The Range Dwellers

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER XIII.

  We Meet Once More.

  I think it was about three weeks that I stayed with the round-up. I didn'tget tired of the life, or weary of honest labor, or anything of that sort.I think the trouble was that I grew accustomed to the life, so that theexhilarating effects of it wore off, or got so soaked into my system thatI began to take it all as a matter of course. And that, naturally, leftroom for other things.

  I know I'm no good at analysis, and that's as close as I can come toaccounting for my welching, the third week out. You see, we were workingsouth and west, and getting farther and farther away from--well, from thepart of country that I knew and liked best. It's kind of lonesome, leavingold landmarks behind you; so when White Divide dropped down behind anotherrange of hills and I couldn't turn in my saddle almost any time and seethe jagged, blue sky-line of her, I stood it for about two days. ThenI rolled my bed one morning, caught out two horses from my string insteadof one, told the wagon-boss I was going back to the ranch, and litout--with the whole bunch grinning after me. As they would have said,they were all "dead next," but were good enough not to say so. Or,perhaps, they remembered the boxing-lessons I had given them in thebunk-house a year or more ago.

  I did feel kind of sneaking, quitting them like that; but it's likeplaying higher than your logical limit: you know you're doing a foolthing, and you want to plant your foot violently upon your own personsomewhere, but you go right ahead in the face of it all. They didn't haveto tell me I was acting like a calf that has lost his mother in the herd.(You know he is prone to go mooning back to the last place he was withher, if it's ten miles.) I knew it, all right. And when I topped a hilland saw the high ridges and peaks of White Divide stand up against thehorizon to the north, I was so glad I felt ashamed of myself and calledone Ellis Carleton worse names than I'd stand to hear from anybody else.

  Still, to go back to the metaphor, I kept on shoving in chips, just as ifI had a chance to win out and wasn't the biggest, softest-headed idiot theLord ever made. Why, even Perry Potter almost grinned when I came ridingup to the corral; and I caught the fellow that was kept on at the ranch,lowering his left lid knowingly at the cook, when I went in to supper thatfirst night. But I was too far gone then to care much what anybodythought; so long as they kept their mouths shut and left me alone, thatwas all I asked of them. Oh, I was a heroic figure, all right, those days.

  On a day in June I rode dispiritedly over to the little butte just outfrom the mouth of the pass. Not that I expected to see her; I went becauseI had gotten into the habit of going, and every nice morning just simply_pulled_ me over that way, no matter how much I might want to keep away.That argues great strength of character for me, I know, but it'sunfortunately the truth.

  I knew she was back--or that she should be back, if nothing had happenedto upset their plans. Edith had written me that they were all coming, andthat they would have two cars, this summer, instead of just one, and thatthey expected to stay a month. She and her mother, and Beryl and AuntLodema, Terence Weaver--deuce take him!--and two other fellows, and aGertrude--somebody--I forget just who. Edith hoped that I would make mypeace with Uncle Homer, so they could see something of me. (If I had toldher how easy it was to make peace with "Uncle Homer," and how he hadturned me down, she might not have been quite so sure that it was all mybull-headedness.) She complained that Gertrude was engaged to one of thefellows, and so was awfully stupid; and Beryl might as well be--

  I tore up the letter just there, and the wind, which was howling that day,caught the pieces and took them over into North Dakota; so I don't knowwhat else Edith may have had to tell me. I'd read enough to put me in amighty nasty temper at any rate, so I suppose its purpose wasaccomplished. Edith is like all the rest: If she can say anything to makea man uncomfortable she'll do it, every time.

  This day, I remember, I went mooning along, thinking hard things about theworld in general, and my little corner of it in particular. The countrywas beginning to irritate me, and I knew that if something didn't breakloose pretty soon I'd be off somewhere. Riding over to little buttes, andnot meeting a soul on the way or seeing anything but a bare rock when youget there, grows monotonous in time, and rather gets on the nerves of afellow.

  When I came close up to the butte, however, I saw a flutter of skirts onthe pinnacle, and it made a difference in my gait; I went up all out ofbreath, scrambling as if my life hung on a few seconds, and calling myselfa different kind of fool for every step I took. I kept assuring myself,over and over, that it was only Edith, and that there was no need to getexcited about it. But all the while I knew, down deep down in thethumping chest of me, that it wasn't Edith. Edith couldn't make all thatdisturbance in my circulatory system, not in a thousand years.

  She was sitting on the same rock, and she was dressed in the same adorableriding outfit with a blue wisp of veil wound somehow on her gray felt hat,and the same blue roan was dozing, with dragging bridle-reins, a few rodsdown the other side of the peak. She was sketching so industriously thatshe never heard me coming until I stood right at her elbow.

  It might have been the first time over again, except that my mentalattitude toward her had changed a lot.

  "That's better; I can see now what you're trying to draw," I said, lookingdown over her shoulder--not at the sketch; it might have been a sea view,for all I knew--but at the pink curve of her cheek, which was growingpinker while I looked.

  She did not glance up, or even start; so she must have known, all along,that I was headed her way. She went on making a lot of marks that didn'tseem to fit anywhere, and that seemed to me a bit wobbly and uncertain.I caught just the least hint of a smile twitching the corner of hermouth--I wanted awfully to kiss it!

  "Yes? I believe I have at last got everything--King's Highway--in theproper perspective and the proper proportion," she said, stumbling a bitover the alliteration--and no wonder. It was a sentence to stampedecattle; but I didn't stampede. I wanted, more than ever, to kiss--butI won't be like Barney, if I can help it.

  "It's too far off--too unattainable," I criticized--meaning something morethan her sketch of the pass. "And it's too narrow. If a fellow rode inthere he would have to go straight on through; there wouldn't be a chanceto turn back."

  "Ergo, a fellow shouldn't ride in," she retorted, with a composurepositively wicked, considering my feelings. "Though it does seem that afellow rather enjoys going straight on through, regardless of anything;promises, for instance."

  That was the gauntlet I'd been hoping for. From the minute I first saw herthere it flashed upon me that she was astonished and indignant that nightwhen she saw Frosty and me come charging through the pass, after metelling her I wouldn't do it any more. It looked to me like I'd have tosquare myself, so I was glad enough of the chance.

  "Sometimes a fellow has to do things regardless of--promises,"I explained. "Sometimes it's a matter of life and death. If a fellow'sfather, for instance--"

  "Oh, I know; Edith told me all about it." Her tone was curious, and whileit did not encourage further explanations or apologies, it also lackedabsolution of the offense I had committed.

  I sat down in the grass, half-facing her to better my chance of a lookinto her eyes. I was consumed by a desire to know if they still had thepower to send crimply waves all over me. For the rest, she was prettiereven than I remembered her to be, and I could fairly see what littlesense or composure I had left slide away from me. I looked at herfatuously, and she looked speculatively at a sharp ridge of the divide asif that sketch were the only thing around there that could possiblyinterest her.

  "Why do you spend every summer out here in the wilderness?" I asked,feeling certain that nothing but speech could save me from goinghopelessly silly.

  She turned her eyes calmly toward me, and--their power had not weakened,at all events. I felt as if I had taken hold of a battery with all thecurrent turned on.

  "Why, I suppose I like it here in summer. You're here, yourself; don't youlike it?"

  I wanted
to say something smart, there, and I have thought of a dozenbright remarks since; but at the time I couldn't think of a blessed thingthat came within a mile of being either witty or epigrammatic. Love-makingwas all new to me, and I saw right then that I wasn't going to shine.I finally did remark that I should like it better if her father would beless belligerent and more peaceful as a neighbor.

  "You told me, last summer, that you enjoyed keeping up the feud," shereminded, smiling whimsically down at me.

  She made a wrong play there; she let me see that she did remember somethings that I said. It boosted my courage a notch.

  "But that was last summer," I countered. "One can change one's view-pointa lot in twelve months. Anyway, you knew all along that I didn't mean aword of it."

  "Indeed!" It was evident that she didn't quite like having me take thattone.

  "Yes, 'indeed'!" I repeated, feeling a rebellion against circumstances andat convention growing stronger within me. Why couldn't I put her on myhorse and carry her off and keep her always? I wondered crazily. That waswhat I wanted to do.

  "Do you ever mean what you say, I wonder?" she mused, biting herpencil-point like a schoolgirl when she can't remember how many timesthree goes into twenty-seven.

  "Sometimes. Sometimes I mean more." I set my teeth, closed myeyes--mentally--and plunged, insanely, not knowing whether I should cometo the surface alive or knock my head on a rock and stay down. "Forinstance, when I say that some day I shall carry you off and find apreacher to marry us, and that we shall live happily ever after, whetheryou want to or not, because I shall _make_ you, I mean every word ofit--and a lot more."

  That was going some, I fancy! I was so scared at myself I didn't darebreathe. I kept my eyes fixed desperately on the mouth of the pass, allgolden-green in the sunshine; and I remember that my teeth were so tighttogether that they ached afterward.

  The point of her pencil came off with a snap. I heard it, but I was afraidto look. "Do you? How very odd!" Her voice sounded queer, as if it hadbeen squeezed dry of every sort of emotion. "And--Edith?"

  I looked at her then, fast enough. "Edith?" I stared at her stupidly."What the--what's Edith got to do with it?"

  "Possibly nothing"--in the same squeezed tone. "Men areso--er--irresponsible; and you say you don't always mean--Still, when aman writes pages and _pages_ to a girl every week for nearly a year, onenaturally supposes--"

  "Oh, look here!" I was getting desperate enough to be a bit rough withher. "Edith doesn't care a rap about me, and you know it. And she knowsI don't care, and--and if anybody had anything to say, it would be your Mr.Terence Weaver."

  "_My_ Mr. Terence Weaver?" She was looking down at me sidewise, in aperfectly maddening way. "You are really very--er--funny, Mr. Carleton."

  "Well," I rapped out between my teeth, "I don't _feel_ funny. I feel--"

  "No? But, really, you know, you act that way."

  I saw she was getting all the best of it--and, in my opinion, that wouldkill what little chance a man might have with a girl. I set deliberatelyabout breaking through that crust of composure, if I did nothing more.

  "That depends on the view-point," I grinned. "Would you think it funny ifI carried you off--really, you know--and--er--married you and made youlive happy--"

  "You seem to insist upon the happy part of it, which is not at all--"

  "Necessary?" I hinted.

  "Plausible," she supplied sweetly.

  "But would you think it funny, if I did?"

  She regarded her broken pencil ruefully--or pretended to--and pinched herbrows together in deep meditation. Oh, she was the most maddening bit ofyoung womanhood--But, there, no Barney for me.

  "I--might," she decided at last. "It _would_ be rather droll, you know,and I wonder how you'd manage it; I'm not very tiny, and I rather think itwouldn't be easy to--er--carry me off. Would you wear a mask--a blackvelvet mask? I should insist upon black velvet. And would you say:'Gadzooks, madam! I command you not to scream!' Would you?" She leanedtoward me, and her eyes--well, for downright torture, women are at timesperfectly fiendish.

  I caught her hand, and I held it, too, in spite of her. That far I wasmaster.

  "No," I told her grimly. "If I saw that you were going to do anything sofoolish as to scream, I should just kiss you, and--kiss you till you wereglad to be sensible about it."

  Well, she tried first to look calmly amused; then she tried to lookinsulted, and to freeze me into sanity. She ended, however, by looking agood bit confused, and by blushing scarlet. I had won that far. I kept herhand held tight in mine; I could feel it squirm to get away, and itfelt--oh, thunder!

  "Let's play something else," she said, after a long minute. "I--I neverdid admire highwaymen particularly, and I must go home."

  "No, you mustn't," I contradicted. "You must--"

  She looked at me with those wonderful, heavy-lashed eyes, and her lips hada little quiver as if--Oh, I don't know, but I let go her hand, and I feltlike a great, hulking brute that had been teasing a child till it cried.

  "All right," I sighed, "I'll let you go this time. But I warn you, littlegirl. If--no, _when_ I find you out from King's Highway by yourself again,that kidnaping is sure going to come off. The Lord intended you to be Mrs.Ellis Carleton. And forty feuds and forty fathers can't prevent it.I don't believe in going against the decrees of Providence; a _wise_Providence."

  She bit her lip at the corner. "You must have a little private Providenceof your own," she retorted, with something like her old assurance. "I'msure mine never hinted at such a--a fate for me. And one feud is as goodas forty, Mr. Carleton. If you are anything like your father, I can easilyunderstand how the feud began. The Kings and the Carletons are fond oftheir own way."

  "Thy way shall be my way," I promised rashly, just because it soundedsmart.

  "Thank you. Then there will be no melodramatic abductions in the shadow ofWhite Divide," she laughed triumphantly, "and I shall escape a mosthorrible fate!" She went, still laughing, down to where her horse waswaiting.

  I followed--rather, I kept pace with her. "All the same, I dare you toride out alone from King's Highway again," I defied. "For, if you do, andI find you--"

  "Good-by, Mr. Carleton. You'd be splendid in vaudeville," she mocked fromher saddle, where she had got with all the ease of a cowboy, without anyhelp from me. "Black velvet mask and gadzooks, madam--I must certainlytell Edith. It will amuse her, I'm sure."

  "No, you won't tell Edith," I flung after her, but I don't know if sheheard.

  She rode away down the steep slope, the roan leaning back stiffly againstthe incline, and I stood watching her like a fool. I didn't think it wouldbe good policy to follow her. I tried to roll a cigarette--in case shemight look back to see how I was taking her last shot. But she didn't, andI threw the thing away half-made. It was a case where smoke wouldn't helpme.

  If I hadn't made my chance any better, I knew I couldn't very well make itworse; but there was mighty little comfort in that reflection. And what abluff I had put up! Carry her off and marry her? Lord knows I wanted to,badly enough! But--