Ben Blair Part 12

Scotty considered for a moment. "Do you mean that seriously?" he asked.

"Yes."

By the sense of feeling alone, the Englishman rolled a cigarette skilfully. "How about the stock here while we're gone," he said hesitatingly. "Do you suppose we'd find anything left when we came back in the Spring?"

Rankin crowded the half-burned tobacco down into the pipe-bowl with his little finger. "I don't think you got the idea," he explained. "My plan was for you to go East in the Fall and put the kids in school. I'd stay here and see that everything ran smoothly while you were gone. Mrs.

Baker has said a dozen times that she wanted a change--for a time, anyway."

Scotty threw one long leg over the other. "As usual you're right, Rankin," he said slowly. "The Lord knows Mollie gets restless enough at times. People were like ants in a hill where she was raised, and that life was a part of her." He took a last puff at the cigarette, and with a toss sent the smoking stump spinning like a firefly into the darkness.

"And Flossie can't grow up wild--I know that. I'll talk your suggestion over with Mollie first, but I think I'd be safe in saying right now that we'll accept."

For a moment Rankin did not speak; then he knocked the ashes out of his pipe upon his heel.

"Excuse me if I keep going back to something unpleasant, Baker," he said slowly, "but in considering the matter there's one thing I don't want you to forget." Then, after a meaning pause, he went on: "It's the same reason I had for not introducing Ben in the first place."

Scotty drew out his book of rice-paper again almost involuntarily.

"I'd thought of that this time," he said; then paused to finger a gauzy sheet absently. "I don't see why I should consider it now, though--seeing I didn't before."

Rankin said nothing, and conversation lapsed. Irresistibly, but so gradually as to be all but unconscious, the spirit of the prairie night--a sensation, a conception of infinite vastness, of una.s.sailable serenity--stole over and took possession of the men. The ambitious and manifold artificial needs for which men barter their happiness, their sense of humanity, even life itself, seemed beyond belief out there alone with the stars, with the prairie night-wind singing in the ears; seemed so puny that they elicited only a smile. The l.u.s.t of show, of extravagance, follies, wisdoms, man's loves and hates--how their true proportions stand revealed against the eternal background of immeasurable distance, in nature's vast scheme!

Scotty cleared his throat. "I used to think, when I first came here, that I'd been a fool; but now, somehow, at times like this, I wonder if I didn't blunder into the wisest act of my life." The prairie spirit had taken hold of him. "And the longer I stay the more it grows upon me that such a life as this, where one's success is not the measure of another's failure, is the only one to live. It is the only life," he added after a pause.

Rankin said nothing.

Scotty was silent for a moment, but the mood was too strong for him to remain so, and he went on.

"I know the ordinary person would laugh if I said it, but really, I believe I'm developing a distaste for money. It's simply another term for caste; and that word, with the unreasoning superiority it implies, has somehow become hateful to me." He looked up into the night.

"I used to think I was happy back in England. I had my home and my a.s.sociates; born so, because their fathers were friends of my father, their grandfathers of my grandfather's cla.s.s. As a small landlord I had my gentlemanly leisure; but as well as I know my name, I realize now that I could never return to that life again. Looking back, I see its intolerable narrowness, its petty smugness. By comparison it's like the relative clearness of the atmosphere there and here. There, perhaps I could see a few miles: here, I look away over leagues and leagues of distance. It's symbolic." The voice paused; the face, turned directly toward his companion's, tried in the half-darkness to read its expression. "I've been in this prairie country long enough now to realize that financially I've made a mistake. I can earn a living, and that's all; but nevertheless I'm happy--happier than I ever realized it was possible for me to be. I've got enough--more would be a burden to me. If I have a trouble in the world, it's because I see the inevitable prospect of money in the future,--money I don't want, for I'm an only son and my father is comparatively wealthy. Without turning his hand, his rent-roll is five thousand pounds a year. He's getting along in life. Some day--it may be five years, it may be fifteen--he will die and leave it to me. I am to maintain and pa.s.s on the family name, the family dignity. It was all cut and dried generations back, generations before I was born."

Still Rankin said nothing. For any indication he gave, the other's revelation might have been only that he had a hundred dollars deposited in the savings bank against a rainy day.

But Scotty was now fairly under headway. He stripped his reserve and confidence bare.

"You see now why I'm glad to consider your proposition. Whatever I believe myself must be of secondary importance. I've others to think about--Florence and her mother. Flossie is only a child, but Mollie is a woman, and has lived her life in sight of the brazen calf. She doesn't realize, she never can realize, that it is of bra.s.s and not of gold.

Personally, I believe, as I believe in my own existence, that Flossie would be immeasurably happier if she never saw the other side of life,--the artificial side,--but lived right here, knowing what we taught her and developing like a healthy animal; perhaps, when the time came, marrying a rancher, having her own home, her own family interests, and living close to nature. But it can't be. I've got to develop her, cultivate her, fit her for any society." The voice paused, and the speaker turned his face away.

"G.o.d knows,--and He knows also that I love her dearly,--that looking into the future I wish sometimes she were the daughter of another man."

The minutes pa.s.sed. The ponies s.h.i.+fted restlessly and then were still.

In the lull, the soft night-breeze crooned its minor song, while near or far away--no human ear could measure the distance--a prairie owl gave its weird cry. Then silence fell as before.

Once more Scotty turned, facing his companion.

"I've a question to ask you, Rankin; may I ask it without offence?"

The big man nodded. By the starlight Baker caught the motion.

"You told me once that you were a college man, and that you had a Master's degree. From the very first you started cattle-raising on a big scale. You must have had money. Still, such being the case, you left culture and civilization far behind and came here to choose a life absolutely different. I have told you why I wish to educate my daughter.

But why, feeling as you must have felt and must still feel, since you're here, why do you wish to educate this waif boy you've picked up? By all the standards of convention, he is at the very bottom of the social scale. Why do you want to do this?"

It was a psychological moment. Even in the semi-darkness, Rankin felt the other's eyes fixed piercingly upon him. He pa.s.sed his hand over his face; he seemed about to speak. But the habit of reticence was too strong upon him. Even the inspiration of the Englishman's confidence was not sufficient to break the seal of his own reserve. He arose slowly and shook the clinging wisps of hay from his clothes.

"For somewhat the same reason as your own," he answered at last. "Ben, like Flossie, is a child, an odd old child to be sure, but nevertheless a child. I have no reason to know that when he grows up his beliefs will be my beliefs. He must see both sides of the coin, and judge for himself."

The speaker paused, then walked slowly over to the old buckboard. "It's getting late, and I've got a long drive home." With an effort he mounted into the seat and picked up the reins. "Good-night."

Scotty hesitated a moment, and then said, "Good-night."

CHAPTER VIII

THE GLITTER OF THE UNKNOWN

Twelve years slipped by. Short as they seemed to those actually living them, they had brought great material changes. No longer did the ranch cattle graze at the will of their owners, but, under stress of compet.i.tion, they browsed within the confines of miles upon miles of galvanized fencing. Neighbors, as Rankin said, were near now. There were four within a radius of twenty miles. To be sure, there was still plenty of land west of them, beyond the broad muddy Missouri,--open rough land, gradually rising in elevation, where a traveller could journey for days and days without seeing a human face. But this was not then a part of the so-called "cattle ranges." In the parlance of the country, that was "West,"--a place to hunt in, a refuge for criminals, but as yet giving no indication of ever becoming of practical use.

The Box R Ranch had evolved along with the others, and always well in advance. The house now boasted six rooms; the barn and stock-sheds had at a distance the appearance of a town in themselves; the collection of haying implements--mowers, loaders, stackers--was almost complete enough to stock a jobbing house. The herd itself had augmented, despite its annual reduction, until one artesian well was inadequate to supply water; and fifteen miles north, at the extreme limit of his home-ranch, Rankin had sunk another well, making a sort of sub-station of that point. From it an observer with good eyes could see the outlines of the modern Big B Ranch property, built on the old site, and ostensibly operated by a long-legged Yankee, Rob Hoyt by name, but in reality owned, as had been the remnant of stock Tom Blair left behind him, by saloon-keeper Mick Kennedy.

The ranch force had changed very little. Rankin, stouter by a quarter-hundred weight, s.h.a.ggier of eyebrows and with an accentuated droop in the upper eyelids, and if possible an increased taciturnity, still lived his daytime life mainly on wheels. The old buckboard had finally succ.u.mbed, but its counterpart, mud-spattered and weather-bleached, had taken its place. In the kitchen, Ma Graham still presided, her acc.u.mulated avoirdupois seeming to have been gathered at the expense of her lord, who in equal ratio thinner and more weazened, danced attendance as of old. Only one of the former cowboys now remained. That one, strange to say, was Grannis, the "man from nowhere,"

who had apparently taken root at last. Regularly on the last day of each month he drew his pay, and without a word of explanation or comment disappeared upon the back of a cow-pony, to reappear, perhaps in ten hours, perhaps in sixty, dead broke, with a thirst seemingly unappeasable, but quite non-committal concerning his experience, apparently satisfied and ready to take up the dull routine of his life again.

Last of all, Benjamin Blair. Precisely as the boy had given promise, the youth had developed. He was now mature in size, in poise, in action.

Long of leg, long of arm, long of face, he stood a half head above Rankin, who had been the tallest man upon the place. Yet he was not awkward. Physically he was of the type, but magnified, to which all cowboys belong; and no one would ever call him awkward or uncouth.

There had been less change upon the Baker ranch. Scotty was not an expansionist. Scarcely a score more horses grazed in his paddock than of old. The barn, though often repaired, was still of sod and thatch. The house contained the original number of rooms. The experiment with trees had never been repeated. If possible, the man himself had altered even less than his surroundings. Scrupulously fresh-shaven each day, fortified beyond the compound lenses of his spectacles, a stranger would have guessed him anywhere from thirty-five to fifty.

Time had not dealt as kindly with Mrs. Baker. She seemed to have aged enough for both herself and her husband. Notwithstanding the fact that for the first eight years of the twelve, the family had spent half their time in the East, she had grown careless of her appearance. True to his instincts, Scotty still dressed for dinner in his antiquated evening clothes; but pathetic as was the example, it had long ceased to stimulate her. The last four years had been dead years with Mollie Baker. The future held but one promise. She referred to it daily, almost hourly; and at such times only would a trace of youth and beauty return to the one-time winsome face. She looked forward and dreamed of an event after which she would do certain things upon which she had set her heart; when, as she said, she would begin to live. It seemed to Scotty ghastly to speak about that event, for it was the death of his father.

The last member of the family had developed with the child's promise, and at seventeen Florence was beautiful; not with a conventional prettiness, but with a vital feminine attraction. All that the mother had been, with her dark, oval face, her ma.s.s of walnut-brown hair, her great dark eyes, her uptilted chin, the daughter was now; but with added health and an augmented femininity that the mother had never known.

Moreover, she had an independence, a dominance, born perhaps of the wild prairie influence, that at times made her parents almost gasp. Except in the minute details of their daily existence, which habit had made unchangeable, she ruled them absolutely. Even Rankin had become a secondary factor. Scotty probably would have denied the a.s.sertion emphatically, yet at the bottom of his consciousness he realized that had she told him to sell everything he possessed for what he could get and return to old Suss.e.x he would have complied. Considering Mollie's daily plaint, it was a constant source of wonder to him that the girl did not do this; but she seemed wholly satisfied with things as they were. For exercise and excitement she rode almost every horse upon the place--rode astride like a man. For amus.e.m.e.nt she read everything she could lay hands upon, both from the modest Baker library and from the larger and more creditable collection which Rankin had imported from the East. This was the first real library that had ever entered the State, and, subject for speculation, it had uniformly the front fly-leaves remaining as mere stubs, as though the pages had been torn out by a hurried hand. What name was it that had been in those hundreds of volumes? For what reason had it been so carefully removed? The girl had often speculated thereon, and fitted theory after theory; but never yet, wilful as she was, had she had the temerity to ask the only person who could have given explanation,--Rankin himself.

In common with her sisters everywhere, Florence had an instinctive love of a fad. Realizing this fact, Scotty was not in the least deceived when, during a lull at the dinner-table one evening late in the Fall, she broke in with an irrelevant though seemingly innocent remark.

"I saw several big jack-rabbits when I was out riding this morning." The dark eyes turned upon her father quizzically, humorously. "They seem to be very plentiful."

"Yes," said Scotty; "they always are in the Fall."

Florence ate for a moment in silence.

"Did you ever think how much sport we could have if we owned a couple of hounds?" she asked.

Scotty was silent; but Mollie threw up her hands in horror. "You don't really mean that you want any of those hungry-looking dogs around, do you, Flossie?" she protested pettishly. "Seems as though you'd be satisfied with riding the horses tomboy style without going to hunting rabbits that way."

The daughter's color heightened and the matter dropped; but Scotty knew the main attack was yet to come. He had learned from experience the methods of his daughter in attaining an object.