The Wrong Woman

by Stewart, Charles D

  He put more wood on the fire and took his place again.

  "You mustn't let me interfere with your work," she suggested.

  "Oh, that is n't it at all. I was just explaining. I'll get through somehow; it won't amount to anything."

  With a characteristic sweep of his arm he waved the whole subject aside as if he did not want to have it interfere with her reading of the newspaper clipping. Janet had dropped it absent-mindedly in her lap; she now took it up again. Besides the tribute to Mrs. Brown's character, who was not a native of Texas but had come to the state in her girlhood from West Virginia, there was a considerable memoir of Stephen Brown, senior, relating his activities and adventures as a Texas patriot. He had "crossed the Great Divide" six years before. Finally, there was a paragraph of sympathy with the only son, "one of our most valued citizens."

  "Your father knew Houston, did n't he?" remarked Janet.

  "Oh, yes; he knew a lot about him."

  "How interesting that must have been. Your father was a pioneer, was n't he?"

  "Oh, no. You 've got to go back pretty far in history to be a Texas pioneer. He was just a Texan."

  She gave another perusal to certain parts and offered it back.

  "There is another piece on the other side," he said.

  She turned it over and found a shorter clipping carefully pasted to the back. This also she read.

  AN ARTISTIC MONUMENT

  Mr. Stephen Brown yesterday received from Austin the monument which he had made for the grave of his mother, Mrs. Stephen P. Brown, who died last November. It is a most beautiful work of art and was much admired by those who saw it. It is a massive block of imported gray granite skillfully carved with clusters of grapes in high relief. Mr. Brown ordered it from the leading marble-cutters in Austin. The reverse side of the stone was cut after his own design, and consists simply of a Lone Star. On the base is the word Mother. Many of our citizens were enabled to inspect it as it went up Main Street, Mr. Jonas Hicks stopping his three yoke of oxen to accommodate those who wished to look it over. It will be by far the most beautiful work of art in our local cemetery.

  Janet folded up the clipping carefully, according to the creases in it, and passed it back. When he had returned it to its compartment in the wallet,an operation which was somewhat delayed by his difficulties with the tissue paper around the picture,she questioned him further about the Comanche Indians and his father's adventures in the war with Mexico. Now the conversational situation was turned about, Janet becoming the interlocutor; and as she had the advantage of so copious a source of information, there was no end to her questioning. And as the stream of talk broadened, it began to include his own experiences and adventures, most interesting of which, to Janet, was a short account of the fight of a sheriff's posse with the train-robbers intrenched near the Post Oaks, a most determined encounter in which the sheriff was among those killed while Steve Brown received only a blunted thumb, for the clumsy appearance of which his story was rather an apology.

  "That's all I got," he said. "And it works as good as ever."

  To demonstrate which fact, he held it up and made it work.

  Now that she had material by which to lead the conversation, she found him not nearly so taciturn as she had at first thought him. Indeed, he talked on without remembering to fix the fire. And when it had nearly faded out he continued on, unconscious of the fact that the real Janet was no longer in sight except as she was partially lit by the moon which now hove upon the scene.

  "But I am keeping you up too late," she said, suddenly rising.

  Steve gathered himself together and stood up, hat in hand.

  "Oh, I am used to all hours," he said. "Anyway, I 've got to keep an eye on things."

  "And I am sorry to put you out," she added.

  "Don't mention it. I put myself out. I could let you have a lantern if you need it. There 's a piece of candle and some matches on the top bunk. It's down near the foot."

  "Oh, that will be all the light I need. Good-night."

  "Good-night, Miss Janet,"saluting her by raising his hat to the side of his head and then bringing it down with a large sweep.

  When the door had closed upon her and the shack showed light at all its cracks, he turned and went to the corral, closely followed by Shep. He took a look at the two sheep, each confined in one of the narrow little prison-pens along with the lamb whose property it was. The lambs were evidently full of milk; they were sleeping. Seeing that all was well, he got an old discarded saddle out of the shed, threw it on his shoulder, and descended to the general level to find himself a buffalo-wallow. Having picked one out he kicked a longhorn skull away from its vicinity, threw the saddle down at its edge, and lined the grassy interior with his slicker. Then he sat down in the middle, crushing the slicker deep into the spring bloom. Here he sat a while.

  It is not easy for the human mind, constituted as it is, to pick out a bed on a prairie. It offers such a large field of choice, and no grounds for preference. Steve had long ago formed the habit of sleeping in a wallow, always to be found within a short distance, and, when found, possessing the advantage of being a "place." Such a placea bowl-like depressionwas made by the bison who pawed away the tough sward to get at mother earth, and then wore it deep and circular as he tried to roll on his unwieldy hump. Steve Brown, anywhere between Texas and Montana, had often slept in the "same old place," though in a different locality, and for some reason he was never so contenteither because it was really a "place," or because he liked a bed that sagged in the middle, or because (which is more likely) he found a certain atmosphere of sleep in one of these places so long ago dedicated to rest and comfort. Which hollow is all that is now left of the buffaloa vacancy.

  He sat down in the middle, his attention fixed upon the shack, which now existed as a sort of picture of itself drawn in lines of light. When suddenly it was erased from the night, he pressed the slicker down and lay back with his head in the saddle. He folded his hands and waited, looking straight up. In a little while the world receded and he was only conscious of sundry stars. Thus, looking heaven in the eye, his hands clasped across his chest, Steve Brown sunk to sleep, his head and feet sticking up at the ends. Again Eternity held sway; and only Shep was left.

  Shep turned round and round till he had trampled a place among the flowers, his usual way of winding up the day. He lay down in it with his chin on his paws. But soon he got up and went at it again. He milled round and round, with several pauses as if he were not quite satisfied; then he dropped down with a decisiveness that settled the matter for good. With his chin on the brink of the wallow he went to sleep; or rather he went as near asleep as a dog with such great responsibilities allows himself to do.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The sheep, having several times broken the silence of the dawn, were growing impatient to be let out. Now that the sun had appeared and the bars were not let down, there was unanimous expression of opinion in the corral, an old wether stamping his foot sternly and leading the chorus with a doleful note. It was very much as if he had put the question and they had all voted "aye." What was the matter with the man who was running this part of the world?

  Steve Brown was otherwise engaged. He was sitting on the ground behind the storm-shed with a lamb in his lap. He was trying to remove from its back the pelt of another lamb which had been neatly fitted on over its own. This was a trick on the mother of the dead lamb intended to get her to care for the present lamb, who was an orphan; which is to say, the extra pelt was the lamb's meal-ticket, and she had given him several meals on the evidence of smell. The deception had worked all the more readily because she had not had time to become familiar with her own lamb's voice; and now that a sort of vocal relationship had been established between the two, things promised to go along naturally, with probably a little insistence upon the lamb's part.

  In accordance with the usual practice in such cases, the pelt, with head and legs removed, had been fastened on by means of holes cut at th
e corners, through which the live one's legs were inserted, care being taken to leave on the tail, which part, when a lamb is nursing, is most convenient to smell.

  As Steve Brown was not used to this sort of tailoring, he had made rather too close a fit of it, and now that it was dried up at the edges and slightly shrunk, he found difficulty in removing it. Seeing, upon further effort, that he could not get it off without risk of straining the lamb's anatomy, he laid the problem across his knees again and searched his pockets for his knife. He had felt for it, not very thoroughly, before. The knife seemed to be lost.

  Janet, awakened by the clamor in the pen, arose from the bunk and set to work arranging her hair. Rather drowsily she moved about through the rifts of sunshine which beamed from the cracks; then, as she realized what a golden day the sun was weaving, she put her eye to a crack and looked out. In her elongated picture of things there were several miles of prairie, the sun just edge-to-edge with the horizon, and any amount of blue sky above. In the sky were some birds soaring at a great height. Smaller birds went skimming over the prairie,now a golden meadowlark, then a darker scissortail snipping the air off behind it in swift flight. Suddenly, and rather precipitately, there came from around the corner of the storm-shed a lamb in full action. Its gait was as effective as it was erratic; it looked very much as if the legs were running away with it.

  From the corner of the shed it made a joyous gambol in the direction of the fire and the steaming kettle, from which point it made for the down-slope of the knoll. Steve Brown, whose legs were none too long for the race, came running after. A moment later the dog arrived on the scene; he made a sudden dash and performed his part in a most creditable manner, overtaking the lamb and upsetting it with a poke of his nose. The lamb, not at all disconcerted by the tumble, which was only a variation of its method of progress, came over on its knees and rose at once to go ahead; but the delay had been sufficient. Steve caught up; and the next instant, the truant, feeling the ground removed from under it, hung helpless across the hand of its captor.

  "Je-e-emima!" Steve remarked. "You 're feeling awful glad this morning."

  Janet, who could not see the end of this performance, but only that part of it which came within range of the crack, stepped back in surprise. As who would not be surprised to see a black lamb with a white head and white legs, and two tails. Such being the result of her prying upon the world, she turned her attention to her toilet again and made haste to go out and see whether her eyes had deceived her.

  In the mean time Steve, not being able to find the knife, stood with the lamb in his arms and bent the whole force of his mind upon the problem of its whereabouts. Suddenly he remembered that he had last used it in front of the shack to put the pelt on the lamb. Naturally, it was still there. Having it again, he sat down near the fire-hole, where he could keep an eye on the kettle, placed the lamb on his lap and opened the blade. He had just got to work on one of the legs when the door opened and his guest made her appearance. He rose at once to pay his respects, the lamb in one hand and his hat in the other.

  "Good-morning, Miss Janet."

  "Good-morning, Mr. Brown. It is a very beautiful day, is n't it?"

  "First-class," he replied. "I 'm just doing a little work on this lamb. I guess you know him; he 's the one you saw when you first came."

  "What! The one that stepped in the sugar bowl?"

  "Yes, that's him. He doesn't look exactly natural, does he? I had to make some changes in him. You see his mother did n't think she wanted any lamb. But another sheep had one that died and I could see she wanted a lamb, so that was an opening for this fellow. And I had to fix him up so that she 'd take him."

  "What a funny thing to do," said Janet.

  "Is n't it! Do you wonder that sheep-herders go crazy? Just wait a minute, Miss Janet, and I 'll have this off of him."

  He sat down again with the lamb in his lap. Turning it over on its back he set to work on the hind legs. Janet, becoming interested, stooped down beside him. She patted the infant on its high forehead.

  "And did n't the other sheep want to adopt him?" she asked.

  "Oh, no. Sheep don't believe in charity."

  "And won't even have their own sometimes! Is n't that strange!"

  "Some of them seem to be built that way, especially if it is their first one. But that sheep did n't have much milk anyway, and maybe she thought he might as well die. If it had n't been for that I would have tried to make her take him. But I saw the other sheep could do better by him."

  "There is really a great deal to think of, is n't there?" said Janet, lending a hand to the operation by catching hold of a too active hind leg. "But I don't see how you could fool her that way. Could n't she see that this lamb had a white head? And white legs? And an extra tail?"

  "Oh, they don't go by looks," he explained. "They go by smell. And later on by voice, too. Appearances don't count."

  "The idea! You seem to know all about them."

  "Not much," he said. "I 'm no sheep-man."

  "But anyway, you do get along with them."

  "If they were my sheep," he answered, "and I was n't responsible for them, I would n't be so particular. Especially with this one; he has been a lot of trouble. As far as money goeshe is n't worth over fifty centsI would have let him die."

  "Oh, no-o-o-o!" protested Janet, lending further assistance with the pelt.

  "But after I had carried him around with me all day I got to feeling responsible for him."

  "A person naturally would," said Janet.

  "And besides," he added, holding the lamb upright while she, with her more skillful fingers, removed the fore legs from the armholes of the pelt, "a fellow sort of hates to lose the first one, you know."

  Janet, finding the lambskin left on her hands, examined it curiously, running her fingers over the soft black wool.

  "What shall I do with this, Mr. Brown?"

  "Oh, just throw it away. But no," he added, upon second thought, "I guess you had better keep that. It would be good for you to sit on."

  Following this suggestion she took it to her "place" on the prairie and spread it down. Then, as he seemed to be waiting for her, she returned.

  "Miss Janet, I guess you 'll want to wash up. The best I can offer you is the place down below the spring. You 'll find some soap down there in a cigar-box. The bank is a little steep for you to climb down, so I guess you had better go round and get in the front way. On your way around you 'll find a towel on a bush; it is pretty clean,I washed it last night. And you 'd better take the lambskin along to kneel on."

  Steve carried the lamb away to its breakfast. Janet took the pelt and followed his instructions, going down the slope and skirting round the base of the knoll till she came to where the stream issued forth.

  The little gully was hardly more than a deep grass-grown ditch made by the spring as it won its way out of the heart of the knoll; or rather it was a green hallway, overtopped with a frieze of mesquite, leading in privately to the source of the stream. Janet, as she entered the house-like cosiness of this diminutive valley, felt very much as if she had just stepped in out of the universe. On a prairie there is such an insistent stare of space, so great a lack of stopping-place for the mind, that this little piece of outdoors, with the sun shining in at its eastern end, was a veritable snug-harbor in an ocean of land. As she turned and looked out of its sunny portal, she told herself that if she had to live in the shack this place would be her front yard.

  Just below the spring was a grassy bank against which the water ran invitingly; she spread the lambskin here, rolled up her sleeves, took off her collar, and conformed to the customs of the place. The cool water was so invigorating, and there was something so intimate in the live push of the current against her hand, that she lathered her arms an unnecessary number of times and kept rinsing them off. It was a brisk little stream and so bent upon its business that she could almost feel its impatience when she obstructed it,for which reason, probably, she interfered w
ith it the more; and finally, being done, she made a little heap of foam in her palm and reached it down just to see the water run away with it.

  As she came round to the sheep-path again, she met Steve, who had been standing on the side of the knoll and started down the moment he saw her. Evidently he had been waiting his turn.

  "Breakfast is all ready," he announced as he passed. "I 'll be up in a minute."

  By the time she reached the shack there was a great spluttering and splashing and blowing of water down below. It was Mr. Brown "washing up." In little more than the minute he was back again. Finding her seated upon the lambskin, he took his place opposite her and passed the hot bread.

  "I saw you chasing that lamb this morning," she said, quite directly. "I was looking out of a crack to find what the weather was like."

  "Did you? Did you see the dog throw him?"

  "No; I couldn't see it all. But I saw how he had learned to use his legs. Why, it does n't seem possible."

  "Oh, that's nothing. He's an old hand nowthis is his third day on earth."

  "Yes; but is n't he unusually smart?"

  "Oh, no. They 've got to catch on pretty quick, you know, or they could n't keep up with the procession. He's just about like the rest of them. They all learn fast."

  "But it hardly seems possible that such a helpless little thing as he was could learn so much. Why, when I first saw him he was just able to stand up."

  "They're animals," replied Steve, spreading a thick coat of molasses on a large piece of hot bread. "It only takes them a few minutes to learn standing up?"

  "But they do have to learn, don't they?"

  "Oh, yes. They don't always get it right the first time. Lambs make mistakes the same as anybody else. But if they get started out right, with a good meal the first thing, and a warm sleep, they go ahead surprisingly. The trouble with them at first is that they are a little weak."

  "I don't suppose, then, that a lamb can get right up and follow the flock?" she queried.