Lonesome Land

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER V. COLD SPRING RANCH

  For almost three years the letters from Manley had been headed "ColdSpring Ranch." For quite as long Val had possessed a mental picture of theplace--a picture of a gurgly little brook with rocks and watercress anddistracting little pools the size of a bathtub, and with a great, frowningboulder--a cliff, almost--at the head. The brook bubbled out and formeda basin in the shadow of the rock. Around it grew trees, unnamed in thepicture, it is true, but trees, nevertheless. Below the spring stood apicturesque little cottage. A shack, Manley had written, was but a synonymfor a small cottage, and Val had many small cottages in mind, from whichshe sketched one into her picture. The sun shone on it, and the westernbreezes flapped white curtains in the windows, and there was a porch whereshe would swing her hammock and gaze out over the great, beautiful country,fascinating in its very immensity.

  Somewhere beyond the cottage--"shack," she usually corrected herself--werethe corrals; they were as yet rather impressionistic; high, round,mysterious inclosures forming an effective, if somewhat hazy, background tothe picture. She left them to work out their attractive details upon closeracquaintance, for at most they were merely the background. The front yard,however, she dwelt upon, and made aglow with sturdy, bright-hued flowers.Manley had that spring planted sweet peas, and poppies, and pansies, andother things, he wrote her, and they had come up very nicely. Afterward,in a postscript, he answered her oft-repeated questions about the flowergarden:

  The flowers aren't doing as well as they might. They need your tender care.I don't have much time to pet them along. The onions are doing pretty well,but they need weeding badly.

  In spite of that, the flowers bloomed luxuriantly in her mental picture,though she conscientiously remembered that they weren't doing as well asthey might. They were weedy and unkempt, she supposed, but a little timeand care would remedy that; and was she not coming to be the mistress ofall this, and to make everything beautiful? Besides, the spring, and thebrook which ran from it, and the trees which shaded it, were the chiefattractions.

  Perhaps she betrayed a lack of domesticity because she had not been ableto "see" the interior of the cottage--"shack"--very clearly. Sunny rooms,white curtains, bright cushions and books, pictures and rugs mingledtogether rather confusingly in her mind when she dwelt upon the inside ofher future home. It would be bright, and cozy, and "homy," she knew. Shewould love it because it would be hers and Manley's, and she could do withit what she would. She bothered about that no more than she did about thedresses she would be wearing next year.

  Cold Spring Ranch! Think of the allurement of that name, just as itstands, without any disconcerting qualification whatever! Any girl withyellow-brown hair and yellow-brown eyes to match, and a dreamy temperamentthat beautifies everything her imagination touches, would be sure to builda veritable Eve's garden around those three small words.

  With that picture still before her mental vision, clear as if she had allher life been familiar with it in reality, she rode beside Manley for threeweary hours, across a wide, wide prairie which looked perfectly level whenyou viewed it as a whole, but which proved all hills and hollows whenyou drove over it. During those three hours they passed not one humanhabitation after the first five miles were behind them. There had been aranch, back there against a reddish-yellow bluff. Val had gazed upon it,and then turned her head away, distressed because human beings couldconsent to live in such unattractive surroundings. It was bad in its way asHope, she thought, but did not say, because Manley was talking about hiscattle, and she did not want to interrupt him.

  After that there had been no houses of any sort. There was a barbed-wirefence stretching away and away until the posts were mere pencil linesagainst the blue, where the fence dipped over the last hill before the skybent down and kissed the earth.

  The length of that fence was appalling in a vague, wordless way, Valunconsciously drew closer to her husband when she looked at it, andshivered in spite of the midsummer heat.

  "You're getting tired." Manley put his arm around her and held her there.

  "We're over half-way now. A little longer and we'll be home." Then hebethought him that she might want some preparation for that home-coming."You mustn't expect much, little wife. It's a bachelor's house, so far.You'll have to do some fixing before it will suit you. You don't lookforward to anything like Fern Hill, do you?"

  Val laughed, and bent solicitously over the suitcase, which her feet hadmarred. "Of course I don't. Nothing out here is like Fern Hill. I know ourranch is different from anything I ever knew--but I know just how it willbe, and how everything will look."

  "Oh! Do you?" Manley looked at her a bit anxiously.

  "For three years," Val reminded him, "you have been describing thingsto me. You told me what it was like when you first took the place. Youdescribed everything, from Cold Spring Coulee to the house you built, andthe spring under the rock wall, and even the meadow lark's nest you foundin the weeds. Of _course_ I know."

  "It's going to seem pretty rough, at first," he observed ratherapologetically.

  "Yes--but I shall not mind that. I want it to be rough. I'm tired to deathof the smug smoothness of my life so far. Oh, if you only knew how I havehated Fern Hill, these last three years, especially since I graduated. Justthe same petty little lives lived in the same petty little way, day in andday out. Every Sunday the class in Sunday school, and the bells ringingand the same little walk of four blocks there and back. Every Tuesday andFriday the club meeting--the Merry Maids, and the Mascot, both just alike,where you did the same things. And the same round of calls with mamma,on the same people, twice a month the year round. And the little socialfestivities--ah, Manley, if you only knew how I tong for something roughand real in my life!" It was very nearly what she said to the tired-facedteacher on the train.

  "Well, if that's what you want, you've come to the right place," he toldher dryly.

  Later, when they drew close to a red coulee rim which he said was the farside of Cold Spring Coulee, she forgot how tired she was, and felt everynerve quiver with eagerness.

  Later still, when in the glare of a July sun they drove around a low knoll,dipped into a wide, parched coulee, and then came upon a barren littlehabitation inclosed in a meager fence of the barbed wire she thought sodetestable, she shut her eyes mentally to something she could not quitebring herself to face.

  He lifted her out and tumbled the great trunks upon the ground before hedrove on to the corrals. "Here's the key," he said, "if you want to go in.I won't be more than a minute or two." He did not look into her face whenhe spoke.

  Val stood just inside the gate and tried to adjust all this to her mentalpicture. There was the front yard, for instance. A few straggling vinesagainst the porch, and a sickly cluster or two of blossoms--those were thesweet peas, surely. The sun-baked bed of pale-green plants without so muchas a bud of promise, she recognized, after a second glance, as the poppies.For the rest, there were weeds against the fence, sun-ripened grass troddenflat, yellow, gravelly patches where nothing grew--and a glaring, burningsun beating down upon it all.

  The cottage--never afterward did she think of it by that name, but alwaysas a shack--was built of boards placed perpendicularly, with battens nailedover the cracks to keep out the wind and the snow. At one side was a"lean-to" kitchen, and on the other side was the porch that was justa narrow platform with a roof over it. It was not wide enough for arocking-chair, to say nothing of swinging a hammock. In the first hastyinspection this seemed to be about all. She was still hesitating before thedoor when Manley came back from putting up the horses.

  "I'm afraid your flowers are a lost cause," he remarked cheerfully. "Theywere looking pretty good two or three weeks ago. This hot weather has driedthem up. Next year we'll have water down here to the house. All thesethings take time."

  "Oh, of course they do." Val managed to smile into his eyes. "Let's see howmany dishes you left dirty; bachelors always leave their dishes unwashed onthe table, don't they?"


  "Sometimes--but I generally wash mine." He led the way into the house,which smelled hot and close, with the odor of food long since cookedand eaten, before he threw all the windows open. The front room wasclean--after a man's idea of cleanliness. The floor was covered with anexceedingly dusty carpet, and a rug or two. Her latest photograph wasnailed to the wall; and when Val saw it she broke into hysterical laughter.

  "You've nailed your colors to the mast," she cried, and after that it wasall a joke. The home-made couch, with the calico cushions and the cowhidespread, was a matter for mirth. She sat down upon it to try it, and wasinformed that chicken wire makes a fine spring. The rickety table, withtobacco, magazines, and books placed upon it in orderly piles, wassomething to smile over. The chairs, and especially the one cane rockerwhich went sidewise over the floor if you rocked in it long enough, werepronounced original.

  In the kitchen the same masculine idea of cleanliness and order obtained.The stove was quite red, but it had been swept clean. The table was pushedagainst the only window there, and the back part was filled with glasspreserve jars, cans, and a loaf of bread wrapped carefully in paper; butthe oilcloth cover was clean--did it not show quite plainly the marks ofthe last washing? Two frying pans were turned bottom up on an obscure tablein an obscure corner of the room, and a zinc water pail stood beside them.

  There were other details which impressed themselves upon her shrinkingbrain, and though she still insisted upon smiling at everything, she stoodin the middle of the room holding up her skirts quite unconsciously, as ifshe were standing at a muddy street crossing, wondering how in the worldshe was ever going to reach the Other side.

  "Isn't it all--deliciously--primitive?" she asked, in a weak little voice,when the smile would stay no longer. "I--love it, dear." That was a lie;more, she was not in the habit of fibbing for the sake of politeness oranything else, so that the words stood for a good deal.

  Manley looked into the zinc water pail, took it up, and started for anouter door, rattling the tin dipper as he went. "Want to go up to thespring?" he queried, over his shoulder, "Water's the first thing--I'mhorribly thirsty."

  Val turned to follow him. "Oh, yes--the spring!" She stopped, however, assoon as she had spoken. "No, dear. There'll be plenty of other times. I'llstay here."

  He gave her a glance bright with love and blind happiness in her presencethere, and went off whistling and rattling the pail at his side.

  Val did not even watch him go. She stood still in the kitchen and looked atthe table, and at the stove, and at the upturned frying pans. She watchedtwo great horseflies buzzing against a window-pane, and when she couldendure that no longer, she went into the front room and stared vacantlyaround at the bare walls. When she saw her picture again, nailedfast beside the kitchen door, her face lost a little of its frozenblankness--enough so that her lips quivered until she bit them intosteadiness.

  She went then to the door and stood looking dully out into the parchedyard, and at the wizened little pea vines clutching feebly at theirwhite-twine trellis. Beyond stretched the bare hills with the waveringbrown line running down the nearest one--the line that she knew was thetrail from town. She was guilty of just one rebellious sentence before shestruggled back to optimism.

  "I said I wanted it to be rough, but I didn't mean--why, this is justsqualid!" She looked down the coulee and glimpsed the river flowing calmlypast the mouth of it, a majestic blue belt fringed sparsely with green.It must be a mile away, but it relieved wonderfully the monotony of brownhills, and the vivid coloring brightened her eyes. She heard Manley enterthe kitchen, set down the pail of water, and come on to where she stood.

  "I'd forgotten you said we could see the river from here," she told him,smiling over her shoulder. "It's beautiful, isn't it? I don't suppose,though, there's a boat within millions of miles."

  "Oh, there's a boat down there. It leaks, though. I just use it for ducks,close to shore. Admiring our view? Great, don't you think?"

  Val clasped her hands before her and let her gaze travel again over thesweep of rugged hills. "It's--wonderful. I thought I knew, but I see Ididn't. I feel very small, Manley; does one ever grow up to it?"

  He seemed dimly to catch the note of utter desolation. "You'll get used toall that," he assured her. "I thought I'd reached the jumping-off place, atfirst. But now--you couldn't dog me outa the country."

  He was slipping into the vernacular, and Val noticed it, and wondered dullyif she would ever do likewise. She had not yet admitted to herself thatManley was different. She had told herself many times that it would takeweeks to wipe out the strangeness born of three years' separation. He wasthe same, of course; everything else was new and--different. That was all.He seemed intensely practical, and he seemed to feel that his love-makinghad all been done by letter, and that nothing now remained save thebusiness of living. So, when he told her to rest, and that he would getdinner and show her how a bachelor kept house, she let him go with no replysave that vague, impersonal smile which Kent had encountered at the depot.

  While he rattled things about in the kitchen, she stood still in thedoorway with her fingers doubled into tight little fists, and stared outover the great, treeless, unpeopled land which had swallowed her alive. Shetried to think--and then, in another moment, she was trying not to think.

  Glancing quickly over her shoulder, to make sure Manley was too busy tofollow her, she went off the porch and stood uncertain in the parchedinclosure which was the front yard.

  "I may as well see it all, and be done," she whispered, and went stealthilyaround the corner of the house, holding up her skirts as she had done inthe kitchen. There was a dim path beaten in the wiry grass--a path whichstarted at the kitchen door and wound away up the coulee. She followed it.Undoubtedly it would lead her to the spring; beyond that she refused to lether thoughts travel.

  In five minutes--for she went slowly--she stopped beside a stock-trampledpool of water and yellow mud. A few steps farther on, a barrel had beensunk in the ground at the base of a huge gray rock; a barrel which filledslowly and spilled the overflow into the mud. There was also a trough, andthere was a barrier made of poles and barbed wire to keep the cattle fromthe barrel. One crawled between two wires, it would seem, to dip up waterfor the house. There were no trees--not real trees. There were somechokecherry bushes higher than her head, and there were other bushes thatdid not look particularly enlivening.

  With a smile of bitter amusement, she tucked her skirts tightly around her,crept through the fence, and filled a chipped granite cup which stood upona rock ledge, and drank slowly. Then she laughed aloud.

  "The water really _is_ cold," she said. "Anywhere else it would bedelicious. And that's a spring, I suppose." Mercilessly she was strippingher mind of her illusions, and was clothing it in the harsher weave ofreality. "All these hills are Manley's--our ranch." She took another sipand set down the cup. "And so Cold Spring Ranch means--all this."

  Down the coulee she heard Manley call. She stood still, pushing back afallen lock of fine, yellow hair. She turned toward the sound, and the sunin her eyes turned them yellow as the hair above them. She was beautiful,in an odd, white-and-gold way. If her eyes had been blue, or gray--or evenbrown--she would have been merely pretty; but as they were, that amber tintwhere one looked for something else struck one unexpectedly and made herwhole face unforgettably lovely. However, the color of her eyes and herhair did not interest her then, or make life any easier. She was quiteordinarily miserable and homesick, as she went reluctantly back along thegrassy trails The odor of fried bacon came up to her, and she hated bacon.She hated everything.

  "I've been to the spring," she called out, resolutely cheerful, as soon asshe came in sight of Manley, waiting in the kitchen door; she ran towardhim lightly. "However does the water keep so deliciously cool through thishot weather? I don't wonder you call this Cold Spring Ranch."

  Manley straightened proudly. "I'm glad you like it; I was afraid you mightnot, just at first. But you're the right stuff--I m
ight have known it. Notevery woman could come out here and appreciate this country right at thestart."

  Val stopped at the steps, panting a little from her run, and smiledunflinchingly up into his face.