IIILEE VIRGINIA WAGES WAR
Intruth, Lize had risen that morning intending “to whirl in and clean up the house,” being suddenly conscious to some degree of the dirt and disorder around her, but she found herself physically unequal to the task. Her brain seemed misted, and her food had been a source of keen pain to her. Hence, after a few half-hearted orders, she had settled into her broad chair behind the counter and there remained, brooding over her maternal responsibilities.
She gave sharp answers to all the men who came up to ask after her daughter, and to one who remarked on the girl’s good looks, and demanded an introduction, she said: “Get along! I’d as soon introduce her to a goat. Now you fellers want to understand I’ll kill the man that sets out to fool with my girl, I tell you that!”
While yet Lee Virginia was wondering how to begin the day’s work, some one knocked on her door, and in answer to her invitation a woman stepped in—a thin blond hag with a weak smile and watery blue eyes. “Is this little Lee Virginy?” she asked.
The girl rose. “Yes.”
“Well, howdy!” She extended her hand, and Lee tookit. “My name’s Jackson—Mrs. Orlando Jackson. I knew yore pa and you before ‘the war.’”
Lee Virginia dimly recalled such a family, and asked: “Where do you live?”
“We hole up down here on a ranch about twenty miles—stayed with yore ma last night—thought I’d jest nacherly look in and say howdy. Are ye back fer to stay?”
“No, I don’t think so. Will you sit down?”
Mrs. Jackson took a seat. “Come back to see how yore ma was, I reckon? Found her pretty porely, didn’t ye?” She lowered her voice. “I think she’s got cancer of the stummick—now that’s my guess.”
Virginia started. “What makes you think so?”
“Well, I knew a woman who went just that way. Had that same flabby, funny look—and that same distress after eatin’, I told her this mornin’ she’d better go up to Sulphur and see that new doctor. You see, yore ma has always been a reckless kind of a critter—more like a man than a woman, God knows—an’ how she ever got a girl like you I don’t fairly understand. I reckon you must be what the breedin’ men call ‘a throw-back,’ for yore pa wa‘n’t much to brag of, ‘ceptin’ for looks—he certainly was good-lookin’. He used to sober down when he got where you was; but my—good God!—weren’t they a pair to draw to? I’ve heard ’Lando tell tales of yore ma’s doin’s that would ’fright ye. Not that she fooled with men,” she hastened to say. “Lord, no! For her the sun rose and set in Ed Wetherford. She’d leave you any day, and go on the round-up with him. It nighabout broke her up in business when Ed hit the far-away trail.”
The girl perceived that in her visitor she had one of these self-oiled human talking-machines “with tongue hung in the middle,” as the old saying goes, and she was dimly conscious of having heard her many times before. “You don’t look very well yourself,” she said.
“Me? Oh, I’m like one o’ these Injun dawgs—can’t kill me. I’ve been on the range so long I’m tough as dried beef. It’s a fierce old place for a woman—or it was before ‘the war’—since then it’s kind o’ softened down a hair.”
“What do you mean by ‘the war’?”
“Why, you remember the rustler war? We date everything out here from that year. You was here, for I saw ye—a slob of a child.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Virginia. “I understand now. Yes, I was here. I saw my father at the head of the cowboys.”
“They weren’t cowboys; they were hired killers from Texas. That’s what let yore pa out o’ the State. He were on the wrong side, and if it hadn’t ‘a’ been for the regular soldiers he’d ‘a’ been wiped out right hyer. As it was he had to skip the range, and hain’t never been back. I don’t s’pose folks will lay it up agin you—bein’ a girl—but they couldn’t nosonof Ed Wetherford come back here and settle, not for a minute. Why, yore ma has had to bluff the whole county a’most—not thatIlay anything up agin her. I tell folks she was that bewitched with Ed she couldn’t see things any way but his way. She fought to save his ranch and stawk and—buthell! she couldn’t do nothin’—and then to have him go back on her the way he did—slip out ’twixt two days, and never write; that just about shot her to pieces. I never could understand that in Ed, he ’peared so mortally fond of you and of her, too. He sure was fond of you!” She shook her head. “No, can’t anybody make me believe Ed Wetherford is alive.”
Lee Virginia started. “Who says he’s alive?”
“Now don’t get excited, girl. He ain’t alive; but yet folks say we don’tknowhe’s dead. He jest dropped out so far as yore ma is concerned, and so far as the county is concerned; but some thought you was with him in the East.”
The girl was now aware that her visitor was hoping to gain some further information, and so curtly answered: “I’ve never seen my father since that night the soldiers came and took him away to the fort. And my mother told me he died down in Texas.”
Mrs. Jackson seemed a little disappointed, but she smoothed the dress over her sharp knees, and continued: “Right there the good old days ended for yore ma—and for us. The cattle business has been steadily on the chute—that is, the free-range business. I saw it comin’, an’ I says to Jackson, ‘Camp on some river-bottom and chuck in the alfalfy,’ I says. An’ that’s what we did. We got a little bunch o’ cattle up in the park—Uncle Sam’s man is lookin’ after ’em.” She grinned. “Jackson kicked at the fee, but I says: ‘Twenty cents a head is cheap pasture. We’re lucky to get any grass at all, now that everybody’s goin’ in for sheep. ’Pearslike the sheepmen air gettin’ bolder and bolder in this free-range graft, and I’m a-bettin’ on trouble.’” She rose. “Well, I’m glad to ’ve had a word with ye; but you hear me: yore ma has got to have doctor’s help, or she’s a-goin’ to fall down some day soon.”
Every word the woman uttered, every tone of her drawling voice, put Lee Virginia back into the past. She heard again the swift gallop of hooves, saw once more the long line of armed ranchers, and felt the hush of fear that lay over the little town on that fateful day. The situation became clearer in her mind. She recalled vividly the words of astonishment and hate with which the women had greeted her mother on the morning when the news came that Edward Wetherford was among the invading cattle-barons—was, indeed, one of the leaders.
In Philadelphia the Rocky Mountain States were synonyms of picturesque lawlessness, the theatre of reckless romance, and Virginia Wetherford, loyal daughter of the West, had defended it; but in the coarse phrase of this lean rancheress was pictured a land of border warfare as ruthless as that which marked the Scotland of Rob Roy.
Commonplace as the little town looked at the moment, it had been the scene of many a desperate encounter, as the girl herself could testify, for she had seen more than one man killed therein. Some way the hideousness of these scenes had never shown itself to her—perhaps because she had been a child at the time, and had thrilled to the delicious excitement of it; but now, as she imagined it all happening again before her eyes, she shivered withhorror. How monstrous, how impossible those killings now seemed!
Then her mind came back to her mother’s ailment. Eliza Wetherford had never been one to complain, and her groans meant real suffering.
Her mind resolved upon one thing. “She must see a doctor,” she decided. And with this in mind she reentered the café, where Lize was again in violent altercation with a waitress.
“Mother,” called Lee, “I want to see you.”
With a parting volley of vituperation, Mrs. Wetherford followed her daughter back into the lodging-house.
“Mother,” the girl began, facing her and speaking firmly, “you must go to Sulphur City and see a doctor. I’ll stay here and look after the business.”
Mrs. Wetherford perceived in her daughter’s attitude and voice something decisive and powerful. She sank into a chair, and regarded her with intent gaze. “Hett Jackson’s been gabblin’ to you,” she declared. “Hett knows more fool things that ain’t so than any old heffer I know. She said I was about all in, didn’t she? Prophesied I’d fall down and stay? I know her.”
Lee Virginia remained firm. “I’m not going by what she said, I’ve got eyes of my own. You need help, and if the doctor here can’t help you, you must go to Sulphur or to Kansas City. I can run the boarding-house till you get back.”
Eliza eyed her curiously. “Don’t you go to countin’ on this ‘chivalry of the West’ which story-writers put intobooks. These men out here will eat you up if you don’t watch out. I wouldn’t dare to leave you here alone. No, what I’ll do is sell the place, if I can, and both of us get out.”
“But you need a doctor this minute.”
“I’ll be all right in a little while; I’m always the worst for an hour or two after I eat. This little squirt of a local doctor gave me some dope to ease that pain, but I’ve got my doubts—I don’t want any morphine habit in mine. No, daughter Virginny, it’s mighty white of you to offer, but you don’t know what you’re up against when you contract to step into my shoes.”
Visions of reforming methods about the house passed through the girl’s mind. “There must be something I can do. Why don’t you have the doctor come down here?”
“I might do that if I get any worse, but I hate to have you stay in the house another night. It’s only fit for these goats of cowboys and women like Hett Jackson. Did the bugs eat you last night?”
Virginia flushed. “Yes.”
Eliza’s face fell. “I was afraid of that. You can’t keep ’em out. The cowboys bring ’em in by the quart.”
“They can be destroyed—and the flies, too, can’t they?”
“When you’ve bucked flies and bugs as long as I have, you’ll be less ’peart about it. I don’t care a hoot in Hades till somebody like you or Reddy or Ross comes along. Most of the men that camp with me are like Injuns, anyway—they wouldn’t feel natural withoutbugs a ticklin’ ’em. No, child, you get ready and pull out on the Sulphur stage to-morrow. I’ll pay your way back to Philadelphy.”
“I can’t leave you now, mother. Now that I know you’re ill, I’m going to stay and take care of you.”
Lize rose. “See here, girl, don’t you go to idealizin’ me, neither. I’m what the boys call an old battle-axe. I’ve been through the whole war. I’m able to feed myself and pay your board besides. Just you find some decent boarding-place in Sulphur, and I’ll see that you have ten dollars a week to live on, just because you’re a Wetherford.”
“But I’m your daughter!”
Again Eliza fixed a musing look upon her. “I reckon if the truth was known your aunt Celia was nigher to being your mother than I ever was. They always said you was all Wetherford, and I reckon they were right. I always liked men better than babies. So long as I had your father, you didn’t count—now that’s the God’s truth. And I didn’t intend that you should ever come back here. I urged you to stay—you know that.”
Lee Virginia imagined all this to be a savage self-accusation which sprang from long self-bereavement, and yet there was something terrifying in its brutal frankness. She stood in silence till her mother left the room, then went to her own chamber with a painful knot in her throat. What could she do with elemental savagery of this sort?
The knowledge that she must spend another night in the bed led her to active measures of reform. With disgustfuldesperation, she emptied the room and swept it as with fire and sword. Her change of mind, from the passive to the active state, relieved and stimulated her, and she hurried from one needed reform to another. She drew others into the vortex. She inspired the chambermaid to unwilling yet amazing effort, and the lodging-house endured such a blast from the besom that it stood in open-windowed astonishment uttering dust like the breath of a dragon. Having swept and garnished the bed-chambers, Virginia moved on the dining-room. As the ranger had said, this, too, could be reformed.
Unheeding her mother’s protests, she organized the giggling waiters into a warring party, and advanced upon the flies. By hissing and shooing, and the flutter of newspapers, they drove the enemy before them, and a carpenter was called in to mend screen doors and windows, thus preventing their return. New shades were hung to darken the room, and new table-cloths purchased to replace the old ones, and the kitchen had such a cleaning as it had not known before in five years.
In this work the time passed swiftly, and when Redfield and Cavanagh came again to lunch they exclaimed in astonishment—as, indeed, every one did.
“How’s this?” queried Cavanagh, humorously. “Has the place ’changed hands?’”
Lize was but grimly responsive. “Seem’s like it has.”
“I hope the price has not gone up?”
“Not yet.”
Redfield asked: “Who’s responsible for this—your new daughter?”
“You’ve hit it. She’s started right in to polish us all up to city standards.”
“We need it,” commented Cavanagh, in admiration of the girl’s prompt action. “This room is almost civilized, still we’ll sort o’ miss the flies.”
Lize apologized. “Well, you know a feller gits kind o’ run down like a clock, and has to have some outsider wind him up now and again. First I was mad, then I was scared, but now I’m cheerin’ the girl on. She can run the whole blame outfit if she’s a mind to—even if I go broke for it. The work she got out o’ them slatter-heels of girls is a God’s wonder.”
Ross looked round for Virginia, but could not find her. She had seen him come in, and was out in the kitchen doing what she could to have his food brought in and properly served.
Redfield reassured the perturbed proprietor of “the joint.” “No fear of going broke, madam—quite the contrary. A few little touches like this, and you’ll be obliged to tear down and build bigger. I don’t believe I’d like to see your daughter run this eating-house as a permanent job, but if she starts in I’m sure she’ll make a success of it.”
Lee Virginia came in flushed and self-conscious, but far lighter of spirit than at breakfast; and stood beside the table while the waitresslaidthe dishes before her guests with elaborate assumption of grace and design. Hitherto she had bumped them down with a slash ofslangy comment. The change was quite as wonderful as the absence of the flies.
“Do we owe these happy reforms to you?” asked Cavanagh, admiring Virginia’s neat dress and glowing cheeks.
“Partly,” she answered. “I was desperate. I had to do something, so I took to ordering people around.”
“I understand,” he said. “Won’t you sit at our table again?”
“Please do,” said Redfield. “I want to talk with you.”
She took a seat—a little hesitantly. “You see, I studied Domestic Science at school, and I’ve never had a chance to apply it before.”
“Here’s your opportunity,” Redfield assured her. “My respect for the science of domestics is growing—I marvel to think what another week will bring forth. I think I’ll have to come down again just to observe the improvement in the place.”
“It can’t last,” Lize interjected. “She’ll catch the Western habits—she’ll sag, same as we all do.”
“No she won’t,” declared Ross, with intent to encourage her. “If you give her a free hand, I predict she’ll make your place the wonder and boast of the county-side.”
“When do you go back to the mountains?” Lee Virginia asked, a little later.
“Immediately after my luncheon,” he replied.
She experienced a pang of regret, and could not help showing it a little. “Your talk helped me,” she said; “I’ve decided to stay, and be of use to my mother.”
Redfield overheard this, and turned toward her.
“This is a rough school for you, Lee Virginia, and I should dislike seeing you settle down to it for life: but it can’t hurt you if you are what I think you are. Nothing can soil or mar the mind that wills for good. I want Mrs. Redfield to know you; I’m sure her advice will be helpful. I hope you’ll come up and see us if you decide to settle in Sulphur—or if you don’t.”
“I should like to do so,” she said, touched by the tone as well as by the words of his invitation.
“Redfield’s house is one of the few completely civilized homes in the State,” put in Cavanagh. “When I get so weary of cuss-words and poaching and graft that I can’t live without killing some one, I go down to Elk Lodge and smoke and read the Supervisor’s London and Paris weeklies and recover my tone.”
Redfield smiled. “When I get weak-kneed or careless in the service and feel my self-respect slipping away, I go up to Ross’s cabin and talk with a man who represents the impersonal, even-handed justice of the Federal law.”
Cavanagh laughed. “There! Having handed each other reciprocal bouquets, we can now tell Miss Wetherford the truth. Each of us thinks very well of himself, and we’re both believers in the New West.”
“What do you mean by the New West?” asked the girl.
“Well, the work you’ve been doing here this morning is a part of it,” answered Redfield. “It’s a kind of housecleaning. The Old West was picturesque and, in a way, manly and fine—certain phases of it were heroic—and I hate to see it all pass, but some of us began to realize thatit was not all poetry. The plain truth is my companions for over twenty years were lawless ruffians, and the cattle business as we practiced it in those days was founded on selfishness and defended at the mouth of the pistol. We were all pensioners on Uncle Sam, and fighting to keep the other fellow off from having a share of his bounty. It was all wasteful, half-savage. We didn’t want settlement, we didn’t want law, we didn’t want a State. We wanted free range. We were a line of pirates from beginning to end, and we’re not wholly, reformed yet.”
He was talking to the whole table now, for all were listening. No other man on the range could say these things with the same authority, for Hugh Redfield was known all over the State as a man who had been one of the best riders and ropers in his outfit—one who had started in as a common hand at herding, and who had been entirely through “the war.”
Lee Virginia listened with a stirring of the blood. Her recollections of the range were all of the heroic. She recalled the few times when she was permitted to go on the round-up, and to witness the breaking of new horses, and the swiftness, grace, and reckless bravery of the riders, the moan and surge of herds, the sweep of horsemen, came back and filled her mind with large and free and splendid pictures. And now it was passing—or past!
Some one at the table accused Redfield of being more of a town-site boomer than a cattle-man.
He was quite unmoved by this charge. “The town-site boomer at least believes in progress. He does notgo so far as to shut out settlement. If a neat and tidy village or a well-ordered farmstead is not considered superior to a cattle-ranch littered with bones and tin cans, or better than even a cow-town whose main industry is whiskey-selling, then all civilized progress is a delusion. When I was a youngster these considerations didn’t trouble me. I liked the cowboy life and the careless method of the plains, but I’ve some girls growing up now, and I begin to see the whole business in a new light. I don’t care to have my children live the life I’ve lived. Besides, what right have we to stand in the way of a community’s growth? Suppose the new lifeisless picturesque than the old? We don’t like to leave behind us the pleasures and sports of boyhood; but we grow up, nevertheless. I’m far more loyal to the State as Forest Supervisor than I was when I was riding with the cattle-men to scare up the nester.”
He uttered all this quite calmly, but his ease of manner, his absolute disregard of consequences, joined with his wealth and culture, gave his words great weight and power. No one was ready with an answer but Lize, who called out, with mocking accent: “Reddy, you’re too good for the Forest Service, you’d ought ’o be our next Governor.”
This was a centre shot. Redfield flushed, and Cavanagh laughed. “Mr. Supervisor, you are discovered!”
Redfield recovered himself. “I should like to be Governor of this State for about four years, but I’m likelier to be lynched for being in command of twenty ‘Cossacks.’”
At this moment Sam Gregg entered the room, followed by a young man in an English riding-suit. Seeing that “the star-boarder table” offered a couple of seats, they pointed that way. Sam was plainly in war-like frame of mind, and slammed his sombrero on its nail with the action of a man beating an adversary.
“That is Sam Gregg and his son Joe—used to be ranch cattle-man, now one of our biggest sheepmen,” Cavanagh explained. “He’s bucking the cattle-men now.”
Lee Virginia studied young Gregg with interest, for his dress was that of a man to whom money came easy, and his face was handsome, though rather fat and sullen. In truth, he had been brought into the room by his father to see “Lize Wetherford’s girl,” and his eyes at once sought and found her. A look of surprise and pleasure at once lit his face.
Gregg was sullen because of his interview with Cavanagh, which had been in the nature of a grapple; and in the light of what Redfield had said, Lee Virginia was able to perceive in these two men a struggle for supremacy. Gregg was the greedy West checked and restrained by the law.
Every man in the room knew that Gregg was a bitter opponent of the Forest Service, and that he “had it in” for the ranger; and some of them knew that he was throwing more sheep into the forest than his permits allowed, and that a clash with Redfield was sure to come. It was just like the burly old Irishman to go straight to the table where his adversary sat.
Virginia’s eyes fell before the gaze of these two men,for they had none of the shyness or nothing of the indirection of the ruder men she had met. They expressed something which angered her, though she could not have told precisely why.
Redfield did not soften his words on Gregg’s account; on the contrary he made them still more cutting and to the line.
“The mere fact that I live near the open range or a national forest does not give me anyrightsin the range or forest,” he was saying, as Gregg took his seat. “I enjoy theprivilegeof these Government grazing grounds, and I ought to be perfectly willing to pay the fee. These forests are the property of the whole nation; they are public lands, and should yield a revenue to the whole nation. It is silly to expect the Government to go on enriching a few of us stockmen at the expense of others. I see this, and I accept the change.”
“After you’ve got rich at it,” said Gregg.
“Well, haven’t you?” retorted Redfield. “Are you so greedy that nothing will stop you?”
Lize threw in a wise word. “The sporting-houses of Kansas City and Chicago keep old Sam poor.”
A roar of laughter followed this remark, and Gregg was stumped for a moment; but the son grinned appreciatively. “Now be good!”
Cavanagh turned to Virginia in haste to shield her from all that lay behind and beneath this sally of the older and deeply experienced woman. “The Supervisor is willing to yield a point—he knows what the New West will bring.”
Gregg growled out: “I’m not letting any of my rights slip.”
The girl was troubled by the war-light which she saw in the faces of the men about her, and vague memories of the words and stories she had overchanced to hear in her childhood came back to her mind—hints of the drunken orgies of the cowboys who went to the city with cattle, and the terrifying suggestion of their attitude toward all womankind. She set Cavanagh and his chief quite apart from all the others in the room, and at first felt that in young Gregg was another man of education and right living—but in this she was misled.
Lize had confidence enough in the ranger to throw in another malicious word. “Ross, old Bullfrog came down here to chase you up a tree—so he said. Did he do it?”
Gregg looked ugly. “I’m not done with this business.”
She turned to Ross. “Don’t let him scare you—his beller is a whole lot worse than his bite.”
This provoked another laugh, and Gregg was furious—all the more so that his son joined in. “I’ll have your head, Mr. Supervisor; I’ll carry my fight to the Secretary.”
“Very well,” returned Redfield, “carry it to the President if you wish. I simply repeat that your sheep must correspond to your permit, and if you don’t send up and remove the extra number I will do it myself. I don’t make the rules of the department. My job is to carry them out.”
By this time every person in the room was tense with interest. They all knew Gregg and his imperious methods. He was famous for saying once (when in hiscup): “I always thought sheepmen were blankety blank sons of guns, and now I’m one of ’em Iknowthey are.” Some of the cattle-men in the room had suffered from his greed, and while they were not partisans of the Supervisor they were glad to see him face his opponent fearlessly.
Lize delivered a parting blow. “Bullfrog, you and me are old-timers. We’re on the losing side. We belong to the ‘good old days’ when the Fork was ‘a man’s town,’ and to be ‘shot up’ once a week kept us in news. But them times are past. You can’t run the range that way any more. Why, man, you’ll have to buy and fence your own pasture in a few years more, or else pay rent same as I do. You stockmen kick like steers over paying a few old cents a head for five months’ range; you’ll be mighty glad to pay a dollar one o’ these days. Take your medicine—that’s my advice.” And she went back to her cash-drawer.
Redfield’s voice was cuttingly contemptuous as he said quite calmly: “You’re all kinds of asses, you sheepmen. You ought to pay the fee for your cattle with secret joy. So long as you can get your stock pastured (and in effect guarded) by the Government from June to November for twenty cents, or even fifty cents, per head you’re in luck. Mrs. Wetherford is right: we’ve all been educated in a bad school. Uncle Sam has been too bloomin’ lazy to keep any supervision over his public lands. He’s permitted us grass pirates to fight and lynch and burn one another on the high range (to which neither of us had any right), holding back the realuser of the land—the farmer. We’ve played the part of selfish and greedy gluttons so long that we fancy our privileges have turned into rights. Having grown rich on free range, you’re now fighting the Forest Service because it is disposed to make you pay for what has been a gratuity. I’m a hog, Gregg, but I’m not a fool. I see the course of empire, and I’m getting into line.”
Gregg was silenced, but not convinced. “It’s a long lane that has no turn,” he growled.
Redfield resumed, in impersonal heat. “The cow-man was conceived in anarchy and educated in murder. Whatever romantic notions I may have had of the plains twenty-five years ago, they are lost to me now. The free-range stock-owner has no country and no God; nothing but a range that isn’t his, and damned bad manners—begging pardon, Miss Wetherford. The sooner he dies the better for the State. He’s a dirty, wasteful sloven, content to eat canned beans and drink canned milk in his rotten bad coffee; and nobody but an old crank like myself has the grace to stand up and tell the truth about him.”
Cavanagh smiled. “And you wouldn’t, if you weren’t a man of independent means, and known to be one of the most experienced cow-punchers in the county. I’ve no fight with men like Gregg; all is they’ve got to conform to the rules of the service.”
Gregg burst out: “You think you’re the whole United States army! Who gives you all the authority?”
“Congress and the President.”
“There’s nothing in that bill to warrant these petty tyrannies of yours.”
“What you call tyrannies I call defending the public domain,” replied Redfield. “If I had my way, I’d give my rangers the power of the Canadian mounted police. Is there any other State in this nation where the roping of sheep-herders and the wholesale butchery of sheep would be permitted? From the very first the public lands of this State have been a refuge for the criminal—a lawless no-man’s land; but now, thanks to Roosevelt and the Chief Forester, we at least have a force of men on the spot to see that some semblance of law and order is maintained. You fellows may protest and run to Washington, and you may send your paid representatives there, but you’re sure to lose. As free-range monopolists you are cumberers of the earth, and all you represent must pass, before this State can be anything but the byword it now is. I didn’t feel this so keenly ten years ago, but with a bunch of children growing up my vision has grown clearer. The picturesque West must give way to the civilized West, and the war of sheepmen and cattle-men must stop.”
The whole dining-room was still as he finished, and Lee Virginia, with a girl’s vague comprehension of the man’s world, apprehended in Redfield’s speech a large and daring purpose.
Gregg sneered. “Perhaps you intend to run for Congress on that line of talk.”
Redfield’s voice was placid. “At any rate, I intend to represent the policy that will change this State from thesparsely settled battle-ground of a lot of mounted hobos to a State with an honorable place among the other commonwealths. If this be treason, make the most of it.”
Cavanagh was disturbed; for while he felt the truth of his chief’s words, he was in doubt as to the policy of uttering them.
It was evident to Virginia that the cow-men, as well as Gregg, were nearly all against the prophet of the future, and she was filled with a sense of having arrived on the scene just as the curtain to a stern and purposeful drama was being raised. With her recollections of the savage days of old, it seemed as if Redfield, by his bold words, had placed his life in danger.
Cavanagh rose. “I must be going,” he said, with a smile.
Again the pang of loss touched her heart. “When will you come again?” she asked, in a low voice.
“It is hard to say. A ranger’s place is in the forest. I am very seldom in town. Just now the danger of fires is great, and I am very uneasy. I may not be down again for a month.”
The table was empty now, and they were standing in comparative isolation looking into each other’s eyes in silence. At last she murmured: “You’ve helped me. I’m going to stay—a little while, anyway, and do what I can—”
“I’m sorry I can’t be of actual service, but I am a soldier with a work to do. Even if I were here, I could not help you as regards the townspeople—they all hate me quite cordially; but Redfield, and especially Mrs. Redfield,can be of greater aid and comfort. He’s quite often here, and when you are lonely and discouraged let him take you up to Elk Lodge.”
“I’ve been working all the morning to make this room decent. It was rather fun. Don’t you think it helped?”
“I saw the mark of your hand the moment I entered the door,” he earnestly replied. “I’m not one that laughs at the small field of woman’s work. If you make this little hotel clean and homelike, you’ll be doing a very considerable work in bringing about the New West which the Supervisor is spouting about.” He extended his hand, and as she took it he thrilled to the soft strength of it. “Till next time,” he said, “good luck!”
She watched him go with a feeling of pain—as if in his going she were losing her best friend and most valiant protector.
IVVIRGINIA TAKES ANOTHER MOTOR RIDE
Lee Virginia’s efforts to refine the little hotel produced an amazing change in Eliza Wetherford’s affairs. The dining-room swarmed with those seeking food, and as the news of the girl’s beauty went out upon the range, the cowboys sought excuse to ride in and get a square meal and a glimpse of the “Queen” whose hand had witched “the old shack” into a marvel of cleanliness.
Say what you will, beauty is a sovereign appeal. These men, unspeakably profane, cruel, and obscene in their saddle-talk, were awed by the fresh linen, the burnished glass, and the well-ordered tables which they found in place of the flies, the dirt, and the disorder of aforetime. “It’s worth a day’s ride just to see that girl for a minute,” declared one enthusiast.
They did not all use the napkins, but they enjoyed having them there beside their plates, and the subdued light, the freedom from insects impressed them almost to decorum. They entered with awe, avid for a word with “Lize Wetherford’s girl.” Generally they failed of so much as a glance at her, for she kept away from the dining-room at meal-time.
Lee Virginia was fully aware of this male curiosity,and vaguely conscious of the merciless light which shone in the eyes of some of them (men like Gregg), who went about their game with the shameless directness of the brute. She had begun to understand, too, that her mother’s reputation was a barrier between the better class of folk and herself; but as they came now and again to take a meal, they permitted themselves a word in her praise, which she resented. “I don’t want their friendshipnow,” she declared, bitterly.
As she gained courage to look about her, she began to be interested in some of her coatless, collarless boarders on account of their extraordinary history. There was Brady, the old government scout, retired on a pension, who was accustomed to sit for hours on the porch, gazing away over the northern plains—never toward the mountains—as if he watched for bear or bison, or for the files of hostile red hunters—though in reality there was nothing to see but the stage, coming and going, or a bunch of cowboys galloping into town. Nevertheless, every cloud of dust was to him diversion, and he appeared to dream, like a captive eagle, bedraggled, spiritless, but with an inner spark of memory burning deep in his dim blue eyes.
Then there was an old miner, distressingly filthy, who hobbled to his meals on feet that had been frozen into clubs. He had a little gold loaned at interest, and on this he lived in tragic parsimony. He and the old scout sat much together, usually without speech (each knew to the last word the other’s stories), as if they recognized each other’s utter loneliness.
Sifton, the old remittance man, had been born to a higher culture, therefore was his degradation the deeper. His poverty was due to his weakness. Virginia was especially drawn toward him by reason of his inalienable politeness and his well-chosen words. He was always the gentleman—no matter how frayed his clothing.
So far as the younger men were concerned, she saw little to admire and much to hate. They were crude and uninteresting rowdies for the most part. She was put upon her defence by their glances, and she came to dread walking along the street, so open and coarse were their words of praise. She felt dishonored by the glances which her feet drew after her, and she always walked swiftly to and from the store or the post-office.
Few of these loafers had the courage to stand on their feet and court her favor, but there was one who speedily became her chief persecutor. This was Neill Ballard, celebrated (and made impudent) by two years’ travel with a Wild West show. He was tall, lean, angular, and freckled, but his horsemanship was marvellous and his skill with the rope magical. His special glory consisted in a complicated whirling of the lariat. In his hand the limp, inert cord took on life, grace, charm. It hung in the air or ran in rhythmic waves about him, rising, falling, expanding, diminishing, as if controlled by some agency other than a man’s hand, and its gyrations had won much applause in the Eastern cities, where such skill is expected of the cowboys.
He had lost his engagement by reason of a drunken brawl, and he was now living with his sister, the wife ofa small rancher near by. He was vain, lazy, and unspeakably corrupt, full of open boasting of his exploits in the drinking-dens of the East. No sooner did he fix eyes upon Virginia than he marked her for his special prey. He had the depraved heart of the herder and the insolent confidence of the hoodlum, and something of this the girl perceived. She despised the other men, but she feared this one, and quite justly, for he was capable of assaulting and binding her with his rope, as he had once done with a Shoshone squaw.
The Greggs, father and son, were in open rivalry for Lee also, but in different ways. The older man, who had already been married several times, was disposed to buy her hand in what he called “honorable wedlock,” but the son, at heart a libertine, approached her as one who despised the West, and who, being kept in the beastly country by duty to a parent, was ready to amuse himself at any one’s expense. He had no purpose in life but to feed his body and escape toil.
There are women to whom all this warfare would have been diverting, but it was not so to Lee. Her sense of responsibility was too keen. It was both a torture and a shame. The chivalry of the plains, of which she had read so much—and which she supposed she remembered—was gone. She doubted if it had ever existed among these centaurs. Why should it inhere in ignorant, brutal plainsmen any more than in ignorant, brutal factory hands?
There came to her, now and again, gentle old ranchers—“grangers,” they would be called—and shy boys fromthe farms, but for the most part the men she saw embittered her, and she kept out of their sight as much as possible. Her keenest pleasures, almost her only pleasures, lay in the occasional brief visits of the ranger, as he rode in for his mail.
Lize perceived all these attacks on her daughter, and was infuriated by them. She snapped and snarled like a tigress leading her half-grown kitten through a throng of leopards. Her brows were knotted with care as well as with pain, and she incessantly urged Virginia to go back to Sulphur. “I’ll send you money to pay your board till you strike a job.” But to this the girl would not agree; and the business, by reason of her presence, went on increasing from day to day.
To Redfield Lize one day confessed her pain. “I ought to send for that doctor up there, but the plain truth is I’m afraid of him. I don’t want to know what’s the matter of me. It’s his job to tell me I’m sick and I’m scared of his verdict.”
“Nonsense,” he replied; “you can’t afford to put off getting him much longer. I’m going back to-night, but I’ll be over again to-morrow. Why don’t you let me bring him down? It will save you twelve dollars. And, by the way, suppose you let me take Lee Virginia home with me? She looks a bit depressed; an outing will do her good. She’s taken hold here wonderfully.”
“Hasn’t she! But I should have sent her away the very first night. I’m getting to depend on her. I’m plumb foolish about her now—can’t let her out of my sight; and yet I’m off my feed worryin’ over her. Greggis getting dangerous—you can’t fool me when it comes to men. Curse ’em, they’re all alike—beasts, every cussed one of them. I won’t have my girl mistreated, I tell you that! I’m not fit to be her mother, now that’s the God’s truth, Reddy, and this rotten little back-country cow-town is no place for her. But what can I do? She won’t leave me so long as I’m sick, and every day ties her closer to me. I don’t know what I’d do without her. If I’m goin’ to die I want her by me when I take my drop. So you see just how I’m placed.”
She looked yellow and drawn as she ended, and Redfield was moved by her unwonted tenderness.
“Now let me advise,” he began, after a moment’s pause. “We musn’t let the girl get homesick. I’ll take her home with me this afternoon, and bring her back along with a doctor to-morrow.”
“All right, but before you go I want to have a private talk—I want to tell you something.”
He warned her away from what promised to be a confession. “Now, now, Eliza, don’t tell me anything that requires that tone of voice; I’m a bad person to keep a secret, and you might be sorry for it. I don’t want to know anything more about your business than I can guess.”
“I don’t mean the whiskey trade,” she explained. “I’ve cut that all out anyway. It’s something more important—it’s about Ed and me.”
“I don’t want to hearthateither,” he declared. “Let bygones be bygones. What you did then is outlawed, anyway. Those were fierce times, and I want to forgetthem.” He looked about. “Let me see this Miss Virginia and convey to her Mrs. Redfield’s invitation.”
“She’s in the kitchen, I reckon. Go right out.”
He was rather glad of a chance to see the young reformer in action, and smiled as he came upon her surrounded by waiters and cooks, busily superintending the preparations for the noon meal, which amounted to a tumult each day.
She saw Redfield, nodded, and a few moments later came toward him, flushed and beaming with welcome. “I’m glad to see you again, Mr. Supervisor.”
He bowed profoundly. “I’m delighted to find you well, Miss Virginia, and doubly pleased to see you in your regimentals, which you mightily adorn.”
She looked down at her apron. “I made this myself. Do you know our business is increasing wonderfully? I’m busy every moment of the day till bedtime.”
“Indeed I do know it. I hear of the Wetherford House all up and down the line. I was just telling your mother she’ll be forced to build bigger, like the chap in the Bible.”
“She works too hard. Poor mother! I try to get her to turn the cash-drawer over to me, but she won’t do it. Doesn’t she seem paler and weaker to you?”
“She does, indeed, and this is what I came in to propose. Mrs. Redfield sends by me a formal invitation to you to visit Elk Lodge. She is not quite able to take the long ride, else she’d come to you.” Here he handed her a note. “I suggest that you go up with me thisafternoon, and to-morrow we’ll fetch the doctor down to see your mother. What do you say to that?”
Her eyes were dewy with grateful appreciation of his kindness as she answered: “That would be a great pleasure, Mr. Redfield, if mother feels able to spare me.”
“I’ve talked with her; she is anxious to have you go.”
Virginia was indeed greatly pleased and pleasantly excited by this message, for she had heard much of Mrs. Redfield’s exclusiveness, and also of the splendor of her establishment. She hurried away to dress with such flutter of joyous anticipation that Redfield felt quite repaid for the pressure he had put upon his wife to induce her to write that note. “You may leave Lize Wetherford out of the count, my dear,” he had said. “There is nothing of her discernible in the girl. Virginia is a lady. I don’t know where she got it, but she’s a gentlewoman by nature.”
Lize said: “Don’t you figure on me in any way, Reddy. I’m nothing but the old hen that raised up this lark, and all I’m a-livin’ for now is to make her happy. Just you cut me out when it comes to any question about your wife and Virginia. I’m not in their class.”
It was hot and still in the town, but no sooner was the car in motion than both heat and dust were forgotten. Redfield’s machine was not large, and as he was content to go at moderate speed, conversation was possible.
He was of that sunny, optimistic, ever-youthful nature which finds delight in human companionship under any conditions whatsoever. He accepted this girl for what she seemed—a fresh, unspoiled child. He saw nothingcheap or commonplace in her, and was not disposed to impose any of her father’s wild doings upon her calendar. He had his misgivings as to her future—that was the main reason why he had said to Mrs. Redfield, “The girl must be helped.” Afterward he had said “sustained.”
It was inevitable that the girl should soon refer to the ranger, and Redfield was as complimentary of him as she could wish. “Ross hasn’t a fault but one, and that’s a negative one: he doesn’t care a hang about getting on, as they say over in England. He’s content just to do the duty of the moment. He made a good cow-puncher and a good soldier; but as for promotion, he laughs when I mention it.”
“He told me that he hoped to be Chief Forester,” protested Virginia.
“Oh yes, he says that; but do you know, he’d rather be where he is, riding over the hills, than live in London. You should see his cabin some time. It’s most wonderful, really. His walls are covered with bookshelves of his own manufacture, and chairs of his own design. Where the boy got the skill, I don’t see. Heaven knows, his sisters are conventional enough! He’s capable of being Supervisor, but he won’t live in town and work in an office. He’s like an Indian in his love of the open.”
All this was quite too absorbingly interesting to permit of any study of the landscape, which went by as if dismissed by the chariot wheels of some contemptuous magician. Redfield’s eyes were mostly on the road (in the manner of the careful driver), but when he did look upit was to admire the color and poise of his seat-mate, who made the landscape of small account.
She kept the conversation to the desired point. “Mr. Cavanagh’s work interests me very much. It seems very important; and it must be new, for I never heard of a forest ranger when I was a child.”
“The forester is new—at least, in America,” he answered. “My dear young lady, you are returned just in the most momentous period in the history of the West. The old dominion—the cattle-range—is passing. The supremacy of the cowboy is ended. The cow-boss is raising oats, the cowboy is pitching alfalfa, and swearing horribly as he blisters his hands. Some of the rangers at the moment are men of Western training like Ross, but whose allegiance is now to Uncle Sam. With others that transfer of allegiance is not quite complete, hence the insolence of men like Gregg, who think they can bribe or intimidate these forest guards, and so obtain favors; the newer men are college-bred, real foresters. But you can’t know what it all means till you see Ross, or some other ranger, on his own heath. We’ll make up a little party some day and drop down upon him, and have him show us about. It’s a lonely life, and so the ranger keeps open house. Would you like to go?”
“Oh, yes indeed! I’m eager to get into the mountains. Every night as I see the sun go down over them I wonder what the world is like up there.”
Then he began very delicately to inquire about her Eastern experience. There was not much to tell. In a lovely old town not far from Philadelphia, where heraunt lived, she had spent ten years of happy exile. “I was horribly lonely and homesick at first,” she said. “Mother wrote only short letters, and my father never wrote at all. I didn’t know he was dead then. He was always good to me. He wasn’t a bad man, was he?”
“No,” responded Redfield, without hesitation. “He was very like the rest of us—only a little more reckless and a little more partisan, that’s all. He was a dashing horseman and a dead-shot, and so, naturally, a leader of these daredevils. He was popular with both sides of the controversy up to the very moment when he went South to lead the invaders against the rustlers.”
“What was it all about? I never understood it. What were they fighting about?”
“In a sense, it was all very simple. You see, Uncle Sam, in his careless, do-nothing way, has always left his range to whomever got there first, and that was the cattle-man. At first there was grass enough for us all, but as we built sheds and corrals about watering-places we came to claimrightson the range. We usually secured by fraud homesteads in the sections containing water, and so, gun in hand, ‘stood off’ the man who came after. Gradually, after much shooting and lawing, we parcelled out the range and settled down covering practically the whole State. Our adjustments were not perfect, but our system was working smoothly for us who controlled the range. We had convinced ourselves, and pretty nearly everybody else, that the State was only fit for cattle-grazing, and that we were themost competent grazers; furthermore, we were in possession, and no man could come in without our consent.
“However, a very curious law of our own making was our undoing. Of course the ‘nester’ or ‘punkin roller,’ as we contemptuously called the small farmer, began sifting in here and there in spite of our guns, but he was only a mosquito bite in comparison with the trouble which our cow-punchers stirred up. Perhaps you remember enough about the business to know that an unbranded yearling calf without its mother is called a maverick?”
“Yes, I remember that. It belongs to the man who finds him, and brands him.”
“Precisely. Now that law worked very nicely so long as the poor cowboy was willing to catch and brand him for his employer, but it proved a ‘joker’ when he woke up and said to his fellows: ‘Why brand these mavericks at five dollars per head for this or that outfit when the law says it belongs to the man who finds him?’”
Lee Virginia looked up brightly. “That seems right to me!”
“Ah yes; but wait. We cattle-men had large herds, and theprobabilitieswere that the calf belonged to some one of us; whereas, the cowboy, having no herd at all,knewthe maverick belonged to some one’s herd. True, the law said it was his, but the law did not mean to reward the freebooter; yet that is exactly what it did. At first only a few outlaws took advantage of it; but hardyears came on, the cattle business became less and less profitable, we were forced to lay off our men, and so at last the range swarmed with idle cow-punchers; then came the breakdown in our scheme! The cowboys took to ‘mavericking’ on their own account. Some of them had the grace to go into partnership with some farmer, and so claim a small bunch of cows, but others suddenly and miraculously acquired herds of their own. From keeping within the law, they passed to violent methods. They slit the tongues of calves for the purpose of separating them from their mothers. Finding he could not suck, bossy would at last wander away from his dam, and so become a ‘maverick.’ In short, anarchy reigned on the range.”
“But surely my father had nothing to do with this?”
“No; your father, up to this time, had been on good terms with everybody. He had a small herd of cattle down the river, which he owned in common with a man named Hart.”
“I remember him.”
“He was well thought of by all the big outfits; and when the situation became intolerable, and we got together to weed out ‘the rustlers,’ as these cattle-thieves were called, your father was approached and converted to a belief in drastic measures. He had suffered less than the rest of us because of his small herd and the fact that he was very popular among the cowboys. So far as I was concerned, the use of violent methods revolted me. My training in the East had made me arespecter of the law. ‘Change the law,’ I said. ‘The law is all right,’ they replied; ‘the trouble is with these rustlers. We’ll hang a few of ’em, and that will break up the business.’”
Parts of this story came back to the girl’s mind, producing momentary flashes of perfect recollection. She heard again the voices of excited men arguing over and over the question of “mavericking,” and she saw her father as he rode up to the house that last day before he went South.
Redfield went on. “The whole plan as developed was silly, and I wonder still that Ed Wetherford, who knew ‘the nester’ and the cowboy so well, should have lent his aid to it. The cattle-men—some from Cheyenne, some from Denver, and a few from New York and Chicago—agreed to finance a sort of Vigilante Corps composed of men from the outside, on the understanding that this policing body should be commanded by one of their own number. Your father was chosen second in command, and was to guide the party; for he knew almost every one of the rustlers, and could ride directly to their doors.”
“I wish he hadn’t done that,” murmured the girl.
“I must be frank with you, Virginia. I can’t excuse that in him. It was a kind of treachery. He must have been warped by his associates. They convinced him by some means that it was his duty, and one fine day the Fork was startled by a messenger, who rode in to say that the cattle-barons were coming with a hundred Texas bad men ‘to clean out the town,’ and to put theirown men into office. This last was silly rot to me, but the people believed it.”
The girl was tingling now. “I remember! I remember the men who rode into the town to give the alarm. Their horses were white with foam; their heads hung down, and their sides went in and out. I pitied the poor things. Mother jumped on her pony, and rode out among the men. She wanted to go with them, but they wouldn’t let her. I was scared almost breathless.”
“I was in Sulphur City, and did not hear of it till it was nearly all over,” Redfield resumed, his speech showing a little of the excitement which thrilled through the girl’s voice. “Well, the first act of vengeance was so ill-considered that it practically ended the whole campaign. The invaders fell upon and killed two ranchers—one of whom was probably not a rustler at all, but a peaceable settler, and the other one they most barbarously hanged. More than this, they attacked and vainly tried to kill two settlers whom they met on the road—German farmers, with no connection, so far as known, with the thieves. These men escaped, and gave the alarm. In a few hours the whole range was aflame with vengeful fire. The Forks, as you may recall, was like a swarm of bumblebees. Every man and boy was armed and mounted. The storekeepers distributed guns and ammunition, leaders developed, and the embattled ‘punkin rollers,’ rustlers, and townsmen rode out to meet the invaders.”
The girl paled with memory of it. “It was terrible! I went all day without eating, and for two nights we were all too excited to sleep. It seemed as if the worldwere coming to an end. Mother cried because they wouldn’t let her go with them. She didn’t know father was leading the other army.”
“She must have known soon, for it was reported that your father was among them. She certainly knew when they were driven to earth in that log fort, for they were obliged to restrain her by force from going to your father. As I run over those furious days it all seems incredible, like a sudden reversal to barbarism.”
“How did it all end? The soldiers came, didn’t they?”
“Yes; the long arm of Uncle Sam reached out and took hold upon the necks of both parties. I guess your father and his band would have died right there had not the regular army interfered. It only required a sergeant wearing Uncle Sam’s uniform to come among those armed and furious cowboys and remove their prisoners.”
“I saw that. It was very strange—that sergeant was so young and so brave.”
He turned and smiled at her. “Do you know who that was?”
Her eyes flashed. She drew her breath with a gasp. “Was it Mr. Cavanagh?”
“Yes, it was Ross. He was serving in the regular army at the time. He has told me since that he felt no fear whatever. ‘Uncle Sam’s blue coat was like Siegfried’s magic armor,’ he said; ‘it was the kind of thing the mounted police of Canada had been called upon to do many a time, and I went in and got my men.’ That ended the war, so far as violent measures went, and it really ended the sovereignty of the cattle-man. Thepower of the ‘nester’ has steadily increased from that moment.”
“But my father—what became of him? They took him away to the East, and that is all I ever knew. What do you think became of him?”
“I could never make up my mind. All sorts of rumors come to us concerning him. As a matter of fact, the State authorities sympathized with the cattle-barons, and my own opinion is that your father was permitted to escape. He was afterward seen in Texas, and later it was reported that he had been killed there.”
The girl sat still, listening to the tireless whir of the machine, and looking out at the purpling range with tear-mist eyes. At last she said: “I shall never think of my father as a bad man, he was always so gentle to me.”
“You need not condemn him, my dear young lady. First of all, it’s not fair to bring him (as he was in those days) forward into these piping times of dairy cows and alfalfa. The people of the Forks—some of them, at least—consider him a traitor, and regard you as the daughter of a renegade, but what does it matter? Each year sees the Old West diminish, and already, in the work of the Forest Service, law and order advance. Notwithstanding all the shouting of herders and the beating to death of sheep, no hostile shot has ever been fired within the bounds of a National Forest. In the work of the forest rangers lies the hope of ultimate peace and order over all the public lands.”
The girl fell silent again, her mind filled with largerconceptions of life than her judgment had hitherto been called upon to meet. She knew that Redfield was right, and yet that world of the past—the world of the swift herdsman and his trampling, long-horned, half-wild kine still appealed to her imagination. The West of her girlhood seemed heroic in memory; even the quiet account of it to which she had just listened could not conceal its epic largeness of movement. The part which troubled her most was her father’s treachery to his neighbors. That he should fight, that he should kill men in honorable warfare, she could understand; but not his recreancy, his desertion of her mother and herself.
She came back to dwell at last on the action of that slim young soldier who had calmly ridden through the infuriated mob. She remembered that she had thrilled even then at the vague and impersonal power which he represented. To her childish mind he seemed to bear a charm, like the heroes of her story-books—something which made him invulnerable.
After a long pause Redfield spoke again. “The memory of your father will make life for a time a bit hard for you in Roaring Fork—perhaps your mother’s advice is sound. Why not come to Sulphur City, which is almost entirely of the new spirit?”
“If I can get my mother to come, too, I will be glad to do so, for I hate the Fork; but I will not leave her there, sick and alone.”
“Much depends upon the doctor’s examination to-morrow.”
They had topped the divide now between the Forkand Sulphur Creek Basin, and the green fields, the alfalfa meadows, and the painted farm-houses thickened beneath them. Strange how significant all these signs were now. A few days ago they had appeared doubtful improvements, now they represented the oncoming dominion of the East. They meant cleanliness and decent speech, good bread and sweet butter. Ultimately houses with hot water in their bath-rooms and pianos in their parlors would displace the shack, the hitching-pole, and the dog-run, and in those days Edward Wetherford would be forgotten.
Redfield swept through the town, then turned up the stream directly toward the high wall of the range, which was ragged and abrupt at this point. They passed several charming farm-houses, and the western sky grew ever more glorious with its plum-color and saffron, and the range reasserted its mastery over the girl. At last they came to the very jaws of the canon; and there, in a deep natural grove of lofty cottonwood-trees, Redfield passed before a high rustic gate which marked the beginning of his estate. The driveway was of gravel, and the intermingling of transplanted shrubs and pine-trees showed the care of the professional gardener.
The house was far from being a castle; indeed, it was very like a house in Bryn-Mawr, except that it was built entirely of half-hewn logs, with a wide projecting roof. Giant hydrangeas and other flowering shrubs bordered the drive, and on the rustic terrace a lady in white was waiting.
Redfield slowed down, and scrambled ungracefullyout; but his voice was charming as he said: “Eleanor, this it Miss Wetherford. She was on the point of getting the blues, so I brought her away,” he explained.
Mrs. Redfield, quite as urban as the house, was a slim little woman of delicate habit, very far from the ordinary conception of a rancher’s wife. Her manner was politely considerate, but not heatedly cordial (the visitor was not precisely hers), and though she warmed a little after looking into Virginia’s face, she could not by any stretch of phrase be called cordial.
“Are you tired? would you like to lie down before dinner?” she asked.
“Oh no, indeed. Nothing ever tires me,” Virginia responded, with a smile.
“You look like one in perfect health,” continued her hostess, in the envious tone of one who knew all too well what ill-health meant. “Let me show you to your room.”
The house was not precisely the palace the cowboy had reported it to be, but it was charmingly decorated, and the furnishings were tasteful. To the girl it was as if she had been transported with instant magic from the horrible little cow-town back to the home of one of her dearest friends in Chester. She was at once exalted and humbly grateful.
“We dine at seven,” Mrs. Redfield was saying, “so you can take a cup of tea without spoiling your dinner. Will you venture it?”
“If you please.”
“Very well; come down soon, and I’ll have it ready. Mr. Redfield, I’m sure, will want some.”
Virginia’s heart was dancing with delight of this home as she came down the stairs a little later. She found Mr. Redfield at the farther end of a long sitting-room, whose dim light was as restful (after the glare of the tawny plains) as the voice of her hostess was to her ears, which still ached with the noise of profane and vulgar speech.
Redfield heard her coming and met her half-way, and with stately ceremony showed her a seat. “I fear you will need something stronger than tea after my exhausting conversation.”
“I hope, Hugh, you were not in one of your talking moods?”
“I was, Eleanor. I talked incessantly, barring an occasional jolt of the machine.”
“You poor thing!” This to Virginia. “Truly you deserve a two hours’ rest before dinner, for our dinner is always a talk-fest, and to-night, with Senator Bridges here, it will be a convention.”
He turned to Virginia. “We were talking old times ‘before the war,’ and you know it never tires veterans to run over their ancient campaigns—does it, Lee Virginia?”
As they talked Mrs. Redfield studied the girl with increasing interest and favor, and soon got at her point of view. She even secured a little more of her story, which matched fairly well with the account her husband had given. Her prejudices were swept away, and she treated her young guest as one well-born and well-educated woman treats another.
At last she said: “We dress for dinner, but any frockyou have will do. We are not ironclad in our rules. There will be some neighbors in, but it isn’t in any sense a ‘party.’”
Lee Virginia went to her room, borne high upon a new conception of the possibilities of the West. It was glorious to think that one could enjoy the refinement, the comfort of the East at the same time that one dwelt within the inspiring shadow of the range. She caught some prophetic hint in all this of the future age when each of these foot-hills would be peopled by those to whom cleanliness of mind and grace of body were habitual. Standing on the little balcony which filled the front of her windows, she looked away at the towering heights, smoky purple against a sky of burning gold, and her eyes expanded like those of the young eagle when about to launch himself upon the sunset wind.
The roar of a waterfall came to her ears, and afar on the sage-green carpet of the lower mesa a horseman was galloping swiftly. Far to the left of this smoothly sculptured table-land a band of cattle fed, while under her eyes, formal as a suburban home, lay a garden of old-fashioned English flowers. It was a singular and moving union of the old and new—the East and the West.
On her table and on the pretty bookshelves she found several of the latest volumes of poetry and essays, and the bed, with its dainty covering and ample spread, testified quite as plainly of taste and comfort. Her hands were a-tremble as she put on the bright muslin gown which was all she had for evening wear. She felt very much like the school-girl again, and after shehad done her best to look nice, she took a seat in the little rocker, with intent to compose herself for her meeting with strangers. “I wish we were dining without visitors,” she said, as she heard a carriage drive up. A little later a galloping horse entered the yard and stopped at the door.
“It all sounds like a play,” she said to herself, forgetting for the moment that she was miles away from a town and in a lonely ranch-house under the very shadows of the mountains.
She heard voices in the hall, and among them one with a very English accent—one that sounded precisely like those she had heard on the stage. It was the voice of a man, big, hearty, with that thick, throaty gurgle which is so suggestive of London that one is certain to find a tweed suit and riding-breeches associated with it.
At last she dared wait no longer, and taking courage from necessity, descended the stairs—a pleasant picture of vigorous yet somewhat subdued maidenhood.