Meeker read Sutler’s letter, which Norcross had handed him, and, after deliberation, remarked: “All right, we’ll do the best we can for you, Mr. Norcross; but we haven’t any fancy accommodations.”
“He don’t expect any,” replied Berrie. “What he needs is a little roughing it.”
“There’s plinty of that to be had,” said one of the herders, who sat below the salt. “’is the soft life I’m nadin’.”
“Pat’s strong on soft jobs,” said another; and Berea joined the laugh which followed this pointless joke. She appeared to be one of them, and it troubled Norcross a little. She had so little the sex feeling and demanded so few of the rights and privileges of a girl. The men all admired her, that was evident, almost too evident, and one or two of the older men felt the charm of her young womanhood too deeply even to meet her eyes; but of this Norcross was happily ignorant. Already in these two days he had acquired a distinct sense of proprietorship in her, a feeling which made him jealous of her good name.
Meeker, it turned out, was an Englishman by way of Canada, and this was his second American wife. His first had been a sister to Mrs. McFarlane. He was a man of much reading—of the periodical sort—and the big sitting-room was littered with magazines both English and American, and his talk abounded in radical and rather foolish utterances. Norcross considered it the most disorderly home he had ever seen, and yet it was not without a certain dignity. The rooms were large and amply provided with furniture of a very mixed and gaudy sort, and the table was spread with abundance.
One of the lads, Frank Meeker, a dark, intense youth of about twenty, was Berea’s full cousin. The others were merely hired hands, but they all eyed the new-comer with disfavor. The fact that Berrie had brought him and that she seemed interested in him added to the effect of the smart riding-suit which he wore. “I’d like to roll him in the creek,” muttered one of them to his neighbor.
This dislike Berrie perceived—in some degree—and to Frank she privately said: “Now you fellows have got to treat Mr. Norcross right. He’s been very sick.”
Frank maliciously grinned. “Oh, we’ll treat him right. We won’t do a thing to him!”
“Now, Frank,” she warned, “if you try any of your tricks on him you’ll hear from me.”
“Why all this worry on your part?” he asked, keenly. “How long since you found him?”
“We rode up on the stage day before yesterday, and he seemed so kind o’ blue and lonesome I couldn’t help trying to chirk him up.”
“How will Cliff take all this chirking business?”
“Cliff ain’t my guardian—yet,” she laughingly responded. “Mr. Norcross is a college man, and not used to our ways—”
“Mister Norcross—what’s his front name?”
“Wayland.”
He snorted. “Wayland! If he gets past us without being called ‘pasty’ he’s in luck. He’s a ‘lunger’ if there ever was one.”
The girl was shrewd enough to see that the more she sought to soften the wind to her Eastern tenderfoot the more surely he was to be shorn, so she gave over her effort in that direction, and turned to the old folks. To Mrs. Meeker she privately said: “Mr. Norcross ain’t used to rough ways, and he’s not very rugged, you ought ’o kind o’ favor him for a while.”
The girl herself did not understand the vital and almost painful interest which this young man had roused in her. He was both child and poet to her, and as she watched him trying to make friends with the men, her indignation rose against their clownish offishness. She understood fully that his neat speech, his Eastern accent, together with his tailor-cut clothing and the delicacy of his table manners, would surely mark him for slaughter among the cow-hands, and the wish to shield him made her face graver than anybody had ever seen it.
“I don’t feel right in leaving you here,” she said, at last; “but I must be ridin’.” And while Meeker ordered her horse brought out, she walked to the gate with Norcross at her side.
“I’m tremendously obliged to you,” he said, and his voice was vibrant. “You have been most kind. How can I repay you?”
“Oh, that’s all right,” she replied, in true Western fashion. “I wanted to see the folks up here, anyhow. This is no jaunt at all for me.” And, looking at her powerful figure, and feeling the trap-like grip of her cinch hand, he knew she spoke the truth.
Frank had saddled his own horse, and was planning to ride over the hill with her; but to this she objected. “I’m going to leave Pete here for Mr. Norcross to ride,” she said, “and there’s no need of your going.”
Frank’s face soured, and with instant perception of the effect her refusal might have on the fortunes of the stranger, she reconsidered.
“Oh, come along! I reckon you want to get shut of some mean job.”
And so she rode away, leaving her ward to adjust himself to his new and strange surroundings as best he could, and with her going the whole valley darkened for the convalescent.
* * *
III
WAYLAND RECEIVES A WARNING
Distance is no barrier to gossip. It amazed young Norcross to observe how minutely the ranchers of the valley followed one another’s most intimate domestic affairs. Not merely was each man in full possession of the color and number of every calf in his neighbor’s herd, it seemed that nothing could happen in the most remote cabin and remain concealed. Any event which broke the monotony of their life loomed large, and in all matters of courtship curiosity was something more than keen, it was remorseless.
Living miles apart, and riding the roads but seldom, these lonely gossips tore to tatters every scrap of rumor. No citizen came or went without being studied, characterized, accounted for, and every woman was scrutinized as closely as a stray horse, and if there was within her, the slightest wayward impulse some lawless centaur came to know it, to exult over it, to make test of it. Her every word, her minutest expression of a natural coquetry was enlarged upon as a sign of weakness, of yielding. Every personable female was the focus of a natural desire, intensified by lonely brooding on the part of the men.
It was soon apparent to the Eastern observer that the entire male population for thirty miles around not only knew McFarlane’s girl; but that every unmarried man—and some who were both husbands and fathers—kept a deeply interested eye upon her daily motion, and certain shameless ones openly boasted among their fellows of their intention to win her favor, while the shy ones reveled in secret exultation over every chance meeting with her. She was the topic of every lumber-camp, and the shining lure of every dance to which the ranch hands often rode over long and lonely trails.
Part of this intense interest was due, naturally, to the scarcity of desirable women, but a larger part was called out by Berea’s frank freedom of manner. Her ready camaraderie was taken for carelessness, and the candid grip of her hand was often misunderstood; and yet most of the men respected her, and some feared her. After her avowed choice of Clifford Belden they all kept aloof, for he was hot-tempered and formidably swift to avenge an insult.
At the end of a week Norcross found himself restless and discontented with the Meekers. He was tired of fishing, tired of the old man’s endless arguments, and tired of the obscene cow-hands. The men around the mill did not interest him, and their Saturday night spree at the saloon disgusted him. The one person who piqued his curiosity was Landon, the ranger who was stationed not far away, and who could be seen occasionally riding by on a handsome black horse. There was something in his bearing, in his neat and serviceable drab uniform, which attracted the convalescent, and on Sunday morning he decided to venture a call, although Frank Meeker had said the ranger was a “grouch.”
His cabin, a neat log structure, stood just above the road on a huge natural terrace of grassy boulders, and the flag which fluttered from a tall staff before it could be seen for several miles—the bright sign of federal control, the symbol of law and order, just as the saloon and the mill were signs of lawless vice and destructive g
reed. Around the door flowers bloomed and kittens played; while at the door of the dive broken bottles, swarms of flies, and heaps of refuse menaced every corner, and the mill immured itself in its own debris like a foul beast.
It was strangely moving to come upon this flower-like place and this garden in the wilderness. A spring, which crept from the high wall back of “the station” (as these ranger headquarters are called), gave its delicious water into several winding ditches, trickled musically down the other side of the terrace in little life-giving cascades, and so finally, reunited in a single current, fell away into the creek. It was plain that loving care, and much of it, had been given to this tiny system of irrigation.
The cabin’s interior pleased Wayland almost as much as the garden. It was built of pine logs neatly matched and hewed on one side. There were but two rooms—one which served as sleeping-chamber and office, and one which was at once kitchen and dining-room. In the larger room a quaint fireplace with a flat arch, a bunk, a table supporting a typewriter, and several shelves full of books made up the furnishing. On the walls hung a rifle, a revolver in its belt, a couple of uniforms, and a yellow oilskin raincoat.
The ranger, spurred and belted, with his cuffs turned back, was pounding the typewriter when Wayland appeared at the open door; but he rose with grave courtesy. “Come in,” he said, and his voice had a pleasant inflection.
“I’m interrupting.”
“Nothing serious, just a letter. There’s no hurry. I’m always glad of an excuse to rest from this job.” He was at once keenly interested in his visitor, for he perceived in him the gentleman and, of course, the alien.
Wayland, with something of the feeling of a civilian reporting to an officer, explained his presence in the neighborhood.
“I’ve heard of you,” responded the ranger, “and I’ve been hoping you’d look in on me. The Supervisor’s daughter has just written me to look after you. She said you were not very well.”
Again Wayland protested that he was not a consumptive, only a student who needed mountain air; but he added: “It is very kind of Miss McFarlane to think of me.”
“Oh, she thinks of everybody,” the young fellow declared. “She’s one of the most unselfish creatures in the world.”
Something in the music of this speech, and something in the look of the ranger’s eyes, caused Wayland to wonder if here were not still another of Berrie’s subjects. He became certain of it as the young officer went on, with pleasing frankness, and it was not long before he had conveyed to Wayland his cause for sadness. “She’s engaged to a man that is not her equal. In a certain sense no man is her equal; but Belden is a pretty hard type, and I believe, although I can’t prove it, that he is part owner of the saloon over there.”
“How does that saloon happen to be here?”
“It’s on patented land—a so-called ‘placer claim’—experts have reported against it. McFarlane has protested against it, but nothing is done. The mill is also on deeded land, and together they are a plague spot. I’m their enemy, and they know it; and they’ve threatened to burn me out. Of course they won’t do that, but they’re ready to play any kind of trick on me.”
“I can well believe that, for I am getting my share of practical jokes at Meeker’s.”
“They’re not a bad lot over there—only just rowdy. I suppose they’re initiating you,” said Landon.
“I didn’t come out here to be a cowboy,” responded Norcross. “But Frank Meeker seems to be anxious to show me all the good old cowboy courtesies. On Monday he slipped a burr under my horse’s saddle, and I came near to having my neck broken. Then he or some one else concealed a frog in my bed, and fouled my hair-brushes. In fact, I go to sleep each night in expectation of some new attack; but the air and the riding are doing me a great deal of good, and so I stay.”
“Come and bunk with me,” urged Landon. “I’ll be glad to have you. I get terribly lonesome here sometimes, although I’m supposed to have the best station in the forest. Bring your outfit and stay as long as you like.”
This offer touched Norcross deeply. “That’s very kind of you; but I guess I’ll stick it out. I hate to let those hoodlums drive me out.”
“All right, but come and see me often. I get so blue some days I wonder what’s the use of it all. There’s one fatal condition about this ranger business—it’s a solitary job, it cuts out marriage for most of us. Many of the stations are fifteen or twenty miles from a post-office; then, too, the lines of promotion are few. I guess I’ll have to get out, although I like the work. Come in any time and take a snack with me.”
Thereafter Wayland spent nearly every day with the ranger, either in his cabin or riding the trail, and during these hours confidence grew until at last Landon confessed that his unrest arose from his rejection by Berrie.
“She was not to blame. She’s so kind and free with every one, I thought I had a chance. I was conceited enough to feel sorry for the other fellows, and now I can’t even feel sorry for myself. I’m just dazed and hanging to the ropes. She was mighty gentle about it—you know how sunny her face is—well, she just got grave and kind o’ faint-voiced, and said—Oh, you know what she said! She let me know there was another man. I didn’t ask her who, and when I found out, I lost my grip entirely. At first I thought I’d resign and get out of the country; but I couldn’t do it—I can’t yet. The chance of seeing her—of hearing from her once in a while—she never writes except on business for her father; but—you’ll laugh—I can’t see her signature without a tremor.” He smiled, but his eyes were desperately sad. “I ought to resign, because I can’t do my work as well as I ought to. As I ride the trail I’m thinking of her. I sit here half the night writing imaginary letters to her. And when I see her, and she takes my hand in hers—you know what a hand she has—my mind goes blank. Oh, I’m crazy! I admit it. I didn’t know such a thing could happen to me; but it has.”
“I suppose it’s being alone so much,” Wayland started to argue, but the other would not have it so.
“No, it’s the girl herself. She’s not only beautiful in body, she’s all sweetness and sincerity in mind. There isn’t a petty thing about her. And her happy smile—do you know, I have times when I resent that smile? How can she be so happy without me? That’s crazy, too, but I think it, sometimes. Then I think of the time when she will not smile—when that brute Belden will begin to treat her as he does his sisters—then I get murderous.”
As Wayland listened to this outpouring he wondered at the intensity of the forester’s passion. He marveled, too, at Berrie’s choice, for there was something fine and high in Landon’s worship. A college man with a mining engineer’s training, he should go high in the service. “He made the mistake of being too precipitate as a lover,” concluded Wayland. “His forthright courtship repelled her.”
Meanwhile his own troubles increased. Frank’s dislike had grown to an impish vindictiveness, and if the old man Meeker had any knowledge of his son’s deviltries, he gave no sign. Mrs. Meeker, however, openly reproved the scamp.
“You ought to be ashamed of worrying a sick man,” she protested, indignantly.
“He ain’t so sick as all that; and, besides, he needs the starch taken out of him,” was the boy’s pitiless answer.
“I don’t know why I stay,” Wayland wrote to Berea. “I’m disgusted with the men up here—they’re all tiresome except Landon—but I hate to slink away, and besides, the country is glorious. I’d like to come down and see you this week. May I do so? Please send word that I may.”
She did not reply, and wondering whether she had received his letter or not, he mounted his horse one beautiful morning and rode away up the trail with a sense of elation, of eager joy, with intent to call upon her at the ranch as he went by.
Hardly had he vanished among the pines when Clifford Belden rode in from his ranch on Hat Creek, and called at Meeker’s for his mail.
Frank Meeker was in the office, and as he both feared and disliked this big conte
mptuous young cattleman, he set to work to make him jealous.
“You want to watch this one-lung boarder of ours,” he warned, with a grin. “He’s been writing to Berrie, and he’s just gone down to see her. His highfalutin ways, and his fine white hands, have put her on the slant.”
Belden fixed a pair of cold, gray-blue eyes on his tormentor, and said: “You be careful of your tongue or I’ll put you on the slant.”
“I’m her own cousin,” retorted Frank. “I reckon I can say what I please about her. I don’t want that dude Easterner to cut you out. She guided him over here, and gave him her slicker to keep him dry, and I can see she’s terribly taken with him. She’s headstrong as a mule, once she gets started, and if she takes a notion to Norcross it’s all up with you.”
“I’m not worrying,” retorted Belden.
“You’d better be. I was down there the other day, and it ’peared like she couldn’t talk of anything else but Mister Norcross, Mister Norcross, till I was sick of his name.”
An hour later Belden left the mill and set off up the trail behind Norcross, his face fallen into stern lines. Frank writhed in delight. “There goes Cliff, hot under the collar, chasing Norcross. If he finds out that Berrie is interested in him, he’ll just about wring that dude’s neck.”
Meanwhile Wayland was riding through the pass with lightening heart, his thought dwelling on the girl at the end of his journey. Aside from Landon and Nash, she was the one soul in all this mountain world in whom he took the slightest interest. Her pity still hurt him, but he hoped to show her such change of color, such gain in horsemanship, that she could no longer consider him an invalid. His mind kept so closely to these interior matters that he hardly saw the path, but his horse led him safely back with precise knowledge and eager haste.
The Forester's Daughter Page 4
