initial commit of ebook 8537HEADmain

1 files changed, 7930 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/8537.txt b/8537.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8064fe3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/8537.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7930 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lonesome Land, by B. M. Bower
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lonesome Land
+
+Author: B. M. Bower
+
+
+Release Date: July, 2005  [EBook #8537]
+This file was first posted on July 21, 2003
+Last Updated: April 17, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LONESOME LAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Charles
+Franks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LONESOME LAND
+
+By B. M. Bower
+
+
+Author of "Chip, of the Flying U," etc.
+
+
+With Four Illustrations (not included)
+
+By Stanley L. Wood
+
+
+
+[Illustration: As he raced over the uneven prairie he fumbled
+with the saddle string]
+
+
+_Contents_
+
+CHAPTER
+    I. THE ARRIVAL OF VAL
+   II. WELL-MEANT ADVICE
+  III. A LADY IN A TEMPER
+   IV. THE "SHIVAREE"
+    V. COLD SPRING RANCH
+   VI. MANLEY'S FIRE GUARD
+  VII. VAL'S NEW DUTIES
+ VIII. THE PRAIRIE FIRE
+   IX. KENT TO THE RESCUE
+    X. DESOLATION
+   XI. VAL'S AWAKENING
+  XII. A LESSON IN FORGIVENESS
+ XIII. ARLINE GIVES A DANCE
+  XIV. A WEDDING PRESENT
+   XV. A COMPACT
+  XVI. MANLEY'S NEW TACTICS
+ XVII. VAL BECOMES AN AUTHOR
+XVIII. VAL'S DISCOVERY
+  XIX. KENT'S CONFESSION
+   XX. A BLOTCHED BRAND
+  XXI. VAL DECIDES
+ XXII. A FRIEND IN NEED
+XXIII. CAUGHT!
+ XXIV. RETRIBUTION
+
+
+_List of Illustrations_
+
+As he raced over the uneven prairie he fumbled with the saddle string
+
+He was jeered unmercifully by Fred De Garmo and his crowd
+
+"Little woman, listen here," he said. "You're playing hard luck, and I know
+it"
+
+To draw the red hot spur across the fresh VP did not take long
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. THE ARRIVAL OF VAL
+
+In northern Montana there lies a great, lonely stretch of prairie land,
+gashed deep where flows the Missouri. Indeed, there are many such--big,
+impassive, impressive in their very loneliness, in summer given over to
+the winds and the meadow larks and to the shadows fleeing always over the
+hilltops. Wild range cattle feed there and grow sleek and fat for the fall
+shipping of beef. At night the coyotes yap quaveringly and prowl abroad
+after the long-eared jack rabbits, which bounce away at their hunger-driven
+approach. In winter it is not good to be there; even the beasts shrink then
+from the bleak, level reaches, and shun the still bleaker heights.
+
+But men will live anywhere if by so doing there is money to be gained, and
+so a town snuggled up against the northern rim of the bench land, where the
+bleakness was softened a bit by the sheltering hills, and a willow-fringed
+creek with wild rosebushes and chokecherries made a vivid green background
+for the meager huddle of little, unpainted buildings.
+
+To the passengers on the through trains which watered at the red tank near
+the creek, the place looked crudely picturesque--interesting, so long as
+one was not compelled to live there and could retain a perfectly impersonal
+viewpoint. After five or ten minutes spent hi watching curiously the one
+little street, with the long hitching poles planted firmly and frequently
+down both sides--usually within a very few steps of a saloon door--and the
+horses nodding and stamping at the flies, and the loitering figures
+that appeared now and then in desultory fashion, many of them imagined
+that they understood the West and sympathized with it, and appreciated its
+bigness and its freedom from conventions.
+
+One slim young woman had just told the thin-faced school teacher on a
+vacation, with whom she had formed one of those evanescent traveling
+acquaintances, that she already knew the West, from instinct and from
+Manley's letters. She loved it, she said, because Manley loved it, and
+because it was to be her home, and because it was so big and so free.
+Out here one could think and grow and really live, she declared, with
+enthusiasm. Manley had lived here for three years, and his letters, she
+told the thin-faced teacher, were an education in themselves.
+
+The teacher had already learned that the slim young woman, with the
+yellow-brown hair and yellow-brown eyes to match, was going to marry
+Manley--she had forgotten his other name, though the young woman had
+mentioned it--and would live on a ranch, a cattle ranch. She smiled with
+somewhat wistful sympathy, and hoped the young woman would be happy; and
+the young woman waved her hand, with the glove only half pulled on, toward
+the shadow-dappled prairie and the willow-fringed creek, and the hills
+beyond.
+
+"Happy!" she echoed joyously. "Could one be anything else, in such a
+country? And then--you don't know Manley, you see. It's horribly bad form,
+and undignified and all that, to prate of one's private affairs, but I just
+can't help bubbling over. I'm not looking for heaven, and I expect to have
+plenty of bumpy places in the trail--trail is anything that you travel
+over, out here; Manley has coached me faithfully--but I'm going to be
+happy. My mind is quite made up. Well, good-by--I'm so glad you happened
+to be on this train, and I wish I might meet you again. Isn't it a funny
+little depot? Oh, yes--thank you! I almost forgot that umbrella, and I
+might need it. Yes, I'll write to you--I should hate to drop out of
+your mind completely. Address me Mrs. Manley Fleetwood, Hope, Montana.
+Good-by--I wish--"
+
+She trailed off down the aisle with eyes shining, in the wake of the
+grinning porter. She hurried down the steps, glanced hastily along the
+platform, up at the car window where the faded little school teacher was
+smiling wearily down at her, waved her hand, threw a dainty little kiss,
+nodded a gay farewell, smiled vaguely at the conductor, who had been
+respectfully pleasant to her--and then she was looking at the rear platform
+of the receding train mechanically, not yet quite realizing why it was that
+her heart went heavy so suddenly. She turned then and looked about her in
+a surprised, inquiring fashion. Manley, it would seem, was not at hand to
+welcome her. She had expected his face to be the first she looked upon in
+that town, but she tried not to be greatly perturbed at his absence; so
+many things may detain one.
+
+At that moment a young fellow, whose clothes emphatically proclaimed him a
+cowboy, came diffidently up to her, tilted his hat backward an inch or so,
+and left it that way, thereby unconsciously giving himself an air of candor
+which should have been reassuring.
+
+"Fleetwood was detained. You were expecting to--you're the lady he was
+expecting, aren't you?"
+
+She had been looking questioningly at her violin box and two trunks
+standing on their ends farther down the platform, and she smiled vaguely
+without glancing at him.
+
+"Yes. I hope he isn't sick, or--"
+
+"I'll take you over to the hotel, and go tell him you're here," he
+volunteered, somewhat curtly, and picked up her bag.
+
+"Oh, thank you." This time her eyes grazed his face inattentively. She
+followed him down the rough steps of planking and up an extremely dusty
+road--one could scarcely call it a street--to an uninviting building with
+crooked windows and a high, false front of unpainted boards.
+
+The young fellow opened a sagging door, let her pass into a narrow hallway,
+and from there into a stuffy, hopelessly conventional fifth-rate parlor,
+handed her the bag, and departed with another tilt of the hat which placed
+it at a different angle. The sentence meant for farewell she did not catch,
+for she was staring at a wooden-faced portrait upon an easel, the portrait
+of a man with a drooping mustache, and porky cheeks, and dead-looking eyes.
+
+"And I expected bearskin rugs, and antlers on the walls, and big
+fireplaces!" she remarked aloud, and sighed. Then she turned and pulled
+aside a coarse curtain of dusty, machine-made lace, and looked after her
+guide. He was just disappearing into a saloon across the street, and she
+dropped the curtain precipitately, as if she were ashamed of spying. "Oh,
+well--I've heard all cowboys are more or less intemperate," she excused,
+again aloud.
+
+She sat down upon an atrocious red plush chair, and wrinkled her
+nose spitefully at the porky-cheeked portrait. "I suppose you're the
+proprietor," she accused, "or else the proprietor's son. I wish you
+wouldn't squint like that. If I have to stop here longer than ten minutes,
+I shall certainly turn you face to the wall." Whereupon, with another
+grimace, she turned her back upon it and looked out of the window. Then she
+stood up impatiently, looked at her watch, and sat down again upon the red
+plush chair.
+
+"He didn't tell me whether Manley is sick," she said suddenly, with some
+resentment. "He was awfully abrupt in his manner. Oh, you--" She rose,
+picked up an old newspaper from the marble-topped table with uncertain
+legs, and spread it ungently over the portrait upon the easel. Then she
+went to the window and looked out again. "I feel perfectly sure that cowboy
+went and got drunk immediately," she complained, drumming pettishly upon
+the glass. "And I don't suppose he told Manley at all."
+
+The cowboy was innocent of the charge, however, and he was doing his
+energetic best to tell Manley. He had gone straight through the saloon and
+into the small room behind, where a man lay sprawled upon a bed in one
+corner. He was asleep, and his clothes were wrinkled as if he had lain
+there long. His head rested upon his folded arms, and he was snoring
+loudly. The young fellow went up and took him roughly by the shoulder.
+
+"Here! I thought I told you to straighten up," he cried disgustedly. "Come
+alive! The train's come and gone, and your girl's waiting for you over to
+the hotel. D' you hear?"
+
+"Uh-huh!" The man opened one eye, grunted, and closed it again.
+
+The other yanked him half off the bed, and swore. This brought both eyes
+open, glassy with whisky and sleep. He sat wobbling upon the edge of the
+bed, staring stupidly.
+
+"Can't you get anything through you?" his tormentor exclaimed. "You want
+your girl to find out you're drunk? You got the license in your pocket.
+You're supposed to get spliced this evening--and look at you!" He turned
+and went out to the bartender.
+
+"Why didn't you pour that coffee into him, like I told you?" he demanded.
+"We've got to get him steady on his pins _somehow!_"
+
+The bartender was sprawled half over the bar, apathetically reading the
+sporting news of a torn Sunday edition of an Eastern paper. He looked up
+from under his eyebrows and grunted.
+
+"How you going to pour coffee down a man that lays flat on his belly and
+won't open his mouth?" he inquired, in an injured tone. "Sleep's all he
+needs, anyway. He'll be all right by morning."
+
+The other snorted dissent. "He'll be all right by dark--or he'll feel a
+whole lot worse," he promised grimly. "Dig up some ice. And a good jolt of
+bromo, if you've got it--and a towel or two."
+
+The bartender wearily pushed the paper to one side, reached languidly under
+the bar, and laid hold of a round blue bottle. Yawning uninterestedly, he
+poured a double portion of the white crystals into a glass, half filled
+another under the faucet of the water cooler, and held them out.
+
+"Dump that into him, then," he advised. "It'll help some, if you get it
+down. What's the sweat to get him married off to-day? Won't the girl wait?"
+
+"I never asked her. You pound up some ice and bring it in, will you?" The
+volunteer nurse kicked open the door into the little room and went in,
+hastily pouring the bromo seltzer from one glass to the other to keep it
+from foaming out of all bounds. His patient was still sitting upon the edge
+of the bed where he had left him, slumped forward with his head in his
+hands. He looked up stupidly, his eyes bloodshot and swollen of lid.
+
+"'S the train come in yet?" he asked thickly. "'S you, is it, Kent?"
+
+"The train's come, and your girl is waiting for you at the hotel. Here,
+throw this into you--and for God's sake, brace up! You make me tired. Drink
+her down quick--the foam's good for you. Here, you take the stuff in the
+bottom, too. Got it? Take off your coat, so I can get at you. You don't
+look much like getting married, and that's no josh."
+
+Fleetwood shook his head with drunken gravity, and groaned. "I ought to be
+killed. Drunk to-day!" He sagged forward again, and seemed disposed to shed
+tears. "She'll never forgive me; she--"
+
+Kent jerked him to his feet peremptorily. "Aw, look here! I'm trying
+to sober you up. You've got to do your part--see? Here's some ice in a
+towel--you get it on your head. Open up your shirt, so I can bathe your
+chest. Don't do any good to blubber around about it. Your girl can't hear
+you, and Jim and I ain't sympathetic. Set down in this chair, where we can
+get at you." He enforced his command with some vigor, and Fleetwood groaned
+again. But he shed no more tears, and he grew momentarily more lucid, as
+the treatment took effect.
+
+The tears were being shed in the stuffy little hotel parlor. The young
+woman looked often at her watch, went into the hallway, and opened the
+outer door several times, meditating a search of the town, and drew back
+always with a timid fluttering of heart because it was all so crude and
+strange, and the saloons so numerous and terrifying in their very bald
+simplicity.
+
+She was worried about Manley, and she wished that cowboy would come out
+of the saloon and bring her lover to her. She had never dreamed of being
+treated in this way. No one came near her--and she had secretly expected to
+cause something of a flutter in this little town they called Hope.
+
+Surely, young girls from the East, come out to get married to their
+sweethearts, weren't so numerous that they should be ignored. If there were
+other people in the hotel, they did not manifest their presence, save by
+disquieting noises muffled by intervening partitions.
+
+She grew thirsty, but she hesitated to explore the depths of this dreary
+abode, in fear of worse horrors than the parlor furniture, and all the
+places of refreshment which she could see from the window or the door
+looked terribly masculine and unmoral, and as if they did not know there
+existed such things as ice cream, or soda, or sherbet.
+
+It was after an hour of this that the tears came, which is saying a good
+deal for her courage. It seemed to her then that Manley must be dead. What
+else could keep him so long away from her, after three years of impassioned
+longing written twice a week with punctilious regularity?
+
+He knew that she was coming. She had telegraphed from St. Paul, and had
+received a joyful reply, lavishly expressed in seventeen words instead of
+the ten-word limit. And they were to have been married immediately upon her
+arrival.
+
+That cowboy had known she was coming; he must also have known why Manley
+did not meet her, and she wished futilely that she had questioned him,
+instead of walking beside him without a word. He should have explained. He
+would have explained if he had not been so very anxious to get inside that
+saloon and get drunk.
+
+She had always heard that cowboys were chivalrous, and brave, and
+fascinating in their picturesque dare-deviltry, but from the lone specimen
+which she had met she could not see that they possessed any of those
+qualities. If all cowboys were like that, she hoped that she would not be
+compelled to meet any of them. And _why_ didn't Manley come?
+
+It was then that an inner door--a door which she had wanted to open, but
+had lacked courage--squeaked upon its hinges, and an ill-kept bundle of
+hair was thrust in, topping a weather-beaten face and a scrawny little
+body. Two faded, inquisitive eyes looked her over, and the woman sidled in,
+somewhat abashed, but too curious to remain outside.
+
+"Oh yes!" She seemed to be answering some inner question. "I didn't know
+you was here." She went over and removed the newspaper from the portrait.
+"That breed girl of mine ain't got the least idea of how to straighten up
+a room," she observed complainingly. "I guess she thinks this picture was
+made to hang things on. I'll have to round her up again and tell her a few
+things. This is my first husband. He was in politics and got beat, and so
+he killed himself. He couldn't stand to have folks give him the laugh." She
+spoke with pride. "He was a real handsome man, don't you think? You mighta
+took off the paper; it didn't belong there, and he does brighten up the
+room. A good picture is real company, seems to me. When my old man gets on
+the rampage till I can't stand it no longer, I come in here and set, and
+look at Walt. 'T ain't every man that's got nerve to kill himself--with a
+shotgun. It was turrible! He took and tied a string to the trigger--"
+
+"Oh, please!"
+
+The landlady stopped short and stared at her. "What? Oh, I won't go into
+details--it was awful messy, and that's a fact. I didn't git over it for a
+couple of months. He coulda killed himself with a six-shooter; it's always
+been a mystery why he dug up that old shotgun, but he did. I always thought
+he wanted to show his nerve." She sighed, and drew her fingers across her
+eyes. "I don't s'pose I ever will git over it," she added complacently. "It
+was a turrible shock."
+
+"Do you know," the girl began desperately, "if Mr. Manley Fleetwood is in
+town? I expected him to meet me at the train."
+
+"Oh! I kinda _thought_ you was Man Fleetwood's girl. My name's Hawley. You
+going to be married to-night, ain't you?"
+
+"I--I haven't seen Mr. Fleetwood yet," hesitated the girl, and her eyes
+filled again with tears. "I'm afraid something may have happened to him.
+He--"
+
+Mrs. Hawley glimpsed the tears, and instantly became motherly in her
+manner. She even went up and patted the girl on the shoulder.
+
+"There, now, don't you worry none. Man's all right; I seen him at dinner
+time. He was--" She stopped short, looked keenly at the delicate face,
+and at the yellow-brown eyes which gazed back at her, innocent of evil,
+trusting, wistful. "He spoke about your coming, and said he'd want the use
+of the parlor this evening, for the wedding. I had an idea you was coming
+on the six-twenty train. Maybe he thought so, too. I never heard you come
+in--I was busy frying doughnuts in the kitchen--and I just happened to come
+in here after something. You'd oughta rapped on that door. Then I'd 'a'
+known you was here. I'll go and have my old man hunt him up. He must be
+around town somewheres. Like as not he'll meet the six-twenty, expecting
+you to be on it."
+
+She smiled reassuringly as she turned to the inner door.
+
+"You take off your hat and jacket, and pretty soon I'll show you up to a
+room. I'll have to round up my old man first--and that's liable to take
+time." She turned her eyes quizzically to the porky-cheeked portrait. "You
+jest let Walt keep you company till I get back. He was real good company
+when he was livin'."
+
+She smiled again and went out briskly, came back, and stood with her hand
+upon the cracked doorknob.
+
+"I clean forgot your name," she hinted. "Man told me, at dinner time, but
+I'm no good on earth at remembering names till after I've seen the person
+it belongs to."
+
+"Valeria Peyson--Val, they call me usually, at home." The homesickness of
+the girl shone in her misty eyes, haunted her voice. Mrs. Hawley read it,
+and spoke more briskly than she would otherwise have done.
+
+"Well, we're plumb strangers, but we ain't going to stay that way, because
+every time you come to town you'll have to stop here; there ain't any other
+place to stop. And I'm going to start right in calling you Val. We don't
+use no ceremony with folk's names, out here. Val's a real nice name, short
+and easy to say. Mine's Arline. You can call me by it if you want to. I
+don't let everybody--so many wants to cut it down to Leen, and I won't
+stand for that; I'm _lean_ enough, without havin' it throwed up to me. We
+might jest as well start in the way we're likely to keep it up, and you
+won't feel so much like a stranger.
+
+"I'm awful glad you're going to settle here--there ain't so awful many
+women in the country; we have to rake and scrape to git enough for three
+sets when we have a dance--and more likely we can't make out more 'n two.
+D' you dance? Somebody said they seen a fiddle box down to the depot, with
+a couple of big trunks; d' you play the fiddle?"
+
+"A little," Valeria smiled faintly.
+
+"Well, that'll come in awful handy at dances. We'd have 'em real often in
+the winter if it wasn't such a job to git music. Well, I got too much to do
+to be standin' here talkin'. I have to keep right after that breed girl all
+the time, or she won't do nothing. I'll git my old man after your fellow
+right away. Jest make yourself to home, and anything you want ask for it
+in the kitchen." She smiled in friendly fashion and closed the door with a
+little slam to make sure that it latched.
+
+Valeria stood for a moment with her hands hanging straight at her
+sides, staring absently at the door. Then she glanced at Walt, staring
+wooden-faced from his gilt frame upon his gilt easel, and shivered. She
+pushed the red plush chair as far away from him as possible, sat down with
+her back to the picture, and immediately felt his dull, black eyes boring
+into her back.
+
+"What a fool I must be!" she said aloud, glancing reluctantly over her
+shoulder at the portrait. She got up resolutely, placed the chair where it
+had stood before, and stared deliberately at Walt, as if she would prove
+how little she cared. But in a moment more she was crying dismally.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. WELL-MEANT ADVICE
+
+Kent Burnett, bearing over his arm a coat newly pressed in the Delmonico
+restaurant, dodged in at the back door of the saloon, threw the coat down
+upon the tousled bed, and pushed back his hat with a gesture of relief at
+an onerous duty well performed.
+
+"I had one hell of a time," he announced plaintively, "and that Chink will
+likely try to poison me if I eat over there, after this--but I got her
+ironed, all right. Get into it, Man, and chase yourself over there to the
+hotel. Got a clean collar? That one's all-over coffee."
+
+Fleetwood stifled a groan, reached into a trousers pocket, and brought up a
+dollar. "Get me one at the store, will you, Kent? Fifteen and a half--and a
+tie, if they've got any that's decent. And hurry! Such a triple-three-star
+fool as I am ought to be taken out and shot."
+
+He went on cursing himself audibly and bitterly, even after Kent
+had hurried out. He was sober now--was Manley Fleetwood--sober and
+self-condemnatory and penitent. His head ached splittingly; his eyes
+were heavy-lidded and bloodshot, and his hands trembled so that he could
+scarcely button his coat. But he was sober. He did not even carry the odor
+of whisky upon his breath or his person; for Kent had been very thoughtful
+and very thorough. He had compelled his patient to crunch and swallow many
+nauseous tablets of "whisky killer," and he had sprinkled his clothes
+liberally with Jockey Club; Fleetwood, therefore, while he emanated odors
+in plenty, carried about him none of the aroma properly belonging to
+intoxication.
+
+In ten minutes Kent was back, with a celluloid collar and two ties of
+questionable taste. Manley just glanced at them, waved them away with
+gloomy finality, and swore.
+
+"They're just about the limit, and that's no dream," sympathized Kent, "but
+they're clean, and they don't look like they'd been slept in for a month.
+You've got to put 'em on--by George, I sized up the layout in both those
+imitation stores, and I drew the highest in the deck. And for the Lord's
+sake, get a move on. Here, I'll button it for you."
+
+Behind Fleetwood's back, when collar and tie were in place, Kent grinned
+and lowered an eyelid at Jim, who put his head in from the saloon to see
+how far the sobering had progressed.
+
+"You look fine!" he encouraged heartily. "That green-and-blue tie's just
+what you need to set you off. And the collar sure is shiny and nice--your
+girl will be plumb dazzled. She won't see anything wrong--believe _me_.
+Now, run along and get married. Here, you better sneak out the back way; if
+she happened to be looking out, she'd likely wonder what you were doing,
+coming out of a saloon. Duck out past the coal shed and cut into the street
+by Brinberg's. Tell her you're sick--got a sick headache. Your looks'll
+swear it's the truth. Hike!" He opened the door and pushed Fleetwood out,
+watched him out of sight around the corner of Brinberg's store, and turned
+back into the close-smelling little room.
+
+"Do you know," he remarked to Jim, "I never thought of it before, but I've
+been playing a low-down trick on that poor girl. I kinda wish now I'd put
+her next, and given her a chance to draw outa the game if she wanted to.
+It's stacking the deck on her, if you ask _me_!" He pushed his hat back
+upon his head, gave his shoulders a twist of dissatisfaction, and told Jim
+to dig up some Eastern beer; drank it meditatively, and set down the glass
+with some force.
+
+"Yes, sir," he said disgustedly, "darn my fool soul, I stacked the deck on
+that girl--and she looked to be real nice. Kinda innocent and trusting,
+like she hasn't found out yet how rotten mean men critters can be." He took
+the bottle and poured himself another glass. "She's sure due to wise up a
+lot," he added grimly.
+
+"You bet your sweet life!" Jim agreed, and then he reconsidered. "Still, I
+dunno; Man ain't so worse. He ain't what you can call a real booze fighter.
+This here's what I'd call an accidental jag; got it in the exuberance of
+the joyful moment when he knew his girl was coming. He'll likely straighten
+up and be all right. He--" Jim broke off there and looked to see who had
+opened the door.
+
+"Hello, Polly," he greeted carelessly.
+
+The man came forward, grinning skinnily. Polycarp Jenks was the outrageous
+name of him. He was under the average height, and he was lean to the point
+of emaciation. His mouth was absolutely curveless--a straight gash across
+his face; a gash which simply stopped short without any tapering or any
+turn at the corners, when it had reached as far as was decent. His nose was
+also straight and high, and owned no perceptible slope; indeed, it seemed
+merely a pendant attached to his forehead, and its upper termination was
+indefinite, except that somewhere between his eyebrows one felt impelled to
+consider it forehead rather than nose. His eyes also were rather long and
+narrow, like buttonholes cut to match the mouth. When he grinned his face
+appeared to break up into splinters.
+
+He was intensely proud of his name, and his pleasure was almost pathetic
+when one pronounced it without curtailment in his presence. His skinniness
+was also a matter of pride. And when you realize that he was an
+indefatigable gossip, and seemed always to be riding at large, gathering or
+imparting trivial news, you should know fairly well Polycarp Jenks.
+
+"I see Man Fleetwood's might' near sober enough to git married," Polycarp
+began, coming up to the two and leaning a sharp elbow upon the bar beside
+Kent. "By granny, gitting married'd sober anybody! Dinner time he was so
+drunk he couldn't find his mouth. I met him up here a little ways just now,
+and he was so sober he remembered to pay me that ten I lent him t' other
+day--_he-he!_ Open up a bottle of pop, James.
+
+"His girl's been might' near crying her eyes out, 'cause he didn't show
+up. Mis' Hawley says she looked like she was due at a funeral 'stid of a
+weddin'. 'Clined to be stuck up, accordin' to Mis' Hawley--shied at hearin'
+about Walt--_he-he!_ I'll bet there ain't been a transient to that hotel in
+the last five year, man or woman, that ain't had to hear about Walt and the
+shotgun--Pop's all right on a hot day, you bet!
+
+"She's got two trunks and a fiddle over to the depot--don't see how 'n the
+world Man's going to git 'em out to the ranch; they're might' near as big
+as claim shacks, both of 'em. Time she gits 'em into Man's shack she'll
+have to go outside every time she wants to turn around--_he-he!_ By
+granny--two trunks, to one woman! Have some pop, Kenneth, on me.
+
+"The boys are talkin' about a shivaree t'-night. On the quiet, y' know.
+Some of 'em's workin' on a horse fiddle now, over in the lumber yard.
+Wanted me to play a coal-oil can, but I dunno. I'm gittin' a leetle old for
+sech doings. Keeps you up nights too much. Man had any sense, he'd marry
+and pull outa town. 'Bout fifteen or twenty in the bunch, and a string of
+cans and irons to reach clean across the street. By granny, I'm going to
+plug m' ears good with cotton when it comes off--_he-he!_ 'Nother bottle of
+pop, James."
+
+"Who's running the show, Polycarp?" Kent asked, accepting the glass of soda
+because he disliked to offend. "Funny I didn't hear about it."
+
+Polycarp twisted his slit of a mouth knowingly, and closed one slit of an
+eye to assist the facial elucidation.
+
+"Ain't funny--not when I tell you Fred De Garmo's handing out the
+_in_vites, and he sure aims to have plenty of excitement--_he-he!_
+Betcher Manley won't be able to set on the wagon seat an' hold the lines
+t'-morrow--not if he comes out when he's called and does the thing
+proper--_he-he!_ An' if he don't show up, they aim to jest about pull the
+old shebang down over his ears. Hope'll think it's the day of judgment,
+sure--_he-he!_ Reckon I might's well git in on the fun--they won't be no
+sleepin' within ten mile of the place, nohow, and a feller always sees the
+joke better when he's lendin' a hand. Too bad you an' Fred's on the outs,
+Kenneth."
+
+"Oh, I don't know--it suits me fine," Kent declared easily, setting down
+his glass with a sigh of relief; he hated "pop."
+
+"What's it all about, anyway?" quizzed Polycarp, hungering for the details
+which had thus far been denied him. "De Garmo sees red whenever anybody
+mentions your name, Kenneth--but I never did hear no particulars."
+
+"No?" Kent was turning toward the door. "Well, you see, Fred claims he
+can holler louder than I can, and I say he can't." He opened the door and
+calmly departed, leaving Polycarp looking exceedingly foolish and a bit
+angry.
+
+Straight to the hotel, without any pretense at disguising his destination,
+marched Kent. He went into the office--which was really a saloon--invited
+Hawley to drink with him, and then wondered audibly if he could beg some
+pie from Mrs. Hawley.
+
+"Supper'll be ready in a few minutes," Hawley informed him, glancing up at
+the round, dust-covered clock screwed to the wall.
+
+"I don't want supper--I want pie," Kent retorted, and opened a door which
+led into the hallway. He went down the narrow passage to another door,
+opened it without ceremony, and was assailed by the odor of many
+things--the odor which spoke plainly of supper, or some other assortment of
+food. No one was in sight, so he entered the dining room boldly, stepped to
+another door, tapped very lightly upon it, and went in. By this somewhat
+roundabout method he invaded the parlor.
+
+Manley Fleetwood was lying upon an extremely uncomfortable couch, of the
+kind which is called a sofa. He had a lace-edged handkerchief folded upon
+his brow, and upon his face was an expression of conscious unworthiness
+which struck Kent as being extremely humorous. He grinned understandingly
+and Manley flushed--also understandingly. Valeria hastily released Manley's
+hand and looked very prim and a bit haughty, as she regarded the intruder
+from the red plush chair, pulled close to the couch.
+
+"Mr. Fleetwood's head is very bad yet," she informed Kent coldly. "I really
+do not think he ought to see--anybody."
+
+Kent tapped his hat gently against his leg and faced her unflinchingly,
+quite unconscious of the fact that she regarded him as a dissolute, drunken
+cowboy with whom Manley ought not to associate.
+
+"That's too bad." His eyes failed to drop guiltily before hers, but
+continued to regard her calmly. "I'm only going to stay a minute. I came to
+tell you that there's a scheme to raise--to 'shivaree' you two, tonight. I
+thought you might want to pull out, along about dark."
+
+Manley looked up at him inquiringly with the eye which was not covered by
+the lace-edged handkerchief. Valeria seemed startled, just at first. Then
+she gave Kent a little shock of surprise.
+
+"I have read about such things. A _charivari_, even out here in this
+uncivilized section of the country, can hardly be dangerous. I really do
+not think we care to run away, thank you." Her lip curled unmistakably.
+"Mr. Fleetwood is suffering from a sick headache. He needs rest--not a
+cowardly night ride."
+
+Naturally Kent admired the spirit she showed, in spite of that eloquent
+lip, the scorn of which seemed aimed directly at him. But he still faced
+her steadily.
+
+"Sure. But if I had a headache--like that--I'd certainly burn the earth
+getting outa town to-night. _Shivarees_"--he stuck stubbornly to his own
+way of saying it--"are bad for the head. They aren't what you could call
+silent--not out here in this uncivilized section of the country. They're
+plumb--" He hesitated for just a fraction of a second, and his resentment
+of her tone melted into a twinkle of the eyes. "They've got fifty coal-oil
+cans strung with irons on a rope, and there'll be about ninety-five
+six-shooters popping, and eight or ten horse-fiddles, and they'll all be
+yelling to beat four of a kind. They're going," he said quite gravely, "to
+play the full orchestra. And I don't believe," he added ironically, "it's
+going to help Mr. Fleetwood's head any."
+
+Valeria looked at him doubtingly with steady, amber-colored eyes before she
+turned solicitously to readjust the lace-edged handkerchief. Kent seized
+the opportunity to stare fixedly at Fleetwood and jerk his head meaningly
+backward, but when, warned by Manley's changing expression, she glanced
+suspiciously over her shoulder, Kent was standing quietly by the door with
+his hat in his hand, gazing absently at Walt in his gilt-edged frame upon
+the gilt easel, and waiting, evidently, for their decision.
+
+"I shall tell them that Mr. Fleetwood is sick--that he has a horrible
+headache, and mustn't be disturbed."
+
+Kent forgot himself so far as to cough slightly behind his hand. Valeria's
+eyes sparkled.
+
+"Even out here," she went on cuttingly, "there must be some men who are
+gentlemen!"
+
+Kent refrained from looking at her, but the blood crept darkly into his
+tanned cheeks. Evidently she "had it in for him," but he could not see why.
+He wondered swiftly if she blamed him for Manley's condition.
+
+Fleetwood suddenly sat up, spilling the handkerchief to the floor. When
+Valeria essayed to push him back he put her hand gently away. He rose and
+came over to Kent.
+
+"Is this straight goods?" he demanded. "Why don't you stop it?"
+
+"Fred De Garmo's running this show. My influence wouldn't go as far--"
+
+Fleetwood turned to the girl, and his manner was masterful. "I'm going out
+with Kent--oh, Val, this is Mr. Burnett. Kent, Miss Peyson. I forgot you
+two aren't acquainted."
+
+From Valeria's manner, they were in no danger of becoming friends. Her
+acknowledgment was barely perceptible. Kent bowed stiffly.
+
+"I'm going to see about this, Val," continued Fleetwood. "Oh, my head's
+better--a lot better, really. Maybe we'd better leave town--"
+
+"If your head is better, I don't see why we need run away from a lot of
+silly noise," Valeria interposed, with merciless logic. "They'll think
+we're awful cowards."
+
+"Well, I'll try and find out--I won't be gone a minute, dear." After that
+word, spoken before another, he appeared to be in great haste, and pushed
+Kent rather unceremoniously through the door. In the dining room, Kent
+diplomatically included the landlady in the conference, by a gesture of
+much mystery bringing her in from the kitchen, where she had been curiously
+peeping out at them.
+
+"Got to let her in," he whispered to Manley, "to keep her face closed."
+
+They murmured together for five minutes. Kent seemed to meet with some
+opposition from Fleetwood--an aftermath of Valeria's objections to
+flight--and became brutally direct.
+
+"Go ahead--do as you please," he said roughly. "But you know that bunch.
+You'll have to show up, and you'll have to set 'em up, and--aw, thunder!
+By morning you'll be plumb laid out. You'll be headed into one of your
+four-day jags, and you know it. I was thinking of the girl--but if you
+don't care, I guess it's none of my funeral. Go to it--but darned if I'd
+want to start my honeymoon out like that!"
+
+Fleetwood weakened, but still he hesitated. "If I didn't show up--" he
+began hopefully. But Kent wittered him with a look.
+
+"That bunch will be two-thirds full before they start out. If you don't
+show up, they'll go up and haul you outa bed--hell, Man! You'd likely start
+in to kill somebody off. Fred De Garmo don't love you much better than he
+loves me. You know what him and his friends would do then, I should think."
+He stopped, and seemed to consider briefly a plan, but shook his head
+over it. "I could round up a bunch and stand 'em off, maybe--but we'd be
+shooting each other up, first rattle of the box. It's a whole lot easier
+for you to get outa town."
+
+"I'll tell somebody you got the bridal chamber," hissed Arline, in a very
+loud whisper. "That's number two, in front. I can keep a light going and
+pass back 'n' forth once in a while, to look like you're there. That'll
+fool 'em good. They'll wait till the light's been out quite a while before
+they start in. You go ahead and git married at seven, jest as you was going
+to--and if Kent'll have the team ready somewheres, I can easy sneak you out
+the back way."
+
+"I couldn't get the team out of town without giving the whole deal away,"
+Kent objected. "You'll have to go horseback.".
+
+"Val can't ride," Fleetwood stated, as if that settled the matter.
+
+"Damn it, she's got to ride!" snapped Kent, losing patience. "Unless you
+want to stay and go on a toot that'll last a week, most likely."
+
+"Val belongs to the W.C.T.U.," shrugged Fleetwood. "She'd never--"
+
+"Well, it's that or have a fight on your hands you maybe can't handle. I
+don't see any sense in haggling about going, now you know what to expect.
+But, of course," he added, with some acrimony, "it's your own business. I
+don't know what the dickens I'm getting all worked up over it for. Suit
+yourself." He turned toward the door.
+
+"She could ride my Mollie--and I got a sidesaddle hanging up in the coal
+shed. She could use that, or a stock saddle, either one," planned Mrs.
+Hawley anxiously. "You better pull out, Man."
+
+"Hold on, Kent! Don't rush off--we'll go," Fleetwood surrendered. "Val
+won't like it, but I'll explain as well as I can, without--Say! you stay
+and see us married, won't you? It's at seven, and--"
+
+Kent's fingers curled around the doorknob. "No, thanks. Weddings and
+funerals are two bunches of trouble I always ride 'way around. Time enough
+when you've got to be _it_. Along about nine o'clock you try and get out to
+the stockyards without letting the whole town see you go, and I'll have the
+horses there; just beyond the wings, by that pile of ties. You know the
+place. I'll wait there till ten, and not a minute longer. That'll give you
+an hour, and you won't need any more time than that if you get down to
+business. You find out from her what saddle she wants, and you can tell me
+while I'm eating supper, Mrs. Hawley. I'll 'tend to the rest." He did not
+wait to hear whether they agreed to the plan, but went moodily down the
+narrow passage, and entered frowningly the "office." Several men were
+gathered there, waiting the supper summons. Hawley glanced up from wiping a
+glass, and grinned.
+
+"Well, did you git the pie?"
+
+"Naw. She said I'd got to wait for mealtime. She plumb chased me out."
+
+Fred De Garmo, sprawled in an armchair and smoking a cigar, lazily fanned
+the smoke cloud from before his face and looked at Kent attentively.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. A LADY IN A TEMPER
+
+To saddle two horses when the night has grown black and to lead them,
+unobserved, so short a distance as two hundred yards or so seems a simple
+thing; and for two healthy young people with full use of their wits and
+their legs to steal quietly away to where those horses are waiting
+would seem quite as simple. At the same time, to prevent the successful
+accomplishment of these things is not difficult, if one but fully
+understands the designs of the fugitives.
+
+Hawley Hotel did a flourishing business that night. The two long tables in
+the dining room, usually not more than half filled by those who hungered
+and were not over-nice concerning the food they ate, were twice filled to
+overflowing. Mrs. Hawley and the "breed" girl held hasty consultations in
+the kitchen over the supply, and never was there such a rattling of dishes
+hurriedly cleansed for the next comer.
+
+Kent managed to find a chair at the first table, and eyed the landlady
+unobtrusively. But Fred De Garmo sat down opposite, and his eyes were
+bright and watchful, so that there seemed no possible way of delivering a
+message undetected--until, indeed, Mrs. Hawley in desperation resorted to
+strategy, and urged Kent unnecessarily to take another slice of bacon.
+
+"Have some more--it's _side_!" she hissed in his ear, and watched anxiously
+his face.
+
+"All right," said Kent, and speared a slice with his fork, although his
+plate was already well supplied with bacon. Then, glancing up, he detected
+Fred in a thoughtful stare which seemed evenly divided between the landlady
+and himself. Kent was conscious of a passing, mental discomfort, which he
+put aside as foolish, because De Garmo could not possibly know what Mrs.
+Hawley meant. To ease his mind still further he glared insolently at Fred,
+and then at Polycarp Jenks _te-hee_ing a few chairs away. After that he
+finished as quickly as possible without exciting remark, and went his way.
+
+He had not, however, been two minutes in the office before De Garmo
+entered. From that time on through the whole evening Fred was never far
+distant; wherever he went, Kent could not shake him off though De Garmo
+never seemed to pay any attention to him, and his presence was always
+apparently accidental.
+
+"I reckon I'll have to lick that son of a gun yet," sighed Kent, when a
+glance at the round clock in the hotel office told him that in just twenty
+minutes it would strike nine; and not a move made toward getting those
+horses saddled and out to the stockyards.
+
+There was much talk of the wedding, which had taken place quietly in the
+parlor at the appointed hour, but not a man mentioned a _charivari_. There
+were many who wished openly that Fleetwood would come out and be sociable
+about it, but not a hint that they intended to take measures to bring him
+among them. He had caused a box of cigars to be placed upon the bar of
+every saloon in town, where men might help themselves at his expense.
+Evidently he had considered that with the cigars his social obligations
+were canceled. They smoked the cigars, and, with the same breath, gossiped
+of him and his affairs.
+
+At just fourteen minutes to nine Kent went out, and, without any attempt
+at concealment, hurried to the Hawley stables. Half a minute behind him
+trailed De Garmo, also without subterfuge.
+
+Half an hour later the bridal couple stole away from the rear of the hotel,
+and, keeping to the shadows, went stumbling over the uneven ground to the
+stockyards.
+
+"Here's the tie pile," Fleetwood announced, in an undertone, when they
+reached the place. "You stay here, Val, and I'll look farther along the
+fence; maybe the horses are down there."
+
+Valeria did not reply, but stood very straight and dignified in the shadow
+of the huge pile of rotting railroad ties. He was gone but a moment, and
+came anxiously back to her.
+
+"They're not here," he said, in a low voice. "Don't worry, dear. He'll
+come--I know Kent Burnett."
+
+"Are you sure?" queried Val sweetly. "From what I have seen of the
+gentleman, your high estimate of him seems quite unauthorized. Aside from
+escorting me to the hotel, he has been anything but reliable. Instead of
+telling you that I was here, or telling me that you were sick, he went
+straight into a saloon and forgot all about us both. You know that. If he
+were your friend, why should he immediately begin carousing, instead of--"
+
+"He didn't," Fleetwood defended weakly.
+
+"No? Then perhaps you can explain his behavior. Why didn't he tell me you
+were sick? Why didn't he tell you I came on that train? Can you tell me
+that, Manley?"
+
+Manley, for a very good reason, could not; so he put his arms around her
+and tried to coax her into good humor.
+
+"Sweetheart, let's not quarrel so soon--why, we're only two hours married!
+I want you to be happy, and if you'll only be brave and--"
+
+"Brave!" Mrs. Fleetwood laughed rather contemptuously, for a bride. "Please
+to understand, Manley, that I'm not frightened in the least. It's you and
+that horrid cowboy--_I_ don't see why we need run away, like criminals.
+Those men don't intend to _murder_ us, do they?" Her mood softened a
+little, and she squeezed his arm between her hands. "You dear old silly,
+I'm not blaming _you_. With your head in such a state, you can't think
+things out properly, and you let that cowboy influence you against your
+better judgment. You're afraid I might be annoyed--but, really, Manley,
+this silly idea of running away annoys me much more than all the noise
+those fellows could possibly make. Indeed, I don't think I would mind--it
+would give me a glimpse of the real West; and, perhaps, if they grew
+too boisterous, and I spoke to them and asked them not to be quite so
+rough--and, really, they only mean it as a sort of welcome, in their crude
+way. We could invite some of the nicest in to have cake and coffee--or
+maybe we might get some ice cream somewhere--and it might turn out a very
+pleasant little affair. I don't mind meeting them, Manley. The worst of
+them can't be as bad as that--but, of course, if he's your friend, I
+suppose I oughtn't to speak too freely my opinion of him!"
+
+Fleetwood held her closely, patted her cheek absently, and tried to think
+of some effective argument.
+
+"They'll be drunk, sweetheart," he told her, after a silence.
+
+"I don't think so," she returned firmly. "I have been watching the street
+all the evening. I saw any number of men passing back and forth, and I
+didn't see one who staggered. And they were all very quiet, considering
+their rough ways, which one must expect. Why, Manley, you always wrote
+about these Western men being such fine fellows, and so generous and
+big-hearted, under their rough exterior. Your letters were full of it--and
+how chivalrous they all are toward nice women."
+
+She laid her head coaxingly against his shoulder. "Let's go back, Manley.
+I--_want_ to see a _charivari_, dear. It will be fun. I want to write all
+about it to the girls. They'll be perfectly wild with envy." She struggled
+with her conventional upbringing. "And even if some of them are slightly
+under the influence--of liquor, we needn't _meet_ them. You needn't
+introduce those at all, and I'm sure they will understand."
+
+"Don't be silly, Val!" Fleetwood did not mean to be rude, but a faint
+glimmer of her romantic viewpoint--a viewpoint gained chiefly from current
+fiction and the stage--came to him and contrasted rather brutally with the
+reality. He did not know how to make her understand, without incriminating
+himself. His letters had been rather idealistic, he admitted to himself.
+They had been written unthinkingly, because he wanted her to like this big
+land; naturally he had not been too baldly truthful in picturing the place
+and the people. He had passed lightly over their faults and thrown the
+limelight on their virtues; and so he had aided unwittingly the stage and
+the fiction she had read, in giving her a false impression.
+
+Offended at his words and his tone, she drew away from him and glanced
+wistfully back toward the town, as if she meditated a haughty return to the
+hotel. She ended by seating herself upon a projecting tie.
+
+"Oh, very well, my lord," she retorted, "I shall try and not be silly, but
+merely idiotic, as you would have me. You and your friend!" She was very
+angry, but she was perfectly well-bred, she hoped. "If I might venture a
+word," she began again ironically, "it seems to me that your friend has
+been playing a practical joke upon you. He evidently has no intention of
+bringing any fleet steeds to us. No doubt he is at this moment laughing
+with his dissolute companions, because we are sitting out here in the dark
+like two silly chickens!"
+
+"I think he's coming now," Manley said rather stiffly. "Of course, I don't
+ask you to like him; but he's putting himself to a good deal of trouble for
+us, and--"
+
+"Wasted effort, so far as I am concerned," Valeria put in, with a chirpy
+accent which was exasperating, even to a bridegroom very much in love with
+his bride.
+
+In the darkness that muffled the land, save where the yellow flare of lamps
+in the little town made a misty brightness, came the click of shod hoofs.
+Another moment and a man, mounted upon a white horse, loomed indistinct
+before them, seeming to take substance from the night. Behind him trailed
+another horse, and for the first time in her life Valeria heard the soft,
+whispering creak of saddle leather, the faint clank of spur chains, and the
+whir of a horse mouthing the "cricket" in his bit. Even in her anger, she
+was conscious of an answering tingle of blood, because this was life in
+the raw--life such as she had dreamed of in the tight swaddlings of a smug
+civilization, and had longed for intensely.
+
+Kent swung down close beside them, his form indistinct but purposeful. "I'm
+late, I guess," he remarked, turning to Fleetwood. "Fred got next, somehow,
+and--I was detained."
+
+"Where is he?" asked Manley, going up and laying a questioning hand upon
+the horse, by that means fully recognizing it as Kent's own.
+
+"In the oats box," said Kent laconically. He turned to the girl. "I
+couldn't get the sidesaddle," he explained apologetically. "I looked where
+Mrs. Hawley said it was, but I couldn't find it--and I didn't have much
+time. You'll have to ride a stock saddle."
+
+Valeria drew back a step. "You mean--a man's saddle?" Her voice was
+carefully polite.
+
+"Why, yes." And he added: "The horse is dead gentle--and a sidesaddle's no
+good, anyhow. You'll like this better." He spoke, as was evident, purely
+from a man's viewpoint.
+
+That viewpoint Mrs. Fleetwood refused to share. "Oh, I couldn't ride a
+man's saddle," she protested, still politely, and one could imagine how her
+lips were pursed. "Indeed, I'm not sure that I care to leave town at all."
+To her the declaration did not seem unreasonable or abrupt but she felt
+that Kent was very much shocked. She saw him turn his head and look back
+toward the town, as if he half expected a pursuit.
+
+"I don't reckon the oats box will hold Fred very long," he observed
+meditatively. He added reminiscently to Manley: "I had a deuce of a time
+getting the cover down and fastened."
+
+"I'm very sorry," said Valeria, with sweet dignity, "that you gave yourself
+so much trouble--"
+
+"I'm kinda sorry myself," Kent agreed mildly, and Valeria blushed hotly,
+and was glad he could not see.
+
+"Come, Val--you can ride this saddle, all right. All the girls out here--"
+
+"I did not come West to imitate all the girls. Indeed, I could never think
+of such a thing. I couldn't possibly--really, Manley! And, you know, it
+does seem so childish of us to run away--"
+
+Kent moved restlessly, and felt to see if the cinch was tight.
+
+Fleetwood took her coaxingly by the arm. "Come, sweetheart, don't be
+stubborn. You know--"
+
+"Well, really! If it's a question of obstinacy--You see, I look at the
+matter in this way: You believe that you are doing what is best for my
+sake; I don't agree with you--and it does seem as if I should be permitted
+to judge what I desire." Then her dignity and her sweet calm went down
+before a flash of real, unpolished temper. "You two can take those nasty
+horses and ride clear to Dakota, if you want to. I'm going back to the
+hotel. And I'm going to tell somebody to let that poor fellow out of that
+box. I think you're acting perfectly horrid, both of you, when I don't want
+to go!" She actually started back toward the scattered points of light.
+
+She did not, however, get so faraway that she failed to hear Kent's "Well,
+I'll be damned!" uttered in a tone of intense disgust.
+
+"I don't care," she assured herself, because of the thrill of compunction
+caused by that one forcible sentence. She had never before in her life
+heard a man really swear. It affected her very much as would the accidental
+touch of an electric battery. She walked on slowly, stumbling a little and
+trying to hear what it was they were saying.
+
+Then Kent passed her, loping back to the town, the led horse shaking his
+saddle so that it rattled the stirrups like castanets as he galloped. "I
+don't care," she told herself again very emphatically, because she was
+quite sure that she did care--or that she would care if only she permitted
+herself to be so foolish. Manley overtook her then, and drew her hand under
+his arm to lead her. But he seemed quite sullen, and would not say a word
+all the way back.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. THE "SHIVAREE"
+
+Kent jerked open the stable door, led in his horses, turned them into their
+stalls, and removed the saddles with quick, nervous movements which told
+plainly how angry he was.
+
+"I'll get myself all excited trying to do her a favor again--I don't
+think!" he growled in the ear of Michael, his gray gelding. "Think of me
+getting let down on my face like that! By a woman!"
+
+He felt along the wall in the intense darkness until his fingers touched
+a lantern, took it down from the nail where it hung, and lighted it. He
+carried it farther down the rude passage between the stalls, hung it high
+upon another nail, and turned to the great oats box, from within which came
+a vigorous thumping and the sound of muttered cursing.
+
+Kent was not in the mood to see the humor of anything in particular. Had he
+known anything about Pandora's box he might have drawn a comparison very
+neatly while he stood scowling down at the oats box, for certainly he was
+likely to release trouble in plenty when he unfastened that lid. He felt of
+the gun swinging at his hip, just to assure himself that it was there
+and ready for business in case Fred wanted to shoot, and rapped with his
+knuckles upon the box, producing instant silence within.
+
+"Don't make so much noise in there," he advised grimly, "not unless you
+want the whole town to know where you are, and have 'em give you the laugh.
+And, listen here: I ain't apologizing for what I done, but, all the same,
+I'm sorry I did it. It wasn't any use. I'd rather be shut up in an oats box
+all night than get let down like I was--and I'm telling you this so as to
+start us off even. If you want to fight about it when you come out, all
+right; you're the doctor. But I'm just as sorry as you are it happened.
+I lay down my hand right here. I hope you shivaree Man and his wife--and
+shivaree 'em good. I hope you bust the town wide open."
+
+"Why this sudden change of heart?" came muffled from within.
+
+"Ah--that's my own business. Well, I don't like you a little bit, and you
+know it; but I'll tell you, just to give you a fair show. I wanted to keep
+Man sober, and I tried to get him and his wife out of town before that
+shivaree of yours was pulled off. But the lady wouldn't have it that way.
+I got let right down on my face, and I'm done. Now you know just where I
+stand. Maybe I'm a fool for telling you, but I seem to be in the business
+to-night. Come on out."
+
+He unfastened the big iron hasp, which was showing signs of the strain put
+upon it, and stepped back watchfully. The thick, oaken lid was pushed up,
+and Fred De Garmo, rather dusty and disheveled and purple from the
+close atmosphere of the box and from anger as well, came up like a
+jack-in-the-box and glared at Kent. When he had stepped out upon the stable
+floor, however, he smiled rather unpleasantly.
+
+[Illustration: He was jeered unmercifully by Fred De Garmo and his crowd]
+
+"If you've told the truth," he said maliciously, "I guess the lady has
+pretty near evened things up. If you haven't--if I don't find them both at
+the hotel--well--Anyway," he added, with an ominous inflection, "there'll
+be other days to settle this in!"
+
+"Why, sure. Help yourself, Fred," Kent retorted cheerfully, and stood where
+he was until Fred had gone out. Then he turned and closed the box. "Between
+that yellow-eyed dame and the chump that went and left this box wide open
+for me to tip Fred into," he soliloquized, while he took down the lantern,
+and so sent the shadows dancing weirdly about him, "I've got a bunch of
+trouble mixed up, for fair. I wish the son of a gun would fight it out now,
+and be done with it; but no, that ain't Fred. He'd a heap rather wait and
+let it draw interest!"
+
+Over in the hotel the "yellow-eyed dame" was doing her unsophisticated best
+to meet the situation gracefully, and to realize certain vague and rather
+romantic dreams of her life out West. She meant to be very gracious, for
+one thing, and to win the chivalrous friendship of every man who came to
+participate in the rude congratulations that had been planned. Just how
+she meant to do this she did not know--except that the graciousness would
+certainly prove a very important factor.
+
+"I'm going to remain downstairs," she told Manley, when they reached the
+hotel. It was the first sentence she had spoken since he overtook her. "I'm
+so glad, dear," she added diplomatically, "that you decided to stay. I want
+to see that funny landlady now, please, and get her to serve coffee and
+cake to our guests in the parlor. I wish I might have had one of my trunks
+brought over here; I should like to wear a pretty gown." She glanced down
+at her tailored suit with true feminine dissatisfaction. "But everything
+was so--so confused, with your being late, and sick--is your head better,
+dear?"
+
+Manley, in very few words, assured her that it was. Manley was struggling
+with his inner self, trying to answer one very important question, and to
+answer it truthfully: Could he meet "the boys," do his part among them, and
+still remain sober? That seemed to be the only course open to him now, and
+he knew himself just well enough to doubt his own strength. But if Kent
+would help him--He felt an immediate necessity to find Kent.
+
+"You'll find Mrs. Hawley somewhere around," he said hurriedly. "I've got to
+see Kent--"
+
+"Oh, Manley! Don't have anything to do with that horrid cowboy! He's
+not--nice. He--he swore, when he must have known I could hear him; and he
+was swearing about _me_, Manley. Didn't you hear him?" She stood in the
+doorway and clung to his arm.
+
+"No," lied Manley. "You must have been mistaken, sweetheart."
+
+"Oh, I wasn't; I heard him quite plainly." She must have thought it a
+terrible thing, for she almost whispered the last words, and she released
+him with much reluctance. It seemed to her that Manley was in danger of
+falling among low associates, and that she must protect him in spite of
+himself. It failed to occur to her that Manley had been exposed to that
+danger for three years, without any protection whatever.
+
+She was thankful, when he came to her later in the parlor, to learn from
+him that he had not held any speech with Kent. That was some comfort--and
+she felt that she needed a little comforting, just then. Her consultation
+with Arline had been rather unsatisfactory. Arline had told her bluntly
+that "the bunch" didn't want any coffee and cake. Whisky and cigars, said
+Arline, without so much as a blush, was what appealed to them fellows. If
+Manley handed it out liberal enough, they wouldn't bother his bride. Very
+likely, Arline had assured her, she wouldn't see one of them. That, on the
+whole, had been rather discouraging. How was she to show herself a gracious
+lady, forsooth, if no one came near her? But she kept these things
+jealously tucked away in the remotest corner of her own mind, and managed
+to look the relief she did not feel.
+
+And, after all, the _charivari_, as is apt to be the case when the plans
+are laid so carefully, proved a very tame affair. Valeria, sitting rather
+dismally in the parlor with Mrs. Hawley for company, at midnight heard a
+banging of tin cans somewhere outside, a fitful popping of six-shooters,
+and an abortive attempt at a procession coming up the street. But the lines
+seemed to waver and then break utterly at the first saloon, where drink was
+to be had for the asking and Manley Fleetwood was pledged to pay, and the
+rattle of cans was all but drowned in the shouts of laughter and talk which
+came from the "office," across the hall. For where is the pleasure or the
+profit in _charivaring_ a bridal couple which stays up and waits quite
+openly for the clamor?
+
+"Is it always so noisy here at night?" asked Valeria faintly when Mrs.
+Hawley had insisted upon her lying down upon the uncomfortable sofa.
+
+"Well, no--unless a round-up pulls in, or there's a dance, or it's
+Christmas, or something. It's liable to keep up till two or three o'clock,
+so the sooner you git used to it, the better off you'll be. I'm going to
+leave you here, and go to bed--unless you want to go upstairs yourself.
+Only it'll be noisier than ever up in your room, for it's right over the
+office, and the way sound travels up is something fierce. Don't you be
+afraid--I'll lock this door, and if your husband wants to come in he can
+come through the dining room." She looked at Valeria and hesitated before
+she spoke the next sentence. "And don't you worry a bit over him, neither.
+My old man was in the kitchen a minute ago, when I was out there, and he
+says Man ain't drinking a drop to-night. He's keeping as straight as--"
+
+Valeria sat up suddenly, quite scandalized. "Oh--why, of course Manley
+wouldn't drink with them! Why--who ever heard of such a thing? The idea!"
+She stared reproachfully at her hostess.
+
+"Oh, sure! I didn't say such a thing was liable to happen. I just thought
+you might be--worrying--they're making so much racket in there," stammered
+Arline.
+
+"Indeed, no. I'm not at all worried, thank you. And please don't let me
+keep you up any longer, Mrs. Hawley. I am quite comfortable--mentally and
+physically, I assure you. Good night."
+
+Not even Mrs. Hawley could remain after that. She went out and closed the
+door carefully behind her, without even finding voice enough to return
+Valeria's sweetly modulated good night.
+
+"She's got a whole lot to learn," she relieved her feelings somewhat by
+muttering as she mounted the stairs.
+
+What it cost Manley Fleetwood to abstain absolutely and without even the
+compromise of "soft" drinks that night, who can say? Three years of free
+living in Montana had lowered his standard of morality without giving him
+that rugged strength of mind which makes a man master of himself first of
+all. He had that day lain, drunken and sleeping, when he should have been
+at his mental and physical best to meet the girl who would marry him. It
+was that very defection, perhaps, which kept him sober in the midst of his
+taunting fellows. Now that Valeria was actually here, and was his wife, he
+was possessed by the desire to make some sacrifice by which he might prove
+his penitence. At any cost he would spare her pain and humiliation, he told
+himself.
+
+He did it, and he did it under difficulty. He was denied the moral support
+of Kent Burnett, for Kent was sulking over his slight, and would have
+nothing to say to him. He was jeered unmercifully by Fred De Garmo and his
+crowd. He was "baptized" by some drunken reveler, so that the stench of
+spilled whisky filled his nostrils and tortured him the night through.
+He was urged, he was bullied, he was ridiculed. His head throbbed, his
+eyeballs burned. But through it all he stayed among them because he feared
+that if he left them and went to Val, some drunken fool might follow him
+and shock her with his inebriety. He stayed, and he stayed sober. Val was
+his wife. She trusted him, and she was ignorant of his sins. If he went to
+her staggering and babbling incoherent foolishness, he knew it would break
+her heart.
+
+When the sky was at last showing faint dawn tints and the clamor had worn
+itself out perforce--because even the leaders were, after all, but men, and
+there was a limit to their endurance--Manley entered the parlor, haggard
+enough, it is true, and bearing with him the stale odor of cigars long
+since smoked, and of the baptism of bad whisky, but also with the air
+of conscious rectitude which sits so comically upon a man unused to the
+feeling of virtue.
+
+As is so often the case when one fights alone the good fight and manages to
+win, he was chagrined to find himself immediately put upon the defensive.
+Val, as she speedily demonstrated, declined to look upon him as a hero, or
+as being particularly virtuous. She considered herself rather neglected and
+abused. She believed that he had stayed away because he was angry with her
+on account of her refusal to leave town, and she thought that was rather
+brutal of him. Also, her head ached from tears and lack of sleep, and she
+hated the town, the hotel--almost she hated Manley himself.
+
+Manley felt the rebuff of her chilling silence when he came in, and when
+she twitched herself loose from his embrace he came near regretting his
+extreme virtue. He spent ten minutes trying to explain, without telling all
+of the truth, and he felt his good opinion of himself slipping from him
+before her inexorable disfavor.
+
+"Well, I don't blame you for not liking the town, Val," he said at last,
+rather desperately. "But you mustn't judge the whole country by it. You'll
+like the ranch, dear. You'll feel as if you were in another world--"
+
+"I hope so," Val interrupted quellingly.
+
+"We'll drive out there just as soon as we have breakfast." He laid his hand
+diffidently upon her tumbled hair. "I _had_ to stay out there with those
+fellows. I didn't want to--"
+
+"I don't want any breakfast," said Val, getting up and going over to the
+window--it would seem to avoid his caress. "The odor of that dining room is
+enough to make one fast forever." She lifted the grimy lace curtain with
+her finger tips and looked disconsolately out upon the street. "It's just a
+dirty, squalid little hamlet. I don't suppose the streets have been
+cleaned or the garbage removed from the back yards since the place was
+first--founded." She laughed shortly at the idea of "founding" a wretched
+village like that, but she had no other word at hand.
+
+"_Arline_," she remarked, in a tone of drawling recklessness. "Arline
+swears. Did you know it? I suppose, of course, you do. She said something
+that struck me as being shockingly true. She said I'm 'sure having a hell
+of a honeymoon.'" Then she bit her lips hard, because her eyelids were
+stinging with the tears she refused to shed in his presence.
+
+"Oh, Val!" From the sofa Manley stared contritely at her back. She must
+feel terrible, he thought, to bring herself to repeat that sentence--Val,
+so icily pure in her thoughts and her speech.
+
+Val was blinking her tawny eyes--like the eyes of a lion in color--at the
+street. Not for the world would she let him see that she wanted to cry! A
+figure, blurred to indistinctness, appealed in a doorway nearly opposite,
+stood for a moment looking up at the reddened sky, and came across the
+street. As the tears were beaten back she saw and recognized him, with a
+curl of the lip.
+
+"Here comes your cowboy friend--from a saloon, of course." Her voice
+was lazily contemptuous. "Only his presence in the street was needed to
+complete the picture of desolation. He has been in a fight, judging from
+his face. It is all bruised and skinned, and one eye is swollen--ugh! My
+guide, my adviser--is it possible, Manley, that you couldn't find a _nice_
+man to meet me at the train?" She turned from the disagreeable sight of
+Kent and faced her husband. "Are all the men like that? And are all the
+women like--Arline?"
+
+Manley looked at her dumbly from the sofa. Would Val ever come to
+understand the place, and the people, he was wondering.
+
+She laughed suddenly. "I'm beginning to feel very sorry for Walt," she said
+irrelevantly, pointing to the easel and the expressionless crayon portrait
+staring out from the gilt frame. "He has to stay in this room always. And
+I believe another two hours would drive me hopelessly insane." The word
+caught her attention. "Hope!" she laughed ironically. "What imbecile ever
+thought of hope in the same breath with this place? What they really ought
+to do is paint that 'Abandon-hope' admonition across the whole front of the
+depot!"
+
+Manley, because he had lifted his head too suddenly and so sent white-hot
+irons of pain clashing through his brain, turned sullen. "If you hate it as
+bad as all that," he said, "why, there'll be a train for the East in about
+two hours."
+
+Val stiffened perceptibly, though the petulance in her face changed to
+something wistful. "Do you mean--do you want me to go?" she asked very
+calmly.
+
+Manley pressed his fingers hard against his temples. "You know I don't. I
+want you to stay and like the country, and be happy. But--the way you have
+been talking makes it seem--a-ah!" He dropped his tortured head upon his
+hands and did not trouble to finish what he had intended to say. Nervous
+strain, lack of sleep, and a headache to begin with, were taking heavy toll
+of him. He could not argue with her; he could not do anything except wish
+he were dead, or that his head would stop aching.
+
+Val took one of her unexpected changes of mood. She went up and laid her
+cold fingers lightly upon his temples, where she could see the blood
+beating savagely in the swollen veins. "What a little beast I am!" she
+murmured contritely. "Shall I get you some coffee, dear? Or some headache
+tablets, or--You know a cold cloth helped you last evening. Lie down for a
+little while. There's no hurry about starting, is there? I--I don't hate
+the place so awfully, Manley. I'm just cross because I couldn't sleep for
+the noise. Here's a cushion, dear. I think it's stuffed with scrap iron,
+for there doesn't seem to be anything soft about it except the invitation
+to 'slumber sweetly,' in red and green silk; but anything is better than
+the head of that sofa in its natural state."
+
+She arranged the cushion to her own liking, if not to his, and when it
+was done she bent down impulsively and kissed him on the cheek, blushing
+vividly the while.
+
+"I won't be nasty and cross any more," she promised. "Now, I'm going to
+interview Arline. I hear dishes rattling somewhere; perhaps I can get a cup
+of real coffee for you." At the door she shook her finger at him playfully.
+"Don't you dare stir off that sofa while I'm gone," she admonished. "And,
+remember, we're not going to leave town until your head stops aching--not
+if we stay here a week!"
+
+She insisted upon bringing him coffee and toast upon a tray--a battered old
+tray, purloined for that purpose from the saloon, if she had only known
+it--and she informed him, with a pretty, domestic pride, that she had made
+the toast herself.
+
+"Arline was going to lay slices of bread on top of the stove," she
+explained. "She said she always makes toast that way, and no one could tell
+the difference! I never heard of such a thing--did you, Manley? But I've
+been attending a cooking school ever since you left Fern Hill. I didn't
+tell you--I wanted it for a surprise. I could have done better with the
+toast before a wood fire--I think poor Arline was nearly distracted at the
+way I poked coals down from the grate; but she didn't say anything. Isn't
+it funny, to have cream in cans! I don't suppose it ever saw a cow--do you?
+The coffee's pretty bad, isn't it? But wait until we get home! I can make
+lovely coffee--if you'll get me a percolator. You will, won't you? And I
+learned now to make the most delicious fruit salad, just before I left. A
+cousin of Mrs. Forman's taught me how. Could you drink another cup, dear?"
+
+Manley could not, and she deplored the poor quality, although she
+generously absolved Arline from blame, because there seemed so much to do
+in that kitchen. She refused to take any breakfast herself, telling him
+gayly that the odor in the kitchen was both food and drink.
+
+Because he understood a little of her loathing for the place, Manley lied
+heroically about his headache, so that within an hour they were leaving
+town, with the two great trunks roped securely to the buckboard behind the
+seat, and with Val's suitcase placed flat in the front, where she could
+rest her feet upon it. Val was so happy at the prospect of getting away
+from the town that she actually threw a kiss in the direction of Arline,
+standing with her frowsy head, her dough-spotted apron, and her tired face
+in the parlor door.
+
+Her mood changed immediately, however, for she had no more than turned from
+waving her hand at Arline, when they met Kent, riding slowly up the street
+with his hat tilted over the eye most swollen. Without a doubt he had seen
+her waving and smiling, and so he must have observed the instant cooling of
+her manner. He nodded to Manley and lifted his hat while he looked at her
+full; and Val, in the arrogant pride of virtuous young womanhood, let her
+golden-brown eyes dwell impersonally upon his face; let her white, round
+chin dip half an inch downward, and then looked past him as if he were a
+post by the roadside. Afterwards she smiled maliciously when she saw, with
+a swift, sidelong glance, how he scowled and spurred unnecessarily his gray
+gelding.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. COLD SPRING RANCH
+
+For almost three years the letters from Manley had been headed "Cold
+Spring Ranch." For quite as long Val had possessed a mental picture of the
+place--a picture of a gurgly little brook with rocks and watercress and
+distracting little pools the size of a bathtub, and with a great, frowning
+boulder--a cliff, almost--at the head. The brook bubbled out and formed
+a basin in the shadow of the rock. Around it grew trees, unnamed in the
+picture, it is true, but trees, nevertheless. Below the spring stood a
+picturesque little cottage. A shack, Manley had written, was but a synonym
+for a small cottage, and Val had many small cottages in mind, from which
+she sketched one into her picture. The sun shone on it, and the western
+breezes flapped white curtains in the windows, and there was a porch where
+she would swing her hammock and gaze out over the great, beautiful country,
+fascinating in its very immensity.
+
+Somewhere beyond the cottage--"shack," she usually corrected herself--were
+the corrals; they were as yet rather impressionistic; high, round,
+mysterious inclosures forming an effective, if somewhat hazy, background to
+the picture. She left them to work out their attractive details upon closer
+acquaintance, for at most they were merely the background. The front yard,
+however, she dwelt upon, and made aglow with sturdy, bright-hued flowers.
+Manley had that spring planted sweet peas, and poppies, and pansies, and
+other things, he wrote her, and they had come up very nicely. Afterward,
+in a postscript, he answered her oft-repeated questions about the flower
+garden:
+
+The flowers aren't doing as well as they might. They need your tender care.
+I don't have much time to pet them along. The onions are doing pretty well,
+but they need weeding badly.
+
+In spite of that, the flowers bloomed luxuriantly in her mental picture,
+though she conscientiously remembered that they weren't doing as well as
+they might. They were weedy and unkempt, she supposed, but a little time
+and care would remedy that; and was she not coming to be the mistress of
+all this, and to make everything beautiful? Besides, the spring, and the
+brook which ran from it, and the trees which shaded it, were the chief
+attractions.
+
+Perhaps she betrayed a lack of domesticity because she had not been able
+to "see" the interior of the cottage--"shack"--very clearly. Sunny rooms,
+white curtains, bright cushions and books, pictures and rugs mingled
+together rather confusingly in her mind when she dwelt upon the inside of
+her future home. It would be bright, and cozy, and "homy," she knew. She
+would love it because it would be hers and Manley's, and she could do with
+it what she would. She bothered about that no more than she did about the
+dresses she would be wearing next year.
+
+Cold Spring Ranch! Think of the allurement of that name, just as it
+stands, without any disconcerting qualification whatever! Any girl with
+yellow-brown hair and yellow-brown eyes to match, and a dreamy temperament
+that beautifies everything her imagination touches, would be sure to build
+a veritable Eve's garden around those three small words.
+
+With that picture still before her mental vision, clear as if she had all
+her life been familiar with it in reality, she rode beside Manley for three
+weary hours, across a wide, wide prairie which looked perfectly level when
+you viewed it as a whole, but which proved all hills and hollows when
+you drove over it. During those three hours they passed not one human
+habitation after the first five miles were behind them. There had been a
+ranch, back there against a reddish-yellow bluff. Val had gazed upon it,
+and then turned her head away, distressed because human beings could
+consent to live in such unattractive surroundings. It was bad in its way as
+Hope, she thought, but did not say, because Manley was talking about his
+cattle, and she did not want to interrupt him.
+
+After that there had been no houses of any sort. There was a barbed-wire
+fence stretching away and away until the posts were mere pencil lines
+against the blue, where the fence dipped over the last hill before the sky
+bent down and kissed the earth.
+
+The length of that fence was appalling in a vague, wordless way, Val
+unconsciously drew closer to her husband when she looked at it, and
+shivered in spite of the midsummer heat.
+
+"You're getting tired." Manley put his arm around her and held her there.
+
+"We're over half-way now. A little longer and we'll be home." Then he
+bethought him that she might want some preparation for that home-coming.
+"You mustn't expect much, little wife. It's a bachelor's house, so far.
+You'll have to do some fixing before it will suit you. You don't look
+forward to anything like Fern Hill, do you?"
+
+Val laughed, and bent solicitously over the suitcase, which her feet had
+marred. "Of course I don't. Nothing out here is like Fern Hill. I know our
+ranch is different from anything I ever knew--but I know just how it will
+be, and how everything will look."
+
+"Oh! Do you?" Manley looked at her a bit anxiously.
+
+"For three years," Val reminded him, "you have been describing things
+to me. You told me what it was like when you first took the place. You
+described everything, from Cold Spring Coulee to the house you built, and
+the spring under the rock wall, and even the meadow lark's nest you found
+in the weeds. Of _course_ I know."
+
+"It's going to seem pretty rough, at first," he observed rather
+apologetically.
+
+"Yes--but I shall not mind that. I want it to be rough. I'm tired to death
+of the smug smoothness of my life so far. Oh, if you only knew how I have
+hated Fern Hill, these last three years, especially since I graduated. Just
+the same petty little lives lived in the same petty little way, day in and
+day out. Every Sunday the class in Sunday school, and the bells ringing
+and the same little walk of four blocks there and back. Every Tuesday and
+Friday the club meeting--the Merry Maids, and the Mascot, both just alike,
+where you did the same things. And the same round of calls with mamma,
+on the same people, twice a month the year round. And the little social
+festivities--ah, Manley, if you only knew how I tong for something rough
+and real in my life!" It was very nearly what she said to the tired-faced
+teacher on the train.
+
+"Well, if that's what you want, you've come to the right place," he told
+her dryly.
+
+Later, when they drew close to a red coulee rim which he said was the far
+side of Cold Spring Coulee, she forgot how tired she was, and felt every
+nerve quiver with eagerness.
+
+Later still, when in the glare of a July sun they drove around a low knoll,
+dipped into a wide, parched coulee, and then came upon a barren little
+habitation inclosed in a meager fence of the barbed wire she thought so
+detestable, she shut her eyes mentally to something she could not quite
+bring herself to face.
+
+He lifted her out and tumbled the great trunks upon the ground before he
+drove on to the corrals. "Here's the key," he said, "if you want to go in.
+I won't be more than a minute or two." He did not look into her face when
+he spoke.
+
+Val stood just inside the gate and tried to adjust all this to her mental
+picture. There was the front yard, for instance. A few straggling vines
+against the porch, and a sickly cluster or two of blossoms--those were the
+sweet peas, surely. The sun-baked bed of pale-green plants without so much
+as a bud of promise, she recognized, after a second glance, as the poppies.
+For the rest, there were weeds against the fence, sun-ripened grass trodden
+flat, yellow, gravelly patches where nothing grew--and a glaring, burning
+sun beating down upon it all.
+
+The cottage--never afterward did she think of it by that name, but always
+as a shack--was built of boards placed perpendicularly, with battens nailed
+over the cracks to keep out the wind and the snow. At one side was a
+"lean-to" kitchen, and on the other side was the porch that was just
+a narrow platform with a roof over it. It was not wide enough for a
+rocking-chair, to say nothing of swinging a hammock. In the first hasty
+inspection this seemed to be about all. She was still hesitating before the
+door when Manley came back from putting up the horses.
+
+"I'm afraid your flowers are a lost cause," he remarked cheerfully. "They
+were looking pretty good two or three weeks ago. This hot weather has dried
+them up. Next year we'll have water down here to the house. All these
+things take time."
+
+"Oh, of course they do." Val managed to smile into his eyes. "Let's see how
+many dishes you left dirty; bachelors always leave their dishes unwashed on
+the table, don't they?"
+
+"Sometimes--but I generally wash mine." He led the way into the house,
+which smelled hot and close, with the odor of food long since cooked
+and eaten, before he threw all the windows open. The front room was
+clean--after a man's idea of cleanliness. The floor was covered with an
+exceedingly dusty carpet, and a rug or two. Her latest photograph was
+nailed to the wall; and when Val saw it she broke into hysterical laughter.
+
+"You've nailed your colors to the mast," she cried, and after that it was
+all a joke. The home-made couch, with the calico cushions and the cowhide
+spread, was a matter for mirth. She sat down upon it to try it, and was
+informed that chicken wire makes a fine spring. The rickety table, with
+tobacco, magazines, and books placed upon it in orderly piles, was
+something to smile over. The chairs, and especially the one cane rocker
+which went sidewise over the floor if you rocked in it long enough, were
+pronounced original.
+
+In the kitchen the same masculine idea of cleanliness and order obtained.
+The stove was quite red, but it had been swept clean. The table was pushed
+against the only window there, and the back part was filled with glass
+preserve jars, cans, and a loaf of bread wrapped carefully in paper; but
+the oilcloth cover was clean--did it not show quite plainly the marks of
+the last washing? Two frying pans were turned bottom up on an obscure table
+in an obscure corner of the room, and a zinc water pail stood beside them.
+
+There were other details which impressed themselves upon her shrinking
+brain, and though she still insisted upon smiling at everything, she stood
+in the middle of the room holding up her skirts quite unconsciously, as if
+she were standing at a muddy street crossing, wondering how in the world
+she was ever going to reach the Other side.
+
+"Isn't it all--deliciously--primitive?" she asked, in a weak little voice,
+when the smile would stay no longer. "I--love it, dear." That was a lie;
+more, she was not in the habit of fibbing for the sake of politeness or
+anything else, so that the words stood for a good deal.
+
+Manley looked into the zinc water pail, took it up, and started for an
+outer door, rattling the tin dipper as he went. "Want to go up to the
+spring?" he queried, over his shoulder, "Water's the first thing--I'm
+horribly thirsty."
+
+Val turned to follow him. "Oh, yes--the spring!" She stopped, however, as
+soon as she had spoken. "No, dear. There'll be plenty of other times. I'll
+stay here."
+
+He gave her a glance bright with love and blind happiness in her presence
+there, and went off whistling and rattling the pail at his side.
+
+Val did not even watch him go. She stood still in the kitchen and looked at
+the table, and at the stove, and at the upturned frying pans. She watched
+two great horseflies buzzing against a window-pane, and when she could
+endure that no longer, she went into the front room and stared vacantly
+around at the bare walls. When she saw her picture again, nailed
+fast beside the kitchen door, her face lost a little of its frozen
+blankness--enough so that her lips quivered until she bit them into
+steadiness.
+
+She went then to the door and stood looking dully out into the parched
+yard, and at the wizened little pea vines clutching feebly at their
+white-twine trellis. Beyond stretched the bare hills with the wavering
+brown line running down the nearest one--the line that she knew was the
+trail from town. She was guilty of just one rebellious sentence before she
+struggled back to optimism.
+
+"I said I wanted it to be rough, but I didn't mean--why, this is just
+squalid!" She looked down the coulee and glimpsed the river flowing calmly
+past the mouth of it, a majestic blue belt fringed sparsely with green.
+It must be a mile away, but it relieved wonderfully the monotony of brown
+hills, and the vivid coloring brightened her eyes. She heard Manley enter
+the kitchen, set down the pail of water, and come on to where she stood.
+
+"I'd forgotten you said we could see the river from here," she told him,
+smiling over her shoulder. "It's beautiful, isn't it? I don't suppose,
+though, there's a boat within millions of miles."
+
+"Oh, there's a boat down there. It leaks, though. I just use it for ducks,
+close to shore. Admiring our view? Great, don't you think?"
+
+Val clasped her hands before her and let her gaze travel again over the
+sweep of rugged hills. "It's--wonderful. I thought I knew, but I see I
+didn't. I feel very small, Manley; does one ever grow up to it?"
+
+He seemed dimly to catch the note of utter desolation. "You'll get used to
+all that," he assured her. "I thought I'd reached the jumping-off place, at
+first. But now--you couldn't dog me outa the country."
+
+He was slipping into the vernacular, and Val noticed it, and wondered dully
+if she would ever do likewise. She had not yet admitted to herself that
+Manley was different. She had told herself many times that it would take
+weeks to wipe out the strangeness born of three years' separation. He was
+the same, of course; everything else was new and--different. That was all.
+He seemed intensely practical, and he seemed to feel that his love-making
+had all been done by letter, and that nothing now remained save the
+business of living. So, when he told her to rest, and that he would get
+dinner and show her how a bachelor kept house, she let him go with no reply
+save that vague, impersonal smile which Kent had encountered at the depot.
+
+While he rattled things about in the kitchen, she stood still in the
+doorway with her fingers doubled into tight little fists, and stared out
+over the great, treeless, unpeopled land which had swallowed her alive. She
+tried to think--and then, in another moment, she was trying not to think.
+
+Glancing quickly over her shoulder, to make sure Manley was too busy to
+follow her, she went off the porch and stood uncertain in the parched
+inclosure which was the front yard.
+
+"I may as well see it all, and be done," she whispered, and went stealthily
+around the corner of the house, holding up her skirts as she had done in
+the kitchen. There was a dim path beaten in the wiry grass--a path which
+started at the kitchen door and wound away up the coulee. She followed it.
+Undoubtedly it would lead her to the spring; beyond that she refused to let
+her thoughts travel.
+
+In five minutes--for she went slowly--she stopped beside a stock-trampled
+pool of water and yellow mud. A few steps farther on, a barrel had been
+sunk in the ground at the base of a huge gray rock; a barrel which filled
+slowly and spilled the overflow into the mud. There was also a trough, and
+there was a barrier made of poles and barbed wire to keep the cattle from
+the barrel. One crawled between two wires, it would seem, to dip up water
+for the house. There were no trees--not real trees. There were some
+chokecherry bushes higher than her head, and there were other bushes that
+did not look particularly enlivening.
+
+With a smile of bitter amusement, she tucked her skirts tightly around her,
+crept through the fence, and filled a chipped granite cup which stood upon
+a rock ledge, and drank slowly. Then she laughed aloud.
+
+"The water really _is_ cold," she said. "Anywhere else it would be
+delicious. And that's a spring, I suppose." Mercilessly she was stripping
+her mind of her illusions, and was clothing it in the harsher weave of
+reality. "All these hills are Manley's--our ranch." She took another sip
+and set down the cup. "And so Cold Spring Ranch means--all this."
+
+Down the coulee she heard Manley call. She stood still, pushing back a
+fallen lock of fine, yellow hair. She turned toward the sound, and the sun
+in her eyes turned them yellow as the hair above them. She was beautiful,
+in an odd, white-and-gold way. If her eyes had been blue, or gray--or even
+brown--she would have been merely pretty; but as they were, that amber tint
+where one looked for something else struck one unexpectedly and made her
+whole face unforgettably lovely. However, the color of her eyes and her
+hair did not interest her then, or make life any easier. She was quite
+ordinarily miserable and homesick, as she went reluctantly back along the
+grassy trails The odor of fried bacon came up to her, and she hated bacon.
+She hated everything.
+
+"I've been to the spring," she called out, resolutely cheerful, as soon as
+she came in sight of Manley, waiting in the kitchen door; she ran toward
+him lightly. "However does the water keep so deliciously cool through this
+hot weather? I don't wonder you call this Cold Spring Ranch."
+
+Manley straightened proudly. "I'm glad you like it; I was afraid you might
+not, just at first. But you're the right stuff--I might have known it. Not
+every woman could come out here and appreciate this country right at the
+start."
+
+Val stopped at the steps, panting a little from her run, and smiled
+unflinchingly up into his face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. MANLEY'S FIRE GUARD
+
+Hot sunlight, winds as hot, a shimmering heat which distorted objects at a
+distance and made the sky line a dazzling, wavering ribbon of faded blue;
+and then the dull haze of smoke which hung over the land, and, without
+tempering the heat, turned the sun into a huge coppery balloon, which
+drifted imperceptibly from the east to the west, and at evening time
+settled softly down upon a parched hilltop and disappeared, leaving behind
+it an ominous red glow as of hidden fires.
+
+When the wind blew, the touch of it seared the face, as the smoke tang
+assailed the nostrils. All the world was a weird, unnatural tint, hard to
+name, never to be forgotten. The far horizons drew steadily closer as the
+days passed slowly and thickened the veil of smoke. The distant mountains
+drew daily back into dimmer distance; became an obscure, formless blot
+against the sky, and vanished completely. The horizon crouched then upon
+the bluffs across the river, moved up to the line of trees along its banks,
+blotted them out one day, and impudently established itself half-way up the
+coulee.
+
+Time ceased to be measured accurately; events moved slowly in an unreal
+world of sultry heat and smoke and a red sun wading heavily through the
+copper-brown sky from the east to the west, and a moon as red which
+followed meekly after.
+
+Men rode uneasily here and there, and when they met they talked of prairie
+fires and of fire guards and the direction of the wind, and of the faint
+prospect of rain. Cattle, driven from their accustomed feeding grounds,
+wandered aimlessly over the still-unburned range, and lowed often in the
+night as they drifted before the flame-heated wind.
+
+Fifteen miles to the east of Cold Spring Coulee, the Wishbone outfit
+watched uneasily the deepening haze. Kent and Bob Royden were put to riding
+the range from the river north and west, and Polycarp Jenks, who had taken
+a claim where were good water and some shelter, and who never seemed to
+be there for more than a few hours at a time, because of his boundless
+curiosity, wandered about on his great, raw-boned sorrel with the white
+legs, and seemed always to have the latest fire news on the tip of his
+tongue, and always eager to impart it to somebody.
+
+To the northwest there was the Double Diamond, also sleeping with both eyes
+open, so to speak. They also had two men out watching the range, though
+the fires were said to be all across the river. But there was the railroad
+seaming the country straight through the grassland, and though the company
+was prompt at plowing fire guards, contract work would always bear
+watching, said the stockmen, and with the high winds that prevailed there
+was no telling what might happen.
+
+So Fred De Garmo and Bill Madison patrolled the country in rather desultory
+fashion, if the truth be known. They liked best to ride to the north and
+east--which, while following faithfully the railroad and the danger line,
+would bring them eventually to Hope, where they never failed to stop as
+long as they dared. For, although they never analyzed their feelings, they
+knew that as long as they kept their jobs and their pay was forthcoming, a
+few miles of blackened range concerned them personally not at all.
+Still, barring a fondness for the trail which led to town, they were not
+unfaithful to their trust.
+
+One day Kent and Polycarp met on the brink of a deep coulee, and, as is the
+way of men who ride the dim trails, they stopped to talk a bit.
+
+Polycarp, cracking his face across the middle with his habitual grin,
+straightened his right leg to its full length, slid his hand with
+difficulty into his pocket, brought up a dirty fragment of "plug" tobacco,
+looked it over inquiringly, and pried off the corner with his teeth. When
+he had rolled it comfortably into his cheek and had straightened his leg
+and replaced the tobacco in his pocket, he was "all set" and ready for
+conversation.
+
+Kent had taken the opportunity to roll a cigarette, though smoking on the
+range was a weakness to be indulged in with much care. He pinched out the
+blaze of his match, as usual, and then spat upon it for added safety before
+throwing it away.
+
+"If this heat doesn't let up," he remarked, "the grass is going to blaze up
+from sunburn."
+
+"It won't need to, if you ask me. I wouldn't be su'prised to see this hull
+range afire any time. Between you an' me, Kenneth, them Double Diamond
+fellers ain't watching it as close as they might. I was away over Dry Creek
+way yesterday, and I seen where there was two different fires got through
+the company's guards, and kited off across the country. It jest _happened_
+that the grass give out in that red day soil, and starved 'em both out.
+They wa'n't _put_ out. I looked close all around, and there wasn't nary a
+track of man or horse. That's their business--ridin' line on the railroad.
+The section men's been workin' off down the other way, where a culvert got
+scorched up pretty bad. By granny, Fred 'n' Bill Madison spend might' nigh
+all their time ridin' the trail to town. They're might' p'ticular about
+watchin' the railroad between the switches--_he-he!_"
+
+"That's something for the Double Diamond to worry over," Kent rebuffed. He
+hated that sort of gossip which must speak ill of somebody. "Our winter
+range lays mostly south and east; we could stop a fire between here and the
+Double Diamond, even if they let one get past 'em."
+
+Polycarp regarded him cunningly with his little, slitlike eyes. "Mebbe you
+could," he said doubtfully. "And then again, mebbe you couldn't. Oncet
+it got past Cold Spring--" He shook his wizened head slowly, leaned, and
+expectorated gravely.
+
+"Man Fleetwood's keeping tab pretty close over that way."
+
+Polycarp gave a grunt that was half a chuckle. "Man Fleetwood's keeping tab
+on what runs down his gullet," he corrected. "I seen him an' his wife out
+burnin' guards t' other day--over on his west line--and, by granny, it
+wouldn't stop nothing! A toad could jump it--_he-he!_" He sent another
+stream of tobacco juice afar, with the grave air as before.
+
+"And I told him so. 'Man,' I says, 'what you think you're doing?'
+
+"'Buildin' a fire guard,' he says. 'My wife, Mr. Jenks.'
+
+"'Polycarp Jenks is my cognomen,' I says. 'And I don't want no misterin'
+in mine. Polycarp's good enough for me,' I says, and I took off my hat and
+bowed to 'is wife. Funny kinda eyes, she's got--ever take notice? Yeller,
+by granny! first time I ever seen yeller eyes in a human's face. Mebbe it
+was the sun in 'em, but they sure was yeller. I dunno as they hurt her
+looks none, either. Kinda queer lookin', but when you git used to 'em you
+kinda like 'em.
+
+"'N' I says: 'Tain't half wide enough, nor a third'--spoke right up to 'im!
+I was thinkin' of the hull blamed country, and I didn't care how he took
+it. 'Any good, able-bodied wind'll jump a fire across that guard so quick
+it won't reelize there was any there,' I says.
+
+"Man didn't like it none too well, either. He says to me: 'That guard'll
+stop any fire I ever saw,' and I got right back at him--_he-he!_ 'Man,' I
+says, 'you ain't never saw a prairie fire'--just like that. 'You wait,' I
+says, 'till the real thing comes along. We ain't had any fires since you
+come into the country,' I says, 'and you don't know what they're like. Now,
+you take my advice and plow another four or five furrows--and plow 'em out,
+seventy-five or a hundred feet from here,' I says, 'an' make sure you
+git all the grass burned off between--and do it on a still day,' I says.
+'You'll burn up the hull country if you keep on this here way you're
+doing,' I told him--straight out, just like that. 'And when you do it,' I
+says, 'you better let somebody know, so's they can come an' help,' I says.
+''Tain't any job a man oughta tackle alone,' I says to him. 'Git help, Man,
+git help.'
+
+"Well, by granny--_he-he!_ Man's wife brustled up at me like a--a--" He
+searched his brain for a simile, and failed to find one. "'I have been
+helping Manley, Mr. Polycarp Jenks,' she says to me, 'and I flatter myself
+I have done as well as any _man_ could do.' And, by granny! the way them
+yeller eyes of hern blazed at me--_he-he!_ I had to laugh, jest to look
+at her. Dressed jest like a city girl, by granny! with ruffles on her
+skirts--to ketch afire if she wasn't mighty keerful!--and a big straw hat
+tied down with a veil, and kid gloves on her hands, and her yeller
+hair kinda fallin' around her face--and them yeller eyes snappin' like
+flames--by granny! if she didn't make as purty a picture as I ever want
+to set eyes on! Slim and straight, jest like a storybook woman--_he-he!_
+'Course, she was all smoke an' dirt; a big flake of burned grass was on her
+hair, I took notice, and them ruffles was black up to her knees--_he-he!_
+And she had a big smut on her cheek--but she was right there with her stack
+of blues, by granny! Settin' into the game like a--a--" He leaned and
+spat "But burnin' guards ain't no work for a woman to do, an' I told Man
+so--straight out. 'You git help,' I says. 'I see you're might' near through
+with this here strip,' I says, 'an' I'm in a hurry, or I'd stay, right
+now.' And, by granny! if that there wife of Man's didn't up an' hit me
+another biff--_he-he!_
+
+"'Thank you very much,' she says to me, like ice water. 'When we need
+your help, we'll be sure to let you know--but at present,' she says, 'we
+couldn't think of troubling you.' And then, by granny! she turns right
+around and smiles up at me--_he-he!_ Made me feel like somebody'd tickled
+m' ear with a spear of hay when I was asleep, by granny! Never felt
+anything like it--not jest with somebody smilin' at me.
+
+"'Polycarp Jenks,' she says to me, 'we do appreciate what you've told us,
+and I believe you're right,' she says. 'But don't insiniwate I'm not as
+good a fighter as any man who ever breathed,' she says. 'Manley has another
+of his headaches to-day--going to town always gives him a sick headache,'
+she says, 'and I've done nearly all of this my own, lone self,' she says.
+'And I'm horribly proud of it, and I'll never forgive you for saying I--'
+And then, by granny! if she didn't begin to blink them eyes, and I felt
+like a--a--" He put the usual period to his hesitation.
+
+"Between you an' _me_, Kenneth," he added, looking at Kent slyly, "she
+ain't having none too easy a time. Man's gone back to drinkin'--I knowed
+all the time he wouldn't stay braced up very long--lasted about six weeks,
+from all I c'n hear. Mebbe she reely thinks it's jest headaches ails him
+when he comes back from town--I dunno. You can't never tell what idees a
+woman's got tacked away under her hair--from all I c'n gether. I don't
+p'tend to know nothing about 'em--don't want to know--_he-he!_ But I
+guess," he hinted cunningly, "I know as much about 'em as you do--hey,
+Kenneth? You don't seem to chase after 'em none, yourself--_he-he!_"
+
+"Whereabouts did Man run his guards?" asked Kent, passing over the
+invitation to personal confessions.
+
+Polycarp gave a grunt of disdain. "Just on the west rim of his coulee.
+About forty rod of six-foot guard, and slanted so it'll shoot a fire right
+into high grass at the head of the coulee and send it kitin' over this way.
+That's supposin' it turns a fire, which it won't. Six feet--a fall like
+this here! Why, I never see grass so thick on this range--did you?"
+
+"I wonder, did he burn that extra guard?" Kent was keeping himself rigidly
+to the subject of real importance.
+
+"No, by granny! he didn't--not unless he done it since yest'day. He went
+to town for suthin, and he might' nigh forgot to go home--_he-he!_ He was
+there yest'day about three o'clock, an' I says to him--"
+
+"Well, so-long; I got to, be moving." Kent gathered up the reins and went
+his way, leaving Polycarp just in the act of drawing his "plug" from his
+pocket, by his usual laborious method, in mental preparation for another
+half hour of talk.
+
+"If you're ridin' over that way, Kenneth, you better take a look at Man's
+guard," he called after him. "A good mile of guard, along there, would
+help a lot if a fire got started beyond. The way he fixed it, it ain't no
+account at all."
+
+Kent proved by a gesture that he heard him, and rode on without turning to
+look back. Already his form was blurred as Polycarp gazed after him, and
+in another minute or two he was blotted out completely by the smoke veil,
+though he rode upon the level. Polycarp watched him craftily, though there
+was no need, until he was completely hidden, then he went on, ruminating
+upon the faults of his acquaintances.
+
+Kent had no intention of riding over to Cold Spring. He had not been there
+since Manley's marriage, though he had been a frequent visitor before, and
+unless necessity drove him there, it would be long before he faced again
+the antagonism of Mrs. Fleetwood. Still, he was mentally uncomfortable, and
+he felt much resentment against Polycarp Jenks because he had caused that
+discomfort. What was it to him, if Manley had gone bock to drinking? He
+asked the question more than once, and he answered always that it was
+nothing to him, of course. Still, he wished futilely that he had not been
+quite so eager to cover up Manley's weakness and deceive the girl. He ought
+to have given her a chance--
+
+A cinder like a huge black snowflake struck him suddenly upon the cheek. He
+looked up, startled, and tried to see farther into the haze which closed
+him round. It seemed to him, now that his mind was turned from his musings,
+that the smoke was thicker, the smell of burning grass stronger, and the
+breath of wind hotter upon his face. He turned, looked away to the west,
+fancied there a tumbled blackness new to his sight, and put his horse to a
+run. If there were fire close, then every second counted; and as he raced
+over the uneven prairie he fumbled with the saddle string that held a
+sodden sack tied fast to the saddle, that he might lose no time.
+
+The cinders grew thicker, until the air was filled with them, like a
+snowstorm done in India ink. A little farther and he heard a faint
+crackling; topped a ridge and saw not far ahead, a dancing, yellow line.
+His horse was breathing heavily with the pace he was keeping, but Kent,
+swinging away from the onrush of flame and heat, spurred him to a greater
+speed. They neared the end of the crackling, red line, and as Kent swung in
+behind it upon the burned ground, he saw several men beating steadily at
+the flames.
+
+He was hardly at work when Polycarp came running up and took his place
+beside him; but beyond that Kent paid no attention to the others, though he
+heard and recognized the voice of Fred De Garmo calling out to some one.
+The smoke which rolled up in uneven volumes as the wind lifted it and bore
+it away, or let it suck backward as it veered for an instant, blinded him
+while he fought. He heard other men gallop up, and after a little some one
+clattered up with a wagon filled with barrels of water. He ran to wet
+his sack, and saw that it was Blumenthall himself, foreman of the Double
+Diamond, who drove the team.
+
+"Lucky it ain't as windy as it was yesterday and the day before,"
+Blumenthall cried out, as Kent stepped upon the brake block to reach a
+barrel. "It'd sweep the whole country if it was."
+
+Kent nodded, and ran back to the fire, trailing the dripping sack after
+him. As he passed Polycarp and another, he heard Polycarp saying something
+about Man Fleetwood's fire guard; but he did not stop to hear what it was.
+Polycarp was always talking, and he didn't always keep too closely to
+facts.
+
+Then, of a sudden, he saw men dimly when he glanced down the leaping fire
+line, and he knew that the fire was almost conquered. Another frenzied
+minute or two, and he was standing in a group of men, who dropped their
+charred, blackened fragments of blanket and bags, and began to feel for
+their smoking material, while they stamped upon stray embers which looked
+live enough to be dangerous.
+
+"Well, she's out," said a voice, "But it did look for a while as if it'd
+get away in spite of us."
+
+Kent turned away, wiping an eye which held a cinder fast under the lid. It
+was Fred De Garmo who spoke.
+
+"If somebody'd been watchin' the railroad a leetle might closer--" Polycarp
+began, in his thin, rasping voice.
+
+Fred cut him short. "I thought you laid it to Man Fleetwood, burning fire
+guards," he retorted. "Keep on, and you'll get it right pretty soon. This
+never come from the railroad; you can gamble on that."
+
+Blumenthall had left his team and come among them. "If you want to know how
+it started, I can tell you. Somebody dropped a match, or a cigarette, or
+something, by the trail up here a ways. I saw where it started when I went
+to Cold Spring after the last load of water. And if I knew who it was--"
+
+Polycarp launched his opinion first, as usual. "Well, I don't _know_ who
+done it--but, by granny! I can might' nigh guess who it was. There's jest
+one man that I know of been traveling that trail lately when he wa'n't in
+his sober senses--"
+
+Here Manley Fleetwood rode up to them, coughing at the soot his horse
+kicked up. "Say! you fellows come on over to the house and have something
+to eat--and," he added significantly, "something _wet_. I told my wife,
+when I saw the fire, to make plenty of coffee, for fighting fire's hungry
+work, let me tell. Come on--no hanging back, you know. There'll be lots of
+coffee, and I've got a quart of something better cached in the haystack!"
+
+As he had said, fighting fire is hungry work, and none save Blumenthall,
+who was dyspeptic and only ate twice a day, and then of certain foods
+prepared by himself, declined the invitation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. VAL'S NEW DUTIES
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. THE PRAIRIE FIRE
+
+A calamity expected, feared, and guarded against by a whole community does
+sometimes occur, and with a suddenness which finds the victims unprepared
+in spite of all their elaborate precautions. Compared with the importance
+of saving the range from fire, it was but a trivial thing which took nearly
+every man who dwelt in Lonesome Land to town on a certain day when the wind
+blew free from out the west. They were weary of watching for the fire which
+did not come licking through the prairie grass, and a special campaign
+train bearing a prospective President of our United States was expected to
+pass through Hope that afternoon.
+
+Since all trains watered at the red tank by the creek, there would be a
+five-minute stop, during which the prospective President would stand upon
+the rear platform and deliver a three-minute address--a few gracious words
+to tickle the self-esteem of his listeners--and would employ the other two
+minutes in shaking the hand of every man, woman, and child who could reach
+him before the train pulled out. There would be a cheer or two given as he
+was borne away--and there would be something to talk about afterward in the
+saloons. Scarce a man of then had ever seen a President, and it was worth
+riding far to look upon a man who even hoped for so exalted a position.
+
+Manley went because he intended to vote for the man, and called it an act
+of loyalty to his party to greet the candidate; also because it took very
+little, now that haying was over and work did not press, to start him down
+the trail in the direction of Hope.
+
+At the Blumenthall ranch no man save the cook remained at home, and he only
+because he had a boil on his neck which sapped his interest in all things
+else. Polycarp Jenks was in town by nine o'clock, and only one man remained
+at the Wishbone. That man was Kent, and he stayed because, according to his
+outraged companions, he was an ornery cuss, and his bump of patriotism was
+a hollow in his skull. Kent had told them, one and all, that he wouldn't
+ride twenty-five miles to shake hands with the Deity Himself--which,
+however, is not a verbatim report of his statement. The prospective
+President had not done anything so big, he said, that a man should want to
+break his neck getting to town just to watch him go by. He was dead sure
+he, for one, wasn't going to make a fool of himself over any swell-headed
+politician.
+
+Still, he saddled and rode with his fellows for a mile or two, and called
+them unseemly names in a facetious tone; and the men of the Wishbone
+answered his taunts with shrill yells of derision when he swung out of the
+trail and jogged away to the south, and finally passed out of sight in the
+haze which still hung depressingly over the land.
+
+Oddly enough, while all the able-bodied men save Kent were waiting
+hilariously in Hope to greet, with enthusiasm, the brief presence of the
+man who would fain be their political chief, the train which bore him
+eastward scattered fiery destruction abroad as it sped across their range,
+four minutes late and straining to make up the time before the next stop.
+
+They had thought the railroad safe at last, what with the guards and the
+numerous burned patches where the fire had jumped the plowed boundary and
+blackened the earth to the fence which marked the line of the right of way,
+and, in some places, had burned beyond. It took a flag-flying special train
+of that bitter Presidential campaign to find a weak spot in the guard, and
+to send a spark straight into the thickest bunch of wiry sand grass, where
+the wind could fan it to a blaze and then seize it and bend the tall flame
+tongues until they licked around the next tuft of grass, and the next,
+and the next--until the spark was grown to a long, leaping line of fire,
+sweeping eastward with the relentless rush of a tidal wave upon a low-lying
+beach.
+
+Arline Hawley was, perhaps, the only citizen of Hope who had deliberately
+chosen to absent herself from the crowd standing, in perspiring
+expectation, upon the depot platform. She had permitted Minnie, the "breed"
+girl, to go, and had even grudgingly consented to her using a box of
+cornstarch as first aid to her complexion. Arline had not approved,
+however, of either the complexion or the occasion.
+
+"What you want to go and plaster your face up with starch for, gits me,"
+she had criticised frankly. "Seems to me you're homely enough without
+lookin' silly, into the bargain. Nobody's going to look at you, no matter
+what you do. They're out to rubber at a higher mark than you be. And what
+they expect to see so great, gits me. He ain't nothing but a man--and, land
+knows, men is common enough, and ornery enough, without runnin' like a band
+of sheep to see one. I don't see as he's any better, jest because he's
+runnin' for President; if he gits beat, he'll want to hide his head in a
+hole in the ground. Look at my Walt. _He_ was the biggest man in Hope, and
+so swell-headed he wouldn't so much as pack a bucket of water all fall, or
+chop up a tie for kindlin'--till the day after 'lection. And what was he
+then but a frazzled-out back number, that everybody give the laugh--till he
+up and blowed his brains out! Any fool can _run_ for President--it's the
+feller that gits there that counts.
+
+"Say, that red-white-'n'-blue ribbon sure looks fierce on that green
+dress--but I reckon blood will tell, even if it's Injun blood. G'wan, or
+you'll be late and have your trouble for your pay. But hurry back soon's
+the agony's over; the bread'll be ready to mix out."
+
+Even after the girl was gone, her finery a-flutter in the sweeping west
+wind, Arline muttered aloud her opinion of men, and particularly of
+politicians who rode about in special trains and expected the homage of
+their fellows.
+
+She was in the back yard, taking her "white clothes" off the line, when the
+special came puffing slowly into town. To emphasize her disapproval of the
+whole system of politics, she turned her back square toward it, and laid
+violent hold of a sheet. There was a smudge of cinders upon its white
+surface, and it crushed crisply under her thumb with the unmistakable feel
+of burned grass.
+
+"Now, what in time--" began Arline aloud, after the manner of women whose
+tongues must keep pace with their thoughts. "That there feels fresh
+and"--with a sniff at the spot--"_smells_ fresh."
+
+With the wisdom of much experience she faced the hot wind and sniffed
+again, while her eyes searched keenly the sky line, which was the ragged
+top of the bluff marking the northern boundary of the great prairie land. A
+trifle darker it was there, and there was a certain sullen glow discernible
+only to eyes trained to read the sky for warning signals of snow, fire, and
+flood.
+
+"That's a fire, and it's this side of the river. And if it is, then the
+railroad set it, and there ain't a livin' thing to stop it. An' the wind's
+jest right--" A curdled roll of smoke showed plainly for a moment in the
+haze. She crammed her armful of sheets into the battered willow basket,
+threw two clothespins hastily toward the same receptacle, and ran.
+
+The special had just come to a stop at the depot. The cattlemen, cowboys,
+and townspeople were packed close around the rear of the train, their backs
+to the wind and the disaster sweeping down upon them, their browned faces
+upturned to the sleek, carefully groomed man in the light-gray suit, with a
+flaunting, prairie sunflower ostentatiously displayed in his buttonhole and
+with his campaign smile upon his lips and dull boredom looking out of his
+eyes.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," he was saying, as he smiled, "you favoured ones
+whose happy lot it is to live in the most glorious State of our glorious
+union, I greet you, and I envy you--"
+
+Arline, with her soiled kitchen apron, her ragged coil of dust-brown hair,
+her work-drawn face and faded eyes which blazed with excitement, pushed
+unceremoniously through the crowd and confronted him undazzled.
+
+"Mister Candidate, you better move on and give these men a chancet to save
+their prope'ty," she cried shrilly. "They got something to do besides stand
+around here and listen at you throwin' campaign loads. The hull country's
+afire back of us, and the wind bringin' it down on a long lope."
+
+She turned from the astounded candidate and glared at the startled crowd,
+every one of whom she knew personally.
+
+"I must say I got my opinion of a bunch that'll stand here swallowin' a lot
+of hot air, while their coat tails is most ready to ketch afire!" Her voice
+was rasping, and it carried to the farthest of them. "You make me _tired!_
+Political slush, all of it--and the hull darned country a-blazin' behind
+you!"
+
+The crowd moved uneasily, then scattered away from the shelter of the depot
+to where they could snuff inquiringly the wind, like dogs in the leash.
+
+"That's right," yelled Blumenthall, of the Double Diamond. "There's a fire,
+sure as hell!" He started to run.
+
+The man behind him hesitated but a second, then gripped his hat against the
+push of the wind, and began running. Presently men, women, and children
+were running, all in one direction.
+
+The prospective President stood agape upon the platform of his
+bunting-draped car, his chosen allies grouped foolishly around him. It
+was the first time men had turned from his presence with his gracious,
+flatteringly noncommittal speech unuttered, his hand unshaken, his smiling,
+bowing departure unmarked by cheers growing fainter as he receded. Only
+Arline tarried, her thin fingers gripping the arm of her "breed girl," lest
+she catch the panic and run with the others.
+
+Arline tilted back her head upon her scrawny shoulders and eyed the
+prospective President with antagonism unconcealed.
+
+"I got something to say to you before you go," she announced, in her
+rasping voice, with its querulous note. "I want to tell you that the
+chances are a hundred to one you set that fire yourself, with your engine
+that's haulin' you around over the country, so you can jolly men into
+votin' for you. Your train's the only one over the road since noon, and
+that fire started from the railroad. The hull town's liable to burn, unless
+it can be stopped the other side the creek, to say nothing of the range,
+that feeds our stock, and the hay, and maybe houses--and maybe _people!_"
+
+She caught her breath, and almost shrieked the last three words, as a
+dreadful probability flashed into her mind.
+
+"I know a woman--just a girl--and she's back there twenty mile--_alone_,
+and her man's here to look at you go by! I hope you git beat, just for
+that!
+
+"If this town ketches afire and burns up, I hope you run into the ditch
+before you git ten mile! If you was a man, and them fellers with you was
+men, you'd hold up your train and help save the town. Every feller counts,
+when it comes to fightin' fire."
+
+She stopped and eyed the group keenly. "But you won't. I don't reckon you
+ever done anything with them hands in your life that would grind a little
+honest dirt into your knuckles and under them shiny nails!"
+
+The prospective President turned red to his ears, and hastily removed his
+immaculate hands from where they had been resting upon the railing. And he
+did not hold up the train while he and his allies stopped to help save the
+town. The whistle gave a warning toot, the bell jangled, and the train slid
+away toward the next town, leaving Arline staring, tight-lipped, after it.
+
+"The darned chump--he'd 'a' made votes hand over fist if he'd called my
+bluff; but, I knew he wouldn't, soon as I seen his face. He ain't man
+enough."
+
+"He's real good-lookin'," sighed Minnie, feebly attempting to release her
+arm from the grasp of her mistress. "And did you notice the fellow with the
+big yellow mustache? He kept eyin' me--"
+
+"Well, I don't wonder--but it ain't anything to your credit," snapped
+Arline, facing her toward the hotel, "You do look like sin a-flyin', in
+that green dress, and with all that starch on your face. You git along to
+the house and mix that bread, first thing you do, and start a fire. And if
+I ain't back by that time, you go ahead with the supper; you know what to
+git. We're liable to have all the tables full, so you set all of 'em."
+
+She was hurrying away, when the girl called to her.
+
+"Did you mean Mis' Fleetwood, when you said that about the woman burning?
+And do you s'pose she's really in the fire?"
+
+"You shut up and go along!" cried Arline roughly, under the stress of her
+own fears. "How in time's anybody going to tell, that's twenty miles away?"
+
+She left the street and went hurrying through back yards and across vacant
+lots, crawled through a wire fence, and so reached, without any roundabout
+method, the trail which led to the top of the bluff, where the whole town
+was breathlessly assembling. Her flat-chested, un-corseted figure merged
+into the haze as she half trotted up the steep road, swinging her arms like
+a man, her skirts flapping in the wind. As she went, she kept muttering to
+herself:
+
+"If she really is caught by the fire--and her alone--and Man more'n half
+drunk--" She whirled, and stood waiting for the horseman who was galloping
+up the trail behind her. "You going home, Man? You don't think it could
+git to your place, do you?" She shouted the questions at him as he pounded
+past.
+
+Manley, sallow white with terror, shook his head vaguely and swung his
+heavy quirt down upon the flanks of his horse. Arline lowered her head
+against the dust kicked into her face as he went tearing past her, and
+kept doggedly on. Some one came rattling up behind her with empty barrels
+dancing erratically in a wagon, and she left the trail to make room. The
+hostler from their own stable it was who drove, and at the creek ahead of
+them he stopped to fill the barrels. Arline passed him by and kept on.
+
+At the brow of the hill the women and children were gathered in a
+whimpering group. Arline joined them and gazed out over the prairie, where
+the smoke was rolling toward them, and, lifting here and there, let a flare
+of yellow through.
+
+"It'll show up fine at dark," a fat woman in a buggy remarked. "There's
+nothing grander to look at than a prairie fire at night. I do hope," she
+added weakly, "it don't do no great damage!"
+
+"Oh, it won't," Arline cut in, with savage sarcasm, panting from her climb.
+"It's bound to sweep the hull country slick an' clean, and maybe burn us
+all out--but that won't matter, so long as it looks purty after dark!"
+
+"They say it's a good ten mile away yet," another woman volunteered
+encouragingly. "They'll git it stopped, all right. There's lots of men here
+to fight it, thank goodness!"
+
+Arline moved on to where a plow was being hurriedly unloaded from a wagon,
+the horses hitched to it, and a man already grasping the handles in an
+aggressive manner. As she came up he went off, yelling his opinions and
+turning a shallow, uneven furrow for a back fire. Within five minutes
+another plow was tearing up the sod in an opposite direction.
+
+"If it jumps here, or they can't turn it, the creek'll help a lot," some
+one was yelling.
+
+The plowed furrows lengthened, the horses sweating and throwing their heads
+up and down with the discomfort of the pace they must keep. Whiplashes
+whistled and the drivers urged them on with much shouting. Blumenthall, cut
+off, with his men, from reaching his own ranch, was directing a group
+about to set a back fire. His voice boomed as if he were shouting across a
+milling herd. A roll of his eye brought his attention momentarily from the
+work, and he ran toward a horseman who was gesticulating wildly and seemed
+on the point of riding straight toward the fire.
+
+"Hi! Fleetwood, we need you here!" he yelled. "You can't get home now, and
+you know it. The fire's past your place already; you'd have to ride through
+it, you fool! Hey? Your wife home alone--_alone!_"
+
+He stood absolutely still and stared out to the southwest, where the smoke
+cloud was rolling closer with every breath. He drew his fingers across his
+forehead and glanced at the men around him, also stunned into inactivity by
+the tragedy behind the words.
+
+"Well--get to work, men. We've got to save the town. Fine time to burn
+guards--when a fire's loping up on you! But that's the way it goes,
+generally. This ought to've been done a month ago. Put it off and put it
+off--while they haggle over bids--Brinberg, you and I'll string the fire.
+The rest of you watch it don't jump back. And, say!" he shouted to the
+group around Manley. "Don't let that crazy fool start off now. Put him to
+work. Best thing for him. But--my God, that's awful!" He did not shout the
+last sentence. He spoke so that only the nearest man heard him--heard, and
+nodded dumb assent.
+
+Manley raged, sitting helpless there upon his horse. They would not let him
+ride out toward that sweeping wave of fire. He could not have gone five
+miles toward home before he met the flames. He stood in the stirrups
+and shook his fists impotently. He strained his eyes to see what it was
+impossible for him to see--his ranch and Val, and how they had fared. He
+pictured mentally the guard he had burned beyond the coulee to protect them
+from just this danger, and his heart squeezed tight at the realization of
+his own shiftlessness. That guard! A twelve-foot strip of half-burned sod,
+with tufts of grass left standing here and there--and he had meant to burn
+it wider, and had put it off from day to day, until now. _Now!_
+
+His clenched fist dropped upon the saddle horn, and he stared dully at the
+rushing, rolling smoke and fire. It was not _that_ he saw--it was Val, with
+cinder-blackened ruffles, grimy face, and yellow hair falling in loose
+locks upon her cheeks--locks which she must stop to push out of her eyes,
+so that she could see where to swing the sodden sack while she helped
+him--him, Manley, who had permitted her to do work it for none but a man's
+hard muscles, so that he might finish the sooner and ride to town upon some
+flimsy pretext. And he could not even reach her now--or the place where she
+had been!
+
+The group had thinned around him, for there was something to do besides
+give sympathy to a man bereaved. Unless they bestirred themselves, they
+might all be in need of sympathy before the day was done. Manley took his
+eyes from the coming fire and glanced around him, saw that he was alone,
+and, with a despairing oath, wheeled his horse and raced back down the hill
+to town, as if fiends rode behind the saddle.
+
+At the saloon opposite the Hawley Hotel he drew up; rather, his horse
+stopped there of his own accord, as if he were quite at home at that
+particular hitching pole. Manley dismounted heavily and lurched inside. The
+place was deserted save for Jim, who was paid to watch the wares of his
+employer, and was now standing upon a chair at the window, that he might
+see over the top of Hawley's coal shed and glimpse the hilltop beyond. Jim
+stepped down and came toward him.
+
+"How's the fire?" he demanded anxiously. "Think she'll swing over this
+way?"
+
+But Manley had sunk into a chair and buried his face in his arms, folded
+upon a whisky-spotted card table.
+
+"Val--my Val!" he wailed, "Back there alone--get me a drink," he added
+thickly, "or I'll go crazy!"
+
+Jim hastily poured a full glass, and stood over him anxiously.
+
+"Here it is. Drink 'er down, and brace up. What you mean? Is your wife--"
+
+Manley lifted his head long enough to gulp the whisky, then dropped it
+again upon his arms and groaned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. KENT TO THE RESCUE
+
+The fire had been burning a possible half-hour when Kent, jogging aimlessly
+toward a log ridge with the lazy notion of riding to the top and taking
+a look at the country to the west before returning to the ranch, first
+smelled the stronger tang of burned grass and swung instinctively into the
+wind. He galloped to higher ground, and, trained by long watching of the
+prairie to detect the smoke of a nearer fire in the haze of those long
+distant, saw at once what must have happened, and knew also the danger. His
+horse was fresh, and he raced him over the uneven prairie toward the blaze.
+
+It was tearing straight across the high ground between Dry Creek and Cold
+Spring Coulee when he first saw it plainly, and he altered his course
+a trifle. The roar of it came faintly on the wind, like the sound of
+storm-beaten surf pounding heavily upon a sand bar when the tide is out,
+except that this roar was continuous, and was full of sharp cracklings and
+sputterings; and there was also the red line of flame to visualize the
+sound.
+
+When his eyes first swept the mile-long blaze, he felt his helplessness,
+and cursed aloud the man who had drawn all the fighting force from the
+prairie that day. They might at least have been able to harry it and hamper
+it and turn the savage sweep of it into barren ground upon some rock-bound
+coulee's rim. If they could have caught it at the start, or even in the
+first mile of its burning--or, even now, if Blumenthall's outfit were on
+the spot--or if Manley Fleetwood's fire guards held it back--He hoped some
+of them had stayed at home, so that they could help fight it.
+
+In that brief glimpse before he rode down into a hollow and so lost sight
+of it, he knew that the fire they had fought and vanquished before had been
+a puny blaze compared with this one. The ground it had burned was not broad
+enough to do more than check this fire temporarily. It would simply burn
+around the blackened area and rush on and on, until the bend of the river
+turned it back to the north, where the river's first tributary stream would
+stop it for good and all. But before that happened it would have done its
+worst--and its worst was enough to pale the face of every prairie dweller.
+
+Once more he caught sight of the fire as he was riding swiftly across
+the level land to the east of Cold Spring Coulee. He was going to see if
+Manley's fire guards were any good, and if anyone was there ready to fight
+it when it came up; they could set a back fire from the guards, he thought,
+even if the guards themselves were not wide enough to hold the main fire.
+
+He pounded heavily down the long trail into the coulee, passed close by the
+house with a glance sidelong to see if anybody was in sight there, rounded
+the corral to follow the trail which wound zigzag up the farther coulee
+wall, and overtook Val, running bareheaded up the hill, dragging a wet sack
+after her. She was panting already from the climb, and she had on thin
+slippers with high heels, he noticed, that impeded her progress and
+promised a sprained ankle before she reached the top. Kent laughed grimly
+when he overtook her; he thought it was like a five-year-old child running
+with a cup of water to put out a burning house.
+
+"Where do you think you're going with that sack?" he called out, by way of
+greeting.
+
+She turned a pale, terrified face toward him, and reached up a hand
+mechanically to push her fair hair out of her eyes. "So much smoke was
+rolling into the coulee," she panted, "and I knew there must be a fire. And
+I've never felt quite easy about our guards since Polycarp Jenks said--Do
+you know where it is--the fire?"
+
+"It's between here and the railroad. Give me that sack, and you go on back
+to the house. You can't do any good." And when she handed the sack up to
+him and then kept on up the hill, he became autocratic in his tone. "Go on
+back to the house, I tell you!"
+
+"I shall not do anything of the kind," she retorted indignantly, and Kent
+gave a snort of disapproval, kicked his horse into a lunging gallop, and
+left her.
+
+"You'll spoil your complexion," he cried over his shoulder, "and that's
+about all you will do. You better go back and get a parasol."
+
+Val did not attempt to reply, but she refused to let his taunts turn her
+back, and kept stubbornly climbing, though tears of pure rage filled her
+eyes and even slipped over the lids to her cheeks. Before she had reached
+the top, he was charging down upon her again, and the pallor of his face
+told her much.
+
+"All hell couldn't stop that fire!" he cried, before he was near her, and
+the words were barely distinguishable in the roar which was growing louder
+and more terrifying. _"Get back!_ You want to stand there till it comes
+down on you?" Then, just as he was passing, he saw how white and trembling
+she was, and he pulled up, with Michael sliding his front feet in the loose
+soil that he might stop on that steep slope.
+
+"You don't want to go and faint," he remonstrated in a more kindly tone,
+vaguely conscious that he had perhaps seemed brutal. "Here, give me your
+hand, and stick your toe in the stirrup. Ah, don't waste time trying to
+make up your mind--up you come! Don't you want to save the house and
+corrals--and the haystacks? We've got our work cut out, let me tell you, if
+we do it."
+
+He had leaned and lifted her up bodily, helped her to put her foot in the
+stirrup from which he had drawn his own, and he held her beside him while
+he sent Michael down the trail as fast as he dared. It was a good deal of
+a nuisance, having to look after her when seconds were so precious, but
+he couldn't go on and leave her, though she might easily have reached the
+bottom as soon as he if she had not been so frightened. He was afraid to
+trust her; she looked, to him, as if she were going to faint in his arms.
+
+"You don't want to get scared," he said, as calmly as he could. "It's back
+two or three miles on the bench yet, and I guess we can easy stop it from
+burning anything but the grass. It's this wind, you see. Manley went to
+town, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes," she answered weakly. "He went yesterday, and stayed over. I'm all
+alone, and I didn't know what to do, only to go up and try--"
+
+"No use, up there."
+
+They were at the corral gate then, and he set her down carefully, then
+dismounted and turned Michael into the corral and shut the gate.
+
+"If we can't step it, and I ain't close by, I wish you'd let Michael out,"
+he said hurriedly, his eyes taking in the immediate surroundings and
+measuring the danger which lurked in weeds, grass, and scattered hay. "A
+horse don't have much show when he's shut up, and--Out there where that dry
+ditch runs, we'll back-fire. You take this sack and come and watch out my
+fire don't jump the ditch. We'll carry it around the house, just the other
+side the trail." He was pulling a handful of grass for a torch, and while
+he was twisting it and feeling in his pocket for a match, he looked at her
+keenly. "You aren't going to get hysterics and leave me to fight it alone,
+are you?" he challenged.
+
+"I hope I'm not quite such a silly," she answered stiffly, and he smiled to
+himself as he ran along the far side of the ditch with his blazing tuft
+of grass, setting fire to the tangled, brown mat which covered the coulee
+bottom.
+
+Val followed slowly behind him, watching that the blaze did not blow back
+across the ditch, and beating it out when it seemed likely to do so. Now
+that she could actually do something, she was no more excited than he, if
+one could judge by her manner. She did look sulky, however, at his way of
+treating her.
+
+To back-fire on short notice, with no fresh-turned furrow of moist earth,
+but only a shallow little dry ditch with the grass almost meeting over its
+top in places, is ticklish business at best. Kent went slowly, stamping out
+incipient blazes that seemed likely to turn unruly, and not trusting
+Val any more than he was compelled to do. She was a woman, and Kent's
+experience with women of her particular type had not been extensive enough
+to breed confidence in an emergency like this.
+
+He had no more than finished stringing his line of fire in the irregular
+half circle which enclosed house, corral, stables, and haystacks, and had
+for its eastern half the muddy depression which, in seasons less dry, was
+a fair-sized creek fed by the spring, when a jagged line of fire with an
+upper wall of tumbling, brown smoke, leaped into view at the top of the
+bluff.
+
+One thing was in his favor: The grass upon the hillside was scantier
+than on the level upland, and here and there were patches of yellow soil
+absolutely bare of vegetation, where a fire would be compelled to halt and
+creep slowly around. Also, fire usually burns slower down a hill than over
+a level. On the other hand, the long, seamlike depressions which ran to the
+top were filled with dry brush, and even the coulee bottom had clumps of
+rosebushes and wild currant, where the flames would revel briefly.
+
+But already the black, smoking line which curved around the haystacks to
+the north, and around the house toward the south, was widening with every
+passing second.
+
+Val had a tub half filled with water at the house, and that helped
+amazingly by making it possible to keep the sacks wet, so that every blow
+counted as they beat out the ragged tongues of flame which, in that wind,
+would jump here and there the ditch and the road, and go creeping back
+toward the stacks and the buildings. For it was a long line they were
+guarding, and there was a good deal of running up and down in their
+endeavor to be in two places at once.
+
+Then Val, in turning to strike a new-born flame behind her, swept her
+skirt across a tuft of smoldering grass and set herself afire. With the
+excitement of watching all points at once, and with the smoke and smell of
+fire all about her, she did not see what had happened, and must have paid a
+frightful penalty if Kent had not, at that moment, been running past her to
+reach a point where a blaze had jumped the ditch.
+
+He swerved, and swung a newly wet sack around her with a force which would
+have knocked her down if he had not at the same time caught and held her.
+Val screamed, and struggled in his arms, and Kent knew that it was of
+him she was afraid. As soon as he dared, he released her and backed away
+sullenly.
+
+"Sorry I didn't have time to say please--you were just ready to go up in
+smoke," he flung savagely over his shoulder. But he found himself shaking
+and weak, so that when he reached the blaze he must beat out, the sack was
+heavy as lead. "Afraid of _me_--women sure do beat hell!" he told himself,
+when he was a bit steadier. He glanced back at her resentfully. Val was
+stooping, inspecting the damage done to her dress. She stood up, looked
+at him, and he saw that her face was white again, as it had been upon the
+hillside.
+
+A moment later he was near her again.
+
+"Mr. Burnett, I'm--ashamed--but I didn't know, and you--you startled me,"
+she stopped him long enough to confess, though she did not meet his eyes.
+"You saved--"
+
+"You'll be startled worse, if you let the fire hang there in that bunch of
+grass," he interrupted coolly. "Behind you, there."
+
+She turned obediently, and swung her sack down several times upon a
+smoldering spot, and the incident was closed.
+
+Speedily it was forgotten, also. For with the meeting of the fires, which
+they stood still to watch, a patch of wild rosebushes was caught fairly
+upon both sides, and flared high, with a great snapping and crackling.
+The wind seized upon the blaze, flung it toward them like a great, yellow
+banner, and swept cinders and burning twigs far out over the blackened
+path of the back fire. Kent watched it and hardly breathed, but Val was
+shielding her face from the searing heat with her arms, and so did not
+see what happened then. A burning branch like a long, flaming dagger flew
+straight with the wind and lighted true as if flung by the hand of an
+enemy. A long, neatly tapered stack received it fairly, and Kent's cry
+brought Val's arms down, and her scared eyes staring at him.
+
+"That settles the hay," he exclaimed, and raced for the stacks knowing all
+the while that he could do nothing, and yet panting in his hurry to reach
+the spot.
+
+Michael, trampling uneasily in the corral, lifted his head and neighed
+shrilly as Kent passed him on the run. Michael had watched fearfully the
+fire sweeping down upon him, and his fear had troubled Val not a little.
+When she saw Kent pass the gate, she hurried up and threw it open,
+wondering a little that Kent should forget his horse. He had told her to
+see that he was turned loose if the fire could not be stopped--and now he
+seemed to have forgotten it.
+
+Michael, with a snort and an upward toss of his head to throw the dragging
+reins away from his feet, left the corral with one jump, and clattered
+away, past the house and up the hill, on the trail which led toward home.
+Val stood for a moment watching him. Could he out-run the fire? He was
+holding his head turned to one side now, so that the reins dangled away
+from his pounding feet; once he stumbled to his knees, but he was up in a
+flash, and running faster than ever. He passed out of sight over the hill,
+and Val, with eyes smarting and cheeks burning from the heat, drew a long
+breath and started after Kent.
+
+Kent was backing, step by step, away from the heat of the burning stacks.
+The roar, and the crackle, and the heat were terrific; it was as if the
+whole world was burning around them, and they only were left. A brand flew
+low over Val's head as she ran staggeringly, with a bewildered sense that
+she must hurry somewhere and do something immediately, to save something
+which positively must be saved. A spark from the brand fell upon her hand,
+and she looked up stupidly. The heat and the smoke were choking her so that
+she could scarcely breathe.
+
+A new crackle was added to the uproar of flames. Kent, still backing from
+the furnace of blazing hay, turned, and saw that the stable, with its roof
+of musty hay, was afire. And, just beyond, Val, her face covered with her
+sooty hands, was staggering drunkenly. He reached her as she fell to her
+knees.
+
+"I--can't--fight--any more," she whispered faintly.
+
+He picked her up in his arms and hesitated, his face toward the house; then
+ran straight away from it, stumbled across the dry ditch and out across the
+blackened strip which their own back fire had swept clean of grass. The hot
+earth burned his feet through the soles of his riding boots, but the wind
+carried the heat and the smoke away, behind them. Clumps of bushes were
+still burning at the roots, but he avoided them and kept on to the far side
+hill, where a barren, yellow patch, with jutting sandstone rocks, offered
+a resting place. He set Val down upon a rock, placed himself beside her so
+that she was leaning against him, and began fanning her vigorously with his
+hat.
+
+"Thank the Lord, we're behind that smoke, anyhow," he observed, when he
+could get his breath. He felt that silence was not good for the woman
+beside him, though he doubted much whether she was in a condition to
+understand him. She was gasping irregularly, and her body was a dead weight
+against him. "It was sure fierce, there, for a few minutes."
+
+He looked out across the coulee at the burning stables, and waited for the
+house to catch. He could not hope that it would escape, but he did not
+mention the probability of its burning.
+
+"Keep your eyes shut," he said. "That'll help some, and soon as we can
+we'll go to the spring and give our faces and hands a good bath." He untied
+his silk neckerchief, shook out the cinders, and pressed it against her
+closed eyes. "Keep that over 'em," he commanded, "till we can do better. My
+eyes are more used to smoke than yours, I guess. Working around branding
+fires toughens 'em some."
+
+Still she did not attempt to speak, and she did not seem to have energy
+enough left to keep the silk over her eyes. The wind blew it off without
+her stirring a finger to prevent, and Kent caught it just in time to save
+it from sailing away toward the fire. After that he held it in place
+himself, and he did not try to keep talking. He sat quietly, with his arm
+around her, as impersonal in the embrace as if he were holding a strange
+partner in a dance, and watched the stacks burn, and the stables. He saw
+the corral take fire, rail by rail, until it was all ablaze. He saw hens
+and roosters running heavily, with wings dragging, until the heat toppled
+them over. He saw a cat, with white spots upon its sides, leave the bushes
+down by the creek and go bounding in terror to the house.
+
+And still the house stood there, the curtains flapping in and out through
+the open windows, the kitchen door banging open and shut as the gusts of
+wind caught it. The fire licked as close as burned ground and rocky creek
+bed would let it, and the flames which had stayed behind to eat the
+spare gleanings died, while the main line raged on up the hillside and
+disappeared in a huge, curling wave of smoke. The stacks burned down
+to blackened, smoldering butts. The willows next the spring, and the
+chokecherries and wild currants withered in the heat and waved charred,
+naked arms impotently in the wind. The stable crumpled up, flared, and
+became a heap of embers. The corral was but a ragged line of smoking,
+half-burned sticks and ashes. Spirals of smoke, like dying camp fires, blew
+thin ribbons out over the desolation.
+
+Kent drew a long breath and glanced down at the limp figure in his arms.
+She lay so very still that in spite of a quivering breath now and then he
+had a swift, unreasoning fear she might be dead. Her hair was a tangled
+mass of gold upon her head, and spilled over his arm. He carefully picked a
+flake or two of charred grass from the locks on her temples, and discovered
+how fine and soft was the hair. He lifted the grimy neckerchief from her
+eyes and looked down at her face, smoke-soiled and reddened from the heat.
+Her lips were drooped pitifully, like a hurt child. Her lashes, he noticed
+for the first time, were at least four shades darker than her hair. His
+gaze traveled on down her slim figure to her ringed fingers lying loosely
+in her lap, a long, dry-looking blister upon one hand near the thumb; down
+to her slippers, showing beneath her scorched skirt. And he drew another
+long breath. He did not know why, but he had a strange, fleeting sense of
+possession, and it startled him into action.
+
+"You gone to sleep?" he called gently, and gave her a little shake. "We can
+get to the spring now, if you feel like walking that far; if you don't, I
+reckon I'll have to carry you--for I sure do want a drink!"
+
+She half lifted her lashes and let them drop again, as if life were not
+worth the effort of living. Kent hesitated, set his lips tightly together,
+and lifted her up straighter. His eyes were intent and stern, as though
+some great issue was at stake, and he must rouse her at once, in spite of
+everything.
+
+"Here, this won't do at all," he said--but he was speaking to himself and
+his quivering nerves, more than to her.
+
+She sighed, made a conscious effort, and half opened her eyes again. But
+she seemed not to share his anxiety for action, and her mental and physical
+apathy were not to be mistaken. The girl was utterly exhausted with
+fire-fighting and nervous strain.
+
+"You seem to be all in," he observed, his voice softly complaining. "Well,
+I packed you over here, and I reckon I better pack you back again--if you
+_won't_ try to walk."
+
+She muttered something, of which Kent only distinguished "a minute." But
+she was still limp, and absolutely without interest in anything, and so,
+after a moment of hesitation, he gathered her up in his arms and carried
+her back to the house, kicked the door savagely open, took her in through
+the kitchen, and laid her down upon the couch, with a sigh of relief that
+he was rid of her.
+
+The couch was gay with a bright, silk spread of "crazy" patchwork, and
+piled generously with dainty cushions, too evidently made for ornamental
+purposes than for use. But Kent piled the cushions recklessly around her,
+tucked her smudgy skirts close, went and got a towel, which he immersed
+recklessly in the water pail, and bathed her face and hands with clumsy
+gentleness, and pushed back her tangled hair. The burn upon her hand showed
+an angry red around the white of the blister, and he laid the wet towel
+carefully upon it. She did not move.
+
+He was a man, and he had lived all his life among men. He could fight
+anything that was fightable. He could save her life, but after this slight
+attention to her comfort he had reached the limitations set by his purely
+masculine training. He lowered the shades so that the room was dusky and as
+cool as any other place in that fire-tortured land, and felt that he could
+no do more for her.
+
+He stood for a moment looking down at the inert, grimy little figure
+stretched out straight, like a corpse, upon the bright-hued couch, her eyes
+closed and sunken, with blue shadows beneath, her lips pale and still with
+that tired, pitiful droop. He stooped and rearranged the wet towel on her
+burned hand, held his face close above hers for a second, sighed, frowned,
+and tiptoed out into the kitchen, closing the door carefully behind him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. DESOLATION
+
+For more than two hours Kent sat outside in the shade of the house, and
+stared out over the black desolation of the coulee. His horse was gone, so
+that he could not ride anywhere--and there was nowhere in particular to
+ride. For twenty miles around there was no woman whom he could bring to
+Val's assistance, even if he had been sure that she needed assistance.
+Several times he tiptoed into the kitchen, opened the door into the front
+room an inch or so, and peered in at her. The third time, she had relaxed
+from the corpselike position, and had thrown an arm up over her face, as if
+she were shielding her eyes from something. He took heart at that, and went
+out and foraged for firewood.
+
+There was a hard-beaten zone around the corral and stables, which had kept
+the fire from spreading toward the house, and the wind had borne the sparks
+and embers back toward the spring, so that the house stood in a brown oasis
+of unburned grass and weeds, scanty enough, it is true, but yet a relief
+from the dead black surroundings.
+
+The woodpile had not suffered. A chopping block, a decrepit sawhorse,
+an axe, and a rusty bucksaw marked the spot; also three ties, hacked
+eloquently in places, and just five sticks of wood, evidently chopped from
+a tie by a man in haste. Kent looked at that woodpile, and swore. He had
+always known that Manley had an aversion to laboring with his hands, but he
+was unprepared for such an exhibition of shiftlessness.
+
+He savagely attacked the three ties, chopped them into firewood, and piled
+them neatly, and then, walking upon his toes, he made a fire in the kitchen
+stove, filled the woodbox, the teakettle, and the water pail, sat out in
+the shade until he heard the kettle boiling over on the stove, took another
+peep in at Val, and then, moving as quietly as he could, proceeded to cook
+supper for them both.
+
+He had been perfectly familiar with the kitchen arrangements in the days
+when Manley was a bachelor, and it interested him and filled him with a
+respectful admiration for woman in the abstract and for Val in particular,
+to see how changed everything was, and how daintily clean and orderly.
+Val's smooth, white hands, with their two sparkly rings and the broad
+wedding band, did not suggest a familiarity with actual work about a house,
+but the effect of her labor and thought confronted him at every turn.
+
+"You can see your face in everything you pick up that was made to shine,"
+he commented, standing for a moment while he surveyed the bottom of a
+stewpan. "She don't look it, but that yellow-eyed little dame sure knows
+how to keep house." Then he heard her cough, and set down the stewpan
+hurriedly and went to see if she wanted anything.
+
+Val was sitting upon the couch, her two hands pushing back her hair, gazing
+stupidly around her.
+
+"Everything's all ready but the tea," Kent announced, in a perfectly
+matter-of-fact tone. "I was just waiting to see how strong you want it."
+
+Val turned her yellow-brown eyes upon him in bewilderment. "Why, Mr.
+Burnett--maybe I wasn't dreaming, then. I thought there was a fire. Was
+there?"
+
+Kent grinned. "Kinda. You worked like a son of a gun, too--till there
+wasn't any more to do, and then you laid 'em down for fair. You were all
+in, so I packed you in and put you there where you could be comfortable.
+And supper's ready--but how strong do you want your tea? I kinda had an
+idea," he added lamely, "that women drink tea, mostly. I made coffee for
+myself."
+
+Val let herself drop back among the pretty pillows. "I don't want any. If
+there was a fire," she said dully, "then it's true. Everything's all burned
+up. I don't want any tea. I want to die!"
+
+Kent studied her for a moment. "Well, in that case--shall I get the axe?"
+
+Val had closed her eyes, but she opened them again. "I don't care what you
+do," she said.
+
+"Well, I aim to please," he told her calmly. "What _I'd_ do, in your place,
+would be to go and put on something that ain't all smoked and scorched like
+a--a ham, and then I'd sit up and drink some tea, and be nice about it.
+But, of course, if you want to cash in--"
+
+Val gave a sob. "I can't help it--I'd just as soon be dead as alive. It
+was bad enough before--and now everything's burned up--and all Manley's
+nice--ha-ay--"
+
+"Well," Kent interrupted mercilessly, "I've heard of women doing all kinds
+of fool things--but this is the first time I ever knew one to commit
+suicide over a couple of measly haystacks!" He went out and slammed the
+door so that the house shook, and tramped three times across the kitchen
+floor. "That'll make her so mad at me she won't think about anything else
+for a while," he reasoned shrewdly. But all the while his eyes were shiny,
+and when he winked, his lashes became unaccountably moist. He stopped and
+looked out at the blackened coulee. "Shut into this hole, week after week,
+without a woman to speak to--it must be--damned tough!" he muttered.
+
+He tiptoed up and laid his ear against the inner door, and heard a
+smothered sobbing inside. That did not sound as if she were "mad," and he
+promptly cursed himself for a fool and a brute. With his own judgment to
+guide him, he brewed some very creditable tea, sugared and creamed it
+lavishly, browned a slice of bread on top of the stove--blowing off the
+dust beforehand--after Arline's recipe for making toast, buttered it until
+it dripped oil, and carried it in to her with the air of a man who will
+have peace even though he must fight for it. The forlorn picture she made,
+lying there with her face buried in a pink-and-blue cushion, and with her
+shoulders shaking with sobs, almost made him retreat, quite unnerved. As it
+was, he merely spilled a third of the tea and just missed letting the toast
+slide from the plate to the floor; when he had righted his burden he had
+recovered his composure to a degree.
+
+"Here, this won't do at all," he reproved, pulling a chair to the couch by
+the simple method of hooking his toe under a round and dragging it toward
+him. "You don't want Man to come and catch you acting like this. He's
+liable to feel pretty blue himself, and he'll need some cheering up--don't
+you think? I don't know for sure--but I've always been kinda under the
+impression that's what a man gets a wife for. Ain't it? You don't want to
+throw down your cards now. You sit up and drink this tea, and eat this
+toast, and I'll gamble you'll feel about two hundred per cent better.
+
+"Come," he urged gently, after a minute. "I never thought a nervy little
+woman like you would give up so easy. I was plumb ashamed of myself, the
+way you worked on that back fire. You had me going, for a while. You're
+just tired out, is all ails you. You want to hurry up and drink this,
+before it gets cold. Come on. I'm liable to feel, insulted if you pass up
+my cooking this way."
+
+Val choked back the tears, and, without taking her face from the pillow,
+put out the burned hand gropingly until it touched his knee.
+
+"Oh, you--you're good," she said brokenly. "I used to think you
+were--horrid, and I'm a--ashamed. You're good, and I--"
+
+"Well, I ain't going to be good much longer, if you don't get your head
+outa that pillow and drink this tea!" His tone was amused and half
+impatient. But his face--more particularly his eyes--told another story,
+which perhaps it was as well she did not read. "I'll be dropping the blamed
+stuff in another minute. My elbow's plumb getting a cramp in it," he added
+complainingly.
+
+Val made a sound half-way between a sob and a laugh, and sat up. With more
+haste than the occasion warranted, Kent put the tea and toast on the chair
+and started for the kitchen.
+
+"I was bound you'd eat before I did," he explained, "and I could stand a
+cup of coffee myself. And, say! If there's anything more you want, just
+holler, and I'll come on the long lope."
+
+Val took up the teaspoon, tasted the tea, and then regarded the cup
+doubtfully. She never drank sugar in her tea. She wondered how much of it
+he had put in. Her head ached frightfully, and she felt weak and utterly
+hopeless of ever feeling different.
+
+"Everything all right?" came Kent's voice from the kitchen.
+
+"Yes," Val answered hastily, trying hard to speak with some life and cheer
+in her tone. "It's lovely--all of it."
+
+"Want more tea?" It sounded, out there, as though he was pushing back his
+chair to rise from the table.
+
+"No, no, this is plenty." Val glanced fearfully toward the kitchen door,
+lifted the teacup, and heroically drank every drop. It was, she considered,
+the least that she could do.
+
+When he had finished eating he came in, and found her nibbling
+apathetically at the toast. She looked up at him with an apology in her
+eyes.
+
+"Mr. Burnett, don't think I am always so silly," she began, leaning back
+against the piled pillows with a sigh. "I have always thought that I could
+bear anything. But last night I didn't sleep much. I dreamed about fires,
+and that Manley was--dead--and I woke up in a perfect horror. It was only
+ten o'clock. So then I sat up and tried to read, and every five minutes I
+would go out and look at the sky, to see if there was a glow anywhere.
+It was foolish, of course. And I didn't sleep at all to-day, either. The
+minute I would lie down I'd imagine I heard a fire roaring. And then it
+came. But I was all used up before that, so I wasn't really--I must have
+fainted, for I don't remember getting into the house--and I do think
+fainting is the silliest thing! I never did such a thing before," she
+finished abjectly.
+
+"Oh, well--I guess you had a license to faint if you felt that way," he
+comforted awkwardly. "It was the smoke and the heat, I reckon; they were
+enough to put a crimp in anybody. Did Man say about when he would be back?
+Because I ought to be moving along; it's quite a walk to the Wishbone."
+
+"Oh--you won't go till Manley comes! Please! I--I'd go crazy, here alone,
+and--and he might not come--he's frequently detained. I--I've such a
+horror of fires--" She certainly looked as if she had. She was sitting up
+straight, her hands held out appealingly to him, her eyes big and bright.
+
+"Sure I won't go if you feel that way about it." Kent was half frightened
+at her wild manner. "I guess Man will be along pretty soon, anyway. He'll
+hit the trail as soon as he can get behind the fire, that's a cinch. He'll
+be worried to death about you. And you don't need to be afraid of prairie
+fires any more, Mrs. Fleetwood; you're safe. There can't be any more fires
+till next year, anyway; there's nothing left to burn." He turned his face
+to the window and stared out somberly at the ravaged hillside. "Yes--you're
+dead safe, now!"
+
+"I'm such a fool," Val confessed, her eyes also turning to the window, "If
+you want to go, I--" Her mouth was quivering, and she did not finish the
+sentence.
+
+"Oh, I'll stay till Man comes. He's liable to be along any time, now." He
+glanced at her scorched, smoke-stained dress. "He'll sure think you made a
+hand, all right!"
+
+Val took the hint, and blushed with true feminine shame that she was not
+looking her best. "I'll go and change," she murmured, and rose wearily.
+"But I feel as if the world had been 'rolled up in a scroll and burned,' as
+the Bible puts it, and as if nothing matters any more."
+
+"It does, though. We'll all go right along living the same as ever, and
+the first snow will make this fire seem as old as the war--except to the
+cattle; they're the ones to get it in the neck this winter."
+
+He went out and walked aimlessly around in the yard, and went over to the
+smoking remains of the stable, and to the heap of black ashes where the
+stacks had been. Manley would be hard hit, he knew. He wished he would
+hurry and come, and relieve him of the responsibility of keeping Val
+company. He wondered a little, in his masculine way, that women should
+always be afraid when there was no cause for fear. For instance, she had
+stayed alone a good many times, evidently, when there was real danger of a
+fire sweeping down upon her at any hour of the day or night; but now, when
+there was no longer a possibility of anything happening, she had turned
+white and begged him to stay--and Val, he judged shrewdly, was not the sort
+of woman who finds it easy to beg favors of anybody.
+
+There came a sound of galloping, up on the hill, and he turned quickly.
+Dull dusk was settling bleakly down upon the land, but he could see three
+or four horsemen just making the first descent from the top. He shouted a
+wordless greeting, and heard their answering yells. In another minute or
+two they were pulling up at the house, where he had hurried to meet them.
+Val, tucking a side comb hastily into her freshly coiled hair, her pretty
+self clothed all in white linen, appeased eagerly in the doorway.
+
+"Why--where's Manley?" she demanded anxiously.
+
+Blumenthall was dismounting near her, and he touched his hat before he
+answered. "We were on the way home, and we thought we'd better ride around
+this way and see how you came out," he evaded. "I see you lost your hay and
+buildings--pretty close call for the house, too, I should judge. You must
+have got here in time to do something, Kent."
+
+"But where's Manley?" Val was growing pale again. "Has anything happened?
+Is he hurt? Tell me!"
+
+"Oh, he's all right, Mrs. Fleetwood." Blumenthall glanced meaningly at
+Kent--and Fred De Garmo, sitting to one side of his saddle, looked at
+Polycarp Jenks and smiled slightly. "We left town ahead of him, and knocked
+right along."
+
+Val regarded the group suspiciously. "He's coming, then, is he?"
+
+"Oh, certainly. Glad you're all right, Mrs. Fleetwood. That was an awful
+fire--it swept the whole country clean between the two rivers, I'm afraid.
+This wind made it bad." He was tightening his cinch, and now he unhooked
+the stirrup from the horn and mounted again. "We'll have to be getting
+along--don't know, yet, how we came out of it over to the ranch. But our
+guards ought to have stopped it there." He looked at Kent. "How did the
+Wishbone make it?" he inquired.
+
+"I was just going to ask you if you knew," Kent replied, scowling because
+he saw Fred looking at Val in what he considered an impertinent manner. "My
+horse ran off while I was fighting fire here, so I'm afoot. I was waiting
+for Man to show up."
+
+"You'll git all of that you want--_he-he!_" Polycarp cut in tactlessly.
+"Man won't git home t'-night--not unless--"
+
+"Aw, come on." Fred started along the charred trail which led across the
+coulee and up the farther side. Blumenthall spoke a last, commonplace
+sentence or two, just to round off the conversation and make the
+termination not too abrupt, and they rode away, with Polycarp glancing
+curiously back, now and then, as though he was tempted to stay and gossip,
+and yet was anxious to know all that had happened at the Double Diamond.
+
+"What did Polycarp Jenks mean--about Manley not coming to-night?" Val was
+standing in the doorway, staring after the group of horsemen.
+
+"Nothing, I guess, Polycarp never does mean anything half the time; he just
+talks to hear his head roar. Man'll come, all right. This bunch happened to
+beat him out, is all."
+
+"Oh, do you think so? Mr. Blumenthall acted as if there was something--"
+
+"Well, what can you expect of a man that lives on oatmeal mush and toast
+and hot water?" Kent demanded aggressively. "And Fred De Garmo is always
+grinning and winking at somebody; and that other fellow is a Swede and got
+about as much sense as a prairie dog--and Polycarp is an old granny gossip
+that nobody ever pays any attention to. Man won't stay in town--hell be too
+anxious."
+
+"It's terrible," sighed Val, "about the hay and the stables. Manley will
+be so discouraged--he worked so hard to cut and stack that hay. And he was
+just going to gather the calves together and put them in the river field,
+in a couple of weeks--and now there isn't anything to feed them!"
+
+"I guess he's coming; I hear somebody." Kent was straining his eyes to see
+the top of the hill, where the dismal sight shadows lay heavily upon the
+dismal black earth. "Sounds to me like a rig, though. Maybe he drove out."
+He left her, went to the wire gate which gave egress from the tiny, unkempt
+yard, and walked along the trail to meet the newcomer.
+
+"You stay there," he called back, when he thought he heard Val following
+him. "I'm just going to tell him you're all right. You'll get that white
+dress all smudged up in these ashes."
+
+In the narrow little gully where the trail crossed the half-dry channel
+from the spring he met the rig. The driver pulled up when he caught sight
+of Kent.
+
+"Who's that? Did she git out of it?" cried Arline Hawley, in a breathless
+undertone, "Oh--it's you, is it, Kent? I couldn't stand it--I just had to
+come and see if she's alive. So I made Hank hitch right up--as soon as we
+knew the fire wasn't going to git into all that brush along the creek, and
+run down to the town--and bring me over. And the way--"
+
+"But where's Man?" Kent laid a hand upon the wheel and shot the question
+into the stream of Arline's talk.
+
+"Man! I dunno what devil gits into men sometimes. Man went and got drunk
+as a fool soon as he seen the fire and knew what coulda happened out here.
+Started right in to drownd his sorrows before he made sure whether he had
+any to drown! If that ain't like a man, every time! Time we all got back to
+town, and the fire was kiting away from us instead of coming up toward
+us, he was too drunk to do anything. He must of poured it down him by the
+quart. He--"
+
+"Manley! Is that you, dear?" It was Val, a slim, white figure against the
+blackness all around her, coming down the trail to see what delayed them.
+"Why don't you come to the house? There _is_ a house, you know. We aren't
+quite burned out. And I'm all right, so there's no need to worry any more."
+
+"Now, ain't that a darned shame?" muttered Arline wrathfully to Kent. "A
+feller that'll drink when he's got a wife like that had oughta be hung!
+
+"It's me, Arline Hawley!" She raised her voice to its ordinary shrill
+level. "It ain't just the proper time to make a call, I guess, but it's
+better late than never. Man, he was took with one of his spells, so I told
+him I'd come on out and take you back to town. How are you, anyhow? Scared
+plumb to death, I'll bet, when that fire come over the hill. You needn't
+'a' tramped clear down here--we was coming on to the house in a minute. I
+got to chewin' the rag with Kent. Git in; you might as well ride back to
+the house, now you're here."
+
+"Manley didn't come?" Val was standing beside the rig, near Kent. Her
+white-clothed figure was indistinct, and her face obscured in the dark. Her
+voice was quiet--lifelessly quiet. "Is he sick?"
+
+"Well--of course has nerves was all upset--"
+
+"Oh! Then he _is_ sick?"
+
+"Well--nothing dangerous, but--he wasn't feelin' well, so I thought I'd
+come out and take you back with me."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Man was awful worried; you mustn't think he wasn't. He was pretty near
+crazy, for a while."
+
+"Oh, yes, certainly."
+
+"Get in and ride. And you mustn't worry none about Man, nor feel hurt that
+he didn't come. He felt so bad--"
+
+"I'll walk, thank you; it's only a few steps. And I'm not worried at all. I
+quite understand."
+
+The team started on slowly, and Mrs. Hawley turned in the seat so that she
+could continue talking without interruption to the two who walked behind.
+But it was Kent who answered her at intervals, when she asked a direct
+question or appeared to be waiting for some comment. Betweenwhiles he was
+wondering if Val did, after all, understand. She knew so little of the West
+and its ways, and her faith in Manley was so firm and unquestioning,
+that he felt sure she was only hurt at what looked very much like an
+indifference to her welfare. He suspected shrewdly that she was thinking
+what she would have done in Manley's place, and was trying to reconcile
+Mrs. Hawley's assurances that Manley was not actually sick or disabled with
+the blunt fact that he had stayed in town and permitted others to come out
+to see if she were alive or dead.
+
+And Kent had another problem to solve. Should he tell her the truth? He had
+never ceased to feel, in some measure, responsible for her position. And
+she was sure to discover the truth before long; not even her innocence
+and her ignorance of life could shield her from that knowledge. He let
+a question or two of Arline's go unanswered while he struggled for a
+decision, but when they reached the house, only one point was dearly
+settled in his mind. Instead of riding as far as he might, and then walking
+across the prairie to the Wishbone, he intended to go on to town with
+them--"to see her through with it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. VAL'S AWAKENING
+
+Val stood just inside the door of the hotel parlor and glanced swiftly
+around at the place of unpleasant memory.
+
+"No, I must see Manley before I can tell you whether we shall want to stay
+or not," she replied to Arline's insistence that she "go right up to a
+room" and lie down. "I feel quite well, and you must not bother about me at
+all. If Mr. Burnett will be good enough to send Manley to me--I must see
+him first of all." It was Val in her most unapproachable mood, and Arline
+subsided before it.
+
+"Well, then, I'll go and send word to Man, and see about some supper for
+us. I feel as if _I_ could eat ten-penny nails!" She went out into the
+hall, hesitated a moment, and then boldly invaded the "office."
+
+"Say! have you got Man rounded up yit?" she demanded of her husband. "And
+how is he, anyhow? That girl ain't got the first idea of what ails him--how
+anybody with the brains and education she's got can be so thick-headed gits
+me. Jim told me Man's been packing a bottle or two home with him every trip
+he's made for the last month--and she don't know a thing about it. I'd like
+to know what 'n time they learn folks back East, anyhow; to put their eyes
+and their sense in their pockets, I guess, and go along blind as bats.
+Where's Kent at? Did he go after him? She won't do nothing till she sees
+Man--"
+
+At that moment Kent came in, and his disgust needed no words. He answered
+Mrs. Hawley's inquiring look with a shake of the head.
+
+"I can't do anything with him," he said morosely. "He's so full he don't
+know he's got a wife, hardly. You better go and tell her, Mrs. Hawley.
+Somebody's got to."
+
+"Oh, my heavens!" Arline clutched at the doorknob for moral support. "I
+could no more face them yellow eyes of hern when they blaze up--you go tell
+her yourself, if you want her told. I've got to see about some supper for
+us. I ain't had a bite since dinner, and Min's off gadding somewheres--"
+She hurried away, mentally washing her hands of the affair. "Women's got to
+learn some time what men is," she soliloquized, "and I guess she ain't
+no better than any of the rest of us, that she can't learn to take her
+medicine--but _I_ ain't goin' to be the one to tell her what kinda fellow
+she's tied to. My stunt'll be helpin' her pick up the pieces and make the
+best of it after she's told."
+
+She stopped, just inside the dining room, and listened until she heard Kent
+cross the hall from the office and open the parlor door. "Gee! It's like a
+hangin'," she sighed. "If she wasn't so plumb innocent--" She started
+for the door which opened into the parlor from the dining room, strongly
+tempted to eavesdrop. She did yield so far as to put her ear to the
+keyhole, but the silence within impressed her strangely, and she retreated
+to the kitchen and closed the door tightly behind her as the most practical
+method of bidding Satan begone.
+
+The silence in the parlor lasted while Kent, standing with his back against
+the door, faced Val and meditated swiftly upon the manner of his telling.
+
+"Well?" she demanded at last. "I am still waiting to see Manley. I am not
+quite a child, Mr. Burnett. I know something is the matter, and you--if you
+have any pity, or any feeling of friendship, you will tell me the truth.
+Don't you suppose I know that Arline was--_lying_ to me all the time about
+Manley? You helped her to lie. So did that other man. I waited until I
+reached town, where I could do something, and now you must tell me the
+truth. Manley is badly hurt, or he is dead. Tell me which it is, and take
+me to him." She spoke fast, as if she was afraid she might not be able to
+finish, though her voice was even and low, it was also flat and toneless
+with her effort to seem perfectly calm and self-controlled.
+
+Kent looked at her, forgot all about leading up to the truth by easy
+stages, as he had intended to do, and gave it to her straight. "He ain't
+either one," he said. "He's drunk!"
+
+Val stared at him. "Drunk!" He could see how even her lips shrank from the
+word. She threw up her head. "That," she declared icily, "I know to be
+impossible!"
+
+"Oh, do you? Let me tell you that's _never_ impossible with a man, not when
+there's whisky handy."
+
+"Manley is not that sort of a man. When he left me, three years ago, he
+promised me never to frequent places where liquor is sold. He never had
+touched liquor; he never was tempted to touch it. But, just to be doubly
+sure, he promised me, on his honor. He has never broken that promise; I
+know, because he told me so." She made the explanation scornfully, as
+if her pride and her belief in Manley almost forbade the indignity of
+explaining. "I don't know why you should come here and insult me," she
+added, with a lofty charity for his sin.
+
+"I don't see how it can insult you," he contended. "You're got a different
+way of looking at things, but that won't help you to dodge facts. Man's
+drunk. I said it, and I mean it. It ain't the first time, nor the second.
+He was drunk the day you came, and couldn't meet the train. That's why I
+met you. I ought to've told you, I guess, but I hated to make you feel bad.
+So I went to work and sobered him up, and sent him over to get married.
+I've always been kinda sorry for that. It was a low-down trick to play on
+you, and that's a fact. You ought to've had a chance to draw outa the game,
+but I didn't think about it at the time. Man and I have always been pretty
+good friends, and I was thinking of _his_ side of the case. I thought he'd
+straighten up after he got married; he wasn't such a hard drinker--only
+he'd go on a toot when he got into town, like lots of men. I didn't think
+it had such a strong hold on him. And I knew he thought a lot of you, and
+if you went back on him it'd hit him pretty hard. Man ain't a bad fellow,
+only for that. And he's liable to do better when he finds out you know
+about it. A man will do 'most anything for a woman he thinks a lot of."
+
+"Indeed!" Val was sitting now upon the red plush chair. Her face was
+perfectly colorless, her manner frozen. The word seemed to speak itself,
+without having any relation whatever to her thoughts and her emotions.
+
+Kent waited. It seemed to him that she took it harder than she would have
+taken the news that Manley was dead. He had no means of gauging the horror
+of a young woman who has all her life been familiar with such terms as "the
+demon rum," and who has been taught that "intemperance is the doorway to
+perdition"; a young woman whose life has been sheltered jealously from all
+contact with the ugly things of the world, and who believes that she might
+better die than marry a drunkard. He watched her unobtrusively.
+
+"Anyway, it was worrying over you that made him get off wrong to-day," he
+ventured at last, as a sort of palliative. "They say he was going to start
+home right in the face of the fire, and when they wouldn't let him, he
+headed straight for a saloon and commenced to pour whisky down him. He
+thought sure you--he thought the fire would--"
+
+"I see," Val interrupted stonily. "For the very doubtful honor of shaking
+the hand of a politician, he left me alone to face as best I might
+the possibility of burning alive; and when it seemed likely that the
+possibility had become a certainty, he must celebrate his bereavement by
+becoming a beast. Is that what you would have me believe of my husband?"
+
+"That's about the size of it," Kent admitted reluctantly. "Only I wouldn't
+have put it just that way, maybe."
+
+"Indeed! And how would you pit it, then?"
+
+Kent leaned harder against the door, and looked at her curiously. Women, it
+seemed to him, were always going to extremes; they were either too soft and
+meek, or else they were too hard and unmerciful.
+
+"How would you put it? I am rather curious to know your point of view."
+
+"Well, I know men better than you do, Mrs. Fleetwood. I know they can do
+some things that look pretty rotten on the surface, and yet be fairly
+decent underneath. You don't know how a habit like that gets a fellow just
+where he's weakest. Man ain't a beast. He's selfish and careless, and he
+gives way too easy, but he thinks the world of you. Jim says he cried like
+a baby when he came into the saloon, and acted like a crazy man. You don't
+want to be too hard on him. I've an idea this will learn him a lesson. If
+you take him the right way, Mrs. Fleetwood, the chances are he'll quit
+drinking."
+
+Val smiled. Kent thought he had never before seen a smile like that, and
+hoped he never would see another. There was in it neither mercy nor mirth,
+but only the hard judgment of a woman who does not understand.
+
+"Will you bring him to me here, Mr. Burnett? I do not feel quite equal
+to invading a saloon and begging him, on my knees, to come--after the
+conventional manner of drunkards' wives. But I should like to see him."
+
+Kent stared. "He ain't in any shape to argue with," he remonstrated. "You
+better wait a while."
+
+She rested her chin upon her hands, folded upon the high chair back, and
+gazed at him with her tawny eyes, that somehow reminded Kent of a lioness
+in a cage. He thought swiftly that a lioness would have as much mercy as
+she had in that mood.
+
+"Mr. Burnett," she began quietly, when Kent's nerves were beginning to feel
+the strain of her silent stare, "I want to see Manley _as he is now_. I
+will tell you why. You aren't a woman, and you never will understand, but I
+shall tell you; I want to tell _somebody_.
+
+"I was raised well--that sounds queer, but modesty forbids more. At any
+rate, my mother was very careful about me. She believed in a girl marrying
+and becoming a good wife to a good man, and to that end she taught me and
+trained me. A woman must give her all--her life, her past, present, and
+future--to the man she marries. For three years I thought how unworthy I
+was to be Manley's wife. _Unworthy_, do you hear? I slept with his letters
+under my pillow." The self-contempt in her tone! "I studied the things I
+thought would make me a better companion out here in the wilderness. I
+practiced hours and hours every day upon my violin, because Manley had
+admired my playing, and I thought it would please him to have me play in
+the firelight on winter evenings, when the blizzards were howling about the
+house! I learned to cook, to wash clothes, to iron, to sweep, and to scrub,
+and to make my own clothes, because Manley's wife would live where
+she could not hire servants to do these things. I lived a beautiful,
+picturesque dream of domestic happiness.
+
+"I left my friends, my home, all the things I had been accustomed to all my
+life, and I came out here to live that dream!" She laughed bitterly.
+
+"You can easily guess how much of it has come true, Mr. Burnett. But you
+don't know what it costs a girl to come down from the clouds and find that
+reality is hard and ugly--from dreaming of a cozy little nest of a home,
+and the love and care of--of Manley, to the reality--to carrying water and
+chopping wood and being left alone, day after day, and to find that his
+love only meant--Oh, you don't know how a woman clings to her ideals! You
+don't know how I have dung to mine. They have become rather tattered, and I
+have had to mend them often, but I have clung to them, even though they do
+not resemble much the dreams I brought with me to this horrible country.
+
+"But if it's true, what you tell me--if Manley himself is another
+disillusionment--if beyond his selfishness and his carelessness he is a
+drunken brute whom I can't even respect, then I'm done with my ideals. I
+want to see him just as he is. I want to see him once without the halo I
+have kept shining all these months. I've got my life to live--but I want to
+face facts and live facts. I can't go on dreaming and making believe, after
+this." She stopped and looked at him speculatively, absolutely without
+emotion.
+
+"Just before I left home," she went on in the same calm quiet, "a girl
+showed me some verses written by a very wicked man. At least, they say he
+is very wicked--at any rate, he is in jail. I thought the verses horrible
+and brutal; but now I think the man must be very wise. I remember a few
+lines, and they seem to me to mean Manley.
+
+         "For each man kills the thing he loves--
+         Some do it with a bitter look,
+         Some with a flattering word;
+         The coward does it with a kiss,
+         The brave man with a sword.
+
+"I don't remember all of it, but there was another line or two:
+
+         "The kindest use a knife, because
+         The dead so soon grow cold.
+
+"I wish I had that poem now--I think I could understand it. I think--"
+
+"I think you've got talking hysterics, if there is such a thing," Kent
+interrupted harshly. "You don't know half what you're saying. You've had
+a hard day, and you're all tired out, and everything looks outa focus. I
+know--I've seen men like that sometimes when some trouble hit 'em hard and
+unexpected. What you want is sleep; not poetry about killing people. A
+man, in the shape you are in, takes to whisky. You're taking to graveyard
+poetry--and, if you ask _me_, that's worse than whisky. You ain't normal.
+What you want to do is go straight to bed. When you wake up in the morning
+you won't feel so bad. You won't have half as many troubles as you've got
+now."
+
+"I knew you wouldn't understand it," Val remarked coldly, still staring at
+him with her chin on her hands.
+
+"You won't yourself, to-morrow morning," Kent declared unsympathetically,
+and called Mrs. Hawley from the kitchen. "You better put Mrs. Fleetwood
+to bed," he advised gruffly. "And if you've got anything that'll make her
+sleep, give her a dose of it. She's so tired she can't see straight." He
+was nearly to the outside door when Val recovered her speech.
+
+"You men are all alike," she said contemptuously. "You give orders and you
+consider yourselves above all the laws of morality or decency; in reality
+you are beneath them. We shouldn't expect anything of the lower animals!
+How I _despise_ men!"
+
+"Now you're _talking_," grinned Kent, quite unmoved. "Whack us in a bunch
+all you like--but don't make one poor devil take it all. Men as a class are
+used to it and can stand it." He was laughing as he left the room, but his
+amusement lasted only until the door was closed behind him. "Lord!" he
+exclaimed, and drew a deep breath. "I'd sure hate to have that little
+woman say all them things about _me!_" and glanced involuntarily over his
+shoulder to where a crack of light showed under the faded green shade of
+one of the parlor windows.
+
+He crossed the street and entered the saloon where Manley was still
+drinking heavily, his face crimson and blear-eyed and brutalized, his
+speech thickened disgustingly. He was sprawled in an armchair, waving an
+empty glass in an erratic attempt to mark the time of a college ditty six
+or seven years out of date, which he was trying to sing. He leered up at
+Kent.
+
+"Wife 'sall righ'," he informed him solemnly. "Knew she would be--fine
+guards's got out there. 'Sall righ'--somebody shaid sho. Have a drink."
+
+Kent glowered down at him, made a swift, mental decision, and pipped him
+by the shoulder. "You come with me," he commanded. "I've got something
+important I want to tell you. Come on--if you can walk."
+
+"'Course I c'n walk all righ'. Shertainly I can walk. Wha's makes you think
+I can't walk? Want to inshult me? 'Sall my friends here--no secrets from my
+friends. Wha's want tell me? Shay it here."
+
+Kent was a big man; that is to say, he was tall, well-muscled and active.
+But so was Manley. Kent tried the power of persuasion, leaving force as a
+last, doubtful result. In fifteen minutes or thereabouts he had succeeded
+in getting Manley outside the door, and there he balked.
+
+"Wha's matter wish you?" he complained, pulling back. "C'm on back 'n' have
+drink. Wha's wanna tell me?"
+
+"You wait. I'll tell you all about it in a minute. I've got something to
+show you, and I don't want the bunch to get next. Savvy?"
+
+He had a sickening sense that the subterfuge would not have deceived a
+five-year-old child, but it was accepted without question.
+
+He led Manley stumbling up the street, evading a direct statement as to his
+destination, pulled him off the board walk, and took him across a vacant
+lot well sprinkled with old shoes and tin cans. Here Manley fell down, and
+Kent's patience was well tested before he got him up and going again.
+
+"Where y' goin'?" Manley inquired pettishly, as often as he could bring his
+tongue to the labor of articulation.
+
+"You wait and I'll show you," was Kent's unvaried reply.
+
+At last he pushed open a door and led his victim into the darkness of a
+small, windowless building. "It's in here--back against the wall, there,"
+he said, pulling Manley after him. By feeling, and by a good sense of
+location, he arrived at a rough bunk built against the farther wall, with a
+blanket or two upon it.
+
+"There you are," he announced grimly. "You'll have a sweet time getting
+anything to drink here, old boy. When you're sober enough to face your wife
+and have some show of squaring yourself with her, I'll come and let you
+out." He had pushed Manley down upon the bunk, and had reached the door
+before the other could get up and come at him. He pulled the door shut
+with a slam, slipped a padlock into the staple, and snapped it just before
+Manley lurched heavily against it. He was cursing as well as he could--was
+Manley, and he began kicking like an unruly child shut into a closet.
+
+"Aw, let up," Kent advised him, through a crack in the wall. "Want to know
+where you are? Well, you're in Hawley's ice house; you know it's a fine
+place for drunks to sober up in; it's awful popular for that purpose. Aw,
+you can't do any business kicking--that's been tried lots of times. This
+is sure well built, for an ice house. No, I can't let you out. Couldn't
+possibly, you know. I haven't got the key--old lady Hawley has got it, and
+she's gone to bed hours ago. You go to sleep and forget about it. I'll talk
+to you in the morning. Good night, and pleasant dreams!"
+
+The last thing Kent heard as he walked away was Manley's profane promise to
+cut Kent's heart out very early the next day.
+
+"The darned fool," Kent commented, as he stopped in the first patch of
+lamplight to roll a cigarette. "He ain't got another friend in town that'd
+go to the trouble I've gone to for him. He'll realize it, too, when all
+that whisky quits stewing inside him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. A LESSON IN FORGIVENESS
+
+"Well, old-timer, how you coming? You sure do sleep sound--this is the
+third time I've come to tell you breakfast is ready and then some. You'll
+get the bottom of the coffeepot, for fair, if you don't hustle." Kent left
+the door of the ice house wide open behind him, so that the warmth of
+mid-morning swept in to do battle with the chill and damp of wet sawdust
+and buried ice.
+
+Manley rolled over so that he faced his visitor, and his reply was abusive
+in the extreme. Kent waited, with an air of impersonal interest, until
+he was done and had turned his face away as though the subject was quite
+exhausted.
+
+"Well, now you've got that load off your mind, come on over and get a cup
+of coffee. But while you're thinking about whether you want anything but my
+heart's blood, I'm going to speak right up and tell you a few things that
+commonly ain't none of my business.
+
+"Do you know your wife came within an ace of burning to death yesterday?"
+Manley sat up with a jerk and glared at him. "Do you know you're burned
+out, slick and clean--all except the shack? Hay, stables, corral, wagons,
+chickens--" Kent spread his hands in a gesture including all minor details.
+"I rode over there when I saw the fire coming, and it's lucky I did,
+old-timer. I back-fired and saved the house--and your wife--from going up
+in smoke. But everything else went. Let that sink into your system, will
+you? And just see if you can draw a picture of what woulda happened if
+nobody had showed up--if that fire had hit the coulee with nobody there but
+your wife. Why, I run onto her half-way up the bluff, packing a wet sack,
+to fight it at the fire guards I Now, Man, it ain't any credit to, _you_
+that the worst didn't happen. I'd sure like to tell you what I think of a
+fellow that will leave a woman out there, twenty miles from town and ten
+from the nearest neighbor--and them not at home--to take a chance on a
+thing like that; but I can't. I never learned words enough.
+
+"There's another thing. Old lady Hawley took more interest in her than
+you did; she drove out there to see how about it, as soon as the fire
+had burned on past and left the trail safe. And it didn't look good to
+her--that little woman stuck out there all by herself. She made her pack up
+some clothes, and brought her to town with her. She didn't want to come;
+she had an idea that she ought to stay with it till you showed up. But the
+only original Hawley is sure all right! She talked your wife plumb outa the
+house and into the rig, and brought her to town. She's over to the hotel
+now."
+
+"Val at the hotel? How long has she been there?" Manley began smoothing his
+hair and his crumpled clothes with his hands, "Good heavens! You told her
+I'd gone on out, and had missed her on the trail, didn't you, Kent? She
+doesn't know I'm in town, does she? You always were a good fellow--I
+haven't forgotten how you--"
+
+"Well, you can forget it now. I didn't tell her anything like that. I
+didn't think of it, for one thing. She knew all the time that you were in
+town. I'm tired of lying to her. I told her the truth. I told her you were
+drunk."
+
+Manley's jaw dropped. "You--you told her--"
+
+"Ex-actly. I told her you were drunk." Kent nodded gravely, and his lips
+curled as he watched the other cringe. "She called me a liar," he added,
+with a certain reminiscent amusement.
+
+Manley brightened. "That's Val--once she believes in a person she's loyal
+as--"
+
+"She ain't now," Kent interposed dryly. "When I let up she was plumb
+convinced. She knows now what ailed you the day she came and you didn't
+meet her."
+
+"You dirty cur! And I thought you were a friend. You--"
+
+"You thought right--until you got to rooting a little too deep in the mud,
+old-timer. And let me tell you something. I was your friend when I told
+her. She's got to know--you couldn't go on like this much longer without
+having her get wise; she ain't a fool. The thing for you to do now is to
+buck up and let her reform you. I've always heard that women are tickled
+plumb to death when they can reform a man. You go on over there and make
+your little talk, and then buckle down and live up to it. Savvy? That's
+your only chance now. It'll work, too.
+
+"You _ought_ to straighten up, Man, and act white! Not just to square
+yourself with her, but because you're going downhill pretty fast, if you
+only knew it. You ain't anything like you were two years ago, when we
+bached together. You've got to brace up pretty sudden, or you'll be so far
+gone you can't climb back. And when a man has got a wife to look after,
+it seems to me he ought to be the best it's in him to be. You were a fine
+fellow when you first hit the country--and she thought she was getting that
+same fine fellow when she came away out here to marry you. It ain't any of
+my business--but do you think you're giving her a square deal?" He waited a
+minute, and spoke the next sentence with a certain diffidence. "I'll gamble
+you haven't been disappointed in _her_."
+
+"She's an angel--and I'm a beast!" groaned Manley, with the exaggerated
+self-abasement which so frequently follows close upon the heels of
+intoxication. "She'll never forgive a thing like that--the best thing I can
+do is to blow my brains out!"
+
+"Like Walt. And have your picture enlarged and put in a gold frame, and
+hubby number two learning his morals from your awful example," elaborated
+Kent, in much the same tone he had employed when Val, only the day before,
+had rashly expressed a wish for a speedy death.
+
+Manley sat up straighter and sent a look of resentment toward the man who
+bantered when he should have sympathized. "It's all a big joke with you, of
+course," he flared weakly. "You're not married--to a perfect woman; a woman
+who never did anything wrong in her life, and can't understand how anybody
+should want to, and can't forgive him when he does. She expects a man to be
+a saint. Why, I don't even smoke in the house--and she doesn't dream I'd
+ever swear, under any circumstances.
+
+"Why, Kent, a fellow's _got_ to go to town and turn himself loose
+sometimes, when he lives in a rarified atmosphere of refined morality, and
+listens to Songs Without Words and weepy classics on the violin, and never
+a thing to make your feet tingle. She doesn't believe in public dances,
+either. Nor cards. She reads 'The Ring and the Book' evenings, and wants to
+discuss it and read passages of it to me. I used to take some interest in
+those things, and she doesn't seem to see I've changed. Why, hang it, Kent,
+Cold Spring Coulee's no place for Browning--he doesn't fit in. All that
+sort of thing is a thousand miles behind me--and I've got to--" He stopped
+short and brooded, his eyes upon the dank sawdust at his feet.
+
+"I'm a beast," he repeated rather lugubriously. "She's an angel--an
+Eastern-bred angel. And let me tell you, Kent, all that's pretty hard to
+live up to!"
+
+Kent looked down at him meditatively, wondering if there was not a good
+deal of truth and justice in Manley's argument. But his sympathies had
+already gone to the other side, and Kent was not the man to make an
+emotional pendulum of himself.
+
+"Well, what you going to do about it?" he asked, after a short silence.
+
+For answer Manley rose to his feet with a certain air of determination,
+which flamed up oddly above his general weakness, like the last sputter
+of a candle burned down. "I'm going over and take my medicine--face the
+music," he said almost sullenly, "She's too good for me--I always knew it.
+And I haven't treated her right--I've left her out there alone too much.
+But she wouldn't come to town with me--she said she couldn't endure the
+sight of it. What could I do? _I_ couldn't stay out there all the time;
+there were times when I had to come. She didn't seem to mind staying alone.
+She never objected. She was always sweet sad good-natured--and shut up
+inside of herself. She just gives you what she pleases of her mind, and the
+rest she hides--"
+
+Kent laughed suddenly. "You married men sure do have all kinds of trouble,"
+he remarked. "A fellow like me can go on a jamboree any time he likes, and
+as long as he likes, and it don't concern anybody but himself--and maybe
+the man he's working for; and look at you, scared plumb silly thinking of
+what your wife's going to say about it. If you ask me, I'm going to trot
+alone; I'd rather be lonesome than good, any old time."
+
+That, however, did not tend to raise Manley's spirits any. He entered the
+hotel with visible reluctance, looked into the parlor, and heaved a sigh
+of relief when he saw that it was empty, wavered at the foot of the steep,
+narrow stairs, and retreated to the dining room, with Kent at his heels
+knowing that the matter had passed quite beyond his help or hindrance and
+had entered that mysterious realm of matrimony where no unwedded man or
+woman may follow and yet is curious enough to linger.
+
+Just inside the door Manley stopped so suddenly that Kent bumped against
+him. Val, sweet and calm and cool, was sitting just where the smoke-dimmed
+sunlight poured in through a window upon her, and a breeze came with it and
+stirred her hair. She had those purple shadows under her eyes which betray
+us after long, sleepless hours when we live with our troubles and the world
+dreams around us; she had no color at all in her cheeks, and she had that
+aloofness of manner which Manley, in his outburst, had described as being
+shut up inside herself. She glanced up at them, just as she would have done
+had they both been strangers, and went on sugaring her coffee with a dainty
+exactness which, under the circumstances, seemed altogether too elaborate
+to be unconscious.
+
+"Good morning," she greeted them quietly. "I think we must be the laziest
+people in town; at any rate, we seem to be the latest risers."
+
+Kent stared at her frankly, so that she flushed a little under the
+scrutiny. Manley consciously avoided looking at her, and muttered something
+unintelligible while he pulled out a chair three places distant from her.
+
+Val stole a sidelong, measuring look at her husband while she took a sip of
+coffee, and then her eyes turned upon Kent. More than ever, it seemed to
+him, they resembled the eyes of a lioness watching you quietly from the
+corner of her cage. You could look at them, but you could not look into
+them. Always they met your gaze with a baffling veil of inscrutability. But
+they were darker than the eyes of a lioness; they were human eyes; woman
+eyes--alluring eyes. She did not say a word, and, after a brief stare which
+might have meant almost anything, she turned to her plate of toast and
+broke away the burned edges of a slice and nibbled at the passable center
+as if she had no trouble beyond a rather unsatisfactory breakfast.
+
+It was foolish, it was childish for three people who knew one another very
+well, to sit and pretend to eat, and to speak no word; so Kent thought,
+and tried to break the silence with some remark which would not sound
+constrained.
+
+"It's going to storm," he flung into the silence, like chucking a rock into
+a pond.
+
+"Do you think so?" Val asked languidly, just grazing him with a glance,
+in that inattentive way she sometimes had. "Are you going out home--or to
+what's left of it--to-day, Manley?" She did not look at him at all, Kent
+observed.
+
+"I don't know--I'll have to hire a team--I'll see what--"
+
+"Mrs. Hawley thinks we ought to stay here for a few days--or that I
+ought--while you make arrangements for building a new stable, and all
+that."
+
+"If you want to stay," Manley agreed rather eagerly, "why, of course, you
+can. There's nothing out there to--"
+
+"Oh, it doesn't matter in the slightest degree where I stay. I only
+mentioned it because I promised her I would speak to you about it." There
+was more than languor in her tone.
+
+"They're going to start the fireworks pretty quick," Kent mentally
+diagnosed the situation and rose hurriedly. "Well, I've got to hunt a
+horse, myself, and pull out for the Wishbone," he explained gratuitously.
+"Ought to've gone last night. Good-bye." He closed the door behind him and
+shrugged his shoulders. "Now they can fight it out," he told himself. "Glad
+_I_ ain't a married man!"
+
+However, they did not fight it out then. Kent had no more than reached the
+office when Val rose, hoped that Manley would please excuse her, and left
+the room also. Manley heard her go up-stairs, found out from Arline what
+was the number of Val's room, and followed her. The door was locked, but
+when he rapped upon it Val opened it an inch and held it so.
+
+"Val, let me in. I want to talk with you. I--God knows how sorry I am--"
+
+"If He does, that ought to be sufficient," she answered coldly. "I don't
+feel like talking now--especially upon the subject you would choose. You're
+a man, supposedly. You must know what it is your duty to do. Please let us
+not discuss it--now or ever.
+
+"But, Val--"
+
+"I don't want to talk about it, I tell you! I won't--I _can't_. You must do
+without the conventional confession and absolution. You must have some sort
+of conscience--let that receive your penitence." She started to close the
+door, but he caught it with his hand.
+
+"Val--do you hate me?"
+
+She looked at him for a moment, as if she were trying to decide. "No," she
+said at last, "I don't think I do; I'm quite sure that I do not. But I'm
+terribly hurt and disappointed." She closed the door then and turned the
+key.
+
+Manley stood for a moment rather blankly before it, then put his hands as
+deep in his pockets as they would go, and went slowly down the stairs. At
+that moment he did not feel particularly penitent. She would not listen to
+"the conventional confession!"
+
+"That girl can be hard as nails!" he muttered, under his breath.
+
+He went into the office, got a cigar, and lighted it moodily. He glanced at
+the bottles ranged upon the shelves behind the bar, drew in his breath for
+speech, let it go in a sigh, and walked out. He knew perfectly well what
+Val had meant. She had deliberately thrown him back upon his own strength.
+He had fallen by himself, he must pick himself up; and she would stand
+back and watch the struggle, and judge him according to his failure or his
+success. He had a dim sense that it was a dangerous experiment.
+
+He looked for Kent, found him just as he was mounting at the stables, and
+let him go almost without a word. After all, no one could help him. He
+stood there smoking after Kent had gone, and when his cigar was finished he
+wandered back to the hotel. As was always the case after hard drinking, he
+had a splitting headache. He got a room as close to Val's as he could,
+shut himself into it, and gave himself up to his headache and to gloomy
+meditation. All day he lay upon the bed, and part of the time he slept. At
+supper time he rapped upon Val's door, got no answer, and went down alone,
+to find her in the dining room. There was an empty chair beside her, and he
+took it as his right. She talked a little--about the fire and the damage it
+had done. She said she was worried because she had forgotten to bring the
+cat, and what would it find to eat out there?
+
+"Everything's burned perfectly black for miles and miles, you know," she
+reminded him.
+
+They left the room together, and he followed her upstairs and to her door.
+This time she did not shut him out, and he went in and sat down by the
+window, and looked out upon the meager little street. Never, in the years
+he had known her, had she been so far from him. He watched her covertly
+while she searched for something in her suit case.
+
+"I'm afraid I didn't bring enough clothes to last more than a day or two,"
+she remarked. "I couldn't seem to think of anything that night. Arline did
+most of the packing for me. I'm afraid I misjudged that woman, Manley;
+there's a good deal to her, after all. But she _is_ funny."
+
+"Val, I want to tell you I'm going to--to be different. I've been a beast,
+but I'm going to--" So much he had rushed out before she could freeze him
+to silence again.
+
+"I hope so," she cut in, as he hesitated, "That is something you must judge
+for yourself, and do by yourself. Do you think you will be able to get a
+team tomorrow?"
+
+"Oh--to hell with a team!" Manley exploded.
+
+Val dropped her hairbrush upon the floor. "Manley Fleetwood! Has it come
+to that, also? Isn't it enough to--" She choked. "Manley, you can be a--a
+drunken sot, if you choose--I've no power to prevent you; but you shall
+not swear in my presence. I thought you had some of the instincts of a
+gentleman, but--" She set her teeth hard together. She was white around the
+mouth, and her whole, slim body was aquiver with outraged dignity.
+
+There was something queer in Manley's eyes as he looked at her, the length
+of the tiny room between them.
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon. I remember, now, your Fern Hill ethics. I may _go_
+to hell, for all of you--you will simply hold back your immaculate, moral
+skirts so that I may pass without smirching them; but I must not mention my
+destination--that is so unrefined!" He got up from the chair, with a laugh
+that was almost a snort. "You refuse to discuss a certain subject, though
+it's almost a matter of life and death with me; at least, it was. Your
+happiness and my own was at stake, I thought. But it's all right--I needn't
+have worried about it. I still have some of the instincts of a gentleman,
+and your pure ears shall not be offended by any profanity or any
+disagreeable 'conventional confessions.' The absolution, let me say, I
+expected to do without." He started, full of some secret intent, for the
+door.
+
+Val humanized suddenly. By the time his fingers touched the door knob she
+had read his purpose, had readied his side, and was clutching his arm with
+both her hands.
+
+"Manley Fleetwood, what are you going to do?" She was actually panting with
+the jump of her heart.
+
+He turned the knob, so that the latch clicked. "Get drunk. Be the drunken
+sot you expect me to be. Go to that vulgar place which I must not mention
+in your presence. Let go my arm, Val."
+
+She was all woman, then. She pulled him away from the door and the unnamed
+horror which lay outside. She was not the crying sort, but she cried, just
+the same--heartbrokenly, her head against his shoulder, as if she herself
+were the sinner. She clung to him, she begged him to forgive her hardness.
+
+She learned something which every woman must learn if she would keep a
+little happiness in her life: she learned how to forgive the man she loved,
+and to trust him afterward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. ARLINE GIVES A DANCE
+
+A house, it would seem, is almost the least important part of a ranch;
+one can camp, with frying pan and blankets, in the shade of a bush or the
+shelter of canvas. But to do anything upon a ranch, one must have many
+things--burnable things, for the most part, as Manley was to learn by
+experience when he left Val at the hotel and rode out, the next day, to
+Cold Spring Coulee.
+
+To ride over twenty miles of blackness is depressing enough in itself,
+but to find, at the end of the journey, that one's work has all gone
+for nothing, and one's money and one's plans and hopes, is worse than
+depressing. Manley sat upon his horse and gazed rather blankly at the heap
+of black cinders that had been his haystacks, and at the cold embers where
+had stood his stables, and at the warped bits of iron that had been his
+buckboard, his wagon, his rake and mower--all the things he had gathered
+around him in the three years he had spent upon the place.
+
+The house merely emphasized his loss. He got down, picked up the cat, which
+was mewing plaintively beside his horse, snuggled it into his arm, and
+remounted. Val had told him to be sure and find the cat, and bring it back
+with him. His horses and his cattle--not many, to be sure, in that land of
+large holdings--were scattered, and it would take the round-up to gather
+them together again. So the cat, and the horse he rode, the bleak coulee,
+and the unattractive little house with its three rooms and its meager
+porch, were all that he could visualize as his worldly possessions. And
+when he thought of his bank account he winced mentally. Before snow fell he
+would be debt-ridden, the best he could do. For he must have a stable, and
+corral, and hay, and a wagon, and--he refused to remind himself of all the
+things he must have if he would stay on the ranch.
+
+His was not a strong nature at best, and now he shrank from facing his
+misfortune and wanted only to get away from the place. He loped his horse
+half-way up the hill, which was not merciful riding. The half-starved cat
+yowled in his arms, and struck her claws through his coat till he felt the
+prick of them, and he swore; at the cat, nominally, but really at the trick
+fate had played upon him.
+
+For a week he dallied in town, without heart or courage though Val urged
+him to buy lumber and build, and cheered him as best she could. He did make
+a half-hearted attempt to get lumber to the place, but there seemed to be
+no team in town which he could hire. Every one was busy, and put him off.
+He tried to buy hay of Blumenthall, of the Wishbone, of every man he met
+who had hay. No one had any hay to sell, however. Blumenthall complained
+that he was short, himself, and would buy if he could, rather than sell.
+The Wishbone foreman declared profanely--that hay was going to be worth a
+dollar a pound to _them_, before spring. They were all sorry for Manley,
+and told him he was "sure playing tough luck," but they couldn't sell any
+hay, that was certain.
+
+"But we must manage somehow to fix the place so we can live on it this
+winter," Val would insist, when he told her how every move seemed blocked.
+"You're very brave, dear, and I'm proud of the way you are holding out--but
+Hope is not a good place for you. It would be foolish to stay in town.
+Can't you buy enough hay here in town--baled hay from the store--to keep
+our horses through the winter?"
+
+"Well, I tried," Manley responded gloomily. "But Brinberg is nearly out.
+He's expecting a carload in, but it hasn't come yet. He said he'd let me
+know when it gets here."
+
+Meanwhile the days slipped away, and imperceptibly the heat and haze of the
+fires gave place to bright sunlight and chill winds, and then to the chill
+winds without the sunshine. One morning the ground was frozen hard, and all
+the roofs gleamed white with the heavy frost. Arline bestirred herself, and
+had a heating stove set up in the parlor, and Val went down to the dry heat
+and the peculiar odor of a rusted stove in the flush of its first fire
+since spring.
+
+The next day, as she sat by her window up-stairs, she looked out at the
+first nip of winter. A few great snowflakes drifted down from the slaty
+sky; a puff of wind sent them dancing down the street, shook more down,
+and whirled them giddily. Then the storm came and swept through the little
+street and whined lonesomely around the hotel.
+
+Over at the saloon--"Pop's Place," it proclaimed itself in washed-out
+lettering--three tied horses circled uneasily until they were standing back
+to the storm, their bodies hunched together with the chill of it, their
+tails whipping between their legs. They accentuated the blank dreariness of
+the empty street. The snow was whitening their rumps and clinging, in tiny
+drifts, upon the saddle skirts behind the cantles.
+
+All the little hollows of the rough, frozen ground were filling slowly,
+making white patches against the brown of the earth--patches which widened
+and widened until they met, and the whole street was blanketed with fresh,
+untrodden snow. Val shivered suddenly, and hurried down-stairs where the
+air was warm and all a-steam with cooking, and the odor of frying onions
+smote the nostrils like a blow in the face.
+
+"I suppose we must stay here, now, till the storm is over," she sighed,
+when she met Manley at dinner. "But as soon as it clears we must go back to
+the ranch. I simply cannot endure another week of it."
+
+"You're gitting uneasy--I seen that, two or three days ago," said Arline,
+who had come into the dining room with a tray of meat and vegetables, and
+overheard her. "You want to stay, now, till after the dance. There's going
+to be a dance Friday night, you know--everybody's coming. You got to wait
+for that."
+
+"I don't attend public dances," Val stated calmly. "I am going home as soon
+as the storm clears--if Manley can buy a little hay, and find our horses,
+and get some sort of a driving vehicle."
+
+"Well, if he can't, maybe he can round up a _ridin'_ vee-hicle," Arline
+remarked dryly, placing the meat before Manley, the potatoes before Val,
+and the gravy exactly between the two, with mathematical precision. "I'm
+givin' that dance myself. You'll have to go--I'm givin' it in your honor."
+
+"In--my--why, the _idea!_ It's good of you, but--"
+
+"And you're goin', and you're goin' to take your vi'lin over and play us
+some pieces. I tucked it into the rig and brought it in, on purpose. I
+planned out the hull thing, driving out to your place. In case you wasn't
+all burned up, I made up my mind I was going to give you a dance, and git
+you acquainted with folks. You needn't to hang back--I've told everybody it
+was in your honor, and that you played the vi'lin swell, and we'd have
+some real music. And I've sent to Chinook for the dance music--harp, two
+fiddles, and a coronet--and you ain't going to stall the hull thing now. I
+didn't mean to tell you till the last minute, but you've got to have time
+to mate up your mind you'll go to a public dance for oncet in your life.
+It ain't going to hurt you none. I've went, ever sence I was big enough to
+reach up and grab holt of my pardner--and I'm every bit as virtuous as you
+be. You're going, and you'n Man are going to head the grand march."
+
+Val's face was flushed, her lips pursed, and her eyes wide. Plainly she was
+not quite sure whether she was angry, amused, or insulted. She descended
+straight to a purely feminine objection.
+
+"But I haven't a thing to wear, and--"
+
+"Oh, yes, you have. While you was dillydallying out in the front room, that
+night, wondering whether you'd have hysterics, or faint, or what all, I
+dug deep in that biggest trunk of yourn, and fished up one of your party
+dresses--white satin, it is, with embroid'ry all up 'n' down the front, and
+slimpsy lace; it's kinda low-'n'-behold--one of them--"
+
+"My white satin--why, Mrs. Hawley! That--you must have brought the gown I
+wore to my farewell club reception. It has a train, and--why, the _idea!_"
+
+"You can cut off the trail--you got plenty of time--or you can pin it up.
+I didn't have time that night to see how the thing was made, and I took it
+because I found white skirts and stockin's, and white satin slippers to go
+with it, right handy. You're a bride, and white'll be suitable, and the
+dance is in your honor. Wear it just as it is, fer all me. Show the folks
+what real clothes look like. I never seen a woman dressed up that way in
+my hull life. You wear it, Val, trail 'n' all. I'll back you up in it, and
+tell folks it's my idee, and not yourn."
+
+"I'm not in the habit of apologizing to people for the clothes I wear." Val
+lifted her chin haughtily. "I am not at all sure that I shall go. In fact,
+I--"
+
+"Oh, you'll go!" Arline rested her arms upon her bony hips and snapped her
+meager jaws together. "You'll go, if I have to carry you over. I've sent
+for fifteen yards of buntin' to decorate the hall with. I ain't going to
+all that trouble for nothing. I ain't giving a dance in honor of a certain
+person, and then let that person stay away. You--why, you'd queer yourself
+with the hull country, Val Fleetwood! You ain't got the least sign of an
+excuse You got the clothes, and you ain't sick. There's a reason why you
+got to show up. I ain't going into no details at present, but under the
+circumstances, it's _advisable_." She smelled something burning then, and
+bolted for the kitchen, where her sharp, rather nasal voice was heard
+upbraiding Minnie for some neglect.
+
+Polycarp Jenks came in, eyed Val and Manley from under one lifted, eyebrow,
+smiled skinnily, and pulled out a chair with a rasping noise, and sat down
+facing them. Instinctively Val refrained from speaking her mind about
+Arline and her dance before Polycarp, but afterward, in their own room,
+she grew rather eloquent upon the subject. She would not go. She would not
+permit that woman to browbeat her into doing what she did not want to do,
+she said. In her honor, indeed! The impertinence of going to the bottom of
+her trunk, and meddling with her clothes--with that reception gown, of all
+others! The idea of wearing that gown to a frontier dance--even if she
+consented to go to such a dance! And expecting her to amuse the company by
+playing "pieces" on the violin!
+
+"Well, why not?" Manley was sitting rather apathetically upon the edge of
+the bed, his arms resting upon his knees, his eyes moodily studying the
+intricate rose pattern in the faded Brussels carpet. They were the first
+words he had spoken; one might easily have doubted whether he had heard all
+Val said.
+
+"Why not? Manley Fleetwood, do you mean to tell me--"
+
+"Why not go, and get acquainted, and quit feeling that you're a pearl cast
+among swine? It strikes me the Hawley person is pretty level-headed on the
+subject. If you're going to live in this country, why not quit thinking
+how out of place you are, and how superior, and meet us all on a level? It
+won't hurt you to go to that dance, and it won't hurt you to play for them,
+if they want you to. You _can_ play, you know; you used to play at all the
+musical doings in Fern Hill, and even in the city sometimes. And, let me
+tell you, Val, we aren't quite savages, out here. I've even suspected,
+sometimes, that we're just as good as Fern Hill."
+
+"We?" Val looked at him steadily. "So you wish to identify yourself with
+these people--with Polycarp Jenks, and Arline Hawley, and--"
+
+"Why not? They're shaky on grammar, and their manners could stand a little
+polish, but aside from that they're exactly like the people you've lived
+among all your life. Sure, I wish to identify myself with them. I'm just a
+rancher--pretty small punkins, too, among all these big outfits, and you're
+a rancher's wife. The Hawley person could buy us out for cash to-morrow, if
+she wanted to, and never miss the money. And, Val, she's giving that dance
+in your honor; you ought to appreciate that. The Hawley doesn't take a
+fancy to every woman she sees--and, let me tell you, she stands ace-high in
+this country. If she didn't like you, she could make you wish she did."
+
+"Well, upon my word! I begin to suspect you of being a humorist, Manley.
+And even if you mean that seriously--why, it's all the funnier." To prove
+it, she laughed.
+
+Manley hesitated, then left the room with a snort, a scowl, and a slam of
+the door; and the sound of Val's laughter followed him down the stairs.
+
+Arline came up, her arms full of white satin, white lace, white cambric,
+and the toes of two white satin slippers showing just above the top of her
+apron pockets. She walked briskly in and deposited her burden upon the bed.
+
+"My! them's the nicest smellin' things I ever had a hold of," she observed.
+"And still they don't seem to smell, either. Must be a dandy perfumery
+you've got. I brought up the things, seein' you know they're here. I
+thought you could take your time about cuttin' off the trail and fillin' in
+the neck and sleeves."
+
+She sat down upon the foot of the bed, carefully tucking her gingham apron
+close about her so that it might not come in contact with the other.
+
+"I never did see such clothes," she sighed. "I dunno how you'll ever git
+a chancet to wear 'em out in this country--seems to me they're most too
+pretty to wear, anyhow, I can git Marthy Winters to come over and help
+you--she does sewin'--and you can use my machine any time you want to. I'd
+take a hold myself if I didn't have all the baking to do for the dance.
+That Min can't learn nothing, seems like. I can't trust her to do a thing,
+hardly, unless I stand right over her. Breed girls ain't much account ever;
+but they're all that'll work out, in this country, seems like. Sometimes I
+swear I'll git a Chink and be done with it--only I got to have somebody I
+can talk to oncet in a while. I couldn't never talk to a Chink--they don't
+seem hardly human to me. Do they to you?
+
+"And say! I've got some allover lace--it's eecrue--that you can fill in the
+neck with; you're welcome to use it--there's most a yard of it, and I won't
+never find a use for it. Or I was thinkin', there'll be enough cut off'n
+the trail to make a gamp of the satin, sleeves and all." She lifted the
+shining stuff with manifest awe. "It does seem a shame to put the shears
+to it--but you never'll git any wear out of it the way it is, and I don't
+believe--"
+
+"Mis' _Hawley!_" shrilled the voice of Minnie at the foot of the stairs.
+"There's a couple of _drummers_ off'n the _train_, 'n' they want _supper_,
+'n' what'll I _give_ 'em?"
+
+"My heavens! That girl'll drive me crazy, sure!" Arline hurried to the
+door. "Don't take the roof off'n the house," she cried querulously down the
+stairway. "I'm comin'."
+
+Val had not spoken a word. She went over to the bed, lifted a fold of
+satin, and smiled down at it ironically. "Mamma and I spent a whole month
+planning and sewing and gloating over you," she said aloud. "You were
+almost as important as a wedding gown; the club's farewell reception--'To
+what base uses we do--'"
+
+"Oh, here's your slippers!" Arline thrust half her body into the room and
+held the slippers out to Val. "I stuck 'em into my pockets to bring up, and
+forgot all about 'em, mind you, till I was handin' the drummers their tea.
+And one of 'em happened to notice 'em, and raised right up outa his chair,
+an' said: 'Cind'rilla, sure as I live! Say, if there's a foot in this town
+that'll go into them slippers, for God's sake introduce me to the owner!'
+I told him to mind his own business. Drummers do get awful fresh when they
+think they can get away with it." She departed in a hurry, as usual.
+
+Every day after that Arline talked about altering the satin gown. Every day
+Val was noncommittal and unenthusiastic. Occasionally she told Arline that
+she was not going to the dance, but Arline declined to take seriously so
+preposterous a declaration.
+
+"You want to break a leg, then," she told Val grimly on Thursday. "That's
+the only excuse that'll go down with this bunch. And you better git a move
+on--it comes off to-morrer night, remember."
+
+"I won't go, Manley!" Val consoled herself by declaring, again and again.
+"The idea of Arline Hawley ordering me about like a child! Why should I go
+if I don't care to go?"
+
+"Search me." Manley shrugged his shoulders. "It isn't so long, though,
+since you were just as determined to stay and have the shivaree, you
+remember."
+
+"Well, you and Mr. Burnett tried to do exactly what Arline is doing. You
+seemed to think I was a child, to be ordered about."
+
+At the very last minute--to be explicit, an hour before the hall was
+lighted, several hours after smoke first began to rise from the chimney,
+Val suddenly swerved to a reckless mood. Arline had gone to her own room to
+dress, too angry to speak what was in her mind. She had worked since five
+o'clock that morning. She had bullied Val, she had argued, she had begged,
+she had wheedled. Val would not go. Arline had appealed to Manley, and
+Manley had assured her, with a suspicious slurring of his _esses_ that he
+was out of it, and had nothing to say. Val, he said, could not be driven.
+
+It was after Arline had gone to her room and Manley had returned to the
+"office" that Val suddenly picked up her hairbrush and, with an impish
+light in her eyes, began to pile her hair high upon her head. With her lips
+curved to match the mockery of her eyes, she began hurriedly to dress.
+Later, she went down to the parlor, where four women from the neighboring
+ranches were sitting stiffly and in constrained silence, waiting to be
+escorted to the hall. She swept in upon them, a glorious, shimmery creature
+all in white and gold. The women steed, wavered, and looked away--at the
+wall, the floor, at anything but Val's bare, white shoulders and arms as
+white. Arline had forgotten to look for gloves.
+
+Val read the consternation in their weather-tanned faces, and smiled in
+wicked enjoyment. She would shock all of Hope; she would shock even Arline,
+who had insisted upon this. Like a child in mischief, she turned and went
+rustling down the ball to the dining room. She wanted to show Arline. She
+had not thought of the possibility of finding any one but Arline and Minnie
+there, so that she was taken slightly aback when she discovered Kent and
+another man eating a belated supper.
+
+Kent looked up, eyed her sharply for just an instant, and smiled.
+
+"Good evening, Mrs. Fleetwood," he said calmly. "Ready for the ball, I see.
+We got in late." He went on spreading butter upon his bread, evidently
+quite unimpressed by her magnificence.
+
+The other man stared fixedly at his plate. It was a trifle, but Val
+suddenly felt foolish and ashamed. She took a step or two toward the
+kitchen, then retreated; down the hall she went, up the stairs and into her
+own room, the door of which she shut and locked.
+
+"Such a fool!" she whispered vehemently, and stamped her white-shod foot
+upon the carpet. "He looked perfectly disgusted--and so did that other man.
+And no wonder. Such--it's _vulgar_, Val Fleetwood! It's just ill-bred, and
+coarse, and horrid!" She threw herself upon the bed and put her face in the
+pillow.
+
+Some one--she thought it sounded like Manley--came up and tried the door,
+stood a moment before it, and went away again. Arline's voice, sharpened
+with displeasure, she heard speaking to Minnie upon the stairs. They went
+down, and there was a confusion of voices below. In the street beneath her
+window footsteps sounded intermittently, coming and going with a certain
+eagerness of tread. After a time there came, from a distance, the sound of
+violins and the "coronet" of which Arline had been so proud; and mingled
+with it was an undercurrent of shuffling feet, a mere whisper of sound, cut
+sharply now and then by the sharp commands of the floor manager. They were
+dancing--in her honor. And she was a fool; a proud, ill-tempered, selfish
+fool..
+
+With one of her quick changes of mood she rose, patted her hair smooth,
+caught up a wrap oddly inharmonious with the gown and slippers, looped
+her train over her arm, tool her violin, and ran lightly down-stairs. The
+parlor, the dining room, the kitchen were deserted and the lights turned
+low. She braced herself mentally, and, flushing at the unaccustomed act,
+rapped timidly upon the door which opened into the office--which by that
+time she knew was really a saloon. Hawley himself opened the door, and in
+his eyes bulged at sight of her.
+
+"Is Mr. Fleetwood here? I--I thought, after all, I'd go to the dance," she
+said, in rather a timid voice, shrinking back into the shadow.
+
+"Fleetwood? Why, I guess he's gone on over. He said you wasn't going. You
+wait a minute. I--here, Kent! You take Mrs. Fleetwood over to the hall.
+Man's gone."
+
+"Oh, no! I--really, it doesn't matter--"
+
+But Kent had already thrown away his cigarette and come out to her, closing
+the door immediately after him.
+
+"I'll take you over--I was just going, anyway," He assured her, his eyes
+dwelling upon her rather intently.
+
+"Oh--I wanted Manley. I--I hate to go--like this, it seems so--so queer, in
+this place. At first I--I thought it would be a joke, but it isn't; it's
+silly and,--and ill-bred. You--everybody will be shocked, and--"
+
+Kent took a step toward her, where she was shrinking against the stairway.
+Once before she had lost her calm composure and had let him peep into her
+mind. Then it had been on account of Manley; now, womanlike, it was her
+clothes.
+
+"You couldn't be anything but all right, if you tried," he told her,
+speaking softly. "It isn't silly to look the way the Lord meant you to
+look. You--you--oh, you needn't worry--nobody's going to be shocked very
+hard." He reached out and took the violin from her; took also her arm
+and opened the outer door. "You're late," he said, speaking in a more
+commonplace tone. "You ought to have overshoes, or something--those white
+slippers won't be so white time you get there. Maybe I ought to carry you."
+
+"The idea!" she stepped out daintily upon the slushy walk.
+
+"Well, I can take you a block or two around, and have sidewalk all the way;
+that'll help some. Women sure are a lot of bother--I'm plumb sorry for the
+poor devils that get inveigled into marrying one."
+
+"Why, Mr. Burnett! Do you always talk like that? Because if you do, I don't
+wonder--"
+
+"No," Kent interrupted, looking down at her and smiling grimly, "as it
+happens, I don't. I'm real nice, generally speaking. Say! this is going to
+be a good deal of trouble, do you know? After you dance with hubby, you've
+got to waltz with me."
+
+"_Got_ to?" Val raised her eyebrows, though the expression was lost upon
+him.
+
+"Sure. Look at the way I worked like a horse, saving your life--and the
+cat's--and now leading you all over town to keep those nice white slippers
+clean! By rights, you oughtn't to dance with anybody else. But I ain't
+looking for real gratitude. Four or five waltzes is all I'll insist on,
+but--" His tone was lugubrious in the extreme.
+
+"Well, I'll waltz with you once--for saving the cat; and once for saving
+the slippers. For saving me, I'm not sure that I thank you." Val stepped
+carefully over a muddy spot on the walk. "Mr. Burnett, you--really, you're
+an awfully queer man."
+
+Kent walked to the next crossing and helped her over it before he answered
+her. "Yes," he admitted soberly then, "I reckon you're right. I am--queer."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. A WEDDING PRESENT
+
+Sunday it was, and Val had insisted stubbornly upon going back to the
+ranch; somewhat to her surprise, if one might judge by her face, Arline
+Hawley no longer demurred, but put up lunch enough for a week almost, and
+announced that she was going along. Hank would have to drive out, to bring
+back the team, and she said she needed a rest, after all the work and worry
+of that dance. Manley, upon whose account it was that Val was so anxious,
+seemed to have nothing whatever to say about it. He was sullenly
+acquiescent--as was perhaps to be expected of a man who had slipped into
+his old habits and despised himself for doing so, and almost hated his wife
+because she had discovered it and said nothing. Val was thankful, during
+that long, bleak ride over the prairie, for Arline's incessant chatter. It
+was better than silence, when the silence means bitter thoughts.
+
+"Now," said Arline, moving excitedly in her seat when they neared Cold
+Spring Coulee, "maybe I better tell you that the folks round here has kinda
+planned a little su'prise for you. They don't make much of a showin' about
+bein' neighborly--not when things go smooth--but they're right there when
+trouble comes. It's jest a little weddin' present--and if it comes kinda
+late in the day, why, you don't want to mind that. My dance that I gave was
+a weddin' party, too, if you care to call it that. Anyway, it was to raise
+the money to pay for our present, as far as it went--and I want to tell you
+right now, Val, that you was sure the queen of the ball; everybody said you
+looked jest like a queen in a picture, and I never heard a word ag'inst
+your low-neck dress. It looked all right on _you_, don't you see? On me,
+for instance, it woulda been something fierce. And I'm real glad you took a
+hold and danced like you did, and never passed nobody up, like some woulda
+done. You'll be glad you did, now you know what it was for. Even danced
+with Polycarp Jenks--and there ain't hardly any woman but what'll turn
+_him_ down; I'll bet he tromped all over your toes, didn't he?"
+
+"Sometimes," Val admitted. "What about the surprise you were speaking of,
+Mrs. Hawley?"
+
+"It does seem as if you might call me Arline," she complained irrelevantly.
+"We're comin' to that--don't you worry."
+
+"Is it--a piano?"
+
+"My lands, no! You don't need a fiddle and a piano both, do you? Man,
+what'd you rather have for a weddin' present?"
+
+Manley, upon the front seat beside Hank, gave his shoulders an impatient
+twitch. "Fifty thousand dollars," he replied glumly.
+
+"I'm glad you're real modest about it," Arline retorted sharply. She was
+beginning to tell herself quite frequently that she "didn't have no time
+for Man Fleetwood, seeing he wouldn't brace up and quit drinkin."
+
+Val's lips curled as she looked at Manley's back. "What I should like," she
+said distinctly, "is a great, big pile of wood, all cut and ready for the
+stove, and water pails that never would go empty. It's astonishing how
+one's desires eventually narrow down to bare essentials, isn't it? But as
+we near the place, I find those two things more desirable than a piano!"
+Then she bit her lip angrily because she had permitted herself to give the
+thrust.
+
+"Why, you poor thing! Man Fleetwood, do you--"
+
+Val impulsively caught her by the arm. "Oh, hush! I was only joking," she
+said hastily. "I was trying to balance Manley's wish for fifty thousand
+dollars, don't you see? It was stupid of me, I know." She laughed
+unconvincingly. "Let me guess what the surprise is. First, is it large or
+small?"
+
+"Kinda big," tittered Arline, falling into the spirit of the joke.
+
+"Bigger than a--wait, now. A sewing machine?"
+
+Arline covered her mouth with her hand and nodded dumbly.
+
+"You say all the neighbors gave it and the dance helped pay for it--let me
+see. Could it possibly be--what in the world could it be? Manley, help me
+guess! Is it something useful, or just something nice?"
+
+"Useful," said Arline, and snapped her jaws together as if she feared to
+let another word loose.
+
+"Larger than a sewing machine, and useful." Val puckered her brows over the
+puzzle. "And all the neighbors gave it. Do you know, I've been thinking all
+sorts of nasty things about our poor neighbors, because they refused to
+sell Manley any hay. And all the while they were planning this sur--" She
+never finished that sentence, or the word, even.
+
+With a jolt over a rock, and a sharp turn to the right, Hank had brought
+them to the very brow of the hill, where they could look down into the
+coulee, and upon the house standing in its tiny, unkempt yard, just beyond
+the sparse growth of bushes which marked the spring creek. Involuntarily
+every head turned that way, and every pair of eyes looked downward. Hank
+chirped to the horses, threw all his weight upon the brake, and they
+rattled down the grade, the brake block squealing against the rear wheels.
+They were half-way down before any one spoke. It was Val, and she almost
+whispered one word:
+
+"Manley!"
+
+Arline's eyes were wet, and there was a croak in her voice when she cried
+jubilantly: "Well, ain't that better 'n a sewin' machine--or a piano?"
+
+But Val did not attempt an answer. She was staring--staring as if she could
+not convince herself of the reality. Even Manley was jarred out of his
+gloomy meditations, and half rose in the seat that he might see over Hank's
+shoulder.
+
+"That's what your neighbors have done," Arline began eagerly, "and they
+nearly busted tryin' to git through in time, and to keep it a dead secret.
+They worked like whiteheads, lemme tell you, and never even stopped for the
+storm. The night of the dance I heard all about how they had to hurry. And
+I guess Kent's there an' got a fire started, like I told him to. I was
+afraid it might be colder'n what it is. I asked him if he wouldn't ride
+over an' warm up the house t'day--and I see there's a smoke, all right."
+She looked at Manley, and then turned to Val. "Well, ain't you goin' to say
+anything? You dumb, both of you?"
+
+Val took a deep breath. "We should be dumb," she said contritely. "We
+should go down on our knees and beg their pardon and yours--I especially. I
+think I've never in my life felt quite so humbled--so overwhelmed with the
+goodness of my fellows, and my own unworthiness. I--I can't put it into
+words--all the resentment I have felt against the country and the people in
+it--as if--oh, tell them all how I want them to forgive me for--for the way
+I have felt. And--_Arline_--"
+
+"There, now--I didn't bargain for you to make it so serious," Arline
+expostulated, herself near to crying. "It ain't nothing much--us folks
+believe in helpin' when help's needed, that's all. For Heaven's sake, don't
+go 'n' cry about it!"
+
+Hank pulled up at the gate with a loud _whoa_ and a grip of the brake. From
+the kitchen stovepipe a blue ribbon of smoke waved high in the clear air.
+Kent appeared, grinning amiably, in the doorway, but Val was looking
+beyond, and scarcely saw him--beyond, where stood a new stable upon the
+ashes of the old; a new corral, the posts standing solidly in the holes dug
+for those burned away; a new haystack--when hay was almost priceless! A
+few chickens wandered about near the stable, and Val recognized them as
+Arline's prized Plymouth Rocks. Small wonder that she and Manley were
+stunned to silence. Manley still looked as if some one had dealt him an
+unexpected blow in the face. Val was white and wide-eyed.
+
+Together they walked out to the stable. When they stopped, she put her hand
+timidly upon his aim. "Dear," she said softly, "there is only one way to
+thank them for this, and that is to be the very best it is in us to be. We
+will, won't we? We--we haven't been our best, but we'll start in right now.
+Shall we, Manley?"
+
+Manley looked down at her for a moment, saying nothing.
+
+"Shall we, Manley? Let us start now, and try again. Let's play the fire
+burned up our old selves, and we're all new, and strong--shall we? And we
+won't feel any resentment for what is past, but we'll work together, and
+think together, and talk together, without any hidden thing we can't
+discuss freely. Please, Manley!"
+
+He knew what she meant, well enough. For the last two days he had been
+drinking again. On the night of the dance he had barely kept within the
+limit of decent behavior. He had read Val's complete understanding and her
+disgust the morning after--and since then they had barely spoken except
+when speech was necessary. Oh, he knew what she meant! He stood for another
+minute, and she let go his arm and stood apart, watching his face.
+
+A good deal depended upon the next minute, and they both knew it, and
+hardly breathed. His hand went slowly into a deep pocket of his overcoat,
+his fingers closed over something, and drew it reluctantly to the light.
+Shamefaced, he held it up for her to see--a flat bottle of generous size,
+full to within a inch of the cork with a pale, yellow liquid.
+
+"There--take it, and break it into a million pieces," he said huskily.
+"I'll try again."
+
+Her yellow-brown eyes darkened perceptibly. "Manley Fleetwood, _you_ must
+throw it away. This is your fight--be a man and _fight_."
+
+"Well--there! May God damn me forever if I touch liquor again! I'm through
+with the stuff for keeps!" He held the bottle high, without looking at it,
+and sent it crashing against the stable door.
+
+"Manley!" She stopped her ears, aghast at his words, but for all that her
+eyes were ashine. She went up to him and put her arms around him. "Now
+we can start all over again," she said. "We'll count our lives from this
+minute, dear, and we'll keep them clean and happy. Oh, I'm so glad! So glad
+and so proud, dear!"
+
+Kent had got half-way down the path from the house; he stopped when Manley
+threw the bottle, and waited. Now he turned abruptly and retraced his
+steps, and he did not look particularly happy, though he had been smiling
+when he left the kitchen.
+
+Arline turned from the window as he entered.
+
+"Looks like Man has swore off ag'in," she observed dryly. "Well, let's hope
+'n' pray he stays swore off."
+
+
+
+
+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!_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. MANLEY'S NEW TACTICS
+
+To the east, to the south, to the north went the riders of the Wishbone,
+gathering the cattle which the fires had driven afar. No rivers stopped
+them, nor mountains, nor the deep-scarred coulees, nor the plains. It was
+Manley's first experience in real round-up work, for his own little herd he
+had managed to keep close at home, and what few strayed afar were turned
+back, when opportunity afforded, by his neighbors, who wished him well. Now
+he tasted the pride of ownership to the full, when a VP cow and her calf
+mingled with the milling Wishbones and Double Diamonds. He was proud of his
+brand, and proud of the sentiment which had made him choose Val's initials.
+More than once he explained to his fellows that VP meant Val Peyson, and
+that he had got it recorded just after he and Val were engaged. He was not
+sentimental about her now, but he liked to dwell upon the fact that he had
+been; it showed that he was capable of fine feeling.
+
+More dominant, however, as the weeks passed and the branding went on,
+became the desire to accumulate property--cattle. The Wishbone brand went
+scorching through the hair of hundreds of calves, while the VP scared tens.
+It was not right. He felt, somehow, cheated by fate. He mentally figured
+the increase of his herd, and it seemed to him that it took a long while,
+much longer than it should, to gain a respectable number in that manner. He
+cast about in his mind for some rich acquaintance in the East who might be
+prevailed upon to lend him capital enough to buy, say, five hundred cows.
+He began to talk about it occasionally when the boys lay around in the
+evenings.
+
+"You want to ride with a long rope," suggested Bob Royden, grinning openly
+at the others. "That's the way to work up in the cow business. Capital
+nothing! You don't get enough excitement buying cattle; you want to steal
+'em. That's what I'd do if I had a brand of my own and all your ambitions
+to get rich."
+
+"And get sent up," Manley rounded out the situation. "No, thanks." He
+laughed. "It's a better way to get to the pen than it is to get rich, from
+all accounts."
+
+Sandy Moran remembered a fellow who worked a brand and kept it up for seven
+or eight years before they caught him, and he recounted the tale between
+puffs at his cigarette. "Only they didn't catch him" he finished. "A
+puncher put him wise to what was in the wind, and he sold out cheap to a
+tenderfoot and pulled his freight. They never did locate him." Then, with a
+pointed rock which he picked up beside him, he drew a rude diagram or two
+in the dirt. "That's how he done it," he explained. "Pretty smooth, too."
+
+So the talk went on, as such things will, idly, without purpose save to
+pass the time. Shop talk of the range it was. Tales of stealing, of working
+brands, and of branding unmarked yearlings at weaning time. Of this big
+cattleman and that, who practically stole whole herds, and thereby took
+long strides toward wealth. Range scandals grown old; range gossip all of
+it, of men who had changed a brand or made one, using a cinch ring at a
+tiny fire in a secluded hollow, or a spur, or a jackknife; who were caught
+in the act, after the act, or merely suspected of the crime. Of "sweat"
+brands, blotched brands, brands added to and altered, of trials, of
+shootings, of hangings, even, and "getaways" spectacular and humorous and
+pathetic.
+
+Manley, being in a measure a pilgrim, and having no experience to draw
+upon, and not much imagination, took no part in the talk, except that he
+listened and was intensely interested. Two months of mingling with men who
+talked little else had its influence.
+
+That fall, when Manley had his hay up, and his cattle once more ranging
+close, toward the river and in the broken country bounded upon the west by
+the fenced-in railroad, three calves bore the VP brand--three husky heifers
+that never had suckled a VP mother. So had the range gossip, sown by chance
+in the soil of his greed of gain and his weakening moral fiber, borne
+fruit.
+
+The deed scared him sober for a month. For a month his color changed and
+his blood quickened whenever a horseman showed upon the rim of Cold Spring
+Coulee. For a month he never left the ranch unless business compelled him
+to do so, and his return was speedy, his eyes anxious until he knew that
+all was well. After that his confidence returned. He grew more secretive,
+more self-assured, more at ease with his guilt. He looked the Wishbone men
+squarely in the eye, and it seldom occurred to him that he was a thief; or
+if it did, the word was but a synonym for luck, with shrewdness behind.
+Sometimes he regretted his timidity. Why three calves only? In a deep
+little coulee next the river--a coulee which the round-up had missed--had
+been more than three. He might have doubled the number and risked no more
+than for the three. The longer he dwelt upon that the more inclined he was
+to feel that he had cheated himself.
+
+That fall there were no fires. It would be long before men grew careless
+when the grass was ripened and the winds blew hot and dry from out the
+west. The big prairie which lay high between the river and Hope was dotted
+with feeding cattle. Wishbones and Double Diamonds, mostly, with here and
+there a stray.
+
+Manley grew wily, and began to plan far in advance. He rode here and there,
+quietly keeping his own cattle well down toward the river. There was
+shelter there, and feed, and the idea was a good one. Just before the river
+broke up he saw to it that a few of his own cattle, and with them some
+Wishbone cows and a steer or two, were ranging in a deep, bushy coulee,
+isolated and easily passed by. He had driven them there, and he left them
+there. That spring he worked again with the Wishbone.
+
+When the round-up swept the home range, gathering and branding, it chanced
+that his part of the circle took him and Sandy Moran down that way. It was
+hot, and they had thirty or forty head of cattle before them when they
+neared that particular place.
+
+"No need going down into the breaks here," he told Sandy easily. "I've
+been hazing out everything I came across lately. They were mostly my own,
+anyway. I believe I've got it pretty well cleaned up along here."
+
+Sandy was not the man to hunt hard riding. He went to the rim of the coulee
+and looked down for a minute. He saw nothing moving, and took Manley's word
+for it with no stirring of his easy-going conscience. He said all right,
+and rode on.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. VAL BECOMES AN AUTHOR
+
+Quite as marked had been the change in Val that year. Every time Kent saw
+her, he recognized the fact that she was a little different; a little less
+superior in her attitude, a little more independent in her views of life.
+Her standards seemed slowly changing, and her way of thinking. He did not
+see her often, but when he did the mockery of their friendship struck him
+more keenly, his inward rebellion against circumstances grew more bitter.
+He wondered how she could be so blind as to think they were just pals, and
+no more. She did think so. All the little confidences, all the glances, all
+the smiles, she gave and received frankly, in the name of friendship.
+
+"You know, Kent, this is my ideal of how people should be," she told him
+once, with a perfectly honest enthusiasm. "I've always dreamed of such a
+friendship, and I've always believed that some day the right man would come
+along and make it possible. Not one in a thousand could understand and meet
+one half-way--"
+
+"They'd be liable to go farther," Kent assented dryly.
+
+"Yes. That's just the trouble. They'd spoil an ideal friendship by falling
+in love."
+
+"Darned chumps," Kent classed them sweepingly.
+
+"Exactly. Pal, your vocabulary excites my envy. It's so forcible
+sometimes."
+
+Kent grinned reminiscently. "It sure is, old girl."
+
+"Oh, I don't mean necessarily profane. I wonder what your vocabulary will
+do to the secret I'm going to tell you." The sweet-peas had reached the
+desired height and profusion of blossoms, thanks to the pails and pails
+of water Val had carried and lavished upon them, and she was gathering a
+handful of the prettiest blooms for him. Her cheeks turned a bit pinker as
+she spoke, and her hesitation raised a wild hope briefly in Kent's heart.
+
+"What is it?" He had to force the words out.
+
+"I--I hate to tell, but I want you to--to help me."
+
+"Well?" To Kent, at that moment, she was not Manley's wife; she was not any
+man's wife; she was the girl he loved--loved with the primitive, absorbing
+passion of the man who lives naturally and does not borrow his morals from
+his next-door neighbor. His code of ethics was his own, thought out by
+himself. Val hated her husband, and her husband did not seem to care much
+for her. They were tied together legally. And a mere legality could not
+hold back the emotions and the desires of Kent Burnett. With him, it was
+not a question of morals: it was a question of Val's feeling in the matter.
+
+Val looked up at him, found something strange in his eyes, and immediately
+looked away again.
+
+"Your eyes are always saying things I can't hear," she observed
+irrelevantly.
+
+"Are they? Do you want me to act as interpreter?"
+
+"No. I just want you to listen. Have you noticed anything different about
+me lately, Kent?" She tilted her head, while she passed judgment upon a
+cluster of speckled blossoms, odd but not particularly pretty.
+
+"What do you mean, anyway? I'm liable to get off wrong if I tell you--"
+
+"Oh, you're so horribly cautious! Have I seemed any more content--any
+happier lately?"
+
+Kent picked a spray of flowers and puled them ruthlessly to pieces. "Maybe
+I've kinda hoped so," he said, almost in a whisper.
+
+"Well, I've a new interest in life. I just discovered it by accident,
+almost--"
+
+Kent lifted his head and looked keenly at her, and his face was a lighter
+shade of brown than it had been.
+
+"It seems to change everything. Pal, I--I've been writing things."
+
+Kent discovered he had been holding his breath, and let it go in a long
+sigh.
+
+"Oh!" After a minute he smiled philosophically. "What kinda things?" he
+drawled.
+
+"Well, verses, but mostly stories. You see," she explained impulsively, "I
+want to earn some money--of my own. I haven't said much, because I hate
+whining; but really, things are growing pretty bad--between Manley and me.
+I hope it isn't my fault. I have tried every way I know to keep my faith in
+him, and to--to help him. But he's not the same as he was. You know that.
+And I have a good deal of pride. I can't--oh, it's intolerable having to
+ask a man for money! Especially when he doesn't want to give you any," she
+added naively. "At first it wasn't necessary; I had a little of my own, and
+all my things were new. But one must eventually buy things--for the
+house, you know, and for one's personal needs--and he seems to resent
+it dreadfully. I never would have believed that Manley could be
+stingy--actually stingy; but he is, unfortunately. I hate to speak of his
+faults, even to you. But I've got to be honest with you. It isn't nice to
+say that I'm writing, not for any particularly burning desire to express
+my thoughts, nor for the sentiment of it, but to earn money. It's terribly
+sordid, isn't it?" She smiled wistfully up at him. "But there seems to be
+money in it, for those who succeed, and it's work that I can do here. I
+have oceans of time, and I'm not disturbed!" Her lips curved into bitter
+lines. "I do so much thinking, I might as well put my brain to some use."
+With one of her sudden changes of mood, she turned to Kent and clasped both
+hands upon his arm.
+
+"Now you see, pal, how much our friendship means to me," she said softly.
+"I couldn't have told this to another living soul! It seems awfully
+treacherous, saying it even to you--I mean about him. But you're so
+good--you always understand, don't you, pal?"
+
+"I guess so." Kent forced the words out naturally, and kept his breath
+even, and his arms from clasping her. He considered that he performed quite
+a feat of endurance.
+
+"You're modest!" She gave his arm a little shake. "Of course you do. You
+know I'm not treacherous, really. You know I'd do anything I could for him.
+But this is something that doesn't concern him at all. He doesn't know it,
+but that is because he would only sneer. When I have really sold something,
+and received the money for it, then it won't matter to me who knows. But
+now it's a solemn secret, just between me and my pal." Her yellow-brown
+eyes dwelt upon his face.
+
+Kent, stealing a glance at her from under his drooped lids, wondered if she
+had ever given any time to analyzing herself. He would have given much to
+know if, down deep in her heart, she really believed in this pal business;
+if she was really a friend, and no more. She puzzled him a good deal,
+sometimes.
+
+"Well--if anybody can make good at that business, you sure ought to;
+you've got brains enough to write a dictionary." He permitted himself the
+indulgence of saying that much, and he was perfectly sincere. He honestly
+considered Val the cleverest woman in the world.
+
+She laughed with gratification. "Your sublime confidence, while it is
+undoubtedly mistaken, is nevertheless appreciated," she told him primly,
+moving away with her hands full of flowers. "If you've got the nerve, come
+inside and read some of my stuff; I want to know if it's any good at all."
+
+Presently he was seated upon the couch in the little, pathetically bright
+front room, and he was knitting his eyebrows over Val's beautifully regular
+handwriting,--pages and pages of it, so that there seemed no end to the
+task,--and was trying to give his mind to what he was reading instead of to
+the author, sitting near him with her hands folded demurely in her lap and
+her eyes fixed expectantly upon his face, trying to read his decision even
+as it was forming.
+
+Some verses she had tried on him first. Kent, by using all his
+determination of character, read them all, every word of them.
+
+"That's sure all right," he said, though, beyond a telling phrase or
+two,--one line in particular which would stick in his memory:
+
+        "Men live and love and die in that lonely land,"--
+
+he had no very clear idea of what it was all about. Certain lines seemed to
+go bumping along, and one had to mispronounce some of the final words to
+make them rhyme with others gone before, but it was all right--Val wrote
+it.
+
+"I think I do better at stories," she ventured modestly. "I wrote one--a
+little story about university life--and sent it to a magazine. They wrote a
+lovely letter about it, but it seems that field is overdone, or something.
+The editor asked me why, living out here in the very heart of the West, I
+don't try Western stories. I think I shall--and that's why I said I should
+need your help. I thought we might work together, you know. You've lived
+here so long, and ought to have some splendid ideas--things that have
+happened, or that you've heard--and you could tell me, and I'd write them
+up. Wouldn't you like to collaborate--'go in cahoots' on it?"
+
+"Sure." Kent regarded her thoughtfully. She really was looking brighter and
+happier, and her enthusiasm was not to be mistaken. Her world had changed.
+"Anything I can do to help, you know--"
+
+"Of course I know, I think it's perfectly splendid, don't you? We'll divide
+the money--when there _is_ any, and--"
+
+"Will we?" His tone was noncommittal in the extreme.
+
+"Of course. Now, don't let's quarrel about that till we come to it. I have
+a good idea of my own, I think, for the first story. A man comes out here
+and disappears, you know, and after a while his sister comes to find him.
+She gets into all kinds of trouble--is kidnapped by a gang of robbers, and
+kept in a cave. When the leader of the gang comes back--he has been away
+on some depredation--you see, I have only the bare outline of the story
+yet--and, well, it's her brother! He kills the one who kidnapped her, and
+she reforms him. Of course, there ought to be some love interest. I think,
+perhaps, one member of the gang ought to fall in love with her, don't you
+know? And after a while he wins her--"
+
+"She'll reform him, too, I reckon."
+
+"Oh, yes. She couldn't love a man she couldn't respect--no woman could."
+
+"Oh!" Kent took a minute to apply that personally. It was of value to him,
+because it was an indication of Val's own code. "Maybe," he suggested
+tentatively, "she'd get busy and reform the whole bunch."
+
+"Oh, say--that would be great! She's an awfully sweet little
+thing--perfectly lovely, you know--and they'd all be in love with her, so
+it wouldn't be improbable. Don't you remember, Kent, you told me once that
+a man would do _anything_ for a woman, if he cared enough for her?"
+
+"Sure. He would, too." Kent fought back a momentary temptation to prove the
+truth of it by his own acquiescence in this pal business. He was saved from
+disaster by a suspicion that Val would not be able to see it from his point
+of view, and by the fact that he would much rather be pals than nothing.
+
+She would have gone on, talking and planning and discussing, indefinitely.
+But the sun slid lower and lower, and Kent was not his own master. The time
+came when he had to go, regardless of his own wishes, or hers.
+
+When he came again, the story was finished, and Val was waiting, with
+extreme impatience, to read it to him and hear his opinion before she sent
+it away. Kent was not so impatient to hear it, but he did not tell her so.
+He had not seen her for a month, and he wanted to talk; not about anything
+in particular--just talk about little things, and see her eyes light up
+once in a while, and her lips purse primly when he said something daring,
+and maybe have her play something on the violin, while he smoked and
+watched her slim wrist bend and rise and fall with the movement of the bow.
+He could imagine no single thing more fascinating than that--that, and the
+way she cuddled the violin under her chin, in the hollow of her neck.
+
+But Val would not play--she had been too busy to practice, all spring and
+summer; she scarcely ever touched the violin, she said. And she did not
+want to talk--or if she did, it was plain that she had only one theme. So
+Kent, perforce, listened to the story. Afterward, he assured her that it
+was "outa sight." As a matter of fact, half the time he had not heard a
+word of what she was reading; he had been too busy just looking at her and
+being glad he was there. He had, however, a dim impression that it was a
+story with people in it whom one does not try to imagine as ever being
+alive, and with a West which, beyond its evident scarcity of inhabitants,
+was not the West he knew anything about. One paragraph of description had
+caught his attention, because it seemed a fairly accurate picture of the
+bench land which surrounded Cold Spring Coulee; but it had not seemed to
+have anything to do with the story itself. Of course, it must be good--Val
+wrote it. He began to admire her intensely, quite apart from his own
+personal subjugation.
+
+Val was pleased with his praise. For two solid hours she talked of nothing
+but that story, and she gave him some fresh chocolate cake and a pitcher
+of lemonade, and urged him to come again in about three weeks, when she
+expected to hear from the magazine she thought would be glad to take the
+story; the one whose editor had suggested that she write of the West.
+
+In the fall, and in the winter, their discussions were frequently hampered
+by Manley's presence. But Val's enthusiasm, though nipped here and there
+by unappreciative editors, managed, somehow, to live; or perhaps it had
+developed into a dogged determination to succeed in spite of everything.
+She still wrote things, and she still read them to Kent when there was
+time and opportunity; sometimes he was bold enough to criticize the worst
+places, and to tell her how she might, in his opinion, remedy them.
+Occasionally Val would take his advice.
+
+So the months passed. The winds blew and brought storm and heat and
+sunshine and cloud. Nothing, in that big land, appreciably changed, except
+the people; and they so imperceptibly that they failed to realize it until
+afterward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. VAL'S DISCOVERY
+
+With a blood-red sun at his back and a rosy tinge upon all the hills before
+him, Manley rode slowly down the western rim of Cold Spring Coulee, driving
+five rebellious calves that had escaped the branding iron in the spring.
+Though they were not easily driven in any given direction, he was
+singularly patient with them, and refrained from bellowing epithets and
+admonitions, as might have been expected. When he was almost down the hill,
+he saw Val standing in the kitchen door, shading her eyes with her hands
+that she might watch his approach.
+
+"Open the corral gate!" he shouted to her, in the tone of command. "And
+stand back where you can head 'em off if they start up the coulee!"
+
+Val replied by doing as she was told; she was not in the habit of wasting
+words upon Manley; they seemed always to precipitate an unpleasant
+discussion of some sort, as if he took it for granted she disapproved of
+all he did or said, and was always upon the defensive.
+
+The calves came on, lumbering awkwardly in a half-hearted gallop, as if
+they had very little energy left. Their tongues protruded, their mouths
+dribbled a lathery foam, and their rough, sweaty hides told Val of the long
+chase--for she was wiser in the ways of the range land than she had been.
+She stood back, gently waving her ruffled white apron at them, and when
+they dodged into the corral, rolling eyes at her, she ran up and slammed
+the gate shut upon them, looped the chain around the post, and dropped the
+iron hook into a link to fasten it. Manley galloped up, threw himself off
+his panting horse, and began to unsaddle.
+
+"Get some wood and start a fire, and put the iron in, Val," he told her
+brusquely.
+
+Val looked at him quickly. "Now? Supper's all ready, Manley. There's no
+hurry about branding them, is there?" And she added: "Dear me! The round-up
+must have just skimmed the top off this range last spring. You've had to
+brand a lot of calves that were missed."
+
+"What the devil is it to you?" he demanded roughly. "I want that fire,
+madam, and I want it _now_. I rather think I knew when I want to brand
+without asking your advice."
+
+Val curved her lips scornfully, shrugged and obeyed She was used to that
+sort of thing, and she did not mind very much. He had brutalized by
+degrees, and by degrees she had hardened. He could rouse no feeling now but
+contempt.
+
+"If you'll kindly wait until I put back the supper," she said coldly. "I
+suppose in your zeal one need not sacrifice your food; you're still rather
+particular about that. I observe."
+
+Manley was leading his horse to the stable, and, though he answered
+something, the words were no more than a surly mumble.
+
+"He's been drinking again," Val decided dispassionately, on the way to the
+house. "I suppose he carried a bottle in his pocket--and emptied it."
+
+She was not long; there was a penalty of profane reproach attached to
+delay, however slight, when Manley was in that mood. She had the fire going
+and the VP iron heating by the time he had stabled and fed his horse, and
+had driven the calves into the smaller pen. He drove a big, line-backed
+heifer into a corner, roped and tied her down with surprising dexterity,
+and turned impatiently.
+
+"Come! Isn't that iron ready yet?"
+
+Val, on the other side of the fence, drew it out and inspected it
+indifferently.
+
+"It is not, Mr. Fleetwood. If you are in a very great hurry, why not apply
+your temper to it--and a few choice remarks?"
+
+"Oh, don't try to be sarcastic--it's too pathetic. Kick a little life into
+that fire."
+
+"Yes, sir--thank you, sir." Val could be rather exasperating when she
+chose. She always could be sure of making Manley silently furious when
+she adopted that tone of respectful servility--as employed by butlers and
+footmen upon the stage. Her mimicry, be it said, was very good.
+
+"'Ere it is, sir----thank you, sir--'ope I 'aven't kept you wyting, sir,"
+she announced, after he had fumed for two minutes inside the corral, and
+she had cynically hummed her way quite through the hymn which begins "Blest
+be the tie that binds." She passed the white-hot iron deftly through the
+rails to him, and fixed the fire for another heating.
+
+Really, she was not thinking of Manley at all, nor of his mood, nor of his
+brutal coarseness. She was thinking of the rebuilt typewriter, advertised
+as being exactly as good as a new one, and scandalously cheap, for which
+she had sold her watch to Arline Hawley to get money to buy. She was
+counting mentally the days since she had sent the money order, and was
+thinking it should come that week surely.
+
+She was also planning to seize upon the opportunity afforded by Manley's
+next absence for a day from the ranch, and drive to Hope on the chance of
+getting the machine. Only--she wished she could be sure whether Kent would
+be coming soon. She did not want to miss seeing him; she decided to sound
+Polycarp Jenks the next time he came. Polycarp would know, of course,
+whether the Wishbone outfit was in from round-up. Polycarp always knew
+everything that had been done, or was intended, among the neighbors.
+
+Manley passed the ill-smelling iron back to her, and she put it in the
+fire, quite mechanically. It was not the first time, nor the second, that
+she had been called upon to help brand. She could heat an iron as quickly
+and evenly as most men, though Manley had never troubled to tell her so.
+
+Five times she heated the iron, and heard, with an inward quiver of pity
+and disgust, the spasmodic blat of the calf in the pen when the VP went
+searing into the hide on its ribs. She did not see why they must be branded
+that evening, in particular, but it was as well to have it done with. Also,
+if Manley meant to wean them, she would have to see that they were fed and
+watered, she supposed. That would make her trip to town a hurried one, if
+she went at all; she would have to go and come the same day, and Arline
+Hawley would scold and beg her to stay, and call her a fool.
+
+"Now, how about that supper?" asked Manley, when they were through, and the
+air was clearing a little from the smoke and the smell of burned hair.
+
+"I really don't know--I smelled the potatoes burning some time ago. I'll
+see, however." She brushed her hands with her handkerchief, pushed back the
+lock of hair that was always falling across her temple, and, because she
+was really offended by Manley's attitude and tone, she sang softly all the
+way to the house, merely to conceal from him the fact that he could move
+her even to irritation. Her best weapon, she had discovered long ago, was
+absolute indifference--the indifference which overlooked his presence and
+was deaf to his recriminations.
+
+She completed her preparations for his supper, made sure that nothing was
+lacking and that the tea was just right, placed his chair in position,
+filled the water glass beside his plate, set the tea-pot where he could
+reach it handily, and went into the living room and closed the door
+between. In the past year, filed as it had been with her literary ambitions
+and endeavors, she had neglected her music; but she took her violin from
+the box, hunted the cake of resin, tuned the strings, and, when she heard
+him come into the kitchen and sit down at the table, seated herself upon
+the front doorstep and began to play.
+
+There was one bit of music which Manley thoroughly detested. That was the
+"Traumerei." Therefore, she played the "Traumerei" slowly--as it should,
+of course, be played--with full value given to all the pensive, long-drawn
+notes, and with a finale positively creepy in its dreamy wistfulness. Val,
+as has been stated, could be very exasperating when she chose.
+
+In the kitchen there was the subdued rattle of dishes, unbroken and
+unhurried. Val went on playing, but she forgot that she had begun in a
+half-conscious desire to annoy her husband. She stared dreamily at the hill
+which shut out the world to the east, and yielded to a mood of loneliness;
+of longing, in the abstract, for all the pleasant things she was missing in
+this life which she had chosen in her ignorance.
+
+When Manley flung open the inner door, she gave a stifled exclamation; she
+had forgotten all about Manley.
+
+"By all the big and little gods of Greece!" he swore angrily. "Calves
+bawling their heads off in the corral, and you squalling that whiny stuff
+you call music in the house--home's sure a hell of a happy place! I'm going
+to town. You don't want to leave the place till I come back--I want those
+calves looked after." He seemed to consider something mentally, and then
+added:
+
+"If I'm not back before they quit bawling, you can turn 'em down in the
+river field with the rest. You know when they're weaned and ready to settle
+down. Don't feed 'em too much hay, like you did that other bunch; just give
+'em what they need; you don't have to pile the corral full. And don't keep
+'em shut up an hour longer than necessary."
+
+Val nodded her head to show that she heard, and went on playing. There was
+seldom any pretense of good feeling between them now. She tuned the violin
+to minor, and poised the bow over the strings, in some doubt as to her
+memory of a serenade she wanted to try next.
+
+"Shall I have Polycarp take the team and haul up some wood from the river?"
+she asked carelessly. "We're nearly out again."
+
+"Oh, _I_ don't care--if he happens along." He turned and went out, his
+mind turning eagerly to the town and what it could give him in the way of
+pleasure.
+
+Val, still sitting in the doorway, saw him ride away up the grade and
+disappear over the brow of the hill. The dusk was settling softly upon the
+land, so that his figure was but a vague shape. She was alone again; she
+rather liked being alone, now that she had no longer a blind, unreasoning
+terror of the empty land. She had her thoughts and her work; the presence
+of Manley was merely an unpleasant interruption to both.
+
+Some time in the night she heard the lowing of a cow somewhere near. She
+wondered dreamily what it could be doing in the coulee, and went to sleep
+again. The five calves were all bawling in a chorus of complaint against
+their forced separation from their mothers, and the deeper, throaty tones
+of the cow mingled not inharmoniously with the sound.
+
+Range cattle were not permitted in the coulee, and when by chance they
+found a broken panel in the fence and strayed down there, Val drove them
+out; afoot, usually, with shouts and badly aimed stones to accelerate their
+lumbering pace.
+
+After she had eaten her breakfast in the morning she went out to
+investigate. Beyond the corral, her nose thrust close against the rails,
+a cow was bawling dismally. Inside, in much the same position, its tail
+waving a violent signal of its owner's distress, a calf was clamoring
+hysterically for its mother and its mother's milk.
+
+Val sympathized with them both; but the cow did not belong in the coulee,
+and she gathered two or three small stones and went around where she could
+frighten her away from the fence without, however, exposing herself too
+recklessly to her uncertain temper. Cows at weaning time did sometimes
+object to being driven from their calves.
+
+"Shoo! Go on away from there!" Val raised a stone and poised it
+threateningly.
+
+The cow turned and regarded her, wild-eyed. It backed a step or two,
+evidently uncertain of its next move.
+
+"Go on away!" Val was just on the point of throwing the rock, when she
+dropped it unheeded to the ground and stared. "Why, you--you--why--the
+_idea!_" She turned slowly white. Certain things must filter to the
+understanding through amazement and disbelief; it took Val a minute or two
+to grasp the significance of what she saw. By the time she did grasp it,
+her knees were beading weakly beneath the weight of her body. She put out
+a groping hand and caught at the corner of the corral to keep herself from
+falling. And she stared and stared.
+
+"It--oh, surely not!" she whispered, protesting against her understanding.
+She gave a little sob that had no immediate relation to tears.
+"Surely--_surely_--not!" It was of no use; understanding came, and came
+clearly, pitilessly. Many things--trifles, all of them--to which she had
+given no thought at the time, or which she had forgotten immediately, came
+back to her of their own accord; things she tried _not_ to remember.
+
+The cow stared at her for a minute, and, when she made no hostile move,
+turned its attention back to its bereavement. Once again it thrust
+its moist muzzle between two rails, gave a preliminary, vibrant
+_mmm--mmmmm--m_, and then, with a spasmodic heaving of ribs and of flank,
+burst into a long-drawn _baww--aw--aw--aw_, which rose rapidly in a
+tremulous crescendo and died to a throaty rumbling.
+
+Val started nervously, though her eyes were fixed upon the cow and she knew
+the sound was coming. It served, however, to release her from the spell of
+horror which had gripped her. She was still white, and when she moved she
+felt intolerably heavy, so that her feet dragged; but she was no longer
+dazed. She went slowly around to the gate, reached up wearily and undid the
+chain fastening, opened the gate slightly, and went in.
+
+Four of the calves were huddled together for mutual comfort in a corner.
+They were blatting indefatigably. Val went over to where the fifth one
+still stood beside the fence, as near the cow as it could get, and threw
+a small stone, that bounced off the calf's rump. The calf jumped and ran
+aimlessly before her until it reached the half-open gate, when it dodged
+out, as if it could scarcely believe its own good fortune. Before Val could
+follow it outside, it was nuzzling rapturously its mother, and the cow was
+contorting her body so that she could caress her offspring with her tongue,
+while she rumbled her satisfaction.
+
+Val closed and fastened the gate carefully, and went back to where the cow
+still lingered. With her lips drawn to a thin, colorless line, she drove
+her across the coulee and up the hill, the calf gamboling close alongside.
+When they had gone out of sight, up on the level, Val turned back and went
+slowly to the house. She stood for a minute staring stupidly at it and at
+the coulee, went in and gazed around her with that blankness which follows
+a great mental shock. After a minute she shivered, threw up her hands
+before her face, and dropped, a pitiful, sorrowing heap of quivering
+rebellion, upon the couch.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX. KENT'S CONFESSION
+
+Polycarp Jenks came ambling into the coulee, rapped perfunctorily upon the
+door-casing, and entered the kitchen as one who feels perfectly at home,
+and sure of his welcome; as was not unfitting, considering the fact that he
+had "chored around" for Val during the last year, and longer.
+
+"Anybody to home?" he called, seeing the front door shut tight.
+
+There was a stir within, and Val, still pale, and with an almost furtive
+expression in her eyes, opened the door and looked out.
+
+"Oh, it's you, Polycarp," she said lifelessly. "Is there anything--"
+
+"What's the matter? Sick? You look kinda peaked and frazzled out. I met Man
+las' night, and he told me you needed wood; I thought I'd ride over and
+see. By granny, you do look bad."
+
+"Just a headache," Val evaded, shrinking back guiltily. "Just do whatever
+there is to do, Polycarp. I think--I don't believe the chickens have had
+anything to eat to-day--"
+
+"Them headaches are sure a fright; they're might' nigh as bad as rheumatiz,
+when they hit you hard. You jest go back and lay down, and I'll look around
+and see what they is to do. Any idee when Man's comin' back?"
+
+"No." Val brought the word out with an involuntary sharpness.
+
+"No, I reckon not. I hear him and Fred De Garmo come might' near havin' a
+fight las' night. Blumenthall was tellin' me this mornin'. Fred's quit
+the Double Diamond, I hear. He's got himself appointed dep'ty stock
+inspector--and how he managed to git the job is more 'n I can figure out.
+They say he's all swelled up over it--got his headquarters in town, you
+know, and seems he got to lordin' it over Man las' night, and I guess if
+somebody hadn't stopped 'em they'd of been a mix-up, all right. Man wasn't
+in no shape to fight--he'd been drinkin' pretty--"
+
+"Yes--well, just do whatever there is to do, Polycarp. The horses are in
+the upper pasture, I think--if you want to haul wood." She closed the
+door--gently, but with exceeding firmness, and, Polycarp took the hint.
+
+"Women is queer," he muttered, as he left the house. "Now, she knows Man
+drinks like a fish--and she knows everybody else knows it--but if you so
+much as mention sech a thing, why--" He waggled his head disapprovingly and
+proceeded, in his habitually laborious manner, to take a chew of tobacco.
+"No matter how much they may know a thing is so, if it don't suit 'em you
+can't never git 'em to stand right up and face it out--seems like, by
+granny, it comes natural to 'em to make believe things is different. Now,
+she knows might' well she can't fool _me_. I've hearn Man swear at her
+like--"
+
+He reached the corral, and his insatiable curiosity turned his thoughts
+into a different channel. He inspected the four calves gravely, wondered
+audibly where Man had found them, and how the round-up came to miss them,
+and criticized his application of the brand; in the opinion of Polycarp,
+Manley either burned too deep or not deep enough.
+
+"Time that line-backed heifer scabs off, you can't tell what's on her," he
+asserted, expectorating solemnly before he turned away to his work.
+
+Prom a window, Val watched him with cold terror. Would he suspect? Or was
+there anything to suspect? "It's silly--it's perfectly idiotic," she told
+herself impatiently; "but if he hangs around that corral another minute, I
+shall scream!" She watched until she saw him mount his horse and ride off
+toward the upper pasture. Then she went out and began apathetically picking
+seed pods off her sweet-peas, which the early frosts had spared.
+
+"Head better?" called Polycarp, half an hour later, when he went rattling
+past the house with the wagon, bound for the river bottom where they got
+their supply of wood.
+
+"A little," Val answered inattentively, without looking at him.
+
+It was while Polycarp was after the wood, and while she was sitting upon
+the edge of the porch, listlessly arranging and rearranging a handful of
+long-stemmed blossoms, that Kent galloped down the hill and up to the gate.
+She saw him coming and set her teeth hard together. She did not want to see
+Kent just then; she did not want to see anybody.
+
+Kent, however, wanted to see her. It seemed to him at least a month since
+he had had a glimpse of her, though it was no more than half that time. He
+watched her covertly while he came up the path. His mind, all the way over
+from the Wishbone, had been very clear and very decided. He had a certain
+thing to tell her, and a certain thing to do; he had thought it all out
+during the nights when he could not sleep and the days when men called him
+surly, and there was no going back, no reconsideration of the matter. He
+had been telling himself that, over and over, ever since the house came
+into view and he saw her sitting there on the porch. She would probably
+want to argue, and perhaps she would try to persuade him, but it would be
+absolutely useless; absolutely.
+
+"Well, hello!" he cried, with more than his usual buoyancy of
+manner--because he knew he must hurt her later on. "Hello, Madam Authoress.
+Why this haughty air? This stuckupiness? Shall I get a ladder and climb
+up where you can hear me say howdy?" He took off his hat and slapped her
+gently upon the top of her head with it. "Come out of the fog!"
+
+"Oh--I wish you wouldn't!" She glanced up at him so briefly that he caught
+only a flicker of her yellow-brown eyes, and went on fumbling her flowers.
+Kent stood and looked down at her for a moment.
+
+"Mad?" he inquired cheerfully. "Say, you look awfully savage. On the dead,
+you do. What do _you_ care if they sent it back? You had all the fun of
+writing it--and you know it's a dandy. Please smile. _Pretty_ please!" he
+wheedled. It was not the first time he had discovered her in a despondent
+mood, nor the first time he had bantered and badgered her out of her gloom.
+Presently it dawned upon him that this was more serious; he had never seen
+her quite so colorless or so completely without spirit.
+
+"Sick, pal?" he asked gently, sitting down beside her.
+
+"No-o--I suppose not." Val bit her lips, as soon as she had spoken, to
+check their quivering.
+
+"Well, what is it? I wish you'd tell me. I came over here full of something
+I had to tell you--but I can't, now; not while you're like this." He
+watched her yearningly.
+
+"Oh, I can't tell you. It's nothing." Val jerked a sweet-pea viciously from
+its stem, pressed her hand against her mouth, and turned reluctantly toward
+him. "What was it you came to tell me?"
+
+He watched her narrowly. "I'll gamble you're down in the mouth about
+something hubby has said or done. You needn't tell me--but I just want to
+ask you if you think it's worth while? You needn't tell me that, either.
+You know blamed well it ain't. He can't deal you any more misery than you
+let him hand out; you want to keep that in mind."
+
+Another blossom was demolished. "What was it you came to tell me?" she
+repeated steadily, though she did not look at him.
+
+"Oh, nothing much. I'm going to leave the country, is all."
+
+"Kent!" After a minute she forced another word out. "Why?"
+
+Kent regarded her somberly. "You better think twice before you ask me
+that," he warned; "because I ain't much good at beating all around the
+bush. If you ask me again, I'll tell you--and I'm liable to tell you
+without any frills." He drew a hard breath. "So I'd advise you not to ask,"
+he finished, half challengingly.
+
+Val placed a pale lavender blossom against a creamy white one, and held the
+two up for inspection.
+
+"When are you going?" she asked evenly.
+
+"I don't know exactly--in a day or so. Saturday, maybe."
+
+She hesitated over the flowers in her lap, and selected a pink one, which
+she tried with the white and the lavender.
+
+"And--_why_ are you going?" she asked him deliberately.
+
+Kent stared at her fixedly. A faint, pink flush was creeping into her
+cheeks. He watched it deepen, and knew that his silence was filling her
+with uneasiness. He wondered how much she guessed of what he was going to
+say, and how much it would mean to her.
+
+"All right--I'll tell you why, fast enough." His tone was grim. "I'm going
+to leave the country because I can't stay any longer--not while you're in
+it."
+
+"Why--Kent!" She seemed inexpressibly shocked.
+
+"I don't know," he went on relentlessly, "what you think a man's made of,
+anyhow. And I don't know what _you_ think of this pal business; I know what
+I think: It's a mighty good way to drive a man crazy. I've had about all of
+it I can stand, if you want to know."
+
+"I'm sorry, if you don't--if you can't be friends any longer," she said,
+and he winced to see how her eyes filled with tears. "But, of course, if
+you can't--if it bores you--"
+
+Kent seized her arm, a bit roughly, "Have I got to come right out and tell
+you, in plain English, that I--that it's because I'm so deep in love with
+you I can't. If you only knew what it's cost me this last year--to play the
+game and not play it too hard! What do you think a man's made of? Do you
+think a man can care for a woman, like I care for you, and--Do you think he
+wants to be just pals? And stand back and watch some drunken brute abuse
+her--and never--Here!" His voice grew testier. "Don't do that--don't! I
+didn't want to hurt you--God knows I didn't want to hurt you!" He threw his
+seem around her shoulders and pulled her toward him.
+
+"Don't--pal, I'm a brute, I guess, like all the rest of the male humans. I
+don't mean to be--it's the way I'm made. When a woman means so much to me
+that I can't think of anything else, day or night, and get to counting
+days and scheming to see her--why--being friends--like we've been--is like
+giving a man a teaspoon of milk and water when he's starving to death, and
+thinking that oughta do. But I shouldn't have let it hurt you. I tried
+to stand for it, little woman. These were times when I just had to fight
+myself not to take you up in my arms and carry you of and keep you. You
+must admit," he argued, smiling rather wanly, "that, considering how I've
+felt about it, I've done pretty tolerable well up till now. You don't--you
+never will know how much it's cost. Why, my nerves are getting so raw I
+can't stand anything any more. That's why I'm going. I don't want to hang
+around till I do something--foolish."
+
+He took his arm away from her shoulders and moved farther off; he was not
+sure how far he might trust himself.
+
+"If I thought you cared--or if there was anything I could do for you," he
+ventured, after a moment, "why, it would be different. But--"
+
+Val lifted her head and turned to him.
+
+"There is something--or there was--or--oh, I can't think any more! I
+suppose"--doubtfully--"if you feel as you say you do, why--it would
+be--wicked to stay. But you don't; you must just imagine it."
+
+"Oh, all right," Kent interpolated ironically.
+
+"But if you go away--" She got up and stood before him, breathing unevenly,
+in little gasps. "Oh, you mustn't go away! Please don't go! I--there's
+something terrible happened--oh, Kent, I need you! I can't tell you what
+it is--it's the most horrible thing I ever heard of! You can't imagine
+anything more horrible, Kent!"
+
+She twisted her fingers together nervously, and the blossoms dropped, one
+by one, on the ground. "If you go," she pleaded, "I won't have a friend in
+the country, not a real friend. And--and I never needed a friend as much
+as I do now, and you mustn't go. I--I can't let you go!" It was like her
+hysterical fear of being left alone after the fire.
+
+Kent eyed her keenly. He knew there must have been something to put her
+into this state--something more than his own rebellion. He felt suddenly
+ashamed of his weakness in giving way--in telling her how it was with
+him. The faint, far-off chuckle of a wagon came to his ears. He turned
+impatiently toward the sound. Polycarp was driving up the coulee with a
+load of wood; already he was nearing the gate which opened into the lower
+field. Kent stood up, reached out, and caught Val by the hand.
+
+"Come on into the house," he said peremptorily. "Polly's coming, and you
+don't want him goggling and listening. And I want you," he added, when he
+had led her inside and closed the door, "to tell me what all this is about.
+There's something, and I want to know what. If it concerns you, then it
+concerns me a whole lot, too. And what concerns me I'm going to find out
+about--what is it?"
+
+Val sat down, got up immediately, and crossed the room aimlessly to sit in
+another chair. She pressed her palms tightly against both cheeks, drew in
+her breath as if she were going to speak, and, after all, said nothing. She
+looked out of the window, pushing back the errant strand of hair.
+
+"I can't--I don't know how to tell you," she began desperately. "It's too
+horrible."
+
+"Maybe it is--I don't know what you'd call too horrible; I kinda think it
+wouldn't be what I'd tack those words to. Anyway--what is it?" He went
+close, and he spoke insistently.
+
+She took a long breath.
+
+"Manley's a thief!" She jerked the words out like as automaton. They were
+not, evidently, the Words she had meant to speak, for she seemed frightened
+afterward.
+
+"Oh, that's it!" Kent made a sound which was not far from a snort. "Well,
+what about it? What's he done? How did you find it out?"
+
+Val straightened in the chair and gazed up at him. Once more her tawny eyes
+gave him a certain shock, as if he had never before noticed them.
+
+"After all our neighbors have done for him," she cried bitterly; "after
+giving him hay, when his was burned and he couldn't buy any; after building
+stables, and corral, and--everything they did--the kindest, best neighbors
+a man ever had--oh, it's too shameful for utterance! I might forgive it--I
+might, only for that. The--the ingratitude! It's too despicable--too--"
+
+Kent laid a steadying hand upon her arm.
+
+"Yes--but what is it?" he interrupted.
+
+Val shook off his hand unconsciously, impatient of any touch.
+
+"Oh, the bare deed itself--well, it's rather petty, too--and cheap." Her
+voice became full of contempt. "It was the calves. He brought home five
+last night--five that hadn't been branded last spring. Where he found them
+_I_ don't know--I didn't care enough about it to ask. He had been drinking,
+I think; I can usually tell--and he often carries a bottle in his pocket,
+as I happen to know.
+
+"Well, he had me make a fire and heat the iron for him, and he branded
+them--last night; he was very touchy about it when I asked him what was his
+hurry. I think now it was a stupid thing for him to do. And--well, in the
+night, some time, I heard a cow bawling around close, and this morning I
+went out to drive her away; the fence is always down somewhere--I suppose
+she found a place to get through. So I went out to drive her away." Her
+eyes dropped, as if she were making a confession of her own misdeed. She
+clenched her hands tightly in her lap.
+
+"Well--it was a Wishbone cow." After all, she said it very quietly.
+
+"The devil it was!" Kent had been prepared for something of the sort; but,
+nevertheless, he started when he heard his own outfit mentioned.
+
+"Yes. It was a Wishbone cow." Her voice was flat and monotonous. "He had
+stolen her calf. He had it in the corral, and he had branded it with his
+own brand--with a VP. _With my initials!_" she wailed suddenly, as if
+the thought had just struck her, and was intolerably bitter. "She had
+followed--had been hunting her calf; it was rather a little calf, smaller
+than the others. And it was crowded up against the fence, trying to get to
+her. There was no mistaking their relationship. I tried to think he had
+made a mistake; but it's of no use--I know he didn't. I know he _stole_
+that calf. And for all I know, the others, too. Oh, it's perfectly horrible
+to think of!"
+
+Kent could easily guess her horror of it, and he was sorry for her. But his
+mind turned instantly to the practical side of it.
+
+"Well--maybe it can be fixed up, if you feel so bad about it. Does
+Polycarp--did he see the cow hanging around?"
+
+Val shook her head apathetically. "No--he didn't come till just a little
+while ago. That was this morning. And I drove her out of the coulee--her
+and her calf. They went off up over the hill."
+
+Kent stood looking down at her rather stupidly.
+
+"You--_what?_ What was it you did?" It seemed to him that something--some
+vital point of the story--had eluded him.
+
+"I drove them away. I didn't think they ought to be permitted to
+hang around here." Her lips quivered again. "I--I didn't want to see
+him--get--into any trouble."
+
+"You drove them away? Both of them?" Kent was frowning at her now.
+
+Val sprang up and faced him, all a-tremble with indignation. "Certainly,
+both! _I'm_ not a thief, Kent Burnett! When I knew--when there was no
+possible doubt--why, what, in Heaven's name, _could_ I do? It wasn't
+Manley's calf. I turned it loose to go back where it belonged."
+
+"With a VP on its ribs!" Kent was staring at her curiously.
+
+"Well, I don't care! Fifty VP's couldn't make the calf Manley's. If anybody
+came and saw that cow, why--" Val looked at him rafter pityingly, as if she
+could not quite understand how he could even question her upon that point.
+"And, after all," she added forlornly, "he's my husband. I couldn't--I had
+to do what I could to shield him--just for sake of the past, I suppose.
+Much as I despise him, I can't forget that--that I cared once. It's because
+I wanted your advice that I--"
+
+"It's a pity you didn't get it sooner, then! Can't you see what you've
+done? Why, think a minute! A VP calf running with a Wishbone cow--why,
+it's--you couldn't advertise Man as a rustler any better if you tried. The
+first fellow that runs onto that cow and calf--well, he won't need to do
+any guessing--he'll _know_. It's a ticket to Deer Lodge--that VP calf. Now
+do you see?" He turned away to the window and stood looking absently at the
+brown hillside, his hands thrust deep into his pockets.
+
+"And there's Fred De Garmo, with his new job, ranging around the country
+just aching to cinch somebody and show his authority. It's a matter of days
+almost. He'd like nothing better than to get a whack at Man, even if the
+Wishbone--"
+
+Outside, they could hear Polycarp throwing the wood off the wagon; knowing
+him as they did, they knew, it would not be long before he found an excuse
+for coming into the house. He had more than once evinced a good deal of
+interest in Kent's visits there, and shown an unmistakable desire to know
+what they were talking about. They had never paid much attention to him;
+but now even Val felt a vague uneasiness lest he overhear. She had been
+sitting, her face buried in her arms, crushed beneath the knowledge of what
+she had done.
+
+"Don't worry, little woman." Kent went over and passed his hand lightly
+over her hair. "You did what looked to you to be the right thing--the
+honest thing. And the chances are he'd get caught before long, anyhow. I
+don't reckon this is the first time he's done it."
+
+"Oh-h--but to think--to think that _I_ should do it--when I wanted to save
+him! He--Kent, I despise him--he has killed all the love I ever felt for
+him--killed it over and over--but if anybody finds that calf, and--and
+if they--Kent, I shall go crazy if I have to feel that _I_ sent
+him--to--prison. To think of him--shut up there--and to know that I did
+it--I can't bear it!" She caught his arm. She pressed her forehead
+against it. "Kent, isn't there some way to get it back? If I should find
+it--and--and shoot it--and pay the Wishbone what it's worth--oh, _any_
+amount--or shoot the cow--or--" she raised her face imploringly to
+his--"tell me, pal--or I shall go stark, raving mad!"
+
+Polycarp came into the kitchen, and, from the sound, he was trying to enter
+as unobtrusively as possible, even to the extent of walking on his toes.
+
+"Go see what that darned old sneak wants," Kent commanded in an undertone.
+"Act as if nothing happened--if you can." He watched anxiously, while she
+drew a long breath, pressed her hands hard against her cheeks, closed her
+lips tightly, and then, with something like composure, went quietly to the
+door and threw it open. Polycarp was standing very close to it, on the
+other side. He drew back a step.
+
+"I wondered if I better git another load, now I've got the team hooked
+up," he began in his rasping, nasal voice, his slitlike eyes peering
+inquisitively into the room. "Hello, Kenneth--I _thought_ that was your
+horse standin' outside. Or would you rather I cut up a pile? I dunno but
+what I'll have to go t'town t'-morrerr or next day--mebby I better cut you
+some wood, hey? If Man ain't likely to be home, mebby--"
+
+"I think, Polycarp, well have a storm soon. So it would be good policy to
+haul another load, don't you think? I can manage very well with what there
+is cut until Manley returns; and there are always small branches that I can
+break easily with the axe. I really think it would be safer to have another
+load hauled now while we can. Don't you think so?" Val even managed to
+smile at him. "If my head wasn't so bad," she added deceitfully, "I should
+be tempted to go along, just for a dose sight of the river. Mr. Burnett is
+going directly--perhaps I may walk down later on. But you had better not
+wait--I shouldn't want to keep you working till dark."
+
+Polycarp, eying her and Kent, and the room in all its details, forced his
+hand into his trousers pocket, brought up his battered plug of tobacco and
+pried off a piece, which he rolled into his left cheek with his tongue.
+
+"Jest as you say," he surrendered, though it was perfectly plain that he
+would much prefer to cut wood and so be able to see all that went on, even
+though he was denied the gratification of hearing what they said. He waited
+a moment, but Val turned away, and even had the audacity to close the
+door upon his unfinished reply. He listened for a moment, his head craned
+forward.
+
+"Purty kinda goings-on!" he mumbled. "Time Man had a flea put in 'is ear,
+by granny, if he don't want to lose that yeller-eyed wife of hisn." To
+Polycarp, a closed door--when a man and woman were alone upon the other
+side--could mean nothing but surreptitious kisses and the like. He
+went stumbling out and drove away down the coulee, his head turning
+automatically so that his eyes were constantly upon the house; from
+his attitude, as Kent saw him through the window Polycarp expected an
+explosion, at the very least. His outraged virtue vested itself in one more
+sentence; "Purty blamed nervy, by granny--to go 'n' shut the door right in
+m' face!"
+
+Inside the room, Val stood for a minute with her back against the door, as
+if she half feared Polycarp would break in and drag her secret from her.
+When she heard him leave the kitchen she drew a long breath, eloquent in
+itself: when the rattle of the wagon came to them there, she left the
+door and went slowly across the room until she stood close to Kent. The
+interruption had steadied them both. Her voice was a constrained calm when
+she spoke.
+
+[Illustration: To draw the red hot spur across the fresh VP did not take
+long]
+
+"Well--is there anything I can do? Because I suppose every minute is
+dangerous."
+
+Kent kept his eyes upon the departing Polycarp.
+
+"There's nothing you can do, no. Maybe I can do something; soon as that
+granny gossip is outa sight, I'll go and round up that cow and calf--if
+somebody hasn't beaten me to it."
+
+Val looked at him with a certain timid helplessness.
+
+"Oh! Will you--won't it be against the law if you--if you kill it?" She
+grew slightly excited again. "Kent, you shall not get into any trouble
+for--for his sake! If it comes to a choice, why--let him suffer for his
+crime. You shall not!"
+
+Kent turned his head slowly and gazed down at her. "Don't run away with the
+idea I'm doing it for him," he told her distinctly. "I love Man Fleetwood
+like I love a wolf. But if that VP calf catches him up, you'd fight your
+head over it, God only knows how long. I know you! You'd think so much
+about the part you played that you'd wind up by forgetting everything else.
+You'd get to thinking of him as a martyr, maybe! No--it's for you. I kinda
+got you into this, you recollect? If I'd let you see Man drank, that day,
+you'd never have married him; I know that now. So I'm going to get you out
+of it. My side of the question can wait."
+
+She stared up at him with a grave understanding.
+
+"But you know what I said--you won't do anything that can make you
+trouble--won't you tell me, Kent, what you're going to do?"
+
+He had already started to the door, but he stopped and smiled reassuringly.
+
+"Nothing so fierce. If I can find 'em, I aim to bar out that VP. Sabe?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX. A BLOTCHED BRAND
+
+At the brow of the hill, which was the western rim of the coulee, Kent
+turned and waved a farewell to Val, watching him wistfully from the kitchen
+door. She had wanted to go along; she had almost cried to go and help, but
+Kent would not permit her--and beneath the unpleasantness of denying her
+anything, there had been a certain primitive joy in feeling himself master
+of the situation and of her actions; for that one time it was as if she
+belonged to him. At the last he had accepted the field glasses, which she
+insisted upon lending him, and now he was tempted to take them from their
+worn, leathern case and focus them upon her face, just for the meager
+satisfaction of one more look at her. But he rode on, oat of sight, for the
+necessity which drove him forth did not permit much loitering if he would
+succeed in what he had set out to do.
+
+Personally he would have felt no compunctions whatever about letting the
+calf go, a walking advertisement of Manley's guilt. It seemed to him a sort
+of grim retribution, and no more than he deserved. He had not exaggerated
+his sentiments when he intimated plainly to her his hatred of Manley, and
+he agreed with her that the fellow was making a despicable return for the
+kindness his neighbors had always shown him. No doubt he had stolen from
+the Double Diamond as well as the Wishbone.
+
+Once Kent pulled up, half minded to go back and let events shape themselves
+without any interference from him. But there was Val--women were so queer
+about such things. It seemed to Kent that, if any man had caused him as
+much misery as Manley had caused Val, he would not waste much time worrying
+over him, if he tangled himself up with his own misdeeds. However, Val
+wanted that bit of evidence covered up; so, while Kent did not approve, he
+went at the business with his customary thoroughness.
+
+The field glasses were a great convenience. More than once they saved him
+the trouble of riding a mile or so to inspect a small bunch of stock.
+Nevertheless, he rode for several hours before, just at sundown, he
+discovered the cow feeding alone with her calf in a shallow depression near
+the rough country next the river. They were wild, and he ran them out of
+the hollow and up on high ground before he managed to drop his loop over
+the calf's head.
+
+"You sure are a dandy-fine sign-post, all right," he observed, and grinned
+down at the staring VP brand.
+
+"It's a pity you can't be left that way." He glanced cautiously around him
+at the great, empty prairie. A mile or two away, a lone horseman was loping
+leisurely along, evidently bound for the Double Diamond.
+
+"Say--this is kinda public," Kent complained to the calf. "Let's you and
+me go down outa sight for a minute." He started off toward the hollow,
+dragging the calf, a protesting bundle of stiffened muscles pulling against
+the rope. The cow, shaking her head in a halfhearted defiance, followed.
+Kent kept an uneasy eye upon the horseman, and hoped fervently the fellow
+was absorbed in meditation and, would not glance in his direction. Once he
+was almost at the point of turning the calf loose; for barring out brands,
+even illegal brands, is justly looked upon with disfavor, to say the least.
+
+Down in the hollow, which Kent reached with a sigh of relief, he dismounted
+and hastily started a little fire on a barren patch of ground beneath a
+jutting sandstone ledge. The calf, tied helpless, lay near by, and the cow
+hovered close, uneasy, but lacking courage for a rush.
+
+Kent laid hand upon his saddle, hesitated, and shook his head; he might
+need it in a hurry, and cinch ring takes time both in the removal and the
+replacement--and is vitally important withal. His knife he had lost on the
+last round-up. He scowled at the necessity, lifted his heel, and took off
+a spur. "And if that darned ginny don't get too blamed curious and cone
+fogging over this way--" He spoke the phrase aloud, out of the middle of a
+mental arrangement of the chance he was taking.
+
+To heat the spur red-hot, draw it across the fresh VP again and again, and
+finally drag it crisscross once or twice to make assurance an absolute
+certainty, did not take long. Kent was particular about not wasting any
+seconds. The calf stopped its dismal blatting, and when Kent released it
+and coiled his rope, it jumped up and ran for its life, the cows ambling
+solicitously at its heels. Kent kicked the dirt over the fire, eyed it
+sharply a moment to make sure it was perfectly harmless, mounted in haste,
+and rode up the sloping side down, which he had come. Just under the top of
+the slope, he peeked anxiously out over the prairie, ducked precipitately,
+and went clattering away down the hollow to the farther side; dodged around
+a spur of rocks, forced his horse down over a wicked jumble of boulders to
+level land below, and rode as if a hangman's noose were the penalty for
+delay.
+
+When he reached the river--which he did after many windings and
+turnings--he got off and washed his spur, scrubbing it diligently with sand
+in an effort to remove the traces of fire. When the evidence was at least
+less conspicuous, he put it on his heel and jogged down the river bank
+quite innocently, inwardly thankful over his escape. He had certainly done
+nothing wrong; but one sometimes finds it rather awkward to be forced into
+an explanation of a perfectly righteous deed.
+
+"If I'd been stealing that calf, I'd never have been crazy enough to take
+such a long chance," he mused, and laughed a little. "I'll bet Fred thought
+he was due to grab a rustler right in the act--only he was a little bit
+slow about making up his mind; deputy stock inspectors had oughta think
+quicker than that--he was just about five minutes too deliberate. I'll
+gamble he's scratching his head, right now, over that blotched brand,
+trying to _sabe_ the play--which he won't, not in a thousand years!"
+
+He gave the reins a twitch and began to climb through the dusk to the
+lighter hilltop, at a point just east of Cold Spring Coulee. At the top he
+put the spurs to his horse and headed straight as might be for the Wishbone
+ranch. He would like to have told Val of his success, but he was afraid
+Manley might be there, or Polycarp; it was wise always to avoid Polycarp
+Jenks, if one had anything to conceal from his fellows.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI. VAL DECIDES
+
+It was the middle of the next forenoon when Manley came riding home, sullen
+from drink and a losing game of poker, which had kept him all night at the
+table, and at sunrise sent him forth in the mood which meets a grievance
+more than half-way. He did not stop at the house, though he saw Val through
+the open door; he did not trouble to speak to her, even, but rode on to the
+stable, stopping at the corral to look over the fence at the calves, still
+bawling sporadically between half-hearted nibblings at the hay which
+Polycarp had thrown in to them.
+
+Just at first he did not notice anything wrong, but soon a vague disquiet
+seized him, and he frowned thoughtfully at the little group. Something
+puzzled him; but his brain, fogged with whisky and loss of sleep, and the
+reaction from hours of concentration upon the game, could not quite grasp
+the thing that troubled him. In a moment, however, he gave an inarticulate
+bellow, wheeled about, and rode back to the house. He threw himself from
+the horse almost before it stopped, and rushed into the kitchen. Val,
+ironing one of her ruffled white aprons, looked up quickly, turned rather
+pale, and then stiffened perceptibly for the conflict that was coming.
+
+"There's only four calves in the corral--and I brought in five. Where's the
+other one?" He came up and stood quite close to her--so close that Val took
+a step backward. He did not speak loud, but there was something in his
+tone, in his look, that drove the little remaining color from her face.
+
+"Manley," she said, with a catch of the breath, "why did you do that
+horrible thing? What devil possessed you? I--"
+
+"I asked you 'where is that other calf'? Where is it? There's only four. I
+brought in five." His very calmness was terrifying.
+
+Val threw back her head, and her eyes were--as they frequently became in
+moments of stress--yellow, inscrutable, like the eyes of a lion in a cage.
+
+"Yes, you brought in five. One of the five, at least, you--stole. You put
+your brand, Manley Fleetwood, on a calf that did not belong to you; it
+belonged to the Wishbone, and you know it. I have learned many disagreeable
+things about you, Manley, in the past two years; yesterday morning I
+learned that you were a _thief_. Ah-h--I despise you! Stealing from the
+very men who helped you--the men to whom you owe nothing but gratitude
+and--and friendship! Have you no manhood whatever? Besides being weak and
+shiftless, are you a criminal as well? _How_ can you be so utterly lacking
+in--in common decency, even?" She eyed him as she would look at some
+strange monster in a museum about which she was rather curious.
+
+"I asked you where that other calf is--and you'd better tell me!" It was
+the tone which goes well with a knife thrust or a blow. But the contempt in
+Val's face did not change.
+
+"Well, you'll have to hunt for it if you want it. The cow--a Wishbone cow,
+mind you!--came and claimed it; I let her have it. No stolen goods
+can remain on this ranch with my knowledge, Manley Fleetwood. Please
+remember--"
+
+"Oh, you turned it out, did you? You turned it out?" He had her by the
+throat, shaking her as a puppy shakes a purloined shoe. "I could--_kill_
+you for that!"
+
+"Manley! Ah-h-h--" It was not pleasant--that gurgling cry, as she straggled
+to get free.
+
+He had the look of a maniac as he pressed his fingers into her throat and
+glared down into her purpling face.
+
+With a sudden impulse he cast her limp form violently from him. She struck
+against a chair, fell from that to the floor, and lay a huddled heap, her
+crisp, ruffled skirt just giving a glimpse of tiny, half-worn slippers, her
+yellow hair fallen loose and hiding her face.
+
+He stared down at her, but he felt no remorse--she had jeopardized his
+liberty, his standing among men. A cold horror caught him when he thought
+of the calf turned loose on the range, his brand on its ribs. He rushed
+in a panic from the kitchen, flung himself into the saddle, and went off
+across the coulee, whipping both sides of his horse. She had not told
+him--indeed, he had not asked her--which way the cow had gone, but
+instinctively he rode to the west, the direction from which he had driven
+the calves. One thought possessed him utterly; he must find that calf.
+
+So he rode here and there, doubling and turning to search every feeding
+herd he glimpsed, fearing to face the possibility of failure and its
+inevitable consequence.
+
+The cat with the white spots on its sides--Val called her Mary Arabella,
+for some whimsical reason--came into the kitchen, looked inquiringly at
+the huddled figure upon the floor, gave a faint mew, and went slowly up,
+purring and arching her back; she snuffed a moment at Val's hair, then
+settled herself in the hollow of Val's arm, and curled down for a nap. The
+sun, sliding up to midday, shone straight in upon them through the open
+door.
+
+Polycarp Jenks, riding that way in obedience to some obscure impulse,
+lifted his hand to give his customary tap-tap before he walked in; saw
+Val lying there, and almost fell headlong into the room in his haste and
+perturbation. It looked very much as if he had at last stumbled upon the
+horrible tragedy which was his one daydream. To be an eyewitness of a
+murder, and to be able to tell the tale afterward with minute, horrifying
+detail--that, to Polycarp, would make life really worth living. He shuffled
+over to Val, pushed aside the mass of yellow hair, turned her head so that
+he could look into her face, saw at once the bruised marks upon her throat,
+and stood up very straight.
+
+"Foul play has been done here!" he exclaimed melodramatically, eying the
+cat sternly. "Murder--that's what it is, by granny--a foul murder!"
+
+The victim of the foul murder stirred slightly. Polycarp started and bent
+over her again, somewhat disconcerted, perhaps, but more humanly anxious.
+
+"Mis' Fleetwood--Mis' Fleetwood! You hurt? It's Polycarp Jenks talkin' to
+you!" He hesitated, pushed the cat away, lifted Val with some difficulty,
+and carried her into the front room and deposited her on the couch. Then he
+hurried after some water.
+
+"Come might' nigh bein' a murder, by granny--from the marks on 'er
+neck--come might' nigh, all right!"
+
+He sprinkled water lavishly upon her face, bethought him of a possible
+whisky flask in the haystack, and ran every step of the way there and back.
+He found a discarded bottle with a very little left in it, and forced the
+liquor down her throat.
+
+"That'll fetch ye if anything will--_he-he!_" he mumbled, tittering from
+sheer excitement. Beyond a very natural desire to do what he could for her,
+he was extremely anxious to bring her to her senses, so that he could hear
+what had happened, and how it had happened.
+
+"Betche Man got jealous of her'n Kenneth--by granny, I betche that's how it
+come about--hey? Feelin' better, Mis' Fleetwood?"
+
+Val had opened her eyes and was looking at him rather stupidly. There was a
+bruise upon her head, as well as upon her throat. She had been stunned,
+and her wits came back slowly. When she recognized Polycarp, she tried
+ineffectually to sit up.
+
+"I--he--is--he--gone?" Her voice was husky, her speech labored.
+
+"Man, you mean? He's gone, yes. Don't you be afeared--not whilst I'm here,
+by granny! How came it he done this to ye?"
+
+Val was still staring at him bewilderedly. Polycarp repeated his question
+three times before the blank look left her eyes.
+
+"I--turned the calf--out--the cow--came and--claimed it--Manley--" She
+lifted her hand as if it were very, very heavy, and fumbled at her throat.
+"Manley--when I told him--he was a--thief--" She dropped her hand wearily
+to her side and closed her eyes, as if the sight of Polycarp's face, so
+close to hers and so insatiably curious and eager and cunning, was more
+than she could bear.
+
+"Go away," she commanded, after a minute or two. "I'm--all right. It's
+nothing. I fell. It was--the heat. Thank you--so much--" She opened her
+eyes and saw him there still. She looked at him gravely, speculatively. She
+waved her hand toward the bedroom. "Get me my hand glass--in there on the
+dresser," she said.
+
+When he had tiptoed in and got it for her, she lifted it up slowly, with
+both hands, until she could see her throat. There were distinct, telltale
+marks upon the tender flesh--unmistakable finger prints. She shivered and
+dropped the glass to the floor. But she stared steadily up at Polycarp, and
+after a moment she spoke with a certain fierceness.
+
+"Polycarp Jenks, don't ever tell--about those marks. I--I don't want any
+one to know. When--after a while--I want to think first--perhaps you can
+help me. Go away now--not away from the ranch, but--let me think. I'm all
+right--or I will be. Please go."
+
+Polycarp recognized that tone, however it might be hoarsened by bruised
+muscles and the shock of what she had suffered. He recognized also that
+look in her eyes; he had always obeyed that look and that tone--he obeyed
+them now, though with visible reluctance. He sat down in the kitchen to
+wait, and while he waited he chewed tobacco incessantly, and ruminated upon
+the mystery which lay behind the few words Val had first spoken, before she
+realized just what it was she was saying.
+
+After a long, long while--so long that even Polycarp's patience was feeling
+the strain--Val opened the door and stood leaning weakly against the
+casing. Her throat was swathed in a piece of white silk.
+
+"I wish, Polycarp, you'd get the team and hitch it to the light rig," she
+said. "I want to go to town, and I don't feel able to drive. Can you take
+me in? Can you spare the time?"
+
+"Why, certainly, I c'n take you in, Mis' Fleetwood. I was jest thinkn' it
+wa'n't safe for you out here--"
+
+"It is perfectly safe," Val interrupted chillingly. "I am going because I
+Want to see Arline Hawley." She raised her hand to the bandage. "I have
+a sore throat," she stated, staring hard at him. Then, with one of her
+impulsive changes, she smiled wistfully.
+
+"You'll be my friend, Polycarp, won't you?" she pleaded. "I can trust you,
+I know, with my--secret. It is a secret--it _must_ be a secret! I'll tell
+you the truth, Polycarp. It was Manley--he had been drinking again. He--we
+had a quarrel--about something. He didn't know what he was doing--he didn't
+mean to hurt me. But I fell--I struck my head; see, there is a great
+lump there." She pushed back her hair to show him the place. "So it's a
+secret--just between you and me, Polycarp Jenks!"
+
+"Why, certainly, Mis' Fleetwood; don't you be the least mite oneasy; I'm
+your friend--I always have been. A feller ain't to be held responsible when
+he's drinkin'--by granny, that's a fact, he ain't."
+
+"No," Val agreed laconically, "I suppose not. Let us go, then, as soon as
+we can, please. I'll stay overnight with Mrs. Hawley, and you can bring me
+back to-morrow, can't you? And you'll remember not to mention--anything,
+won't you, Polycarp?"
+
+Polycarp stood very straight and dignified.
+
+"I hope, Mis' Fleetwood, you can always depend on Polycarp Jenks," he
+replied virtuously. "Your secret is safe with me."
+
+Val smiled--somewhat doubtfully, it is true--and let him go. "Maybe it
+is--I hope so," she sighed, as she turned away to dress for the trip.
+
+All through that long ride to town, Polycarp talked and talked and talked.
+He made surmises and waited openly to hear them confirmed or denied; he
+gave her advice; he told her everything he had ever heard about Manley, or
+had seen or knew from some other source; everything, that is, save what was
+good. The sums he had lost at poker, or had borrowed; the debts he owed to
+the merchants; the reputation he had for "talking big and doing little;"
+the trouble he had had with this man and that man; and what he did not know
+for a certainty he guessed at, and so kept the subject alive.
+
+True, Val did not speak at all, except when he asked her how she felt. Then
+she would reply dully, "Pretty well, thank you, Polycarp." Invariably those
+were the words she used. Whenever he stole a furtive, sidelong glance at
+her, she was staring straight ahead at the great, undulating prairie with
+the brown ribbon, which was the trail, thrown carelessly across to the sky
+line.
+
+Polycarp suspected that she did not see anything--she just stared with her
+eyes, while her thoughts were somewhere else. He was not even sure that she
+heard what he was saying. He thought she must be pretty sick, she was so
+pale, and she had such wide, purple rings under her eyes. Also, he rather
+resented her desire to keep her trouble a secret; he favored telling
+everybody, and organizing a party to go out and run Man Fleetwood out of
+the country, as the very mildest rebuke which the outraged community could
+give and remain self-respecting. He even fell silent daring the last three
+or four miles, while he dwelt longingly upon the keen pleasure there would
+be in leading such an expedition.
+
+"You'll remember, Polycarp, not to speak of this?" Val urged abruptly when
+he drew up before the Hawley Hotel. "Not a hint, you know until--until I
+give you permission. You promised."
+
+"Oh, certainly, Mis' Fleetwood. Certainly. Don't you be a mite oneasy." But
+the tone of Polycarp was dejected in the extreme.
+
+"And please be ready to drive me back in the morning. I should like to be
+at the ranch by noon, at the latest." With that she left him and went into
+the hotel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII. A FRIEND IN NEED
+
+"And so," Val finished, rather apathetically, pushing back the fallen lock
+of hair, "it has come to that. I can't remain here and keep any shred of
+self-respect. All my life I've been taught to believe divorce a terrible
+thing--a crime, almost; now I think it is sometimes a crime _not_ to be
+divorced. For months I have been coming slowly to a decision, so this
+is really not as sudden as it may seem to you. It is humiliating to be
+compelled to borrow money--but I would much rather ask you than any of my
+own people. My pride is going to suffer enough when I meet them, as it is;
+I can't let them know just how miserable and sordid a failure--"
+
+Arline gave an inarticulate snort, bent her scrawny body nearly double,
+and reached frankly into her stocking. She fumbled there a moment and
+straightened triumphantly, grasping a flat, buckskin bag.
+
+"I'd feel like shakin' you if you went to anybody else but me," she
+declared, untying the bag. "I know what men is--Lord knows I see enough of
+'em and their meanness--and if I can help a woman outa the clutches of one,
+I'm tickled to death to git the chancet. I ain't sayin' they're all of 'em
+bad--I c'n afford to give the devil his due and still say that men is the
+limit. The good ones is so durn scarce it ain't one woman in fifty lucky
+enough to git one. All I blame you for is stayin' with him as long as you
+have. I'd of quit long ago; I was beginnin' to think you never would come
+to your senses. But you had to fight that thing out for yourself; every
+woman has to.
+
+"I'm glad you've woke up to the fact that Man Fleetwood didn't git a deed
+to you, body and soul, when he married you; you've been actin' as if you
+thought he had. And I'm glad you've got sense enough to pull outa the game
+when you know the best you can expect is the worst of it. There ain't no
+hope for Man Fleetwood; I seen that when he went back to drinkin' again
+after you was burnt out. I did think that would steady him down, but he
+ain't the kind that braces up when trouble hits him--he's the sort that
+stays down ruther than go to the trouble of gittin' up. He's hopeless now
+as a rotten egg, and has been for the last year. Here; you take the hull
+works, and if you need more, I can easy git it for you by sendin' in to the
+bank."
+
+"Oh, but this is too much!" Val protested when she had counted the money.
+"You're so good--but really and truly, I won't need half--"
+
+Arline pushed away the proffered money impatiently. "How'n time are you
+goin' to tell how much you'll need? Lemme tell you, Val Peyson--I ain't
+goin' to call you by his name no more, the dirty cur!--I've been packin'
+that money in my stockin' for six months, jest so'st to have it handy when
+you wanted it. Divorces cost more'n marriage licenses, as you'll find out
+when you git started. And--"
+
+"You--why, the idea!" Val pursed her lips with something like her old
+spirit. "How could _you_ know I'd need to borrow money? I didn't know it
+myself, even. I--"
+
+"Well, I c'n see through a wall when there's a knothole in it," paraphrased
+Arline calmly. "You may not know it, but you've been gittin' your back-East
+notions knocked outa you pretty fast the last year or so. It was all a
+question of what kinda stuff you was made of underneath. You c'n put a
+polish on most anything, so I couldn't tell, right at first, what there was
+to you. But you're all right--I've seen that a long time back; and so I
+knowed durn well you'd be wantin' money to pull loose with. It takes money,
+though I know it ain't polite to say much about real dollars 'n' cents.
+You'll likely use every cent of that before you're through with the
+deal--and remember, there's a lot more growin' on the same bush, if you
+need it. It's only waitin' to be picked."
+
+Val stared, found her eyes blurring so that she could not see, and with
+a sudden, impulsive movement leaned over and put her arms around Arline,
+unkempt, scrawny, and wholly unlovely though she was.
+
+"Arline, you're an angel of goodness!" she cried brokenly. "You're the best
+friend I ever had in my life--I've had many who petted me and flattered
+me--but you--you _do_ things! I'm ashamed--because I haven't loved you
+every minute since I first saw you. I judged you--I mean--oh, you're pure,
+shining gold inside, instead of--"
+
+"Oh, git out!" Arline was compelled to gulp twice before she could say even
+that much. "I don't shine nowhere--inside er out. I know that well enough.
+I never had no chancet to shine. It's always been wore off with hard
+knocks. But I like shiny folks all right--when they're fine clear through,
+and--"
+
+"Arline--dear, I do love you. I always shall. I--"
+
+Arline loosened her clasp and jumped up precipitately.
+
+"Git out!" she repeated bashfully. "If you git me to cryin', Val Peyson,
+I'll wish you was in Halifax. You go to bed, 'n' go to sleep, er I'll--"
+She almost ran from the room. Outside, she stopped in a darkened corner
+of the hallway and stood for some minutes with her checked gingham apron
+pressed tightly over her face, and several times she sniffed audibly. When
+she finally returned to the kitchen her nose was pink, her eyelids were
+pink, and she was extremely petulant when she caught Minnie eying her
+curiously.
+
+Val had refused to eat any supper, and, beyond telling Arline that she had
+decided to leave Manley and return to her mother in Fern Hill, she had not
+explained anything very clearly--her colorless face, for instance, nor her
+tightly swathed throat, nor the very noticeable bruise upon her temple.
+
+Arline had not asked a single question. Now, however, she spent some time
+fixing a tray with the daintiest food she knew and could procure, and took
+it upstairs with a certain diffidence in her manner and a rare tenderness
+in her faded, worldly-wise eyes.
+
+"You got to eat, you know," she reminded Val gently. "You're bucking up
+ag'inst the hardest part of the trail, and grub's a necessity. Take it like
+you would medicine--unless your throat's too sore. I see you got it all
+tied up."
+
+Val raised her hands in a swift alarm and clasped her throat as if she
+feared Arline would remove the bandages.
+
+"Oh, it's not sore--that is, it is sore--I mean not very much," she
+stammered betrayingly.
+
+Arline set down the tray upon the dresser and faced Val grimly.
+
+"I never asked you any questions, did I?" she demanded. "But you act for
+all the world as if--do you want me to give a guess about that tied-up
+neck, and that black'n'blue lump on your forehead? I never asked any
+questions--I didn't need to. Man Fleetwood's been maulin' you abound. I was
+kinda afraid he'd git to that point some day when he got mad enough; he's
+just the brand to beat up a woman. But if it took a beatin' to bring you
+to the quitting point, I'm glad he done it. _Only_," she added darkly, "he
+better keep outa my reach; I'm jest in the humor to claw him up some if I
+should git close enough. And if I happened to forget I'm a lady, I'd sure
+bawl him out, and the bigger crowd heard me the better. Now, you eat
+this--and don't get the idee you can cover up any meanness of Man
+Fleetwood's; not from me, anyhow. I know men better'n you do; you couldn't
+tell me nothing about 'em that would su'prise me the least bit. I'm only
+thankful he didn't murder you in cold blood. Are you going to eat?"
+
+"Not if you keep on reminding me of such h-horrid things," wailed Val,
+and sobbed into her pillow. "It's bad enough to--to have him ch-choke me
+without having you t-talk about it all the time!"
+
+"Now, honey, don't you waste no tears on a brute like him--he ain't w-worth
+it!" Arline was on her bony knees beside the bed, crying with sympathy and
+self-reproach.
+
+So, in truly feminine fashion, the two wept their way back to the solid
+ground of everyday living. Before they reached that desirable state of
+composure, however, Val told her everything--within certain limits set not
+by caution, but rather by her woman's instinct. She did not, for instance,
+say much about Kent, though she regretted openly that Polycarp knew so much
+about it.
+
+"Hope never needed no newspaper so long as Polycarp lives here," Arline
+grumbled when Val was sitting up again and trying to eat Arline's toast,
+and jelly made of buffalo berries, and sipping the tea which had gone
+cold. "But if I can round him up in time, I'll try and git him to keep his
+mouth shet. I'll scare the liver outa him some way. But if he caught onto
+that calf deal--" She shook her head doubtfully. "The worst of it is,
+Fred's in town, and he's always pumpin' Polycarp dry, jest to find out all
+that's goin' on. You go to bed, and I'll see if I can find out whether
+they're together. If they are--but you needn't to worry none. I reckon I'm
+a match for the both of 'em. Why, I'd dope their coffee and send 'em both
+to sleep till Man got outa the country, if I had to!"
+
+She stood with her hands upon her angular hips and glared at Val.
+
+"I sure would do that, very thing--for _you_," she reiterated solemnly, "I
+don't purtend I'd do it for Man--but I would for you. But it's likely Kent
+has fixed things up so they can't git nothing on Man if they try. He would
+if he said he would; that there's _one_ feller that's on the square. You go
+to bed now, whilst I go on a still hunt of my own. I'll come and tell you
+if there's anything to tell."
+
+It was easy enough to make the promise, but keeping it was so difficult
+that she yielded to the temptation of going to bed and letting Val sleep in
+peace; which she could not have done if she had known that Polycarp Jenks
+and Fred De Garmo left town on horseback within an hour after Polycarp had
+entered it, and that they told no man their errand.
+
+Over behind Brinberg's store, Polycarp had told Fred all he knew, all he
+suspected, and all he believed would come to pass. "Strictly on the quiet,"
+of course--he reminded Fred of that, over and over, because he had promised
+Mrs. Fleetwood that he would not mention it.
+
+"But, by granny," he apologized, "I didn't like the idee of keepin' _a_
+thing like that from _you_; it would kinda look as if I was standin' in on
+the deal, which I ain't. Nobody can't accuse me of rustlin', no matter what
+else I might do; you know that, Fred."
+
+"Sure, I know you're honest, anyway," Fred responded quite sincerely.
+
+"Well, I considered it my duty to tell you. I've kinda had my suspicions
+all fall, that there was somethin' scaly goin' on at Cold Spring. Looked to
+me like Man had too blamed many calves missed by spring round-up--for the
+size of his herd. I dunno, of course, jest where he gits 'em--you'll have
+to find that out. But he's brung twelve er fourteen to the ranch, two er
+three at a time. And what she said when she first come to--told me right
+out, by granny, 'at Man choked her because she called 'im a thief, and
+somethin' about a cow comin' an' claimin' her calf, and her turnin' it out.
+That oughta be might' nigh all the evidence you need, Fred, if you find it.
+She don't know she said it, but she wouldn't of told it, by granny, if it
+wasn't so--now would she?"
+
+"And you say all this happened to-day?" Fred pondered for a minute. "That's
+queer, because I almost caught a fellow last night doing some funny work
+on a calf. A Wishbone cow it was, and her calf fresh burned--a barred-out
+brand, by thunder! If it was to-day, I'd, say Man found it and blotched the
+brand. I wish now I'd hazed them over to the Double Diamond and corralled
+'em, like I had a mind to. But we can find them, easy enough. But that
+was last night, and you say this big setting came off to-day; you _sure_,
+Polly?"
+
+"'Course I'm sure." Polycarp waggled his head solemnly. He was enjoying
+himself to the limit. He was the man on the inside, giving out information
+of the greatest importance, and an officer of the law was hanging anxiously
+upon his words. He spoke slowly, giving weight to every word. "I rode up to
+the house--Man's house--somewhere close to noon, an' there she was, layin'
+on the kitchen floor. Didn't know nothin', an' had the marks of somebody's
+fingers on 'er throat; the rest of her neck's so white they showed up, by
+granny, like--like--" Polycarp never could think of a simile. He always
+expectorated in such an emergency, and left his sentence unfinished. He did
+so now, and Fred cut in unfeelingly.
+
+"Never mind that--you've gone over it half a dozen times. You say it was
+to-day, at noon, or thereabouts. Man must have done it when he found out
+she'd turned the calf loose--he wouldn't unless he was pretty mad, and
+scared. He isn't cold-blooded enough to wait till he'd barred out the
+brand, and then go home and choke his wife. He didn't know about the calf
+till to-day, that's a cinch." He studied the matter with an air of grave
+importance.
+
+"Polycarp," he said abruptly, "I'm going to need you. We've got to find
+that bunch of cattle--it ought to be easy enough, and haze 'em down into
+Man's field where his bunch of calves are--see? Any calf that's been weaned
+in the last three weeks will be pretty likely to claim its mother; and if
+he's got any calves branded that claim cows with some other brand--well--"
+He threw out his hands in a comprehensive gesture. "That's the quickest way
+I know to get him," he said. "I want a witness along, and some help. And
+you," he eyed Polycarp keenly, "ain't safe running around town loose. All
+your brains seem to leak out your mouth. So you come along with me."
+
+"Well--any time after to-morrer," hedged Polycarp, offended by the
+implication that he talked too much. "I've got to drive the team home for
+Mis' Fleetwood to-morrer, I tol' her I would--"
+
+"Well, you won't. You're going to hit the trail with me just as soon as I
+can find a horse for you to ride. We'll sleep at the Double Diamond, and
+start from there in the morning. And if I catch you letting a word outa you
+about this deal, I'll just about have to arrest you for--" He did not
+quite know what, but the very vagueness of the threat had its effect upon
+Polycarp.
+
+He went without further argument, though first he went to the Hawley
+Hotel--with Fred close beside him as a precaution against imprudent
+gossip--and left word in the office that he would not be able to drive Mrs.
+Fleetwood home, the next morning, but would be back to take her out the day
+after that, if she did not mind staying in town. It was that message which
+Arline deliberately held back from Val until morning.
+
+"You better stay here," she advised then. "Polycarp an' Fred's up to some
+devilment, that's a cinch; but whatever it is, you're better off right here
+with me. S'posen you should drive out there and run into Man--what then?"
+
+Val shivered. "I--that's the only thing I can't bear," she admitted, as if
+the time for proud dignity and reserve had gone by. "If I could be sure I
+wouldn't need to meet him, I'd rather go alone; really and truly, I would.
+You know the horses are perfectly safe--I've driven them to town fifty
+times if I have once. I had to, out there alone so much of the time. I'd
+rather not have Polycarp spying around. I've got to pack up--there are so
+many things of no value to--to _him_, things I brought out here with me.
+And there are all my manuscripts; I can't leave them lying around, even if
+they aren't worth anything; especially since they aren't worth anything."
+She pushed back her hair with a weary movement. "If I could only be
+sure--if I knew where _he_ is," she sighed.
+
+"I'll lend you my gun," Arline offered in good faith. "If he comes around
+you and starts any funny business again, you can stand him off, even if you
+got some delicate feelin's about blowin' his brains out."
+
+"Oh, I couldn't. I'm deadly afraid of guns." Val shuddered.
+
+"Well, then you can't go atone. I'd go with you, if you could git packed
+up so as to come back to-day. I guess Min could make out to git two meals
+alone."
+
+"Oh, no. Really and truly, Arline, I'd just as soon go alone. I would
+rather, dear."
+
+Arline was not accustomed to being called "dear." She surrendered with some
+confusion and a blush.
+
+"Well, you better wait," she admonished temporizingly. "Something may turn
+up."
+
+Presently something did turn up. She rushed breathlessly into Val's room
+and caught her by the arm.
+
+"Now's your chancet, Val," she hissed in a loud whisper. "Man jest now rode
+into town; he's over in Pop's place--I seen him go in. He's good for the
+day, sure. I'll have Hank hitch right up, an' you can go down to the stable
+and start from there, so'st he won't see you. An' I'll keep an eye out, 'n'
+if he leaves town I won't be fur behind, lemme tell you. He won't, though;
+there ain't one chancet in a hundred he'll leave that saloon till he's
+full--an' if he tries t' go then, I'll have somebody lock 'im up in the ice
+house till you git back. You want to hurry up that packin', an' git in here
+quick's you can."
+
+She went to the stable with Val, her apron thrown over her head for want
+of a hat. "When Val was settling herself in the seat, Arline caught at the
+wheel.
+
+"Say! How'n time you goin' to git your trunks loaded into the wagon?" she
+cried. "You can't do it alone." Val parsed her lips; she had not thought of
+that.
+
+"But Polycarp will come, by the time I am ready," she decided. "You
+couldn't keep him away, Arline; he would be afraid he might miss something,
+because I suppose ours is the only ranch in the country where the wheels
+aren't turning smoothly. Polycarp and I can manage."
+
+Hank, grinning under his ragged, brown mustache, handed her the lines.
+"I've got my orders," he told her briefly. "I'll watch out the trail's kept
+clear."
+
+"Oh, thank you. I've so many good friends," Val answered, giving him a
+smile to stir his sluggish blood. "Good-bye, Arline. Don't worry about me,
+there's a dear. I shall not be back before to-morrow night, probably."
+
+Both Arline and Hank stood where they were and watched her out of sight
+before they turned back to the sordid tasks which made up their lives.
+
+"She'll make it--she's the proper stuff," Hank remarked, and lighted his
+pipe. Arline, for a wonder, sighed and said nothing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII. CAUGHT!
+
+After two nights and a day of torment unbearable, Kent bolted from his
+work, which would have taken him that day, as it had done the day before,
+in a direction opposite to that which his mind and his heart followed, and
+without apology or explanation to his foreman rode straight to Cold Spring
+Coulee. He had no very definite plan, except to see Val. He did not even
+know what he would say when he faced her.
+
+Michael was steaming from nose to tail when he stopped at the yard gate,
+which shows how impatience had driven his master. Kent glanced quickly
+around the place as he walked up the narrow path to the house. Nothing
+was changed in the slightest particular, as far as he could see, and he
+realized then that he had been uneasy as well as anxious. Both doors were
+closed, so that he was obliged to knock before Val became visible. He had a
+fleeting impression of extreme caution in the way she opened the door and
+looked out, but he forgot it immediately in his joy at seeing her.
+
+"Oh, it's you. Come in, and--you won't mind if I close the door? I'm afraid
+I'm the victim of nerves, to-day."
+
+"Why?" Kent was instantly solicitous. "Has anything happened since I was
+here?"
+
+Val shook her head, smiling faintly. "Nothing that need to worry _you_,
+pal. I don't want to talk about worries. I want to be cheered up; I haven't
+laughed, Kent, for so long I'm afraid my facial muscles are getting stiff.
+Say something funny, can't you?"
+
+Kent pushed his hat far back on his head and sat down upon a corner of the
+table. "Such is life in the far West--and the farther West you go, the
+livelier--" he began to declaim dutifully.
+
+"The livelier it gets. Yes, I've heard that a million tunes, I believe. I
+can't laugh at that; I never did think it funny." She sighed, and twitched
+her shoulders impatiently because of it. "I see you brought back the
+glasses," she remarked inanely. "You certainly weren't in any great hurry,
+were you?"
+
+"Oh, they had us riding over east of the home ranch, hazing in some outa
+the hills. I'm supposed to be over there right now--but I ain't. I expect
+I'll get the can, all right--"
+
+"If you're going away, what do you care?" she taunted.
+
+"H'm--sure, what do I care?" He eyed her from under his brows while he bent
+to light a match upon the sole of his boot. Val had long ago settled his
+compunctions about smoking in her presence. "You seem to be all tore up,
+here," he observed irrelevantly. "Cleaning house?"
+
+"Yes--cleaning house." Val smiled ambiguously.
+
+"Hubby in town?"
+
+"Yes--he went in yesterday, and hasn't come back yet."
+
+Kent smoked for a moment meditatively. "I found that calf, all right," he
+informed her at last. "It was too late to ride around this way and tell you
+that night. So you needn't worry any more about that."
+
+"I'm not worrying about that." Val stooped and picked up a hairpin from the
+floor, and twirled it absently in her fingers. "I don't think it matters,
+any more. Yesterday afternoon Fred De Garmo and Polycarp Jenks came into
+the coulee with a bunch of cattle, and turned all the calves out of the
+river field with them; and, after a little, they drove the whole lot of
+them away somewhere--over that way." She waved a slim hand to the west.
+"They let out the calves in the corral, too. I saw them from the window,
+but I didn't ask them any questions. I really didn't need to, did I?" She
+grazed him with a glance. "I thought perhaps you had failed to find that
+calf; I'm glad you did, though--so it wasn't that started them hunting
+around here--Polycarp and Fred I mean."
+
+Kent looked at her queerly. Her voice was without any emotion whatever, as
+if the subject held no personal interest for her. He finished his cigarette
+and threw the stub out into the yard before either of them spoke another
+word. He closed the door again, stood there for a minute making up his
+mind, and went slowly over to where she was sitting listlessly in a chair,
+her hands folded loosely in her lap. He gripped with one hand the chairback
+and stared down at her high-piled, yellow hair.
+
+"How long do you think I'm going to stand around and let you be dragged
+into trouble like this?" he began abruptly. "You know what I told you the
+other day--I could say the same thing over again, and a lot more; and I'd
+mean more than I could find words for. Maybe you can stand this sort
+of thing--I can't. I'm not going to try. If you're bound to stick to
+that--that gentleman, I'm going to get outa the country where I can't see
+you killed by inches. Every time I come, you're a little bit whiter, and a
+little bigger-eyed--I can't stand it, I tell you!
+
+"You weren't made for a hell like you're living. You were meant to be
+happy--and I was meant to make you happy. Every morning when I open my
+eyes--do you know what I think? I think it's another day we oughta be happy
+in, you and me." He took her suddenly by the shoulder and brought her up,
+facing him, where he could look into her eyes.
+
+"We've only got just one life to live, Val!" he pleaded. "And we could be
+happy together--I'd stake my life on that. I can't go on forever just being
+friends, and eating my heart out for you, and seeing you abused--and what
+for? Just because a preacher mumbled some words over you two! Only for
+that, you wouldn't stay with him over-night, and you know it! Is _that_
+what ought to tie two human beings together--without love, or even
+friendship? You hate him; you can't look me in the eyes and say you don't.
+And he's tired of you. Some other woman would please him better. And I
+could make you happy!"
+
+Val broke away from his grasp, and retreated until the table was between
+them. Her listlessness was a thing forgotten. She was panting with the
+quick beating of her heart.
+
+"Kent--don't, pal! You mustn't say those things--it's wicked."
+
+"It's true," he cried hotly. "Can you look at me and say it ain't the
+truth?"
+
+"You've spoiled our friendship, Kent!" she accused, while she evaded his
+question. "It meant so much to me--just your dear, good friendship."
+
+"My love could mean a whole lot more," he declared sturdily.
+
+"But you mustn't say those things--you mustn't feel that way, Kent!"
+
+"Oh!" He laughed grimly. "Mustn't I? How are you going to stop me?" He
+stared hard at her, his face growing slowly rigid. "There's just one way to
+stop me from saying such wicked things," he told her. "You can tell me you
+don't care anything about me, and never could, not even if that down-east
+conscience of yours didn't butt into the game. You can tell me that, and
+swear it's the truth, and I'll leave the country. I'll go so far you'll
+newer see me again, so I'll never bother you any more. I can't promise I'll
+stop loving you--but for my own sake I'll sure try hard enough." He set his
+teeth hard together and stood quiet, watching her.
+
+Val tied to answer him. Evidently she could not manage her voice, for he
+saw her begin softly beating her lips with her fist, fighting to get back
+her self-control. Once or twice he had seen her do that, when, womanlike,
+the tears would come in spite of her.
+
+"I don't want you to go a-away," she articulated at last, with a hint of
+stubbornness.
+
+"Well, what _do_ you want? I can't stay, unless--" He did not attempt to
+finish the sentence. He knew there was no need; she understood well enough
+the alternative.
+
+For long minutes she did not speak, because she could not. Like many women,
+she fought desperately against the tears which seemed a badge of her
+femininity. She sat down in a chair, dropped her face upon her folded
+arms, and bit her lips until they were sore. Kent took a step toward her,
+reconsidered, and went over to the window, where he stood staring moodily
+out until she began speaking. Even then, he did not turn immediately toward
+her.
+
+"You needn't go, Kent," she said with some semblance of calm. "Because I'm
+going. I didn't tell you--but I'm going home. I'm going to get free, by
+the same law that tied me to him. You are right--I have a 'down-east'
+conscience. I think I was born with it. It demands that I get my freedom
+honestly; I can't steal it--pal. I couldn't be happy if I did that, no
+matter how hard I might try--or you."
+
+He turned eagerly toward her then, but she stopped him with a gesture.
+
+"No--stay where you are. I want to solve my problem and--and leave you out
+of it; you're a complication, pal--when you talk like--like you've just
+been talking. It makes my conscience wonder whether I'm honest with myself.
+I've got to leave you out, don't you see? And so, leaving you out, I don't
+feel that any woman should be expected to go on like I'm doing. You don't
+know--I couldn't tell you just how--impossible--this marriage of mine has
+become. The day after--well, yesterday--no, the day before yesterday--he
+came home and found out--what I'd done. He--I couldn't stay here, after
+that, so--"
+
+"What did he do?" Kent demanded sharply. "He didn't dare to lay his hands
+on you--did he? By--"
+
+"Don't swear, Kent--I hear so much of that from him!" Val smiled curiously.
+"He--he swore at me. I couldn't stay with him, after that--could I, dear?"
+Whether she really meant to speak that last word or not, it set Kent's
+blood dancing so that he forgot to urge his question farther. He took two
+eager steps toward her, and she retreated again behind the table.
+
+"Kent, don't! How can I tell you anything, if you won't be good?" She
+waited until he was standing rather sulkily by the window again. "Anyway,
+it doesn't matter now what he has done. I am going to leave him. I'm going
+to get a divorce. Not even the strictest 'down-east' conscience could
+demand that I stay. I'm perfectly at ease upon that point. About this last
+trouble--with the calves--if I could help him, I would, of course. But all
+I could say would only make matters worse--and I'm a wretched failure at
+lying. I can help him more, I think, by going away. I feel certain there's
+going to be trouble over those calves. Fred De Garmo never would have come
+down here and driven them all away, would he, unless there was going to be
+trouble?"
+
+"If he came in here and got the calves, it looks as if he meant business,
+all right." Kent frowned absently at the white window curtain. "I've seen
+the time," he added reflectively, "when I'd be all broke up to have Man get
+into trouble. We used to be pretty good friends!"
+
+"A year ago it would have broken my heart," Val sighed. "We do change so! I
+can't quite understand Why I should feel so indifferent about it now; even
+the other day it was terrible. But when I felt his fingers--" she stopped
+guiltily. "He seems a stranger to me now. I don't even hate him so very
+much. I don't want to meet him, though."
+
+"Neither do I." But there was a different meaning in Kent's tone. "So
+you're going to quit?" He looked at her thoughtfully--"You'll leave your
+address, I hope!"
+
+"Oh, yes." Val's voice betrayed some inward trepidation. "I'm not running
+away; I'm just going."
+
+"I see." He sighed, impatient at the restraint she had put upon him. "That
+don't mean you won't ever come back, does it? Or that the trains are going
+to quit carrying passengers to your town? Because you can't _always_ keep
+me outa your 'problem,' let me tell you. Is it against the rules to ask
+when you're going--and how?"
+
+"Just as soon as I can get my trunks packed, and Polycarp--or
+somebody--comes to help me load them into the spring wagon. I promised
+Arline Hawley I would be in town to-night. I don't know, though--I don't
+seem to be making much progress with my packing." She smiled at him more
+brightly. "Let's wade ashore, pal, and get to work instead of talking about
+things better left alone. I know just exactly what you're thinking--and I'm
+going to let you help me instead of Polycarp. I'm frightfully angry with
+him, anyway. He promised me, on his word of honor, that he wouldn't mention
+a thing--and he must have actually hunted for a chance to tell! He didn't
+have the nerve to come to the house yesterday, when he was here with
+Fred--perhaps he won't come to-day, after all. So you'll have to help me
+make my getaway, pal."
+
+Kent wavered. "You're the limit, all right," he told her after a period of
+hesitation. "You just wait, old girl, till you get that conscience of
+yours squared! What shall I do? I can pack a war-bag in one minute and
+three-quarters, and a horse in five minutes--provided he don't get gay and
+pitch the pack off a time or two, and somebody's around to help throw the
+hitch. Just tell me where to start in, and you won't be able to see me for
+dust!"
+
+"You seem in a frightful hurry to have me go," Val complained, laughing
+nevertheless with the nervous reaction. "Packing a trunk takes time, and
+care, and intelligence."
+
+"Now isn't that awful?" Kent's eyes flared with mirth, all the more
+pronounced because it was entirely superficial. "Well, you take the time
+and care, Mrs. Goodpacker, and I'll cheerfully furnish the intelligence,
+This goes, I reckon?" He squeezed a pink cushion into as small a space as
+possible, and held it out at arm's length.
+
+"That goes--to Arline. _Don't_ put it in there!" Val's laughter was not far
+from hysteria. Kent was pretending to stuff the pink cushion into her hand
+bag.
+
+"Better take it; you'll--"
+
+The front door was pushed violently open and Manley almost fell into the
+room. Val gave a little, inarticulate cry and shrank back against the wall
+before she could recover herself. They had for the moment forgotten Manley,
+and all he stood for in the way of heartbreak.
+
+A strange-looking Manley he was, with his white face and staring, bloodshot
+eyes, and the cruel, animal lines around his mouth. Hardly recognizable to
+one who had not seen him since three or four years before, he would have
+been. He stopped short just over the threshold, and glanced suspiciously
+from one to the other before he came farther into the room.
+
+"Dig up some grub, Val--in a bag, so I can carry it on horseback," he
+commanded. "And a blanket--where did you put those rifle cartridges?" He
+hurried across the room to where his rifle and belt hung upon the wall,
+just over the little, homemade bookcase. "I had a couple of boxes--where
+are they?" He snatched down the rifle, took the belt, and began buckling it
+around him with fumbling fingers.
+
+Mechanically Val reached upon a higher shelf and got him the two boxes of
+shells. Her eyes were fixed curiously upon his face.
+
+"What has happened?" she asked him as he tore open a box and began pushing
+the shells, one by one, into his belt.
+
+"Fred De Garmo--he tried to arrest me--in town--I shot him dead," He
+glanced furtively at Kent. "Can I take your horse, Kent? I want to get
+across the river before--"
+
+"You shot--Fred--" Val was staring at him stupidly. He whirled savagely
+toward her.
+
+"Yes, and I'd shoot any man that walked up and tried to take me. He was
+a fool if he thought all he had to do was crook his finger and say 'Come
+along.' It was over those calves--and I'd say you had a hand in it, if I
+hadn't found that calf, and saw how you burned out the brand before you
+turned it loose. You might have told me--I wouldn't have--" He shifted his
+gaze toward Kent. "The hell of it is, the sheriff happened to be in town
+for something; he's back a couple of miles--for God's sake, move! And get
+that flour and bacon, and some matches. I've got to get across the river. I
+can shake 'em off, on the other side. Hurry, Val!"
+
+She went out into the kitchen, and they heard her moving about, collecting
+the things he needed.
+
+"I'll have to take your horse, Kent." Manley turned to him with a certain
+wheedling tone, infinitely disgusting to the other. "Mine's all in--I rode
+him down, getting this far. I've got to get across the river, and into
+the hills the other side--I can dodge 'em over there. You can have my
+horse--he's good as yours, anyway." He seemed to fed a slight discomfort at
+Kent's silence. "You've always stood by me--anyway, it wasn't so much
+my fault--he came at me unawares, and says 'Man Fleetwood, you're my
+prisoner!' Why, the very tone of him was an insult--and I won't stand for
+being arrested--I pulled my gun and got him through the lungs--heard 'em
+yelling he was dead--Hurry up with that grub! I can't wait here till--"
+
+"I ought to tell you Michael's no good for water," Kent forced himself to
+say. "He's liable to turn back on you; he's scared of it."
+
+"He won't turn back with _me_--not with old Jake Bondy at my heels!" Manley
+snatched the bag of provisions from Val when she appeared, and started for
+the door.
+
+"You better leave off some of that hardware, then," Kent advised
+perfunctorily. "You're liable to have to swim."
+
+"I don't care how I get across, just so--" A panic seemed to seize him
+then. Without a word of thanks or farewell he rushed out, threw himself
+into Kent's saddle without taking time to tie on his bundle of bacon and
+flour, or remembering the blanket he had asked for. Holding his provisions
+under his arm, his rifle in one hand, and his reins clutched in the other,
+he struck the spurs home and raced down the coulee toward the river. Fred
+and Polycarp had not troubled to put up the wire gate after emptying the
+river field, so he had a straight run of it to the very river bank. The two
+stood together at the window and watched him go.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV. RETRIBUTION
+
+"He thought it was I burned out that, brand; did you notice what he said?"
+Val, as frequently happens in times of stress, spoke first of a trivial
+matter, before her mind would grasp the greater issues.
+
+"He'll never make it," said Kent, speaking involuntarily his thought.
+"There comes old Jake Bondy, now, down the hill. Still, I dunno--if Michael
+takes to the water all right--"
+
+"If the sheriff comes here, what shall we tell him? Shall we--"
+
+"He won't. He's turning off, don't you see? He must have got a sight of
+Man from the top of the hill. Michael's tolerably fresh, and Jake's horse
+isn't; that makes a big difference."
+
+Val weakened unexpectedly, as the full meaning of it all swept through her
+mind.
+
+"Oh, it's horrible!" she whispered. "Kent, what can we do?"
+
+"Not a thing, only keep our heads, and don't give way to nerves," he
+hinted. "It's something out of our reach; let's not go all to pieces over
+it, pal."
+
+She steadied under his calm voice.
+
+"I'm always acting foolish just at the wrong time--but to think he could--"
+
+"Don't think! You'll have enough of that to do, managing your own affairs.
+All this doesn't change a thing for you. It makes you feel bad--and for
+that I could kill him, almost!" So much flashed out, and then he brought
+himself in hand again. "You've still got to pack your trunks, and take the
+train home, just the same as if this hadn't happened. I didn't like the
+idea at first, but now I see it's the best thing you can do, for the
+present. After awhile--we'll see about it. Don't look out, if it upsets
+you, Val. You can't do any good, and you've got to save your nerves. Let
+pull down the shade--"
+
+"Oh, I've got to see!" Perversely, she caught up the field glasses from the
+table, drew them from their case, and, letting down the upper window sash
+with a slam, focused the glasses upon the river. "He usually crosses right
+at the mouth of the coulee--" She swung the glasses slowly about. "Oh,
+there he is--just on the bank. The river looks rather high--oh, your horse
+doesn't want to go in, Kent. He whirls on his hind feet, and tried to bolt
+when Manley started in--"
+
+Kent had been watching her face jealously. "Here, let me take a look, will
+you? I can tell--" She yielded reluctantly, and in a moment he had caught
+the focus.
+
+"Tell me what you see, Kent--everything," she begged, looking anxiously
+from his face to the river.
+
+"Well, old Jake is fogging along down the coulee--but he ain't to the river
+yet, not by a long shot! Ah-h! Man's riding back to take a run in. That's
+the stuff--got Michael's feet wet that time, the old freak! They came near
+going clean outa sight."
+
+"The sheriff--is he close enough--" Val began fearfully. "Oh, we're too far
+away to do a thing!"
+
+Kent kept his eyes to the glasses. "We couldn't do a thing if we were right
+there. Man's in swimming water already. Jake ain't riding in--from the
+motions he's ordering Man back."
+
+"Oh, please let me look a minute! I won't get excited, Kent, and I'll tell
+you everything I see--_please!_" Val's teeth were fairly chattering with
+excitement, so that Kent hesitated before he gave up the glasses. But it
+seemed boorish to refuse. She snatched at them as he took them from his
+eyes, and placed them nervously to her own.
+
+"Oh, I see them both!" she cried, after a second or two. "The sheriff's got
+his rifle in his hands--Kent, do you suppose he'd--"
+
+"Just a bluff, pal. They all do it. What--"
+
+Val gave a start. "Oh, he shot, Kent! I saw him take aim--it looked as if
+he pointed it straight at Manley, and the smoke--" She moved the glasses
+slowly, searching the river.
+
+"Well, he'd have to be a dandy, to hit anything on the water, and with the
+sun in his eyes, too," Kent assured her, hardly taking his eyes from her
+face with its varying expression. Almost he could see what was taking place
+at the river, just by watching her.
+
+"Oh, there's Manley, away out! Why, your Michael is swimming beautifully,
+Kent! His head is high out of the water, and the water is churning
+like--Oh, Manley's holding his rifle up over his head--he's looking back
+toward shore. I wonder," she added softly, "what he's thinking about!
+Manley! you're my husband--and once I--"
+
+"Draw a bead on that gazabo on shore," Kent interrupted her faint faring up
+of sentiment toward the man she had once loved and loved no more.
+
+Val drew a long breath and turned the glasses reluctantly from the
+fugitive. "I don't see him--oh, yes! He's down beside a rock, on one knee,
+and he's taking a rest across the rock, and is squinting along--oh, he
+can't hit him at that distance, can he, Kent? Would he dare--why, it would
+be murder, wouldn't it? Oh-h--_he shot again_!"
+
+Kent reached up a hand and took the glasses from her eyes with a masterful
+gesture. "You let me look," he said laconically. "I'm steadier than you."
+
+Val crept closer to him, and looked up into his face. She could read
+nothing there; his mouth was shut tight so that it was a stern, straight
+line, but that told her nothing. He always looked so when he was intent
+upon something, or thinking deeply. She turned her eyes toward the river,
+flowing smoothly across the mouth of the coulee. Between, the land lay
+sleeping lazily in the hazy sunlight of mid-autumn. The grass was brown,
+the rocky outcroppings of the coulee wall yellow and gray and red--and the
+river was so blue, and so quiet! Surely that sleepy coulee and that placid
+river could not be witnessing a tragedy. She turned her head, irritated
+by its very calmness. Her eyes dwelt wistfully upon Kent's half-concealed
+face.
+
+"What are they doing now, Kent?" Her tone was hushed.
+
+"I can't--exactly--" He mumbled absently, his mind a mile away. She waited
+a moment.
+
+"Can you see--Manley?"
+
+This time he did not answer at all; he seemed terribly far off, as if only
+his shell of a body remained with her in the room.
+
+"Why don't you talk?" she wailed. She waited until she could endure no
+more, then reached up and snatched the glasses from his eyes.
+
+"I can't help it--I shall go crazy standing here. I've just got to see!"
+she panted.
+
+For a moment he clung to the glasses and stared down at her. "You better
+not, sweetheart," he urged gently, but when she still held fast he let them
+go. She raised them hurriedly to her eyes, and turned to the river with a
+shrinking impatience to know the worst and have it over with.
+
+"E-everything j-joggles so," she whimpered complainingly, trying vainly
+to steady the glasses. He slipped his arms around her, and let her lean
+against him; she did not even seem to realize it. Just then she had caught
+sight of something, and her intense interest steadied her so that she stood
+perfectly still.
+
+"Why, your horse--" she gasped. "Michael--he's got his feet straight up in
+the air--oh, Kent, he's rolling over sad over! I can't see--" She held her
+breath.
+
+The glasses sagged as if they had grown all at once too heavy to hold.
+"I--I thought I saw--" She shivered and hid her face upon one upflung arm.
+
+Kent caught up the glasses and looked long at the river, unmindful of the
+girl sobbing wildly beside him. Finally he turned to her, hesitated, and
+then gathered her close in his arms. The glasses slid unheeded to the
+floor.
+
+"Don't cry--it's better this way, though it's hard enough, God knows." His
+voice was very gentle. "Think how awful it would have been, Val, if the
+law had got him. Don't cry like that! Such things are happening every day,
+somewhere--" He realized suddenly that this was no way to comfort her, and
+stopped. He patted her shoulder with a sense of blank helplessness. He
+could make love--but this was not the time for love-making; and since he
+was denied that outlet for his feelings, he did not know what to do, except
+that he led her to the couch, and settled her among the cushions so that
+she would be physically comfortable, at least. He turned restlessly to the
+window, looked; out, and then went to the couch and bent over her.
+
+"I'm going out to the gate--I want to see Jake Bondy. He's coming up the
+coulee," he said. "I won't be far. Poor little girl--poor little pal, I
+wish I could help you." He touched his lips to her hair, so lightly she
+could not feel it, and left her.
+
+At the gate he met, not the sheriff, who was riding slowly, and had just
+passed through the field gate, but Arline and Hank, rattling up in the
+Hawley buck-board.
+
+"Thank the good Lord!" he exclaimed when he helped her from the rig. "I
+never was so glad to see anybody in my life. Go on in--she's in there
+crying her heart out. Man's dead--the sheriff shot him in the river--oh,
+there's been hell to pay out here!"
+
+"My heavens above!" Arline stared up at him while she grasped the
+significance of his words. "I knowed he'd hit for here--I followed right
+out as quick as Hank could hitch up the team. Did you hear about Fred--"
+
+"Yes, yes, yes, I know all about it!" Kent was guilty of pulling her
+through the gate, and then pushing her toward the house. "You go and do
+something for that poor girl. Pack her up and take her to town as quick as
+God'll let you. There's been misery enough for her out here to kill a dozen
+women."
+
+He watched until she had reached the porch, and then swung back to Hank,
+sitting calmly in the buckboard, with the lines gripped between his knees
+while he filled his pipe.
+
+"I can take care of the man's side of this business, fast enough," Kent
+confessed whimsically, "but there's some things it takes a woman to
+handle." He glanced again over his shoulder, gave a huge sigh of relief
+when he glimpsed Arline's thin face as she passed the window and knelt
+beside the couch, and turned with a lighter heart to meet the sheriff.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lonesome Land, by B. M. Bower
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LONESOME LAND ***
+
+***** This file should be named 8537.txt or 8537.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/8/5/3/8537/
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Charles
+Franks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
+  www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at 809
+North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887.  Email
+contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the
+Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:  www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For forty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+