The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 30

Eleanor didn't answer. She was trying to think what had changed the driver's friendly manner. He had neither greeted her nor proffered the reins. And now, oh, philosopher of the human heart, for each of us is a philosopher inside, answer me: why did the driver, who was a bit of a hero, and the lavender silk, who was an adventuress, and the gold teeth, who was a slattern, neither pure nor simple, why did each and all eagerly believe the evil, so vague it had not been stated, written by an unknown blackmailer, in the face of the reputation of purity sitting beside them?

"M' father uz down inside," continued the child. "He's sleep. We're goin' t' live on th' Ridge. D' y' know what a Ridge iz? We're goin'

t' be waal-thy--m' father says so. He says we won't have a thing t' do but sit toight an' whuttle un' sput, un' whuttle un' sput fur three years, then the com'ny wull huv t' pay us what he asks. He says they think they'll pay him off fur three hun'red; but he says he _knows_, he does; un' he's goin' t' hold 'em up fur half. Unless they give him half he'll tell--"

"What?" asked Eleanor, suddenly wakening up to the meaning of the chatter. "What is your father?"

"He's trunk jes' now," said the child. Then she reached her face up to Eleanor's confidentially. The little teeth were very unclean and the breath was very garlicky, indeed. "He's goin' t' be a dummy," she whispered with a gurgle of childish glee, "un' he says he'll easily hold 'em up for twenty thousand without doin' a thing fur five years but whuttle un' sput."

"A dummy? Oh," said Eleanor.

Even the driver relaxed enough to flick the tandem grays with his whip and permit a twisted smile to play round the tobacco wad in his cheek.

They ate their late supper in the Ranch House by lamp light, her father scarcely uttering a word, the evening paper still sticking out of his coat pocket.

"I know this sheep affair has been a horrible, hideous loss," she said.

"Is that what's worrying you, father?"

MacDonald shoved back from the table.

"Pah, that's nothing," he said.

He stood waiting till the German cook had removed the dishes. Then he drew the paper from his pocket.

"There's something here I'm sorry you'll have to know," he said. "You won't understand how low the meaning of most of it is; but I'm sorry they hit you to try and hurt me."

He threw himself down in a big leather chair. She took the paper mechanically and sat on the arm of the chair to read. She read slowly and deliberately to the end. Then she re-read both columns; and the paper fell from her hands. She did not know it, but the same suppressed fury was blazing in her face as she had seen on his at the stage door.

"So that is what was doing when I went to the Senator's office this afternoon to plead with him that things could not go on in the old plundering way. That is what his man's visit meant here the other day to express sympathy with you for the loss of the sheep? Now I understand what the loafers at the station meant, and the driver's unfriendliness, and those unclean women; and to think they framed it all out of that innocent coat. You know, father, Mr. Wayland had carried Fordie down from the Rim Rocks. We carried the body in together."

"Where is Wayland?" asked MacDonald; and she poured out the full story of all that had happened. I hope, gentle reader, you will please to observe that if the father had viewed the facts of that recital through the same tainted mind as Mr. Bat Brydges, a breach would have occurred that neither time nor regret could have bridged. I confess when I see breaches occur that wrench lives and break hearts through love harboring suspicion, I don't think the love is very much worth the name. You can't both have your plant grow, and keep tearing up the roots to see if they are growing. You can't both throw mud in a spring and drink out of a well of love undefiled. If love grows by what it feeds on, so does suspicion. He did not once look up questioningly to her eyes. Instead, he reached up and took hold of her hand. For the first time in their lives, father and daughter came together.

"But there is one thing you are mistaken about, father. They did not hit me, to hurt you. They hit me, to stop d.i.c.k Wayland."

"Why, what difference can you make to Wayland?"

She hid her face on his shoulder.

"I love him," she said.

When the German cook came in with the washed dishes, father and daughter still sat in the big arm chair; and you may depend on it, that flunky carried out to the ranch hands, guzzling over the evening paper in the bunk house, a proper report of a heart broken father and a repentant daughter; for when we look out on the world, do we see the world at all; or do we see the shadows of our own inner souls cast out on the pa.s.sing things of life?

CHAPTER XX

A FAITH WORKABLE FOR MEN ON THE JOB

"The point is," said Wayland, "though, we have driven out this nest of beauties, we have no guarantee another nest won't take their place; and so we're not much farther ahead than before, with the chances I'll be called down for exceeding my duties."

"And y'll keep on bein' where y' were before till y' get the Man Higher Up," interrupted Matthews.

They had camped among the red firs where the Desert crossed the State Line and merged from cut rocks to broken timber. It was seven weeks since they had set out from the Upper Mesas of the Rim Rocks, four weeks since they had left the saline pool. Man and beast, f.a.gged to the point of utter exhaustion, retraced steps slower than fresh hunters on an untried trail. Also, going down, they had followed hard wherever fugitives led. Coming back, they struck across to the Western Desert road, and travelled from belt to belt of the irrigation farms, with their orange-green cottonwood groves and bluish-green alfalfa fields and little match box houses stuck out of sight among peach orchards.

The parched-earth, burnt-oil smell gave place to the minty odor of hay in wind rows, with the cool water tang of the big irrigation ditch flowing liquid gold in the yellow August light. One evening, Matthews looked back to the looming heat waving and writhing above the orange sands beneath a sky of lilac and topaz round a sunset flowing from a dull red ball of fire. Far ahead, the edges of forested mountain cut the heat haze with opal winged light above what might have been peaks or clouds.

"'Tis beautiful, Wayland, y'r lone Desert world; but man alive, it's sad! Y' call some the Painted Desert, don't ye? 'Tis like a painted woman, Wayland, vera beautiful, vera fair to look on an' allurin', but a' out o' perspective; an' Wayland, the painted woman is always a bit lonely in the bottom o' her soul spite o' harsh laugh. So is the Desert wi' its harsh silence. Those as like to be shrivelled up wi'

thirst, may have it! A'm a plain man!"

Then one morning, the opal swimming above the smoke haze of the North shone,--was it the shape of a cross?

"Wayland, man, look!"

The old frontiersman had taken off his hat.

"Man alive, open y'r throat an' let out a yell."

"I'm too busy drinking in the air," answered Wayland.

And they both laughed. The mule and the broncho stood pointing their ears forward. Wayland's mare, which he had bought at one of the irrigation farms, lifted up her neck and whinnied. It was at that irrigation farm operated by a retired newspaper man from Chicago--they had got a reading of the first newspaper seen since leaving the Valley and learned that the bodies of the two remaining fugitive outlaws had been found by the railway navvies. Wayland thoughtfully removed his Forest Service medallion. Men do not question each other over much in the West. They had pa.s.sed on unquestioning and unquestioned, Wayland a disguised figure in his new ready-to-wear kakhi, not a sign of the Forest Service about them, but the green felt hat still worn by the old preacher, and the hatchets fastened to the saddles.

"How many Holy Cross Mountains have y' in the West, Wayland?"

"Three that I know of."

"That's ours, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's ours: the old priests and explorers scattered the name round pretty thick in the old days."

"How far do you make it?"

"About a hundred miles, perhaps more!"

"Been a pilot to the priests and explorers for centuries?"

"I guess so, sir."

"Wayland, may it be so t' th' Nation, now! Y've got a wilderness an' a Red Sea an' a Dead Sea an' a devilish dirty lot o' travellin' to do on th' way t' y'r promised land; an' A'm thinkin', man, y've wasted a lot o' time on the trail wors.h.i.+ppin' th' calf; an' G.o.d knows who is y'r Moses."

They camped that night among the evergreens with red fir branches for beds, the first beds they had known for seven weeks, with the needled end pointing in and the branch end out, "unless y' want t' sleep on stumps," the old preacher had admonished the bed maker. And during the night, the wind sprang up shaking all the pixie tambourines in the pines and the hemlocks, and setting the poplars and cottonwoods clapping their hands. A spurt of moisture hit the old man's face.

"Man alive, but is that rain?" he asked. Wayland laughed. "Only a drop from a broken pine needle; but rain would taste good, wouldn't it?"

"D' y' smell it? Smell hard! It's like cloves."

Wayland laughed. He had had all these sensations of coming back from South to North before.