Lonesome Land Part 12

"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--d.a.m.ned 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, b.u.t.tered 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 pa.s.s 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 hors.e.m.e.n 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 hors.e.m.e.n.

"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 n.o.body ever pays any attention to. Man won't stay in town--h.e.l.l 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--"