The Last Straw Part 29

"As for poetry ... I don't know,"--shaking his head. "I read some; tried to understand it, but it seems all messed up with words as if poets liked to take the long, painful way of telling things.

"I expect poets want to tell something that's sort of ... delicate an'

beautiful.... Now and then I've got a funny feel out of poetry, but it ain't anything to me like, say, seeing a bunch of little quail run along under the brush, heads up, lookin' back at you, whistlin' to each other. That's the most delicate thing I've ever seen or heard....

"I've seen some paintings, in Los and San Francisco; once in Chicago and once in Denver. I don't know. They don't get my idea of it. I never want to see anything more beautiful than sunrise over the Grand Canon, or sunsets over these hills, dust storm on the desert, snow blowin'

before a norther off the ridges, and things like that. G.o.d, who's such a close friend to the Reverend, and who I don't know much about, is as good a painter as any I've ever seen."

He said no more but rode apparently thinking of much more that might be said and Jane watched him carefully, a hungry look coming into her eyes. His words had partly a.n.a.lyzed him for her:

He was _real_.

He was the most real human being she had ever known, real because he lived a real life, because he appreciated realities; he was sufficient to himself, finding such an interest in life about him that his own impressions and reactions occupied the foreground of his consciousness.

All her life she had been fed on the artificial, living on a soft pad of unrealities which softened and hid the bed-rock foundation of existence from her. Within the last weeks she had had her first taste of the real, was face to face with life and with herself; it had been sweet and inspiring; she felt a great urge for more of that experience and her mind sped ahead into the vague future, the future which her imagination could not even conjure because the new foundation beneath her feet was as yet unfamiliar. But for all that vagueness she thrilled and as she peered forward eagerly she saw this man, this clean, frank man ever at her side....

And yet he had spoken of love as a gamble which did not work itself out in life! A sharp stab of shame shot through her heart, for she had once handled her love as though it had been a white chip, she had been willing to chance it as a thing of little value and she knew that to him that would be the outraging of a sacred thing.

And again she heard the p.r.o.nouncement of Hilton: You cannot stand alone! You will fail! A knave, she now knew, but he knew her as she had been. And could he be right? Could she measure up to where a real man's love would not be wasted upon her? She did not know; she dared not think further, so driving back these doubts, she said:

"There's one question I want to ask and I want your honest answer. What is your opinion of Hepburn?"

He looked at her with that twinkle in his eye again.

"In just what way, ma'am?"

"At times he seems reluctant to talk to me, as though he knew more than he wanted to tell and again I've had a notion he didn't want me asking about certain ranch matters at all.

"I confess to you that with all the talk of thieving I've wondered if he didn't know more about it than he gave me to understand, but what he did the other day seems, in all reason, to wipe that suspicion out."

He said: "It seems you've answered your own question. When you've said that he went a long ways to prove that he's the man you want by what he's just done, you've said all there was to say."

"But do you mean that? Are you keeping some suspicion of your own from me?"

He deliberated a moment, then smiled.

"It's easy to suspect but it don't pay very big until you know somethin'. Then you don't need to."

They climbed out of the gulch, horses breathing loudly as they made the last steep ascent and gained the ridge they were to follow and there was little more talk until they stopped and sat looking down across the great flat-bottomed cavity of Devil's Hole. It was a pear-shaped depression, perhaps four miles from rim to rim at the widest point and fully a score of miles in length. Its sides were sprinkled with cedars which clung to the sheer cliffs determinedly, but its bottom was blanketed with thrifty sage brush, purple in the sunlight that was just then slanting across the floor and beneath this sheen they could see the bright green of new gra.s.ses. A dark line marked with the clarity of a map the course of the creek and half way down toward the neck of the Hole was a small cabin erected by the man who had filed on the land for Colonel Hunter and who had drifted on without establishing t.i.tle.

"There's your neighbor," Beck said.

Jane looked for a moment, then lifted her eyes to the country which showed through the narrow outlet of the deep valley. Behind her endless ridges tossed upward to a sharp horizon, but out through that gap the range lay in a vast basin, rising gently to diminutive lavendar b.u.t.tes plastered against the sky many miles away. It seemed soft and vague and unreal ... like one of the unreal paintings Beck had seen hanging within walls.

Tom led the way through trees and among upstanding ledges of rock into the narrow, dangerous trail and as he went down, his big roan picking the way quickly yet cautiously, he half turned in his saddle to explain the significance of the descent.

It was the only egress on that side of the Hole. There was one trail on the far side, so steep and hazardous that a man must lead his horse either up or down. The only other outlet was through the narrow Gap where the wash of flood water during storms had made the going easy for men and stock. Out to the northwest, however, lay miles of desert, the great basin of which Jane had had a glimpse, well enough to use for range in three seasons, but in summer it became parched and useless. In the Hole cattle could feed on the abundant gramma, could drink from the creek, but getting them out and over the divide to the more plentiful water of Coyote Creek was an undertaking.

"That's the danger," he told her, "It's a long, hard climb for stock in good shape, but if anything should happen to prevent your stock from drinkin' down here and they should get low from lack of water, why then you'd leave a lot of 'em down there if you tried to bring 'em up."

He pointed over the abrupt drop at his left where a pebble would fall hundreds of feet before striking again and as he indicated his right chap scrubbed the face of the cliff, so narrow was the way to which they clung.

Finally they reached the flat and swung along at a free trot through the brash sage.

"There's water here now," he explained, as they followed the steep creek bank, "but that don't last. It's mighty low right this mornin'.

The creek sinks when it don't rain an' its been comin' up in just one spot for years. That's what makes a nester dangerous for you."

They approached the cabin. A mare and a newly born colt eyed them suspiciously. An ancient wagon, its top tattered, its tires red with rust, stood close beside a frail corral. Fire wood was scattered about; here was an axe with a broken helve, there a rust-eaten shovel, and the whole place spoke of poverty.

And yet piled against the cabin was spool upon spool of new barbed wire!

"Fence!" muttered Beck.

"But Mr. Hepburn said--"

"Yeah, I recall what he _said!_"

Just then the canvas which served as a door was thrown back and the girl stepped out. She stood just across the threshold looking at them, sullen and defiant.

"Good-morning," said Jane.

"Howdy," replied the girl indifferently.

An awkward pause. Surely, she would volunteer no more and Beck asked:

"Your dad around?"

"What do you want with him?"--a demand rather than a question.

"I am Miss Hunter. I own the--"

"Oh, I know who you are!" the girl cut in defiantly.

"I came down to talk to your father. We are neighbors. If we are to be good neighbors there are things we must discuss."

Jane was unpoised by the att.i.tude of the other but she dismounted and walked toward the cabin.

"What did you want with him?" the girl asked again.

"I want to ask some things about your plans."

"And what is our business to you?" The girl's eyes snapped and her vivid color intensified.

"It may be a great deal to me. That is why I am frank in coming here.

For years this place has been range for HC cattle. Recently water has been short. You have wire and evidently are going to fence.

"I don't come as an enemy. Now that you are here I want to make the best of it."

"But you don't want us here!"