by Zane Grey
“Kal Emerson, you’re going to stick to that promise to Dick?”
“I’d forgotten about him, but not about marrying you. I shore intend to do that.”
“I won’t,” she declared.
“You will,” he returned.
“A woman has to swear to — to love, honor, and obey a man, doesn’t she, before it’s binding?”
“Why, I reckon. But you can cut out the obey if you want.”
“You know every little wish of yours would be law to me,” she said, passionately.
“Ruth, I didn’t know that, but fine — fine! My wish is for you to be my wife.”
“Why?” she asked, her face paling.
“Wal, for a number of reasons, most particular of which is that I want to take care of you an’ make you happy.”
“But you don’t have to marry me — to do that. I’ll be happier than I ever was in my life — just to be with you, work for you.”
“Maybe you could. An’ that would be all right with me,” he rejoined, earnestly. “Only, our story will be known.... An’ wal, I won’t have it any other way.”
“I can jump in the river,” said Ruth, tragically. “I always wanted to. Those deep green pools always fascinated me.” She rose to her feet, her face white, her eyes dark with pain, but with something rebellious in them that persuaded Kalispel she would not naturally go so far.
“Aw, Ruth, you wouldn’t,” he replied. Nevertheless, he laid a strong hand on the nearest blue-jean leg.
“I would rather than disgrace you,” she asserted.
“But, you little dunce, if you won’t marry me, you will disgrace me.”
“I — I thought I’d settled it,” she faltered, miserably.
“If you cry I’ll — I’ll spank you,” he declared, threateningly. “I’d forgotten everything — and I was happy.”
“Ah-huh. An’ now you’re unhappy just because I’m determined to make you Mrs. Lee Emerson?... Gosh! It’s shore flatterin’ to my vanity.”
“Kal, I’m not like other girls — for instance, Sydney Blair.”
“Yes you are, an’ a darn sight nicer.”
“Oh! — Oh! If you only — only had met me — when I was sixteen!” she sobbed, and broke down.
Kalispel almost took her into his arms. He surely wanted to, and choked up with his feeling, but he was afraid of hurting her further. After a while, when she grew composed once more, he said: “Ruth, it’s only for appearance’s sake. I told you that.... You’ll not be my wife, really. So there’ll be nothin’ for you to be ashamed of. An’ I’ll have you to take care of — an’ you’ll have me.”
“Very well. I will marry you,” she replied, in faint and sober tone.
Kalispel left her alone then and walked under the cottonwoods realizing that he did not understand himself very well. But he felt greatly relieved and glad of her decision. Presently he heard a clip-clop of hoofs and the crunch of wheels on the gravel road. The vehicle proved to be a light spring-wagon which turned off toward the cottonwood grove. Soon Kalispel saw that the driver’s garb betokened him to be a minister and that the other occupant of the wagon was Jake.
“Kal, this is Parson Weeks,” announced Jake as they came to a stop. “I commissioned him to pack our fresh supplies out. An’ he’s offered to sell the hoss an’ wagon cheap. So I reckon, when he winds up by hitchin’ you an’ Ruth, thet it’ll be a right pert day for him.”
“Howdy, Parson. I’m Lee Emerson, called Kalispel by some, an’ I’m shore glad to meet you,” drawled Kalispel, offering his hand, as the gray-haired, blue-eyed, brown-faced little man alighted.
“The pleasure is mine, Emerson. I’ve heard of you and I’m glad to shake this good right hand of yours.”
“Come an’ meet the lady.”
Ruth rose from her log seat as they approached, and Kalispel’s fears were unfounded. She showed no trace of distress and met them with a smile and brave, sweet eyes.
“Ruth, this is Parson Weeks,” announced Kalispel. The meeting came off to Kalispel’s keen pleasure.
“Parson, I have promised to marry him,” said Ruth, presently, with lovely, troubled eyes uplifted. “I will — but I ought not.”
“And goodness me! why not, if you care for him?” exclaimed Weeks, kindly.
“Oh, I do love him, but I was a dance-hall girl and I can never live down the bad name that gave me.”
“Suppose you were,” he replied, slowly. “That is nothing if he wants you.” He turned to Kalispel.
“Yes, I do!” interrupted Kalispel, with passion. “Parson, I took her out of a dance-hall, but that doesn’t say she was bad. An’ I’m goin’ to marry her an’ make her happy. She’s afraid she’ll disgrace me, but she’s a lot better than I am. She has a better education than I had, too.... If you can only talk a little sense into her pretty head you’ll be doin’ me an everlastin’ favor.”
“Ah! I see!” returned the minister, deeply moved, and he took Ruth’s hand. “My dear child, this is a question of love and love alone. Emerson is proving his. You have told me of yours. I advise you as a father and beseech you as a minister to marry this young man.... I am of the West, Ruth. And I know what the foundation has been. Women are scarce on the frontier. A few pioneer women with their daughters, and the rest a horde of Indian squaws, adventuresses, prostitutes — and dance-hall girls. From these Westerners must choose their wives. And they have done so for years, are doing it now, and will continue to do so. Man must have woman. It is a hard country, this glorious West of ours. It takes big women to stand it. And bad women, if there are any bad women, have turned out big and good. They are making the West. Who shall remember in threescore years, when this broad land will be prosperous with cities and ranchers, that the grandmothers of that generation, ever were, let us say, dance-hall girls? And if it were remembered, who could bring calumny against the strong-souled mothers of the West?”
Parson Weeks married Ruth and Kalispel under the gold-leafed cottonwoods, with Jake grinning happily by. And when Kalispel bent over Ruth to watch her sign the marriage certificate, he was rather astonished to discover that he had never before known her surname.
Kalispel bought out Olsen, lock, stock, and barrel, to his own rapture and the dissatisfied rancher’s great satisfaction.
A belated Indian summer fell upon the Salmon River Valley, and added its enchantment of smoky, still, golden days to the splendor of silver, black-tipped slopes, and the singing river.
While Jake scoured the Lemhi Valley for horses and cattle, Kalispel superintended the erection of a spacious addition to Olsen’s log cabin. Carpenters and builders from the town peeled the lodge-pole pines that the Indians snaked down from the forests, and sawed and raised and hammered till a long living-room arose, with a large open fireplace in the center, and small, well-lighted rooms at each end. Kalispel never left the ranch, but his orders were sent out, and wagon-loads of furniture arrived. And when he had exhausted Salmon’s resources he sent freighters to Boise for the luxuries he wanted for Ruth. Pictures, curtains, lamps, rugs, linen, all the things he had surreptitiously learned from Ruth were dear to the hearts of housewives, all these and many more came almost before the roof was on, to Ruth’s growing consternation and rapture.
“Oh, Kal! If you are going in debt we are ruined before we start!” she wailed.
“Nary a debt,” he replied, with a mysterious air.
“Kal, you couldn’t have lied to me!” she implored. “You couldn’t!”
“Wal, I don’t recollect lyin’ to you,” he drawled. “What about?”
“You swore you have never been — oh, forgive me! — a — a bandit?”
“Shore, I swore. I never took two-bits in my life — that didn’t belong to me.”
“Then, Kal, you struck gold over there — struck it rich — and kept it secret!”
“Wal, there’s somethin’ in what you say,” he replied, lazily, and then he ran out to keep from telling her of his secret, of the bags and bag
s of gold dust so carefully hidden by himself deep under his corner of the new house.
Kalispel planned many surprises, to Ruth’s endless bewilderment. When Smoky arrived, the finest and prettiest little saddle-horse in the valley, with a Mexican silver-mounted saddle and bridle, Ruth wept and loved the horse and followed Kalispel around with eyes that made a slow, strange heat throb in his veins. What was this intense desire of his to see the light of gladness come to her blue eyes? How stern his determination to make up to her for what she had suffered, to fill the present with a joy that must obliterate the past!
However, when a young Lemhi Indian couple put in an appearance, the stalwart man to help Jake with his manifold tasks, and the comely squaw to look after the house, then Ruth arose like a roused lioness. To her wrath and her protestations and lamentations Kalispel turned a flinty, if not a deaf, ear.
“Dog-gone it! There’s too much work on this big place for a little girl like you!” he ejaculated, finally.
“I’m not little. At least, if I am little, I’m strong.”
“Shore. But I won’t have my wife makin’ a slave of herself. Not while I’m rich.”
“Rich!... Damn you, Kal!... Oh, forgive me. I meant to stop swearing.... But I don’t care if you are rich, you mysterious cowpuncher! I want to be worth my salt.”
“Ruth, I reckon I’m findin’ out you’re worth gold an’ rubies an’ pearls.”
“You are!... Oh, Kal, you’re so careless with your speech. Remember I’m only a poor little lost waif — and if I ever thought you’d — I — Oh!... but let me cook and bake and sew for you!”
“Wal, I sort of think I’ll like that, a little,” he drawled. “But no pichin’ hay or diggin’ potatoes or milkin’ cows or choppin’ wood or scrubbin’ floors, or any of a hundred jobs such as Olsen’s wife had to do. You savvy, Mrs. Emerson?”
“Yes, I savvy,” she replied, her eyes shining through tears.
By mid-November the leaves were off the cottonwoods and willows; the grass had grown sear and brown; the skies were mostly gray; and the wailing wind and dismal croak of ravens from the hill attested to the imminent approach of winter.
Jake had driven in a thousand head of cattle and fifty horses, which were turned out in the river pastures. The freighting was all finished. Jake and the Indian cut firewood when the other farm chores left them time.
During these eventful and all-satisfying weeks Kalispel had not visited Salmon or Challis. His thoughts were absorbed by his ranch and a new something that had come into his life.
Nevertheless, he heard endless gossip from Jake, who never failed to return from town with the latest happenings. Moreover, miners and travelers, who often stopped at the ranch, brought their share of news. Only of late had the stream of miners from Thunder City diminished to a few stragglers.
Five hundred undefeated gold-diggers had remained behind to spend the winter in the ruined gold-camp. Thunder Mountain had slipped down to pile a dam a hundred feet high across the valley at the lower end. A hundred feet of water now covered the long, wide street where revelry had held sway day and night. And the lake had backed up two miles, here and there dotted by clapboard houses that had floated until they stranded in shallow places. But the gold was still there. And in the spring the hundred-ton stamp-mill would be packed in.
Of vital interest to Kalispel was the news that Masters had lingered at Thunder City long after all his friends had left. And one day, in a tent-walled gambling-den, he had clashed with two miners named Jones and Matthews and had killed them both. One of these men, while dying, had confessed to the murder of Sam Emerson, at Leavitt’s instigation.
Leavitt’s vigilantes had taken off their masks that last day when the landslide had saved Kalispel, and were never known by their fellow miners or heard of again.
Kalispel often inquired about Blair and his daughter, but they seemed to have vanished. Memory of the dark haired, violet-eyed girl had mellowed to something fine for Kalispel and he no longer felt any regret or remorse.
Then one day a leaden sky mantled the mountain peaks and snow began to fall. Great, feathery, white flakes floated down to cover the slopes, the ranges, the cabins, the sheds and fences, all except the dark-green, gliding river. Three feet of snow fell during that first storm of the winter, and when it cleared the mercury slipped down below zero.
Kalispel gazed out of the window that morning upon a beautiful white world.
“Gosh, how I always used to hate winter!” he ejaculated. “Blizzards on the Wyomin’ range were no joke.”
“I love winter,” replied Ruth, gayly. “I shall wade out in the snow every day.”
“Wade away, but not with me, darlin’!” he drawled. The unconscious term of endearment checked any further enthusiasm of Ruth’s and again opened for Kalispel a singular train of thought, which for long had recurred, despite his perplexity and disfavor.
“Snowed in, like a couple of Missouri groundhogs! Snowed in for the winter, you an’ me, Ruth!... Aw, it’s terrible hard luck for Kalispel Emerson! Nice, cozy, bright livin’- room, big open fireplace an’ stacks an’ stacks of dead wood to burn! — Shore is hard luck for a down-trodden, never-understood cowboy!”
“Yes, I had observed the same thing,” replied Ruth, demurely, with an expressive glance from her blue eyes.
“Shore. I’m glad you are observin’,” drawled Kalispel, the mood growing on him. “An’ stuff to eat! Oh, my! Two deer hangin’ up in the shed an’ a thousand pounds of elk meat! — Pantry full of grub! Milk an’ cream an’ butter all I can stuff, an’ not have to lift a dam hand to get it.... An’ then this here livin’-room. Books an’ books, an’ magazines galore! Nice, bright lamps an ‘easy chairs! Aw, the long winter evenin’s when the wind moans an’ the snow blows, with all these things an’ a girl no man would ever tire lookin’ at!”
“Oh, so you have observed that last!” exclaimed Ruth, lightly, but she did not raise her eyes.
Kalispel had looked at her often of late, though not so keenly and realizingly as on this white morning when he accepted the fact of winter.
“November, December, January, February, March, April, May!” he exclaimed.
“Oh, the long months, eh?” she rejoined, encouragingly.
“Yep, the long months with you alone.”
“Kal, isn’t that prospect very — very — ?” she asked, troubled of eyes, and unable to find the word she wanted.
“Shore it is,” he agreed, but did not tell her what.
Ruth had greatly improved during these weeks of autumn. The hollows of her cheeks and neck had filled out, and she had gained otherwise, so that her appearance of frailty had vanished. The shadows that had once lain under her eyes were gone, and the haunting pain no longer lurked in her expression. With Kalispel’s sense of relief at this transformation came his full realization of the love that had grown in him. He had long been conscious of something deeply sig-nificant for him in her presence. Every thought of her busy, happy days and evenings seemed to be for him. She lived for him. And his love, insensibly born that dusk in Sloan’s cabin, had been fed by her sweetness, her shining hair and never-failing smile, her improvement in health and beauty, the day by day unfolding of her brave and loyal soul.
He kept his secret to himself for days and nights, gloating over the wonder of it, the transformation it had wrought in him. He played with this happiness and hugged it to his bosom.
But the time came when Kalispel felt that he could not keep his love secret any longer. Wherefore he reacted to his old cowboy humor and planned his capitulation.
That night he had been unusually quiet, and not responsive to Ruth’s thoughtful importunities. But when bedtime came he apparently regained his cheerfulness.
“Dog-gone! — Ruth, can’t you feel the cold creepin’ in?” he said, as he got up to bank the red bed of embers in the fireplace. “If I don’t keep pilin’ on wood —— —”
“It was fifteen degrees below zero this morning,” she dec
lared.
“Wal, no wonder.... Do you sleep warm, Ruth?” he asked, solicitously, as he turned his back, raking up the coals.
“I freeze to death,” she rejoined, frankly, with a laugh.
“So do I, towards mornin’,” he drawled, thoughtfully. “Dog-gone it, Ruth, suppose we sleep together to keep warm.”
She uttered a slight gasp, but did not reply. Kalispel went on piling the ashes over the live fire and taking pains about it. He did not want to look at her just then, because he knew that when he did there would be the end of his secret. As she did not speak, however, he began to feel that he had overstepped his bounds.
“Course I won’t sleep in my chaps an’ spurs, as I used to,” he ventured.
“Kal!...” she whispered, faintly. “You — you’re not — in earnest?”
“Shore, come to think of it. You see I just happened to think that married people do sleep together in winter-time. So I’ve been told. It’s not a bad idee, Ruth.”
Another long silence, which at length she broke in a strangled voice.
“Very well.... I — I will.”
Then he let out a great exultant laugh.
“What’s so — so funny about it?” she asked, resentfully. Kalispel laid aside his poker and faced about with outward composure. He saw a very flushed and agitated girl. “Kid, I never told you about my love-affairs, did I?”
“No. And I don’t want to hear about them,” she replied, achieving disdain.
“Wal, all right, then I won’t bore you with details,” he went on. “But I reckon I thought I was in love a lot of times. Queer thing! I had some fights, too, an’ near got shot more’n once, an’ shot.... Wal, never mind about them.... But when I met Sydney Blair I fell kerplunk. Gee! I was lovesick! I had luck, too, in that affair. Saved Sydney from Borden, an’ again from drownin’, an’ along about then, after we got over to Thunder Mountain, when she got kinda sweet on me an’ I kissed her that night —— —”
“Kal, I don’t want to hear any more,” cried Ruth with the red of her convulsed face changing to white. Her eyes darkened with a shade Kalispel could not endure to see there.