The B. M. Bower Megapack

by B. M. Bower

  “You’re a long way from home. Does it—are yuh homesick, ever?” Andy was playing for information without asking directly how long she intended to stay—a question which had suddenly seemed quite important. Also, why was she stopping here with Take-Notice Johnson, away off from everybody?

  “Seeing I’ve only been here four days, the novelty hasn’t worn off yet,” she replied. “But it does seem more like four weeks; and how I’ll ever stand two months of it, not ever seeing a soul but father—”

  Andy looked reproachful, and also glad. Didn’t she consider him a soul? And Take-Notice was her dad! To be sure, Take-Notice had never mentioned having a daughter, but then, in the range-land, men don’t go around yawping their personal affairs.

  Before Take-Notice returned, Andy felt that he had accomplished much. He had learned that the young woman’s name really was Mary, and that she was a stenographer in a real-estate office in San Jose, where her mother lived; that the confinement of office-work had threatened her with pulmonary tuberculosis (Andy failed, at the moment, to recognize the disease which had once threatened him also, and wondered vaguely) and that the doctor had advised her coming to Montana for a couple of months; that she had written to her father (it seemed queer to have anyone speak of old Take-Notice as “father”) and that he had told her to “come a-running.”

  She told Andy that she had not seen her father for five years (Andy knew that Take-Notice had disappeared for a whole winter, about that long ago, and that no one had discovered where he went) because he and her mother were “not congenial.”

  He had dismounted, at her invitation, and had gone clanking to the doorstep and sat down—giving a furtive kick now and then at the black lamb, which developed a fondness for the leathern fringe on his chaps—and had eaten an orange which she had brought in her trunk all the way from San Jose, and which she had picked from a tree which stood by her mother’s front gate. He had nibbled a ripe olive—eating it with what Andy himself would term “long teeth”—and had tried hard not to show how vile he found it. He had inspected two star-fishes which she had found last Fourth-of-July at Monterey and had dried; and had crumpled a withered leaf of bay in his hands and had smelled and nearly sneezed his head off; and had cracked and eaten four walnuts—also gathered from her mother’s yard—and three almonds from the same source, and had stared admiringly at a note-book filled with funny marks which she called shorthand.

  Between-whiles Andy had told her his name and the name of the outfit he worked for; had explained what he meant by “outfit,” and had drawn a large U in the dirt to show her what a Flying U was, and had wanted to murder the black lamb which kept getting in his way and trying to eat the stick Andy used for a pencil; had confessed that he did sometimes play cards for money, as do the cowboys in Western stories, but assured her that he had never killed off any of his friends during any little disagreement. He had owned to drinking a glass of whisky now and then, but declared that it was only for snake bite and did not happen oftener than once in six months or so. Yes, he had often had rattlers in his bed, but not to hurt. This is where he began to inspect the star-fishes, and so turned the conversation safely back to California and himself away from the temptation to revel in fiction.

  All of which took time, so that Take-Notice came before they quite felt a longing for his presence; and though the sun shone straight in the cabin door and so proved that it was full noon, there was no fire left in the stove and nothing in sight that was eatable save another ripe olive—which Andy had politely declined—and two more almonds and an orange.

  A stenographer, with a fluffy pompadour that dipped distractingly at one side, and a gold watch suspended around the neck like a locket, and with sleeves that came no farther than the elbow and heels higher than any riding boot Andy ever owned in his life, and with teeth that were very white and showed a glint of gold here and there, and eyes that looked at one with insincere gravity, and fingers with nails that shone—fingers that pinched red lips together meditatively—a stenographer who has all these entrancing attributes, Andy discovered, may yet lack those housewifely accomplishments that make a man dream of a little home for two. So far as Andy could see, her knowledge of cookery extended no farther than rolled oat porridge for the two lambs.

  Take-Notice it was who whittled shavings and started the fire without any comment upon the hour or his appetite; who went to the spring and brought water, half-filled the enameled teakettle which had large, bare patches where the enamel had been chipped off in the stress of baching, and sliced the bacon and mixed the “sour-dough” biscuits. To be sure, he had done those things for years and thought nothing of it; Andy, also, had done those things, many’s the time, and had thought nothing of it, either. But to do them while a young woman sits calmly by and makes no offer of help, but talks of many things, unconscious even of her world-old, feminine duties and privileges, that struck Andy with a cold breath of disillusionment.

  He watched her unobtrusively while she talked. She never once seemed to feel that cooking belonged to woman, and as far as he could see Take-Notice did not feel so either. So Andy mentally adjusted himself to the novelty and joyed in her presence.

  To show how successful was his mental adjustment, it is necessary merely to state one fact: Where he had intended to stop an hour or so, he stayed the afternoon; ate supper there and rode home at sundown, his mind a jumble of sunny Californian days where one may gather star-fishes and oranges, bay leaves and ripe olives at will, and of black and white lambs which always obtrude themselves at the wrong moment and break off little, intimate confidences about life in a real-estate office, perhaps; and of polished finger-nails that never dip themselves in dishwater—Andy had come to believe that it would be neither right or just to expect them to do so common a thing.

  The season was what the range calls “between roundups,” so that Andy went straight to the ranch and found the Happy Family in or around the bunk-house, peacefully enjoying their before-bedtime smoke. Andy, among other positive faults and virtues, did not lack a certain degree of guile. Men there were at the Flying U who would ride in haste if they guessed that a pompadoured young woman from California was at the end of the trail, and Andy, knowing well the reputation he bore among them, set that reputation at work to keep the trail empty of all riders save himself. When someone asked him idly what had kept him so long, he gazed around at them with his big, innocent gray eyes.

  “Why, I was just getting acquainted with the new girl,” he answered simply and truthfully.

  Truth being something which the Happy Family was unaccustomed to from the lips of Andy Green, they sniffed scornfully.

  “What girl?” demanded Irish bluntly.

  “Why, Take-Notice’s girl. His young lady daughter that is visiting him. She’s mighty nice, and she’s got style about her, and she was feeding two lambs. Her name,” he added softly, “is Mary.”

  Since no one had ever heard that Take-Notice had a daughter, the Happy Family could not be blamed for doubting Andy. They did doubt, profanely and volubly.

  “Say, did any of you fellows ever eat a ripe olive?” Andy broke in, when he could make himself heard. “Well,” he explained mildly, when came another rift of silence in the storm-cloud of words, “When yuh ride over there, she’ll likely give yuh one to try; but yuh take my advice and pass it up. I went up against one, and I ain’t got the taste out uh my mouth yet. It’s sure fierce.”

  More words, from which Andy gathered that they did not believe anything he said; that he was wasting time and breath, and that his imagination was weak and his lies idiotic. He’d better not let Take-Notice hear how he was taking his name in vain and giving him a daughter—and so on.

  “Say, did yuh ever see a star-fish? Funniest thing yuh ever saw, all pimply, and pink, and with five points to ’em. She’s got two. When yuh go over, you ask her to let yuh see ’em.” Andy was in bed, then, and he spoke through the dusk toward the voices. What those voices had just then been saying seemed to
have absolutely no effect upon him.

  “Oh, dry up!” Irish commanded impatiently. “Nobody’s thinking uh riding over there, yuh chump. What kind of easy marks do yuh think we are?”

  Andy laughed audibly in his corner next the window. “Say, you fellows do amuse me a lot. By gracious, I’ll bet five dollars some of yuh take the trail over there, soon or late. I—I’ll bet five dollars to one that yuh do! The bet to hold good for —well, say six weeks. But yuh better not take me up, boys—especially Irish, that ain’t got a girl at present. Yes, or any of yuh, by gracious! It’ll be a case for breach-uh-promise for any one uh yuh. Say, she’s a bird! Got goldy hair, and a dimple in her chin and eyes that’d make a man—”

  With much reviling they accepted the wager, and after that Andy went peacefully to sleep, quite satisfied for the time with the effect produced by his absolute truthfulness; it did not matter much, he told himself complacently, what a man’s reputation might be, so long as he recognized its possibilities and shaped his actions properly.

  It is true that when he returned from Dry Lake, not many days after, with a package containing four new ties and a large, lustrous silk handkerchief of the proper, creamy tint, the Happy Family seemed to waver a bit. When he took to shaving every other day, and became extremely fastidious about his finger-nails and his boots and the knot in his tie, and when he polished the rowels of his spurs with Patsy’s scouring brick (which Patsy never used) and was careful to dent his hat-crown into four mathematically correct dimples before ever he would ride away from the ranch, the Happy Family looked thoughtful and discussed him privately in low tones.

  But when Andy smilingly assured them that he was going over to call on Take-Notice’s girl, and asked them if they wouldn’t like to come along and be introduced, and taste a ripe olive, and look at the star-fishes, and smell a crumpled leaf of bay, they backed figuratively from the wiles of him and asserted more or less emphatically he couldn’t work them. Then Andy would grin and ride gaily away, and Flying U Coulee would see him no more for several hours. It was mere good fortune—from Andy’s viewpoint—that duty did not immediately call the Happy Family, singly or as a whole, to ride across the hills toward the cabin of Take-Notice Johnson. Without a legitimate excuse, he felt sure of their absence from the place, and he also counted optimistically upon their refusing to ask any one whom they might meet, if Take-Notice Johnson had a daughter visiting him.

  Four weeks do not take much space in a calendar, nor much time to live; yet in the four that came just after Andy’s discovery, he accomplished much, even in his own modest reckoning. He had taught the girl to watch for his coming and to stand pensively in the door with many good-bye messages when he said he must hit the trail. He had formed definite plans for the future and had promised her quite seriously that he would cut out gambling, and never touch liquor in any form—unless the snake was a very big one and sunk his fangs in a vital spot, in which dire contingency Mary absolved him from his vow. He had learned the funny marks that meant his name and hers in shorthand and had watched with inner satisfaction her efforts to learn how to fry canned corn in bacon grease, and to mix sour-dough biscuits that were neither yellow with too much soda nor distressfully “soggy” with too little, and had sat a whole, blissful afternoon in his shirtsleeves, while Mary bent her blond pompadour domestically over his coat, sewing in the sleeve-linings that are prone to come loose and torment a man. To go back to the first statement, which includes all these things and much more, Andy had, in those four weeks, accomplished much.

  But a girl may not live forever in that lonely land with only Andy Green to discover her presence, and the rumors which at first buzzed unheeded in the ears of the Happy Family, stung them at last to the point of investigation; so that on a Sunday—the last Sunday before the Flying U wagons took again to the trailless range-land, Irish and Jack Bates rode surreptitiously up the coulee half an hour after Andy, blithe in his fancied security, had galloped that way to spend a long half-day with Mary. If he discovered them they would lose a dollar each—but if they discovered a girl such as Andy had pictured, they felt that it would be a dollar well lost.

  In the range-land many strange things may happen. Irish and Jack pulled up short when, off to their right, in a particularly, lonely part of that country, broken into seamed coulees and deep-scarred hills, they heard a faint halloo. With spurs pricking deep and frequent they hurried to the spot; looked down a grassy swale and saw Andy lying full length upon the ground in rather a peculiar pose, while his horse fed calmly a rein-length away.

  They stopped and looked at him, and at each other; rode cautiously to within easy rifle shot and stopped again.

  “Ain’t yuh getting tired feelings kinda unseasonable in the day?” Jack Bates called out guardedly.

  “I—I’m hurt, boys,” Andy lifted his head to say, strainedly. “My hoss stepped in a hole, and I wasn’t looking for it. I guess—my leg’s broke.”

  Jack snorted. “That so? Sure it ain’t your neck, now? Seems to me your head sets kinda crooked. Better feel it and find out, while we go on where we’re going.” He half turned his horse up the hill again, resenting the impulse which had betrayed him a hand’s breadth from the trail.

  Andy waited a moment. Then: “On the dead, boys, my leg’s broke—like you’d bust a dry stick. Come and see—for yourselves.”

  “Maybe—” Irish began, uncertainly, in an undertone. Andy’s voice had in it a note of pain that was rather convincing.

  “Aw, he’s just trying to head us off. Didn’t I help pack him up that ungodly bluff, last spring, thinking he was going to die before we got him to the top—and him riding off and giving us the horse-laugh to pay for it? You can bite, if yuh want to; I’m going on. I sure savvy Andy Green.”

  “Come and look,” Andy begged from below. “If I’m joshing—”

  “You can josh and be darned,” finished Jack for him. “I don’t pack you up hill more than once, old-timer. We’re going to call on your Mary-girl. When yuh get good and refreshed up, you can come and look on at me and Irish acting pretty and getting a stand-in. So-long!”

  Irish, looking back over his shoulder, saw Andy raise his head and gaze after them; saw it drop upon his arms just before they went quite over the hill. The sight stuck persistently and unpleasantly in his memory.

  “Yuh know, he might be hurt,” he began tentatively when they had ridden slowly a hundred yards or so.

  “He might. But he ain’t. He’s up to some game again, and he wouldn’t like anything better than to have us ride down there and feel his bones. If you’d been along, that day in the Bad-lands, you’d know the kind of bluff he can put up. Why, we all thought sure he was going to die. He acted that natural we felt like we was packing a corpse at a funeral—and him tickled to death all the while at the load he was throwing! No sir, yuh don’t see me swallowing no such dope as that, any more. When he gets tired uh laying there, he’ll recover rapid and come on. Don’t yuh worry none about Andy Green; why, man, do yuh reckon any horse-critter could break his leg—a rider like him? He knows more ways uh falling off a horse without losing the ashes off his cigarette than most men know how to—how to punish grub! Andy Green couldn’t get hurt with a horse! If he could, he’d uh been dead and playing his little harp long ago.”

  Such an argument was more convincing than the note of pain in the voice of Andy, so that Irish shook off his uneasiness and laughed at the narrow escape he’d had from being made a fool. And speedily they forgot the incident.

  It was Take-Notice who made them remember, when they had been an hour or so basking themselves, so to speak, in the smiles of Mary. They had fancied all along that she had a curiously expectant air, and that she went very often to the door to see what the lambs were up to—and always lifted her eyes to the prairie slope down which they had ridden and gazed as long as she dared. They were not dull; they understood quite well what “lamb” it was that held half the mind of her, and they were piqued because of their understan
ding, and not disposed to further the cause of the absent. Therefore, when Take-Notice asked casually what had become of Andy, Jack Bates moved his feet impatiently, shot a sidelong glance at the girl (who was at that moment standing where she could look out of the window) and laughed unpleasantly.

  “Oh, Andy’s been took again with an attack uh bluff,” he answered lightly. “He gets that way, ever so often, you know. We left him laying in a sunny spot, a few miles back, trying to make somebody think he was hurt, so they’d pack him home and he’d have the laugh on them for all summer.”

  “Wasn’t he hurt?” The girl turned suddenly and her voice told how much it meant to her. But Jack was not sympathetic.

  “No, he wasn’t hurt. He was just playing off. He got us once, that way, and he’s never given up the notion that he could do it again. We may be easy, but—”

  “I don’t understand,” the girl broke in sharply. “Do you mean that he would deliberately try to deceive you into believing he was hurt, when he wasn’t?”

  “Miss Johnson,” Jack replied sorrowfully, “he would. He would lose valuable sleep for a month, studying up the smoothest way to deceive. I guess,” he added artfully, and as if the subject was nearly exhausted, “yuh don’t know Mr. Green very well.”

  “I remember hearing about that job he put up on yuh,” Take-Notice remarked, not noticing that the girl’s lips were opened for speech, “Yuh made a stretcher, didn’t yuh, and—”

  “No—he told it that way, but he’s such a liar he couldn’t tell the truth if he wanted to. We found him lying at the bottom of a steep bluff, and he appeared to be about dead. It looked as if he’d slipped and fallen down part way. So we packed water and sloshed in his face, and he kinda come to, and then we packed him up the bluff—and yuh know what the Bad-lands is like, Take-Notice. It was unmerciful hot, too, and we like to died getting him up. At the top we laid him down and worked over him till we got him to open his eyes, and he could talk a little and said maybe he could ride if we could get him on a horse. The—he made us lift him into the saddle—and considering the size of him, it was something of a contract—and then he made as if he couldn’t stay on, even. But first we knew he digs in the spurs, yanks off his hat and lets a yell out of him you could hear a mile, and says: ‘Much obliged, boys, it was too blamed hot to walk up that hill,’ and off he goes.”