The Reclaimers Part 12

"I came down here to find out its value. It belongs to me. My only inheritance. I have always lived in a big city until now, and I know little of country life except its beauty and comfort, and nothing at all of the West. But I can understand you when you say that this claim is not worth an effort. I hope I shall never, never see it again. Good-by."

The firm, red lips quivered and the blue eyes looked up through real tears as Jerry Swaim drew on her gloves and fitted the soft blue hat down on the golden glory of her hair. Then without another word she turned her car about and sped away.

II

JERRY AND JOE

VII

UNHITCHING THE WAGON FROM A STAR

How long is a mid-June day? Ticked off by the almanac, it is so much time as lies between the day-dawn and the dark of evening. But Jerry Swaim lived a lifetime in that June day in which she went out to enter upon her heritage. From the moment she had turned away from the young farmer under the oak-trees until she reached the forks of the road again she did not take cognizance of a single object. The three big cottonwood sentinels, the vine-covered ranch-home, the deep bend of the Sage Brush to the eastward, were pa.s.sed unnoted. Ponk's gray gadabout seemed to know the way home like a faithful horse.

There was no apparent reason why the junction of the two highways should have momentarily called the bewildered disappointed girl to her calmer self. No more was there anything logical in her choosing to turn again down the narrow river road. The lone old fisherman was the farthest down in the scale from Geraldine Swaim of any human being who had ever shown her a favor. He could not have had any interest for her.... But York Macpherson was correct in his estimate of Jerry. She was a type in herself alone. She drove far beyond the narrow place by the deep hole where, with accurate eye and clear skill, she had played a game of chance with the river and fate and guardian angels. Her tires had cut a wide, curving gash across the sand of the road.

"My gracious alive! that was a close turn!" she exclaimed, as she caught sight of her wheel-marks. "No wonder the old Teddy Bear looked scared.

One inch or less! Well, there was that inch. But what for? To enter on my vast landed--vast sanded--estate in the kingdom of Kansas!"

Jerry smiled grimly in ridicule of her foolish, defrauded self. Then in a desperate effort to blot out of mind what she had seen she hurled the gray car madly forward. With the bewildered gropings of a shipwrecked landsman she was struggling to get her bearings, she for whom the earth had been especially designed. As the hours pa.s.sed the road became dry and sunny, with the north breeze tempering the air to the coolness of a rare Kansas June day, entirely unlike the hot and windy one on which Jerry had first come up this valley. She did not, in reality, cover many miles now, because she made long stops in sheltered places and at times let the gray machine merely creep on the sunny stretches, but in her mind she had girdled the universe.

In the late afternoon she turned about wearily, as one who has yet many leagues of ground to cover before nightfall. The sunlight glistened along the surface of the river and a richer green gleamed in what had been the shadowy places earlier in the day; but the driver in the car paid little heed to the lights and shadows of the way.

"If a man went right with himself." Cornelius Darby's words came drifting across the girl's mind. "Poor Uncle Cornie! He didn't begin to live, to me, until he was gone. Maybe he knew what it meant for a man _not_ to go right with himself. And if a woman went right with herself!"

Jerry halted her car again by the deep hole and looked at nothing where the Sage Brush waters were rippling over the rough ledge in its bed. For the first time since she had sat under the oak-trees and looked at the acres that were hers, Jerry Swaim really found herself on solid ground again. The bloom came slowly back to the ashy cheeks, and the light into the dark-blue eyes.

"If I can only go right with myself, I shall not fail. I need time, that's all. There will be a letter from Eugene waiting when I get back to town, and that will make up for a lot. There must be some way out of all the mistakes, too. It wasn't my land that I saw. Mr. Ponk must have directed me wrongly. That country fellow may not know the facts. I'll go back and ask York Macpherson right away. Only, he's gone out of town for two days. Oh dear!"

She wrung her hands as the picture of that oak-grove and all that lay beyond it came vividly before her. She tried to forget it and for a moment she smiled to herself deceivingly, and then--the smile was gone and by the determined set of her lips Jerry was her father's own resolute child again.

"I don't exactly know what next, except that I'm hungry. Why, it is five o'clock! Where has this day gone, and where am I, anyhow?"

Her eyes fell on the broad ruts across the road. Then back in the bushes she caught a glimpse of a low roof.

"I smell fish frying. I'll starve to death if I wait to get back to the Commercial Hotel!" Jerry exclaimed. "Here's the wayside inn where I find comfort for man and beast."

She called sharply with her horn. In a minute the fuzzy brown fisherman came shuffling along the narrow path through the bushes.

"I'm dreadfully hungry," Jerry said, bluntly.

It did not occur to her to explain to this creature why she happened to be here and hungry at this time. She wanted something; that was sufficient.

"Can't you let me have some of your fish? I am desperate," she went on, smiling at the surprised face of the man who stared up at her in silence.

"Yes'm, I can give you what I eat. Just a minute," he squeaked out, at last. Then he shuffled back to where the bit of roof showed through the leaves.

While the girl waited a tall, slender woman came around the brushy bend ahead. She halted in the middle of the road and stared a moment at Jerry; then she came forward rapidly and pa.s.sed the car without looking up. She wore a plain, grayish-green dress, with a sunbonnet of the same hue covering her face--all very much like the bushes out of which she seemed to have come and into which she seemed to melt again. In her hand she carried a big parcel lightly, as if its weight was slight. As Jerry turned and looked after her with a pa.s.sing curiosity, she saw that the woman was looking back also. The young city-bred girl had felt no fear of the strange country fellow in the far-away oak-grove; she had no fear of this uncouth fisherman in this lonely hidden place; but when she caught a mere glimpse of this woman's eyes staring at her from under the shadows of the deep sunbonnet a tremor of real fright shook her hands grasping the steering-wheel. It pa.s.sed quickly, however, with the reappearance of the host of the wayside inn.

"This is delicious," Jerry exclaimed, as the hard scaly hands lifted a smooth board bearing her meal up to her.

Fried fish, hot corn-bread, baked in husks in the ashes, wild strawberries with coa.r.s.e brown sugar sprinkled on them, and a cup of fresh b.u.t.termilk.

The girl ate with the healthy appet.i.te that youth, a long fast, a day in the open, and a well-cooked meal can create. When she had finished she laid a silver half-dollar on the board beside the cracked plate.

"'Tain't nuthin'; no, 'tain't nuthin'. I jis' divided with ye," the fisherman insisted, shrilly.

"Oh, it is worth a dollar to drink this good b.u.t.termilk!"

Jerry lifted the cup, a shining silver mug, and turned it in the light.

It was of an old pattern, with a quaint monogram on one side.

"This looks like an heirloom," she thought. "Why should a bear with cracked plates and iron knives and forks offer me a drink in a silver cup? There must be a story back of it. Maybe he's a n.o.bleman in disguise. Well, the disguise is perfect. After all, it's as good as a novel to live in Kansas."

Jerry slowly sipped the drink as these thoughts ran through her mind.

The meal was helping wonderfully to take the edge off of the tragedy of the morning. It would overwhelm her again later, but in this shady, restful solitude it slipped away.

She smiled down at the old man at the thought of him in a story. _Him!_ But the smile went straight to his heart; that was Jerry's gift, making him drop his board tray and break the cracked plate in his confusion.

"Here's another quarter. That was my fault," Jerry insisted.

"Oh no'm, no'm! 'Tain't n.o.body's fault." The voice quavered as the scaly brown hand thrust back the proffered coin.

Jerry could not understand why this creature should refuse her money.

Tipping, to her mind, covered all the obligations her cla.s.s owed to the lower strata of the earth's formation.

At sunset York Macpherson drove into Ponk's garage.

"h.e.l.lo, fellow-townsman! You look like a sick man!" he exclaimed, as the owner met him in the doorway.

"I'd 'a' been a dead man if you hadn't come this minute," Ponk growled back.

"Congratulations! The good die young," York returned. "I failed to get through to the place I wanted to see. That Sat.u.r.day rain filled the dry upper channels where a bridge would rot in the tall weeds, but an all-day rain puts a dangerous flood in every ford, so I came back in time to save your life. What's your grievance?"

Ponk's face was agonizing between smiles and tears. "Well, spite of all I, or _anybody_ could do, Miss Swaim takes my little gadabout this morning and makes off with it."

"And broke the wind-shield? I told you to keep her at home."

York still refused to be serious.

"I don't know what's broke, except my feelin's. You tried yet to _keep_ her anywhere? She would go off to that danged infernal blowout section of the country, _and she ain't back yet_."