B M Bower - Wolverine Page 7

  "I 'm awfully glad he came, anyway." Billy Louise pulled down a budded lilac branch and sniffed at it. "I won't have to stay all night, now. I was going to."

  "In that case, the young man is welcome as a gold mine. Here they come -- he and Mrs. Martha. You 'll have to introduce me, Bill-the-Conk; I have never met the lady." Ward hastily returned the mop to its corner, rolled down his sleeves, and picked up his gloves. Then he stepped outside and waited beside Billy Louise, looking not in the least like a man who has just wiped a lot of dishes and scrubbed a floor.

  The nephew, striding along behind Marthy and showing head and shoulders above her, seemed not to resent any little mischance, such as muddy water flirted upon him from a broom. He grinned reminiscently as he came up, shook hands with the two of them, and did not let his glance dwell too long or too often upon Billy Louise, nor too briefly upon Ward.

  "You 've got a splendid place here, Aunt Martha," he told the old woman appreciatively. "I 'd no idea there was such a little beauty-spot down here. This is even more picturesque than that homey-looking ranch we passed a few miles back, down in that little valley. I was hoping that was your ranch when I first saw it; and when I found it was n't I came near stopping, anyway. I 'm glad I resisted the temptation, now. This is worth coming a long way to see."

  "I ain't never had a chance to do all I wanted to with it," said Marthy, with the first hint of apology Billy Louise had ever heard from her. "I only had one pair of hands to work with -- "

  "We 'll fix that part. Don't you worry a minute. You 're going to sit in a rocking-chair and give orders, from now on. And if I can't make good here, I ought to be booted all the way up that spooky gorge. Is n't that right?" He turned to Warren with a certain air of appraisement behind the unmistakable cordiality of his voice.

  "A man ought to make good here, all right," Ward agreed neutrally. "It 's a fine place."

  "It ain't as fine as I 'd like to see it," began Marthy depreciatingly.

  "As you will see it, let 's say -- if that does n't sound too conceited from a tenderfoot," supplemented the nephew, and laid his hand upon her shoulder with a gentle little pat. "Folks, I don't want to see too exuberantly sure of myself, but -- " he waved a carefully-kept hand eloquently at the luxuriance around him, " -- I 'm all fussed up over this place, honest. I thought I was coming to a shack in the middle of the sage-brush; I was primed to buckle down and make good even in the desert. And bumping into this sort of thing without warning has gone to my alleged brain a bit. What I don't know about ranching would fill a library; but there 's this much anyway. There won't be any more ditch-digging for a certain game little lady in this Cove." He gave the shoulder another pat, and he smiled down at her in a way that made Billy Louise blink. And Marthy, who had probably never before been called a game little lady, came near breaking down and crying before them all.

  When Ward went to the stable after Blue, half an hour later, Charlie Fox went with him. His manner when they were alone was different; not so exuberantly cheerful -- more frank and practical.

  "Honest, it floored me completely to see what that poor old woman has been up against down here," he told Warren, stuffing tobacco into a silver-rimmed, briar pipe while Ward saddled Blue. "I don't know a hell of a lot about this ranch game; but if that old lady can put it across, I guess I can wobble along somehow. Too bad the old man cashed in just now; but Aunt Martha as good as told me he was n't much force, so maybe I can play a lone hand here as easy as I could have done with him. Live near here?"

  "Fifteen miles or so." Ward was not in his most expansive mood, chiefly for the reason that this man was a stranger, and of strangers he was inclined to fight shy.

  "Oh, well -- it might have been fifty. I know how you fellows measure distances out here. I 'm likely to need a little coaching, now and then, if I live up to what I just now told the old lady."

  "From all I know of her, you won't need to go out of the Cove for advice."

  "Well that 's right, judging from the looks of things. A woman that can go up against a proposition like she did to-day and handle it alone, is no mental weakling; to say nothing of the way this ranch looks. All right, Warren; I 'll make out alone, I reckon."

  Afterwards, when Ward thought it over, he remembered gratefully that Charlie Fox had refrained from attempting any discussion of Billy Louise or from asking any questions even remotely personal. He knew enough about men to appreciate the tactful silences of the stranger, and when Billy Louise, on the way home, predicted that the nephew was going to be a success, Ward did not feel like qualifying the verdict.

  "He 's going to be a godsend to the old lady." he said. "He seems to have his sights raised to making things come easier for her from now on."

  "Well, she certainly deserves it. For a college young man -- the ordinary, smart young man who comes out here to astonish the natives -- he 's almost human. I was so afraid that Marthy 'd get him out here and then discover he was a perfect nuisance. So many men are."

  CHAPTER VI

  A Matter Of Twelve Months Or So

  OUT in the wide spaces, where homes are but scattered oases in the general emptiness, life does not move uniformly, so far as it concerns incidents or acquaintanceships. A man or a ranch may experience complete isolation, and the unbroken monotony which sometimes accompanies it, for a month at a time. Summer work or winter storm may be the barrier temporarily raised, and life resolves itself into a succession of days and nights unbroken by outside influences. They leave their mark upon humans -- these periods of isolation. For better, for worse, the man changes slowly with the months; he grows more bovine in his phlegmatic acceptance of his environment, or he becomes restless and fired with a surplus energy of ambition, or he falls to dreaming dreams; whatever angle he takes, he changes, imperceptibly perhaps, but inevitably.

  Then the monotony is broken and sometimes with violence. Incident rushes in upon the heels of incident, and life becomes as tumultuous as the many moods of nature when it has a wide, open land for a playground.

  That is why, perhaps, so much of western life is painted with broad strokes and raw colors. You are given the crowded action, the unleashing of emotions and temperaments that have smoldered long under the blanket of solitary living. You are shown an effect without being given the cause of that effect. You pronounce the West wild, and you never think of the long winters that bred in silence and brooding solitude those storm-periods which seem so primitively savage; of the days wherein each nature is thrown upon its own resources, with nothing to feed upon but itself and its own personal interests. And so characters change, and one wonders why.

  There was Billy Louise, with her hands and her mind full of the problems her father had died still trying to solve. She did not in the least realize that she was attempting anything out of the ordinary when she took a half-developed ranch in the middle of a land almost as wild as it had been when the Indians wandered over it unmolested, a few cattle and horses and a bundle of debts to make her head swim, and set herself the problem of increasing the number of cattle and eliminating the debts, and of wresting prosperity out of a condition of picturesquely haphazard poverty. She went about it with the pathetic confidence of youth and ignorance. She rode up and down the canyons and over the higher, grassier ridges, to watch the cattle on their summer range and keep them from straying. She went with John Pringle after posts and helped him fence certain fertile slopes and hollows for winter grazing. She drove the rickety old mower through the waving grass along the creek bottoms and hummed little, contented tunes while she watched the grass sway and fall evenly when the sickle shuttled through. She put on her gymnasium bloomers and drove the hay wagon, and felt only a pleasurable thrill of excitement when John Pringle inadvertently pitched an indignant rattlesnake up to her with a forkful of hay. She killed the snake with her pitchfork, and pinched off the rattles, proud of their size and number.

  When she sold seven fat, three-year-old steers that fall and paid a note twice renewed, managing besides
to buy the winter supply of "grub" and a sewing-machine and a set of silver teaspoons for her mother, oh, but she was proud!

  Ward rode down to the ranch that night, and Billy Louise showed him the note with its red stamp, oblong and imposing and slightly blurred on the "paid" side. Ward was almost as proud as she, if looks and tones went for anything, and he helped Billy Louise a good deal by telling her just how much she ought to pay for the yearlings old Johnson, over on Snake River, had for sale. Also he told her how much hay it would take to winter them -- though she knew that already -- and just what percentage of profit she might expect from a given number in a given period of time.

  He spoke of his own work and plans, as well. He was going into cattle, also, as fast as possible, he said. In a few years the sheep would probably come in and crowd them out, but in the meantime there was money in cattle -- and the more cattle, the more money. He was going to work for wages till the winter set in. He did n't know when he would see Billy Louise, he said, but he would stop on his way back.

  To them that short visit was something more than an incident. It gave Ward new stuff for his dreams and new fuel for the fire of ambition. To Billy Louise it also furnished new dream material. She rode the hills and saw in fancy whole herds of cattle where now wandered scattered animals. She dreamed of the time when Ward and Charlie Fox and she would pool their interests and run a wagon of their own, and gather their stock from wide ranges. She was foolish, in that; but that is what she liked to dream.

  Mentioning Charlie Fox calls to mind the fact that he was changing more than any of them. Billy Louise did not see him very often, but when she did it was with a deepening impression of his unflagging tenderness to Marthy -- a tenderness that manifested itself in many little, unassuming thoughtfulnesses -- and of his good-humor and his energy and several other qualities which one must admire.

  "Mommie, that nephew goes at everything just as if it were a game," she said after one visit. "You know what that cabin has always been: dark and dirty and not a comfortable chair to sit down in, or a book or magazine or anything? Well, I 'm just going to take you over there some day and let you see the difference. He 's cut two more windows and built on an addition with a porch, if you please. And he has a bookcase he made himself, just stuffed with books and magazines. And he made Marthy a rocking-chair, mommie, and -- she wears a white apron, and has her hair combed, and sits and rocks! Honest to goodness, you would n't think she was the same woman."

  "Marthy always seemed to me more like a man than a woman," said her mother. "She did n't have nothing domestic in her whole make-up, far as I could see. Her cooking -- "

  "Well, mommie, Marthy cooks real well now. Charlie praises up her bread, and she takes lots of pains with it. And she just fusses with her flowers and lets him run the ranch; and, mommie, she just worships Charlie! The way she sits and looks at him when he 's talking -- you can see she almost says prayers to him. She does let her dishpan stay greasy -- I don't suppose you can change a person completely -- but everything is lots cleaner than it used to be before Charlie came. He 's going to buy more cattle, too, he says. Young stock, mostly. He says there 's no sense in anybody being poor, in such a country as this. He says he intends to make Marthy rich; Aunt Martha, he calls her. I 'm certainly going to take you over to see her, mommie, the very first nice day when I don't have a million other things to do." Billy Louise sighed and pushed her hair back impatiently. "I wish I were a man and as smart as Charlie Fox," she added, with the plaintive note that now sometimes crept into her voice when she realized of a sudden how great a load she was carrying.

  "A man can get out and do things. And a woman -- why, even Ward seems to thinks it 's perfectly wonderful, mommie, that we don't just about starve, with me running the ranch! I know he does. Every time I do a thing right or pay off a note or anything, he looks as if -- "

  "I would n't be a mite surprised, Billy Louise," said her mother, with a flash of amused comprehension, "if you kinda misread Ward sometimes. Them eyes of his are pretty keen, and they see a whole lot; but they ain't easy to read, for all that. I guess Ward don't think it 's anything surprising that you 're getting along so well, Billy Louise. I surmise he knows you 're a better manager than a lot of men are."

  "I 'm not the manager Charlie Fox is, though." Billy Louise was frankly envious.

  "He did n't have any more to do with than I 've got, and he 's accomplished a lot more. And, besides, he started in green at the whole business." She rested her chin in her cupped palms and stared disconsolately at the high-piled hills behind which the sun was setting gloriously. "He 's going to pipe water into the house, mommie," she observed, after a silence. "I wish -- "

  "Well, he 's welcome. I don't want no water piped in here, Billy Louise, and tastin' of the pipe. I 'd rather carry it and have it sweet and fresh. Don't you go worrying because you can't do everything Charlie Fox does. Likely as not he 's pilin' up the debts instead of payin' 'em off as you 're doing."

  "I don't know; I don't believe he is, though. I think he 's just managing right and making every dollar count. He got calves from Seabeck, up the river, cheaper than I did from Johnson, mommie. He rode all over the country and looked up range conditions and prices. He did n't say so, but he made me feel foolish because I just bought the first ones I saw, without waiting to look around first. But -- Ward said it was a good buy, and he ought to know; only, the fact remains that Charlie has done better. I guess it is n't experience that counts, altogether. Charlie Fox has got brains!"

  "Land alive! I guess he ain't the only one, Billy Louise. You 're doing better than your father done, and he was n't any Jase Meilke kind of a man, but a good, hard worker always. You don't want to get all outa conceit with yourself just because Charlie Fox is gitting along all right. I don't know as it 's so wonderful. Marthy was always forehanded, and she made money there and never spent any to speak of. Though I should n't carry the idea she 's stingy, after the way she -- "

  If Billy Louise had not been so absorbed with her own discontent, she might have wondered at her mother's sudden silence. But she did not even notice it. She was comparing two young men and measuring them with certain standards of her own, and she was not quite satisfied with the result. She had seen Charlie Fox spring up with a perfectly natural courtesy and hand Marthy a chair when she entered the room where he had been discussing books with Billy Louise. She had seen him stand beside his own chair until Marthy was seated and then had heard him deftly turn the conversation into a channel wherein Marthy had also an interest. Parlor politeness -- and something more; something infinitely finer and better than mere obedience to certain conventional rules.

  She had seen that and more, and she had a vivid picture of Ward, sitting absorbed in a book which he never afterwards mentioned, and letting her or her mother lift heavy pieces of wood upon the fire within arm's reach of him; sitting with his hat tilted back upon his head and a cigarette gone cold in his fingers, and perhaps not replying at all when he was spoken to. She had never considered him uncouth or rude, he was Ward Warren, and these were certain individual traits which he possessed and which seemed a part of him. She had sensed dimly that some natures are too big and too strong for petty rules of deportment, and that Ward might sit all day in the house with his hat on his head and still be a gentleman of the finer sort. And yet, now that Charlie Fox has come and presented an example of the world's standard, Billy Louise could not, for the life of her, help wishing that Ward was different. And there were other things; things which Billy Louise was ashamed to recognize as influencing her in any way, and yet which did influence her. For instance, Ward lived to himself and for himself, and not always wisely or well. He was arrogant in his opinions -- Billy Louise had rather admired what she had called his strength, but it had become arrogance now -- and his scorn was swift and keen for blunderings. And there was Charlie, always thinking and planning for Marthy and putting her wishes first; wanting to make sure that he himself had not blundered, and with a conservative e
stimate of himself that was refreshingly modest. And --

  "Ain't that Ward coming, Billy Louise? Seems to me it looks like him -- the way he rides."

  Billy Louise started guiltily and looked up toward the trail, now piled deep with shadows. It was Ward, all right, and his voice, lifted in a good-humored shout, brought Billy Louise to her feet and sent her down the slope to the stable, where he had stopped as a matter of course.

  When he turned and smiled at her through the dusk and said, "'Lo, Bill," in a voice that was like a spoken kiss, a certain young woman hated herself for a weak-souled traitor and mentally called Charlie Fox a popinjay, which was merely shifting injustice to another resting-place.

  "Are you plumb tickled to death to see me, William?"

  "Oh, no; but I guess I can stand it!"

  A smile to go with both sentences, and a strong undercurrent of something unnamed in their tones -- who wanted the pasteurized milk and distilled water of a perfectly polite form of greeting? Not Billy Louise, if one might judge from that young woman 's face and voice and manner. Not Ward, though he was perfectly unconscious of having been weighed or measured or judged by any standard at all.

  And yet, when Charlie Fox rode down to the Wolverine a week or so later, tied his horse under the shed, and came up to the cabin as though he knew of no better place in all the world; when he greeted mommie as though she were something precious in his sight, and talked with her about the things she was most interested in, and actually made her feel as if he were immensely interested also, Billy Louise simply could not help admiring him and liking him for his frank good-nature and his kindness. She had never before met a man just like Charlie Fox though she had known many who were what Ward once called "parlor-broke." She felt when she was with him that he had a strength to match Ward's strength; only, this strength was tamed and trained and smoothed so that it did not obtrude upon one's notice. It was not every young man who would come out into the wilderness and roughen his hands on an irrigating shovel and live a cramped, lonely life, for the sake of a harsh, illiterate old woman like Marthy Meilke. She did not believe Ward would do that. He would have to feel some tie stronger than the one between Marthy and her nephew before he would change his life and his own plans for anyone.