CHAPTER IV
THE world continued to be otherwise uninhabited and to glow rosily for almost a fortnight. Ginger’s Aunt Fan received a very satisfactory letter from Jim Featherstone; the Wolcott Family was as solid as Plymouth Rock, and contemporaneous with it. Dean Wolcott was a young man of excellent lineage, character, and achievement—known already, at twenty-eight, for unusual and original work in his line. He had gone in mildly for athletics at Harvard, topped his classes, made two of the best clubs. He had been popular in a quiet and discriminating fashion.
At the end of his letter Aunt Fan’s ex-husband allowed himself a bit of facetiousness. “I’ve sleuthed the lad down very thoroughly. But—Tremont Street and Dos Pozos! Well, it may work out, if he likes paprika on his Boston beans!”
Mrs. Featherstone was extremely pleased with this report, but she was likewise thorough, so shesent out a hurry call for her good friend, Doctor Gurney Mayfield. This was the doctor with whom they should have supped at Tait’s on the night of Ginger’s shabby arrival in San Francisco, and he had known Aunt Fan since she was nineteen years old and weighed ninety-eight pounds and she would always be Miss Fanny to him. He had taken care of her first husband through his last illness, the more zealously and devotedly because he had always considered him a rival, and he had thought then, after a decent interval, to renew his suit (that was what he called it in his courtly and chivalrous heart) but his Miss Fanny, some time before his idea of that interval had elapsed, met and married Jim Featherstone and went with him to New York and lived unhappily ever after. He was honestly regretful and soberly elated to have her back in California again, and calling on him as always for escort and counsel, and now he came at once at her summons, driving down from the prosperous ranch where he spent his time after retiring from a beloved and almost boundless practice.
Ginger was a great favorite with him; he was keenly concerned about her choice. The thoughtof her marriage had always made him a little anxious; she was her father and her mother—truly, as her lover had said in his rhapsodic moment, Scotch granite and Spanish flame. The doctor had seen something of the home life of Rosalía Valdés and Alexander McVeagh; it had been quite lyrically perfect, but very high keyed, and he had wondered if it would—or could—last down the years. The Spanish woman had a small velvet voice, convent-trained, and she sat often at the rosewood spinnet which had belonged to her mother before her and sang the songs of the period. They were very sweet and very sentimental and packed with pathos, and some one invariably died in the second verse. He remembered that she had loved best one which ran something after this fashion—
Perhaps it is better we lived as we did,The summer of love together,And that one of us tired and lay down to rest,Ere the coming of wintry weather—
Perhaps it is better we lived as we did,The summer of love together,And that one of us tired and lay down to rest,Ere the coming of wintry weather—
Perhaps it is better we lived as we did,
The summer of love together,
And that one of us tired and lay down to rest,
Ere the coming of wintry weather—
and always turned away from the spinnet with her dark eyes wet.
That was exactly what she had done, herself,and Alexander McVeagh had followed her, ten years later, contentedly, for all his devotion to his son and daughter. He wasn’t at all sure, in his rugged and unadorned version of his forbears’ belief, that he should find her again in the world to come, but he was very sure that the world he was leaving was not much of a world without her. Aleck, the son, had been a simple and uncomplex creature; all McVeagh. It was the girl who combined her father and her mother in a baffling and intricate fashion. The doctor wondered; it would have been simpler and safer, he considered, for Virginia Valdés McVeagh to marry a neighboring rancher—even Jerome Ojeda—though he lacked a little of the fineness the doctor wanted for her—than a Wolcott of Boston.
Doctor Mayfield’s opportunities for studying them together were limited; when they were together—save at meal-times—they took excellent care to be alone together. They motored all over the surrounding landscape by day and by night—it was, by a special dispensation of Providence, a time of white and silver moonlight—and tramped high into the hills. This in itself was an amazing spectacle—Ginger McVeagh afoot; from her tinychildhood she had never walked except on her way to a horse. Dean Wolcott loved walking, however, and she loved Dean Wolcott and the thing was accomplished. Besides, by an odd and dramatically arranged combination of circumstances, she had not, for that period, a horse to offer him. Aleck’s horse, Felipe, which she usually rode, had a wrenched foot, and was turned out, and she was riding her own horse Diablo, about the business of the ranch. Estrada and his men were using all the others, bringing in the stock from the farther feeding pastures. Ordinarily, she would have borrowed a mount for him from a neighbor, but it was a part of the newness and strangeness of things to be motoring and tramping with her strange new lover.
At such times, however, as she had to be about the business of Dos Pozos, the doctor held satisfying converse with Dean Wolcott. He liked him heartily, and reported to Aunt Fan as favorably as Jim Featherstone had done, and after five days he went north again, satisfied with the newcomer as an individual, hopeful about him as Ginger’s husband, and Aunt Fan was left alone.
“Well, it’s ‘the summer of love’ they’re livingnow, Miss Fanny,” he told her at leaving. “We can only hope it’ll be big enough to see them through ‘the coming of wintry weather.’” But he shook his head. Since he had given up the patching and mending of bodies he had given a lot of thought to minds and souls and temperaments; he was rather well up on them.
Ginger jumped up from the dinner table one day and flew to the telephone. “Imustget you a horse,” she said, excitedly. “I don’t know what I’ve been thinking about!” Then she colored hotly and suddenly; she knew very well what she had been thinking about. “You’ve been here nearly two weeks and we haven’t had a ride together, and Friday’s the big day!” She gave her number and stood waiting, the receiver in her hand.
“But—look here,” said Dean Wolcott. “I don’t ride, you know. I’ve told you that before, haven’t I?”
He had told her several times, but it simply didn’t register. For a man—a hundred per cent man, who had been a soldier and her brother’s comrade, who was, above all,herman—not toride was—ridiculous. He was using a phrase which didn’t mean anything; he probably didn’t care especially about riding (Boston was without doubt a wretched place in which to ride) or didn’t ride especially well; city men didn’t as a rule. But to say he didn’tride— She was speaking into the telephone. “Hello! Hello! Oh, ’Rome, is that you? How are you?... ’Rome, can you lend us a horse? Felipe’s turned out with a bad foot, and we haven’t a thing for Dean to ride.... Oh, fine,’Rome! Thanks a lot! Bring him over with you Friday morning, will you?” She came back to the table radiant. “’Rome says he’s got just the thing for you; I knew he’d help us out.”
(’Rome Ojeda had heard, as all the countryside had heard, of Ginger’s eastern suitor; it was the chief topic in a land which was ordinarily bare of conversational thrills, but he had taken it quite coolly. He wasn’t, he had been quoted as saying, “worrying none.” Ginger hadn’t given him any thought. He had not, to be sure, telephoned to her or ridden over with congratulations as others had done, but he had been gay and good-natured when they met up on horseback.)
Dean looked at her quizzically. He was beginning, in the last day or two, to look at her with his mind instead of his heart, and he had made several discoveries. One of these was that she was as high-handed and autocratic as a feudal duchess; it was not only that she always wanted and took her own way—she was unaware that there was any other way to want, or to take. But, up to that time, he was not worrying any more than ’Rome Ojeda was. It was picturesque, it was pretty—her high-handedness.
The night before the “big day” she refused to walk or motor or even sit on the veranda, but told him a resolute good night at eight o’clock. “Ling will call you at three, and breakfast’s at three-thirty.”
“We attack at dawn, I see,” said Dean, steering her cleverly into an alcove and out of her aunt’s range of vision. “Then, if my evening is to end at eight instead of ten or eleven, I certainly consider myself entitled to something in the way of recompense.” He swept her into his arms and kissed her.
“Honey,” said Ginger, persuasively, “let mego! And you must get to sleep yourself—we’ve got a big day ahead of us!”
“My dear, I’ve told you several times, though you’ve seemed not to listen to me, that I’m no horseman. I rather think you’d better let me off, to-morrow; it’s highly probable that I’d cut a sorry figure in the saddle.”
Ginger drew back in his arms, wide-eyed. “But you’llhaveto ride, Dean! You couldn’t possibly drive the car—we go by trail and straight over the hills—and you couldn’t walk.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’ll be a forty-mile trip, and—why, it wouldn’t be safe, goose! Youarea tenderfoot, aren’t you? The steers are all right when you’re on horseback, but they’d rush over you in a wink, afoot.”
“Forty miles,” said Dean, thoughtfully. “It sounds rather a large order, Ginger, dear. Suppose I don’t go?”
“Suppose you don’t—go?” She stared at him and her voice was cold with astonishment. “Why—what’ll everybody think?”
“I don’t understand you.”
“What’ll everybody think aboutyou, if youdon’t go—when it’s my ranch and my cattle, and everybody coming back here for the big feed at night and the dance?” she wanted hotly to know.
Dean Wolcott colored slowly. “I fail to see where it is any one’s affair but my own—and yours, of course. If we decide that it is wiser——”
“But we haven’t and we aren’t going to!” she flamed out at him. “Oh, can’t you see how it is? Everybody, Estrada and his men and all the neighbors and people I’ve known ever since I was born, think it’s funny and queer, my being—engaged to you. They think easterners are just likeforeigners. I did, too,” she was gentle for an instant, “before you came! And if you ditch the ride, and just sit around the house and wait for the big feed and the dance, they’ll say—anyhow, ’Rome Ojeda’ll say—that you’re bluffed out. ’Rome Ojeda’s been trying to make me say I’d marry him ever since I was fifteen;he’ll say you’re—afraid.”
He did not speak at once, and Ginger, watching him, breathing fast after her long speech, saw that he was looking a lot like the other Mr. Wolcott. “And what will you say, Ginger, if I tell you that I won’t ride? What will you say?” He was veryquiet about it. “It doesn’t matter in the least to me what a lot of ranchers and cowboys think or say—Ojeda or any one else. But—what will you say?”
Even a resemblance to the cousin who had convoyed him disapprovingly across the continent made her truculent, and his voice was even more like the other than his expression. “I’ll say youmust—” she caught herself midway, aghast to find how nearly she had said the unforgivable thing. She came close to him again and put her arms around his neck and clasped her hands behind his head, and pulled his grave face down to her. “I won’t have to say anything, because I know you’re going to do it for me—aren’t you, Dean—dearest?”
It was the first time she had ever, alone and unassisted—uninvited—kissed him upon the mouth. He caught her hard against him with a strength which seemed ready for any feats of prowess. “I’ll ride—anything—anywhere—you ask me,” he said, unsteadily.
Ling called him at three o’clock. It was dark and unbelievably cold, and he dressed himself with stiff fingers and went heavy-eyed into thedining room. He felt old and jaded and depressed; unhappily conscious of all the strength which hadn’t yet come back to him.
Ginger was there before him, dressed in her oldest riding things, a worn old Stetson on her head, a scarlet bandanna tied, cowboy fashion, about her neck, and she was warm and glowing. She looked as if she had just emerged from the conclusion of their ardent little scene of the night before; Dean felt as if it were something which had happened to him in his youth, and as if his youth had passed a long time ago. He had no appetite, and could barely manage a cup of coffee, and he was almost annoyed with her for eating with excellent relish. They spoke in low tones, remembering Aunt Fan’s earnest pleas that she should not be wakened, but before they left the table there was a pounding of hoofs and a shout from the front of the house.
“There’s ’Rome!” said Ginger, jumping up. “Come along!” She ran out onto the veranda and he followed her slowly.
’Rome Ojeda had ridden in from his ranch the night before and stayed with Ginger’s nearest neighbor, and his horses—the one he rode and theone he was leading—were quite fresh. He swung himself to the ground, dropped the reins, pulled off a buckskin gauntlet and strode over to Dean, holding out his hand. “Mighty pleased to make your acquaintance,” he said, displaying very briefly his white smile in his brown face. “Here’s your mount, Mr. Wolcott,” he nodded toward the red roan.
“Very good of you,” said Dean, stiffly. He felt stiff, body and brain, aching for sleep, cramped and cold.
“Oh—the lunches!” cried Ginger. “Almost forgot them!” She bolted into the house.
Dean Wolcott looked at his horse and hunted wearily through his mind for something sapient to say about him. The fact was that he had not been astride a horse six times in his twenty-eight years. Others of the Wolcott family rode—several of his friends rode; it had merely happened that he had gone in, instead, in what leisure he had from school and college and later, the office, for tennis and golf and walking trips. He had very nearly made tackle in his junior year; three years on the squad. Now he would have tradedall these glad activities for a good working knowledge of horseflesh.
One of Ginger’s men brought up her Diablo; there were a dozen riders in the distance, coming nearer at a swinging lope.
Thevaquerolooked at the roan. “I see you got new horse, Meester Ojeda, no?”
“Yeh,” Ojeda nodded. “Mr. Wolcott’s ridin’ him to-day.” Then he said, very slowly, “Only been rode a coup’la saddles.”
Dean Wolcott pulled himself up. “What do you call him, Ojeda?”
’Rome Ojeda rolled a cigarette. “I call him ‘Snort,’” he said. “He mostly does.”
Ginger’s suitor walked down the shallow steps and went up to the horse with outstretched hand. “Hello, Snort, old chap! Do you——”
The animal pulled back sharply, flinging up his head with a sound vividly descriptive of his name, and ’Rome Ojeda grinned, enjoyingly. “Aside from that, he’s as gentle as a kitten,” he drawled. “Look here, Mr. Wolcott—where’s your spurs?”
“Oh, I sha’n’t need spurs,” said Dean, easily. Just as Ginger had disliked his correct cousin in less than five minutes of acquaintance, so now didhe detest this brown and beautiful ’Rome Ojeda with his appalling bigness, his flashing smile, and his crude sureness. He loathed the whole commonplace, rubber-stamp situation in which he found himself—competent wild westerner, eastern tenderfoot, cattle-queen heroine, mob scene of cow-punchers; it was like finding himself placed on the printed page of a tawdry story—like seeing himself on the screen in a cheap and stupid moving picture; like seeing himself in the rôle of unwitting comedian. He knew that, unescapably, he was about to be made to appear ridiculous; and that was a thing no Wolcott ever was. They had reverses, disappointments; they were ill, they suffered, they died; they were never ridiculous. And now Dean Wolcott, whose mother kept his Congressional Medal and his Croix de Guerre in the box with her delicate handkerchiefs, so that, with no parade of them, she could see and touch them every day, was about to afford rude mirth to yokels.
He went again and firmly to his mount, clutched at the mane and the reins, got one foot into the jerking stirrup, scrambled and clawed his way up. The horse, simultaneously with these motions onhis part, noisily demonstrating the aptness of his cognomen, did incredibly swift and sudden things with his head, his neck, all four of his legs and his torso. Dean Wolcott, just as the riders came loping up and Ginger stepped out on to the veranda with the packets of lunch in her hands, rose clear of the saddle, appeared to hang an instant in mid-air, sailed over the head of his steed and fell heavily to the sun-baked earth.