Read Ebook: Corduroy by Mitchell Ruth Comfort

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Ebook has 612 lines and 53213 words, and 13 pages

That was exactly what she had done, herself, and Alexander McVeagh had followed her, ten years later, contentedly, for all his devotion to his son and daughter. He wasn't at all sure, in his rugged and unadorned version of his forbears' belief, that he should find her again in the world to come, but he was very sure that the world he was leaving was not much of a world without her. Aleck, the son, had been a simple and uncomplex creature; all McVeagh. It was the girl who combined her father and her mother in a baffling and intricate fashion. The doctor wondered; it would have been simpler and safer, he considered, for Virginia Vald?s McVeagh to marry a neighboring rancher--even Jerome Ojeda--though he lacked a little of the fineness the doctor wanted for her--than a Wolcott of Boston.

Doctor Mayfield's opportunities for studying them together were limited; when they were together--save at meal-times--they took excellent care to be alone together. They motored all over the surrounding landscape by day and by night--it was, by a special dispensation of Providence, a time of white and silver moonlight--and tramped high into the hills. This in itself was an amazing spectacle--Ginger McVeagh afoot; from her tiny childhood she had never walked except on her way to a horse. Dean Wolcott loved walking, however, and she loved Dean Wolcott and the thing was accomplished. Besides, by an odd and dramatically arranged combination of circumstances, she had not, for that period, a horse to offer him. Aleck's horse, Felipe, which she usually rode, had a wrenched foot, and was turned out, and she was riding her own horse Diablo, about the business of the ranch. Estrada and his men were using all the others, bringing in the stock from the farther feeding pastures. Ordinarily, she would have borrowed a mount for him from a neighbor, but it was a part of the newness and strangeness of things to be motoring and tramping with her strange new lover.

At such times, however, as she had to be about the business of Dos Pozos, the doctor held satisfying converse with Dean Wolcott. He liked him heartily, and reported to Aunt Fan as favorably as Jim Featherstone had done, and after five days he went north again, satisfied with the newcomer as an individual, hopeful about him as Ginger's husband, and Aunt Fan was left alone.

"But--look here," said Dean Wolcott. "I don't ride, you know. I've told you that before, haven't I?"

Dean looked at her quizzically. He was beginning, in the last day or two, to look at her with his mind instead of his heart, and he had made several discoveries. One of these was that she was as high-handed and autocratic as a feudal duchess; it was not only that she always wanted and took her own way--she was unaware that there was any other way to want, or to take. But, up to that time, he was not worrying any more than 'Rome Ojeda was. It was picturesque, it was pretty--her high-handedness.

The night before the "big day" she refused to walk or motor or even sit on the veranda, but told him a resolute good night at eight o'clock. "Ling will call you at three, and breakfast's at three-thirty."

"We attack at dawn, I see," said Dean, steering her cleverly into an alcove and out of her aunt's range of vision. "Then, if my evening is to end at eight instead of ten or eleven, I certainly consider myself entitled to something in the way of recompense." He swept her into his arms and kissed her.

"Honey," said Ginger, persuasively, "let me go! And you must get to sleep yourself--we've got a big day ahead of us!"

"My dear, I've told you several times, though you've seemed not to listen to me, that I'm no horseman. I rather think you'd better let me off, to-morrow; it's highly probable that I'd cut a sorry figure in the saddle."

"Why not?"

"Forty miles," said Dean, thoughtfully. "It sounds rather a large order, Ginger, dear. Suppose I don't go?"

"I don't understand you."

He did not speak at once, and Ginger, watching him, breathing fast after her long speech, saw that he was looking a lot like the other Mr. Wolcott. "And what will you say, Ginger, if I tell you that I won't ride? What will you say?" He was very quiet about it. "It doesn't matter in the least to me what a lot of ranchers and cowboys think or say--Ojeda or any one else. But--what will you say?"

It was the first time she had ever, alone and unassisted--uninvited-- kissed him upon the mouth. He caught her hard against him with a strength which seemed ready for any feats of prowess. "I'll ride--anything--anywhere--you ask me," he said, unsteadily.

Ling called him at three o'clock. It was dark and unbelievably cold, and he dressed himself with stiff fingers and went heavy-eyed into the dining room. He felt old and jaded and depressed; unhappily conscious of all the strength which hadn't yet come back to him.

Ginger was there before him, dressed in her oldest riding things, a worn old Stetson on her head, a scarlet bandanna tied, cowboy fashion, about her neck, and she was warm and glowing. She looked as if she had just emerged from the conclusion of their ardent little scene of the night before; Dean felt as if it were something which had happened to him in his youth, and as if his youth had passed a long time ago. He had no appetite, and could barely manage a cup of coffee, and he was almost annoyed with her for eating with excellent relish. They spoke in low tones, remembering Aunt Fan's earnest pleas that she should not be wakened, but before they left the table there was a pounding of hoofs and a shout from the front of the house.

"There's 'Rome!" said Ginger, jumping up. "Come along!" She ran out onto the veranda and he followed her slowly.

'Rome Ojeda had ridden in from his ranch the night before and stayed with Ginger's nearest neighbor, and his horses--the one he rode and the one he was leading--were quite fresh. He swung himself to the ground, dropped the reins, pulled off a buckskin gauntlet and strode over to Dean, holding out his hand. "Mighty pleased to make your acquaintance," he said, displaying very briefly his white smile in his brown face. "Here's your mount, Mr. Wolcott," he nodded toward the red roan.

"Very good of you," said Dean, stiffly. He felt stiff, body and brain, aching for sleep, cramped and cold.

"Oh--the lunches!" cried Ginger. "Almost forgot them!" She bolted into the house.

Dean Wolcott looked at his horse and hunted wearily through his mind for something sapient to say about him. The fact was that he had not been astride a horse six times in his twenty-eight years. Others of the Wolcott family rode--several of his friends rode; it had merely happened that he had gone in, instead, in what leisure he had from school and college and later, the office, for tennis and golf and walking trips. He had very nearly made tackle in his junior year; three years on the squad. Now he would have traded all these glad activities for a good working knowledge of horseflesh.

One of Ginger's men brought up her Diablo; there were a dozen riders in the distance, coming nearer at a swinging lope.

"Yeh," Ojeda nodded. "Mr. Wolcott's ridin' him to-day." Then he said, very slowly, "Only been rode a coup'la saddles."

Dean Wolcott pulled himself up. "What do you call him, Ojeda?"

'Rome Ojeda rolled a cigarette. "I call him 'Snort,'" he said. "He mostly does."

The animal pulled back sharply, flinging up his head with a sound vividly descriptive of his name, and 'Rome Ojeda grinned, enjoyingly. "Aside from that, he's as gentle as a kitten," he drawled. "Look here, Mr. Wolcott--where's your spurs?"

"Oh, I sha'n't need spurs," said Dean, easily. Just as Ginger had disliked his correct cousin in less than five minutes of acquaintance, so now did he detest this brown and beautiful 'Rome Ojeda with his appalling bigness, his flashing smile, and his crude sureness. He loathed the whole commonplace, rubber-stamp situation in which he found himself--competent wild westerner, eastern tenderfoot, cattle-queen heroine, mob scene of cow-punchers; it was like finding himself placed on the printed page of a tawdry story--like seeing himself on the screen in a cheap and stupid moving picture; like seeing himself in the r?le of unwitting comedian. He knew that, unescapably, he was about to be made to appear ridiculous; and that was a thing no Wolcott ever was. They had reverses, disappointments; they were ill, they suffered, they died; they were never ridiculous. And now Dean Wolcott, whose mother kept his Congressional Medal and his Croix de Guerre in the box with her delicate handkerchiefs, so that, with no parade of them, she could see and touch them every day, was about to afford rude mirth to yokels.

He went again and firmly to his mount, clutched at the mane and the reins, got one foot into the jerking stirrup, scrambled and clawed his way up. The horse, simultaneously with these motions on his part, noisily demonstrating the aptness of his cognomen, did incredibly swift and sudden things with his head, his neck, all four of his legs and his torso. Dean Wolcott, just as the riders came loping up and Ginger stepped out on to the veranda with the packets of lunch in her hands, rose clear of the saddle, appeared to hang an instant in mid-air, sailed over the head of his steed and fell heavily to the sun-baked earth.

IT was thus that Virginia Vald?s McVeagh, sole owner and proprietor of Dos Pozos, saddle-wise from babyhood, cool and competent as any man among them, presented her betrothed to the friends of her youth, to her world.

Her betrothed, in those swift seconds between his departure from the saddle and his arrival upon the ground, hoped fervently that he might have the good fortune to break his neck, but it appeared immediately that he had not broken anything whatever. He was dizzy, jarred and bruised and lamed, but he was entirely intact, as he curtly made clear to 'Rome Ojeda. 'Rome Ojeda, his white smile flashing, was first to rush to the rescue.

Dean Wolcott picked himself up and brushed himself off, resolutely keeping his eyes away from the veranda and Ginger; he felt he could bear all the rest of it if she would only keep away from him. She was there, however, almost as soon as 'Rome was, her face as pale as possible beneath its brown warmth. She wanted breathlessly and with unashamed anguish in her voice to know if he was hurt, but directly she saw--and heard--that he was not, the color rushed hotly back into her cheeks and she turned shortly away on a spurred heel.

Two or three of the riders promptly dismounted and came forward, but Dean Wolcott shook his head. "Thank you," he said, stubbornly, "I shall ride this horse or none." He sounded blatantly dramatic to his own ears. Why hadn't he laughed it off, made determined comedy of the situation, made them laugh with him, instead of at him? He hated himself for the bombastic attitude he had struck; he hated 'Rome Ojeda and his quivering red roan; he hated his own fatuous folly of weakening the evening before under Ginger's lips and promising her to make this ghastly fiasco; he was not at all sure that he didn't hate Ginger.

Old Estrada came forward, respectful, helpful. Dean was fitted out with spurs and quirt, the horse was firmly held until the rider was solidly in the saddle, his feet braced, the reins in a tense grip. But now Snort, as if he had had his little joke, conducted himself in what was, for him, a staid and dignified manner; he pranced, he curvetted, he tossed his handsome head, but he made no effort to dislodge his passenger, and Dean, his head aching dully, his aching body intolerably jolted and jarred, followed in the wake of the procession.

"Thank you," said Dean, civilly. "You are very kind."

Dean Wolcott tried to detach himself from the spectacle, to regard it objectively--something whose like he had never seen before, and never would see--but of course, he told himself, after he married Ginger he would often see this sort of thing. She would, he supposed, insist on coming back to her ranch occasionally, unless he could persuade her to sell it. He sought to see her in the frame and with the background of Boston; it was actually the first time, since that moment when they stood midway on Aleck's bridge, that he had done this. The realization came sharply that he had been looking into a kaleidoscope for two glowing and highly colored weeks. On his summer vacations, when he was a small and quiet child, he had visited at an uncle's Connecticut farm, and--better than the out-of-doors--he had loved the cool dimness of the big "Front Room."

Being a gentle and trustworthy child he was allowed the freedom of it. He might turn the pages of the ancient album, lift the conch shells from the whatnot in the corner and listen to the imprisoned sound of the sea, climb carefully upon a chair to inspect the wax flowers and the hair wreaths framed and hanging on the walls; best of all he loved sitting on a slippery hair-cloth sofa, his eyes glued to the tiny window of the kaleidoscope, his soul warm with the joy of color and design. There was always, he remembered now, a distinct effort of his will necessary to remove his reveling eye, to take it away from crimson and jade and orange and ultramarine and deep purple, and return it to the grays and browns and drabs of the material world. And the time had come again, he told himself grimly, his head aching dully, his muscles aching sharply, to take his eye away from the kaleidoscope.

He was following Estrada into the thick of it; he was surrounded by the brown bodies; he was stifled by the brown dust which rose over him. The sun was high, now, and he had stopped being chilled, but he was miserable in so many other ways that he was not able to be thankful. He wondered dully, disgusted, why the powerful creatures, horned, capable of splendid battle, allowed themselves to be driven by a twentieth part of their number of men, herded docilely down to their death.

Dean Wolcott tried it; he tried it faithfully. He was willing and eager to try anything which would alleviate his wretchedness, but there was no looseness in him anywhere. Everything was taut, shrieking with painful tension. If he leaned forward, if he leaned back, if he shifted the weight from the stirrups to the saddle, from the saddle to the stirrups, it was worse in another strained or bruised or blistered locality. He knew that his stirrups were too short but he would not dismount to change them; he doubted if he could get on again. "How many miles have we come, Estrada?" He knew they must be almost at their destination, but it would be a comfort to hear it from the Spaniard's lips.

"Then we have twelve still to go?"

It would last for hours yet, this personal misery, this unendurable monotony; brown, twisting, turning bodies, tossing horns, wild eyes; ceaseless bellowing; dust--stifling, choking, blinding dust; the smell of sweating hides.

The girl rode close to her lover, bright-eyed and glowing and spoke softly. "All right, Dean? Are you all right?"

He told her he was all right. He swallowed one sandwich with difficulty; no one had thought to bring a drinking cup, and besides, the steers had hopelessly muddied the creek. Well, they would be at Santa Rita in about an hour.

Dean studied Ginger and Ojeda and the rest of them with angry and grudging admiration, their boundless endurance, their lazy confidence, their utter oneness with their mounts. Then, honestly disgusted with himself, he set to work to see the thing as it was, not in its interrelationship to his own unfitness. He told himself unsparingly that he was like the type of American who goes to a foreign land and talks disparagingly about the foreigners; his sense of balance came back. He, Dean Wolcott, was the failure here. These people were integral parts of the virile picture; they fitted strongly into the high brown hills and the blue mountains far beyond, into the wide dry valleys and the deep ca?ons: he belonged on the pavement, in the shadow of grave buildings, art galleries, quiet clubs, dignified offices. It was absurd to let himself be overcome with such a sense of bitterness and rebellion; suppose he didn't and couldn't make good here, according to their crude and simple standards? Could they make good in Boston, according to his? He was weary enough to begin to quote, bromidically to himself. East was east and west was west, and never the twain-- Ah, but the twain did, occasionally, brilliantly, satisfyingly, as he and Ginger had met on Aleck's bridge, the good, simple Aleck who had opened a window into a new world for him, in the trenches; who had given him Ginger.

They reached the shipping point at last; there was a hectic half hour of getting the steers across the concrete highway; they advanced upon it warily, putting their noses down to it, snorting, pawing, holding back against the pressure of the herd behind them; then they went with a rush, over, up and down, wild, terrified; plunging, slipping. Some one told Dean, curtly, to tie his horse and go out on foot on to the highway to stop the automobiles. It was exquisite relief and exquisite torture to be walking; it was ludicrous to feel a sudden access of power and authority, holding up his hand like a traffic policeman, seeing the cars slam on their brakes and obey him, to have people lean out and ask him questions about the cattle. He was busily useful for thirty minutes; he was doing his job as well as any man of them. Then he was hauling himself unhappily into the saddle again, and they were off.

"Got to make time while we can," said Ginger, "before we pick up the yearlings. Let's go!"

'Rome Ojeda passed them, drew his horse back on his haunches, waited for them. "Well, goin' to make a hand with the yearlings, Mr. Wolcott? That was easy this mornin'; they'd been moved two--three times, those steers. These young-uns are different."

"He sure is going to make a hand, 'Rome," said Ginger, confidently. "It'll take all of us, and then some!"

He saw, presently, why it would take all of them, why he must strive, in his awkward and unready fashion, to "make a hand." The young steers were timid, suspicious, quarrelsome; stupid, quick to get into a blind and unreasoning panic--brown streaks of speed when they broke away from the bunch. Ginger was here, there, everywhere, swallow-swift on Diablo, darting after a fugitive--up a sheer bank, down a steep ca?on, hanging low out of her saddle, Indian-fashion, to dodge a dangerous branch. Estrada had had to give up his duties as guide; he was in the thick of the job. Dean rode alone, and Snort, who, by some miracle of mercy, had been mild and tractable earlier in the day, now developed temper and temperament. Any sort of riding, after the long hours in the saddle, was active discomfort; riding Snort was torture.

A dog ran out of a ranch house and barked; the herd, which had settled down for half an hour into something like order and calm, started milling; round and round, like an eddying whirlpool, trying to turn, to start back; there was the sharp sound of a fence giving way--they were into the rancher's orchard, they were into his field, and then over his hill--they were off and away.

He made a hand, of sorts. He was part and parcel of the noisy, breathless chaos. He was never to know by what magic he remained in or near the saddle; certainly there was little left of power or volition in his racked and tired body. They were back at last upon the road; they were moving steadily forward again. 'Rome Ojeda came up to him. "Well, you sure are makin' a hand," he said, genially. Dust had settled thickly on his face; it made his smile whiter and more flashing than ever by contrast. "But we got'a watch 'em, still! They're sure one wild bunch! They--" he broke off abruptly at Ginger's cry--

A lone young steer had sneaked away from his side of the herd, from under his inattentive nose, and was galloping clumsily off across a field.

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