Claim Number One Part 35

"You'll have to put it down, or it will make you old. Go right on dreaming and planning; things will come out exactly as you have designed."

"Perhaps," she agreed, but with little hope in her voice.

Slavens saddled his horse after they had refreshed themselves with coffee. Agnes stood by, racked with an anxiety which seemed to grind her heart. The physician thought of the pioneer women of his youth, of those who lived far out on the thin edge of prairie reaches, and in the gloom of forests which groaned around them in the lone winds of winter nights.

There was the same melancholy of isolation in Agnes' eyes today as he had seen in theirs; the same sad hopelessness; the same hunger, and the longing to fly from the wilderness and its hardships, heart-weariness, and pain.

Her hand lay appealingly upon his shoulder for a moment before he mounted, and her face was turned up to him, unspoken yearning on her lips.

"Promise me again before you go that you will come back here before you relinquish your homestead to Boyle," she demanded. "Promise me that, no matter what the lawyer's opinion may be, you'll return here before you do anything else at all."

"I promise you," said he.

When he had ridden a little way he halted his horse and turned in his saddle to look back. She was sitting there in the sun, her head bowed, her hands clasped over her face, as if she wept or prayed. A little while he waited there, as if meditating a return, as if he had forgotten something--some solace, perhaps, for which her lips had appealed to his heart dumbly.

Yet a sincere man seldom knows these things, which a trifler is so quick to see. He did not know, perhaps; or perhaps he was not certain enough to turn his horse and ride back to repair his omission. Presently he rode on slowly, his head bent, the bridle-reins loose in his hand.

CHAPTER XVII

A PLAN

The man who had supplied the horse-blanket for covering the dead sheep-herder had taken it away, but the board upon which they had stretched him still lay under the tree where they had left it. There was blood on it where the wound had drained, a disturbing sight which persisted in meeting Agnes' eye every time she came out of the tent. She was debating in her mind whether to throw the board in the river or split it up and burn it in the stove, when Smith came along and claimed it.

"Scarce as wood's goin' to be in this valley six months from now," Smith remarked, rubbing dust over the stain which did not appear to give him any qualms, "a man's got to take care of it. That's a shelf out of my store."

"I don't suppose you'll ever put goods on it again."

"Sure. Why not?"

"Well, not groceries, at any rate," she ventured.

"It won't hurt canned goods," Smith told her, turning it stain downward.

"Doctor gone back?"

"He's gone on to Meander on some business."

"Smart feller," commended Smith. "If I had to have my leg took off I'd just as lief have that man do it as any doctor I ever saw."

"I'm sure he would appreciate your confidence," she smiled.

"Been acquainted with him a good while?" he wanted to know.

"Only since I've been in this country. We met on the train coming to Comanche."

Smith sighed as if oppressed by a secret trouble, and cast his wise eye about the camp.

"I wouldn't leave them things around out here at night," he advised, indicating some boxes of supplies with which she was rather liberally provided. "Animals might git at 'em."

"You don't mean bears?" she asked with lively concern.

"No; not likely bears," said he. "Badgers, more like. They're awful thieves."

"Thank you for the advice. I meant to put them in today, but I've been so distracted by last night's awful events----"

"Yes, I know," Smith nodded. "I'll put 'em in for you."

Smith stored the boxes within the tent. The exertion brought out the sweat on his red face. He stood wiping it, his hat in his hand, turning his eyes to see how she regarded his strength.

"I tell you, a woman needs a man to do the heavy work for her in a place like this," he hinted.

"I'm finding that out," she laughed.

Smith sat down comfortably on the box lately occupied by Dr. Slavens. He buckled his hands over a knee and sat with that foot raised from the ground in a most ungainly, but perhaps refreshing, att.i.tude.

"Thinkin' about marryin'?" he asked.

The frankness of the question relieved her of embarra.s.sment. She smiled.

"I suppose every woman thinks of that, more or less," she admitted.

Smith nodded, and slowly lowered his foot, looking up at her with sly confidence, as if discovering to her a mighty secret which he had just become convinced she was worthy to share.

"Well, so am I," said he.

It began to look like dangerous ground, but she didn't know how to turn him. Thinking to try a show of abstract interest, she told him she was glad to hear it.

"There's money to be made in this country," he continued, warming up to his argument, "and I know how to make it. Inside of five years I'll be able to put up a house with a cupola on it, and a picket fence in front, and gra.s.s in the yard, for the woman that marries me."

"I believe you will," she agreed. "What kind of a noise does a bear make?"

"Dang bears!" said Smith, disconcerted by having his plans thrown out of joint in such an abrupt way.

"I thought I heard one the night before last," she went on. "I was afraid."

"No need to be," he a.s.sured her. "Bears don't come down here any more.

What could a bear live on down here, I'd like to know? Snakes? Well, bears don't eat snakes."

"Oh!" said she, enlightened.

"There's not a bear in a hundred miles of here," he told her.

"That's comforting knowledge," she said. "You've never told me about the big grizzly that you killed. Was it long ago?"

"Not so very long," Smith replied, sighing as he saw himself led so far away from the subject nearest his heart, and despairing of working his courage up to it again that day.

"It was a big one, wasn't it?"