Wayside Courtships

by Garland, Hamlin

  The road wound among shapeless buttes of red soil, the plain was clothed on its levels with a short, dry grass, and on the side of the buttes were scattering, scraggy cedars, looking at a distance like droves of cattle.

  He sat down upon a little hummock to rest, for his feet ached with the long stretches of hilly road. The larks cried to him out of the mist, with their piercing sweet notes, cheerful and undaunted ever. There was a sudden lighting up of the day, as if the lark's song had shot the mist with silver light.

  As he rose and started on with painful slowness, he heard the sound of horses' hoofs behind him, and a man in a yellow cart came swiftly out of the gray obscurity.

  Arthur stepped aside to let him pass, but he could not help limping a little more markedly as the man looked at him. The man seemed to understand.

  "Will you ride?" he asked.

  Arthur glanced up at him and nodded without speaking. The stranger was a fine-looking man, with a military cut of beard, getting gray. His face was ruddy and smiling.

  "Thank you. I am rather tired," Arthur said, as he settled into the seat. "I guess I'll have to own up, I'm about played out."

  "I thought you looked foot-sore. I'm enough of a Western man to feel mean when I pass a man on the road. A footman can get very tired on these stretches of ours."

  "I've tramped about forty miles to-day, I guess. I'm trying to find some work to do," he added, in desperate confidence.

  "Is that so? What kind of work?"

  "Well, I wanted to get a place as foreman on a ranch."

  "I'm afraid that's too much to expect."

  Arthur sighed.

  "Yes, I suppose it is. If I'd known as much two weeks ago as I do now, I wouldn't be here."

  "Oh, don't get discouraged; there's plenty of work to do. I can give you something to do on my place."

  "Well, I've come to the conclusion that there is nothing here for me but the place of a common hand, so if you can give me anything——"

  "Oh, yes, I can give you something to do in my garden. Perhaps something better will open up later. Where are you staying?" he asked, as they neared town.

  Arthur told him, and the man drove him down to his hotel.

  "I'd like to have you call at my office to-morrow morning; my partner does most of the hiring. I've been living in Denver. Here's my card."

  After he had driven away, the listening landlord broke forth:

  "You're in luck, Cap. If you get a place with Major Thayer you're fixed."

  "Who is he, anyhow?"

  "Who is he? Why, he owns all the land up the creek, and banks all over Colorado."

  "Is that so?"

  Arthur was delighted. Of course, it was only a common hand's place, but here was the vista he had looked for—here was the chance.

  He stretched his legs under the table in huge content as he ate his supper. His youthful imagination had seized upon this slender wire of promise and was swiftly making it a hoop of diamonds.

  II.

  When he entered the office next day, however, the Major merely nodded to him over the railing and said:

  "Good morning. Take a seat, please."

  He seemed deeply engaged with a tall young man of about thirty-five years of age, with a rugged, smooth-shaven face. The young man spoke with a marked English accent, and there was a quality in his manner of speech which appealed very strongly to Arthur.

  "Confeound the fellow," the young Englishman was saying, "I've discharged him. I cawn't re-engage him, ye kneow! We cawn't have a man abeout who gets drunk, y' kneow—it's too bloody proveoking, Majah."

  "But the poor fellow's family, Saulisbury."

  "Oh, hang the fellow's family," laughed Saulisbury. "We are not a poorhouse, y' kneow—or a house for inebriates. I confess I deon't mind these things as you do, old man. I'm a Britisher, y' kneow, and I haven't got intristed in your bloody radicalism, y' kneow. I'm in for Sam Saulisbury 'from the word go,' as you fellows say."

  "And you don't get along any better—I mean in a money way."

  "I kneow, and that's too deuced queeah. Your blawsted sentimentality seems note to do you any harm. Still I put it in this way, y' kneow—if he weren't so deadly sentimental, what couldn't the fellow do, y' kneow?"

  The Major laughed.

  "Well, I can't turn Jackson off, even for you."

  "Well, deon't do it then—only if he gets drunk agine and drops a match into the milk can, fancy! and blows us all up, deon't come back on me, that's all."

  They both laughed at this, and the Major said:

  "This is the young man I told you about, Mr.—a——"

  "Ramsey is my name," said Arthur, rising.

  "Mr. Ramsey, this is my partner, Mr. Saulisbury."

  "Haow de do," said Saulisbury, with a nod and a glance, which made Arthur hot with wrath, coming as it did after the talk he had heard. Saulisbury did not take the trouble to rise. He merely swung round on his swivel chair and eyed the young stranger.

  Arthur was not thick-skinned, and he had been struck for the first time by the lash of caste, and it raised a welt.

  He choked with his rage and stood silent, while Saulisbury looked him over, and passed upon his good points, as if he were a horse. There was something in the lazy lift of his eyebrows which maddened Arthur.

  "He looks a decent young fellow enough; I suppeose he'll do to try," Saulisbury said at last, with cool indifference. "I'll use him, Majah."

  "By Heaven, you won't!" Arthur burst out. "I wouldn't work for you at any price."

  He turned on his heel and rushed out.

  He heard the Major calling to him as he went down the stairs, but refused to turn back. The tears of impotent rage filled his eyes, his fists strained together, and the curses pushed slowly from his lips. He wished he had leaped upon his insulter where he sat—the smooth, smiling hound!

  He was dizzy with rage. For the first time in his life he had been trampled upon, and could not, at least he had not, struck his assailant.

  As he stood on the street-corner thinking of these things and waiting for the mist of rage to pass from his eyes, he felt a hand on his arm, and turned to Major Thayer, standing by his side.

  "Look here, Ramsey, you mustn't mind Sam. He's an infernal Englishman, and can't understand our way of meeting men. He didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

  Arthur looked down at him silently, and there was a look in his eyes which went straight to the Major's heart.

  "Come, Ramsey, I want to give you a place. Never mind this. You will really be working for me, anyhow."

  Saulisbury himself came down the stairs and approached them, putting on his gloves, and Arthur perceived for the first time that his eyes were blue and very good-natured. Saulisbury cared nothing for the youth, but felt something was due his partner.

  "I hope I haven't done anything unpardonable," he began, with his absurd, rising inflection.

  Arthur flared up again.

  "I wouldn't work for a man like you if I starved. I'm not a dog. You'll find an American citizen won't knuckle down to you the way your English peasants do. If you think you can come out here in the West and treat men like dogs, you'll find yourself mighty mistaken, that's all!"

  The men exchanged glances. This volcanic outburst amazed Saulisbury, but the Major enjoyed it. It was excellent schooling for his English friend.

  "Well, work for me, Mr. Ramsey. Sam knuckles down to me on most questions. I hope I know how to treat my men. I'm trying to live up to traditions, anyway."

  "You'll admit it is a tradition," said Saulisbury, glad of a chance to sidle away.

  The Major dismissed Saulisbury with a move of the hand.

  "Now get into my cart, Mr. Ramsey, and we'll go out to the farm and look things over," he said; and Arthur clambered in.

  "I can't blame you very much," the Major continued, after they were well settled. "I've been trying lately to get into harmonious relations with my employees, and I think I'm succeeding. I have a father and grandfather in
shirt sleeves to start from and to refer back to, but Saulisbury hasn't. He means well, but he can't always hold himself in. He means to be democratic, but his blood betrays him."

  Arthur soon lost the keen edge of his grievance under the kindly chat of the Major.

  The farm lay on either side of a small stream which ran among the buttes and green mesas of the foothills. Out to the left, the kingly peak looked benignantly across the lesser heights that thrust their ambitious heads in the light. Cattle were feeding among the smooth, straw-colored or sage-green hills. A cluster of farm buildings stood against an abrupt, cedar-splotched bluff, out of which a stream flowed and shortly fell into a large basin.

  The irrigation ditch pleased and interested Arthur, for it was the finest piece of work he had yet seen. It ran around the edge of the valley, discharging at its gates streams of water like veins, which meshed the land, whereon men were working among young plants.

  "I'll put you in charge of a team, I think," the Major said, after talking with the foreman, a big, red-haired man, who looked at Arthur with his head thrown back and one eye shut.

  "Well, now you're safe," said the Major, as he got into his buggy, "so I'll leave you. Richards will see you have a bed."

  Arthur knew and liked the foreman's family at once. They were familiar types. At supper he told them of his plans, and how he came to be out there; and they came to feel a certain proprietorship in him at once.

  "Well, I'm glad you've come," said Mrs. Richards, after their acquaintanceship had mellowed a day or two. "You're like our own folks back in Illinois, and I can't make these foreigners seem neighbors nohow. Not but what they're good enough, but, land sakes! they don't jibe in someway."

  Arthur winced a little at being classed in with her folks, and changed the subject.

  One Sunday, a couple of weeks later, just as he was putting on his old clothes to go out to do his evening's chores, the Major and a merry party of visitors came driving into the yard. Arthur came out to the carriage, a little annoyed that these city people should not have come when he had on his Sunday clothes. The Major greeted him pleasantly.

  "Good evening, Ramsey. Just hitch the horses, will you? I want to show the ladies about a little."

  Arthur tied the horses to a post and came back toward the Major, expecting him to introduce the ladies; but the Major did not, and Mrs. Thayer did not wait for an introduction, but said, with a peculiar, well-worn inflection:

  "Ramsey, I wish you'd stand between me and the horses. I'm as afraid as death of horses and cows."

  The rest laughed in musical uproar, but Arthur flushed hotly. It was the manner in which English people, in plays and stories, addressed their butler or coachman.

  He helped her down, however, in sullen silence, for his rebellious heart seemed to fill his throat.

  The party moved ahead in a cloud of laughter. The ladies were dainty as spring flowers in their light, outdoor dresses, and they seemed to light up the whole barnyard.

  One of them made the most powerful impression upon Arthur. She was so dainty and so birdlike. Her dress was quaint, with puffed sleeves, and bands and edges of light green, like an April flower. Her narrow face was as swift as light in its volatile changes, and her little chin dipped occasionally into the fluff of her ruffled bodice like a swallow into the water. Every movement she made was strange and sweet to see.

  She cried out in admiration of everything, and clapped her slender hands like a wondering child. Her elders laughed every time they looked at her, she was so entirely carried away by the wonders of the farm.

  She admired the cows and the colts very much, but shivered prettily when the bull thrust his yellow and black muzzle through the little window of his cell.

  "The horrid thing! Isn't he savage?"

  "Not at all. He wants some meal, that's all," said the Major, as they moved on.

  The young girl skipped and danced and shook her perfumed dress as a swallow her wings, without appearing vain—it was natural in her to do graceful things.

  Arthur looked at her with deep admiration and delight, even while Mrs. Saulisbury was talking to him.

  He liked Mrs. Saulisbury at once, though naturally prejudiced against her. She had evidently been a very handsome woman, but some concealed pain had made her face thin and drawn, and one corner of her mouth was set in a slight fold as if by a touch of paralysis. Her profile was still very beautiful, and her voice was that of a highly cultivated American.

  She seemed to be interested in Arthur, and asked him a great many questions, and all her questions were intelligent.

  Saulisbury amused himself by joking the dainty girl, whom he called Edith.

  "This is the cow that gives the cream, ye know; and this one is the buttermilk cow," he said, as they stood looking in at the barn door.

  Edith tipped her eager little face up at him:

  "Really?"

  The rest laughed again.

  "Which is the ice-cream cow?" the young girl asked, to let them know that she was not to be fooled with.

  Saulisbury appealed to the Major.

  "Majah, what have you done with our ice-cream cow?"

  "She went dry during the winter," said the Major; "no demand on her. 'Supply regulated by the demand,' you know."

  They drifted on into the horse barn.

  "We're in Ramsey's domain now," said the Major, looking at Arthur, who stood with his hand on the hip of one of the big gray horses.

  Edith turned and perceived Arthur for the first time. A slight shock went through her sensitive nature, as if some faint prophecy of great storms came to her in the widening gaze of his dark eyes.

  "Oh, do you drive the horses?" she asked quickly.

  "Yes, for the present; I am the plowman," he said, in the wish to let her know he was not a common hand. "I hope to be promoted."

  Her eyes rested a moment longer on his sturdy figure and his beautifully bronzed skin, then she turned to her companions.

  After they had driven away, Arthur finished his work in silence; he could hardly bring himself to speak to the people at the supper table, his mind was in such tumult.

  He went up into his little room, drew a chair to the window facing the glorious mountains, and sat there until the ingulfing gloom of rising night climbed to the glittering crown of white soaring a mile above the lights of the city; but he did not really see the mountains; his eyes only turned toward them as a cat faces the light of a hearth. It helped him to think, somehow.

  He was naturally keen, sensitive, and impressionable; his mind worked quickly, for he had read a great deal and held his reading at command.

  His thought concerned itself first of all with the attitude these people assumed toward him. It was perfectly evident that they regarded him as a creature of inferior sort. He was their servant.

  It made him turn hot to think how terribly this contrasted with the flamboyant phraseology of his graduating oration. If the boys knew that he was a common hand on a ranch, and treated like a butler!

  He came back for relief to the face of the girl, the girl who looked at him differently somehow.

  The impression she made on him was one of daintiness and light; her eager face and her sweet voice, almost childish in its thin quality, appealed to him with singular force.

  She was strange to him, in accent and life; she was good and sweet, he felt sure of that, but she seemed so far away in her manner of thought. He wished he had been dressed a little better; his old hat troubled him especially.

  The girls he had known, even the daintiest of them, could drive horses and were not afraid of cows. Their way of talking was generally direct and candid, or had those familiar inflections which were comprehensible to him. She was alien.

  Was she a girl? Sometimes she seemed a woman—when her face sobered a moment—then again she seemed a child. It was this change of expression that bewildered and fascinated him.

  Then her lips were so scarlet and her level brown eyebrows wavered about so beautifully!
Sometimes one had arched while the other remained quiet; this gave a winsome look of brightness and roguishness to her face.

  He came at last to the strangest thing of all: she had looked at him, every time he spoke, as if she were surprised at finding herself able to understand his way of speech.

  He worked it all out at last. They all looked upon him as belonging to the American peasantry; he belonged to a lower world—a world of service. He was brick, they were china.

  Saulisbury and Mrs. Thayer were perfectly frank about it; they spoke from the English standpoint. The Major and Mrs. Saulisbury had been touched by the Western spirit and were trying to be just to him, with more or less unconscious patronization.

  As his thoughts ran on, his fury came back, and he hammered and groaned and cursed as he tossed to and fro on his bed, determined to go back where the American ideas still held—back to the democracy of Lodi and Cresco.

  III.

  These spring days were days of growth to the young man. He grew older and more thoughtful, and seldom joked with the other men.

  There came to the surface moods which he had not known before. There came times when his teeth set together like the clutch of a wolf, as some elemental passion rose from the depths of his inherited self.

  His father had been a rather morose man, jealous of his rights, quick to anger, but just in his impulses. Arthur had inherited these stronger traits, but they had been covered and concealed thus far by the smiling exterior of youth.

  Edith came up nearly every day with the Major in order to enjoy the air and beauty of the sunshine, and when she did not come near enough to nod to Arthur, life was a weary treadmill for the rest of the day, and the mountains became mere gloomy stacks of débris.

  Sometimes she sat on the porch with the children, while Mrs. Richards, the foreman's wife, a hearty, talkative woman, plied her with milk and cookies.

  "It must be heaven to live here and feed the chickens and cows," the young girl said one day when Arthur was passing by—quite accidentally.