by Dean Owen
If Wilson Keith, clad in tweeds tailored on Fifth Avenue, a little portly, square-faced, confident, a trifle condescending, typified the East, Sandy was the West. A good horse is the incarnation of symmetry, grace and power. Sandy, erect in the saddle, lean and keen, matched all of Pronto’s fitness. Man and mount both eminently belonged to the land, shimmering with sage, far-stretching to the mountains, a land that demanded and bred such a combination.
Sandy’s clean-shaven face was sharp with obstacles faced and overcome, his eyes held clean fine spirit, his jaw showed determination and the good lines of his mouth belied obstinacy. He wore the regalia of his cow-punching holidays, soft-collared shirt of blue, silk bandanna of dark weave in lieu of tie, leather gauntlets, leather chaps, fringed and buttoned with leather and trimmed with disk of silver, silver spurs on his high-heeled boots, trousers of dark gray stripe, a quirt with the handle plaited in black and white diamonds of horsehair dangling from one wrist, and the blue Colts in the twin holsters. He could not avoid being picturesque, yet there was nothing of the masquerader, the moving-picture cowboy. He held the eye, even of Hereford, but only because they liked to gaze upon a good man on a good horse. His body responded to every shift of Pronto, jigging impatiently, showing off, pretending to be afraid of the panting locomotive, body shining like metal of bronze and aluminum, his nostrils pink as the inside of a shell, ears twitching, rider and mount one in every movement. Grit stood with plumy tail erect and waving gently, ears up, red tongue playing between white teeth, his eyes like jewels; braced on his feet, tiptoe on his pads, watching the parking of the private car with now and then a glance of inquiry at Sandy.
Keith stood by the railing of his platform, the darky ready with the dismounting stool. He surveyed the crowd affably, with the poise of a successful candidate assured of welcome, waving his hand in demi-salute to Sandy, Sam and Mormon, lifting his hat graciously to Miranda Bailey. The man and the car emanated prosperity. Yet, for all the booming of Casey Town, the finding of pay-ore, the sale of shares, Keith’s present financial status was not all that he trusted it might be within a short time. It was part of the technique of his profession to assume a mask and manner of financial success, and of late he had worn these until at times they jaded him, but they were well designed, well worn, and no one doubted but that Wilson Keith was a man of ready millions.
Keith was essentially a gambler. He knew that those who bought his shares were largely tinctured with the same spirit that exists, more or less, in almost every man. They were amateurs and Keith the professional, that was the main difference. The average man likes to believe himself lucky. Keith was no exception. He knew the prevalence of the trait and traded upon it. Also he knew the gold mining game from prospect to prospectus and possible profit. But the expert faro-dealer, after his trick is over, is apt to take his wages to the roulette wheel of an opposition house and buck a game that his experience tells him is, like his own, run with the percentages against the player.
Keith had dallied with oil, had speculated, plunged, been persuaded to invest heavily. He was beginning to have a vague fear of not being so certain as he would have wished as to which end of the line he had taken, that of the baited hook, or the end that was attached to the reel that automatically plays the fish.
He sold gold and he was buying oil. More, he was sinking wells, infected with the fever of the game, whereas, with his own mines, he was cool with the poise of the physician who takes count of a pulse. Others, partners with him in new enterprises in the petroleum field, were making sudden fortunes. His turn had not come yet, but they assured him that his ventures promised even more than those that had enriched them. Faster than gold came out of Casey Town, Keith used it in Oklahoma and Texas. He had come west to view his resources, to strain them to the utmost, to overlook the ground with the eye of the past-master of promotion, who could conjure up visions of wealth from the barest indication of pay-ore, trusting to find inspiration for further flotation on his return to New York, his market-place, “fresh from the field of operations.”
The engine uncoupled and panted off, leaving the car at rest on the spur-track. The fox-faced secretary came out, held the door open. Some one followed Molly Casey. Sandy surmised it must be Donald Keith, but he had sight for nothing except the slender figure whose radiant face, between a Panama hat and a dustcoat of pongee silk, shone straight at him. It was Molly, but a glorified Molly, woman not girl. The freckles had gone, the snub nose had become defined, the eyes of Irish blue seemed to have deepened in hue back of their smudgy lashes. The wide mouth was the same, scarlet and soft as cactus blossom, smiling, opening in a glad cry.…
“Sandy!” Her arms went out toward him in greeting over the brass railing. Then Grit, catapulting from ground to platform, with frantic yaps of welcome, fairly bowled over the darky with his mounting block and bounded up into Molly’s embrace. There was confusion on the platform for a moment with Grit as the nucleus. Another person had come out, evidently Miss Nicholson. She was neither undernourished nor thin, she was medium-sized and her bones were well covered. She had the general appearance of a white rabbit and the manners of a maternally intentioned but none too efficient hen. “Amenable” described her in one word. The darky was bringing out kitbags and suit-cases, piling them on the ground. Sam tackled him and showed him the flivver.
“There’s a cupple of trunks,” said the porter.
“We’ll come back for them,” Sam told him and helped him pile in the smaller baggage.
Keith descended first, Molly darted by his extended hand and ran straight to Sandy, who had dismounted.
“I’m going to hug you, and Mormon and Sam, as soon as we get home to the ranch,” she cried. “Home! I’m so glad to be here. Pronto, you beauty, and my own bay, Blaze! Do you remember the trip over the mesa, Blaze? How did you know I wanted to ride to Three Star instead of drive?”
“Took a chance,” said Sandy. “Do you?” The old woman-shyness had come over him, fighting with his knowledge of the child who had changed into a woman. And the pongee duster deceived him.
“Do I? Didn’t I write you I was aching to fork a saddle? Look!”
She unbuttoned the duster with swift fingers and stripped it off, standing revealed in riding togs of smallest black and white checks, coat flaring out from the trim waist, slim straight legs in breeches and riding boots, a white stock about the slender, rounded neck. She gave one hand to Mormon, the other to Sam, gazing at her in admiration that was radiant and goggle-eyed.
“You’re losing weight, Mormon,” she said. “I believe you must be in love.”
“I allus was, with you,” gallantried Mormon.
“You stand aside, you human chuckawalla!” said Sam. “Miss Molly, you sure look good to sore eyes. An’ I’m sure happy you’re in my debt, if you ain’t grown up too fur to pay yore dues.”
“I always pay my debts, Sam. What do you mean?”
“It was me kissed the dawg,” said Sam. “I give the animile somethin’ I hadn’t received.”
Molly laughed at him reassuringly. Sandy, looking down at her, saw her eyes crinkle at the corners in the old way. Keith and his son joined them, coming from the car, the Amenable Nicholson hovering behind ingratiatingly.
“Glad to see you, Bourke,” he said. “And you, Manning. You too, Peters. Meet my son, Donald.”
The three partners shook hands gravely with the boy, appraising him without his guessing it.
“Glad to see you out west,” said Mormon. “We’d sure admire to have you visit us fo’ a spell.”
“I was hoping for a bid,” said young Keith. “Thanks. The car is here, or will be within an hour or two. Father shipped it ahead. Sims wired us it was at the junction. He will drive it over for us to go on to Casey Town as soon as he overhauls it. Then I’ll run in from the mines, as soon as Dad can spare me.”
“Donald has to get acquainted with a real mining property,” s
aid Keith affably. “Molly was certain you would have a horse for her, Bourke. Don’t wait round for us. We have to get some supplies and we’ll wait in my car till the machine comes. Er”—he looked around, and Miss Nicholson fluttered up—“this is Molly’s companion, Miss Nicholson. She goes with you to the ranch. How…?”
Sandy indicated the flivver and introduced Miranda Bailey, who had been directing the stowage of the grips and the proper subordination of the porter, who had not seemed appreciative of the flivver.
Molly held out a gloved hand for the reins of the fretful Blaze. Young Keith advanced with the proffer of a palm of her mounting. She shook her head at him.
“Blaze wouldn’t know what you were trying to do, Don,” she said. She turned the stirrup, set in her foot, grasped mane and horn and raised herself lightly, holding her body close to the bay’s withers for a second as he whirled, then lifting to the saddle, firm-seated, with a laugh for Blaze’s plungings.
“I see they didn’t unteach you ridin’ back east,” said Mormon admiringly.
The pair rode out of the crowd that opened for them, with whispered comments upon Molly’s appearance, or rather, her reappearance. There were few stings in the remarks; the girl’s spontaneous gaiety, her absolute unconsciousness of effort or cause, her evident delight in her return and reunion with the Three Star partners, disarmed all criticism of her costume. The Amenable Nicholson clambered into the flivver beside Miranda Bailey. Sam, Mormon and the grips packed the tonneau, and Keith and his son were left standing by the private car.
Keith was soon surrounded with a crowd, making himself popular, flattering them until they finally went away convinced that they had all constituted a first-class reception committee to meet the illustrious, the energetic, good-fellow-well-met promoter and engineer of other people’s fortunes.
Some of them were invited into the car for a private talk. It is certain that cigars were handed round and it was hinted that some private stock had found its way upon the car. When, three hours later, the big machine with Sims the chauffeur, imperturbable as ever, at the wheel, departed with the promoter and his heir, the name of Keith was, for a time at least, a household word in Hereford.
There was not much spoken between Molly and Sandy on the way back to the ranch. She seemed content to breathe in deep the herb-scented air and gaze at the mountains.
Sandy, riding a little to one side, a little back of her, so that he could see her better without appearing to stare, echoed, for the time, her happiness. It seemed to him as if this ride had been dreamed of by him, long ago, as if he had always known this was to happen, the gallop, side by side, the wind in their faces, their gaze toward the range, he and a woman who was all the world to him. Even the dog, leaping beside them as they loped, ranging when the pinto and the bay broke to a breathing walk, belonged in that picture. It was, he told himself, as if a boy had long cherished an illustration seen in a book and, suddenly, the beloved picture had become real and he a part of it.
This was Molly, the girl, who had sworn when she told them of her father’s death. He could recall the tone of the words at will.
“The damned road jest slid out from under. He didn’t have a hell-chance!”
Molly, who had put arms about his neck and kissed him good-by when she went to school—how long ago that seemed—and said, “Sandy, I don’t want to go, but I’ll be game.”
Game! Sandy looked at the supple strength of her, so subtly knit in curves of graciousness, alert and upright in the new saddle, Panama hat in one hand, the better to get the wind full in her face, her cheeks flushed with the caress of it, the thick brown braids fluffing here and there;—she was the essence of gameness. He had quoted Lasca to her once—a line or two. More came to him now.
To ride with me and forever ride,
From San Saba’s shore to Valacca’s tide.
Molly, who had told him, the first time the woman-look had come into her eyes, “Yo’re sure a white man. I’ll git even with you some time if I work the bones of my fingers through the flesh fo’ you. Thanks don’t ’mount to a damn ’thout somethin’ back of them ’em. I’ll come through.”
That Molly, and yet another Molly, swiftly maturing, with all life opening up before her to wider horizons than would have been hers if she had stayed back west.
I want free life and I want free air,
And I sigh for the canter after the cattle,
The crack of whips like shots in battle,
The mêlée of horns and hoofs and heads.
Pronto’s hoofs beat out the cantering rhythm of the poem.
That wars and wrangles and scatters and spreads,
The green beneath and the blue above,
And dash and danger and life and—
He had stopped the quotation there before. Now he finished the stanza,
—and life and love
And Lasca!
Only it was Molly! The knowledge swept over Sandy and left him tingling. Love came to him, the first, clean white flame of first love, burning like a lamp in the heart of a man. It was for this, he knew, that he had been woman-shy, that he had cherished his own thought of womanhood as something so rare a thought might tarnish it. First love, shorn of boy fallacies, strong, irresistible, protective, passionate. He closed his eyes and, for the first time in his life, touched leather, gripping the horn of his saddle as if he would squeeze it to a pulp.
Game and dainty, tender, true, a girl-woman, partner—what a partner she would make, western-bred…!
He checked himself there. She was western born but, what had the transplanting done? Would she ever now be satisfied with western ways? She would come to him, Sandy knew that. Whatever he asked her she would not refuse. But would that be fair to her? And he did not want her to come to him out of gratitude. He wanted her nature to fuse with his. Swiftly maturing as she had done, out of the ruggedness of her early years, she was still young in Sandy’s eyes.
It seemed no time since he had taken her from her saddle and carried her, a tired heartsore child, in his arms. She must have a fair chance to see if the East, with all it could offer her of amusement and interest, would not outbid the claims of the West. He must wait and watch and hold himself in hand though his love and his knowledge of it thrilled through him, charging him as if with an electric current that strove to close all gaps between him and Molly, struggling ever, in mind and body, to complete the circle.
Molly reined up Blaze and turned in her saddle toward him, her eyes sparkling, the color of lupines damp with the dew of dawn. Their eyes met, the glance held, welded. For a moment the circuit was formed, polarity effected. For a moment Sandy looked deep and then Molly’s eyes hazed with tenderness, with a yearning that made Sandy’s heart constrict, that warned him his emotions were getting beyond control, his own eyes betraying him. He summoned his will. His face hardened to the effort, his eyes steeled. Molly’s face flushed rose, from the line of her white linen riding stock up to her hair, then it paled, her eyes seemed to hold surprise, then hurt. Their expression changed, Sandy could not read it now as long lashes veiled them. He spoke with an effort, his voice sounded strange to himself, phonographic.
“How’s the saddle?” he heard himself asking.
“It’s wonderful. I’m not going to begin to thank you for it, now, Sandy.”
“Glad to be back?”
She shook her head at him.
“No words for that, Sandy.” Her eyes crinkled at him, with a hint of mischief, the old Molly looking out. “If you want to find that out, just you watch my smoke,” she said, and set her heels sharply to the flanks of her mount. The astonished Blaze responded with a snort and a leap and cut loose his speed, Sandy after them on the pinto.
They got to the ranch ahead of the flivver by a scant margin. Miranda Bailey inducted Molly and her chaperon governess into the quarters she had helped prepare for them, Molly
giving little cries of delight at the improvements she saw down-stairs. Miranda came down first and joined the partners.
“Molly is certainly sweet,” she said. “She’s grown into a woman an’ she’s grown away from the old Molly. Can’t say as how she’s affected none an’ her speech an’ manners is sure fine. That gel’s natcherally got a grand disposition.
“The Nicholson person—her first name is Clarice—is well-meanin’ enough. She ain’t shif’less, but she ain’t what you’d call practical. I reckon she does fine in teachin’ Molly some things, but she’d be plumb wasted out West. She never saw a churn an’ she’d likely die of thirst before she’d ever learn how to milk a cow. She’s like the rest of ’em back East, I imagine, goes fine so long as folks can be hired to do everything fo’ you. I’ll say she never washed out anything bigger than a hankychif or cooked a thing larger’n an egg. An’ she c’udn’t boss a sick lizard. But she’s easy to git along with, I suppose.”
There was a certain complacency about the spinster’s summing up of the Amenable Nicholson that made Sam wink covertly at Sandy, watching Mormon at the same time. Sam was convinced that, despite the handicap of a third wife, present whereabouts unknown, Miranda had made up her mind to marry Mormon and regarded all other women as possible rivals.
“That Donald is a good-lookin’ lad,” went on Miranda. “It must take him an awful waste of time to fix his clothes every time he puts ’em on. I don’t know how smart he is inside, but he’s got some of them movin’-picture heroes beat on appearance. I’m wonderin’ what Molly thinks about him. As for his father, he’s smart enough inside an’ out. But he talks too much like a politician to suit me. I’m mighty glad we got cash for our claims. Keith’s too slick an’ smooth an’ smilin’ to suit me. So long as he had lots he’d give you some to help the game erlong but, when the grazin’ gits short, he’ll hog the range or quit it. That’s my opinion. Or ruther, it ain’t my opinion, for I ain’t done a heap of thinkin’ on it, it’s the way I feel. Some apples sets my teeth on aidge before I know it, some victuals riles my stomach jest to mention ’em. I never c’ud abear castor-ile, jest the mention of it makes me squirmy. Keith affects me that way, on’y in my mind, well as in the pit of my stomach.”
