six weeks of all she had ever hoped for, dreamed of, in the lean years of heart starvation. the complete devotion of a strong man, a man who held a place in the world she knew. every luxury wealth could purchase at her disposal, even to satiation. her every whim ministered to, and even anticipated. this was something of the ripe fruit literally heaped into elvine's lap. she had longed for it, schemed for it, and providence had permitted all her efforts complete success.
now, with those six weeks behind her, she gazed upon the balance-sheet. she looked for the balance of happiness. to her horror it was blotted out, smudged out of all recognition. oh, yes, the figures had been entered, but now they were completely obscured.
it was the last stage of her journey to her new home. it was a journey being made in the saddle. their baggage, a large number of trunks loaded with the precious gleanings from the great stores during the honeymoon, had been sent on ahead by wagon. there was nothing, so far as could be seen, to rob the home-coming of its proper sense of delight. yet delight was more than far off. elvine was a prey to a hopelessness which nothing seemed able to relieve.
summer was not yet over, although the signs of the coming fall were by no means lacking. the hard trail, like some carefully set out terra-cotta ribbon upon a field of tawny green, took them through a region of busy harvesting. the tractors and threshers were busily engaged in many directions. great stacks of straw testified to the ample harvest in progress. fall ploughing had already begun, and high-wheeled wagons bore their burden of produce toward the distant elevators. then, too, human freight passed them, happy, smiling freight of old and young, whose sun-scorched faces reflected something of the joy of life and general prosperity prevailing.
a radiant sun looked down upon the scenes through which they passed. it was the wonderful ripening god almost worshipped of these people who lived by the fruits of the earth. jeffrey masters understood it all, and reveled in the pleasant senses it stirred. for he, too, lived by the fruits of the earth, although his harvest was garnered in the flesh of creature kind.
elvine looked on with eyes that beheld but saw nothing of that which inspired her husband. remembrance claimed her. too well she remembered. and gladly would she have shut out such sights altogether, for more and more surely they crushed her already depressed spirits to a depth from which it seemed impossible to raise them.
nor was her beautiful face without some reflection of this. her smile was ready for the man at her side. she laughed and talked in a manner so care-free that he could never have suspected. but in repose, when no eyes were upon her, a lurking, hunted dread peered furtively out of her dark eyes, and the fine-drawn lines gathered about her shapely lips, and seriously marred the serenity of their youthful contours.
she had one purpose now, one only. it was to ward off the blow which she knew might fall at any moment when she reached her new home. the threat of it was with her always. it drove her to panic in the dark of night. it left her watchful and fearful in the light of day. at all times the memory of her husband's words dinned through her brain like the haunt of some sickening melody.
"now i only hope the good god'll let me come up with the man who took the price of his blood."
it had been spoken coldly. it had been spoken with an intensity of bitterness that left an impression as hard as flint. the tone had set her shuddering. then the look in those cold blue eyes when at last she had turned confronting them. no, there had been no mercy in them. no mercy, she told herself, for--anybody.
at that moment she had known that the earth could hold no future peace for her. she felt that fate had passed sentence on her, and she was powerless to stay its execution. her husband demanded vengeance upon the man who had accepted the price of his brother's blood.
for the moment she had been stunned. then had risen up in her a desperate courage. she would fight. she would fight for herself, she would fight for the love which all unbidden, all undesired, had come to her. then, in the end, if defeat should overtake her, she would, yes, she could, submit to the punishment his hand should mete out to her.
strangely, from that moment her love for this man seemed to increase a thousandfold. he grew in her heart a towering colossus of worship. the primitive in her bowed down before his image ready to yield to his lightest word, while, by every art, she was ready to cajole and foster his love.
it was all she knew, understood. it was the woman in her who possessed no other weapons of defense. she loved him, she desired him, then nothing was too small to cling to with the wild hope of the drowning. when the day came that he should turn and rend her soul she could submit. but until that day she would cling to every straw that offered.
while the scenes through which they were passing preoccupied the man, the silence of the wide plains left elvine to her fears. the great breadth of the world about her added to her hopelessness. and after a silence which had become unduly protracted, she took refuge in talk for which she had no real desire.
"it's beautiful, but--oppressive," she said, and the words were the inspiration of genuine thought.
but the man was like one who has spent a world of love and devotion upon carving a beautiful setting and is now about to complete his work by securing in place the crowning jewel. he had no room for any feeling of oppression. he shook his head.
"say, evie," he cried, "i just can't allow you the word 'oppressive.' i just can't. look--look right out there toward the hills we're making. take the colors as they heap up to the distance. every shade, i guess, from green to purple. it makes me feel good. it gives me room to stretch myself. it sort o' sweeps away a whole heap of fusty city smells, and gives us something a deal more worth breathing. it's a man's place. and it's full of man's work. guess providence got busy an' set it all out for us. providence guessed we'd have to use it. but providence didn't just guess how far crazy human nature really was. she didn't foresee we'd gather around in the musty dump-holes we call cities. she didn't figure on our tastes for the flesh-pots, and the indulgence of the senses she'd handed us. but then providence knows her power to fix us right when she feels that way." then he spread out his arms with an inexpressible suggestion of longing. "say, i'm crazy--plumb crazy to get the first peek at that dandy home i've had fixed for you."
the woman's eyes sought her husband's with a smile that was a caress.
"you're good to me, jeff," she said. then she added: "so good." her smile deepened. "you'd hand me the world with--with a fence around it, if i asked. why? why are you like that?"
it was the love in her seeking reassurance. nor was she disappointed.
"why?" the man laughed. and the sound of it was good to hear. it was deep, and seemed to come from the depths of his soul. his blue eyes shone with a world of devotion. "guess i love you--just that," he said. then he pointed at the distant hills. "i can't tell you all i feel, elvie," he said, "but get those hills. see them. there, that peak, sitting right up over its fellows, with a cap of snow on it i don't guess the sun could ever melt. that's thousands of feet up. i'd say man's foot was never set there, nor bird's, nor animal's either. well, if that peak was a throne it 'ud give you pleasure to occupy, why, i guess i'd just go the limit to have you sit there."
elvine was gazing at the mountain crest, but she was not thinking of it. she was thinking of the love which the extravagant words expressed, and she was wondering at the bigness of it. she was caught in its power, and it thrilled her with an even greater appreciation of her danger. what would be the result upon such a nature as this man's when--he knew?
"i believe you would," she said, her eyes coming back to the strong, flushed face. then she added: "now."
"now?"
there was a quick lifting in the man's fair brows. there was incredulity in his tone. to him it seemed impossible, the implied doubt in her final word.
"i don't change easy, elvie," he protested. "i kind of get things hard. it's my way, and it's no doing of mine. life's a full-sized proposition, and i don't guess we can see far through it. but i can't imagine a thing that could come before you in my thoughts."
"i'd like to think that. i'd like to feel that," elvine returned. she was smiling up into his eyes. "you see, jeff, i was kind of thinking. we're young now. we've been together just six weeks. maybe you'll get used to me later. men do get used to women till they become sort of part of the furniture. oh, i guess their love goes right on, but--but they wouldn't feel like starting in to fence in the north pole, or--or hitch up niagara to their wife's buggy just because she fancied that way. say, jeff, when i lose your love i just lose everything in the world. you--you won't ever let me lose it, will you?"
jeff shook his head, and smiled in the confidence of feelings.
"don't ever talk that way. don't ever think like that," he urged her. then, as their horses ambled side by side up the last gentle incline before they dropped down to the great plain of the rainbow hill valley, which was the setting of the obar ranch, he drew nearer and reached out one arm and gently encircled her waist. "guess you're feeling like me just now, evie. do you know what i mean? we're getting home. home--yours and mine. well, say, that home is in my mind now, and it's full to the brim of thoughts of you. you're in it--everywhere. you're part of it. you're just part of me. i can't see any future without you. it don't seem to me there could be any. i don't doubt. i guess the thought of it don't scare me a thing. maybe with you it's different. maybe you're scared such happiness can't last. but i tell you it can--it will. you're with me now and always, and i can't see a shadow that could come between us."
"none? no, none, none!"
the woman forced conviction into her final denial, and, for a moment, she permitted herself to yield to the reassuring embrace. then she started up and released herself.
"oh, jeff!" she cried. "i just pray all the time that nothing shall ever rob me of your love. night and day i pray that way. if i were to lose you, i--i think nothing else would much matter."
the man smiled with supreme confidence. they had reached the top of the hill, and he set his horse into a canter.
"you're just going to live right on--for me, sweetheart," he cried. "be yourself. just yourself. the frank, honest woman i know and love. if ever the shadows you fear come to worry us, they'll have to be of your own creating. we have nothing to fear from the future, nothing at all. we'll just drive right on down the clear trail of life. it's only in the byways there's any ugly dumps. look!" he suddenly flung out one arm, pointing ahead where the great obar plains rolled away toward the hills below them. "that's the ranch. there. that one there is bud's homestead, and the other to the right's your--our home. say, it's good to see--mighty good!"
* * * * * *
nan gazed upon the result of her labors and decided that it was good. bud was observing her in his unobtrusive way. they were together in the new parlor of the home which jeff had had reconstructed under nan's most careful supervision.
the girl had put forth her greatest effort, greater even than she herself realized, for it had been inspired by a desire that jeff and his wife should never realize the pain and bitter disappointment she had endured.
now, as she surveyed each detail in her final tour of inspection, she convinced herself that nothing, nothing she could think of had been forgotten. even the city-bred elvine could find no fault with any detail of it.
she and bud were standing side by side rather like two children gazing in awed wonder at some undreamed of splendor suddenly discovered in a familiar playground, every square foot of which they had believed themselves familiar with.
"i--don't think i've forgotten a thing," nan said, in a tone subdued by her weight of responsibility.
"not a thing," agreed bud, with a perfect disregard for any consequences his statement might have.
he was utterly unchanged. he had made no preparation to receive the bride and bridegroom in their home. he was just the cattleman nothing could change him from. his gray flannel shirt was agape over his sunburned chest. his leather chapps creaked as he moved, his vicious spurs clanked. then, too, the curling iron-gray hair of his bared head was innocent of all extra combing. with nan it was different. she had striven to rid herself of every sign of the prairie to which she belonged. she was dressed with consummate care. every jealous feeling of the woman in her had cried out for her rights, and those rights were that her successful rival should be unable to sneer at or pity her.
the result was a delightful picture that filled bud's heart with admiration. and for perhaps the thousandth time he silently anathematized the blind folly of the man who had wilfully cast his eyes in another direction.
nan seated herself in one of the luxuriously inviting armchairs, while bud insinuated his huge form on to the polished surface of a large central table.
"you know, daddy, i sort of feel like a feller who's guessed the right answer to a question he hadn't a notion of. maybe you won't get just how i mean." the smile in her pretty eyes changed to a deep seriousness. "you know when i was a little teeny girl all mud and overall, that never could keep me within measurable distance of being clean, you used to talk to me just as if you were speaking your thoughts aloud. guess it was about the time poor momma died, or maybe soon after. i kind of remember you were squatting indian fashion on the veranda of our shack, i'd been busy in the hopes of drowning myself in a half dry mud hole, and had mostly succeeded in absorbing more of the dirt than seemed good for a single meal. guess i must have started to cry, and you'd reached out and grabbed me, and fetched me up on your lap, and were handing me a few words you reckoned to cheer me up with. do you remember them, my daddy? i don't guess you do. i didn't till a while later, and then i didn't figure out their meaning till i went to school. you said, 'tears is only for kiddies an' grown women. kiddies mostly cry because they don't understand, an' grown women because they do. anyway, neither of 'em need to cry, if they only get busy an' think a while. ther' ain't a thing in this life calls for a tear from a living soul, not even a stomachful of moist mud, 'cos, you see, ther's someone who fixes everything the way it should go, an' it's the right way. so we'll jest give you a dose of physic to help boost the show along.'" she glanced round her with smiling eyes at the tastefully arrayed furnishings of the parlor. "this has been the dose of physic i gave myself, and--and i feel better for it. i had the mud, and, why, the tears came just as they did before. maybe if i'd been able to think right i wouldn't have shed them. but i just couldn't think right then. but i've thought since, and the physic's helped me. do--do you think he'll like it all?"
the contemplative gaze of her father was full of gentle amusement.
"sure he will--if he ain't changed any."
nan shook her head.
"jeff couldn't change. even marriage couldn't change jeff. you see, jeff's got notions of life which are just part of him. maybe he'll soften some in ways and things, but his notions'll remain, and they'll stand right out in all he does."
but bud remained without conviction.
"a good woman can set a big man hunting a halo," he said. "an' i allow he's li'ble to find it, if she don't weaken in her play. but a bad woman--why, i guess a bad woman can send him down quicker than most things in life, once she tucks herself into a corner of his life depot."
"but jeff would never fall in love with a bad woman." nan protested swiftly, an odd little pucker of anxiety gathering between her brows. "i--i'm sure his wife's a good woman."
"an' i ain't any sort o' reason to think diff'rent."
"but you do think--that way."
nan's understanding of her father was wide. it could scarcely have been otherwise, since he had been her sole companion for so many years.
but bud was to be drawn no further.
"ther' ain't no accounting fer how folks think when they ain't out on a joy trip," he grumbled, as he moved across to the open window, and stood gazing out over the trail from the northeast. then all further discussion was abandoned in a small wave of excitement. he was pointing down the trail.
"say, they're coming right along now. an'----"
but nan was at his side. something of the color had faded out of her cheeks, and she clung to her father's arm as she gazed along the narrow winding road. her breath was coming rapidly. for all her courage, now that the moment of great trial had arrived, she felt very weak, very helpless.
bud understood. he released his arm from her nervous clasp, and placed it gently about her shoulders. "it's jeff setting the gait," he said. "i'd say he's crazy to get home." then he added as though to himself: "guess i'd as lief seen her on the lead."
but nan gave no heed to his words. the soul of the girl was in her eyes, which were full of a deep terror and yearning. she had schooled herself for this meeting how she had schooled herself! and now it seemed beyond her powers to live up to that schooling.
never for a moment did she withdraw her gaze. it was held fascinated, perhaps against her will. they came on, riding at an almost racing gallop, and finally drew up with their horses fighting against the restraining bits.
bud and nan were on the veranda. bud's attitude was one of almost shy reserve. nan was smiling a welcome such as a moment before would have seemed quite impossible. but her schooling had finally triumphed in the crisis, and her loyalty to her generous love had vanquished every baser feeling. it was her hands which clasped those of the city woman before she sprang lightly from the saddle. it was her steady voice spoke the first words of welcome.
"say, you sure must be tired with your journey," she said. "come right in to--your new home."
bud had averted his eyes the moment she began to speak. he could not witness that greeting. his courage was unequal to it. instead he greeted jeff in his own fashion, as though nothing unusual had occurred.
"nan's got everything through for you same as you asked. after you've eaten, why, i guess we'll need to make some talk. things have been moving, boy. guess we'll need to get busy."
nan had taken elvine into the house, and one of the barn-hands was waiting to take the horses. jeff leaped from the saddle. once in the company of his partner, with all the atmosphere of the world to which he belonged about him, all the excitement of his home-coming seemed to drop from him. he even seemed to have forgotten that this was the final great event of his new life--the bringing of his bride to the home he had prepared for her. but nan's estimate of him was right. jeff's was a nature that could not be changed, even by his marriage. his love, his marriage, elvine; these things were, in reality, merely episodes. delightful episodes. before all things his work claimed him.
"you mean the--rustlers?"
the two men were facing each other on the wide veranda. the trailing wild cucumber vines tempered the blaze of sunlight and left the atmosphere of the veranda cool. jeff mopped the beads of perspiration from his forehead under his wide hat, which had been thrust back on his head.
"that's so." bud's eyes were following the horses as they moved away in the wake of the barn-hand.
"it's pretty bad?"
"an' gettin' worse."
bud's eyes came back to his partner's face. they gazed steadily into it.
"can't you tell me--now? evie's in there with nan," he added significantly.
bud shook his head.
"it's a big yarn, an' needs time. but----" he paused, searching the other's face.
"go right on."
jeff read through the pause. he waited, his lips firmly set.
bud cleared his throat.
"i've got to say these things later if i don't say 'em now, jeff, boy. what i need to tell 'll make you sore, an' i don't guess it's the best sort o' welcome making you sore at your home-comin'. it's the worst of the yarn anyway, an' i kind o' feel it's best spitting out the worst right away. we're up against a gang, a slick gang, organized right, same as----"
he hesitated. but the younger man seemed to have no similar scruples.
"the gang my brother ran."
bud nodded.
"some of 'em got clear away--that time."
"and you figure after giving things time to get forgotten they've gathered up a crowd of toughs and started in on this district?"
"it seems that way."
"how?"
"system," bud declared sharply. "they're takin' a steady toll of us, an' other folks in the district. we trailed 'em to the hills, an'--lost 'em. say, if we don't handle 'em it means----"
"something like ruin for the--obar."
jeff's manner was shorn of any equivocation. he spoke with almost ruthless force, but the coldness of tone was incomparable with the steely light in his blue eyes.
after a moment's silence he turned away. he stood looking back over the trail he had just left, and bud regarded his keen profile, waiting. he felt there was nothing more for him to say at the moment.
at last the other turned in his quick, decided fashion as the sound of the women's voices reached them from within the parlor.
"will you stop and eat with us?" he asked bluntly.
bud shook his head.
"not now, jeff, boy. this is your home-coming."
"yes. well, i'll get around your place to-morrow morning, bud. we can make big talk then."
