Ewing's Lady Part 3

"I was sorry when I reached the last one," he began. "It was another world. Oh, he's a great writer. He writes as if he was thinking all the time in fireworks, and he makes you do the same thing. Every page or two he sets off a bunch of firecrackers in your mind that you didn't know you had there. But he writes as if he didn't care whether anybody understood him or not. It's a blind trail, lots of the way, and on some pages I just bog down."

She smiled sympathetically. "Many of us have that trouble with him." She put "Diana" back on the shelf and held up the poems of Robert Browning.

"And this?"

"Oh, do you read that, too?" he counterquestioned with sparkling curiosity. She could see that he was enlivened beyond his self-consciousness for the moment. "Well, I do, too, in spots. He's pretty good in spots. But other times he's choppy and talky and has a hard time getting into the saddle. Why, sometimes when Ben Crider is talking to himself, it would sound just like Browning, if you broke it up into poetry lengths and gave it a good t.i.tle."

"And this you like, too?" She was opening a volume of Whitman.

"_Sure!_" he rang out. "Don't you? There's the man." He began walking about with a fine smile that was almost a friendly grin. She felt suddenly sure that he had never talked about the books before, and that it was a kind of feast day for him.

"Yes," he continued easily; "when I get to feeling too much alone up here I pretend I see him striding in off the trail, his head up, sniffing the air, his eyes just _eating_ these big hills, and he'd march right in and sit down. Only I can't ever think of what we'd say. I reckon we'd sit here without a word. He must have had wonderful eyes.

He's good in winters when you're holed up here in the snow and get on edge with nothing to do for five or six months but feed the stock and keep a water hole open. Sometimes I wonder if Ben and I won't come out crazy in the spring, and then I read old Whitman and he makes me feel all easy-like and sure of myself."

He paused again, but she only waited.

"I had a funny thought last winter," he pursued. "It seemed to me that if people turn into other things when they die--the way some folks believe, you know--that Whitman must have become a whole world when _he_ died, whirling away somewhere off in s.p.a.ce; a fine, big, fresh world, with mountains and valleys and lakes, with big rivers and little ones, and forests and plains and people, good people and bad people, he just liked all sorts--it didn't seem to make much difference to him what they were, so they were people--and he'd carry them all on his back and breathe in and out and feel great."

He laughed as if the idea still delighted him, and she laughed with him.

"I'd like to have told him that," he continued, almost meditatively.

"But I'll bet he often thought of it himself. I guess he wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than that."

When he stopped they stood a moment smiling at each other. Then she went back to the couch with rather a businesslike air.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"I'm twenty-four. How old are you?"

She smiled, quite disarmed by the artlessness of this brutality.

"I am twenty-seven."

"That's pretty old, isn't it?" he commented, gravely. "I shouldn't have said you were older than I am. Some ways you look younger. And what a lot you must have seen out yonder!"

"You should go there yourself, to work, to study." She felt that he was curiously watching her lips as she spoke rather than listening to her.

"Now I see it's only your profile that's sad," he began in the same detached, absent way he had spoken of the books, the way of one talking in solitude. "Your full face isn't sad; it's full of joy; but there's a droop to the profile. Here--I'll show you." He took a sketch-book from the table.

"I'll show you this, now we're such good friends. I could only draw the profile because--well, that was the only thing I could look at much."

She looked and saw herself on three pages of the book, quick little drawings, all of the side face.

"I didn't dream you had seen me enough," she said. "And you have everything from cap to boots, and c.o.o.ney----"

"I knew c.o.o.ney, and I've--well--I've watched you some when you didn't know."

"Certainly you never watched me when I did know," she retorted.

"I should think not!" He laughed uneasily. "But you see the sadness there. I tried to locate it, but I couldn't. I only knew it was there because I found it in the sketches when they were done. I think I caught the figure pretty well in that one. Stand that way now, won't you?"

She rose graciously.

"Here's your quirt, and catch your skirts the way you've done there--that's it. Yes, I got that long line down from the shoulder. It's a fine line. You are beautiful," he continued critically. "I like the way your neck goes up from your shoulders, and your head has a perky kind of a tilt, as if you wouldn't be easy to bluff."

She smiled, meditating some jocose retort, but he still surveyed her impersonally, not seeing the smile. She dropped to the couch rather quickly.

"Let us talk about you," she urged. But he did not hear.

"Your face, though--that's the fine thing--" He was scanning it with narrowed eyes. But a protesting movement of hers restored him to his normal embarra.s.sment. He writhed in uncomfortable apology before her.

"I'd 'most forgot you were really here," he explained. "I've seen you that way so often when you _weren't_ here. There now--I see that sadness; it's in the upper lip. It showed even when you laughed then."

"Really, this must stop," she broke in. "People don't talk this way."

"Don't they? Why don't they? I'm sorry--but all that interested me." The wave of his hand indicated the fluent grace of the lady impartially from head to foot.

"Of course," he added, "I knew there must be people like you, out there, but I never dreamed I'd have one of them close enough to look at--let alone get friendly with. I hope you won't hold it against me."

CHAPTER IV

A PORTRAIT

Though she had made him tingle with an impulse to flee from her, he was at the edge of the east bench early the next afternoon. He might see her from a distance. If she came close upon him--well, it was worth risking; he had a good horse. Her eyes were the best of her he thought, big gray things under black brows, with a dark ring, well defined, about the iris. He had seen no such eyes before. And how they lighted her face when she spoke. Her face needed lighting, he thought. It was pale under the dark hair--her hair stopped short of being black, and was l.u.s.terless--with only a bit of scared pink in her cheeks, after that ride of the day before. He thought of her hands, too. They were the right hands for her, long, slender, and strong, he did not doubt, under a tricky look of being delicate. It was not possible that they could ever talk together again so easily. He could not make that seem true, but he could look at her. He had hoped she would promise to come again, but they had parted abruptly the afternoon before. Riding back with her, as they breasted the last slope leading to the ranch, he had rejoiced boldly at the chance that had led her up the lake trail that morning.

Then Beulah Pierce had hailed them from his station at the bars, hailed them in a voice built to admirable carrying power by many cattle drives. His speech began, "Didn't I _tell_ you where that upper trail would----"

Whereupon the lady turned to dismiss her escort rather curtly.

"Thank you for riding back with me. I shall not trouble you any further." And he, staring suddenly at her with the wild deer's eyes again, had fled over the back trail.

He thought if there had been more time she might have said, "I will come again soon--perhaps to-morrow." He liked to think she might have said that, but he could not give it much reality.

He sprawled easily in the saddle, leaning his crossed arms on the pommel and gazing out over the sun-shot valley to the group of buildings and corrals at Bar-7. At least she rode somewhere every afternoon, and he would see her leave. If she turned down the valley road or up the canon--well, that emergency could be met. He thought of speeches to make it plain that he had not followed her, daring to approach her in his mind, but knowing well that he would probably hide at sight of her.

A half hour he waited so, beholding visions of their accidental meeting.

Then his pulses raced. He saw the stocky-barreled c.o.o.ney led from the corral to the front of the house by Red Phinney. He could almost discern the Sabbath finery of Red across that crystal mile--for this was the breathing day of the week, when faces were rasped cruelly by indifferent razors, and fine raiment was donned, black trousers and gay, clean s.h.i.+rts and neckerchiefs of flaming silk.

He could not see her mount. The ranch house hid that spectacle. But she rode into view presently, putting c.o.o.ney first to his little fox trot and then to a lope, as the road wound among the willows.

He straightened in the saddle as she reached the creek. He was eager to retreat, yet feared to have his cowardice detected. And when c.o.o.ney halted midway of the stream, pawing its rocky bed and making a pretense of thirst, the woman looked up and saw her watcher on the trail. She waved the gauntleted hand that held her quirt, and he found himself holding his hat in his hand with an affectation of ease. Then each laughed, and, though neither could hear the other, it was as if they had laughed together in some little flurry of understanding. He could still pretend to have happened there at that moment, he reflected. And this brought him courage as he saw her give c.o.o.ney his way where the trail branched. When the little horse had carried her to the summit and stood in panting grat.i.tude, the waiting youth evolved a splendid plan for hiding his fright. He dismounted and forced himself to go coolly and take her hand. Perhaps it was as well that he had not trusted himself to remain in the saddle at that first moment. But when the thing was really over he no longer made a secret of his delight at her coming. His first anxious look at her face had shown him the cordial friendliness of the preceding day. She was amused by him, he could see that, and did not resent it; but she was kind, and in his joy at this he babbled, at first, with little coherence.

"I rode right over here to make sure I would see you," he began, "and then if you rode down the valley, or up, I was going to loaf along and find you by accident, and pretend I was hunting a colt. I was going to be afraid the mountain lions had got it." He laughed immoderately at this joke. "And while I waited for you I kept trying to think how fine it would have sounded last night if you had said, 'I think I shall go over and look at your place again to-morrow.' I couldn't make your voice sound true, though. It's a good thing we needn't try to paint voices."

They were riding together over the first stretch of meadow. It seemed to have been agreed without words that they should ride to the lake cabin.