Sunday it was, and Val had insisted stubbornly upon going back to the ranch; somewhat to her surprise, if one might judge by her face, Arline Hawley no longer demurred, but put up lunch enough for a week almost, and announced that she was going along. Hank would have to drive out, to bring back the team, and she said she needed a rest, after all the work and worry of that dance. Manley, upon whose account it was that Val was so anxious, seemed to have nothing whatever to say about it. He was sullenly acquiescent—as was perhaps to be expected of a man who had slipped into his old habits and despised himself for doing so, and almost hated his wife because she had discovered it and said nothing. Val was thankful, during that long, bleak ride over the prairie, for Arline's incessant chatter. It was better than silence, when the silence means bitter thoughts.
“Now,” said Arline, moving excitedly in her seat when they neared Cold Spring Coulee, “maybe I better tell you that the folks round here has kinda planned a little su'prise for you. They don't make much of a showin' about bein' neighborly—not when things go smooth—but they're right there when trouble comes. It's jest a little weddin' present—and if it comes kinda late in the day, why, you don't want to mind that. My dance that I gave was a weddin' party, too, if you care to call it that. Anyway, it was to raise the money to pay for our present, as far as it went—and I want to tell you right now, Val, that you was sure the queen of the ball; everybody said you looked jest like a queen in a picture, and I never heard a word ag'inst your low-neck dress. It looked all right onyou, don't you see? On me, for instance, it woulda been something fierce. And I'm real glad you took a hold and danced like you did, and never passed nobody up, like some woulda done. You'll be glad you did, now you know what it was for. Even danced with Polycarp Jenks—and there ain't hardly any woman but what'll turnhimdown; I'll bet he tromped all over your toes, didn't he?”
“Sometimes,” Val admitted. “What about the surprise you were speaking of, Mrs. Hawley?”
“It does seem as if you might call me Arline,” she complained irrelevantly. “We're comin' to that—don't you worry.”
“Is it—a piano?”
“My lands, no! You don't need a fiddle and a piano both, do you? Man, what'd you rather have for a weddin' present?”
Manley, upon the front seat beside Hank, gave his shoulders an impatient twitch. “Fifty thousand dollars,” he replied glumly.
“I'm glad you're real modest about it,” Arline retorted sharply. She was beginning to tell herself quite frequently that she “didn't have no time for Man Fleetwood, seeing he wouldn't brace up and quit drinkin.”
Val's lips curled as she looked at Manley's back. “What I should like,” she said distinctly, “is a great, big pile of wood, all cut and ready for the stove, and water pails that never would go empty. It's astonishing how one's desires eventually narrow down to bare essentials, isn't it? But as we near the place, I find those two things more desirable than a piano!” Then she bit her lip angrily because she had permitted herself to give the thrust.
“Why, you poor thing! Man Fleetwood, do you—”
Val impulsively caught her by the arm. “Oh, hush! I was only joking,” she said hastily. “I was trying to balance Manley's wish for fifty thousand dollars, don't you see? It was stupid of me, I know.” She laughed unconvincingly. “Let me guess what the surprise is. First, is it large or small?”
“Kinda big,” tittered Arline, falling into the spirit of the joke.
“Bigger than a—wait, now. A sewing machine?”
Arline covered her mouth with her hand and nodded dumbly.
“You say all the neighbors gave it and the dance helped pay for it—let me see. Could it possibly be—what in the world could it be? Manley, help me guess! Is it something useful, or just something nice?”
“Useful,” said Arline, and snapped her jaws together as if she feared to let another word loose.
“Larger than a sewing machine, and useful.” Val puckered her brows over the puzzle. “And all the neighbors gave it. Do you know, I've been thinking all sorts of nasty things about our poor neighbors, because they refused to sell Manley any hay. And all the while they were planning this sur—” She never finished that sentence, or the word, even.
With a jolt over a rock, and a sharp turn to the right, Hank had brought them to the very brow of the hill, where they could look down into the coulee, and upon the house standing in its tiny, unkempt yard, just beyond the sparse growth of bushes which marked the spring creek. Involuntarily every head turned that way, and every pair of eyes looked downward. Hank chirped to the horses, threw all his weight upon the brake, and they rattled down the grade, the brake block squealing against the rear wheels. They were half-way down before any one spoke. It was Val, and she almost whispered one word:
“Manley!”
Arline's eyes were wet, and there was a croak in her voice when she cried jubilantly: “Well, ain't that better 'n a sewin' machine—or a piano?”
But Val did not attempt an answer. She was staring—staring as if she could not convince herself of the reality. Even Manley was jarred out of his gloomy meditations, and half rose in the seat that he might see over Hank's shoulder.
“That's what your neighbors have done,” Arline began eagerly, “and they nearly busted tryin' to git through in time, and to keep it a dead secret. They worked like whiteheads, lemme tell you, and never even stopped for the storm. The night of the dance I heard all about how they had to hurry. And I guess Kent's there an' got a fire started, like I told him to. I was afraid it might be colder'n what it is. I asked him if he wouldn't ride over an' warm up the house t'day—and I see there's a smoke, all right.” She looked at Manley, and then turned to Val. “Well, ain't you goin' to say anything? You dumb, both of you?”
Val took a deep breath. “We should be dumb,” she said contritely. “We should go down on our knees and beg their pardon and yours—I especially. I think I've never in my life felt quite so humbled—so overwhelmed with the goodness of my fellows, and my own unworthiness. I—I can't put it into words—all the resentment I have felt against the country and the people in it—as if—oh, tell them all how I want them to forgive me for—for the way I have felt. And—Arline—”
“There, now—I didn't bargain for you to make it so serious,” Arline expostulated, herself near to crying. “It ain't nothing much—us folks believe in helpin' when help's needed, that's all. For Heaven's sake, don't go 'n' cry about it!”
Hank pulled up at the gate with a loudwhoaand a grip of the brake. From the kitchen stovepipe a blue ribbon of smoke waved high in the clear air. Kent appeared, grinning amiably, in the doorway, but Val was looking beyond, and scarcely saw him—beyond, where stood a new stable upon the ashes of the old; a new corral, the posts standing solidly in the holes dug for those burned away; a new haystack—when hay was almost priceless! A few chickens wandered about near the stable, and Val recognized them as Arline's prized Plymouth Rocks. Small wonder that she and Manley were stunned to silence. Manley still looked as if some one had dealt him an unexpected blow in the face. Val was white and wide-eyed.
Together they walked out to the stable. When they stopped, she put her hand timidly upon his aim. “Dear,” she said softly, “there is only one way to thank them for this, and that is to be the very best it is in us to be. We will, won't we? We—we haven't been our best, but we'll start in right now. Shall we, Manley?”
Manley looked down at her for a moment, saying nothing.
“Shall we, Manley? Let us start now, and try again. Let's play the fire burned up our old selves, and we're all new, and strong—shall we? And we won't feel any resentment for what is past, but we'll work together, and think together, and talk together, without any hidden thing we can't discuss freely. Please, Manley!”
He knew what she meant, well enough. For the last two days he had been drinking again. On the night of the dance he had barely kept within the limit of decent behavior. He had read Val's complete understanding and her disgust the morning after—and since then they had barely spoken except when speech was necessary. Oh, he knew what she meant! He stood for another minute, and she let go his arm and stood apart, watching his face.
A good deal depended upon the next minute, and they both knew it, and hardly breathed. His hand went slowly into a deep pocket of his overcoat, his fingers closed over something, and drew it reluctantly to the light. Shamefaced, he held it up for her to see—a flat bottle of generous size, full to within a inch of the cork with a pale, yellow liquid.
“There—take it, and break it into a million pieces,” he said huskily. “I'll try again.”
Her yellow-brown eyes darkened perceptibly. “Manley Fleetwood,youmust throw it away. This is your fight—be a man andfight.”
“Well—there! May God damn me forever if I touch liquor again! I'm through with the stuff for keeps!” He held the bottle high, without looking at it, and sent it crashing against the stable door.
“Manley!” She stopped her ears, aghast at his words, but for all that her eyes were ashine. She went up to him and put her arms around him. “Now we can start all over again,” she said. “We'll count our lives from this minute, dear, and we'll keep them clean and happy. Oh, I'm so glad! So glad and so proud, dear!”
Kent had got half-way down the path from the house; he stopped when Manley threw the bottle, and waited. Now he turned abruptly and retraced his steps, and he did not look particularly happy, though he had been smiling when he left the kitchen.
Arline turned from the window as he entered.
“Looks like Man has swore off ag'in,” she observed dryly. “Well, let's hope 'n' pray he stays swore off.”
The blackened prairie was fast hiding the mark of its fire torture under a cloak of tender new grass, vividly green as a freshly watered, well-kept lawn. Meadow larks hopped here and there, searching long for a sheltered nesting place, and missing the weeds where they were wont to sway and swell their yellow breasts and sing at the sun. They sang just as happily, however, on their short, low flights over the levels, or sitting upon gray, half-buried boulders upon some barren hilltop. Spring had come with lavish warmth. The smoke of burning ranges, the bleak winter with its sweeping storms of snow and wind, were pushed info the past, half forgotten in this new heaven and new earth, when men were glad simply because they were alive.
On a still, Sunday morning—that day which, when work does not press, is set apart in the range land for slight errands, attention to one's personal affairs, and to the pursuit of pleasure—Kent jogged placidly down the long hill into Cold Spring Coulee and pulled up at the familiar little unpainted house of rough boards, with its incongruously dainty curtains at the windows and its tiny yard, green and scrupulously clean.
The cat with white spots on its sides was washing its face on the kitchen doorstep. Val was kneeling beside the front porch, painstakingly stringing white grocery twine upon nails, which she drove into the rough posts with a small rock. The primitive trellis which resulted was obviously intended for the future encouragement of the sweet-pea plants just unfolding their second clusters of leaves an inch above ground. She did not see Kent at first, and he sat quiet in the saddle, watching her with a flicker of amusement in his eyes; but in a moment she struck her finger and sprang up with a sharp little cry, throwing the rock from her.
“Didn't you know that was going to happen, sooner or later?” Kent inquired, and so made known his presence.
“Oh—how do you do?” She came smiling down to the gate, holding the hurt finger tightly clasped in the other hand. “How comes it you are riding this way? Our trail is all growing up to grass, so few ever travel it.”
“We're all hard-working folks these days. Where's Man?”
“Manley is down to the river, I think.” She rested both arms upon the gatepost and regarded him with her steady eyes. “If you can wait, he will be back soon. He only went to see if the river is fordable. He thinks two or three of our horses are on the other side, and he'd like to get them. The river has been too high, but it's lowering rather fast. Won't you come in?” She was pleasant, she was unusually friendly, but Kent felt vaguely that, somehow, she was different.
He had not seen her for three months. Just after Christmas he had met her and Manley in town, when he was about to leave for a visit to his people in Nebraska. He had returned only a week or so before, and, if the truth were known, he was not displeased at the errand which brought him this way. He dismounted, and when she moved away from the gate he opened it and went in.
“Well,” he began lightly, when he was seated upon the floor of the porch and she was back at her trellis, “and how's the world been using you? Had any more calamities while I've been gone?”
She busied herself with tying together two pieces of string, so that the whole would reach to a certain nail driven higher than her head. She stood with both hands uplifted, and her face, and her eyes; she did not reply for so long that Kent began to wonder if she had heard him. There was no reason why he should watch her so intently, or why he should want to get up and push back the one lock of hair which seemed always in rebellion and always falling across her temple by itself.
He was drifting into a dreamy wonder that all women with yellow-brown hair should not be given yellow-brown eyes also, and to wishing vaguely that it might be his luck to meet one some time—one who was not married—when she looked down at him quite unexpectedly. He was startled, and half ashamed, and afraid that she might not like what he, had been thinking.
She was staring straight into his eyes, and he knew that she was thinking of something that affected her a good deal.
“Unless it's a calamity to discover that the world is—what it is, and people in it are—what they are, and that you have been a blind idiot. Is that a calamity, Mr. Cowboy? Or is it a blessing? I've been wondering.”
Kent discovered, when he started to speak, that he had run short of breath. “I reckon that depends on how the discovery pans out,” he ventured, after a moment. He was not looking at her then. For some reason, unexplained to himself, he felt that it wasn't right for him to look at her; nor wise; nor quite pleasant in its effect. He did not know exactly what she meant, but he knew very well that she meant something more than to make conversation.
“That,” she said, and gave a little sigh—“that takes so long—don't you know? The panning out, as you call it. It's hard to see things very clearly, and to make a decision that you know is going to stand the test, and then—just sit down and fold your hands, because some sordid, petty little reason absolutely prevents your doing anything. I hate waiting for anything. Don't you? When I want to do a thing, I want to do it immediately. These sweet-peas—now I've fixed the trellis for them to climb upon, I resent it because they don't take hold right now. Nasty little things—two inches high, when they should be two yards, and all covered with beautiful blossoms.”
{Illustration: “Little woman, listen here,” he said. “You're playing hard luck, and I know it"}
“Not the last of April,” he qualified. “Give 'em a fair chance, can't you? They'll make it, all right; things take time.”
She laughed surrenderingly, and came and sat down upon the porch near him, and tapped a slipper toe nervously upon the soft, green sod.
“Time! Yes—” She threw back her head and smiled at him brightly—and appealingly, it seemed to Kent. “You remember what you told me once—about sheep-herders andsuchgoing crazy out here? Thesuchis sometimes ready to agree with you.” She turned her head with a quick impatience. “Such is learning to ride a horse,” she informed him airily. “Such does it on the sly—and she fell off once and skinned her elbow, and she—well, Such hasn't any sidesaddle—but she's learning, 'by granny!'”
Kent laughed unsteadily, and looked sidelong at her with eyes alight. She matched the glance for just about one second, and turned her eyes away with a certain consciousness that gave Kent a savage delight. Of a truth, she was different! She was human, she was intolerably alluring. She was not the prim, perfectly well-bred young woman he had met at the train. Lonesome Land was doing its work. She was beginning to think as an individual—as a woman; not merely as a member of conventional society.
“Such is beginning to be the proper stuff—'by granny,” he told her softly.
He was afraid his tone had offended her. She rose, and her color flared and faded. She leaned slightly against the post beside her, and, with a hand thrown up and half shielding her face, she stared out across the coulee to the hill beyond.
“Did you—I feel like a fool for talking like this, but one sometimes clutches at the least glimmer of sympathy and—and understanding, and speaks what should be kept bottled up inside, I suppose. But I've been bottled up for solong—” She struck her free hand suddenly against her lips, as if she would apply physical force to keep them from losing all self-control. When she spoke again, her voice was calmer. “Did you ever get to the point, Mr. Cowboy, where you—you dug right down to the bottom of things, and found that you must do something or go mad—and there wasn't a thing you could do? Did you ever?” She did not turn toward him, but kept her eyes to the hills. When he did not answer, however, she swung her head slowly and looked down at him, where he sat almost at her feet.
Kent was leaning forward, studying the gashes he had cut in the sod with his spurs. His brows were knitted close.
“I kinda think I'm getting there pretty fast,” he owned gravely when he felt her gaze upon him. “Why?”
“Oh—because you can understand how one must speak sometimes. Ever since I came, you have been—I don't know—different. At first I didn't like you at all; but I could see you were different. Since then—well, you have now and then said something that made me see one could speak to you, and you would understand. So I—” She broke off suddenly and laughed an apology. “Am I boring you dreadfully? One grows so self-centered living alone. If you aren't interested—”
“I am.” Kent was obliged to clear his throat to get those two words out. “Go on. Say all you want to say.”
She laughed again wearily. “Lately,” she confessed nervously, “I've taken to telling my thoughts to the cat. It's perfectly safe, but, after all, it isn't quite satisfying.” She stopped again, and stood silent for a moment.
“It's because I am alone, day after day, week in and week out,” she went on. “In a way, I don't mind it—under the circumstances I prefer to be alone, really. I mean, I wouldn't want any of my people near me. But one has too much time to think. I tell you this because I feel I ought to let you know that you were right that time; I don't suppose you even remember it! But I do. Once last fall—the first time you came to the ranch—you know, the time I met you at the spring, you seemed to see that this big, lonesome country was a little too much for me. I resented it then. I didn't want any one to tell me what I refused to admit to myself. I was trying so hard to like it—it seemed my only hope, you see. But now I'll tell you you were right.
“Sometimes I feel very wicked about it. Sometimes I don't care. And sometimes I—I feel I shall go crazy if I can't talk to some one. Nobody comes here, except Polycarp Jenks. The only woman I know really well in the country is Arline Hawley. She's good as gold, but—she's intensely practical; you can't tell her your troubles—not unless they're concrete and have to do with your physical well-being. Arline lacks imagination.” She laughed again shortly.
“I don't know why I'm taking it for granted you don't,” she said. “You think I'm talking pore nonsense, don't you, Mr. Cowboy?” She turned full toward him, and her yellow-brown eyes challenged him, begged him for sympathy and understanding, held him at bay—but most of all they set his blood pounding sullenly in his veins. He got unsteadily to his feet.
“You seem to pass up a lot of things that count, or you wouldn't say that,” he reminded her huskily. “That night in town, just after the fire, for instance. And here, that same afternoon. I tried to jolly you out of feeling bad, both those times; but you know I understood. You know damn'wellI understood! And you know I was sorry. And if you don't know, I'd do anything on God's green earth—” He turned sharply away from her and stood kicking savagely backward at a clod with his rowel. Then he felt her hand touch his arm, and started. After that he stood perfectly still, except that he quivered like a frightened horse.
“Oh, it doesn't mean much to you—you have your life, and you're a man, and can do things when you want to. But I do so need a friend! Just somebody who understands, to whom I can talk when that is the only thing will keep me sane. You saved my life once, so I feel—no, I don't mean that. It isn't because of anything you did; it's just that I feel I can talk to you more freely than to any one I know. I don't mean whine. I hope I'm not a whiner. If I've blundered, I'm willing to—to take my medicine, as you would say. But if I can feel that somewhere in this big, empty country just one person will always feel kindly toward me, and wish me well, and be sorry for we when I—when I'm miserable, and—” She could not go on. She pressed her lips together tightly, and winked back the tears.
Kent faced about and laid both his hands upon her shoulders. His face was very tender and rather sad, and if she had only understood as well as he did—. But she did not.
“Little woman, listen here,” he said. “You're playing hard luck, and I know it; maybe I don't know just how hard—but maybe I can kinda give a guess. If you'll think of me as your friend—your pal, and if you'll always tell yourself that your pal is going to stand by you, no matter what comes, why—all right.” He caught his breath.
She smiled up at him, honestly pleased, wholly without guile—and wholly blind. “I'd rather have such a friend, just now, than anything I know, except—. But if your sweetheart should object—could you—”
His fingers gripped her shoulders tighter for just a second, and he let her go. “I guess that part'll be all right,” he rejoined in a tone she could not quite fathom. “I never had one in m' life.”
“Why, you poor thing!” She stood back and tilted her head at him. “You poor—pal. I'll have to see about that immediately. Every young man wants a sweetheart—at least, all the young men I ever knew wanted one, and—”
“And I'll gamble they all wanted the same one,” he hinted wickedly, feeling himself unreasonably happy over something he could not quite put into words, even if he had dared.
“Oh, no. Hardly ever the same one, luckily. Do you know—pal, I've quite forgotten what it was all about—the unburdening of my soul, I mean. After all, I think I must have been just lonesome. The country is just as big, but it isn't quite so—soempty, you see. Aren't you awfully vain, to see how you have peopled it with your friendship?” She clasped her hands behind her and regarded him speculatively. “I hope, Mr. Cowboy, you're in earnest about this,” she observed doubtfully. “I hope you have imagination enough to see it isn't silly, because if I suspected you weren't playing fair, and would go away and laugh at me, I'd—scratch—you.” She nodded her head slowly at him. “I've always been told that, with tiger eyes, you find the disposition of a tiger. So if you don't mean it, you'd better let me know at once.”
Kent brought the color into her cheeks with his steady gaze. “I was just getting scaredyoudidn't mean it,” he averred. “If my pal goes back on me—why, Lord help her!”
She took a slow, deep breath. “How is it you men ratify a solemn agreement?” she puzzled. “Oh, yes.” With a pretty impulse she held out her right hand, half grave, half playful. “Shake on it, pal!”
Kent took her hand and pressed it as hard as he dared. “You're going to be a dandy little chum,” he predicted gamely. “But let me tell you right now, if you ever get up on your stilts with me, there's going to be all kinds of trouble. You call me Kent—that is,” he qualified, with a little, unsteady laugh, “when there ain't any one around to get shocked.”
“I suppose thisisn'tquite conventional,” she conceded, as if the thought had just then occurred to her. “But, thank goodness, out here there aren't any conventions. Every one lives as every one sees fit. It isn't the best thing for some people,” she added drearily. “Some people have to be bolstered up by conventions, or they can't help miring in their own weaknesses. But we don't; and as long as we understand—” She looked to him for confirmation.
“As long as we understand, why, it ain't anybody's business but our own,” he declared steadily.
She seemed relieved of some lingering doubt. “That's exactly it. I don't know why I should deny myself a friend, just because that friend happens to be a man, and I happen to be—married. I never did have much patience with the rule that a man must either be perfectly indifferent, or else make love. I'm so glad you—understand. So that's all settled,” she finished briskly, “and I find that, as I said, it isn't at all necessary for me to unburden my soul.”
They stood quiet for a moment, their thoughts too intangible for speech.
“Come inside, won't you?” she invited at last, coming back to everyday matters. “Of course you're hungry—or you ought to be. You daren't run away from my cooking this time, Mr. Cowboy. Manley will be back soon, I think. I must get some lunch ready.”
Kent replied that he would stay outside and smoke, so she left him with a fleeting smile, infinitely friendly and confiding and glad. He turned and looked after her soberly, gave a great sigh, and reached mechanically for his tobacco and papers; thoughtfully rolled a cigarette, lighted it, and held the match until it burned quite down to his thumb and fingers. “Pals!” he said just under his breath, for the mere sound of the word. “All right—pals it is, then.”
He smoked slowly, listening to her moving about in the house. Her steps came nearer. He turned to look.
“What was it you wanted to see Manley about?” she asked him from the doorway. “I just happened to wonder what it could be.”
“Well, the Wishbone needs men, and sent me over to tell him he can go to work. The wagons are going to start to-morrow. He'll want to gather his cattle up, and of course we know about how he's fixed—for saddle horses and the like. He can work for the outfit and draw wages, and get his cattle thrown back on this range and his calves branded besides. Get paid for doing what he'll have to do anyhow, you see.”
“I see.” Val pushed back the rebellious lock of hair. “Of course you suggested the idea to the Wishbone. You're always doing something—”
“The outfit is short-handed,” he reiterated. “They need him. They ain't straining a point to do Man a favor—don't you ever think it! Well—he's coming,” he broke off, and started to the gate.
Manley clattered up, vociferously glad to greet him. Kent, at his urgent invitation, led his horse to the stable and turned him into the corral, unsaddled and unbridled him so that he could eat. Also, he told his errand. Manley interrupted the conversation to produce a bottle of whisky from a cunningly concealed hole in the depleted haystack, and insisted that Kent should take a drink. Kent waved it off, and Manley drew the cork and held the bottle to his own lips.
As he stood there, with his face uplifted while the yellow liquor gurgled down his throat, Kent watched him with a curiously detached interest. So that's how Manley had kept his vow! he was thinking, with an impersonal contempt. Four good swallows—Kent counted them.
“You're hitting it pretty strong, Man, for a fellow that swore off last fall,” he commented aloud.
Manley took down the bottle, gave a sigh of pure, animal satisfaction, and pushed the cork in with an unconsciously regretful movement.
“A fellow's got to get something out of life,” he defended peevishly. “I've had pretty hard luck—it's enough to drive a fellow to most any kind of relief. Burnt out, last fall—cattle scattered and calves running the range all winter—I haven't got stock enough to stand that sort of a deal, Kent. No telling where I stand now on the cattle question. I did have close to a hundred head—and three of my best geldings are missing—a poor man can't stand luck like that. I'm in debt too—and when you've got an iceberg in the house—when a man's own wife don't stand by him—when he can't get any sympathy from the very one that ought to—but, then, I hope I'm a gentleman; I don't make any kick againsther—my domestic affairs are my own affairs. Sure. But when your wife freezes up solid—” He held the bottle up and looked at it. “Best friend I've got,” he finished, with a whining note in his voice.
Kent turned away disgusted. Manley had coarsened. He had “slopped down” just when he should have braced up and caught the fighting spirit—the spirit that fights and overcomes obstacles. With a tightening of his chest, he thought of his “pal,” tied for life to this whining drunkard. No wonder she felt the need of a friend!
“Well, are you going out with the Wishbone?” he asked tersely, jerking his thoughts back to his errand. “If you are, you'll need to go over there to-night—the wagons start out to-morrow. Maybe you better ride around by Polly's place and have him come over here, once in a while, to look after things. You can't leave your wife alone without somebody to kinda keep an eye out for her, you know. Polycarp ain't going to ride this spring; he's got rheumatism, or some darned thing. But he can chop what wood she'll need, and go to town for her once in a while, and make sure she's all right. You better leave your gentlest horse here for her to use, too. She can't be left afoot out here.”
Manley was taking another long swallow from the bottle, but he heard.
“Why, sure—I never thought about that. I guess maybe Ihadbetter get Polycarp. But Val could make out all right alone. Why, she's held it down here for a week at a time—last winter, when I'd forgot to come home”—he winked shamelessly—“or a storm would come up so I couldn't get home. Val isn't like some fool women, I'll say that much for her. She don't care whether I'm around or not; fact is, sometimes I think she's better pleased when I'm gone. But you're right—I'll see Polycarp and have him come over once in a while. Sure. Glad you spoke of it. You always had a great head for thinking about other people, Kent. You ought to get married.”
“No, thanks,” Kent scowled. “I haven't got any grudge against women. The world's full of men ready and willing to give 'em a taste of pure, unadulterated hell.”
Manley stared at him stupidly, and then laughed doubtfully, as if he felt certain of having, by his dullness, missed the point of a very good joke.
After that the time was filled with the preparations for Manley's absence. Kent did what he could to help, and Val went calmly about the house, packing the few necessary personal belongings which might be stuffed into a “war bag” and used during round-up. Beyond an occasional glance of friendly understanding, she seemed to have forgotten the compact she had made with Kent.
But when they were ready to ride away, Kent purposely left his gloves lying upon the couch, and remembered them only after Manley was in the saddle. So he went back, and Val followed him into the room. He wanted to say something—he did not quite know what—something that would bring them a little closer together, and keep them so; something that would make her think of him often and kindly. He picked up his gloves and held out his hand to her—and then a diffidence seized his tongue. There was nothing he dared say. All the eloquence, all the tenderness, was in his eyes.
“Well—good-by, pal. Be good to yourself,” he said simply.
Val smiled up at him tremulously. “Good-by, my one friend. Don't—don't get hurt!”
Their clasp tightened, their hands dropped apart rather limply. Kent went out and got upon his horse, and rode away beside Manley, and talked of the range and of the round-up and of cattle and a dozen other things which interest men. But all the while one exultant thought kept reiterating itself in his mind: “She never said that much tohim!She never said that much tohim!”
To the east, to the south, to the north went the riders of the Wishbone, gathering the cattle which the fires had driven afar. No rivers stopped them, nor mountains, nor the deep-scarred coulees, nor the plains. It was Manley's first experience in real round-up work, for his own little herd he had managed to keep close at home, and what few strayed afar were turned back, when opportunity afforded, by his neighbors, who wished him well. Now he tasted the pride of ownership to the full, when a VP cow and her calf mingled with the milling Wishbones and Double Diamonds. He was proud of his brand, and proud of the sentiment which had made him choose Val's initials. More than once he explained to his fellows that VP meant Val Peyson, and that he had got it recorded just after he and Val were engaged. He was not sentimental about her now, but he liked to dwell upon the fact that he had been; it showed that he was capable of fine feeling.
More dominant, however, as the weeks passed and the branding went on, became the desire to accumulate property—cattle. The Wishbone brand went scorching through the hair of hundreds of calves, while the VP scared tens. It was not right. He felt, somehow, cheated by fate. He mentally figured the increase of his herd, and it seemed to him that it took a long while, much longer than it should, to gain a respectable number in that manner. He cast about in his mind for some rich acquaintance in the East who might be prevailed upon to lend him capital enough to buy, say, five hundred cows. He began to talk about it occasionally when the boys lay around in the evenings.
“You want to ride with a long rope,” suggested Bob Royden, grinning openly at the others. “That's the way to work up in the cow business. Capital nothing! You don't get enough excitement buying cattle; you want to steal 'em. That's what I'd do if I had a brand of my own and all your ambitions to get rich.”
“And get sent up,” Manley rounded out the situation. “No, thanks.” He laughed. “It's a better way to get to the pen than it is to get rich, from all accounts.”
Sandy Moran remembered a fellow who worked a brand and kept it up for seven or eight years before they caught him, and he recounted the tale between puffs at his cigarette. “Only they didn't catch him” he finished. “A puncher put him wise to what was in the wind, and he sold out cheap to a tenderfoot and pulled his freight. They never did locate him.” Then, with a pointed rock which he picked up beside him, he drew a rude diagram or two in the dirt. “That's how he done it,” he explained. “Pretty smooth, too.”
So the talk went on, as such things will, idly, without purpose save to pass the time. Shop talk of the range it was. Tales of stealing, of working brands, and of branding unmarked yearlings at weaning time. Of this big cattleman and that, who practically stole whole herds, and thereby took long strides toward wealth. Range scandals grown old; range gossip all of it, of men who had changed a brand or made one, using a cinch ring at a tiny fire in a secluded hollow, or a spur, or a jackknife; who were caught in the act, after the act, or merely suspected of the crime. Of “sweat” brands, blotched brands, brands added to and altered, of trials, of shootings, of hangings, even, and “getaways” spectacular and humorous and pathetic.
Manley, being in a measure a pilgrim, and having no experience to draw upon, and not much imagination, took no part in the talk, except that he listened and was intensely interested. Two months of mingling with men who talked little else had its influence.
That fall, when Manley had his hay up, and his cattle once more ranging close, toward the river and in the broken country bounded upon the west by the fenced-in railroad, three calves bore the VP brand—three husky heifers that never had suckled a VP mother. So had the range gossip, sown by chance in the soil of his greed of gain and his weakening moral fiber, borne fruit.
The deed scared him sober for a month. For a month his color changed and his blood quickened whenever a horseman showed upon the rim of Cold Spring Coulee. For a month he never left the ranch unless business compelled him to do so, and his return was speedy, his eyes anxious until he knew that all was well. After that his confidence returned. He grew more secretive, more self-assured, more at ease with his guilt. He looked the Wishbone men squarely in the eye, and it seldom occurred to him that he was a thief; or if it did, the word was but a synonym for luck, with shrewdness behind. Sometimes he regretted his timidity. Why three calves only? In a deep little coulee next the river—a coulee which the round-up had missed—had been more than three. He might have doubled the number and risked no more than for the three. The longer he dwelt upon that the more inclined he was to feel that he had cheated himself.
That fall there were no fires. It would be long before men grew careless when the grass was ripened and the winds blew hot and dry from out the west. The big prairie which lay high between the river and Hope was dotted with feeding cattle. Wishbones and Double Diamonds, mostly, with here and there a stray.
Manley grew wily, and began to plan far in advance. He rode here and there, quietly keeping his own cattle well down toward the river. There was shelter there, and feed, and the idea was a good one. Just before the river broke up he saw to it that a few of his own cattle, and with them some Wishbone cows and a steer or two, were ranging in a deep, bushy coulee, isolated and easily passed by. He had driven them there, and he left them there. That spring he worked again with the Wishbone.
When the round-up swept the home range, gathering and branding, it chanced that his part of the circle took him and Sandy Moran down that way. It was hot, and they had thirty or forty head of cattle before them when they neared that particular place.
“No need going down into the breaks here,” he told Sandy easily. “I've been hazing out everything I came across lately. They were mostly my own, anyway. I believe I've got it pretty well cleaned up along here.”
Sandy was not the man to hunt hard riding. He went to the rim of the coulee and looked down for a minute. He saw nothing moving, and took Manley's word for it with no stirring of his easy-going conscience. He said all right, and rode on.
Quite as marked had been the change in Val that year. Every time Kent saw her, he recognized the fact that she was a little different; a little less superior in her attitude, a little more independent in her views of life. Her standards seemed slowly changing, and her way of thinking. He did not see her often, but when he did the mockery of their friendship struck him more keenly, his inward rebellion against circumstances grew more bitter. He wondered how she could be so blind as to think they were just pals, and no more. She did think so. All the little confidences, all the glances, all the smiles, she gave and received frankly, in the name of friendship.
“You know, Kent, this is my ideal of how people should be,” she told him once, with a perfectly honest enthusiasm. “I've always dreamed of such a friendship, and I've always believed that some day the right man would come along and make it possible. Not one in a thousand could understand and meet one half-way—”
“They'd be liable to go farther,” Kent assented dryly.
“Yes. That's just the trouble. They'd spoil an ideal friendship by falling in love.”
“Darned chumps,” Kent classed them sweepingly.
“Exactly. Pal, your vocabulary excites my envy. It's so forcible sometimes.”
Kent grinned reminiscently. “It sure is, old girl.”
“Oh, I don't mean necessarily profane. I wonder what your vocabulary will do to the secret I'm going to tell you.” The sweet-peas had reached the desired height and profusion of blossoms, thanks to the pails and pails of water Val had carried and lavished upon them, and she was gathering a handful of the prettiest blooms for him. Her cheeks turned a bit pinker as she spoke, and her hesitation raised a wild hope briefly in Kent's heart.
“What is it?” He had to force the words out.
“I—I hate to tell, but I want you to—to help me.”
“Well?” To Kent, at that moment, she was not Manley's wife; she was not any man's wife; she was the girl he loved—loved with the primitive, absorbing passion of the man who lives naturally and does not borrow his morals from his next-door neighbor. His code of ethics was his own, thought out by himself. Val hated her husband, and her husband did not seem to care much for her. They were tied together legally. And a mere legality could not hold back the emotions and the desires of Kent Burnett. With him, it was not a question of morals: it was a question of Val's feeling in the matter.
Val looked up at him, found something strange in his eyes, and immediately looked away again.
“Your eyes are always saying things I can't hear,” she observed irrelevantly.
“Are they? Do you want me to act as interpreter?”
“No. I just want you to listen. Have you noticed anything different about me lately, Kent?” She tilted her head, while she passed judgment upon a cluster of speckled blossoms, odd but not particularly pretty.
“What do you mean, anyway? I'm liable to get off wrong if I tell you—”
“Oh, you're so horribly cautious! Have I seemed any more content—any happier lately?”
Kent picked a spray of flowers and puled them ruthlessly to pieces. “Maybe I've kinda hoped so,” he said, almost in a whisper.
“Well, I've a new interest in life. I just discovered it by accident, almost—”
Kent lifted his head and looked keenly at her, and his face was a lighter shade of brown than it had been.
“It seems to change everything. Pal, I—I've been writing things.”
Kent discovered he had been holding his breath, and let it go in a long sigh.
“Oh!” After a minute he smiled philosophically. “What kinda things?” he drawled.
“Well, verses, but mostly stories. You see,” she explained impulsively, “I want to earn some money—of my own. I haven't said much, because I hate whining; but really, things are growing pretty bad—between Manley and me. I hope it isn't my fault. I have tried every way I know to keep my faith in him, and to—to help him. But he's not the same as he was. You know that. And I have a good deal of pride. I can't—oh, it's intolerable having to ask a man for money! Especially when he doesn't want to give you any,” she added naively. “At first it wasn't necessary; I had a little of my own, and all my things were new. But one must eventually buy things—for the house, you know, and for one's personal needs—and he seems to resent it dreadfully. I never would have believed that Manley could be stingy—actually stingy; but he is, unfortunately. I hate to speak of his faults, even to you. But I've got to be honest with you. It isn't nice to say that I'm writing, not for any particularly burning desire to express my thoughts, nor for the sentiment of it, but to earn money. It's terribly sordid, isn't it?” She smiled wistfully up at him. “But there seems to be money in it, for those who succeed, and it's work that I can do here. I have oceans of time, and I'm not disturbed!” Her lips curved into bitter lines. “I do so much thinking, I might as well put my brain to some use.” With one of her sudden changes of mood, she turned to Kent and clasped both hands upon his arm.
“Now you see, pal, how much our friendship means to me,” she said softly. “I couldn't have told this to another living soul! It seems awfully treacherous, saying it even to you—I mean about him. But you're so good—you always understand, don't you, pal?”
“I guess so.” Kent forced the words out naturally, and kept his breath even, and his arms from clasping her. He considered that he performed quite a feat of endurance.
“You're modest!” She gave his arm a little shake. “Of course you do. You know I'm not treacherous, really. You know I'd do anything I could for him. But this is something that doesn't concern him at all. He doesn't know it, but that is because he would only sneer. When I have really sold something, and received the money for it, then it won't matter to me who knows. But now it's a solemn secret, just between me and my pal.” Her yellow-brown eyes dwelt upon his face.
Kent, stealing a glance at her from under his drooped lids, wondered if she had ever given any time to analyzing herself. He would have given much to know if, down deep in her heart, she really believed in this pal business; if she was really a friend, and no more. She puzzled him a good deal, sometimes.
“Well—if anybody can make good at that business, you sure ought to; you've got brains enough to write a dictionary.” He permitted himself the indulgence of saying that much, and he was perfectly sincere. He honestly considered Val the cleverest woman in the world.
She laughed with gratification. “Your sublime confidence, while it is undoubtedly mistaken, is nevertheless appreciated,” she told him primly, moving away with her hands full of flowers. “If you've got the nerve, come inside and read some of my stuff; I want to know if it's any good at all.”
Presently he was seated upon the couch in the little, pathetically bright front room, and he was knitting his eyebrows over Val's beautifully regular handwriting,—pages and pages of it, so that there seemed no end to the task,—and was trying to give his mind to what he was reading instead of to the author, sitting near him with her hands folded demurely in her lap and her eyes fixed expectantly upon his face, trying to read his decision even as it was forming.
Some verses she had tried on him first. Kent, by using all his determination of character, read them all, every word of them.
“That's sure all right,” he said, though, beyond a telling phrase or two,—one line in particular which would stick in his memory: