For some moments she followed his movements wonderingly. He walked straight over to the hay corral with long, easy strides. There was none of the slouch of a man idling about him. His whole attitude was full of distinct purpose. She saw him enter the corral and mount the half-cut haystack, and proceed to cut deeper into it. A moment later he pitched the loose hay to the ground, and himself slid down on to it. Then, stooping, he gathered it in his arms and left the corral.
Now she saw his face for the first time. It was dark. Nor could she be certain that his coloring was due to sunburn. His eyes were dark, too, and his hair. He was a good-looking man, she decided, and quite young. But how tall. And what shoulders. She wondered who he was, and what he was doing on her farm.
Then, of a sudden, she remembered she had spoken of a hired man to Mrs. Ransford. Had she——?
Her reflections were cut short by the sudden appearance of the farm-wife from the house. The old woman trotted hastily across the yard toward the barn, her fat sides shaking as she waddled, and her short, stout arms violently gesticulating. Joan needed nothing more than the good woman’s back view to tell her that the dame was very angry, and that it was the stranger who had inspired her wrath. She waited, smiling, for the dénouement.
It came quickly. It came with the reappearance of the stranger round the corner of the barn. What a splendid specimen of a man, she thought, as she watched the expression of unruffled calm on his strong features. His shirt sleeves were rolled well up above his elbows, and even at that distance she could see the deep furrows in his arms where the rope-like muscles stood out beneath the thin, almost delicate skin.
But her attention was quickly diverted by the clacking of the farm-wife’s tongue. She could hear it where she sat with the window tight shut. And though she could not hear the words it was plain enough from the violence of her gesticulations that she was rating the patient man soundly. So patent was it, so dreadful, that even in her keenest interest Joan found herself wondering if Mr. Ransford were dead, and hoping that, if he were, his decease had occurred in early youth.
Nor had the man made any attempt at response. She was sure of it, because she had watched his firm lips, and they had not moved. Perhaps he had found retort impossible. It was quite possible, for the other had not paused a moment in her tirade. What a flow. It was colossal, stupendous. Joan felt sorry for the man.
What a patience he had. Nor had his expression once altered. He merely displayed the thoughtful attention that one might bestow, listening to a brilliant conversationalist or an interesting story. It was too ridiculous, and Joan began to laugh.
Then the end came abruptly and without warning. Mrs. Ransford just swung about and trotted furiously back to the house. Her face was flaming, and her fat arms, flourishing like unlimber flails, were pointing every verbal threat she hurled over her shoulder at the spot where the man had stood. Yes, he had vanished again round the corner of the barn, and the poor woman’s best efforts were quite lost upon the warm summer air.
But her purpose was obvious, and Joan prepared herself for a whirlwind visitation. Nor had she long to wait. There was a shuffling of feet out in the passage, and, the next moment, the door of her room was unceremoniously flung open and the indignant woman staggered in.
“Well, of all the impidence, of all the sass, of all the ignorant bums that ever I——!” She exploded, and stood panting under the strain of her furious emotions.
But Joan felt she really must assert herself. This sort of reign of terror must not go on.
“Don’t fluster yourself, Mrs. Ransford,” she said calmly. “I’ll see to the matter myself.”
But she might as well have attempted to stem the tide of the river that had wrecked her journey as stay the irate woman’s tongue.
“But it’s him!” she cried. “Him, that low-down scallawag that carried you in his arms an’ walked right into this yere bedroom an’ laid you on your own virgin bed without no by your leave nor nuthin’. Him, as saw your trunks drownded an’ you all mussed up with water, without raisin’ a hand to help, ’less it was to push you further under——”
But Joan was equal to no more. She pushed the well-meaning creature on one side and hurried out of the house, while the echoes of the other’s scathing indictment died down behind her.
Joan did not hesitate. It was not her way to hesitate about anything when her mind was made up. And just now she was determined to find out the real story of what had happened to her. She was interested. This man had carried her. He had brought her trunks up. And—yes, she liked the look of him.
But she felt it necessary to approach the matter with becoming dignity. She was not given much to standing on her dignity, but she felt that in her association with the men of these parts she must harden herself to it. All friendships with men were banned. This she was quite decided upon. And she sighed as she passed round the angle of the barn.
Her sigh died at its birth, however, and she was brought to a short and terrified halt. Two prongs of a hayfork gleamed viciously within three inches of her horrified eyes, and, behind them, with eyes no less horrified, stood the dark-haired stranger.
* * *
CHAPTER XI
THE SHADOW OF THE PAST
The gleaming prongs of the fork were sharply withdrawn, and a pleasant voice greeted the girl.
“Guess that was a near thing,” it said half-warningly.
Joan had started back, but at the sound of the voice she quickly recovered herself.
“It was,” she agreed. Then as she looked into the smiling eyes of the stranger she began to laugh.
“Another inch an’ more an’ you’d sure have been all mussed up on that pile of barn litter,” he went on, joining in her laugh.
“I s’pose I should,” Joan nodded, her mirth promptly sobering to a broad smile.
She had almost forgotten her purpose so taken up was she in observing this “scallawag,” as Mrs. Ransford had called him. Nor did it take her impressionable nature more than a second to decide that her worthy housekeeper was something in the nature of a thoroughly stupid woman. She liked the look of him. She liked his easy manner. More than all she liked the confident look of his dark eyes and his sunburnt face, so full of strength.
“Hayforks are cussed things anyway,” the man said, flinging the implement aside as though it had offended him.
Joan watched him. She was wondering how best to approach the questions in her mind. Somehow they did not come as easily as she had anticipated. It was one thing to make up her mind beforehand, and another to put her decision into execution. He was certainly not the rough, uncouth man she had expected to find. True, his language was the language of the prairie, and his clothes, yes, they surely belonged to his surroundings, but there was none of the uncleanness about them she had anticipated.
It was his general manner, however, that affected her chiefly. How tall and strong he was, and the wonderful sunburn on his clean-cut face and massive arms! Then he had such an air of reserve. No, it was not easy.
Finally, she decided to temporize, and wait for an opening. And in that she knew in her heart she was yielding to weakness.
“My housekeeper tells me it was you who handed the farm over to her?” she said interrogatively.
The man’s eyes began to twinkle again.
“Was that your—housekeeper?” he inquired.
“Yes—Mrs. Ransford.”
Joan felt even less at her ease confronted by those twinkling eyes.
“She’s a—bright woman.”
The man casually picked up a straw and began to chew it.
Joan saw that he was smiling broadly, and resented it. So she threw all the dignity she could summon into her next question.
“Then you must be Mr. Moreton Kenyon!” she said.
The man shook his head.
“Wrong. That’s the ‘Padre,’” he announced curtly.
Joan forgot her resentment in her surprise.
“The ‘Padre’! Why, I t
hought Mr. Kenyon was a farmer!”
The man nodded.
“So he is. You see folks call him Padre because he’s a real good feller,” he explained. Then he added: “He’s got white hair, too. A whole heap of it. That sort o’ clinched it.”
The dark eyes had become quite serious again. There was even a tender light in them as he searched the girl’s fair face. He was wondering what was yet to come. He was wondering how this interview was to bear on the future. In spite of his easy manner he dreaded lest the threats of Mrs. Ransford were about to be put into execution.
Joan accepted his explanation.
“I see,” she said. Then, after a pause: “Then who are you?”
“Me? Oh, I’m ‘Buck,’” he responded, with a short laugh.
“Buck—who?”
“Jest plain ‘Buck.’” Again came that short laugh.
“Mr. Kenyon’s son?”
The man shook his head, and Joan tried again.
“His nephew?”
Again came that definite shake. Joan persisted, but with growing impatience.
“Perhaps you’re—his partner?” she said, feeling that if he again shook his head she must inevitably shake him.
But she was spared a further trial. Buck had been quick to realize her disappointment. Nor had he any desire to inspire her anger. On the contrary, his one thought was to please and help her.
“You see we’re not related. Ther’s nuthin’ between us but that he’s jest my great big friend,” he explained.
His reward came promptly in the girl’s sunny smile. And the sight of it quickened his pulses and set him longing to hold her again in his arms as he had done only yesterday. Somehow she had taken a place in his thoughts which left him feeling very helpless. He never remembered feeling helpless before. It was as though her coming into his life had robbed him of all his confidence. Yesterday he had found a woman almost in rags. Yesterday she was in trouble, and it had seemed the simplest thing in the world for him to take her in his arms and carry her to the home he knew to be hers. Now—now, all that confidence was gone. Now an indefinable barrier, but none the less real, had been raised between them. It was a barrier he felt powerless to break down. This beautiful girl, with her deep violet eyes and wonderful red-gold hair, clad in her trim costume of lawn and serge, seemed to him like a creature from an undreamed-of world, and as remote from him as if thousands of miles separated them. He sighed as Joan went on with her examination—
“I suppose you have come to fetch some of your big friend’s belongings?” she said pleasantly.
For answer Buck suddenly flung out a protecting arm.
“Say, you’re sure getting mussed with that dirty litter,” he said almost reproachfully. “See, your fixin’s are right agin it. Say——”
Joan laughed outright at his look of profound concern.
“That doesn’t matter a bit,” she exclaimed. “I must get used to being ‘mussed-up.’ You see, I’m a farmer—now.”
The other’s concern promptly vanished. He loved to hear her laugh.
“You never farmed any?” he asked.
“Never.” Joan shook her head in mock seriousness. “Isn’t it desperate of me? No, I’m straight from a city.”
Buck withdrew his gaze from her face and glanced out at the hills. But it was only for a moment. His eyes came back as though drawn by a magnet.
“Guess you’ll likely find it dull here—after a city,” he said at last. “Y’ see, it’s a heap quiet. It ain’t quiet to me, but then I’ve never been to a city—unless you call Leeson Butte a city. Some folks feel lonesome among these big hills.”
“I don’t think I shall feel lonesome,” Joan said quickly. “The peace and quiet of this big world is all I ask. I left the city to get away from—oh, from the bustle of it all! Yes, I want the rest and quiet of these hills more than anything else in the world.”
The passionate longing in her words left Buck wondering. But he nodded sympathetically.
“I’d say you’d get it right here,” he declared. Then he turned toward the great hills, and a subtle change seemed to come over his whole manner. His dark eyes wore a deep, far-away look in which shone a wonderfully tender affection. It was the face of a man who, perhaps for the first time, realizes the extent and depth of his love for the homeland which is his.
“It’s big—big,” he went on, half to himself. “It’s so big it sometimes makes me wonder. Look at ’em,” he cried, pointing out at the purpling distance, “rising step after step till it don’t seem they can ever git bigger. An’ between each step there’s a sort of world different from any other. Each one’s hidden all up, so pryin’ eyes can’t see into ’em. There’s life in those worlds, all sorts of life. An’ it’s jest fightin’, lovin’, dyin’, eatin’, sleepin’, same as everywhere else. There’s a big story in ’em somewhere—a great big story. An’ it’s all about the game of life goin’ on in there, jest the same as it does here, an’ anywher’. Yes, it’s a big story and hard to read for most of us. Guess we don’t ever finish readin’ it, anyway—until we die. Don’t guess they intended us to. Don’t guess it would be good for us to read it easy.”
He turned slowly from the scene that meant so much to him, and smiled into Joan’s astonished eyes.
“An’ you’re goin’ to git busy—readin’ that story?” he asked.
The startled girl found herself answering almost before she was aware of it.
“I—I hope to,” she said simply.
Then she suddenly realized her own smallness. She felt almost overpowered with the bigness of what the man’s words had shown her. It was wonderful to her the thought of this—this “scallawag.” The word flashed through her mind, and with it came an even fuller realization of Mrs. Ransford’s stupidity. The man’s thought was the poet’s insight into Nature’s wonderlands. He was speaking of that great mountain world as though it were a religion to him, as if it represented some treasured poetic ideal, or some lifelong, priceless friendship.
She saw his answering nod of sympathy, and sighed her relief. Just for one moment she had been afraid. She had been afraid of some sign of pity, even contempt. She felt her own weakness without that. Now she was glad, and went on with more confidence.
“I’m going to start from the very beginning,” she said, with something akin to enthusiasm. “I’m going to start here—right here, on my very own farm. Surely the rudiments must lie here—the rudiments that must be mastered before the greater task of reading that story is begun.” She turned toward the blue hills, where the summer clouds were wrapped about the glistening snowcaps. “Yes,” she cried, clasping her hands enthusiastically, “I want to learn it all—all.” Suddenly she turned back and looked at him with a wonderful, smiling simplicity. “Will you help me?” she said eagerly. “Perhaps—in odd moments? Will you help me with those—lessons?”
Buck’s breath came quickly, and his simple heart was set thumping in his bosom. But his face was serious, and his eyes quite calm as he nodded.
“It’ll be dead easy for you to learn,” he said, a new deep note sounding in his voice. “You’ll learn anything I know, an’ much more, in no time. You can’t help but learn. You’ll be quicker to understand, quicker to feel all those things. Y’ see I’ve got no sort of cleverness—nor nuthin’. I jest look around an’ see things—an’ then, then I think I know.” He laughed quietly at his own conceit. “Oh, yes! sometimes I guess I know it all. An’ then I get sorry for folks that don’t, an’ I jest wonder how it comes everybody don’t understand—same as me. Then something happens.”
“Yes, yes.”
Joan was so eager she felt she could not wait for the pause that followed. Buck laughed.
“Something happens, same as it did yesterday,” he went on. “Oh, it’s big—it sure is!” he added. And he turned again to his contemplation of the hills.
But Joan promptly recalled his wandering attention.
“You mean—the storm?” she demanded.
Buck nodded.
“That—an’ the other.”
“What—other?”
“The washout,” he said.
Then, as he saw the look of perplexity in the wide violet eyes, he went on to explain—
“You ain’t heard? Why, there was a washout on Devil’s Hill, where for nigh a year they bin lookin’ for gold. Y’ see they knew the gold was there, but couldn’t jest locate it. For months an’ months they ain’t seen a sign o’ color. They bin right down to ‘hard pan.’ They wer’ jest starvin’ their lives clear out. But they’d sank the’r pile in that hill, an’ couldn’t bring ’emselves to quit. Then along comes the storm, an’ right wher’ they’re working it washes a great lump o’ the hill down. Hundreds o’ thousands o’ tons of rock an’ stuff it would have needed a train load of dynamite to shift.”
“Yes, yes.” Joan’s eagerness brought her a step nearer to him. “And they found——”
“Gold!” Buck laughed. “Lumps of it.”
“Gold—in lumps!” The girl’s eyes widened with an excitement which the discovery of the precious metal ever inspires.
The man watched her thoughtfully.
“Why aren’t you there?” Joan demanded suddenly.
“Can’t jest say.” Buck shrugged. “Maybe it’s because they bin lookin’ fer gold, an’—wal, I haven’t.”
“Gold—in lumps!” Again came the girl’s amazed exclamation, and Buck smiled at her enthusiasm.
“Sure. An’ they kind o’ blame you for it. They sort o’ fancy you brought ’em their luck. Y’ see it came when you got around their hut. They say ther’ wasn’t no luck to the place till you brought it. An’ now——”
Joan’s eyes shone.
“Oh, I’m so glad. I’m so glad I’ve brought them——”
But her expression of joy was never completed. She broke off with a sharp ejaculation, and the color died out of her cheeks, leaving her so ghastly pale that the man thought she was about to faint. She staggered back and leant for support against the wall of the barn, and Buck sprang to her side. In a moment, however, she stood up and imperiously waved him aside.
The Golden Woman Page 10
