CHAPTER XI
THE middle of July Ginger’s Aunt Fan began writing her and begging her earnestly to come to San Francisco and visit her at the St. Agnes. She was lonely and blue, she wrote, and although she ate less than a microbe she now tipped the scales at a hundred and seventy-three pounds, and a New York friend had written her that Jim Featherstone was “stepping out” with a woman young enough to be his daughter—not that she cared, of course; her warm wish was to see old Jim happy, for he was a prince if ever there was one, butnotto have him make a fool of himself.
Ranch affairs were too numerous and pressing when the first letter came, but after three of them, and a breathless long distance telephone call, the girl put the reins into Estrada’s brown and weathered hands and went north. It had been a hard and busy season and she found herself, oddly, a little tired; it was not like her tobe tired. She would like a week or two of brisk San Francisco climate, a lecture, a play; perhaps, most of all, she would be glad to be away from ’Rome Ojeda’s ardent importunities. She was quite sure that she was never going to marry ’Rome, but he was just as sure that she was, and was beginning to get boisterous and vehement about it, and was drinking a good deal, and she was rather worn with the struggle. Sometimes she thought it might be simpler to marry him ... but she knew that it wouldn’t be anything else.
This time her Aunt Fan met her without a criticism of her clothes. “Well,” she said, looking her over pleasantly, “I’ll say this—if you didn’t get anything else out of that—that Wolcott episode, you learned how to dress, and that’ssomething! I suppose everything you bought in the east is as good as new; that’s what it is to be a string-bean figure. I’ve burst through every rag of mine like an elephant through a jungle; I expect any day now I’ll have to get a larger apartment! My dear,” she shook her intricately waved head, “you simply can’t imagine how lucky you are—never having to go into shops and ask for ‘out-sizes’; never have to let saleswomen as flat aspaper dolls show you their ‘stylish stouts’ and patronize you! I’m about discouraged, Ginger. And that’s one reason”—she spoke more briskly—“why I’m going down to the doctor’s camp. He’s asked me, year after year, but you know how I hate the country; ranches are bad enough, but camps— Well, IknowI’d lose there—rough fare, and exercise. The doctorsaysI’d lose.”
Ginger tried to be grave and sympathetic. She thought her Aunt Fan would enjoy it, and it was surely only right to go, when the doctor had asked her so often. “And you mustn’t let me keep you, Aunt Fan, if you want to go at once. I intended to stay only a few days with you.”
Mrs. Featherstone opened her prominent blue eyes. “But I want you to go with me, child! You must go with me!”
“Oh, Aunt Fan, that’s dear of you, but I don’t believe I can—possibly.”
“Nonsense! Of course you can—what’s Estrada for, I’d like to know? The doctor particularly wanted you to come, too. He says there’s a lively bunch of young people this season.”
“I know,” said Ginger. “He wrote and asked me, but I told him I was too busy.” She had thefeeling that she did not care to be with a bunch of lively young people; she did not feel like a lively young person herself; she felt like a serious-minded proprietor of a big and busy ranch, and she meant to go east again in the winter and feel a little like Mary Wiley.
“Well, you’re not too busy—that’s too absurd for words, Ginger—and you are going! Let’s see—this is Tuesday. You can telephone Manuela to send your riding things straight to the Big Sur, and whatever else you think you’ll need, and we’ll go direct from here, say, Friday—I’d like to get a facial and a henna rinse before I go off to the wilderness. The doctor said he’d drive in to Monterey for us.”
“Oh, Aunt Fan, you go without me, please! I—some way, I’m not in the mood for it.”
“‘Mood for it,’” mocked her aunt, severely. “Since when have you been having moods, I’d like to inquire? You talk like a girl in a sentimental novel. No; I won’t stir a step without you, Ginger McVeagh, and if you have any gratitude, after the way I traipsed across the continent with you last year—” then, as her niece looked dangerously unmoved, she came closer to herand spoke in a breathless whisper. “Listen, Ginger, I haven’t told you the real reason, and I didn’t intend to, but you’re so stubborn I see I’ll have to.” Aunt Fan had out-sizes in speech as well as in hose. “The fact is, I’ve made up my mind to—make up my mind about the doctor!”
Ginger frowned. “To make up your mind—I don’t understand, Aunt Fan.”
“Then you’re a ninny-hammer if you don’t,” said her aunt, complacently. “You must know—every one else in California does—that he’s admired me for years—before I married Jim—even before I married Henry! I feel this way about it; I’m not getting any younger; if ever I’m going to—take another step, now’s the time. I wouldn’t make a spectacle of myself as I hear Jim Featherstone’s doing, but a suitable, dignified—I tell you, Ginger,” sudden tears shone in her very blue eyes, “there’s nothing funny about the last years of your life alone. I shall be all right for ten years more, and then—fancywork, chimney corners, solitaire!” She began to cry a little.
Her niece put an arm about her as far as it would go. “Oh, don’t cry, Aunt Fan! You’ll always have me, you know. We’ll do a lot ofthings together—travel, spend winters in the east—”
But her aunt shook her head vigorously, producing a small, pale pink handkerchief and delicately drying her tears. “It isn’t the same, as you’ll know some day. Well, will you or won’t you come with me?”
“I’ll come with you for a little while, Aunt Fan; a week, perhaps.”
It was true that she owed her plump relative something in the way of escort and companionship, after her good offices of last winter, but the keynote of the pilgrimage rather shocked and startled her. She thought her aunt must be mistaken; the keen, splendid, out-of-doors doctor, and Aunt Fan tapping endlessly on high heels down restaurant floors—breathing always steam-heated air, knowing as little about a horse as a zebra—
“All right, then—go and telephone old Manuela this minute, and I’ll drop the doctor a line. My—when I think what it may mean to me, what I may lose—” she went with heavy swiftness, taking her short, chugging steps, to a tiny pink-and-gold writing desk, and it seemed to the watchingGinger that she was considerably keener about what she might lose than what she might gain.
The doctor, brown and hard and happy, met their train at Monterey and motored them down to his camp. It was in full swing: thirty persons sat down to meals together in the big screened dining room—pleasant, poised people from San José and San Francisco, people who had achieved and arrived and were comfortably slackening the pace—but for the rest of the days and evenings they were scattered. The doctor, undisputed chief, by right of discovery and conquest of the wilderness, captained the hunts, the long rides over the mountain trails, the daybreak fishing trips; the judge rallied two teams for lusty morning games of volley ball; an ardent golfer found a meadow where enthusiasts might improve their form; the women spent long, soft afternoons over intricate needlework for an orphans’ home bazaar; there were tables of bridges, hammocks and magazines, picnics at the beach, stories by the camp fire, dancing in the evening.
Ginger knew most of the older people, but the three or four girls were strangers to her, and itis doubtful if they welcomed her with any deep degree of pleasure; everything that they were—in riding, in pictorialness, Virginia McVeagh, the far-famed “Ginger” of Dos Pozos, was—and more. She was the doctor’s prime favorite; his keen eyes rested on her in affectionate approval. She was quieter than she used to be, he believed, but it was a sure and serene quiet, not a shy one.
They had been discussing a two days’ riding and camping trip and a very blond girl leaned forward in her chair at table and called down to Ginger. “Listen, Miss McVeagh, I want to give you fair warning about the new Forest Ranger! I saw him first—I’ve got my fingers crossed!” She held up two slim digits, twisted. “Ah ... wait till you see him! Wallie Reed and Tommy Meighan and Valentino rolled into one! We’ll never be the same again, any of us! Even Laura”—Laura, a brown-eyed beauty, was newly and patently betrothed—“has missed a mail or two! He’s—”
“Now, now,” said the doctor, rather quickly, “he’s a nice, likely lad, but nice, likely lads aren’t any treat for Ginger—she has a whole landscape full of them, down south. Well, she can judgefor herself; she’s going to ride out to Cold Spring with me this afternoon, and meet him and get our camp-fire permit.”
“Oh,doctor!” wailed the very blond girl. “That’s playing favorites! You know Miss McVeagh looks as if she hadinventedhorseback riding—it gives her a terrible handicap!”
“Won’t you come, too, Miss Milton?” Ginger wanted calmly to know.
“I should say not! I won’t be a mob scene. But it’s not fair. I shall stay in my cabin all afternoon and think up ways in which I may outshine you.”
“I’m sure it won’t take you long,” said Ginger, amiably. She felt a great deal older than the chattering, pretty creature; she felt older and wiser than all of them—immeasurably older and wiser than the rapt-eyed Laura.
She was ready at one to ride with the doctor, but when she walked down to the corral, her Aunt Fan, panting beside her, she found Dr. Mayfield putting her saddle on his own horse.
“Ginger, I’m going to desert you,” he said. “I don’t know whether Miss Fanny has confessedto you or not, but she’s inveigled me into a game of bridge.”
“My dear, I simply have to play bridge after the lunches I eat here, or I’d take a nap, and that’sfatal! I’ve been shamefully deceived about this place, anyway—‘camp fare!’ Better food than you get at the Ritz, and much more fattening—hot biscuits—honey—”
“But, by way of apology, I’m letting you ride Ted,” said the doctor, handsomely. There was nothing beyond that in his gift. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Mind riding Ted?” Ginger smiled at him, putting a respectful hand on the big beast’s cheek.
“Mind going alone, Miss! And you’re to take this—” he strapped a belt about her waist and slipped his pistol into it.
“Of course I don’t mind going alone, but what is this for?”
“Oh, there have been several mountain lions about, recently, and it’s just as well—not that any mountain lion living could catch Ted, of course, even if it wanted to!” He nodded approvingly as she swung herself surely to the tall steed’s back. “You remember the way, of course—up the GovernmentTrail to ours, where we went yesterday, on over the hill, past Post’s old barn—”
“I know,” said the girl, securely. “How long should it take me?”
“Well, Ted’s admittedly the fastest walker in the state, and part of the time you’ll be able to let him out, but it’ll be two hours, each way; you’ll be back by five-thirty, I should say, if you don’t linger too long at the spring.”
“I sha’n’t linger,” said Ginger, with dignity. “He won’t keep me waiting, I hope. I am just to ask him for the camp-fire permits?” She turned Ted toward the mountain.
“Yes, he’ll have them made out, and he’ll be on time. Oh, yes—and ask him to come down for supper with us, Saturday night, if he can, and dance.”
Ginger nodded and rode away, and the doctor and her Aunt Fan stood looking after her.
“Gad, Miss Fanny,” he said, ruefully, taking out his cheerful red camp handkerchief and wiping his moist brow, “I wonder what she’ll say to us when she comes back?”
“She’ll say ‘Thank you,’ if she has any gratitude,”said Mrs. Featherstone, severely. “NowI’ll go and get my nap!”
Ginger had said truly that she did not mind riding alone. Much as she liked and looked up to the doctor, she was not quite comfortable when she was alone with him; she found his keen eyes too searching, and she was always a little afraid he might say in his brisk fashion, “Now, then, Ginger, suppose you tell me all about it!”
It was a joy to ride Ted, to feel his great bulk and power beneath her, like a stout ship, like an eight-cylindered machine, and the afternoon was clear and jewel-bright. The inevitable after-luncheon languor left her when she drew rein on the first crest; the Ted horse had his second wind and they went on with smooth speed. Once, about midway of her trip, she figured, the horse stopped short, his ears twitching, his delicate nostrils distending; her heart quickened a beat at what she saw before her on the trail; lion’s tracks, positive, unmistakable; a big one, clearly. She leaned forward and patted the shining neck. “All right, Ted; I see it. Maybe we’ll get him!”
But the prints of the big pads left the trailabruptly and went off into the brush—for a hapless fawn, doubtless, and Ginger and the doctor’s horse went forward without adventure, until they espied, half an hour later, another horseman coming toward them; the Ranger, she thought, had ridden on from the spring, and she was sorry; it was, she remembered, the clearest and coldest water in all those mountains and she was thirsty and warm.
Immediately, however, she saw that the figure was that of a child on a small old horse. He kicked the animal into a livelier pace at sight of her, and saluted her graciously. “How do you do?” he said in a thin and piping voice. “I’m not the Ranger. I expect you thought I was, at first, didn’t you?—but I’m not. He’s waiting at Cold Spring. I’m his Scout, and I rode on alone to meet the doctor, because I’m not afraid of anything, hardly, and I ride everywhere alone, almost. Where is the doctor?”
“The doctor didn’t come,” said Ginger, smiling at him. She liked boys enormously, and this one was engaging. “He sent me instead to get the camp-fire permits.”
“Gee! He let you ride Ted, didn’t he? I guess you must be a pretty good rider.”
“Pretty good,” admitted Ginger, modestly.
“I’m a pretty good rider, too, now,” said the Scout, frankly. “I guess maybe this horse isn’t quite as good as Ted, but he’s a very good horse. His name is Mabel. He”—he leaned toward her and sunk his treble a tone or two—“he’s a lady horse. Well, I guess we’d better be going back to Cold Spring.” He turned the lady horse in the trail, looking over his shoulder to explain to her. “I don’t know if you understand that you must always turn your horse with his nosetowardthe cañon—then he can see what he’s doing. If you turned him the other way, he might back over; many a horse and rider’s been lost that way.”
“I’ll remember that,” said the girl, gravely, “and thank you for telling me.”
“That’s all right,” he said, easily. “I guess there’s a good many things I could tell you about horses and camping. Of course”—he was painstakingly honest about it—“the Ranger taughtme. I lived in the city, and a person can’t learn much there. The Ranger knows—everything.”
“Does he, really?”
“You betcher. He can ride like anything and he can shoot like—likeanything! He was asoldier in the War, and I’ll bet he killed two or three hundred Germanshimself. But he doesn’t like to kill things, the Ranger doesn’t. He won’t shoot deer—only rattlesnakes and varmints. But he can shoot—oh,boy!” He glanced back at the shabby Airedale who was heeling sedately behind Mabel. “I guess you didn’t notice my dog. His name is Rusty.”
“Hello, Rusty!” said Ginger, politely.
“Of course he isn’t really my dog, but I call him my dog. He likes me better than he does the Ranger, but you ought to see how Snort loves the Ranger.”
“Snort?” she said sharply. “Why—oh, of course—this must have been the man the doctor wanted him for!” It was strange how the sound of that horse’s name, all these miles away, and after thirteen months, could make her heart turn over. She had been thankful to persuade ’Rome Ojeda to let him go because she hadn’t wanted ever to see him again; now, it appeared, she must see him again.
“Look!” said the Scout as they rounded a sharp curve in the trail. “You can see Cold Spring from here and the—” he stopped, catching his breath,pointing. “Looky!” he gasped. “It’s a mountain lion, chasing a fawn! Oh, gee ...gee—”
Cold Spring was in an elbow of the trail—it was like an arm sharply crooked to hold it. Snort, his reins over his head, cropped the sparse, green grass; the figure of a man lounged at ease. It was an entirely peaceful picture. But, just beyond, in the opposite direction from that in which the girl and the Scout were coming, there was no peace, but war; relentless war of extermination by the strong upon the weak. A young fawn, breathless, almost exhausted, ran stumbling and swaying, a pitifully few paces before a lion, long, lithe, trotting easily, sure of its prey.
Ginger, watching from above, saw the scene unwinding before her like a film. The horse flung up his head and trumpeted wildly and the man, catching up the rifle from the ground beside him, sprang to his feet. The baby deer saw him; it hesitated, staggering, its great eyes wide with terror, its mouth open: before it was the trail, and the lion gaining steadily, inexorably, and to its left, just off the trail—Man—Man with the black and shining stick which barked fire and death.
“Come!” said the man, softly, too low for thegirl to hear, but the fawn heard him. “Come!Come on!”
The little creature turned from the trail and ran weakly to the Ranger and collapsed in a quivering heap at his feet. Instantly, above it, his rifle spoke: the lion leaped, twisting, into the air and fell to the ground, writhing, uttering a wild, unearthly cry.
“Oh, good work, Ranger!” cried Ginger, half sobbing. She spoke to Ted and plunged heedlessly over the edge of the bank, cutting down without waiting to take the winding trail. She had never seen a surer shot; she had never seen grim tragedy changed in a flash to peace and security, and no scene in a New York play and no passage in a symphony had ever moved her more. Her eyes were wet and her lips were trembling. “Oh, fine, Ranger!” she said, unsteadily. “Good work, Ranger!”
And then Dean Wolcott, turning round from his inspection of the fallen lion, faced her.