Dale stood with face and arm upraised, and he watched Helen ride off the ledge to disappear in the forest. That vast spruce slope seemed to have swallowed her. She was gone! Slowly Dale lowered his arm with gesture expressive of a strange finality, an eloquent despair, of which he was unconscious.
He turned to the park, to his camp, and the many duties of a hunter. The park did not seem the same, nor his home, nor his work.
“I reckon this feelin's natural,” he soliloquized, resignedly, “but it's sure queer for me. That's what comes of makin' friends. Nell an' Bo, now, they made a difference, an' a difference I never knew before.”
He calculated that this difference had been simply one of responsibility, and then the charm and liveliness of the companionship of girls, and finally friendship. These would pass now that the causes were removed.
Before he had worked an hour around camp he realized a change had come, but it was not the one anticipated. Always before he had put his mind on his tasks, whatever they might be; now he worked while his thoughts were strangely involved.
The little bear cub whined at his heels; the tame deer seemed to regard him with deep, questioning eyes, the big cougar padded softly here and there as if searching for something.
“You all miss them—now—I reckon,” said Dale. “Well, they're gone an' you'll have to get along with me.”
Some vague approach to irritation with his pets surprised him. Presently he grew both irritated and surprised with himself—a state of mind totally unfamiliar. Several times, as old habit brought momentary abstraction, he found himself suddenly looking around for Helen and Bo. And each time the shock grew stronger. They were gone, but their presence lingered. After his camp chores were completed he went over to pull down the lean-to which the girls had utilized as a tent. The spruce boughs had dried out brown and sear; the wind had blown the roof awry; the sides were leaning in. As there was now no further use for this little habitation, he might better pull it down. Dale did not acknowledge that his gaze had involuntarily wandered toward it many times. Therefore he strode over with the intention of destroying it.
For the first time since Roy and he had built the lean-to he stepped inside. Nothing was more certain than the fact that he experienced a strange sensation, perfectly incomprehensible to him. The blankets lay there on the spruce boughs, disarranged and thrown back by hurried hands, yet still holding something of round folds where the slender forms had nestled. A black scarf often worn by Bo lay covering the pillow of pine-needles; a red ribbon that Helen had worn on her hair hung from a twig. These articles were all that had been forgotten. Dale gazed at them attentively, then at the blankets, and all around the fragrant little shelter; and he stepped outside with an uncomfortable knowledge that he could not destroy the place where Helen and Bo had spent so many hours.
Whereupon, in studious mood, Dale took up his rifle and strode out to hunt. His winter supply of venison had not yet been laid in. Action suited his mood; he climbed far and passed by many a watching buck to slay which seemed murder; at last he jumped one that was wild and bounded away. This he shot, and set himself a Herculean task in packing the whole carcass back to camp. Burdened thus, he staggered under the trees, sweating freely, many times laboring for breath, aching with toil, until at last he had reached camp. There he slid the deer carcass off his shoulders, and, standing over it, he gazed down while his breast labored. It was one of the finest young bucks he had ever seen. But neither in stalking it, nor making a wonderful shot, nor in packing home a weight that would have burdened two men, nor in gazing down at his beautiful quarry, did Dale experience any of the old joy of the hunter.
“I'm a little off my feed,” he mused, as he wiped sweat from his heated face. “Maybe a little dotty, as I called Al. But that'll pass.”
Whatever his state, it did not pass. As of old, after a long day's hunt, he reclined beside the camp-fire and watched the golden sunset glows change on the ramparts; as of old he laid a hand on the soft, furry head of the pet cougar; as of old he watched the gold change to red and then to dark, and twilight fall like a blanket; as of old he listened to the dreamy, lulling murmur of the water fall. The old familiar beauty, wildness, silence, and loneliness were there, but the old content seemed strangely gone.
Soberly he confessed then that he missed the happy company of the girls. He did not distinguish Helen from Bo in his slow introspection. When he sought his bed he did not at once fall to sleep. Always, after a few moments of wakefulness, while the silence settled down or the wind moaned through the pines, he had fallen asleep. This night he found different. Though he was tired, sleep would not soon come. The wilderness, the mountains, the park, the camp—all seemed to have lost something. Even the darkness seemed empty. And when at length Dale fell asleep it was to be troubled by restless dreams.
Up with the keen-edged, steely-bright dawn, he went at the his tasks with the springy stride of the deer-stalker.
At the end of that strenuous day, which was singularly full of the old excitement and action and danger, and of new observations, he was bound to confess that no longer did the chase suffice for him.
Many times on the heights that day, with the wind keen in his face, and the vast green billows of spruce below him, he had found that he was gazing without seeing, halting without object, dreaming as he had never dreamed before.
Once, when a magnificent elk came out upon a rocky ridge and, whistling a challenge to invisible rivals, stood there a target to stir any hunter's pulse, Dale did not even raise his rifle. Into his ear just then rang Helen's voice: “Milt Dale, you are no Indian. Giving yourself to a hunter's wildlife is selfish. It is wrong. You love this lonely life, but it is not work. Work that does not help others is not a real man's work.”
From that moment conscience tormented him. It was not what he loved, but what he ought to do, that counted in the sum of good achieved in the world. Old Al Auchincloss had been right. Dale was wasting strength and intelligence that should go to do his share in the development of the West. Now that he had reached maturity, if through his knowledge of nature's law he had come to see the meaning of the strife of men for existence, for place, for possession, and to hold them in contempt, that was no reason why he should keep himself aloof from them, from some work that was needed in an incomprehensible world.
Dale did not hate work, but he loved freedom. To be alone, to live with nature, to feel the elements, to labor and dream and idle and climb and sleep unhampered by duty, by worry, by restriction, by the petty interests of men—this had always been his ideal of living. Cowboys, riders, sheep-herders, farmers—these toiled on from one place and one job to another for the little money doled out to them. Nothing beautiful, nothing significant had ever existed in that for him. He had worked as a boy at every kind of range-work, and of all that humdrum waste of effort he had liked sawing wood best. Once he had quit a job of branding cattle because the smell of burning hide, the bawl of the terrified calf, had sickened him. If men were honest there would be no need to scar cattle. He had never in the least desired to own land and droves of stock, and make deals with ranchmen, deals advantageous to himself. Why should a man want to make a deal or trade a horse or do a piece of work to another man's disadvantage? Self-preservation was the first law of life. But as the plants and trees and birds and beasts interpreted that law, merciless and inevitable as they were, they had neither greed nor dishonesty. They lived by the grand rule of what was best for the greatest number.
But Dale's philosophy, cold and clear and inevitable, like nature itself, began to be pierced by the human appeal in Helen Rayner's words. What did she mean? Not that he should lose his love of the wilderness, but that he realize himself! Many chance words of that girl had depth. He was young, strong, intelligent, free from taint of disease or the fever of drink. He could do something for others. Who? If that mattered, there, for instance, was poor old Mrs. Cass, aged and lame now; there was Al Auchincloss, dying in his boots, afraid of enemies, and wistful for his blood and his property to receive the fruit of his labors; there were the two girls, Helen and Bo, new and strange to the West, about to be confronted by a big problem of ranch life and rival interests. Dale thought of still more people in the little village of Pine—of others who had failed, whose lives were hard, who could have been made happier by kindness and assistance.
What, then, was the duty of Milt Dale to himself? Because men preyed on one another and on the weak, should he turn his back upon a so-called civilization or should he grow like them? Clear as a bell came the answer that his duty was to do neither. And then he saw how the little village of Pine, as well as the whole world, needed men like him. He had gone to nature, to the forest, to the wilderness for his development; and all the judgments and efforts of his future would be a result of that education.
Thus Dale, lying in the darkness and silence of his lonely park, arrived at a conclusion that he divined was but the beginning of a struggle.
It took long introspection to determine the exact nature of that struggle, but at length it evolved into the paradox that Helen Rayner had opened his eyes to his duty as a man, that he accepted it, yet found a strange obstacle in the perplexing, tumultuous, sweet fear of ever going near her again.
Suddenly, then, all his thought revolved around the girl, and, thrown off his balance, he weltered in a wilderness of unfamiliar strange ideas.
When he awoke next day the fight was on in earnest. In his sleep his mind had been active. The idea that greeted him, beautiful as the sunrise, flashed in memory of Auchincloss's significant words, “Take your chance with the girl!”
The old rancher was in his dotage. He hinted of things beyond the range of possibility. That idea of a chance for Dale remained before his consciousness only an instant. Stars were unattainable; life could not be fathomed; the secret of nature did not abide alone on the earth—these theories were not any more impossible of proving than that Helen Rayner might be for him.
Nevertheless, her strange coming into his life had played havoc, the extent of which he had only begun to realize.
For a month he tramped through the forest. It was October, a still golden, fulfilling season of the year; and everywhere in the vast dark green a glorious blaze of oak and aspen made beautiful contrast. He carried his rifle, but he never used it. He would climb miles and go this way and that with no object in view. Yet his eye and ear had never been keener. Hours he would spend on a promontory, watching the distance, where the golden patches of aspen shone bright out of dark-green mountain slopes. He loved to fling himself down in an aspen-grove at the edge of a senaca, and there lie in that radiance like a veil of gold and purple and red, with the white tree-trunks striping the shade. Always, whether there were breeze or not, the aspen-leaves quivered, ceaselessly, wonderfully, like his pulses, beyond his control. Often he reclined against a mossy rock beside a mountain stream to listen, to watch, to feel all that was there, while his mind held a haunting, dark-eyed vision of a girl. On the lonely heights, like an eagle, he sat gazing down into Paradise Park, that was more and more beautiful, but would never again be the same, never fill him with content, never be all and all to him.
Late in October the first snow fell. It melted at once on the south side of the park, but the north slopes and the rims and domes above stayed white.
Dale had worked quick and hard at curing and storing his winter supply of food, and now he spent days chopping and splitting wood to burn during the months he would be snowed-in. He watched for the dark-gray, fast-scudding storm-clouds, and welcomed them when they came. Once there lay ten feet of snow on the trails he would be snowed-in until spring. It would be impossible to go down to Pine. And perhaps during the long winter he would be cured of this strange, nameless disorder of his feelings.
November brought storms up on the peaks. Flurries of snow fell in the park every day, but the sunny south side, where Dale's camp lay, retained its autumnal color and warmth. Not till late in winter did the snow creep over this secluded nook.
The morning came at last, piercingly keen and bright, when Dale saw that the heights were impassable; the realization brought him a poignant regret. He had not guessed how he had wanted to see Helen Rayner again until it was too late. That opened his eyes. A raging frenzy of action followed, in which he only tired himself physically without helping himself spiritually.
It was sunset when he faced the west, looking up at the pink snow-domes and the dark-golden fringe of spruce, and in that moment he found the truth.
“I love that girl! I love that girl!” he spoke aloud, to the distant white peaks, to the winds, to the loneliness and silence of his prison, to the great pines and to the murmuring stream, and to his faithful pets. It was his tragic confession of weakness, of amazing truth, of hopeless position, of pitiful excuse for the transformation wrought in him.
Dale's struggle ended there when he faced his soul. To understand himself was to be released from strain, worry, ceaseless importuning doubt and wonder and fear. But the fever of unrest, of uncertainty, had been nothing compared to a sudden upflashing torment of love.
With somber deliberation he set about the tasks needful, and others that he might make—his camp-fires and meals, the care of his pets and horses, the mending of saddles and pack-harness, the curing of buckskin for moccasins and hunting-suits. So his days were not idle. But all this work was habit for him and needed no application of mind.
And Dale, like some men of lonely wilderness lives who did not retrograde toward the savage, was a thinker. Love made him a sufferer.
The surprise and shame of his unconscious surrender, the certain hopelessness of it, the long years of communion with all that was wild, lonely, and beautiful, the wonderfully developed insight into nature's secrets, and the sudden-dawning revelation that he was no omniscient being exempt from the ruthless ordinary destiny of man—all these showed him the strength of his manhood and of his passion, and that the life he had chosen was of all lives the one calculated to make love sad and terrible.
Helen Rayner haunted him. In the sunlight there was not a place around camp which did not picture her lithe, vigorous body, her dark, thoughtful eyes, her eloquent, resolute lips, and the smile that was so sweet and strong. At night she was there like a slender specter, pacing beside him under the moaning pines. Every camp-fire held in its heart the glowing white radiance of her spirit.
Nature had taught Dale to love solitude and silence, but love itself taught him their meaning. Solitude had been created for the eagle on his crag, for the blasted mountain fir, lonely and gnarled on its peak, for the elk and the wolf. But it had not been intended for man. And to live always in the silence of wild places was to become obsessed with self—to think and dream—to be happy, which state, however pursued by man, was not good for him. Man must be given imperious longings for the unattainable.
It needed, then, only the memory of an unattainable woman to render solitude passionately desired by a man, yet almost unendurable. Dale was alone with his secret; and every pine, everything in that park saw him shaken and undone.
In the dark, pitchy deadness of night, when there was no wind and the cold on the peaks had frozen the waterfall, then the silence seemed insupportable. Many hours that should have been given to slumber were paced out under the cold, white, pitiless stars, under the lonely pines.
Dale's memory betrayed him, mocked his restraint, cheated him of any peace; and his imagination, sharpened by love, created pictures, fancies, feelings, that drove him frantic.
He thought of Helen Rayner's strong, shapely brown hand. In a thousand different actions it haunted him. How quick and deft in camp-fire tasks! how graceful and swift as she plaited her dark hair! how tender and skilful in its ministration when one of his pets had been injured! how eloquent when pressed tight against her breast in a moment of fear on the dangerous heights! how expressive of unutterable things when laid on his arm!
Dale saw that beautiful hand slowly creep up his arm, across his shoulder, and slide round his neck to clasp there. He was powerless to inhibit the picture. And what he felt then was boundless, unutterable. No woman had ever yet so much as clasped his hand, and heretofore no such imaginings had ever crossed his mind, yet deep in him, somewhere hidden, had been this waiting, sweet, and imperious need. In the bright day he appeared to ward off such fancies, but at night he was helpless. And every fancy left him weaker, wilder.
When, at the culmination of this phase of his passion, Dale, who had never known the touch of a woman's lips, suddenly yielded to the illusion of Helen Rayner's kisses, he found himself quite mad, filled with rapture and despair, loving her as he hated himself. It seemed as if he had experienced all these terrible feelings in some former life and had forgotten them in this life. He had no right to think of her, but he could not resist it. Imagining the sweet surrender of her lips was a sacrilege, yet here, in spite of will and honor and shame, he was lost.
Dale, at length, was vanquished, and he ceased to rail at himself, or restrain his fancies. He became a dreamy, sad-eyed, camp-fire gazer, like many another lonely man, separated, by chance or error, from what the heart hungered most for. But this great experience, when all its significance had clarified in his mind, immeasurably broadened his understanding of the principles of nature applied to life.
Love had been in him stronger than in most men, because of his keen, vigorous, lonely years in the forest, where health of mind and body were intensified and preserved. How simple, how natural, how inevitable! He might have loved any fine-spirited, healthy-bodied girl. Like a tree shooting its branches and leaves, its whole entity, toward the sunlight, so had he grown toward a woman's love. Why? Because the thing he revered in nature, the spirit, the universal, the life that was God, had created at his birth or before his birth the three tremendous instincts of nature—to fight for life, to feed himself, to reproduce his kind. That was all there was to it. But oh! the mystery, the beauty, the torment, and the terror of this third instinct—this hunger for the sweetness and the glory of a woman's love!
Helen Rayner dropped her knitting into her lap and sat pensively gazing out of the window over the bare yellow ranges of her uncle's ranch.
The winter day was bright, but steely, and the wind that whipped down from the white-capped mountains had a keen, frosty edge. A scant snow lay in protected places; cattle stood bunched in the lee of ridges; low sheets of dust scurried across the flats.
The big living-room of the ranch-house was warm and comfortable with its red adobe walls, its huge stone fireplace where cedar logs blazed, and its many-colored blankets. Bo Rayner sat before the fire, curled up in an armchair, absorbed in a book. On the floor lay the hound Pedro, his racy, fine head stretched toward the warmth.
“Did uncle call?” asked Helen, with a start out of her reverie.
“I didn't hear him,” replied Bo.
Helen rose to tiptoe across the floor, and, softly parting some curtains, she looked into the room where her uncle lay. He was asleep. Sometimes he called out in his slumbers. For weeks now he had been confined to his bed, slowly growing weaker. With a sigh Helen returned to her window-seat and took up her work.
“Bo, the sun is bright,” she said. “The days are growing longer. I'm so glad.”
“Nell, you're always wishing time away. For me it passes quickly enough,” replied the sister.
“But I love spring and summer and fall—and I guess I hate winter,” returned Helen, thoughtfully.
The yellow ranges rolled away up to the black ridges and they in turn swept up to the cold, white mountains. Helen's gaze seemed to go beyond that snowy barrier. And Bo's keen eyes studied her sister's earnest, sad face.
“Nell, do you ever think of Dale?” she queried, suddenly.
The question startled Helen. A slow blush suffused neck and cheek.
“Of course,” she replied, as if surprised that Bo should ask such a thing.
“I—I shouldn't have asked that,” said Bo, softly, and then bent again over her book.
Helen gazed tenderly at that bright, bowed head. In this swift-flying, eventful, busy winter, during which the management of the ranch had devolved wholly upon Helen, the little sister had grown away from her. Bo had insisted upon her own free will and she had followed it, to the amusement of her uncle, to the concern of Helen, to the dismay and bewilderment of the faithful Mexican housekeeper, and to the undoing of all the young men on the ranch.
Helen had always been hoping and waiting for a favorable hour in which she might find this wilful sister once more susceptible to wise and loving influence. But while she hesitated to speak, slow footsteps and a jingle of spurs sounded without, and then came a timid knock. Bo looked up brightly and ran to open the door.
“Oh! It's only—YOU!” she uttered, in withering scorn, to the one who knocked.
Helen thought she could guess who that was.
“How are you-all?” asked a drawling voice.
“Well, Mister Carmichael, if that interests you—I'm quite ill,” replied Bo, freezingly.
“Ill! Aw no, now?”
“It's a fact. If I don't die right off I'll have to be taken back to Missouri,” said Bo, casually.
“Are you goin' to ask me in?” queried Carmichael, bluntly. “It's cold—an' I've got somethin' to say to—”
“To ME? Well, you're not backward, I declare,” retorted Bo.
“Miss Rayner, I reckon it 'll be strange to you—findin' out I didn't come to see you.”
“Indeed! No. But what was strange was the deluded idea I had—that you meant to apologize to me—like a gentleman.... Come in, Mr. Carmichael. My sister is here.”
The door closed as Helen turned round. Carmichael stood just inside with his sombrero in hand, and as he gazed at Bo his lean face seemed hard. In the few months since autumn he had changed—aged, it seemed, and the once young, frank, alert, and careless cowboy traits had merged into the making of a man. Helen knew just how much of a man he really was. He had been her mainstay during all the complex working of the ranch that had fallen upon her shoulders.
“Wal, I reckon you was deluded, all right—if you thought I'd crawl like them other lovers of yours,” he said, with cool deliberation.
Bo turned pale, and her eyes fairly blazed, yet even in what must have been her fury Helen saw amaze and pain.
“OTHER lovers? I think the biggest delusion here is the way you flatter yourself,” replied Bo, stingingly.
“Me flatter myself? Nope. You don't savvy me. I'm shore hatin' myself these days.”
“Small wonder. I certainly hate you—with all my heart!”
At this retort the cowboy dropped his head and did not see Bo flaunt herself out of the room. But he heard the door close, and then slowly came toward Helen.
“Cheer up, Las Vegas,” said Helen, smiling. “Bo's hot-tempered.”
“Miss Nell, I'm just like a dog. The meaner she treats me the more I love her,” he replied, dejectedly.
To Helen's first instinct of liking for this cowboy there had been added admiration, respect, and a growing appreciation of strong, faithful, developing character. Carmichael's face and hands were red and chapped from winter winds; the leather of wrist-bands, belt, and boots was all worn shiny and thin; little streaks of dust fell from him as he breathed heavily. He no longer looked the dashing cowboy, ready for a dance or lark or fight.
“How in the world did you offend her so?” asked Helen. “Bo is furious. I never saw her so angry as that.”
“Miss Nell, it was jest this way,” began Carmichael. “Shore Bo's knowed I was in love with her. I asked her to marry me an' she wouldn't say yes or no.... An', mean as it sounds—she never run away from it, thet's shore. We've had some quarrels—two of them bad, an' this last's the worst.”
“Bo told me about one quarrel,” said Helen. “It was—because you drank—that time.”
“Shore it was. She took one of her cold spells an' I jest got drunk.”
“But that was wrong,” protested Helen.
“I ain't so shore. You see, I used to get drunk often—before I come here. An' I've been drunk only once. Back at Las Vegas the outfit would never believe thet. Wal, I promised Bo I wouldn't do it again, an' I've kept my word.”
“That is fine of you. But tell me, why is she angry now?”
“Bo makes up to all the fellars,” confessed Carmichael, hanging his head. “I took her to the dance last week—over in the town-hall. Thet's the first time she'd gone anywhere with me. I shore was proud.... But thet dance was hell. Bo carried on somethin' turrible, an' I—”
“Tell me. What did she do?” demanded Helen, anxiously. “I'm responsible for her. I've got to see that she behaves.”
“Aw, I ain't sayin' she didn't behave like a lady,” replied Carmichael. “It was—she—wal, all them fellars are fools over her—an' Bo wasn't true to me.”
“My dear boy, is Bo engaged to you?”
“Lord—if she only was!” he sighed.
“Then how can you say she wasn't true to you? Be reasonable.”
“I reckon now, Miss Nell, thet no one can be in love an' act reasonable,” rejoined the cowboy. “I don't know how to explain, but the fact is I feel thet Bo has played the—the devil with me an' all the other fellars.”
“You mean she has flirted?”
“I reckon.”
“Las Vegas, I'm afraid you're right,” said Helen, with growing apprehension. “Go on. Tell me what's happened.”
“Wal, thet Turner boy, who rides for Beasley, he was hot after Bo,” returned Carmichael, and he spoke as if memory hurt him. “Reckon I've no use for Turner. He's a fine-lookin', strappin', big cow-puncher, an' calculated to win the girls. He brags thet he can, an' I reckon he's right. Wal, he was always hangin' round Bo. An' he stole one of my dances with Bo. I only had three, an' he comes up to say this one was his; Bo, very innocent—oh, she's a cute one!—she says, 'Why, Mister Turner—is it really yours?' An' she looked so full of joy thet when he says to me, 'Excoose us, friend Carmichael,' I sat there like a locoed jackass an' let them go. But I wasn't mad at thet. He was a better dancer than me an' I wanted her to have a good time. What started the hell was I seen him put his arm round her when it wasn't just time, accordin' to the dance, an' Bo—she didn't break any records gettin' away from him. She pushed him away—after a little—after I near died. Wal, on the way home I had to tell her. I shore did. An' she said what I'd love to forget. Then—then, Miss Nell, I grabbed her—it was outside here by the porch an' all bright moonlight—I grabbed her an' hugged an' kissed her good. When I let her go I says, sorta brave, but I was plumb scared—I says, 'Wal, are you goin' to marry me now?'”
He concluded with a gulp, and looked at Helen with woe in his eyes.
“Oh! What did Bo do?” breathlessly queried Helen.
“She slapped me,” he replied. “An' then she says, I did like you best, but NOW I hate you!' An' she slammed the door in my face.”
“I think you made a great mistake,” said Helen, gravely.
“Wal, if I thought so I'd beg her forgiveness. But I reckon I don't. What's more, I feel better than before. I'm only a cowboy an' never was much good till I met her. Then I braced. I got to havin' hopes, studyin' books, an' you know how I've been lookin' into this ranchin' game. I stopped drinkin' an' saved my money. Wal, she knows all thet. Once she said she was proud of me. But it didn't seem to count big with her. An' if it can't count big I don't want it to count at all. I reckon the madder Bo is at me the more chance I've got. She knows I love her—thet I'd die for her—thet I'm a changed man. An' she knows I never before thought of darin' to touch her hand. An' she knows she flirted with Turner.”
“She's only a child,” replied Helen. “And all this change—the West—the wildness—and you boys making much of her—why, it's turned her head. But Bo will come out of it true blue. She is good, loving. Her heart is gold.”
“I reckon I know, an' my faith can't be shook,” rejoined Carmichael, simply. “But she ought to believe thet she'll make bad blood out here. The West is the West. Any kind of girls are scarce. An' one like Bo—Lord! we cowboys never seen none to compare with her. She'll make bad blood an' some of it will be spilled.”
“Uncle Al encourages her,” said Helen, apprehensively. “It tickles him to hear how the boys are after her. Oh, she doesn't tell him. But he hears. And I, who must stand in mother's place to her, what can I do?”
“Miss Nell, are you on my side?” asked the cowboy, wistfully. He was strong and elemental, caught in the toils of some power beyond him.
Yesterday Helen might have hesitated at that question. But to-day Carmichael brought some proven quality of loyalty, some strange depth of rugged sincerity, as if she had learned his future worth.
“Yes, I am,” Helen replied, earnestly. And she offered her hand.
“Wal, then it 'll shore turn out happy,” he said, squeezing her hand. His smile was grateful, but there was nothing in it of the victory he hinted at. Some of his ruddy color had gone. “An' now I want to tell you why I come.”
He had lowered his voice. “Is Al asleep?” he whispered.
“Yes,” replied Helen. “He was a little while ago.”
“Reckon I'd better shut his door.”
Helen watched the cowboy glide across the room and carefully close the door, then return to her with intent eyes. She sensed events in his look, and she divined suddenly that he must feel as if he were her brother.
“Shore I'm the one thet fetches all the bad news to you,” he said, regretfully.
Helen caught her breath. There had indeed been many little calamities to mar her management of the ranch—loss of cattle, horses, sheep—the desertion of herders to Beasley—failure of freighters to arrive when most needed—fights among the cowboys—and disagreements over long-arranged deals.
“Your uncle Al makes a heap of this here Jeff Mulvey,” asserted Carmichael.
“Yes, indeed. Uncle absolutely relies on Jeff,” replied Helen.
“Wal, I hate to tell you, Miss Nell,” said the cowboy, bitterly, “thet Mulvey ain't the man he seems.”
“Oh, what do you mean?”
“When your uncle dies Mulvey is goin' over to Beasley an' he's goin' to take all the fellars who'll stick to him.”
“Could Jeff be so faithless—after so many years my uncle's foreman? Oh, how do you know?”
“Reckon I guessed long ago. But wasn't shore. Miss Nell, there's a lot in the wind lately, as poor old Al grows weaker. Mulvey has been particular friendly to me an' I've nursed him along, 'cept I wouldn't drink. An' his pards have been particular friends with me, too, more an' more as I loosened up. You see, they was shy of me when I first got here. To-day the whole deal showed clear to me like a hoof track in soft ground. Bud Lewis, who's bunked with me, come out an' tried to win me over to Beasley—soon as Auchincloss dies. I palavered with Bud an' I wanted to know. But Bud would only say he was goin' along with Jeff an' others of the outfit. I told him I'd reckon over it an' let him know. He thinks I'll come round.”
“Why—why will these men leave me when—when—Oh, poor uncle! They bargain on his death. But why—tell me why?”
“Beasley has worked on them—won them over,” replied Carmichael, grimly. “After Al dies the ranch will go to you. Beasley means to have it. He an' Al was pards once, an' now Beasley has most folks here believin' he got the short end of thet deal. He'll have papers—shore—an' he'll have most of the men. So he'll just put you off an' take possession. Thet's all, Miss Nell, an' you can rely on its bein' true.”
“I—I believe you—but I can't believe such—such robbery possible,” gasped Helen.
“It's simple as two an' two. Possession is law out here. Once Beasley gets on the ground it's settled. What could you do with no men to fight for your property?”
“But, surely, some of the men will stay with me?”
“I reckon. But not enough.”
“Then I can hire more. The Beeman boys. And Dale would come to help me.”
“Dale would come. An' he'd help a heap. I wish he was here,” replied Carmichael, soberly. “But there's no way to get him. He's snowed-up till May.”
“I dare not confide in uncle,” said Helen, with agitation. “The shock might kill him. Then to tell him of the unfaithfulness of his old men—that would be cruel.... Oh, it can't be so bad as you think.”
“I reckon it couldn't be no worse. An'—Miss Nell, there's only one way to get out of it—an' thet's the way of the West.”
“How?” queried Helen, eagerly.
Carmichael lunged himself erect and stood gazing down at her. He seemed completely detached now from that frank, amiable cowboy of her first impressions. The redness was totally gone from his face. Something strange and cold and sure looked out of his eyes.
“I seen Beasley go in the saloon as I rode past. Suppose I go down there, pick a quarrel with him—an' kill him?”
Helen sat bolt-upright with a cold shock.
“Carmichael! you're not serious?” she exclaimed.
“Serious? I shore am. Thet's the only way, Miss Nell. An' I reckon it's what Al would want. An' between you an' me—it would be easier than ropin' a calf. These fellars round Pine don't savvy guns. Now, I come from where guns mean somethin'. An' when I tell you I can throw a gun slick an' fast, why I shore ain't braggin'. You needn't worry none about me, Miss Nell.”
Helen grasped that he had taken the signs of her shocked sensibility to mean she feared for his life. But what had sickened her was the mere idea of bloodshed in her behalf.
“You'd—kill Beasley—just because there are rumors of his—treachery?” gasped Helen.
“Shore. It'll have to be done, anyhow,” replied the cowboy.
“No! No! It's too dreadful to think of. Why, that would be murder. I—I can't understand how you speak of it—so—so calmly.”
“Reckon I ain't doin' it calmly. I'm as mad as hell,” said Carmichael, with a reckless smile.
“Oh, if you are serious then, I say no—no—no! I forbid you. I don't believe I'll be robbed of my property.”
“Wal, supposin' Beasley does put you off—an' takes possession. What 're you goin' to say then?” demanded the cowboy, in slow, cool deliberation.
“I'd say the same then as now,” she replied.
He bent his head thoughtfully while his red hands smoothed his sombrero.
“Shore you girls haven't been West very long,” he muttered, as if apologizing for them. “An' I reckon it takes time to learn the ways of a country.”
“West or no West, I won't have fights deliberately picked, and men shot, even if they do threaten me,” declared Helen, positively.
“All right, Miss Nell, shore I respect your wishes,” he returned. “But I'll tell you this. If Beasley turns you an' Bo out of your home—wal, I'll look him up on my own account.”
Helen could only gaze at him as he backed to the door, and she thrilled and shuddered at what seemed his loyalty to her, his love for Bo, and that which was inevitable in himself.
“Reckon you might save us all some trouble—now if you'd—just get mad—an' let me go after thet greaser.”
“Greaser! Do you mean Beasley?”
“Shore. He's a half-breed. He was born in Magdalena, where I heard folks say nary one of his parents was no good.”
“That doesn't matter. I'm thinking of humanity of law and order. Of what is right.”
“Wal, Miss Nell, I'll wait till you get real mad—or till Beasley—”
“But, my friend, I'll not get mad,” interrupted Helen. “I'll keep my temper.”
“I'll bet you don't,” he retorted. “Mebbe you think you've none of Bo in you. But I'll bet you could get so mad—once you started—thet you'd be turrible. What 've you got them eyes for, Miss Nell, if you ain't an Auchincloss?”
He was smiling, yet he meant every word. Helen felt the truth as something she feared.
“Las Vegas, I won't bet. But you—you will always come to me—first—if there's trouble.”
“I promise,” he replied, soberly, and then went out.
Helen found that she was trembling, and that there was a commotion in her breast. Carmichael had frightened her. No longer did she hold doubt of the gravity of the situation. She had seen Beasley often, several times close at hand, and once she had been forced to meet him. That time had convinced her that he had evinced personal interest in her. And on this account, coupled with the fact that Riggs appeared to have nothing else to do but shadow her, she had been slow in developing her intention of organizing and teaching a school for the children of Pine. Riggs had become rather a doubtful celebrity in the settlements. Yet his bold, apparent badness had made its impression. From all reports he spent his time gambling, drinking, and bragging. It was no longer news in Pine what his intentions were toward Helen Rayner. Twice he had ridden up to the ranch-house, upon one occasion securing an interview with Helen. In spite of her contempt and indifference, he was actually influencing her life there in Pine. And it began to appear that the other man, Beasley, might soon direct stronger significance upon the liberty of her actions.
The responsibility of the ranch had turned out to be a heavy burden. It could not be managed, at least by her, in the way Auchincloss wanted it done. He was old, irritable, irrational, and hard. Almost all the neighbors were set against him, and naturally did not take kindly to Helen.
She had not found the slightest evidence of unfair dealing on the part of her uncle, but he had been a hard driver. Then his shrewd, far-seeing judgment had made all his deals fortunate for him, which fact had not brought a profit of friendship.
Of late, since Auchincloss had grown weaker and less dominating, Helen had taken many decisions upon herself, with gratifying and hopeful results. But the wonderful happiness that she had expected to find in the West still held aloof. The memory of Paradise Park seemed only a dream, sweeter and more intangible as time passed, and fuller of vague regrets. Bo was a comfort, but also a very considerable source of anxiety. She might have been a help to Helen if she had not assimilated Western ways so swiftly. Helen wished to decide things in her own way, which was as yet quite far from Western. So Helen had been thrown more and more upon her own resources, with the cowboy Carmichael the only one who had come forward voluntarily to her aid.
For an hour Helen sat alone in the room, looking out of the window, and facing stern reality with a colder, graver, keener sense of intimacy than ever before. To hold her property and to live her life in this community according to her ideas of honesty, justice, and law might well be beyond her powers. To-day she had been convinced that she could not do so without fighting for them, and to fight she must have friends. That conviction warmed her toward Carmichael, and a thoughtful consideration of all he had done for her proved that she had not fully appreciated him. She would make up for her oversight.
There were no Mormons in her employ, for the good reason that Auchincloss would not hire them. But in one of his kindlier hours, growing rare now, he had admitted that the Mormons were the best and the most sober, faithful workers on the ranges, and that his sole objection to them was just this fact of their superiority. Helen decided to hire the four Beemans and any of their relatives or friends who would come; and to do this, if possible, without letting her uncle know. His temper now, as well as his judgment, was a hindrance to efficiency. This decision regarding the Beemans; brought Helen back to Carmichael's fervent wish for Dale, and then to her own.
Soon spring would be at hand, with its multiplicity of range tasks. Dale had promised to come to Pine then, and Helen knew that promise would be kept. Her heart beat a little faster, in spite of her business-centered thoughts. Dale was there, over the black-sloped, snowy-tipped mountain, shut away from the world. Helen almost envied him. No wonder he loved loneliness, solitude, the sweet, wild silence and beauty of Paradise Park! But he was selfish, and Helen meant to show him that. She needed his help. When she recalled his physical prowess with animals, and imagined what it must be in relation to men, she actually smiled at the thought of Beasley forcing her off her property, if Dale were there. Beasley would only force disaster upon himself. Then Helen experienced a quick shock. Would Dale answer to this situation as Carmichael had answered? It afforded her relief to assure herself to the contrary. The cowboy was one of a blood-letting breed; the hunter was a man of thought, gentleness, humanity. This situation was one of the kind that had made him despise the littleness of men. Helen assured herself that he was different from her uncle and from the cowboy, in all the relations of life which she had observed while with him. But a doubt lingered in her mind. She remembered his calm reference to Snake Anson, and that caused a recurrence of the little shiver Carmichael had given her. When the doubt augmented to a possibility that she might not be able to control Dale, then she tried not to think of it any more. It confused and perplexed her that into her mind should flash a thought that, though it would be dreadful for Carmichael to kill Beasley, for Dale to do it would be a calamity—a terrible thing. Helen did not analyze that strange thought. She was as afraid of it as she was of the stir in her blood when she visualized Dale.
Her meditation was interrupted by Bo, who entered the room, rebellious-eyed and very lofty. Her manner changed, which apparently owed its cause to the fact that Helen was alone.
“Is that—cowboy gone?” she asked.
“Yes. He left quite some time ago,” replied Helen.
“I wondered if he made your eyes shine—your color burn so. Nell, you're just beautiful.”
“Is my face burning?” asked Helen, with a little laugh. “So it is. Well, Bo, you've no cause for jealousy. Las Vegas can't be blamed for my blushes.”
“Jealous! Me? Of that wild-eyed, soft-voiced, two-faced cow-puncher? I guess not, Nell Rayner. What 'd he say about me?”
“Bo, he said a lot,” replied Helen, reflectively. “I'll tell you presently. First I want to ask you—has Carmichael ever told you how he's helped me?”
“No! When I see him—which hasn't been often lately—he—I—Well, we fight. Nell, has he helped you?”
Helen smiled in faint amusement. She was going to be sincere, but she meant to keep her word to the cowboy. The fact was that reflection had acquainted her with her indebtedness to Carmichael.
“Bo, you've been so wild to ride half-broken mustangs—and carry on with cowboys—and read—and sew—and keep your secrets that you've had no time for your sister or her troubles.”
“Nell!” burst out Bo, in amaze and pain. She flew to Helen and seized her hands. “What 're you saying?”
“It's all true,” replied Helen, thrilling and softening. This sweet sister, once aroused, would be hard to resist. Helen imagined she should hold to her tone of reproach and severity.
“Sure it's true,” cried Bo, fiercely. “But what's my fooling got to do with the—the rest you said? Nell, are you keeping things from me?”
“My dear, I never get any encouragement to tell you my troubles.”
“But I've—I've nursed uncle—sat up with him—just the same as you,” said Bo, with quivering lips.
“Yes, you've been good to him.”
“We've no other troubles, have we, Nell?”
“You haven't, but I have,” responded Helen, reproachfully.
“Why—why didn't you tell me?” cried Bo, passionately. “What are they? Tell me now. You must think me a—a selfish, hateful cat.”
“Bo, I've had much to worry me—and the worst is yet to come,” replied Helen. Then she told Bo how complicated and bewildering was the management of a big ranch—when the owner was ill, testy, defective in memory, and hard as steel—when he had hoards of gold and notes, but could not or would not remember his obligations—when the neighbor ranchers had just claims—when cowboys and sheep-herders were discontented, and wrangled among themselves—when great herds of cattle and flocks of sheep had to be fed in winter—when supplies had to be continually freighted across a muddy desert and lastly, when an enemy rancher was slowly winning away the best hands with the end in view of deliberately taking over the property when the owner died. Then Helen told how she had only that day realized the extent of Carmichael's advice and help and labor—how, indeed, he had been a brother to her—how—
But at this juncture Bo buried her face in Helen's breast and began to cry wildly.
“I—I—don't want—to hear—any more,” she sobbed.
“Well, you've got to hear it,” replied Helen, inexorably “I want you to know how he's stood by me.”
“But I hate him.”
“Bo, I suspect that's not true.”
“I do—I do.”
“Well, you act and talk very strangely then.”
“Nell Rayner—are—you—you sticking up for that—that devil?”
“I am, yes, so far as it concerns my conscience,” rejoined Helen, earnestly. “I never appreciated him as he deserved—not until now. He's a man, Bo, every inch of him. I've seen him grow up to that in three months. I'd never have gotten along without him. I think he's fine, manly, big. I—”
“I'll bet—he's made love—to you, too,” replied Bo, woefully.
“Talk sense,” said Helen, sharply. “He has been a brother to me. But, Bo Rayner, if he HAD made love to me I—I might have appreciated it more than you.”
Bo raised her face, flushed in part and also pale, with tear-wet cheeks and the telltale blaze in the blue eyes.
“I've been wild about that fellow. But I hate him, too,” she said, with flashing spirit. “And I want to go on hating him. So don't tell me any more.”
Whereupon Helen briefly and graphically related how Carmichael had offered to kill Beasley, as the only way to save her property, and how, when she refused, that he threatened he would do it anyhow.
Bo fell over with a gasp and clung to Helen.
“Oh—Nell! Oh, now I love him more than—ever,” she cried, in mingled rage and despair.
Helen clasped her closely and tried to comfort her as in the old days, not so very far back, when troubles were not so serious as now.
“Of course you love him,” she concluded. “I guessed that long ago. And I'm glad. But you've been wilful—foolish. You wouldn't surrender to it. You wanted your fling with the other boys. You're—Oh, Bo, I fear you have been a sad little flirt.”
“I—I wasn't very bad till—till he got bossy. Why, Nell, he acted—right off—just as if he OWNED me. But he didn't.... And to show him—I—I really did flirt with that Turner fellow. Then he—he insulted me.... Oh, I hate him!”
“Nonsense, Bo. You can't hate any one while you love him,” protested Helen.
“Much you know about that,” flashed Bo. “You just can! Look here. Did you ever see a cowboy rope and throw and tie up a mean horse?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Do you have any idea how strong a cowboy is—how his hands and arms are like iron?”
“Yes, I'm sure I know that, too.”
“And how savage he is?”
“Yes.”
“And how he goes at anything he wants to do?”
“I must admit cowboys are abrupt,” responded Helen, with a smile.
“Well, Miss Rayner, did you ever—when you were standing quiet like a lady—did you ever have a cowboy dive at you with a terrible lunge—grab you and hold you so you couldn't move or breathe or scream—hug you till all your bones cracked—and kiss you so fierce and so hard that you wanted to kill him and die?”
Helen had gradually drawn back from this blazing-eyed, eloquent sister, and when the end of that remarkable question came it was impossible to reply.
“There! I see you never had that done to you,” resumed Bo, with satisfaction. “So don't ever talk to me.”
“I've heard his side of the story,” said Helen, constrainedly.
With a start Bo sat up straighter, as if better to defend herself.
“Oh! So you have? And I suppose you'll take his part—even about that—that bearish trick.”
“No. I think that rude and bold. But, Bo, I don't believe he meant to be either rude or bold. From what he confessed to me I gather that he believed he'd lose you outright or win you outright by that violence. It seems girls can't play at love out here in this wild West. He said there would be blood shed over you. I begin to realize what he meant. He's not sorry for what he did. Think how strange that is. For he has the instincts of a gentleman. He's kind, gentle, chivalrous. Evidently he had tried every way to win your favor except any familiar advance. He did that as a last resort. In my opinion his motives were to force you to accept or refuse him, and in case you refused him he'd always have those forbidden stolen kisses to assuage his self-respect—when he thought of Turner or any one else daring to be familiar with you. Bo, I see through Carmichael, even if I don't make him clear to you. You've got to be honest with yourself. Did that act of his win or lose you? In other words, do you love him or not?”
Bo hid her face.
“Oh, Nell! it made me see how I loved him—and that made me so—so sick I hated him.... But now—the hate is all gone.”