Books: Lonesome Land
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B. M. Bower >> Lonesome Land
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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.
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