The Lions of the Lord Part 33

She looked up at him, embarra.s.sed, and stepped back across the narrow trail, her head down again, so that he was free to pa.s.s. But instead of pa.s.sing, she became aware that he had dismounted.

When she looked up, he was busily engaged in adjusting something about his saddle, with an expression of deepest concern in his blue eyes. His hat was on the ground and his yellow hair glistened where the band had pressed it about his head.

"It's that latigo strap," he remarked, in a tone of some annoyance.

"I've had to fix it every five miles since I left Kanab!" Then looking up at her with a friendly smile: "Dandy most stepped on you, I reckon."

The amazement of it was that, after her first flurry at the sound of his voice and his half-seen movements up the trail, it should now seem all so commonplace.

"Oh, no, I was well out of his way."

She started again to cross the trail, stepping quickly, with her eyes down, but again his voice came, less deliberate this time, and with words in something less than intelligible sequence.

"Excuse me, Miss--but--now how many miles to--what's the name of the nearest settlement--I suppose you live hereabouts?"

"What did you say?"

"I say is there any place where I could get to stop a day or so in Amalon?"

"Oh--I didn't understand--I think so; at least, my father sometimes--but there's Elder Wardle, he often takes in travellers."

"You say your father--"

"Not always--I don't know, I'm sure--" she looked doubtful.

"Oh, all right! I'll ask him,--if you'll show me his place."

"It's the first place on the left after you leave the canon--with the big peach orchard--I'm not going home just yet."

He stroked the muzzle of the horse.

"Oh, I'm in no hurry, I'm just looking over the country a little. Your father's name is--"

"Ask for Elder Rae--or one of his wives will say if they can keep you over night."

She caught something new in his glance, and felt the blood in her face.

"I must go now--you can find your way--I must go."

"Well, if you _must_ go,"--he picked up his hat,--"but I'll see you again. You'll be coming home this evening, I reckon?"

"The first house on the left," she answered, and stepped once more across the trail and into the edge of the pines. She went with the same mien of importance that Tom Potwin wore on his endless errands; and with quite as little reason, too; for the direction in which she had started so earnestly would have led her, after a few steps, straight up a granite cliff a thousand feet high. As she entered the pines she heard him mount his horse and ride down the trail, and then the rest of his song came back to her:--

"Will you forsake your houses and lands, Will you forsake your baby-O?

Will you forsake your own wedded lord To foller a Gypsy Davy-O?

"Yes, I'll forsake my houses and lands, Yes, I'll forsake my baby-O, For I am bewitched, and I know the reason why; It's a follering a Gypsy Davy-O.

"Last night I lay on a velvet couch Beside my lord and baby-O; To-night I shall lie on the cold, cold ground, In the arms of a Gypsy Davy-O.

"To-night I shall lie on the cold, cold ground, In the arms of a Gypsy Davy-O!"

When his voice died away and she knew he must be gone, she came out again to her nook beside the stream where, a moment before, her dream had filled her. But now, though nothing had happened beyond the riding by of a strange youth, the dream no longer sufficed. In place of the moonlit balcony was the figure of this young stranger swaying with his horse down between the hollowed shoulders of the Pine Mountains and reining up suddenly to sweep his broad hat low in front of her. She was surprised by the clearness with which she could recall the details of his appearance,--a boyish-looking fellow, with wide-open blue eyes and a sunbrowned face under his yellow hair, the smallest of moustaches, and a smile of such winning good-humour that it had seemed to force her own lips apart in answer.

Around the broad, gray hat had been a band of braided silver; when he stepped, the spurs on his high-heeled boots had jingled and clanked of silver; around his neck with a knot at the back and the corners flapping down on the front of his blue woollen shirt, had been a white-dotted handkerchief of scarlet silk; and about his waist was knotted a long scarf of the same colour; dogskin "chapps" he had worn, fronted with the thick yellowish hair outside; his saddle-bags, back of the saddle, showing the same fur; his saddle had been of stamped Spanish leather with a silver capping on the horn and on the circle of the cantle; and on the right of the saddle she had seen the coils of a lariat of plaited horsehair.

The picture of him stayed in her mind, the st.u.r.dy young figure,--rather loose-jointed but with an easy grace of movement,--and the engaging naturalness of his manner. But after all nothing had happened save the pa.s.sing of a stranger, and she must go alone back to her dream. Yet now the dream might change; a strange youth might come riding out of the east, sitting a sorrel horse with a star and a white hind ankle, a long rangy neck and strong quarters; and he--the youth--would wear a broad, gray hat, with a band of silver filigree, a scarlet kerchief at his throat, a scarlet sash at his waist, and yellow dogskin "chapps."

Still, she thought, he could hardly have a place in the dream. The real youth of the dream had been of an unearthly beauty, with a rose-leaf complexion and l.u.s.trous curls ma.s.sed above a brow of marble. The stranger had not been of an unearthly beauty. To be sure, he was very good to look at, with his wide-open blue eyes and his yellow hair, and he had appeared uncommonly fresh and clean about the mouth when he smiled at her. But she could not picture him sighing the right words of love under a balcony in the moonlight. He had looked to be too intensely business-like.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

_The Gentile Invasion_

When she came across the fields late in the afternoon, the strange youth's horse was picketed where the bunch-gra.s.s grew high, and the young man himself talked with her father by the corral bars. She had never realised how old her father was, how weak, and small, and bent, until she saw him beside this erect young fellow. Her heart went out to the older man with a new sympathy as she saw his feebleness so sharply in relief against the well-blooded, hard-muscled vigour of the younger.

When she would have pa.s.sed them, her father called to her.

"Prudence, this is Mr. Ruel Follett. He will stay with us to-night."

The sombrero was off again and she felt the blue eyes seeking hers, though she could not look up from the ground when she had given her little bow. She heard him say:

"I already met your daughter, sir, at the mouth of the canon."

She went on toward the house, hearing them resume their talk, the stranger saying, "That horse can sure carry all the weight you want to put on him and step away good; he'll do it right at both ends, too--Dandy will--and he's got a mighty tasty lope."

Later she brought him a towel when he had washed himself in the tin basin on the bench outside the house. He had doffed the "chapps" and hung them on a peg, the scarlet kerchief was also off, his shirt was open at the neck, and soap and water had played freely over his head. He took the towel from her with a sputtering, "Thank you," and with a pair of muscular, brown hands proceeded to scour himself dry until the yellow hair stood about him as a halo--without, however, in the least suggesting the angelic or even saintly: for his face, from the friction inflamed to a high degree, was now a ma.s.s of red with two inquiring spots of blue near the upper edge. But then the clean mouth opened in its frank smile, and her own dark lashes had to fall upon her cheeks until she turned away.

At supper and afterwards Mr. Follett talked freely of himself, or seemed to. He was from the high plains and the short-gra.s.s country, wherever that might be--to the east and south she gathered. He had grown up in that country, working for his father, who had been an overland freighter, until the day the railroad tracks were joined at Promontory.

He, himself, had watched the gold and silver spikes driven into the tie of California mahogany two years before; and then, though they still kept a few wagon trains moving to the mining camps north and south of the railroad, they had looked for other occupations.

Now their attention was chiefly devoted to mines and cattle. There were great times ahead in the cattle business. His father remembered when they had killed cattle for their hides and tallow, leaving the meat to the coyotes. But now, each spring, a dozen men, like himself, under a herd boss, would drive five thousand head to Leavenworth, putting them through ten or twelve miles a day over the Abiline trail, keeping them fat and getting good prices for them. There was plenty of room for the business. "Over yonder across the hills," as Mr. Follett put it. There was a herding ground four hundred miles wide, east and west, and a thousand miles north and south, covered with buffalo gra.s.s, especially toward the north, that made good stock feed the year around. He himself had, in winter, followed a herd that drifted from Montana to Texas; and in summer he had twice ranged from Corpus Christi to Deadwood.

Down in the Panhandle they were getting control of a ranch that would cover five thousand square miles. Some day they would have every one of its three million acres enclosed with a stout wire fence. It would be a big ranch, bigger than the whole state of Connecticut--bigger than Delaware and Rhode Island "lumped together", he had been told. Here they would have the "C lazy C" brand on probably a hundred and fifty thousand head of cattle. He thought the business would settle down to this conservative basis with the loose ends of it pulled together; with closer attention paid to branding, for one thing; branding the calves, so they would no longer have to rope a full-grown steer, and tie it with a scarf such as he wore about his waist.

But they were also working some placer claims up around Helena, and developing a quartz prospect over at Carson City. And the freighting was by no means "played out." He, himself, had driven a six-mule team with one line over the Santa Fe trail, and might have to do it again. The resources of the West were not exhausted, whatever they might say. A man with a head on him would be able to make a good living there for some years to come.

Both father and daughter found him an agreeable young man in spite of his being an alien from the Commonwealth of Israel. He remained with them three days looking over the country about Amalon, talking with its people and making himself at least not an object of suspicion and aversion, as the casual Gentile was apt to be. Prudence found herself usually at ease with him; he was so wholly likable and una.s.suming. Yet at times he seemed strangely mature and reserved to her, so that she was just a little awed.

He told her in their evenings many wonder-tales of that outside world where the wicked Gentiles lived; of populous cities on the western edge of it, and of vast throngs that crowded the interior clear over to the Atlantic Ocean. She had never realised before what a small handful of people the Lord had set His hand to save, and what vast numbers He had made with hearts that should be hardened to the glorious articles of the new covenant.

The wastefulness of it rather appalled her. Out of the world with its myriad millions, only the few thousand in this valley of the mountains had proved worthy of exaltation. And this young man was doubtless a fair sample of them,--happy, unthinking, earning perdition by mere carelessness. If only there were a way to save them--if only there were a way to save even this one--but she hardly dared speak to him of her religion.

When he left he told them he was making a little trip through the settlements to the north, possibly as far as Cedar City. He did not know how long he would be gone, but if nothing prevented he might be back that way. He shook hands with them both at parting, and though he spoke so vaguely about a return, his eyes seemed to tell Prudence that he would like very much to come. He had talked freely about everything but the precise nature of his errand in the valley.

In her walks to the canon she thought much of him when he had gone. She could not put his face into the dream because he was too real and immanent. He and the dream would not blend, even though she had decided that his fresh-cheeked, clear-eyed face, with its clean smile and the yellow hair above it was almost better to look at than the face of the youth in the play. It was not so impalpable; it satisfied. So she mused about them alternately, the dream and the Gentile,--taking perhaps a warmer interest in the latter for his aliveness, for the grasp of his hand at parting, which she, with astonishment, had felt her own hand cordially returning.