by Bower, B M
The two riders pulled up, smiling pityingly, just as well-mounted riders invariably smile upon stalled automobilists. This was not the first machine that had come to grief in that hollow, though they could not remember ever to have seen one sunk deeper in the sand.
"I guess you wouldn't refuse a little help, about now," Lite observed casually to Lee, who was most in evidence.
"We wouldn't refuse a little, but a lot is what we need," Lee amended glumly. "Any ranch within forty miles of here? We need about twelve good horses, I should say." Lee's experience with sand had been unhappy, and his knowledge of what one good horse could do was slight.
"Shall we snake 'em out, Jean?" Lite asked her, as if he himself were absolutely indifferent to their plight.
"Oh, I suppose we might as well. We can't leave them blocking the trail; somebody might want to drive past," Jean told him in much the same tone, just to tease Lee Milligan, who was looking them over disparagingly.
"We'll be blocking the trail a good long while if we stay here till you move us," snapped Lee, who was rather sensitive to tones.
Then Robert Grant Burns gave a heave and a wriggle, and came up for air and a look around. He had been composing a monologue upon the subject of sand, and he had not noticed that strange voices were speaking on the other side of the machine.
"Hello, sis— How-de-do, Miss," he greeted Jean guardedly, with a hasty revision of the terms when he saw how her eyebrows pinched together. "I wonder if you could tell us where we can find teams to pull us out of this mess. I don't believe this old junk-wagon is ever going to do it herself."
"How do you do, Mr. Burns? Lite and I offered to take you out on solid ground, but your man seemed to think we couldn't do it."
"What man was that? Wasn't me, anyway. I think you can do just about anything you start out to do, if you ask me."
"Thank you," chilled Jean, and permitted Pard to back away from his approach.
"Say, you're some rider," he praised tactlessly, and got no reply whatever. Jean merely turned and rode around to where Lite eased his long legs in the stirrups and waited her pleasure.
"Shall we help them out, Lite?" she asked distinctly. "I think perhaps we ought to; it's a long walk to town."
"I guess we better; won't take but a minute to tie on," Lite agreed, his fingers dropping to his coiled rope. "Seems queer to me that folks should want to ride in them things when there's plenty of good horses in the country."
"No accounting for tastes, Lite," Jean replied cheerfully. "Listen. If that thin man will start the engine,—he doesn't weigh more than half as much as you do, Mr. Burns,—we'll pull you out on solid ground. And if you have occasion to cross this hollow again, I advise you to keep out there to the right. There's a little sod to give your tires a better grip. It's rough, but you could make it all right if you drive carefully, and the bunch of you get out and walk. Don't try to keep around on the ridge; there's a deep washout on each side, so you couldn't possibly make it. We can't with the horses, even." Jean did not know that there was a note of superiority in her voice when she spoke the last sentence, but her listeners winced at it. Only Pete Lowry grinned while he climbed obediently into the machine to advance his spark and see that the gears were in neutral.
"Don't crank up till we're ready!" Lite expostulated. "These cayuses of ours are pretty sensible, and they'll stand for a whole lot; but there's a limit. Wait till I get the ropes fixed, before you start the engine. And the rest of you all be ready to give the wheels a lift. You're in pretty deep."
When Jean dismounted and hooked the stirrup over the horn so that she could tighten the cinch, the eyes of Robert Grant Burns glistened at the "picture-stuff" she made. He glanced eloquently at Pete, and Pete gave a twisted smile and a pantomime of turning the camera-crank; whereat Robert Grant Burns shook his head regretfully and groaned again.
"Say, if I had a leading woman—" he began discontentedly, and stopped short; for Muriel Gay was standing quite close, and even through her grease-paint make-up she betrayed the fact that she knew exactly what her director was thinking, had seen and understood the gesture of the camera man, and was close to tears because of it all.
Muriel Gay was a conscientious worker who tried hard to please her director. Sometimes it seemed to her that her director demanded impossibilities of her; that he was absolutely soulless where picture-effects were concerned. Her riding had all along been a subject of discord between them. She had learned to ride very well along the bridle-paths of Golden Gate Park, but Robert Grant Burns seemed to expect her to ride—well, like this girl, for instance, which was unjust.
One could not blame her for glaring jealously while Jean tightened the cinch and remounted, tying her rope to the saddle horn, all ready to pull; with her muscles tensed for the coming struggle with the sand,—and perhaps with her horse as well,—and with every line of her figure showing how absolutely at home she was in the saddle, and how sure of herself.
"I've tied my rope, Lite," Jean drawled, with a little laugh at what might happen.
Lite turned his face toward her. "You better not," he warned. "Things are liable to start a-popping when that engine wakes up."
"Well, then I'll want both hands for Pard. I've taken a couple of half-hitches, anyway."
"You folks want to be ready at the wheels," Lite directed, waiving the argument. "When we start, you all want to heave-ho together. Good team-work will do it.
"All set?" he called to Jean, when Pete Lowry bent his back to start the engine. "Business'll be pickin' up, directly!"
"All set," replied Jean cheerfully.
It seemed then that everything began to start at once, and to start in different directions. The engine snorted and pounded so that the whole machine shook with ague. When Pete jumped in and threw in the clutch, there was a backfire that sounded like the crack of doom. The two horses went wild, as their riders had half expected them to do. They lunged away from the horror behind them, and the slack ropes tightened with a jerk. Both were good rope horses, and the strain of the ropes almost recalled them to sanity and their training; at least they held the ropes tight for a few seconds, so that the machine jumped ahead and veered toward the firmer soil beside the trail, in response to Pete's turn of the wheel.
Then Pard looked back and saw the thing coming after him, and tried to bolt. When he found that he could not, because of the rope, he bucked as he had not done since he was a half-broken broncho. That started Lite Avery's horse to pitching; and Pete, absorbed in watching what would have made a great picture, forgot to shut off the gas.
Robert Grant Burns picked himself out of the sand where he had sprawled at the first wild lunge of the machine, and saw Pete Lowry, humped over the wheel like any speed demon, go lurching off across the hollow in the wake of two fear-crazed animals, that threatened at any instant to bolt off at an angle that would overturn the car.
Then Lite let his rope slip from the saddle-horn and spurred his horse to one side, out of the danger zone of the other, while he felt frantically in his pockets for his knife.
"Don't you cut my rope," Jean warned, when she saw him come plunging toward her, knife in hand. "This is—fine training—for Pard!"
Pete came to himself, then, and killed the engine before he landed in the bottom of a yawning, water-washed hole, and Lite rode close and slashed Jean's rope, in spite of her protest; whereupon Pard went off up the slope as though witches were riding him hard.
At long rifle range, he circled and faced the thing that had scared him so, and after a little Jean persuaded him to go back as far as the trail. Nearer he would not stir, so she waited there for Lite.
"Never even thanked us," Lite grumbled when he came up, his mouth stretched in a wide smile. "That girl with the kalsomine on her face made remarks about folks butting in. And the fat man talked into his double chin; dunno what all he was saying. Here's what's left of your rope. I'll get you another one, Jean. I was afraid that gazabo was going to run over you, is why I cut it."
"What's the matter over there? Aren't they glad they're out of the sand?" Jean held her horse quiet while she studied the buzzing group.
"Something busted. I guess we done some damage." Lite grinned and watched them over his shoulder.
"You needn't go any further with me, Lite. That fat man's the one that had the cattle. I am going over to the ranch for awhile, but don't tell Aunt Ella." She turned to ride on up the hill toward the Lazy A, but stopped for another look at the perturbed motorists. "Well anyway, we snaked them out of the sand, didn't we, Lite?"
"We sure did," Lite chuckled. "They don't seem thankful, but I guess they ain't any worse off than they was before. Anyway, it serves them right. They've no business here acting fresh."
Lite said that because he was not given the power to peer into the future, and so could not know that Fate herself had sent Robert Grant Burns into their lives; and that, by a somewhat roundabout method, she was going to use the Great Western Film Company and Jean and himself for her servants in doing a work which Fate had set herself to do.
CHAPTER VIII
JEAN SPOILS SOMETHING
Jean found the padlock key where she had hidden it under a rock ten feet from the door, and let herself into her room. The peaceful familiarity of its four walls, and the cheerful patch of sunlight lying warm upon the faded rag carpet, gave her the feeling of security and of comfort which she seldom felt elsewhere.
She wandered aimlessly around the room, brushing the dust from her books and straightening a tiny fold in the cradle quilt. She ran an investigative forefinger along the seat of her father's saddle, brought the finger away dusty, pulled one of the stockings from the overflowing basket and used it for a dust cloth. She wiped and polished the stamped leather with a painstaking tenderness that had in it a good deal of yearning, and finally left it with a gesture of hopelessness.
She went next to her desk and fumbled the quirt that lay there still. Then she pulled out the old ledger, picked up a pencil, and began to write, sitting on the arm of an old, cane-seated chair while she did so. As I told you before, Jean never wrote anything in that book except when her moods demanded expression of some sort; when she did write, she said exactly what she thought and felt at the time. So if you are permitted to know what she wrote at this time, you will have had a peep into Jean's hidden, inner life that none of her world save Lite knew anything about. She wrote rapidly, and she did not always take the trouble to finish her sentences properly,—as if she never could quite keep pace with her thoughts. So this is what that page held when finally she slammed the book shut and slid it back into the desk:
I don't know what's the matter with me lately. I feel as if I wanted to shoot somebody, or rob a bank or run away—I guess it's the old trouble nagging at me. I KNOW dad never did it. I don't know why, but I know it just the same—and I know Uncle Carl knows it too. I'd like to take out his brain and put it into some scientific machine that would squeeze out his thoughts—hope it wouldn't hurt him—I'd give him ether, maybe. What I want is money—enough to buy back this place and the stock. I don't believe Uncle Carl spent as much defending dad as he claims he did—not enough to take the whole ranch anyway. If I had money I'd find Art Osgood if I had to hunt from Alaska to Africa—don't believe he went to Alaska at all. Uncle Carl thinks so.... I'd like the price of that machine I helped drag out of the sand—some people can have anything they want but all I want is dad back, and this place the way it was before....
If I had any brains I could write something wonderful and be rich and famous and do the things I want to do—but there's no profit in just feeling wonderful things; if I could make the world see and feel what I see and feel—when I'm here, or riding alone....
If I could find Art Osgood I believe I could make him tell—I know he knows something, even if he didn't do it himself. I believe he did—But what can you do when you're a woman and haven't any money and must stay where you're put and can't even get out and do the little you might do, because somebody must have you around to lean on and tell their troubles to.... I don't blame Aunt Ella so much—but thank goodness, I can do without a shoulder to weep on, anyway. What's life for if you've got to spend your days hopping round and round in a cage. It wouldn't be a cage if I could have dad back—I'd be doing things for him all the time and that would make life worth while. Poor dad—four more years is—I can't think about it. I'll go crazy if I do—
It was there that she stopped and slammed the book shut, and pushed it back out of sight in the desk. She picked up her hat and gloves, and went out with blurred eyes, and began to climb the bluff above the little spring, where a faint, little-used trail led to the benchland above. By following a rock ledge to where it was broken, and climbing through the crevice to where the trail marked faintly the way to the top, one could in a few minutes leave the Lazy A coulee out of sight below, and stand on a high level where the winds blew free from the mountains in the west to the mountains in the east.
Some day, it was predicted, the benchland would be cut into squares and farmed,—some day when the government brought to reality a long-talked-of irrigation project. But in the meantime, the land lay unfenced and free. One could look far away to the north, and at certain times see the smoke of passing trains through the valley off there. One could look south to the distant river bluffs, and east and west to the mountains. Jean often climbed the bluff just for the wide outlook she gained. The cage did not seem so small when she could stand up there and tire her eyes with looking. Life did not seem quite so purposeless, and she could nearly always find little whispers of hope in the winds that blew there.
She walked aimlessly and yet with a subconscious purpose for ten minutes or so, and her face was turned directly toward the eastern hills. She stopped on the edge of the bluff that broke abruptly there, and sat down and stared at the soft purple of the hills and the soft green of the nearer slopes, and at the peaceful blue of the sky arched over it all. Her eyes cleared of their troubled look and grew dreamy. Her mouth lost its tenseness and softened to a half smile. She was not looking now into the past that was so full of heartbreak, but into the future as hope pictured it for her.
She was seeing the Lazy A alive again and all astir with the business of life; and her father saddling Sioux and riding out to look after the stock. She was seeing herself riding with him,—or else cooking the things he liked best for his dinner when he came back hungry. She sat there for a long, long while and never moved.
A sparrow hawk swooped down quite close to Jean and then shot upward with a little brown bird in its claws, and startled her out of her castle building. She felt a hot anger against the hawk, which was like the sudden grasp of misfortune; and a quick sympathy with the bird, which was like herself and dad, caught unawares and held helpless. But she did not move, and the hawk circled and came back on his way to the nesting-place in the trees along the creek below. He came quite close, and Jean shot him as he lifted his wings for a higher flight. The hawk dropped head foremost to the grass and lay there crumpled and quiet.
Jean put back her gun in its holster and went over to where the hawk lay. The little brown bird fluttered terrifiedly and gave a piteous, small chirp when her hand closed over it, and then lay quite still in her cupped palms and blinked up at her.
Jean cuddled it up against her cheek, and talked to it and pitied it and promised it much in the way of fat little bugs and a warm nest and her tender regard. For the hawk she had no pity, nor a thought beyond the one investigative glance she gave its body to make sure that she had hit it where she meant to hit it. Lite had taught her to shoot like that,—straight and quick. Lite was a man who trimmed life down to the essentials, and he had long ago impressed it upon her that if she could not shoot quickly, and hit where she aimed, there was not much use in her attempting to shoot at all. Jean proved by her scant interest in the hawk how well she had learned the lesson, and how sure she was of hitting where she aimed.
The little brown bird had been gashed in the
breast by a sharp talon. Jean was much concerned over the wound, even though it did not reach any vital organ. She was afraid of septic poisoning, she told the bird; but added comfortingly: "There—you needn't worry one minute over that. I'm almost sure there's a bottle of peroxide down at the house, that isn't spoiled. We'll go and put some on it right away; and then we'll go bug-hunting. I believe I know where there's the fattest, juiciest bugs!" She cuddled the bird against her cheek, and started back across the wide point of the benchland to where the trail led down the bluff to the house.
She was wholly absorbed in the trouble of the little brown bird; and the trail, following a crevice through the rocks and later winding along behind some scant bushes, partially concealed the buildings and the house yard from view until one was well down into the coulee. So it was not until she was at the spring, looking at the moist earth there for fat bugs for the bird, that she had any inkling of visitors. Then she heard voices and went quickly around the corner of the house toward the sound.
It seemed to her that she was lately fated to come plump into the middle of that fat Mr. Burns' unauthorized picture-making. The first thing she saw when she rounded the corner was the camera perched high upon its tripod and staring at her with its one round eye; and the humorous-eyed Pete Lowry turning a crank at the side and counting in a whisper. Close beside her the two women were standing in animated argument which they carried on in undertones with many gestures to point their meaning.
"Hey, you're in the scene!" called Pete Lowry, and abruptly stopped counting and turning the crank.
"You're in the scene, sister. Step over here to one side, will you?" The fat director waved his pink-cameoed hand impatiently.
An old bench had been placed beside the house, under a window. Jean backed a step and sat down upon the bench, and looked from one to the other. The two women glanced at her wide-eyed and moved away with mutual embracings. Jean lifted her hands and looked at the soft little crest and beady eyes of the bird, to make sure that it was not disturbed by these strangers, before she gave her attention to the expostulating Mr. Burns.