Lonesome Land

CHAPTER XV. A COMPACT

The blackened prairie was fast hiding the mark of its fire torture under a cloak of tender new grass, vividly green as a freshly watered, well-kept lawn. Meadow larks hopped here and there, searching long for a sheltered nesting place, and missing the weeds where they were wont to sway and swell their yellow breasts and sing at the sun. They sang just as happily, however, on their short, low flights over the levels, or sitting upon gray, half-buried boulders upon some barren hilltop. Spring had come with lavish warmth. The smoke of burning ranges, the bleak winter with its sweeping storms of snow and wind, were pushed info the past, half forgotten in this new heaven and new earth, when men were glad simply because they were alive.

On a still, Sunday morning—that day which, when work does not press, is set apart in the range land for slight errands, attention to one's personal affairs, and to the pursuit of pleasure—Kent jogged placidly down the long hill into Cold Spring Coulee and pulled up at the familiar little unpainted house of rough boards, with its incongruously dainty curtains at the windows and its tiny yard, green and scrupulously clean.

The cat with white spots on its sides was washing its face on the kitchen doorstep. Val was kneeling beside the front porch, painstakingly stringing white grocery twine upon nails, which she drove into the rough posts with a small rock. The primitive trellis which resulted was obviously intended for the future encouragement of the sweet-pea plants just unfolding their second clusters of leaves an inch above ground. She did not see Kent at first, and he sat quiet in the saddle, watching her with a flicker of amusement in his eyes; but in a moment she struck her finger and sprang up with a sharp little cry, throwing the rock from her.

“Didn't you know that was going to happen, sooner or later?” Kent inquired, and so made known his presence.

“Oh—how do you do?” She came smiling down to the gate, holding the hurt finger tightly clasped in the other hand. “How comes it you are riding this way? Our trail is all growing up to grass, so few ever travel it.”

“We're all hard-working folks these days. Where's Man?”

“Manley is down to the river, I think.” She rested both arms upon the gatepost and regarded him with her steady eyes. “If you can wait, he will be back soon. He only went to see if the river is fordable. He thinks two or three of our horses are on the other side, and he'd like to get them. The river has been too high, but it's lowering rather fast. Won't you come in?” She was pleasant, she was unusually friendly, but Kent felt vaguely that, somehow, she was different.

He had not seen her for three months. Just after Christmas he had met her and Manley in town, when he was about to leave for a visit to his people in Nebraska. He had returned only a week or so before, and, if the truth were known, he was not displeased at the errand which brought him this way. He dismounted, and when she moved away from the gate he opened it and went in.

“Well,” he began lightly, when he was seated upon the floor of the porch and she was back at her trellis, “and how's the world been using you? Had any more calamities while I've been gone?”

She busied herself with tying together two pieces of string, so that the whole would reach to a certain nail driven higher than her head. She stood with both hands uplifted, and her face, and her eyes; she did not reply for so long that Kent began to wonder if she had heard him. There was no reason why he should watch her so intently, or why he should want to get up and push back the one lock of hair which seemed always in rebellion and always falling across her temple by itself.

He was drifting into a dreamy wonder that all women with yellow-brown hair should not be given yellow-brown eyes also, and to wishing vaguely that it might be his luck to meet one some time—one who was not married—when she looked down at him quite unexpectedly. He was startled, and half ashamed, and afraid that she might not like what he, had been thinking.

She was staring straight into his eyes, and he knew that she was thinking of something that affected her a good deal.

“Unless it's a calamity to discover that the world is—what it is, and people in it are—what they are, and that you have been a blind idiot. Is that a calamity, Mr. Cowboy? Or is it a blessing? I've been wondering.”

Kent discovered, when he started to speak, that he had run short of breath. “I reckon that depends on how the discovery pans out,” he ventured, after a moment. He was not looking at her then. For some reason, unexplained to himself, he felt that it wasn't right for him to look at her; nor wise; nor quite pleasant in its effect. He did not know exactly what she meant, but he knew very well that she meant something more than to make conversation.

“That,” she said, and gave a little sigh—“that takes so long—don't you know? The panning out, as you call it. It's hard to see things very clearly, and to make a decision that you know is going to stand the test, and then—just sit down and fold your hands, because some sordid, petty little reason absolutely prevents your doing anything. I hate waiting for anything. Don't you? When I want to do a thing, I want to do it immediately. These sweet-peas—now I've fixed the trellis for them to climb upon, I resent it because they don't take hold right now. Nasty little things—two inches high, when they should be two yards, and all covered with beautiful blossoms.”

{Illustration: “Little woman, listen here,” he said. “You're playing hard luck, and I know it"}

“Not the last of April,” he qualified. “Give 'em a fair chance, can't you? They'll make it, all right; things take time.”

She laughed surrenderingly, and came and sat down upon the porch near him, and tapped a slipper toe nervously upon the soft, green sod.

“Time! Yes—” She threw back her head and smiled at him brightly—and appealingly, it seemed to Kent. “You remember what you told me once—about sheep-herders and such going crazy out here? The such is sometimes ready to agree with you.” She turned her head with a quick impatience. “Such is learning to ride a horse,” she informed him airily. “Such does it on the sly—and she fell off once and skinned her elbow, and she—well, Such hasn't any sidesaddle—but she's learning, 'by granny!'”

Kent laughed unsteadily, and looked sidelong at her with eyes alight. She matched the glance for just about one second, and turned her eyes away with a certain consciousness that gave Kent a savage delight. Of a truth, she was different! She was human, she was intolerably alluring. She was not the prim, perfectly well-bred young woman he had met at the train. Lonesome Land was doing its work. She was beginning to think as an individual—as a woman; not merely as a member of conventional society.

“Such is beginning to be the proper stuff—'by granny,” he told her softly.

He was afraid his tone had offended her. She rose, and her color flared and faded. She leaned slightly against the post beside her, and, with a hand thrown up and half shielding her face, she stared out across the coulee to the hill beyond.

“Did you—I feel like a fool for talking like this, but one sometimes clutches at the least glimmer of sympathy and—and understanding, and speaks what should be kept bottled up inside, I suppose. But I've been bottled up for so long—” She struck her free hand suddenly against her lips, as if she would apply physical force to keep them from losing all self-control. When she spoke again, her voice was calmer. “Did you ever get to the point, Mr. Cowboy, where you—you dug right down to the bottom of things, and found that you must do something or go mad—and there wasn't a thing you could do? Did you ever?” She did not turn toward him, but kept her eyes to the hills. When he did not answer, however, she swung her head slowly and looked down at him, where he sat almost at her feet.

Kent was leaning forward, studying the gashes he had cut in the sod with his spurs. His brows were knitted close.

“I kinda think I'm getting there pretty fast,” he owned gravely when he felt her gaze upon him. “Why?”

“Oh—because you can understand how one must speak sometimes. Ever since I came, you have been—I don't know—different. At first I didn't like you at all; but I could see you were different. Since then—well, you have now and then said something that made me see one could speak to you, and you would understand. So I—” She broke off suddenly and laughed an apology. “Am I boring you dreadfully? One grows so self-centered living alone. If you aren't interested—”

“I am.” Kent was obliged to clear his throat to get those two words out. “Go on. Say all you want to say.”

She laughed again wearily. “Lately,” she confessed nervously, “I've taken to telling my thoughts to the cat. It's perfectly safe, but, after all, it isn't quite satisfying.” She stopped again, and stood silent for a moment.

“It's because I am alone, day after day, week in and week out,” she went on. “In a way, I don't mind it—under the circumstances I prefer to be alone, really. I mean, I wouldn't want any of my people near me. But one has too much time to think. I tell you this because I feel I ought to let you know that you were right that time; I don't suppose you even remember it! But I do. Once last fall—the first time you came to the ranch—you know, the time I met you at the spring, you seemed to see that this big, lonesome country was a little too much for me. I resented it then. I didn't want any one to tell me what I refused to admit to myself. I was trying so hard to like it—it seemed my only hope, you see. But now I'll tell you you were right.

“Sometimes I feel very wicked about it. Sometimes I don't care. And sometimes I—I feel I shall go crazy if I can't talk to some one. Nobody comes here, except Polycarp Jenks. The only woman I know really well in the country is Arline Hawley. She's good as gold, but—she's intensely practical; you can't tell her your troubles—not unless they're concrete and have to do with your physical well-being. Arline lacks imagination.” She laughed again shortly.

“I don't know why I'm taking it for granted you don't,” she said. “You think I'm talking pore nonsense, don't you, Mr. Cowboy?” She turned full toward him, and her yellow-brown eyes challenged him, begged him for sympathy and understanding, held him at bay—but most of all they set his blood pounding sullenly in his veins. He got unsteadily to his feet.

“You seem to pass up a lot of things that count, or you wouldn't say that,” he reminded her huskily. “That night in town, just after the fire, for instance. And here, that same afternoon. I tried to jolly you out of feeling bad, both those times; but you know I understood. You know damn' well I understood! And you know I was sorry. And if you don't know, I'd do anything on God's green earth—” He turned sharply away from her and stood kicking savagely backward at a clod with his rowel. Then he felt her hand touch his arm, and started. After that he stood perfectly still, except that he quivered like a frightened horse.

“Oh, it doesn't mean much to you—you have your life, and you're a man, and can do things when you want to. But I do so need a friend! Just somebody who understands, to whom I can talk when that is the only thing will keep me sane. You saved my life once, so I feel—no, I don't mean that. It isn't because of anything you did; it's just that I feel I can talk to you more freely than to any one I know. I don't mean whine. I hope I'm not a whiner. If I've blundered, I'm willing to—to take my medicine, as you would say. But if I can feel that somewhere in this big, empty country just one person will always feel kindly toward me, and wish me well, and be sorry for we when I—when I'm miserable, and—” She could not go on. She pressed her lips together tightly, and winked back the tears.

Kent faced about and laid both his hands upon her shoulders. His face was very tender and rather sad, and if she had only understood as well as he did—. But she did not.

“Little woman, listen here,” he said. “You're playing hard luck, and I know it; maybe I don't know just how hard—but maybe I can kinda give a guess. If you'll think of me as your friend—your pal, and if you'll always tell yourself that your pal is going to stand by you, no matter what comes, why—all right.” He caught his breath.

She smiled up at him, honestly pleased, wholly without guile—and wholly blind. “I'd rather have such a friend, just now, than anything I know, except—. But if your sweetheart should object—could you—”

His fingers gripped her shoulders tighter for just a second, and he let her go. “I guess that part'll be all right,” he rejoined in a tone she could not quite fathom. “I never had one in m' life.”

“Why, you poor thing!” She stood back and tilted her head at him. “You poor—pal. I'll have to see about that immediately. Every young man wants a sweetheart—at least, all the young men I ever knew wanted one, and—”

“And I'll gamble they all wanted the same one,” he hinted wickedly, feeling himself unreasonably happy over something he could not quite put into words, even if he had dared.

“Oh, no. Hardly ever the same one, luckily. Do you know—pal, I've quite forgotten what it was all about—the unburdening of my soul, I mean. After all, I think I must have been just lonesome. The country is just as big, but it isn't quite so—so empty, you see. Aren't you awfully vain, to see how you have peopled it with your friendship?” She clasped her hands behind her and regarded him speculatively. “I hope, Mr. Cowboy, you're in earnest about this,” she observed doubtfully. “I hope you have imagination enough to see it isn't silly, because if I suspected you weren't playing fair, and would go away and laugh at me, I'd—scratch—you.” She nodded her head slowly at him. “I've always been told that, with tiger eyes, you find the disposition of a tiger. So if you don't mean it, you'd better let me know at once.”

Kent brought the color into her cheeks with his steady gaze. “I was just getting scared you didn't mean it,” he averred. “If my pal goes back on me—why, Lord help her!”

She took a slow, deep breath. “How is it you men ratify a solemn agreement?” she puzzled. “Oh, yes.” With a pretty impulse she held out her right hand, half grave, half playful. “Shake on it, pal!”

Kent took her hand and pressed it as hard as he dared. “You're going to be a dandy little chum,” he predicted gamely. “But let me tell you right now, if you ever get up on your stilts with me, there's going to be all kinds of trouble. You call me Kent—that is,” he qualified, with a little, unsteady laugh, “when there ain't any one around to get shocked.”

“I suppose this isn't quite conventional,” she conceded, as if the thought had just then occurred to her. “But, thank goodness, out here there aren't any conventions. Every one lives as every one sees fit. It isn't the best thing for some people,” she added drearily. “Some people have to be bolstered up by conventions, or they can't help miring in their own weaknesses. But we don't; and as long as we understand—” She looked to him for confirmation.

“As long as we understand, why, it ain't anybody's business but our own,” he declared steadily.

She seemed relieved of some lingering doubt. “That's exactly it. I don't know why I should deny myself a friend, just because that friend happens to be a man, and I happen to be—married. I never did have much patience with the rule that a man must either be perfectly indifferent, or else make love. I'm so glad you—understand. So that's all settled,” she finished briskly, “and I find that, as I said, it isn't at all necessary for me to unburden my soul.”

They stood quiet for a moment, their thoughts too intangible for speech.

“Come inside, won't you?” she invited at last, coming back to everyday matters. “Of course you're hungry—or you ought to be. You daren't run away from my cooking this time, Mr. Cowboy. Manley will be back soon, I think. I must get some lunch ready.”

Kent replied that he would stay outside and smoke, so she left him with a fleeting smile, infinitely friendly and confiding and glad. He turned and looked after her soberly, gave a great sigh, and reached mechanically for his tobacco and papers; thoughtfully rolled a cigarette, lighted it, and held the match until it burned quite down to his thumb and fingers. “Pals!” he said just under his breath, for the mere sound of the word. “All right—pals it is, then.”

He smoked slowly, listening to her moving about in the house. Her steps came nearer. He turned to look.

“What was it you wanted to see Manley about?” she asked him from the doorway. “I just happened to wonder what it could be.”

“Well, the Wishbone needs men, and sent me over to tell him he can go to work. The wagons are going to start to-morrow. He'll want to gather his cattle up, and of course we know about how he's fixed—for saddle horses and the like. He can work for the outfit and draw wages, and get his cattle thrown back on this range and his calves branded besides. Get paid for doing what he'll have to do anyhow, you see.”

“I see.” Val pushed back the rebellious lock of hair. “Of course you suggested the idea to the Wishbone. You're always doing something—”

“The outfit is short-handed,” he reiterated. “They need him. They ain't straining a point to do Man a favor—don't you ever think it! Well—he's coming,” he broke off, and started to the gate.

Manley clattered up, vociferously glad to greet him. Kent, at his urgent invitation, led his horse to the stable and turned him into the corral, unsaddled and unbridled him so that he could eat. Also, he told his errand. Manley interrupted the conversation to produce a bottle of whisky from a cunningly concealed hole in the depleted haystack, and insisted that Kent should take a drink. Kent waved it off, and Manley drew the cork and held the bottle to his own lips.

As he stood there, with his face uplifted while the yellow liquor gurgled down his throat, Kent watched him with a curiously detached interest. So that's how Manley had kept his vow! he was thinking, with an impersonal contempt. Four good swallows—Kent counted them.

“You're hitting it pretty strong, Man, for a fellow that swore off last fall,” he commented aloud.

Manley took down the bottle, gave a sigh of pure, animal satisfaction, and pushed the cork in with an unconsciously regretful movement.

“A fellow's got to get something out of life,” he defended peevishly. “I've had pretty hard luck—it's enough to drive a fellow to most any kind of relief. Burnt out, last fall—cattle scattered and calves running the range all winter—I haven't got stock enough to stand that sort of a deal, Kent. No telling where I stand now on the cattle question. I did have close to a hundred head—and three of my best geldings are missing—a poor man can't stand luck like that. I'm in debt too—and when you've got an iceberg in the house—when a man's own wife don't stand by him—when he can't get any sympathy from the very one that ought to—but, then, I hope I'm a gentleman; I don't make any kick against her—my domestic affairs are my own affairs. Sure. But when your wife freezes up solid—” He held the bottle up and looked at it. “Best friend I've got,” he finished, with a whining note in his voice.

Kent turned away disgusted. Manley had coarsened. He had “slopped down” just when he should have braced up and caught the fighting spirit—the spirit that fights and overcomes obstacles. With a tightening of his chest, he thought of his “pal,” tied for life to this whining drunkard. No wonder she felt the need of a friend!

“Well, are you going out with the Wishbone?” he asked tersely, jerking his thoughts back to his errand. “If you are, you'll need to go over there to-night—the wagons start out to-morrow. Maybe you better ride around by Polly's place and have him come over here, once in a while, to look after things. You can't leave your wife alone without somebody to kinda keep an eye out for her, you know. Polycarp ain't going to ride this spring; he's got rheumatism, or some darned thing. But he can chop what wood she'll need, and go to town for her once in a while, and make sure she's all right. You better leave your gentlest horse here for her to use, too. She can't be left afoot out here.”

Manley was taking another long swallow from the bottle, but he heard.

“Why, sure—I never thought about that. I guess maybe I had better get Polycarp. But Val could make out all right alone. Why, she's held it down here for a week at a time—last winter, when I'd forgot to come home”—he winked shamelessly—“or a storm would come up so I couldn't get home. Val isn't like some fool women, I'll say that much for her. She don't care whether I'm around or not; fact is, sometimes I think she's better pleased when I'm gone. But you're right—I'll see Polycarp and have him come over once in a while. Sure. Glad you spoke of it. You always had a great head for thinking about other people, Kent. You ought to get married.”

“No, thanks,” Kent scowled. “I haven't got any grudge against women. The world's full of men ready and willing to give 'em a taste of pure, unadulterated hell.”

Manley stared at him stupidly, and then laughed doubtfully, as if he felt certain of having, by his dullness, missed the point of a very good joke.

After that the time was filled with the preparations for Manley's absence. Kent did what he could to help, and Val went calmly about the house, packing the few necessary personal belongings which might be stuffed into a “war bag” and used during round-up. Beyond an occasional glance of friendly understanding, she seemed to have forgotten the compact she had made with Kent.

But when they were ready to ride away, Kent purposely left his gloves lying upon the couch, and remembered them only after Manley was in the saddle. So he went back, and Val followed him into the room. He wanted to say something—he did not quite know what—something that would bring them a little closer together, and keep them so; something that would make her think of him often and kindly. He picked up his gloves and held out his hand to her—and then a diffidence seized his tongue. There was nothing he dared say. All the eloquence, all the tenderness, was in his eyes.

“Well—good-by, pal. Be good to yourself,” he said simply.

Val smiled up at him tremulously. “Good-by, my one friend. Don't—don't get hurt!”

Their clasp tightened, their hands dropped apart rather limply. Kent went out and got upon his horse, and rode away beside Manley, and talked of the range and of the round-up and of cattle and a dozen other things which interest men. But all the while one exultant thought kept reiterating itself in his mind: “She never said that much to him! She never said that much to him!”