The Range Dwellers Part 16

"Certainly, Edith. Whom else? Did you think she would be left behind, pining at your infidelity? Didn't you know they are old, old sweethearts who had quarreled and parted quite like a story? She used to read your letters so eagerly to see if you made any remark about him; you did, quite often, you know. I drove her over to Kenmore, and afterward went off toward Laurel just to put in the time and not arrive home too soon without her--which might have been awkward, if father took a notion to go after her. I'm so glad we came up with them." She stood up and waved her hand at Edith.

I shouted rea.s.surances to Frosty, who was looking apprehensively back at us. But it was a facer. I had never once suspected them of such a thing.

"Well," I greeted, when we overtook them and could talk comfortably; "this is luck. When we get across to Pochette's you can get in with us, Mr. and Mrs. Miller, and add the desired touch of propriety to _our_ wedding."

They did some staring themselves, then, and Beryl blushed delightfully--just as she did everything else. She was growing an altogether bewitching bit of femininity, and I kept thanking my private Providence that I had had the nerve to kidnap her first and take chances on her being willing. Honest, I don't believe I'd ever have got her in any other way.

When we stopped at Pochette's door the girls ran up and tangled their arms around each other and wasted enough kisses to make Frosty and me swear.

And they whispered things, and then laughed about it, and whispered some more, and all we could hear was a gurgle of "You dear!" and the like of that. Frosty and I didn't do much; we just looked at each other and grinned. And it's long odds we understood each other quite as well as the girls did after they'd whispered and gurgled an hour.

We had an early dinner--or supper--and ate fried bacon and stewed prunes--and right there I couldn't keep the joke, but had to tell the girls about how Frosty and I had deviled Beryl's father, that time. They could see the point, all right, and they seemed to appreciate it, too.

After that, we all talked at once, sometimes; and sometimes we wouldn't have a thing to say--times when the girls would look at each other and smile, with their eyes all shiny. Frosty and I would look at them, and then at each other; and Frosty's eyes were shiny, too.

Then we went on, with the motor purring love-songs and sliding the miles behind us, while Frosty and Edith cooed in the tonneau behind us, and didn't thank us to look around or interrupt. Beryl and I didn't say much; I was driving as fast as was wise, and sometimes faster. There was always the chance that the other car would come slithering along on our trail.

Besides, it was enough just to know that this was real, and that Beryl would marry me just as soon as we found a preacher. There was no incentive to linger along the road.

It yet lacked an hour of sunset when we slid into Osage and stopped before a little goods-box church, with a sample of the same style of architecture chucked close against one side.

We left the girls with the preacher's wife, and Frosty wrote down our ages--Beryl was twenty-one, if you're curious--and our parents' names and where we were born, and if we were black or white, and a few other impertinent things which he, having been through it himself, insisted was necessary. Then he hustled out after the license, while I went over to the dry-goods and jewelry store to get a ring. I will say that Osage puts up a mighty poor showing of wedding-rings.

We were married. I suppose I ought to stop now and describe just how it was, and what the bride wore, and a list of the presents. But it didn't last long enough to be clear in my mind. Everything is a bit hazy, just there. I dropped the ring, I know that for certain, because it rolled under an article of furniture that looked suspiciously like a folding-bed masquerading as a cabinet, and Frosty had to get down on all fours and fish it out before we could go on. And Edith put her handkerchief to her mouth and giggled disreputably. But, anyway, we got married.

The preacher gave Beryl an impressive lily-and-rose certificate, which caused her much embarra.s.sment, because it would not go into any pocket of hers or mine, but must be carried ostentatiously in the hand. I believe Edith was a bit jealous of that beflowered roll. _Her_ preacher had been out of certificates, and had made shift with a plain, undecorated sheet of foolscap that Frosty said looked exactly like a home-made bill of sale.

I told Edith she could paint some lilies around the edge, and she flounced out with her nose in the air.

We had decided that we must go back in the morning and face the music. We had no desire to be arrested for stealing Weaver's car, and there was not a man in Osage who could be trusted to drive it back. Then the girls needed a lot of things; and though Frosty had intended to take the next train East, I persuaded him to go back and wait for us.

Beryl said she was almost sure her father would be nice about it, now there was no good in being anything else. I think that long roll of stiff paper went a long way toward strengthening her confidence; she simply could not conceive of any father being able to resist its appeal and its look of finality.

We all got into the car again, and went up to the station, so I might send a wire to dad. It seemed only right and fair to let him know at once that he had a daughter to be proud of.

"Good Lord!" I broke out, when we were nearly to the depot "If that isn't--do any of you notice anything out on the side-track, over there?"

I pointed an unsteady finger toward the purple and crimson sunset.

"A maroon-colored car, with dark-green--" Beryl began promptly.

"That's it," I cut in. "I was afraid joy had gone to my head and was making me see crooked. It's dad's car, the _Shasta_. And I wonder how the deuce she got _here_!"

"Probably by the railroad," said Edith flippantly.

I drove over to the _Shasta_, and we stopped. I couldn't for the life of me understand her being, there. I stared up at the windows, and nodded dazedly to Crom, grinning down at me. The next minute, dad himself came out on the platform.

"So it's you, Ellie?" he greeted calmly. "I thought Potter wasn't to let you know I was coming; he must be getting garrulous as he grows old.

However, since you are here, I'm very glad to see you, my boy."

"h.e.l.lo, dad," I said meekly, and helped Beryl out. I wasn't at all sure that I was glad to see him, just then. Telling dad face to face was a lot different from telling him by telegraph. I swallowed.

"Dad, let me introduce you to Miss--Mrs. Beryl King--that is, Carleton; my _wife_." I got that last word out plain enough, at any rate.

Dad stared. For once I had rather floored him. But he's a thoroughbred, all right; you can't feaze him for longer than ten seconds, and then only in extreme cases. He leaned down over the rail and held out his hand to her.

"I'm very glad to meet you, Mrs. Beryl King--that is, Carleton," he said, mimicking me. "Come up and give your dad-in-law a proper welcome."

Beryl did. I wondered how long it had been since dad had been kissed like that. It made me gulp once or twice to think of all he had missed.

Frosty and Edith came up, then, and Edith shook hands with dad and I introduced Frosty. Five minutes, there on the platform, went for explanations. Dad didn't say much; he just listened and sized up the layout. Then he led us through the vestibule into the drawing-room. And I knew, from the look of him, that we would get his verdict straight.

But it was a relief not to see his finger-tips together.

"Perry Potter wrote me something of all this," he observed, settling himself comfortably in his pet chair. "He said this young cub needed looking after, or King--your father, Mrs. Carleton--would have him by the heels. I thought I'd better come and see what particular brand of--er--

"As for the motor, I might make shift to take it back myself, seeing Potter hasn't got a rig here to meet me. And if you'd like a little jaunt in the _Shasta_, you four, you're welcome to her for a couple of weeks or so. I'm not going back right away. Ellis has done his da--er--is married and off my hands, so I can take a vacation too. I can arrange transportation over any lines you want, before I start for the ranch. Will that do?"

I guess he found that it would, from the way Edith and Beryl made for him.

Frosty glanced out of the window and motioned to me. I looked, and we both bolted for the door, reaching it just as old King's foot was on the lower step of the platform. Weaver, looking like chief mourner at a funeral, was down below in his car. King came up another step, glaring and evidently in a mood for war and extermination.

"How d'y' do, King?" Dad greeted over my shoulder, before I could say a word. He may not have had his finger-tips together, but he had the finger-tip tone, all right, and I knew it was a good man who would get the better of him. "Out looking for strays? Come right up; I've got two brand new married couples here, and I need some sane person pretty bad to help me out." There was the faintest possible accent on the _sane_.

Say, it was the finest thing I had ever seen dad do. And it wasn't what he said, so much as the way he said it. I knew then why he had such, a record for getting his own way.

King swallowed hard and glared from dad to me, and then at Beryl, who had come up and laid my arm over her shoulder--where it was perfectly satisfied to stay. There was a half-minute when I didn't know whether King would shoot somebody, or have apoplexy.

"You're late, father," said Beryl sweetly, displaying that blessed certificate rather conspicuously. "If you had only hurried a little, you might have been in time for the we-wedding."

I squeezed my arm tight in approval, and came near choking her. King gasped as if somebody had an arm around his neck, too, and was squeezing.

"Oh, well, you're here now, and it's all right," put in dad easily, as though everything was quite commonplace and had happened dozens of times to us. "Crom will have dinner ready soon, though as he and Tony weren't notified that there would be a wedding-party here, I can't promise the feast I'd like to. Still, there's a bottle or two good enough to drink even _their_ happiness in, Homer. Just send your chauffeur down to the town, and come in." (Good one on Weaver, that--and, the best part of it was, he heard it.)

King hesitated while I could count ten--if I I counted fast enough--and came in, following us all back through the vestibule. Inside, he looked me over and drew his hand down over his mouth; I think to hide a smile.

"Young man, yuh seem born to leave a path uh destruction behind yuh," he said. "There's a lot uh fixing to be done on that gate--and I don't reckon I ever _will_ find the padlock again."

His eyes met the keen, steady look of dad, stopped there, wavered, softened to friendliness. Their hands went out half-shyly and met. "Kids are sure terrors, these days," he remarked, and they laughed a little. "Us old folks have got to stand in the corners when they're around."

King's Highway is open trail. Beryl and I go through there often in the _Yellow Peril_, since dad gave me outright the Bay State Ranch and all pertaining thereto--except, of course, Perry Potter; he stays on of his own accord.

Frosty is father King's foreman, and Aunt Lodema went back East and stayed there. She writes prim little letters to Beryl, once in awhile, and I gather that she doesn't approve of the match at all. But Beryl does, and, if you ask me, I approve also. So what does anything else matter?