The Song of the Wolf Part 6

Let us not sit too hardly in judgment upon this red-corpuscled young savage. The fires of youth burn fiercely into the natural sequence of maturity's steady glow and senility's ashes. A boy's will is proverbially the wind's will, and youth must have its fling. In a land where every man is a law unto himself it is hard to fix limitations and the tide of license rolls high. There is no caste on the frontier, and the range of pa.s.sion is as wide as the boundless horizon. He had been tenderly received in high places before, and so there was nothing incongruous in his quick desire for Grace Carter.

Something of this was pa.s.sing through his mind now, but somehow it savored of sophistry and he knit his brows. He had said or done nothing to which the most hypercritical could logically take exceptions, yet her resentment had been spontaneous and unmistakable.

"_Honi soit qui mal y pense!_" he muttered, and again his eyes held that unlovely light. "One who divines, must feel--and she is only a woman after all." But the conclusion was not altogether satisfying and he shook his head. The cigarette was suddenly bitter in his mouth and he threw it away impatiently.

"No, d.a.m.ned if I believe that, either! I don't know what I believe.

Guess I better hit the feathers." He rolled into bed, blinked sleepily at the stars for a few minutes, and with an indifferent "What the h.e.l.l do I care, anyway!" fell asleep.

And in the hammock seven miles away she was making excuses for him. "He is very impatient of restraint," she was thinking, "and probably I misjudged him, he is so different from the others." Nevertheless a sudden flash of anger kindled in her eyes; then, strangely enough, she smiled softly into the starlight.

She had yet two hours to wait and the balmy stillness of the night was conducive to reflection. Her thoughts went back to the scenes of her former life and the people she had known in that vastly different environment. Men had been plentiful. In that effete land of worrying necessities the shrine of beauty, when allied with reputed wealth, has many devotees; the Carters were known to be "cattle kings." She was familiar with many types, and with the arrogance of all youthful women, deemed herself an infallible judge of men and their motives. There had been men of parts among her acquaintances: soldiers, merchants, clergymen, writers, financiers, and fops galore. Some she had respected, a few she had admired, many she had tolerated, but none she had loved.

She was generous in her estimation of their worth and strove to enthuse over their many excellences, but to her irritation, suddenly realized that she was weighing them all against a gray-eyed man in a fire-rent s.h.i.+rt, with smoke-grimed face and singed hair.

She turned uneasily in her hammock, catching through the wistaria a glimpse of the open door of the dimly-lit bunkhouse. She could see the intermittent glow of Red's cigarette, and the glisten of the polished steel in the holster, hung carelessly on his bed-post. Suddenly she was infected by the magnificent extravagance of this western life, this queer jumble of loyalty, pride, poverty, sacrifice, sin, strength, suffering, fort.i.tude and malignity. She felt a fierce satisfaction in living where men begged for the privilege of killing the enemies of their friends, and she felt almost grateful to Red for his savage appreciation of the courage which had transformed Dougla.s.s from his dearest foe into his dearest friend. She had even a greater reason to be grateful to him, had she only known it.

"He must not leave," she said with a fine determination. "It will check his career--and we owe so much to him. I am a super-sensitive little fool and I will make amends. Bobbie said we must 'make it up to him' and I will. He is a gentleman, and he will not make it hard for me."

Comforted by her intuitive a.s.surance of that fact she laid her soft cheek on the pillow at precisely the moment of Dougla.s.s's line a.s.sumption of indifference, and fell asleep.

But out in the kitchen an old woman was awkwardly stroking the head of an antelope kid. "I wonder ef I done right?" she mumbled. "I wonder!"

CHAPTER VII

BELSHAZZAR

In October the Colorado mountain lands are very beautiful. They lack, it is true, the gorgeous coloring of the eastern Indian summer, with its beauty of scarlets, crimsons, ochres, maroons and mauves, the western color scheme being in half-tints of low tone. The barbaric splendor of the eastern autumn is here reflected only in the evening skies and in the glowing grays, blues, browns, blacks, bronzes and golds of the eyes, hair and faces of the hardy mountaineers.

Over the foothills and valleys are spread tenderly the more delicate tints of the Master's palette; the enveiling haze is golden instead of purple, the tints of verdure and earth are softly subdued and blend together with all the exquisite harmony of an old Bokhara rug. Even the once-disfiguring alkali barrens appeal to the eye now, their velvet cloaks of ash-of-roses contrasting most agreeably with the delicate olive-grays and heliotropes of the sage and rabbit brush. Here and there a belated Indian-shot flaunts its brilliant lance and over yonder a cactus masks its treachery with a blush; an occasional larkspur or gentian raises blue eyes from the gentle hill slopes, and down on the plains the martial Spanish-bayonet parades its oriflamme. The whole landscape has an underlying wash of burnt sienna, glowing warmly through the superimposed color.

The forests are mysterious with silent flitting mouse-blue and gray-tawny shadows, and the dim trails and pa.s.ses are incised with the quaint hieroglyphics which tell the story of the migrant deer. The oily black-green splashes of spruce and fir, the silvery valance of the aspens, and the ermine of the snow coronal against the puce of protruding peaks in the higher ranges are the only decided colors in ma.s.s. Of early mornings the mountain bases in the distances are billows of smoked-pearl mist; as the light strengthens and the temperature rises, the mist rises with it, dissipating gradually into thin wreaths of dainty rose-pink, faint orange--and nothingness. In the as yet undisturbed shadows the bold cliffs suggest to the imaginative mind aggregations of uncut crystals; higher up, where they catch the downward reflected rays of the warming sun, they are amber and wine-colored topazes, and on the ice-capped summits they are scintillant as diamonds.

At midday the pure rarified air is a marvel of transparent clarity and everything is as clear cut as a cameo.

It is not until late in the afternoon that the great mystery evolves.

All of a sudden one is aware of a decided and yet intangible change.

Imperceptibly but surely the temperature falls, the quality of light alters, the heat s.h.i.+mmer is no more and a golden radiance replaces the brazen glare of the sun; into the nostrils steals an indescribable perfume, elusive and infrangible, the brown scent of autumn wafted to the senses on the cool breath of the frozen heights above.

Instinctively the perceptions sharpen; this is the hour when beast and bird bestir themselves and the vista is enlivened with a new animation.

Out of nowhere, seemingly, struts a sage hen with her brood; another and yet another materializes under your feet until it seems as if the very soil was being trans.m.u.ted into patches of gray-speckled life. In the apparent vacancy of that soft-swelling knoll to the west looms up the phantom bulk of an antelope, disproportionately large and deceptively black against the sun. A dun-colored heap of trash at the foot of a sagebrush in the bight of the dry creek-bed below resolves itself into a very live-looking coyote which blinks yearningly at the unattainable venison on the knoll above, wistfully licks his chops and slinks evilly in the wake of the grouse broods.

As the sun dips behind the detached mountain spurs in the west the shadows grow slightly blue and the high lights intensify. By some optical necromancy the clouds seem ma.s.sed in the west, the whole eastern sweep of sky being an unbroken wash of salmon pink, relieved by tinges of apple-green at its nethermost edges. Against this tender background the minutest details of the majestic Rockies stand out with such vivid distinctness that one gasps with the wonder of it. Long after the low lands have gloomed these heights glow with a glory indescribable, and when it has finally pa.s.sed one feels as though a glimpse of Heaven itself had been vouchsafed to the soul torn with Life's torturing skepticism.

But what words can describe, what brush portray the awful grandeur of the western sky! Before that riot of color the eye falls abashed as did those of Moses on the mount. The sublimity of it shrivels man's pitiful egoism until he grovels in humility and awe. When G.o.d lays His hand upon the sky the dimmest eye sees and the most skeptical heart believes!

She was saying as much in substance to him as they rode homeward in the soft afterglow, her face transfigured by the reverence in her heart. He a.s.sented gravely, his eyes dwelling admiringly upon her rare beauty. In the hallowing light of the hour she was invested with a new charm to this appreciative Pantheist and from some pigeon-hole of his well-stocked and retentive memory called the almost-inspired voice of old Ossian:

"Fair was Colna-Dona, the daughter of kings, Her soul was a pure beam of light!"

Unconsciously he put his thought into words and the voice was very gentle. She looked at him dubiously, almost apprehensively; it was hard to differentiate between this man's cynicism and sincerity. Then she dropped her eyes in rosy confusion, her heart leaping unaccountably.

"That was a false note the Psalmist struck," he went on quietly, "when he sang of the wrath of his G.o.d. It were better he had dwelt only on the sweeter quant.i.ty of His love. I am sorry for that devotion inspired only by fear. _This_ is the manifestation best calculated to insure one's keeping in the right trail." He swept his hand comprehensively toward the western glory. "Men do not love the thing they fear--nor women either." His tone was quizzical and challenging.

She looked up in sudden relief; this was more familiar ground and she laughed with sudden audacity.

"How do you know?"

"About women? Well, I'll admit that was a bluff; but I know all about men; I am one of them! The divinity that shapes our ends must kiss, not kick!"

At this unconscious confirmation of old Abigail's sage conclusions her laugh pealed out merrily. "Feed 'em well, speak 'em kind, an' give 'em theah haids on a hawd pull er in a tight place," she quoted with inimitable mimicry, and he grinned with quick understanding.

"Good old Abbie! I wonder who she loved enough to learn all that? And so you've been taking lessons, too!"

"I thought we had done with that," she said almost pleadingly. "You make it very hard for me!"

Instantly he was all contrition. "Forgive me! I shall not offend again."

She took his extended hand frankly and for a time they rode in silence.

The narrow canon trail necessitated their riding very closely together and occasionally his leathern chaps brushed against her. Once, as they rounded an abrupt turn, the heavy revolver at his hip was jammed painfully against her gauntlet; she merely shut her teeth and smiled.

They were returning from Tin Cup, whither they had gone in the morning in company with Robert and his mother, who were leaving for the East.

The morning after his arrival at the ranch she had bravely told her brother the whole circ.u.mstances of the preceding week, magnanimously taking upon herself all the blame--in which truth compels us to say her brother entirely agreed--and thereafter had ridden out to the camp of the ditch repairers and patched up a truce with Dougla.s.s.

"I am only a tenderfoot," she had wisely begun, "and always have had an unhappy faculty of doing the wrong thing unintentionally. You are a big, strong, generous man, and you will hold no malice against a foolish girl--!"

He capitulated instantly; but he was over-voluble in his rea.s.surances and somehow she divined that her apology had missed fire so far as it affected his determination to leave when he had recouped her brother for the losses he had unwittingly brought about. She was not for a moment deceived by his studiously polite words but was too politic to betray it. He had affected not to see the hand she had timidly extended in amity and for that he would pay, later! There was much of old Bob Carter's inflexible determination in this frail-looking daughter of his.

To her mother she had, curiously enough, said nothing about it. She had even been unwise enough to impose secrecy upon her brother and Abigail as to the cause of the conflagration and Red's mishap, forgetting that Mrs. Carter was range bred and born, and that Nellie Vaughan was an incorrigible gossip! It would not have added to her equanimity to have known that inside of twenty-four hours her astute mother was in possession of all the facts and considerably perturbed thereover. She would, however, have appreciated the relief in her mother's eyes on her first encounter with Dougla.s.s.

"Clean, manly and good to look at," had been her shrewd verdict.

"Thoroughbred stock, too. A good friend and a bad enemy! A good cowman and a valuable accession all around. I really must congratulate Robbie.

But what is Grace's mysterious interest in him? She was very anxious not to have me find out the facts about this latest outrage, poor dear! Was it that she was afraid that I would be unduly exercised over a trifle like this?"

She smiled somewhat grimly as her mind went back to that day when, over her husband's unconscious form thrown at her feet by the benumbing bullets of a gang of rustlers, she had emptied the magazine of his Winchester to such effect that border men rode far out of their way to take off their hats to "Bob Carter's pard." The recollection sent the blood into the fine old cheeks and her hands were again clenched retrospectively upon that shapely bit of walnut and steel which had served her so well that day. Then the lips softened wondrously and a great sweetness flooded her eyes. She was thinking how tenderly he had kissed her powder-blackened hands and bruised shoulder, his heart throbbing with love and wonder and pride of her.

She was very gracious to Dougla.s.s that night at dinner, leading him on with skill to talk of himself, and drawing him out to a degree that would have astonished him had he realized it. Under her charming personality, quick and sympathetic intelligence and clever induction, his reserve melted gradually and soon he was talking more freely than he had ever done to human being before. When he had finally made his exit she turned thoughtfully to her children.

"We want to be very judicious in our dealings with that young man. He is of sterling quality, but super-sensitive and impulsive, and requires handling with gloves of velvet. I think he is scrupulously honest, and I should imagine inordinately brave--and vain! Do you know anything of his antecedents?"

"Only that he is American born, of Scotch descent, mother," replied Robert, "and that he was educated at Yale. He is a civil engineer by profession, I believe, but he is hardly the kind of man from whom one would attempt to force confidences. All I know is that he is the pluckiest fellow in the world, and the most generous and considerate.

Why, one night at the Alcazar--?" and he proceeded to the eager relation of his pet story.

She listened attentively, nodding her full comprehension. "That is what I would have expected of him; I am seldom mistaken in my judgment of the type. And I presume his services here are in every way satisfactory?

Well, let us make every consistent effort to retain him; such men are scarce even in this land of good men. I suppose that the man Matlock has left the country?"

"He has not been seen since the night of which I spoke. Ken seems to have run him out for keeps!" His voice was distinctly boastful. "And if he knows what is good for him he'll stay out!"

If Mrs. Carter, glancing casually at her daughter, noted the sudden compression of Grace's lips, she made no comment thereon. She had craftily wormed out of one of the men, the youngster detailed for ch.o.r.e-work, the story of the men's agreement to leave Matlock's punishment to Dougla.s.s. She understood the situation thoroughly, and, as a typical range woman she approved of Dougla.s.s's determination. The quarrel was eminently his, and upon him in person devolved its settlement. What she could not understand was the distress in her daughter's face as she said earnestly: