Read Ebook: The Freebooters of the Wilderness by Laut Agnes C

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Ebook has 1752 lines and 108549 words, and 36 pages

A meadow lark went lifting above the Ridge dropping silver arrows of song; and a little flutter of phantom wind came rustling through the pine needles.

"I don't suppose," she was saying--he had never heard those notes in her voice before: they were gold, gold flute notes to melt rock-hard self-control and touch the timbre of unknown chords within--"I don't suppose anything ever was accomplished without somebody being willing to fight a losing battle. Do you?" Wayland stretched out on the ground at her feet.

"Eleanor, do you know, do you realize--?"

"Yes I know," she whispered.

And somehow, unpremeditated and half way, their hands met.

"Something wonderful has happened to us both to-night."

The sheen of the stars had come to her eyes. She could not trust her glance to meet his. A compulsion was sweeping over her in waves, drawing her to him--her free hand lay on his hair; her averted face flushed to the warmth of his nearness.

"I don't suppose, Dick, that right ever did triumph till somebody was willing to be crucified. Men die of vices every day; women snuff out like candles. What's so heroic about a man more or less going down in a good game fight--?"

He felt the tremor in her voice and her hands, in her deep breathing; and his manhood came to rescue their balance in words that sounded foolish enough:

"So my old mountain talks to you, too? I'll think of that when I'm up here in my hammock alone. Oh, you bet, I'll think of that hard! What does the old mountain lady say to you, anyway? Look--when the light's on that long precipice, you can sometimes see a snow slide come over the edge in a puff of spray. They are worst at mid-day when the heat sends 'em down; and they're bigger on the back of the mountain where she shelves straight up and down--"

And her thought met his poise half way.

"What does the old mountain say? Don't you know what science says--how the snow flakes fall to the same music of law as the snow slide, and it's the snow flake makes the snow slide that sets the mountain free, the gentle, quiet, beautiful snow flake that sculptures the granite--"

"The gentle, quiet--beautiful thing," slowly repeated the Ranger in a dream. "That sounds pretty good to me."

He said no more; for he knew that the veil had lifted, and the voiceless voices of the night were shouting riotously. The wind came suffing through the swaying arms of the bearded waving hemlocks--Druid priests officiating at some age-old sacrament. Then a night-hawk swerved past with a hum of wings like the twang of a harp string.

"Look," she said, poking at the sod with her foot. "All the little clover leaves have folded their wings to sleep."

Old Calamity passed in and out of the Range cabin. Wayland couldn't remember how from the first they had slipped into the habit of calling each other by Christian names. It was the old half-breed woman, who had first told him that the Canadian, Donald MacDonald, the rich sheep man, had a daughter travelling in Europe. One day when he had been signing grazing permits in the MacDonald ranch house, he had caught a glimpse of a piano, that had been packed up the mountains on mules, standing in an inner sitting room; and the walls were decorated with long-necked swan-necked Gibson girls and Watts' photogravures and Turner color prints and naked Sorolla boys bathing in Spanish seas. That was the beginning. She had come in suddenly, introduced herself and shaken hands.

And now Wayland felt a dazed wonder how in the world they two in the course of half an hour--the first half hour they had ever been alone in their lives--had come to deciding "straddle or fight"; but that was the unusual thing about her. She got under surfaces; but, until to-night on the Holy Cross Mountain, he had been able to laugh at his own new sensations, to laugh even at an occasional sense of his tongue turning to dough in the roof of his mouth.

"Look, what is that behind your shoulder, Dick?"

"Oh, that," said the Forest Ranger, "that is a well known, game old elderly spinster lady commonly called the Moon; and that other on the branch chittering swear words is nothing in the world but a Douglas squirrel hunting--I think he is really hunting--a flea to mix in his spruce tips as salad."

"Do you know what he is saying?"

"Of course! Cheer up! Cheer up! Chirrup! He's our Master Forester--caches the best seed cones for us to steal."

But when he turned back, she had freed her hands, and slipped to the other side of the slab seat; and Wayland--inconsistent fellow--went all abash when they had both got hold of themselves and were once more back to life with feet on solid earth.

"And is it straddle or--fight?"

She had put on her panama sunshade and was looking straight and steadily in his eyes. The Ranger met the look, the eager look slowly and deliberately giving place to determined masterdom.

"If that is a challenge, I'll take it!" Then he added; and his face went hot as her own: "As to the freebooters of the Western Wilderness ripping the bowels out of public property out here, I'll accept that challenge, too! We'll put up a bluff of a fight, anyway!"

"I didn't mean that, Dick." She was looking over the edge of the Ridge. "I couldn't give a precious gift conditionally if I wanted to, Dick. It would surely give itself before I could stop it. Isn't that always the way? I wanted you to feel I would be with you in the fight if I could. They are late. Father and the missionary, Mr. Williams, and his boy were to have been here an hour ago. I heard them talking of your struggle against the big steals, and came up here before them to wait. They are coming to see about changing the sheep from the Holy Cross Range to the Rim Rocks."

"I can hear 'em coming," Wayland leaned over the precipice. "They are coming up the switch back now. They have a turn or two to take--we have a few minutes yet--Eleanor, best gifts come unasked: perhaps, also, they go unsent. Listen, I couldn't Hope to keep the gift unless I jumped in this fight for right; but it's a man's job! I mustn't desert because of the gift! I mustn't take the prize before I finish the job! I want you to see that--always that I mind my p's and q's and don't swerve from that resolution. If I deserted and went down from the Ridge to the Valley, from hard to easy, I wouldn't be worthy of--do you understand what I am trying to say to you?"

"Not in the least. You wouldn't be worthy of what?"

"Of you," said Wayland.

"Gifts?" It was the falsetto of a boy's voice from the trail below the Ridge. "Who's talkin' of gifts and things?"

They heard the others ascending. Her woman instinct caught at the first straw to hand. "Photogravures, Fordie, three more to-day. They are Watts--"

"He has to round the next turn! Never mind! He didn't hear," interjected Wayland irritably.

"All the same," she said, "I'm going to send one of those pictures up to you for the cabin. There is Hope sitting on top of the World, eyes bandaged, harp strings broken--"

"Don't send that one! Jim-jams enough of my own up here! I want my Hope clear-eyed even if she has to go it blind for a bit as to you--"

"Then there's Faith sheathing her sword--"

"Not putting away the Big-Stick," interrupted Wayland.

"Then you'll have to take the Happy Warrior--"

"I forget that one: I've been up here four years, you know?"

"It's the Soldier asleep on the Battle-Field--"

"You mean the picture of the girl kissing the man in his sleep--Yes, that will do all right for me. You can send that one--"

And the Missionary's boy came over the edge of the Ridge trail in a hand spring.

THE CHALLENGE TO A LOSING FIGHT

"Hullo, Dick! Who is talking of pictures and things?" The high falsetto announced the Missionary's boy of twelve, who promptly turned a hand spring over the slab bench, never pausing in a running fire of exuberant comment. "Get on y'r bib and tucker, Dickie! You're goin' t' have a s'prise party--right away! Senator Moses and Battle Brydges, handy-andy-dandy, comin' up with Dad and MacDonald! Oh, hullo, Miss Eleanor, how d' y' get here ahead? Did y' climb? We met His Royal High Mightiness and His Nibs goin' to the cow-camp. Say, Miss Eleanor, I don't care what they say, I'm goin' to take sheep all by my lonesome this time, sure; goin' t' ride Pinto 'cause he's got a big tummy t' keep him from sinking when he swims. You needn't laugh, it's so! You ask Dad if a tum-jack don't keep a horse from sinkin'! Say--" sticking forward his face in a whisper--"Senator oughtn't to sink--eh?"

"You don't swim sheep unless you're a pilgrim," admonished Wayland; but at that moment, the Senator himself came over the edge of the Ridge, bloused and white-vested and out of breath, a bunch of mountain flowers in one hand, his felt hat in the other; and three men bobbed up behind, Indian file, over the crest of the trail, the Missionary, Williams, stepping lightly, MacDonald swarthy and close-lipped, taking the climb with the ease of a mountaineer, Bat Brydges, the Senator's newspaper man, hat on the back of his head, coat and vest and collar in hand, blowing with the zest of a puffing locomotive.

"Whew!" The Senator dilated expansively and sank again. "Here we are at last! You here, Miss Eleanor? Evening--Wayland! Night to you, Calamity! How is the world using you since you stopped tramping over the hills?" Calamity shrank back to the cabin. "I thought this trail hard as a climb to Paradise. Now, I know it was," and the gentleman wheezed a bow to Eleanor that sent his neck creasing to his flowing collar and set his vest chortling.

"But she has a royal white heart," interposed Eleanor.

The Senator looked up to the face of the rancher's daughter and laughed, a big soft noiseless laugh that shook down inside the white vest.

"Typical of a woman, eh? Here, take 'em! Why am I an old bachelor? Now, here's the wind flower; opens to touch o' the wind like woman to love; find 'em like stars on the bleakest slopes--that's like a woman, too, eh? And like a woman, they wither when you pick 'em, eh? And see these little cheats--pale people--catch flies--know why they call 'em that? Stuck all over with false honey to snare the moths--stew the poor devils to death in sweetness--eh, now, isn't that a woman for you?" Spreading his broad palms, the Senator shook noiselessly at his own facetiousness.

"They keep the real honey for the royal butterflies," suggested Eleanor.

"Exactly! What chance on earth for an old bumble bee of a drudge like me without any wings and frills and things, all weighted down with cares of state?" And Moyese mopped the moisture from a good natured red face, that looked anything but weighted down by the cares of state. "You know, don't you," he added, "that the flies actually do prefer white flowers; bees t' th' blue; butterflies, red; and the moths, white?"

Strident laughter blew up on the wind from the cow camp of the Arizona drovers in the Valley.

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