To Val the days of heat and smoke, and the isolation, had made life seem unreal, like a dream which holds one fast and yet is absurd and utterly improbable. Her past was pushed so far from her that she could not even long for it as she had done during the first few weeks. There were nights of utter desolation, when Manley was in town upon some errand which prevented his speedy return—nights when the coyotes howled much louder than usual, and she could not sleep for the mysterious snapping and creaking about the shack, but lay shivering with fear until dawn; but not for worlds would she have admitted to Manley her dread of staying alone. She believed it to be necessary, or he would not require it of her, and she wanted to be all that he expected her to be. She was very sensitive, in those days, about doing her whole duty as a wife—the wife of a Western rancher.
For that reason, when Manley shouted to her the news of the fire as he galloped past the shack, and told her to have something for the men to eat when the fire was out, she never thought of demurring, or explaining to him that there was scarcely any wood, and that she could not cook a meal without fuel. Instead, she waved her hand to him and let him go; and when he was quite out of sight she went up to the corrals to see if she could find another useless pole, or a broken board or two which her slight strength would be sufficient to break up with the axe. Till she came to Montana, Val had never taken an axe in her hands; but its use was only one of the many things she must learn, of which she had all her life been ignorant.
There was an old post there, lying beside a rusty, overturned plow. More than once she had stopped and eyed it speculatively, and the day before she had gone so far as to lift an end of it tentatively; but she had found it very heavy, and she had also disturbed a lot of black bugs that went scurrying here and there, so that she was forced to gather her skirts close about her and run for her life.
Where Manley had built his hayrack she had yesterday discovered some ends of planking hidden away in the rank, ripened weeds and grass. She went there now, but there were no more, look closely as she might. She circled the evil-smelling stable in discouragement, picked up one short piece of rotten board, and came back to the post. As she neared it she involuntarily caught her skirts and held them close, in terror of the black bugs.
She eyed it with extreme disfavor, and finally ventured to poke it with her slipper toe; one lone bug scuttled out and away in the tall weeds. With the piece of board she turned it over, stared hard at the yellowed grass beneath, discovered nothing so very terrifying after all, and, in pure desperation, dragged the post laboriously down to the place where had been the woodpile. Then, lifting the heavy axe, she went awkwardly to work upon it, and actually succeeded, in the course of half an hour or so, in worrying an armful of splinters off it.
She started a fire, and then she had to take the big zinc pail and carry some water down from the spring before she could really begin to cook anything. Manley's work, every bit of it—but then Manley was so very busy, and he couldn't remember all these little things, and Val hated to keep reminding him. Theoretically, Manley objected to her chopping wood or carrying water, and always seemed to feel a personal resentment when he discovered her doing it. Practically, however, he was more and more often making it necessary for her to do these things.
That is why he returned with the fire fighters and found Val just laying the cloth upon the table, which she had moved into the front room so that there would be space to seat her guests at all four sides. He frowned when he looked in and saw that they must wait indefinitely, and her cheeks took on a deeper shade of pink.
“Everything will be ready in ten minutes,” she hurriedly assured him. “How many are there, dear?”
“Eight, counting myself,” he answered gruffly. “Get some clean towels, and we'll go up to the spring to wash; and try and have dinner ready when we get back—we're half starved.” With the towels over his arm, he led the way up to the spring. He must have taken the trail which led past the haystack, for he returned in much better humor, and introduced the men to his wife with the genial air of a host who loves to entertain largely.
Val stood back and watched them file in to the table and seat themselves with a noisy confusion. Unpolished they were, in clothes and manner, though she dimly appreciated the way in which they refrained from looking at her too intently, and the conscious lowering of their voices while they talked among themselves.
They did, however, glance at her surreptitiously while she was moving quietly about, with her flushed cheeks and her yellow-brown hair falling becomingly down at the temples because she had not found a spare minute in which to brush it smooth, and her dainty dress and crisp, white apron. She was not like the women they were accustomed to meet, and they paid her the high tribute of being embarrassed by her presence.
She poured coffee until all the cups were full, replenished the bread plate and brought more butter, and hunted the kitchen over for the can opener, to punch little holes in another can of condensed cream; and she rather astonished her guests by serving it in a beautiful cut-glass pitcher instead of the can in which it was bought.
They handled the pitcher awkwardly because of their mental uneasiness, and Val shared with them their fear of breaking it, and was guilty of an audible sigh of relief when at last it found safety upon the table.
So perturbed was she that even when she decided that she could do no more for their comfort and retreated to the kitchen, she failed to realize that the one extra plate meant an absent guest, and not a miscount in placing them, as she fancied.
She remembered that she would need plenty of hot water to wash all those dishes, and the zinc pail was empty; it always was, it seemed to her, no matter how often she filed it. She took the tin dipper out of it, so that it would not rattle and betray her purpose to Manley, sitting just inside the door with his back toward her, and tiptoed quite guiltily out of the kitchen. Once well away from the shack, she ran.
She reached the spring quite out of breath, and she actually bumped into a man who stood carefully rinsing a bloodstained handkerchief under the overflow from the horse trough. She gave a little scream, and the pail went rolling noisily down the steep bank and lay on its side in the mud.
Kent turned and looked at her, himself rather startled by the unexpected collision. Involuntarily he threw out his hand to steady her. “How do you do, Mrs. Fleetwood?” he said, with all the composure he could muster to his aid. “I'm afraid I scared you. My nose got to bleeding—with the heat, I guess. I just now managed to stop it.” He did not consider it necessary to explain his presence, but he did feel that talking would help her recover her breath and her color. “It's a plumb nuisance to have the nosebleed so much,” he added plaintively.
Val was still trembling and staring at him with her odd, yellow-brown eyes. He glanced at her swiftly, and then bent to squeeze the water from his handkerchief; but his trained eyes saw her in all her dainty allurement; saw how the coppery sunlight gave a strange glint to her hair, and how her eyes almost matched it in color, and how the pupils had widened with fright. He saw, too, something wistful in her face, as though life was none too kind to her, and she had not yet abandoned her first sensation of pained surprise that it should treat her so.
“That's what I get for running,” she said, still panting a little as she watched him. “I thought all the men were at the table, you see. Your dinner will be cold, Mr. Burnett.”
Kent was a bit surprised at the absence of cold hauteur in her manner; his memory of her had been so different.
“Well, I'm used to cold grub,” he smiled over his shoulder. “And, anyway, when your nose gets to acting up with you, it's like riding a pitching horse; you've got to pass up everything and give it all your time and attention.” Then, with the daring that sometimes possessed him like a devil, he looked straight at her.
“Sure you intend to give me my dinner?” he quizzed, his lips' lifting humorously at the corners. “I kinda thought, from the way you turned me down cold when we met before, you'd shut your door in my face if I came pestering around. How about that?”
Little flames of light nickered in her eyes. “You are the guest of my husband, here by his invitation,” she answered him coldly. “Of course I shall give you your dinner, if you want any.”
He inspected his handkerchief critically, decided that it was not quite clean, and held it again under the stream of water. “If I want it—yes,” he drawled maliciously. “Maybe I'm not sure about that part. Are you a pretty fair cook?”
“Perhaps you'd better interview your friends,” she retorted, “if you are so very fastidious. I—” She drew her brows together, as if she was in doubt as to the proper method of dealing with this impertinence. She suspected that he was teasing her purposely, but still—
“Oh, I can eat 'most any old thing,” he assured her, with calm effrontery. “You look as if you'd learn easy, and Man ain't the worst cook I ever ate after. If he's trained you faithful, maybe it'll be safe to take a change. How about that? Can you make sour-dough bread yet?”
“No!” she flung the word at him. “And I don't want to learn,” she added, at the expense of her dignity.
Kent shook his head disapprovingly. “That sure ain't the proper spirit to show,” he commented. “Man must have to beat you up a good deal, if you talk back to him that way.” He eyed her sidelong. “You're a real little wolf, aren't you?” He shook his head again solemnly, and sighed. “A fellow sure must build himself lots of trouble when he annexes a wife—a wife that won't learn to make sour-dough bread, and that talks back. I'm plumb sorry for Man. We used to be pretty good friends—” He stopped short, his face contrite.
Val was looking away, and she was winking very fast. Also, her lips were quivering unmistakably, though she was biting them to keep them steady.
Kent stared at her helplessly. “Say! I never thought you'd mind a little joshing,” he said gently, when the silence was growing awkward. “I ought to be killed! You—you must get awful lonesome—”
She turned her face toward him quickly, as if he were the first person who had understood her blank loneliness. “That,” she told him, in an odd, hesitating manner, “atones for the—the 'joshing.' No one seems to realize—”
“Why don't you get out and ride around, or do something beside stick right here in this coulee like a—a cactus?” he demanded, with a roughness that somehow was grateful to her. “I'll bet you haven't been a mile from the ranch since Man brought you here. Why don't you go to town with him when he goes? It'd be a whole lot better for you—for both of you. Have you got acquainted with any of the women here yet? I'll gamble you haven't!” He was waving the handkerchief gently like a flag, to dry it.
Val watched him; she had never seen any one hold a handkerchief by the corners and wave it up and down like that for quick drying, and the expedient interested her, even while she was wondering if it was quite proper for him to lecture her in that manner. His scolding was even more confusing than his teasing.
“I've been down to the river twice,” she defended weakly, and was angry with herself that she could not find words with which to quell him.
“Really?” He down at her indulgently. “How did you ever manage to get so far? It must be all of half a mile!”
“Oh, you're perfectly horrible!” she flashed suddenly. “I don't see how it can possibly concern you whether I go anywhere or not.”
“It does, though. I'm a lot public-spirited. I hate to see taxes go up, and every lunatic that goes to the asylum costs the State just that much more. I don't know an easier recipe for going crazy than just to stay off alone and think. It's a fright the way it gets sheep-herders, and such.”
“I'm such, I suppose!”
Kent glanced at her, approved mentally of the color in her cheeks and the angry light in her eyes, and laughed at her quite openly.
“There's nothing like getting good and mad once in a while, to take the kinks out of your brain,” he observed. “And there's nothing like lonesomeness to put 'em in. A good fighting mad is what you need, now and then; I'll have to put Man next, I guess. He's too mild.”
“No one could accuse you of that,” she retorted, laughing a little in spite of herself. “If I were a man I should want to blacken your eyes—” And she blushed hotly at being betrayed into a personality which seemed to her undignified, and, what was worse, unrefined. She turned her back squarely toward him, started down the path, and remembered that she had not filled the water bucket, and that without it she could not consistently return to the house.
Kent interpreted her glance, went sliding down the steep bank and recovered the pail; he was laughing to himself while he rinsed and filled it at the spring, but he made no effort to explain his amusement. When he came back to where she stood watching him, Val gave her head a slight downward tilt to indicate her thanks, turned, and led the way back to the house without a word. And he, following after, watched her slim figure swinging lightly down the hill before him, and wondered vaguely what sort of a hell her life was going to be, out here where everything was different from what she had been accustomed to, and where she did not seem to “fit into the scenery,” as he put it.
“You ought to learn to ride horseback,” he advised unexpectedly.
“Pardon me—you ought to learn to wait until your advice is wanted,” she replied calmly, without turning her head. And she added, with a sort of defiance: “I do not feel the need of either society or diversion, I assure you; I am perfectly contented.”
“That's real nice,” he approved. “There's nothing like being satisfied with what's handed out to you.” But, though he spoke with much unconcern, his tone betrayed his skepticism.
The others had finished eating and were sitting upon their heels in the shade of the house, smoking and talking in that desultory fashion common to men just after a good meal. Two or three glanced rather curiously at Kent and his companion, and he detected the covert smile on the scandal-hungry face of Polycarp Jenks, and also the amused twist of Fred De Garmo's lips. He went past them without a sign of understanding, set the water pail down in its proper place upon a bench inside the kitchen door, tilted his hat to Val, who happened to be looking toward him at that moment, and went out again.
“What's the hurry, Kenneth?” quizzed Polycarp, when Kent started toward the corral.
“Follow my trail long enough and you'll find out—maybe,” Kent snapped in reply. He felt that the whole group was watching hum, and he knew that if he looked back and caught another glimpse of Fred De Garmo's sneering face he would feel compelled to strike it a blow. There would be no plausible explanation, of course, and Kent was not by nature a trouble hunter; and so he chose to ride away without his dinner.
While Polycarp was still wondering audibly what was the matter, Kent passed the house on his gray, called “So-long, Man,” with scarcely a glance at his host, and speedily became a dim figure in the smoke haze.
“He must be runnin' away from you, Fred,” Polycarp hinted, grinning cunningly. “What you done to him—hey?”
Fred answered him with an unsatisfactory scowl. “You sure would be wise, if you found out everything you wanted to know,” he said contemptuously, after an appreciable Wait. “I guess we better be moving along, Bill.” He rose, brushed off his trousers with a downward sweep of his hands, and strolled toward the corrals, followed languidly by Bill Madison.
As if they had been waiting for a leader, the others rose also and prepared to depart. Polycarp proceeded, in his usual laborious manner, to draw his tobacco from his pocket, and pry off a corner.
“Why don't you burn them guards now, Manley, while you got plenty of help?” he suggested, turning his slit-lidded eyes toward the kitchen door, where Val appeared for an instant to reach the broom which stood outside.
“Because I don't want to,” snapped Manley: “I've got plenty to do without that.”
“Well, they ain't wide enough, nor long enough, and they don't run in the right direction—if you ask me.” Polycarp spat solemnly off to the right.
“I don't ask you, as it happens.” Manley turned and went into the home.
Polycarp looked quizzically at the closed door. “He's mighty touchy about them guards, for a feller that thinks they're all right—he-he!” he remarked, to no one in particular. “Some of these days, by granny, he'll wisht he'd took my advice!”
Since no one gave him the slightest attention, Polycarp did not pursue the subject further. Instead, with both ears open to catch all that was said, he trailed after the others to the corral. It was a matter of instinct, as well as principle, with Polycarp Jenks, to let no sentence, however trivial, slip past his hearing and his memory.
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