The Prairie Mother Part 8

But all I could see in the eye of my sedate old Bobs was love, love infinite and inarticulate, love too big ever to be put into words.

"d.i.n.ky-Dunk," I said, interrupting my lord and master at his reading, "if G.o.d is really love, as the Good Book says, I don't see why they ever started talking about the Lamb of G.o.d."

"Why shouldn't they?" asked Diddums, not much interested.

"Because lambs may be artless and innocent little things, but when you've got their innocence you've got about everything. They're not the least bit intelligent, and they're self-centered and self-immured.

Now, with dogs it's different. Dogs love you and guard you and ache to serve you." And I couldn't help stopping to think about the dogs I'd known and loved, the dogs who once meant so much in my life: c.h.i.n.kie's Bingo, with his big baptizing tongue and his momentary rainbow as he emerged from the water and shook himself with my stick still in his mouth; Timmie with his ineradicable hatred for cats; Maxie with all his tricks and his singsong of howls when the piano played; Schnider, with his mania for my slippers and undies, which he carried into most unexpected quarters; and Gyp, G.o.d bless him, who was so homely of face and form but so true blue in temper and trust.

"Life, to a dog," I went on, "really means devotion to man, doesn't it?"

"What are you driving at, anyway?" asked d.i.n.ky-Dunk.

"I was just wondering," I said as I sat staring into Bobs' eyes, "how strange it would be if, after all, G.o.d was really a dog, the loving and faithful Watch-Dog of His universe!"

"Please don't be blasphemous," d.i.n.ky-Dunk coldly remarked.

"But I'm not blasphemous," I tried to tell him. "And I was never more serious in my life. There's even something sacred about it, once you look at it in the right way. Just think of the Shepherd-Dog of the Stars, the vigilant and affectionate Watcher who keeps the wandering worlds in their folds! That's not one bit worse than the lamb idea, only we've got so used to the lamb it doesn't shock us into attention any more. Why, just look at these eyes of Bobs right now. There's more n.o.bility and devotion and trust and love in them than was ever in all the eyes of all the lambs that ever frisked about the fields and sheep-folds from Dan to Beersheba!"

"Your theory, I believe, is entertained by the Igorrotes," remarked d.i.n.ky-Dunk as he made a pretense of turning back to his tractor-pamphlet. "The Igorrotes and other barbarians," he repeated, so as to be sure the screw was being turned in the proper direction.

"And now I know why she said the more she knew about men the better she liked dogs," I just as coldly remarked, remembering Madame de Stael. "And I believe you're jealous of poor old Bobs just because he loves me more than you do."

d.i.n.ky-Dunk put down his pamphlet. Then he called Bobs over to his side of the table. But Bobs, I noticed, didn't go until I'd nodded approval. So d.i.n.ky-Dunk took his turn at sitting with Bobs' nose in his hand and staring down into the fathomless...o...b.. that stared up at him.

"You'll never get a lady, me lud, to look up at you like that," I told him.

"Perhaps they have," retorted d.i.n.ky-Dunk, with his face slightly averted.

"And having done so in the past, there's the natural chance that they'll do so in the future," I retorted, making it half a question and half a statement. But he seemed none too pleased at that thrust, and he didn't even answer me when I told him I supposed I was his Airedale, because they say an Airedale is a one-man dog.

"Then don't at least get distemper," observed my Kaikobad, very quietly, over the top of his tractor-catalogue.

I made no sign that I had heard him. But d.i.n.ky-Dunk would never have spoken to me that way, three short years ago. And I imagine he knows it. For, after all, a change has been taking place, insubstantial and unseen and subterranean, a settling of the foundations of life which comes not only to a building as it grows older but also to the heart as it grows older. And I'm worried about the future.

_Monday the--Monday the I-forget-what_

It's Monday, blue Monday, that's all I remember, except that there's a rift in the lute of life at Alabama Ranch. Yesterday of course was Sunday. And out of that day of rest d.i.n.ky-Dunk spent just five hours over at Casa Grande. When he showed up, rather silent and constrained and an hour and a half late for dinner, I asked him what had happened.

He explained that he'd been adjusting the carbureter on Lady Alicia's new car.

"Don't you think, Duncan," I said, trying to speak calmly, though I was by no means calm inside, "that it's rather a sacrifice of dignity, holding yourself at that woman's beck and call?"

"We happen to be under a slight debt of obligation to _that woman_,"

my husband retorted, clearly more upset than I imagined he could be.

"But, d.i.n.ky-Dunk, you're not her hired man," I protested, wondering how, without hurting him, I could make him see the thing from my standpoint.

"No, but that's about what I'm going to become," was his altogether unexpected answer.

"I can't say that I quite understand you," I told him, with a sick feeling which I found it hard to keep under. Yet he must have noticed something amusingly tragic in my att.i.tude, for he laughed, though it wasn't without a touch of bitterness. And laughter, under the circ.u.mstances, didn't altogether add to my happiness.

"I simply mean that Allie's made me an offer of a hundred and fifty dollars a month to become her ranch-manager," d.i.n.ky-Dunk announced with a casualness that was patently forced. "And as I can't wring that much out of this half-section, and as I'd only be four-flus.h.i.+ng if I let outsiders come in and take everything away from a tenderfoot, I don't see--"

"And such a lovely tenderfoot," I interrupted.

"--I don't see why it isn't the decent and reasonable thing," concluded my husband, without stooping to acknowledge the interruption, "to accept that offer."

I understood, in a way, every word he was saying; yet it seemed several minutes before the real meaning of a somewhat startling situation seeped through to my brain.

"But surely, if we get a crop," I began. It was, however, a lame beginning. And like most lame beginnings, it didn't go far.

"How are we going to get a crop when we can't even raise money enough to get a tractor?" was d.i.n.ky-Dunk's challenge. "When we haven't help, and we're short of seed-grain, and we can't even get a gang-plow on credit?"

It didn't sound like my d.i.n.ky-Dunk of old, for I knew that he was equivocating and making excuses, that he was engineering our ill luck into an apology for worse conduct. But I was afraid of myself, even more than I was afraid of d.i.n.ky-Dunk. And the voice of Instinct kept whispering to me to be patient.

"Why couldn't we sell off some of the steers?" I valiantly suggested.

"It's the wrong season for selling steers," d.i.n.ky-Dunk replied with a ponderous sort of patience. "And besides, those cattle don't belong to me."

"Then whose are they?" I demanded.

"They're yours," retorted d.i.n.ky-Dunk, and I found his hair-splitting, at such a time, singularly exasperating.

"I rather imagine they belonged to the family, if you intend it to remain a family."

He winced at that, as I had proposed that he should.

"It seems to be getting a dangerously divided one," he flung back, with a quick and hostile glance in my direction.

I was ready to fly to pieces, like a barrel that's lost its hoops. But a thin and quavery and over-disturbing sound from the swing-box out on the sleeping-porch brought me up short. It was a pizzicato note which I promptly recognized as the gentle Pee-Wee's advertis.e.m.e.nt of wakefulness. So I beat a quick and involuntary retreat, knowing only too well what I'd have ahead of me if Poppsy joined in to make that solo a duet.

But Pee-Wee refused to be silenced, and what d.i.n.ky-Dunk had just said felt more and more like a branding-iron against my breast. So I carried my wailing infant back to the dinner-table where my husband still stood beside his empty chair. The hostile eye with which he regarded the belcantoing Pee-Wee reminded me of the time he'd spoken of his own off-spring as "squalling brats." And the memory wasn't a tranquillizing one. It was still another spur roweling me back to the ring of combat.

"Then you've decided to take that position?" I demanded as I surveyed the cooling roast-beef and the fallen Yorks.h.i.+re pudding.

"As soon as they can fix up my sleeping-quarters in the bunk-house over at Casa Grande," was d.i.n.ky-Dunk's reply. He tried to say it casually, but didn't quite succeed, for I could see his color deepen a little. And this, in turn, led to a second only too obvious gesture of self-defense.

"My monthly check, of course, will be delivered to you," he announced, with an averted eye.

"Why to me?" I coldly inquired.

"It wouldn't be of much use to me," he retorted. And I resented his basking thus openly in the fires of martyrdom.

"In that case," I asked, "what satisfaction are you getting out of your new position?"