Then she paused. The old, gripping desire had seized her. She had not once felt it since she had passed through that door more than two hours before. For a moment she hesitated, and then, fearfully, she turned toward Eva.
“May I clean up in your room?” she asked.
There was a strange note of appeal in Shannon’s voice that the other girl did not understand.
“Why, certainly,” she said; “but is there anything the matter? You are not ill?”
“Just a little tired.”
“There! I should never have walked you so far. I’m so sorry!”
“I want to be tired. I want to do it again this afternoon — all afternoon. I don’t want to stop until I am ready to drop!” Then, seeing the surprise in Eva’s expression, she added: “You see, I shall be here such a short time that I want to crowd every single moment full of pleasant memories.”
Shannon thought that she had never eaten so much before as she had that morning at breakfast; but at luncheon she more than duplicated her past performance.
“My!” Shannon exclaimed at last. “I have seen the pigs and I have become one.”
“And I see something, dear,” said Mrs. Pennington, smiling.
“What?”
“Some color in your cheeks.”
“Not really?” she cried, delighted.
“Yes, really.”
“And it’s mighty becoming,” offered the colonel. “Nothing like a brown skin and rosy cheeks for beauty. That’s the way God meant girls to be, or He wouldn’t have given ’em delicate skins and hung the sun up there to beautify ‘em.
“What a dapper little thought!” exclaimed Eva. “Popsy should have been a poet.”
“Or an ad writer for a cosmetic manufacturer,” suggested Custer. “Oh, by the way, not changing the subject or anything, but did you hear about Slick Allen?”
No, they had not. Shannon pricked up her ears, metaphorically. What did these people know of Slick Allen?
“He’s just been sent up in L. A. for having narcotics in his possession. Got a year in the county jail.”
“I guess he was a bad one,” commented the colonel; “but he never struck me as being a drug addict.”
“Nor me; but I guess you can’t always tell them,” said Custer.
“It must be a terrible habit,” said Mrs. Pennington.
“It’s about as low as any one can sink,” said Custer.
“I hear that there’s been a great increase in it since prohibition,” remarked the colonel. “Personally, I’d have more respect for a whiskey drunkard than for a drug addict; or perhaps I should better say that I’d feel less disrespect. A police official told me not long ago, at a dinner in town, that if drug-taking continues to increase as it has recently, it will constitute a national menace by comparison with which the whiskey evil will seem paltry.”
Shannon Burke was glad when they rose from the table, putting an end to the conversation. She had plumbed the uttermost depths of humiliation. She had felt herself go hot and cold in shame and fear. At first her one thought had been to get away — to find some excuse for leaving the Penningtons at once.
She was hastening to her room to pack. She knew there was an evening train for the city, and while she packed she could be framing some plausible excuse for leaving thus abruptly.
Custer Pennington called to her.
“Miss Burke!” She turned, her hand upon the knob of the door to the upstairs suite.
“I’m going to ride over the back ranch this afternoon. Eva showed you the Berkshires this morning; now I want to show you the Herefords. I told the stableman to saddle Baldy for you. Will half an hour be too soon?”
For a long time they rode in silence, the girl taking in every beauty of meadow, ravine, and hill, that she might store them all away for the days when they would be only memories. The sun beat down upon them fiercely, for it was an early August day, and there was no relieving breeze; but she enjoyed it. It was all so different from any day in her past, and so much happier than anything in the last two years, or anything she could expect in the future.
The riders had entered the hills and were winding up Jackknife Canyon before either spoke.
“If you tire,” he said, “or if it gets too hot, we’ll turn back. Please don’t hesitate to tell me.”
“It’s heavenly!” she said.
“Possibly a few degrees too hot for heaven,” he suggested; “but it’s always cool under the live oaks. Any time you want to rest we’ll stop for a bit.”
“Which are the live oaks?” she asked.
He pointed to one.
“Why are they called live oaks?”
“They’re evergreen — I suppose that’s the reason. Here’s a big old fellow — shall we stop?”
“And get off?”
“If you wish.”
“Do you think I could get on again?”
Pennington laughed.
After a while they started on again, and the girl surprised the man by mounting easily from the ground. She was very much pleased with her achievement, laughing happily at his word of approval.
They rode on until they found the Herefords. They counted them as they searched through the large pasture that ran back into the hills; and when the full number had been accounted for, they turned toward home. As he had told her about the trees, Custer told her also about the beautiful white-faced cattle, of their origin in the English county whose name they bear, and of their unequaled value as beef animals. He pointed out various prize winners as they passed them.
“There you are, smiling again,” she said accusingly, as they followed the trail homeward. “What have I done now?”
“You haven’t done anything but be very patient all afternoon. I was smiling at the idea of how thrilling the afternoon must have been for a city girl, accustomed, I suppose, to a constant round of pleasure and excitement!”
“I have never known a happier afternoon,” she said.
“I wonder if you really mean that?”
“Honestly!”
“I am glad,” he said: “for sometimes I get terribly tired of it here, and I think it always does me good to have an outsider enthuse a little. It brings me a realization of the things we have here that city people can’t have, and makes me a little more contented.”
“You couldn’t be discontented! Why, there are just thousands and thousands of people in the city who would give everything to change places with you! We don’t all live in the city because we want to. You are fortunate that you don’t have to.”
“Do you think so?”
“I know it.”
“But it seems such a narrow life here! I ought to be doing a man’s work among men, where it will count.”
“You are doing a man’s work here and living a man’s life, and what you do here does count. Suppose you were making stoves, or selling automobiles or bonds, in the city. Would any such work count for more than all this — the wonderful swine and cattle and horses that you are raising? Your father has built a great business, and you are helping him to make it greater. Could you do anything in the city of which you could be half so proud? No, but in the city you might find a thousand things to do of which you might be terribly ashamed. If I were a man, I’d like your chance!”
“You’re not consistent. You have the same chance, but you tell us that you are going back to the city. You have your grove here, and a home and good living, and yet you want to return to the city you inveigh against.”
“I do not want to,” she declared.
“I hope you don’t, then,” Custer said simply.
They reached the house in time for a swim before dinner; but after dinner, when they started for the ballroom to dance, Shannon threw up her hands in surrender.
“I give up!” she cried laughingly. “I tried to be game to the finish, and I want ever so much to come and dance; but I don’t believe I could even walk as far as the ballroom, much less dance after I got there. Why, I doubt whether I’ll be abl
e to get upstairs without crawling!”
“You poor child!” exclaimed Mrs. Pennington. “We’ve nearly killed you, I know. We are all so used to the long rides and walking and swimming and dancing that we don’t realize how they tire unaccustomed muscles. You go right to bed, my dear, and don’t think of getting up for breakfast.”
“Oh, but I want to get up and ride, if I may, and if Eva will wake me.”
“She’s got the real stuff in her;” commented the colonel, after Shannon had bid them good night and gone to her rooms.
“I’ll say she has,” agreed Custer. “She’s a peach of girl!”
“She’s simply divine,” added Eva.
In her room, Shannon could barely get into bed before she was asleep.
CHAPTER 16
It was four o’clock the following morning before she awoke. The craving awoke with her. It seized her mercilessly; yet even as she gave in to it, she had the satisfaction of knowing that she had gone without the little white powders longer this time than since she had first started to use them. She took but a third of her normal dose.
That day she went with Custer and Eva and Guy to the country club, returning only in time for a swim before dinner; and again she fought off the craving while she was dressing for dinner. After dinner they danced, and once more she was so physically tired when she reached her rooms that she could think of nothing but sleep. The day of golf had kept her fully occupied in the hot sun, and in such good company her mind had been pleasantly occupied, too, so that she had not been troubled by her old enemy.
Again it was early morning before she was forced to fight the implacable foe. She fought valiantly this time, but she lost.
And so it went, day after day, as she dragged out her dwindling supply and prolonged the happy hours of her all too brief respite from the degradation of the life to which she knew she must soon return. Each day it was harder to think of going back — of leaving these people, whom she had come to love as she loved their lives and surroundings, and taking her place again in the stifling and degraded atmosphere of the Vista del Paso bungalow. They were so good to her, and had so wholly taken her into their family life, that she felt as one of them. They shared everything with her. There was not a day that she did not ride with Custer out among the brown hills. She knew that she was going to miss these rides — that she was going to miss the man, too. He had treated her as a man would like other men to treat his sister, with a respect and deference that she had never met with in the City of Angels.
And now the time had come when she must definitely set a date for her departure. She had determined to retain the orchard, not alone because she had seen that it would prove profitable, but because it would always constitute a link between her and the people whom she had come to love. No matter what the future held, she could always feel that a part of her remained here, where she would that all of her might be; but she knew that she must go, and she determined to tell them on the following day that she would return to the city within the week.
She passed that night without recourse to the white powders, for she must be frugal of them if they were to last through the week. The next morning she rode with the Penningtons and the Evanses as usual. She would tell them at breakfast.
When she came to the table she found a pair of silver spurs beside her plate, and when she looked about in astonishment they were all smiling.
“For me?” she cried.
After that she simply couldn’t tell them then that she was going away. She would wait until tomorrow; but she laid her plans without reference to the hand of fate.
That afternoon, immediately after luncheon, they were all seated in the patio, lazily discussing the chief topic of thought — the heat. It was one of those sultry days that are really unusual in southern California. The heat was absolutely oppressive, and even beneath the canvas canopy that shaded the patio there was little relief.
“I don’t know why we sit here,” said Custer. “It’s cooler in the house. This is the hottest place on the ranch a day like this!”
“Wouldn’t it be nice under one of those oaks up the canyon?” suggested Shannon.
He looked at her and smiled.
“Phew! It’s too hot even to think of getting there.”
“That from a Pennington!” she cried in mock astonishment and reproach.
“Do you mean to say that you’d ride up there through this heat?” he demanded.
“Of course I would. I haven’t christened my new spurs yet.”
“I’m game, then, if you are,” Custer announced.
She jumped to her feet.
It was very hot. The dust rose from the shuffling feet of their horses. Even the Apache shuffled today. His head was low, and he did not dance. The dust settled on sweating neck and flank, and filled the eyes of the riders.
“Lovely day for a ride,” commented Custer.
“But think how nice it will be under the oak,” she reminded him.
“I’m trying to.”
Suddenly he raised his head as his wandering eyes sighted a slender column of smoke rising from behind the ridge beyond Jackknife Canyon. He reined in the Apache.
“Fire!” he said to the girl. “Wait here. I’ll notify the boys, and then we’ll ride on ahead and have a look at it. It may not amount to anything.”
Presently the “boys” — a wagon full of them — came with four horses, two walking plows, shovels, a barrel of water, and burlap sacks. They were of all ages, from eighteen to seventy. Some of them had been twenty years on the ranch, and had fought many a fire. They did not have to be told what to bring or what to do with what they brought.
The wagon had to be left in Jackknife Canyon. The horses dragged the plows to the ridge, and the men carried the shovels and wet burlaps and buckets of water from the barrel. Custer dismounted and turned the Apache over to an old man to hold.
“Plow down the east side of the ravine. Try to get all the way around the south side of the fire and then back again,” he directed the two men with one of the teams. “I’ll take the other, with Jake, and we’ll try to cut her off across the top here!”
“You can’t do it, Cus,” said one of the older men. “It’s too steep.”
“We’ve got to try it,” said Pennington. “Otherwise we’d have to go back so far that it would get away from us on the east side before we made the circle. Jake, you choke the plow handles — I’ll drive!”
Jake was a short, stocky, red-headed boy of twenty, with shoulders like a bull. He grinned good-naturedly.
“I’ll choke the tar out of ‘em!” he said.
“The rest of you shovel and beat like hell!” ordered Custer.
They were more than halfway back when it happened. The off horse must have stepped upon a loose stone, so suddenly did he lurch to to the left, striking the shoulder of his mate just as the latter had planted his left forefoot. The ton of weight hurled against the shoulder of the near horse threw him downward against the furrow. He tried to catch himself on his right foot, crossed his forelegs, stumbled over the ridge of newly turned earth, and rolled down the hill, dragging his mate and the plow after him toward the burning brush below.
Jake at the plow handles and Custer on the lines tried to check the horses’ fall, but both were jerked from their hands, and the two Percherons rolled over and over into the burning brush. A groan of dismay went up from the men. It was with difficulty that Shannon stifled a scream; and then her heart stood still as she saw Custer Pennington leap deliberately down the hillside, drawing the long, heavy trail-cutting knife that he always wore on the belt with his gun.
The horses were struggling and floundering to gain their feet. One of them was screaming with pain. The girl wanted to cover her eyes with her palms to shut out the heart-rending sight, but she could not take them off the figure of the man.
As Shannon watched, a great light awoke within her, suddenly revealing the unsuspected existence of a wondrous thing that had come into her life — a thin
g which a moment later dragged her from her saddle and sent her stumbling down the hill into the burning ravine, to the side of Custer Pennington.
He had cut one horse free, seized its headstall, dragged it to its feet, and then started it scrambling up the hill. As he was returning to the other, the animal struggled up, crazed with terror and pain, and bolted after its mate. Pennington was directly in its path on the steep hillside. He tried to leap aside, but the horse struck him with its shoulder, hurling him to the ground, and before he could stop his fall he was at the edge of the burning brush, stunned and helpless.
Every man of them who saw the accident leaped down the hillside to save him from the flames; but quick as they were, Shannon Burke was first to his side, vainly endeavoring to drag him to safety. An instant later strong hands seized both Custer and Shannon and helped them up the steep acclivity, for Pennington had already regained consciousness, and it was not necessary to carry him.
Custer was badly burned, but his first thought was for the girl, and his next when he found she was uninjured, for the horses.
Then he turned to Shannon.
“Why did you go down into that?” he asked. “You shouldn’t have done it - with all the men here.”
“I couldn’t help it,” she said. “I thought you were going to be killed.”
Custer looked at her searchingly for a moment.
“It was very brave thing to do,” he said, “and a very foolish thing. You might have been badly burned.”
“Never mind that,” she said. “You have been badly burned, and you must go to the house at once. Do you think you can ride?” He laughed.
“I’m all right,” he said. “I’ve got to stay here and fight this fire.”
“You are not going to do anything of the kind.” She turned and called to the man who held Pennington’s horse. “Please bring the Apache over here,” she said. “These men can fight the fire without you,” she told Custer. “You are going right back with me. You’re never seen any one badly burned, or you’d know how necessary it is to take care of burns at once.”
Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26) Page 754
