The Trail of Conflict Part 9

For a silent moment the man and girl standing side by side looked up at the tender, laughing face of the woman in riding costume. She didn't seem like a thing of paint and canva.s.s, she was real, vital, alive and welcoming. Jerry was the first to stir. She colored with confusion.

"Steve, I--I beg your pardon! I--I shouldn't have called her--mother.

But I was so--so surprised. It seemed for a moment as if she held out welcoming arms to me." She turned away. Courtlandt gripped her shoulders with a force which hurt.

"She is your mother--I----" he released her abruptly and threw open a door. "These are your rooms. Mine are opposite. You see we have but one story in the ranch-house. Your bags are in your room. Ming Soy will come to help you when you ring." He put his two hands on her shoulders again.

"I'm glad that you wore my roses."

"Your roses! Why I thought--I thought----" Her voice was drenched with disappointment. Steve's face was a mask, only his eyes seemed alive as he removed his hands and asked crisply:

"That they came from Greyson?"

"No, Steve, no! How could you think such a thing? I thought that Dad had relented and--and had sent the roses to----" she winked her lashes furiously but not before Steve had seen the diamond-like drops that beaded them. His voice was tender as he comforted:

"Your father will come round, Jerry. Just believe with old Doc Rand that things have a way of coming marvelously, unbelievably right. You are not sorry that you came, are you?"

"I'll say I'm not!" She had essayed an imitation of his voice and words but the emotion which had threatened her all day surged in her heart and betrayed her. Steve caught her hands in his.

"Don't look like that, little girl. You're going to love the life here and the ranch and--and--and Goober," he added with a short laugh as the dog bounded into the room.

CHAPTER VIII

Jerry Courtlandt sent her horse up the slope and came out on a bluff above the Double O. As the girl sat motionless looking off over the plain, an artist would have labeled the picture she made, "A Study in Browns," before he slipped it into his mental portfolio. Her mount, Patches, was a deep mahogany in color, her riding boots were but a shade lighter than his satin skin, her breeches and long coat were of khaki, her blouse was fawn color, her eyes were deeply, darkly bronze.

Rebellious tendrils of l.u.s.trous brown hair escaped from under the broad brim of the campaign hat she wore, one of Steve's army hats with its gold and black cord. He had insisted upon her using it. The hats she had brought to the ranch had been urban affairs, not designed to shade her eyes from the glare of white roads. As she had had no money with which to buy another she had taken it.

Jerry pulled it off as she took a deep breath of the glorious air asparkle with bubbles of life. She loved the spot. Every day that she rode she stopped to look down upon the valley. Far away among the foot-hills a silver stream cleft rocky bluffs, then coiled and foamed its way until it broadened and flashed in gleaming waterfalls. In places where it boiled and frothed rustic bridges had been thrown across.

Toward the east lay the st.u.r.dily built stock corrals, storehouses spick and span with whitewash, towering silos. Toward the west were fenced-off alfalfa fields and beyond them a mosaic of varicolored pasture-lands, dotted with grazing herds, stretched out to the foot-hills.

Beyond the foot-hills loomed mountains darkly green with pine and spruce to the timberline, above which reared sombre, forbidding rock until against the ragged edge of gold-lined clouds, white peaks flamed crimson in the slanting sun. Toward the north she could see the gap in the mountains through which the railroad cut. The gap was known as the Devil's Hold-up because of the natural facilities it had offered--and still offered for that matter,--to the cla.s.s whose pleasing pastime it had been to maintain their divine right in the other man's property at the point of a gun.

Almost beneath her, approached by a broad, well-graded road, lay the ranch-house. Telephone wires from all directions rounded up the activities of the Double O at the office near by. The house was a rambling structure of rudely squared timbers set in fieldstone and cement. Its one story was built around a court on which many doors opened and which was gayly brocaded with shrubs and plants in blossom this late June day.

Where was Steve, Jerry wondered, as her eyes lingered on the office building. She saw him less and less as the days pa.s.sed, as more and more he a.s.sumed the responsibilities of the Double O. He was off before she was up in the morning riding the range or in the dairies or barns until night. She had hardly believed her eyes when on the evening after her arrival, she had seen Steve and Tommy Benson, his secretary, come into the living-room in dinner coats. Courtlandt had answered her unspoken question with the explanation that it had been Nicholas Fairfax's unvarying rule to shed ranch problems at night, and he had found that getting into the dress of the city helped. A man just naturally would curb an impulse to toddle down to the corral if he were in dinner clothes. The two didn't seem to go together.

Steve had appointed Tommy Benson her squire, he himself had so little time to give her. A laugh curved Jerry's lips as she thought of Tommy.

He was a slight youth with a face of one of Raphael's cherubs grown up and a book for his inseparable companion. His almost yellow hair was short and wavy, his eyes were a brilliant blue, his skin was as nearly pink and white as human skin can be after it has been ranch-seasoned, his lips seemed made for laughter. He and Steve had been officers in the same company and when they returned from overseas the two had gone to the ranch to recuperate. Tommy had remained there to please his mother. He was in the throes of a virulent attack of stage fever and Mrs. Benson had begged him to wait a few years before he decided upon acting as his career. She had a.s.sured him that if after reflection he still felt that it was the profession for him she would attend his premiere without a qualm. So he had stayed at the Double O. There was plenty of money back of him and he had grown to love the ranch life, apparently.

Tommy was taking the responsibility of training the lady of the ranch seriously, that is as seriously as a boy could who was forever expressing his emotions and convictions in the words of the immortals, Jerry thought with a smile. She had ridden since she was a little girl but Tommy was making her proficient in some hair-raising stunts. Steve didn't know of those but he had ordained that she was to learn to saddle Patches, that she must be able to fasten and unfasten gates securely while mounted, that she was to rope and shoot from her horse's back.

Her days were full but filled with her own pleasures. She did nothing for others, she thought ruefully as she gazed down upon the smoke rising from the cook-house chimney. Her only link with the outside world was Sandy, the carrier, whose appearance sent her imagination winging into the past whenever she saw him. The queer little postman wore a tall gray hat which, Tommy Benson insisted, was a left-over from the wardrobe of Gentleman Rick whose zeal as a promoter of pleasure in Slippy Bend in the nineties had lured men through miles of wilderness. Jerry often sat on the wall beside the mail-box to await his coming. He always had news and a quaint bit of philosophy if he hadn't letters. Letters! There weren't many for her. She had had hosts of friends in school and college but she heard from them seldom now. Her conscience administered a vicious pinch. Yes, it was quite all her fault, she answered it. The girls apparently had adored her, but she had been unable to accept their devotion with single-minded pleasure. Always in the back of her mind had skulked the ghost of that first home near the coal-fields. Would they have cared for her could they have seen that? After her marriage events had moved too rapidly for her to pick up the scattered lines of her correspondence. However, she no longer had that excuse, her days now were long and uneventful. She would write to every friend she had. It would be like sending out a fleet of ships. How eagerly she would await the return cargoes.

She broke into her own good resolutions with a laugh. To send out letters one must have stamps. She had used the last one she possessed yesterday and to get more she must have money. "Money!" Jerry laughed again as she repeated the word aloud. Conditions were reversed now as to money, she thought as she stared unseeingly off at the mountain tops which p.r.i.c.ked the crimsoning sky. Steve had the income from his uncle's large property as long as he remained on the ranch. It would not be his unreservedly until a year from the day they had arrived at the Double O.

She had persistently refused to accept money from him. If she wrote to the girls she would need a regiment of postage stamps. If she could earn----

Her eyes flashed earthward from the mountains as she heard the click of a hoof against rock and the creak of saddle leather. A horse and rider topped the slope. It was Courtlandt on his favorite mount, Blue Devil, a horse all spirit, shining blue-black satin. He was a regal creature from his flowing mane to his silken fetlock. He nosed Patches who showed an undignified haste to snuggle up to him in return.

"Did you think you had lost me, Steve?" Jerry asked gayly as she noted the seriousness of his blue eyes and the crease in his forehead which his broad-brimmed Stetson was not drawn low enough to hide. How unnecessarily good looking he was in his riding clothes, she thought. He wore a black tie with his khaki shirt, his heavy riding breeches were tucked into the tops of high boots which laced up the front and had curious sloping heels. He had removed one of his riding gloves and the dark stone of his ring, which bore the seal of the Courtlandts, made the browned hand seem white in contrast. He gave the impression of being absolute master of his horse and of any situation which might arise.

Jerry's heart unaccountably skipped a beat as he answered her question.

"No, I saw you from the road. You looked like one of Dallin's bronzes.

Where is Tommy?" with quick displeasure.

"Don't glower. I sent him back. I don't want him always at my heels. I love to come up here alone and, figuratively speaking, look down upon my blessings."

"Was that what you were doing when I came up? Your expression belied you. Instead of looking beatific, you looked worried."

She laughed up at him with warm friendliness as she bent forward and confided in a theatrical whisper:

"You are right. I was figuring finances. I have just----" The color flew to her face as she thought of what he might infer. She stumbled on quite conscious that she was making matters worse. "I'm about at the end of my stamp book and--and--I've developed a sudden fervor for letter writing and--and----" she broke off her breathless explanation as he laid his finely-shaped hand on her saddle-bow. Even back in the Manor days his hands had fascinated her.

"I'm glad that you've brought up the subject of finances, Jerry. The money question between you and me has got to be cleared up, and cleared up now. You've had your way long enough. Don't be foolish any longer, little girl, I----"

"I shall not take your money, Steve. Would you take mine?" then as his eyes darkened stormily, "Oh, truly, I didn't mean to rouse sleeping dogs--but--but I won't take it. I do nothing for you--if I even had anything to do about the house but Ming and Hopi Soy run the household motor noiselessly, perfectly, with every cylinder hitting. If there was anything I could do----"

"There is something you can do."

Jerry's heart flew to her throat. What did he mean? He looked grim and determined.

"W-what is it?" she asked faintly. She put on her hat, tightened her reins unconsciously.

Courtlandt laughed. The sternness left his face. There was an expression in his eyes which she couldn't translate as he teased:

"Don't run, Jerry. You don't trust me over much, do you? To return to finances, if you want to help you can do so tremendously by taking over the accounts and my correspondence. Tommy's had that job but I need him outside. Ranlett's leaving. You'll soon get the hang of the accounting and it won't take much of your time."

"But if it took all I'd love to do it, Steve. Shall I have a desk in the office?" she asked eagerly.

"If you agree to accept a salary."

"But I don't want to be paid for helping."

He turned his horse's head toward the slope.

"That settles it. I shall send to the agency to-morrow for a private secretary." As she did not answer he looked at her with a smile which lighted eyes and lips. "Now will you be good?"

She regarded him with oblique scrutiny. With an adorable imitation of Pete Gerrish she drawled:

"You're sure puttin' it straight, Chief. You win. Now shall we mosey 'long home?" With a touch of spurs she wheeled Patches and headed him down the slope.

"Why is Ranlett leaving?" she asked as their horses trotted side by side along the hard white ranch road. Courtlandt's face reddened darkly.

"Because I thought it time to determine the status of the alien on Double O ranch. Ranlett had a couple of men in the outfit who have not taken out first naturalization papers, even, who had been pointing out to my boys deficiencies of the government. They're flares set here to ignite any chaff of discontent which may be blowing about."

"But you're not against freedom of speech, Steve?"

"You bet I am against the inflammatory brand on the tongue of an alien.