciative into his eyes as the Little
Lady had looked.
Graham was meditating, with skepticism, Ernestine's information that
Paula Forrest was thirty-eight, when she turned to the colts and
pointed her riding whip at a black yearling nibbling at the spring
green.
"Look at that level rump, Dick," she said, "and those trotting feet and
pasterns." And, to Graham: "Rather different from Nymph's long wrists,
aren't they? But they're just what I was after." She laughed a little,
with just a shade of annoyance. "The dam was a bright sorrel--almost
like a fresh-minted twenty-dollar piece--and I did so want a pair out
of her, of the same color, for my own trap. Well, I can't say that I
exactly got them, although I bred her to a splendid, sorrel trotting
horse. And this is my reward, this black--and, wait till we get to the
brood mares and you'll see the other, a full brother and mahogany
brown. I'm so disappointed."
She singled out a pair of dark bays, feeding together: "Those are two
of Guy Dillon's get--brother, you know, to Lou Dillon. They're out of
different mares, not quite the same bay, but aren't they splendidly
matched? And they both have Guy Dillon's coat."
She moved her subdued steed on, skirting the flank of the herd quietly
in order not to alarm it; but a number of colts took flight.
"Look at them!" she cried. "Five, there, are hackneys. Look at the lift
of their fore-legs as they run."
"I'll be terribly disappointed if you don't get a prize-winning
four-in-hand out of them," Dick praised, and brought again the flash of
grateful eyes that hurt Graham as he noted it.
"Two are out of heavier mares--see that one in the middle and the one
on the far left--and there's the other three to pick from for the
leaders. Same sire, five different dams, and a matched and balanced
four, out of five choices, all in the same season, is a stroke of luck,
isn't it?"
She turned quickly to Mr. Hennessy: "I can begin to see the ones that
will have to sell for polo ponies--among the two-year-olds. You can
pick them."
"If Mr. Mendenhall doesn't sell that strawberry roan for a clean
fifteen hundred, it'll be because polo has gone out of fashion," the
veterinary approved, with waxing enthusiasm. "I've had my eye on them.
That pale sorrel, there. You remember his set-back. Give him an extra
year and he'll--look at his coupling!--watch him turn!--a
cow-skin?--he'll turn on a silver dollar! Give him a year to make up,
and he'll stand a show for the international. Listen to me. I've had my
faith in him from the beginning. Cut out that Burlingame crowd. When
he's ripe, ship him straight East."
Paula nodded and listened to Mr. Hennessy's judgment, her eyes kindling
with his in the warmth of the sight of the abounding young life for
which she was responsible.
"It always hurts, though," she confessed to Graham, "selling such
beauties to have them knocked out on the field so quickly."
Her sheer absorption in the animals robbed her speech of any hint of
affectation or show--so much so, that Dick was impelled to praise her
judgment to Evan.
"I can dig through a whole library of horse practice, and muddle and
mull over the Mendelian Law until I'm dizzy, like the clod that I am;
but she is the genius. She doesn't have to study law. She just knows it
in some witch-like, intuitional way. All she has to do is size up a
bunch of mares with her eyes, and feel them over a little with her
hands, and hunt around till she finds the right sires, and get pretty
nearly what she wants in the result--except color, eh, Paul?" he teased.
She showed her laughing teeth in the laugh at her expense, in which Mr.
Hennessy joined, and Dick continued: "Look at that filly there. We all
knew Paula was wrong. But look at it! She bred a rickety old
thoroughbred, that we wanted to put out of her old age, to a standard
stallion; got a filly; bred it back with a thoroughbred; bred its filly
foal with the same standard again; knocked all our prognostications
into a cocked hat, and--well, look at it, a world-beater polo pony.
There is one thing we have to take off our hats to her for: she doesn't
let any woman sentimentality interfere with her culling. Oh, she's
cold-blooded enough. She's as remorseless as any man when it comes to
throwing out the undesirables and selecting for what she wants. But she
hasn't mastered color yet. There's where her genius falls down, eh,
Paul? You'll have to put up with Duddy and Fuddy for a while longer for
your trap. By the way, how is Duddy?"
"He's come around," she answered, "thanks to Mr. Hennessy."
"Nothing serious," the veterinarian added. "He was just off his feed a
trifle. It was more a scare of the stableman than anything else."