Earliest dawn found the young man seated composedly upon one of the flattened outcroppings of the bill of stone that lay like an island between the outer plain and the sheltered cove. As yet, there was no sign of life within the cove—both the dugout and the cabin of cedar logs were as silent and as void of movement as the rocks behind them. The young man watched first one, then the other, as tireless and vigilant as if he had not been awake for twenty-four hours.
It was the dugout that first started from its night's repose. Before the sun showed itself over the rim of the prairie, long before its rays darted over the distant mountain-crest, the door was thrown away from the casing, and a great uncouth man, strong as a giant, and wild of aspect as a savage, strode forth, gun in hand, his eyes sweeping the landscape in quick flashing glances. Almost instantly he discovered the figure perched on the granite block overlooking his retreat. He raised his gun to his shoulder.
The young man fell sidewise behind the rocks and a bullet clipped the edge of his barricade. Remaining supine, he fastened his handkerchief to the end of his whip and waved it above the rampart. Having thus manifested his peaceful intent, he rose, still holding the flag of truce above his head, and remained motionless. Brick Willock stared at him for a moment in hostile indecision, then strode forward. At the same time, an old man, thin, tall and white-haired, issued from the dugout evidently attracted by the gunshot; and soon after, the cabin door opened, and the girl of the cove looked out inquiringly.
In the meantime the young man slowly descended the hill to the oval valley, while Willock hurried forward to meet him.
"Don't you come no futher!" Willock commanded, threatening with his gun. "Keep your hands above your head until I can ship your cargo."
Obediently he stood while the great whiskered fellow took the weapons from his belt, and dived into his hip pockets.
"That'll do. Now—what do you want?"
"It's hard to put it into a few words," the other complained. "I'd like to have a little talk with you."
"You are one of them fellows that come here to run us out of the country, ain't you? I don't remember seeing you, but I guess you belong to the bunch over on Red River. Well, you see we're still here, meaning to stay. Are your pards outside there, waiting for a message?"
"Nobody knows I'm here, or thought of coming. Let me put that affair in its true light. The boys are all under our boss, and when he lays down the law it isn't for us to argue with him—we carry out orders—"
"Unless there's a Brick Willock involved in them orders," returned the man, with a grim smile.
"But it's our duty to TRY to carry out the orders, whether we like 'em or not. So you won't hold that against me—that little scrimmage of last month, especially as you came out best man."
"I used to have a boss, myself," Willock spoke uncompromisingly. "But when he give me certain orders, one particular night that I recollect, I knocked him on the head and put out for other parts. You must of thought yourself in PRETTY business coming over here to take away the land and all on it, that's belonged to me for nine years, and nobody never having tried to prize me out of it except some trifling Injuns and horse-thieves. Ain't they NO honesty in the world? Hasn't no man his property rights? I guess your boss knowed this wasn't HIS land, didn't he? What's going to become of this country when man isn't satisfied with what is his'n? Well, now you've had a little talk with me, and hoping you've enjoyed it, you can just mosey along. I'll send your weapons after you by a messenger."
The young man cast a despairing glance toward the girl who stood like a statue in her doorway, gravely listening. The man with the bushy white hair had drawn near, but evidently with no thought of interfering.
"Willock," the voice came so eager, so impetuous, that the words were somewhat incoherent, "I've GOT to talk to your daughter—hold on, don't shoot, LISTEN!—that's what I've come for, to see her and—and meet her and hear her voice. I can't help it, can I? It's been two long years since I left home, back East, and in all these two years I've never seen anything like your little girl and—and what harm can it do? I say! Have pity on a fellow, and do him the biggest favor he could enjoy on this earth when it won't cost you a penny, or a turn of your hand. Look here—hold on, don't turn away! I'm just so lonesome, so homesick, so dead KILLED by all these sand-hills and alkali beds and nothing to talk to from one year's end to the next but men and cattle...."
Willock glared at him in silence, fingering the trigger thoughtfully.
"There I've sat, on that hill," he continued, "since two o'clock last night, waiting for daylight so I could ask you to help a miserable wretch that's just starving to death for the sound of a girl's voice, and the sight of a girl's smile. Isn't this square, waiting for you, and telling you the whole truth? I never saw her but once, and that was from this same hill. She didn't know I was watching; it was yesterday. Maybe all I'm saying sounds just crazy to you, and I reckon I am out of my senses, but until I saw her I didn't know how heart-sick I was of the whole business."
"It IS kinder lonesome," remarked the other gruffly. He lowered his gun and leaned on it, irresolutely. "You've sure touched me in the right spot, son, for I knows all you mean and more that you ain't even ever dreampt of. But you see, we don't know nothing about your name, your character, if you've got one, nor what you really intends. I like your looks and the way you talk, fine, just fine, but I've saw bobcats that was mighty sleek and handsome when they didn't know I was nigh."
"My name in Wilfred Compton. I—I have a letter or two in my pocket that I got a long time ago; they'd tell something about me but I'd rather not show 'em, as they're private—"
"From your gal, I reckon?" asked Willock more mildly.
"Yes," he answered gloomily.
"Carried 'em as long as a year?"
"Nearly two years."
"Mean to still lug 'em around?"
"Of course I'm going to keep 'em."
"Well, I don't deny THAT'S pretty favorable. Now look here, son, I've been half-crazy from lonesomeness, and I don't believe I've got the heart to send you away. That gal of ours—she's just a kid, you understand.... Now you wouldn't be taking up no idea that she was what you'd classify as a young lady, or anything like that, eh?"
"Of course not—she's fifteen or sixteen, I should think. Upon my honor, Willock, any thought of sentiment or romance is a thousand miles from my mind."
"Yes, just so. But such thoughts travels powerful fast; don't take 'em long to lap over a thousand mile."
"But it's because she IS a young girl, fresh and unartificial as the mountain breezes, that I want to be with her for a little while—yes, get to know her, if I may."
Willock turned to the taciturn old man standing a little behind him. "Bill Atkins, what do you say?"
"I say, fire him and do it quick!" was the instant rejoinder, accompanied by threatening twitchings of the huge white mustache.
Willock was not convinced. "Son, if you sets here till we have had our breakfast, and has held a caucus over you, I'll bring you the verdict in about an hour. If you don't like that, they's nothing to do but put out for your ranch."
"I go on duty at seven," replied the young man composedly, "but I have a friend riding the line that'll stay with it till I come. So I'll wait for your caucus."
"That friend—one of them devils I shot at the other day?"
Wilfred Compton smiled with sudden sunniness. "Yes."
Somewhere beneath the immense whiskers, an answering smile slipped like a breeze, stirring the iron-gray hair. "I kinder believe in you, son! Nobody can't gainsay that you've played the man in this matter. Now, just one thing more. You must swear here before me, with Bill Atkins for an unwilling witness, that should we let you make the acquaintance of our little gal, and should you get to be friends, you two, that the very fust minute it comes to you that she ain't no little gal, but is in the way of being food for love—Bill Atkins, air I making myself plain?"
"You ain't," returned the old man sourly. "You're too complicated for ordinary use."
"Then YOU tell him what I mean."
The old man glared at Wilfred fiercely. "If we decide to grant your request, young man, swear on your honor that the second you find yourself thinking of our little girl as a WOMAN, to be wooed and won, you'll put out, and never stop till you're so far away, you'll be clear out of her world. And not one word to her, not so much as one hint, mind you, as to the reason of your going; it'll just be good-by and farewell!"
"You see," Willock interpolated, "she is nothing a little gal, and we don't want no foolish ideas to the contrary. You takes her for what she is, nothing took from nor added to. In course, she'll be growed up some day, I reckon, though may the good Lord take a good long time finishing up the work He's begun so noble. When she's growed up, when she's a woman, it ain't for us to say how you come and how you go, take from or add to. But while she's a kid, it is different, according."
"You have my word of honor to all these conditions," Wilfred cried lightly. "As a child of the mountains I ask for her acquaintance. If I should ever feel differently about her, I'll go away and stay away until she's a woman. Surely that's enough to promise!"
"There ain't too much to promise, when it comes to the peace and happiness of our little girl," retorted the old man, "but I can't think of any more for you to take oath to."
"Me nuther, Bill," agreed Willock. "Seems to me the young man is bound as firm as humans can do the binding. Now you sit right here, son, don't come a step nigher the house, and we'll go to breakfast; and later you'll know whether or not all this promising has been idle waste of time."
"But I can see how it'll turn out," growled Atkins, "for she is always a-looking for something new, something out of the big world that she don't know nothing about."
"Never mind, Bill, don't give up so quick," Willock reproached him, as they turned away. "She's been having a good look at him all this time, and it may be she have took a distaste to him already."
The two men went into the cabin. An hour later they reappeared, accompanied by the girl. Wilfred was still seated obediently on the rock, but at sight of them he rose with a gay laugh and advanced.
"Come over here in the shade," Willock called, as he strode toward a grassy bank that sloped up to a line of three cedar trees of interlocked branches. "Come over here and know her. This is our gal."
Lahoma looked at the young man with grave interest, taking note of his garments and movements as she might have examined the skin and actions of some unknown animal. Bill Atkins also watched him, but with suspicious eye, as if anticipating a sudden spring on his ward.
"Set down," said Willock, sinking on the grass. "The last man up is the biggest fool in Texas!"
Lahoma and Wilfred instantly dropped as if shot, at the same time breaking into unexpected laughter that caused Willock's beard to quiver sympathetically. Bill Atkins, sour and unresponsive, stood as stiffly erect as possible, aided no little in this obstinate attitude by the natural unelasticity of age.
The young man exclaimed boyishly, still smiling at the girl, "We're friends already, because we've laughed together."
"Yes," cried Lahoma, "and Brick is in it, too. That's best of all."
"Iain't in it," cried Bill Atkins so fiercely that the young man was somewhat discomposed.
"Now, Bill," exclaimed the girl reprovingly, "you sit right down by my side and do this thing right." She explained to the young man, "Bill Atkins has been higher up than Brick, and he knows forms and ceremonies, but he despises to act up to what he knows. Sit right down, Bill, and make the move." There was something so unusual in the attitude of the blooming young girl toward the weather-beaten, forbidding-looking man, something so authoritative and at the same time so protecting, at once the air of a superior who commands and who shelters from the tyranny of others—that Wilfred was both amused and touched.
"Yes, Bill," said Willock, "make the move. Make 'em know each other."
"This is Miss Lahoma Willock," growled Bill; "and this"—waving at the young man disparagingly—"SAYS he is Wilfred Compton. Know each other!"
"I'm glad to know you," Lahoma declared frankly. "It's mighty lucky you came this way, for, you see, I just live here in the cove and never touch the big world. I believe you know a thousand things about the world that we ain't never dreamed of—"
"That we have never dreamed of," corrected Bill Atkins.
"—That we have never dreamed of," resumed Lahoma meekly; "and that's what I would like to hear about. I expect to go out in the big world and be a part of it, when I am older, when I know how to protect myself, Brick says. I'm just a little girl now, if I do look so big; I'm only fifteen, but when I am of age I'm going out into the big world; so that's why I'm glad to know you, to use you like a kind of dictionary. Are you coming back here again?"
"I hope so!" he exclaimed fervently.
"And so do I. In my cabin I have a long list of things written down in my tablet that I'd like to know about; questions that come to me as I sit looking over the hill into the sky, things Brick doesn't know, and not even Bill Atkins. You going to tell me them there things?"
Bill interposed: "Will you kindly tell me those things?"
"Will you kindly tell me those things?" Lahoma put the revised question as calmly as if she had not suffered correction.
"You see how it is, son," Willock remarked regretfully; "Lahoma keeps pretty close to me, and I'm always a-leading her along the wrong trails, not having laid out an extensive education when I was planning the grounds I calculated to live in. When I got anything to say, I just follows the easiest way, knowing I'll get to the end of it if I talk constant. People in the big world ain't no more natural in talking than in anything else. They builds up fences and arbitrary walls, and is careful to stay right in the middle of the beaten path, and I'm all time keeping Bill busy at putting up the bars after me, so Lahoma will go straight."
"So that's why I'm glad to know you," Lahoma said gravely. "But why did you want to know ME?" She fastened on him her luminous brown eyes, with red lips parted, awaiting the clearing up of this mystery.
Wilfred preserved a solemn countenance, "I've been awfully lonesome, Lahoma, the last two years because, up to that time, I'd lived in a city with friends all about town and no end of gay times—and these last two years, I've been in the terrible desert. You are the first girl I've seen that reminded me of home; when I saw you and knew you were my kind, the way you held yourself and the smile in your eyes—"
Bill interposed: "Don't you forget that binding, young man!"
"Of course not. But I don't know how to tell just what it means to me to be with her—with all of you, I mean—but her especially, because—well, I had so many friends among the girls, back home and—and— It's no use trying to explain; if you've known the horrible lonesomeness of the plains you already understand, and if you don't..."
"I know what you mean," Willock remarked, with a reminiscent sigh.
"Let it not be put in words," Bill persisted. "If a thing can't be expressed, words only mislead. I never knew any good to come of talking about smiles in eyes. There's nothing to it but misleading words."
"Go on, Lahoma," said Willock encouragingly, "we're both staying with you, to see that you come out of this with flying colors. Just go ahead."
"I want to ask you all about yourself," remarked Lahoma thoughtfully, "because I can see from your face, and the way you talk, that you're a real sample of the big world. If I tell you all about myself, will you do the same?"
Wilfred promised, and Lahoma entered on the history of her childhood. Wilfred looked and listened joyously, conscious of the unusual scene, alive to the subtle charm of her fearless eyes, her unreserved confidences, the melting harmony of her musical tones. To be sure, she was only a child, but he saw already the promise of the woman. The petals as yet were closed, but the faint sweet fragrance was already astir. He found, too, that in her nature was already developed something not akin to youth, something impersonal, having nothing to do with one's number of years—like the breath of experience, or the ancient freshness of a new day. It was born of the mountains and nourished in the solitude of the plains.
How different the girls of fifteen or sixteen such as he had known in the city or in sophisticated villages in the East! Lahoma had not been so engrossed by trivial activities of exacting days that she had lacked time for thought. Her housekeeping cares were few and devoid of routine, leaving most of the hours of each day for reading, for day-dreaming, for absorbed meditation. Somehow the dreams seemed to linger in, her voice, to hover upon her brow, to form a part of her; and the longings of those dreams were half-veiled in her eyes, looking out shyly as if afraid of wounding her guardians by full revelation. She wanted to meet life, to take a place in the world—but what would then become of Willock and Bill?
"Bill used to live seven miles away at the mountain with the precipice," she went on, after she had told about the wonderful window. "But it was too far off. When he got to know me, it tired him, walking this far twice a day, morning and night,—didn't it, Bill! So at last Brick and Bill decided to cut some cedars from the mountain and make me a cabin,—they took the dugout to sleep in. There are two rooms in the cabin, one, the kitchen where we eat—and the other, my parlor where I sleep. Some time you shall visit me in the cabin, if Brick and Bill are willing. They made it for me, so I couldn't ask anybody in, unless they said so."
"We aren't far enough along," observed Bill, "to be shut up together under a roof."
"I'd like to have you visit my parlor," Lahoma said somewhat wistfully. "I'd like to show you all my books—they were Bill's when we first met him, but since then he's given me everything he's got, haven't you, old Bill!" Lahoma leaned over and patted the unyielding shoulder.
Bill stared moodily at the top of the mountain as if in a gloomy trance, but Wilfred fancied he moved that honored shoulder a trifle nearer the girl.
She resumed, her face glowing with sudden rapture: "There are six books—half a dozen! Maybe you've heard of some of them. Bill's read 'em over lots of times. He begins with the first on the shelf and when he's through the row, he just takes 'em up, all over again. I like to read parts of them—the interesting parts. This is the way they stand on the shelf: The Children of the Abbey—that's Bill's favorite; The Scottish Chiefs, David Copperfield, The Talisman, The Prairie, The Last of the Mohicans."
"I like The Children of the Abbey best, too," observed Brick Willock thoughtfully. "Lahoma, she's read 'em all to me; that's the way we get through the winter months. They's something softening and enriching about that there Children of the Abbey; and Scottish Chiefs has got some mighty high work in it, too. I tells Lahoma that I guess them two books is just about as near the real thing out in the big world as you can get. David Copperfield is sort of slow; I've went with people that knowed a powerful sight more than them characters in David. I used to drift about with a bunch of fellows that Uriah Heep couldn't have stood up against for five minutes. The Talisman is noble doings, too, but not up-to-date. As for The Prairie and The Last of the Mohicans, them is dissatisfying books,—they make you think, being as you lives in just such quarters, interesting things might happen most any minute—and they never does."
"Why, Brick!" Lahoma reproached him. "THIS has happened—" she nodded at Wilfred Compton. "Don't you call that interesting?"
"That's the wayIdiscusses them books," returned Willock with manifest satisfaction. "I wasn't never no man to be overawed by no book, which, however high and by whoever wrote, ain't no more like life than a shadow in a pool. Try to grab that shadow, and where is it? Just to go out after game and climb the mountains all day and come home of an evening to sit down to a plate of bacon and eggs, and another of the same, with coffee smoking on the little stove, and Lahoma urging on the feast—that's more of real living than you'd get out of a big library. Ain't it, Bill?"
"Now WE want to talk, Brick," interposed Lahoma—"don't we, Wilfred?"
"So your cabin was built," Wilfred prompted her, "and the men took the dugout."
"Yes—and then, oh! the most wonderful thing happened: a family settled in the arm of the mountain at the west end—a family that had a woman and a baby in it—a sure-enough woman with a sweet face and of a high grade though worked down pretty level what from hardships—and a baby that laughed, just laughed whenever he saw me coming in the dugout—and I was over there every day. And that's how I got to be like a woman, and know how to dress, and how to meet strangers without being scared, and preside at table, and use language like this. Other settlers began coming into Greer, but they were far away, and Brick and Bill don't like folks, so they stayed shut up pretty close. But for three years I had the mother and her baby to show me how to be a woman. Then came the soldiers. Brick thinks a big cattle-king stood in with Congress, and he got the soldiers sent here to drive out all the settlers because they were beginning to farm the land instead of letting it grow wild for the cattle. Anyway, all the settlers were driven out of the country—and it's been four years since I lost my only friends in the world—except Brick and Bill. What makes me and Brick and Bill mad is, that the soldiers didn't have any right to drive out the settlers, because Texas claims this country, and so does the United States, but it's never been settled."
"But they didn't drive YOU out," Wilfred remarked inquiringly.
"You see," Brick explained simply, "we didn't want to go."
"It nearly broke Mrs. Featherby's heart to have to leave," Lahoma added, "for they'd got a good stand of wheat and I think she liked me 'most as well as I liked her. But Mr. Featherby came from Ohio, and he had respect to the government, so when the soldiers said 'Go,' he pulled up stakes."
"We ain't got no respect to nothing," Brick explained, "that stands in the way of doing what we're a mind to. The soldiers come to force us out, but they changed their minds. I reckon they knew they hadn't no morality on their side. Sure thing, they knowed they had but very little safety, whilst occupying their position. None was left but us in this country till you cattlemen come monopolizing Heaven and earth. Knowing we got just as much right to this cove as Uncle Sam himself, we expect to stay here at anchor till Lahoma steams out into the big world with sails spread. She expects to tug us along behind her—but I don't know, I'm afraid we'd draw heavy. Until that time comes, however, we 'lows to lay to, in this harbor. We feels sheltered. Nothing ain't more sheltering than knowing you have a moral right and a dependable gun."
"So that's about all," Lahoma went on. "These past four years, we've just been to ourselves, with a long journey once a year to the settlements; and all the time I had those sweet thoughts to dream over, about the little family that used to live in the west mountain. And I've tried to do like Mrs. Featherby used to do, and be like she was, and if I can make as fine a woman I needn't ask any more. She'd been to Europe, too, and she'd taught school in New England. Bill Atkins is higher up than Brick—Bill used to know Kit Carson and all those famous pioneers, and he's been most everywhere—except in settled places. When a boy he saw Sam Houston and ate with him, and he has heard David Crockett with his own ears—has heard him say 'Be sure you're right, then go ahead,' that's how far BILL has been. But it sort of hurt Brick's neck, and even Bill's, to look up high enough to see where Mrs. Featherby had risen. She was like you—right out of the big world. She came out here because the family was awful poor. Is that why you left the big world?"
Wilfred shook his head. "I'm poor enough," he said, "but it wasn't that. It was a girl."
Brick Willock explained, "He's got a sweetheart; he's been carrying her letters for about two years. He's done spoke for, Lahoma, staked out, as a fellow might say, and squatted on."
Lahoma looked at him in breathless interest. "A girl out in the big world? Completely civilized, I reckon! Was she as old as I am?"
"Why, honey!" Brick exclaimed uneasily, "YOU ain't got no age at all, to speak of! What are you but a mere child? This young man is talking about them as has got up to be old enough to think of sweethearting—something respectable in YEARS."
"And how old does a sweetheart have to be?" demanded Lahoma with some displeasure. "I feel old enough for anything, and Wilfred doesn't look any older than the knight standing guard in THE TALISMAN. Besides, look at David Copperfield and Little Em'ly."
"That was child's work," retorted Brick.
"I was afraid of this," growled Bill Atkins restlessly.
Wilfred laughed out. "Don't worry. My eastern girl is at least nineteen years old, and so thoroughly civilized that she thinks this part of the world is still overrun with Indians and buffaloes. She wouldn't live out here for a fortune, and she wouldn't marry a man back East without one—that's why I'm here. I didn't have the fortune."
"Does she LOVE you, Wilfred?" Her voice was so soft, her eyes were so big, that Bill uttered a smothered groan, and even Brick sat up.
"She did the last time I saw her—can't say how she feels now; that's been about two years ago." He spoke lightly; but gazing into the wonderful depths of Lahoma's eyes, he felt a queer sensation like a lost heart-beat.
"Did she send you here as a kind of test?"
"Oh, no, she told me good-by and we parted forever. Both of us were poor,—you can't live in the city if you're poor; you can BE poor there, but not LIVE. By this time she's found some one with property, I dare say—she's tremendously handsome and accomplished, and has a very distinguished-looking mother and they have friends in society—she'll make it all right, no doubt." His voice was matter-of-fact even to indifference; but for all that, he seemed to be deeply inhaling Lahoma's freshness of morning-rose sparkling with dew.
"Does it pierce your heart to think of her marrying somebody else?" Her voice was sweet with the dream-passion of a young girl.
"When I left home, I flung myself into the life of a cow-puncher and did all I could to keep from thinking. So my heart's rather callous by this time. I don't seem to mind like I thought I would if I should sit down to think about it. That's what I've avoided like the plague—sitting down to think about it. But I believe I could sit down and think about it now, pretty calmly."
"Then that's what I'd do," Lahoma cried. "I'd just face it. She isn't worthy of you if she'd rather have a fortune than the man she loves. I'd just sit down and face it."
"I will!" He had never before thought it could be easy. It seemed very easy, now.
"Maybe I could help you," Lahoma suggested earnestly. "When Mrs. Featherby lived near, I asked her all about such cases and got her advice and experience. Change of scene and time are the greatest remedies. You've had both. Then you must tell yourself that she isn't worthy. And then you'll remind yourself that there are OTHER girls in the world. Then you keep your mind occupied,—that is a great thing. If you come to the cove to visit us, we will try to occupy your mind—won't we Brick?—and Bill?"
Bill looked at Wilfred glumly. "It's too occupied now, I'm afraid."
"Bill, this is a-growing on you," Brick expostulated. "I like the young chap first rate. He's open and free. Bill, you are hampering, at times. I would go to my dugout if I was you, and cool my head."
"Your head'll be hot enough," growled Bill, "when this has gone too far."
Lahoma opened her eyes wide. "What do you mean?" she demanded, sincerely perplexed.
"Bill," cried Brick warningly, "you're a-going to start up a fire where they ain't even been no kindling laid."
Wilfred rose hastily. "I should like dearly to come, and come often," he exclaimed, "but I couldn't force myself where I'm not wanted."
"In that case," remarked Bill inflexibly, "you're seeing me for the last time, and may look your fill!"
Wilfred smiled at him tolerantly and turned to Willock. "I ought to go to my work, Brick. I won't try to explain what this hour has meant to me for I believe you understand. I'm like a man crossing the desert who finds a spring and gets enough water to last him till the next oasis."
He held out his hand to Lahoma who had risen swiftly at these signs of departure. "God bless you, little girl!" he said cheerily. "A man's fortunate who finds such oases along his desert-trail!"
It was not Bill's gruffness, but Lahoma's charm that warned him to flee lest he break his promise to her guardians.
"But you can't go, yet," cried Lahoma, not taking his hand, "there are a thousand things I want to do with you that I've never had a chance to do with anybody else—strolling, for instance. Come and stroll—I'll show you about the cove. Brick and Bill don't know anything about strolling as they do in pictures. Hold out your arm with a crook in it and I'll slip my hand just inside where you'll hold it soft and warm like a bird in its nest.... Isn't his noble? And I holds back—excuse me—I HOLD back my skirts with my other hand, and this is the way we stroll, like an engraving out of the history of Louis the Fourteenth's court. Do, oh, do!" Her bright eyes glowed into his like beckoning stars.
"We stroll," he gravely announced, responding to the pressure of her fingers, but at the same time feeling somewhat guilty as Bill rolled his eyes fearfully at Brick.
When they were a few yards from the trees Lahoma whispered, "Make for the other side of Turtle Hill. I want to feel grown up when I do my strolling, but I'm nothing but a little barefooted kid when Brick and Bill are looking at me!"
Hidden by the shoulder of the granite hill island she stopped, withdrew her hand, and stood very straight as she said, with breathless eagerness, "Answer me quick! Wilfred: ain't I old enough to be a sweetheart?"
"Oh, Lahoma," he protested warmly, "please don't think of it. Don't be anybody's until—until I say the word. You couldn't understand such matters, dear, you wouldn't know the—the proper time. I'll tell you when the time comes."
She looked at him keenly. "Am I to wait for a time, or for a person? I wish you'd never met that girl back East I think you'd have filled the bill for me, because, having always lived here in the mountains, I've not learned to be particular. Not but what I've seen lots of trappers and squatters in my day, but I never wanted to stroll with them. I don't see why that eastern girl ever turned you loose from her trap. I think a man's a very wonderful thing; especially a young man—don't you, Wilfred?"
"Not half so wonderful as you, Lahoma." His voice vibrated with sudden intensity. "There's your wonderful hair, like light shining through a brown veil ... and your eyes where your soul keeps her lights flashing when all the rest of you is in twilight ... and your hands and feet, four faithful little guides to the wonderful treasures that belong only to maidenhood ... and your mouth, changing with your thoughts—an adorable little thermometer, showing how high the smiles have risen in your heart; a mouth so pure and sweet—"
"Hey!" shouted Bill Atkins, as he and Brick came around the angle of the hill. "Hi, there! You may call that strolling, but if so, it's because you don't know its true name, if you ask ME!"
Wilfred came to himself with a sharp indrawing of his breath. "Yes," he stammered, somewhat dizzily, "Yes, I—I must be going, now."
She held his hand beseechingly. "But you'll come again, won't you? When I hold your hand, it's like grabbing at a bit of the big world."
"No, Lahoma, I'm not coming again." His look was long and steady, showing sudden purpose which concealed regret beneath a frank smile of liking.
She still held his hand, her brown eyes large with entreaty. "You WILL come again, Wilfred! You must come again! Don't mind Bill. I'll have a talk with him after you're gone. I'll send him over to the ranch after you. Just say you'll come again if I send for you."
"Of course he'll come, honey," said Brick, melted by the tears that sounded in her voice. "He won't get huffy over a foolish old codger like Bill Atkins. Of course he'll come again and tell you about street-cars and lamp-posts. Let him go to his work now, he's been up all night, just to get a word with you. Let him go—he'll come back tomorrow, I know."
Wilfred turned to Brick and looked into his eyes as he slowly released Lahoma's hand.
"Oh!" said Brick, considerably disconcerted. "No, I reckon he won't come back, honey—yes, I guess he'll be busy the rest of the summer. Well, son, put 'er there—shake! I like you fine, just fine, and as you can't come here to see us no more, being so busy and—and otherwise elsewhere bound—I'm kinder sorry to see you go."
"Partings," said Bill, somewhat mollified, "are painful but necessary, else there wouldn't be any occasion for dentists' chairs."
"That's so," Brick agreed. "You called Lahoma an oasis. And what is an oasis? Something you come up to, and go away from, and that's the end of the story. You don't settle down and live at a spring just because it give you a drink when you was thirsty. A man goes on his way rejoicing, and Wilfred according."
Lahoma walked up to Wilfred with steady eyes. "Are you coming back to see me?" she asked gravely.
"No, Lahoma. At least not for a long, long time. I don't believe it's good for me to forget the life I've chosen, even for a happy hour. When I left the city, it was to drop out of the world—nobody knows what became of me, not even my brother. You've brought everything back, and that isn't good for my peace of mind and so—good-bye!"
Tall and straight he stood, like a soldier whose duty it is to face defeat; and standing thus, he fastened his eyes upon her face as if to stamp those features in a last long look upon his heart.
"Good-by," said Lahoma; this time she did not hold out her hand. Her face was composed, her voice quiet. If in her eyes there was the look of one who has been rebuffed; her pride was too great to permit a show of pain.
Wilfred hesitated. But what was to be done? Solitude and homesickness had perhaps distorted his vision; at any rate he had succumbed to the folly against which he had been warned. He could not accept Lahoma as a mere child; and though, during the scene, he had repeatedly reminded himself that she was only fifteen, her face, her voice, her form, her manner of thought, refused the limits of childhood. Therefore he went away, outwardly well-content with his morning, but inwardly full of wrath that his heart had refused the guidance of his mind.
And she had been so simple, so eager to meet him on an equal plane, even clinging to him as to the only hope in her narrow world that might draw her out into deeper currents of knowledge.
"I've always been a fool," he muttered savagely, as he sought his horse. "I was a fool about Annabel—and now I'm too big a fool to enjoy what fortune has fairly flung in my path." Presently he began to laugh—it was all so ridiculous, beating a retreat because he could not regard a fifteen-year-old girl as a little child! He drew several time-worn letters from his pocket and tore them into small bits that fluttered away like snowflakes on the wind. He had no longer a sentimental interest in them, at all events.
He did not come again. Lahoma used to go to the hill-island, which she called Turtle Hill because the big flattened rocks looked like turtles that had crawled up out of the cove to sun themselves; among these turtles she would lie, watching the open mouth of the mountain horseshoe in the vain hope that Wilfred would appear from around the granite wall. Occasionally she descended to the plain and scanned the level world, but it was pleasanter to watch from the cove because one never knew, while in that retreat, who might be coming along the range. On the plain, there were no illusions.
Lahoma courted illusions. And when she knew that Wilfred Compton had severed connections with Old Man Walker she merely exchanged one hope, one dream, for another. The opportunity to learn about the big world was withdrawn; but the anticipation of one day meeting Wilfred again was as strong as ever. She made no secret of this expectation.
Bill Atkins sought to dismiss it effectually. "You don't know about the big world, Lahoma," he declared, "if you think people meet up with each other after they've once lost touch. If all this part of America was blotted out of existence, people in the East wouldn't miss any ink out of the ink-bottle."
Lahoma tossed her head. "Maybe the world IS big," she conceded. "But if Wilfred isn't big enough to make himself seen in it when I go a-looking, I don't care whether I meet him again or not. When I'm in the big world, I expect to deal only with big people."
"I saw no bigness about HIM," Bill cried slightingly.
"If he isn't big enough to make himself seen," Lahoma serenely returned, "I won't never—"
"You won't ever—" Bill corrected.
"I won't ever have to wear specs for strained eyes," Lahoma concluded, smiling at Bill as if she knew why he was as he was, and willingly took him so because he couldn't help himself.
It was Brick who heard about Wilfred's adventures on leaving the Red River ranch, and as all three sat outside the cabin in the dusk of evening, he retailed them as gathered from a recent trip to the corral. That was a strange story unfolded to Lahoma's ears, a story rich with the romance of the great West, wild in its primitive strivings and thrilling in its realizations of countless hopes. The narrative lost nothing in the telling, for Brick Willock understood the people and the instincts that moved them, and though Wilfred Compton might differ from all in his motives and plans, he shared with all the same hardships, the same spur to ambition.
It was now ten years since the discovery had been made that in the western part of Indian Territory were fourteen million acres that had never been assigned to the red man and which, therefore, were public land, subject to homestead settlement. As long as the western immigrants could choose among the rich prairie-lands of Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Dakota and Kansas—and the choice was open to all, following the agreement of the plains tribes to retire to reservations,—it was not strange that the unassigned lands of Indian Territory should have escaped notice, surrounded as they were by the Cherokee Strip, the Osage and Creek countries, the Chickasaw Nation, the Wichita, Cado, Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes.
But other public lands were now scarce, or less inviting, and as far back as 1879, when Lahoma was five years old, colonies had formed in Kansas City, in Topeka and in Texas, to move upon the Oklahoma country. The United States troops had dispersed the "boomers," but in the following year the indefatigable Payne succeeded in leading a colony into the very heart of the coveted land. It was in order to escape arrest—for again the United States cavalry had descended on settlers—that several wagons, among them that of Gledware's, had driven hastily toward the Panhandle, to come to grief at the hands of ruffians from No-Man's Land.
As Brick Willock told of Payne's other attempts to colonize the Oklahoma country, of his arrests, of his attempts to bring his various cases to the trial, she felt that Willock was, in a way, dealing with her personal history, for had she not been named Lahoma in honor of that country which her step-father had seen only to loose? Time and again the colonists swarmed over the border, finding their way through Indian villages and along desolate trails to the land that belonged to the public, but was enjoyed only by the great cattlemen; as many times, they were driven from their newly-claimed homes by federal troops, not without severity, and their leaders were imprisoned.
But, at last, April the twenty-second, 1889, had been appointed as the day on which the Oklahoma country was to be opened up to settlement, and it was to meet this event that Wilfred Compton had left Greer County. He was a unit in that immense throng that waited impatiently for the hour of noon—a countless host, stretching along the north on the boundary of the Cherokee Strip, on the south, at the edge of the Cherokee Nation; on the east, along the Kickapoo and Pottawatomie reservations; and on the west, blackening the extremity of the Cheyenne and Arapaho countries. He was one of those who, at the discharge of the carbines of the patrolling cavalrymen, joined in the deafening shout raised by men of all conditions and from almost every state in the Union—a shout as of triumph over the fulfillment of a ten-years' dream. And, leaning forward on his pony, he was one of the army of conquest that burst upon the desert, on foot, on horseback, and in vehicles of every description, in the mad rush for homes in a land that had never known the incense of the hearth or the civilizing touch of the plow.
At noon, a wilderness, at night, a land of tents, and on the morrow, a settled country of furrowed fields. "Pioneer work is awful quick, nowadays!" grumbled Bill Atkins, as Brick concluded. "It wasn't so in my time. Up there in the Oklahoma country, fifty years have been squeezed into a week's time—it's like a magician making a seed grow and sprout and blossom right before the audience. Lucky I came to Greer County, Texas—I don't guess IT'LL ever be anything but sand and a blow."
"It's a great story," Brick declared with enthusiasm. "I reckon it's the greatest story that America can put out, in the pioneering line. There they had everything in twenty-four hours that used to wear out our ancestors: Injuns, unbroken land, no sign of life for hundreds of miles—and just a turn of the hand and cities is a-coming up out of the ground, and saloons and churches is rubbing shoulders, and there's talk of getting out newspapers. What do you think of it, honey?"
Lahoma was sitting in grave silence, her hands clasped in her lap. She turned slowly and looked at Willock. "Brick, I'm disappointed."
"Which?" asked Willock, somewhat taken aback. "Where?"
"In him—in Wilfred."
"As how so?"
"Going into that wilderness-life, instead of taking his place in the world!"
"Well, honey if he hadn't come to THIS wilderness, you'd never of saw him."
"Yes—but he wasn't settled, and now he's settled in it. Is that the way to be a man? There's all those other people to do the thing he's doing. Then what's the use of him?"
"Ain't we in the same box?"
"Yes, and that's why I mean to get out of it, some day. But it's different with him. He's chosen his box, and gone in, and shut the lid on himself! I'm disappointed in him. I've been thinking him a real man. I guess I'm still to see what I'm looking for," added Lahoma, shaking her head.
"We'll let it go at that," muttered Bill who was anxious to turn Lahoma's mind from thoughts of Wilfred. "We'll just go ahead and look for new prospects."
"Not till I make a remark," said Willock, laying aside his pipe. "Honey, do yon know what I mean by a vision? It calls for a big vision to take in a big person, and you ain't got it. Maybe it wasn't meant for women, or at least a girl of fifteen to see further than her own foot-tracks, so no blame laid and nobody judged, according. If you don't see nothing in that army of settlers going into a raw land and falling to work to make it bloom like the rose, a-setting out to live in solitude for years that in due time the world may be richer by a great territory, why, you ain't got a big vision. I've got it, for I was born in the West, and I've lived all my life, peaceable and calm, right out here or hereabouts. You've got to breathe western air to get the big vision. You've got to see towns rise out of the turf over night and bust into cities before the harvest-fields is ripe, to know what can be did when men is free, not hampered by set-and-bound rules as holds 'em down to the ways of their fathers. Back East, folks is straining themselves to make over, and improve, and polish up what they found ready-to-hand—but here out West, we creates. It takes a big vision to see the bigness of the West, and you can't get no true idee by squinting at the subject."
Lahoma did not reply, and Bill feared that under the conviction of her friend's eloquence, she had begun to idealize the efforts of Wilfred Compton. He need not have been afraid. To her imagination, "big people" were not living in dugouts, or tents, far from civilization; "big people" were going to the opera every night, and riding in splendid carriages along imposing boulevards every day. Brick and Bill had contrived to live as well as they desired from profits on skins obtained in the mountains and the small tract of ground they had cultivated in a desultory manner had done little beyond supplying themselves with vegetables and the horses with some extra feed. She had no great opinion of agriculture; and though she had taken part in planting and hoeing with a pleasurable zest, she had never entertained herself with the thought that she was engaged in a great work. As to dugouts, they had no place in her dreams of the future. Since Wilfred had chosen to handicap himself with the same limitations that bound her, even the thought of him was to be banished from her world, banished absolutely.
Her day-dreams did not cease, but became more dreamy, more unreal, since the hero of her fancies, for whom she now had no flesh-and-blood prototype, was suggested only by her moods and her books. As the sun-clear days of maidenhood melted imperceptibly into summer glow and winter spaces, the memory of Wilfred's face and voice sometimes surprised her at unexpected turns of solitary musings. But the face grew less defined, the voice lost its distinctive tone, as the years passed uninterruptedly by.
"I reckon it ain't right," said Brick Willock to Bill Atkins as they went one morning to examine their traps before Lahoma was astir, "to keep our little gal to ourselves as we're doing. You're getting old, Bill, awful old—"
"Well, damn it," growled Bill, "I guess I don't have to be told!"
"You ain't very long for this world, Bill, not in the ordinary course of nature. And when I've laid you to rest under the rock-pile, Lahoma ain't going to find the variety in me that she now has in the two of us. Besides which, I'm in the fifties myself, and them is halves of hundreds."
"Yes," Bill growled, "and give Lahoma time, she'll die, too. Nothing but the mountain'll be left to look out on the plains. Lord, Brick, who do you reckon'll be living in that cove, when we three are dead and gone?"
"Guess I'll be worrying about something else, then."
"Do you reckon," pursued Bill, in an unwonted tone of mellowness, "that those who come to live in our dugout will ever imagine what happy hours we've passed there, just sitting around quiet and enjoying ourselves and one another?"
"They wouldn't imagine YOU was enjoying of yourself, not if they was feeding their eyes on you every day. But I'm awful bothered about Lahoma. I tell you, it ain't right to keep her shut up as in a cage. Can't you see she's pining for high society such as I ain't got it in me to supply, and you are too cussed obstinate to display?"
"I guess that's so." Bill drew himself stiffly up by the tree above—they were ascending the wooded gully that extended from base to mountain-top.
"Well, what's the hurry? She's only seventeen years old."
"Yes, she was only seventeen years old, two years ago; but she's nineteen, now."
Bill Atkins sank upon a rock at the foot of a bristling cedar. "Nineteen! Who, LAHOMA? Then where've I been all the time?"
"You've been a-traveling along at a pretty fast clip toward your last days, that's where you've been. Just look at yourself! Ain't you always careful in making your steps as if scared of breaking something? And now, you're out of breath!"
"It was knocked out by the thought of her being so old—but I guess you're right. Well, I wouldn't call her life caged-up. The settlers have been moving in pretty steadily, and she has friends amongst all the families where there's women-folks. She has her own pony, and is gone more than suits me; and although there's no young man disposable, we ain't fretting about that, nor her neither."
"I used to think she might be foolish about Wilfred Compton—but Lahoma, she ain't foolish about nothing. Nevertheless, Bill, it ain't right. Settlers is settlers, and what she yearns for is the big world. I would long since of took her out to see it, but dassn't from a liability to be catched up for divers deeds that was unlawfully charged to me in times past. You could have guided her along the city trails, but was too cussed obstinate."
"She's your cousin," retorted Bill, "and it wasn't for me to act her guardian. Besides, did you want to lose her? You couldn't take Lahoma where she'd be seen and known, and expect to get her back again. Maybe it isn't exactly fair to keep her boarded up—but the times are changing all that, and sorry am I to see it. Do you know, Brick, I once thought you and me and Lahoma could just live here in the cove till time was no more, reading our books, and smoking our pipes, and taking peaceful morning trips like this—to see whether we'd caught a coyote in our traps, or a bobcat, or a skunk."
"Yes, that's all right for us; but Lahoma ain't smoking no pipe, nor is her interest in skunks such as ours."
"Just so—but see how Greer County is getting settled up—that's what's going to save us, Brick—civilization is coming to Lahoma, she won't have to go out gunning after it."
"Of course I've thought of that. I ain't got your grammar, but my mind don't have to wait to let in an idea after it's put its clothes on. Maybe they comes in nothing but a nightshirt, but I ain't ever knowed YOU to think of nothing yet, that I hadn't entertained in some fashion. Of course, civilization is a-creeping up to the mountain, and I reckon by the time Lahoma is my age it'll be playing an organ in church. But she's at the age that calls for quick work—she's got the rest of her life to settle down in. Most all of a person's life is spent in settling and it's befitting to lay in the foundation aforetime. Look at that dear girl in The Children of the Abbey, all them love-passages and the tears she sheds—she was being a young woman! What would that noble book of been had that lovely creature been shut up in a cove till nineteen year of age? Is Lahoma going to have a chance like that amongst these settlers? Will she ever hear that high talk, that makes your flesh sort of creep with pride in your race when you read it aloud?"
"Do you want Lahoma to have a lover, Brick Willock?"
"Bill, if he is fit, I say she ought to have a chance."
"And where are you going to find the man?"
"I'm going to help Lahoma find him. I'm like you, Bill, I hates that lover like a snake this minute, though I ain't no idea who, where, or what he is, or may be. I hates him—but I ain't going to stand in Lahoma's way. No, sir, I 'low to meet civilization half-way. There it is—look!"
Willock stood erect and pointed toward the plain, where perhaps twenty tents had been pitched within the last two weeks. Bill gave an unwilling glance, shrugged his shoulders disdainfully, and resumed progress up the difficult defile.
Willock continued: "Two weeks ago, there wasn't nothing there but naked sand. Now there's three saloons, a hardware store, a grocery, a bank—all of 'em under canvas—and the makings of a regular town. Right out there in the broiling sun! Carloads of lumber and machinery is on its way, and the stage-coach will be putting off mail there before long. That's how civilization is a-seeking out our little gal. But I means to meet it halfway."
"Oh, come on, don't say anything more about it—when I look at those tents I can't breathe freely. What do you gamble on—a skunk, or a coyote, in the traps?"
"'Tain't them tents that's seeping your breath, it's pure unalloyed age. Yes, sir, I means to meet civilization half-way. I've already been prospecting. There's a party over there in Tent City that's come on from Chicago just from the lust of seeing pioneer-life at first hand, people that haven't no idee of buying or settling—it's a picnic to them. They're camping out, watching life develop—and what's life-and-death earnestness to others is just amusement to them. That there's a test of people high-up. Real folks in the big world don't do nothing, it takes all their time just being folks. You and me could bag a dozen polecats whilst a fine lady was making her finger-nails ready for the day. And these Chicago people is that kind."
"Do you think they'll make friends with Lahoma just to suit you? The kind of people you're talking about are more afraid of getting to know strangers than they are of being set on by wildcats."
"They'll make friends with Lahoma, all right, and invite her home with 'em. That's the way I 'low to set her out in the big world. Lahoma don't know my plans and neither do they, but I was never a man to make my plans knowed when I was going to hold up people. Of course I'M speaking in a figger, but in a figger I may say I've held up several, in my day."
"THEY won't invite Lahoma to Chicago, not if they are the right sort."
"They will invite Lahoma to Chicago," retorted Willock firmly, "and they are the right sort. Wait and see; and when you have saw, render due honor to your Uncle Brick."