“Little Girl Gold,” he said, gayly, “do you want your pony fetched in?”
“No, thanks, Chess. I’ve a heap of mending—washing to do. . . . And why did vou call me that? I’m not little. I weigh—or did—a hundred and thirty. My hair is chestnut, not gold.”
“It had nothing to do with looks,” replied Chess, mysteriously.
“Oh, very well, little Boy Blue,” returned Sue, lightly.
“Say, I can stand that from you,” flashed Chess, “but don’t say it before anybody.”
“You’ll see. Wait till your brother Chane rides in on your trail,” said Sue, teasingly.
“I wish I hadn’t told you,” he replied, with regret. “Because if you do I’m going to get mad.”
“Chess, you have called me a number of names, and none of them suited me.”
“Mrs. Chess Weymer would suit fine, but you’re hard to please,” he retorted, with a laugh. Then he went Whistling on his way, leaving behind him a pleasant sense of something fine and gay and irresponsible in him. Sue reflected that it was rather inconsistent of her to note he apparently had not been cast down by her rejection. Sometimes she regarded some of her thoughts and feelings quite dubiously.
She set about her own necessary duties, which, however, were all personal. She was not often called upon to help in the general camp chores. First she got Jake and Bonny to lift her chest out of the wagon and place it in the back of her tent.
“Now, Sue, I’ll bet you’ve got some pretty dresses in here,” ventured Jake, his tanned face wrinkling. He had big brown eyes, full of the kindliest expression.
“A few, Jake. And all the other possessions I have in the world,” she replied.
“No wonder you were afraid I’d drive the wagon over a bank,” responded Jake, with tremendous interest. “Some day you’ll dress up for us, won’t you? I’d like awful well to see you. My little girl, if she’d lived, would be about your age now.”
“Yes, Jake, I will if it would please you,” said Sue, “Please me! Well now, listen to her! . . . Bonny, wouldn’t you like to see Sue all dressed up?”
“Shure, Miss Sue, it’d be g-g-grand,” replied the Irishman, with the most intense gravity. “I’d like to see you knock out the black-eyed wench.”
Jake and Bonny stooped out under the tent flaps, leaving Sue on her knees beside her precious chest “These men. . . . It’s funny how they give Ora a little dig now and then. She’s pretty. But, no, I guess it’s not funny.”
Sue dragged her tarpaulin and roll of blankets, and her chaps, spurs, gloves, gun, slicker, coat—all her belongings except the big chest, out into the sunlight. She spread the blankets in the sun.
“Jake,” she called, “I want you to help me some more.”
She dispatched the genial Jake to fetch a tarpaulinful of cedar and pinon boughs; and on second thought, finding she had no task at hand while she waited for him, she followed him up the slope and helped him gather the boughs and drag the loaded tarpaulin back to her tent. Jake was the best of company, and, moreover, he had a way of making one feel more thoughtful and tolerant of others. “I’ll tell you, Sue,” he said, very confidentially, “don’t let Bonny or anybody put you against Ora. She’s a nice girl, if you just like her. She’s been spoiled. It’s plain she was sweet on young Chess, and everybody saw Chess favored you. That’s a hard place for a girl. It brings out feelings we all have.”
“Jake, I liked Ora, but lately she’s different,” protested Sue, and she tried to explain to the earnest old fellow how hard it was to be always sweetly disposed toward Ora.
“Yes, I know. But you’d feel better if you never had hard feelings,” replied Jake.
With Jake’s help Sue laid a mattress of fragrant boughs, a foot deep, along one side of her tent, holding them in place with a small log, cut to fit snugly against the canvas at each end. Upon this she spread the tarpaulin, made her bed of blankets upon it, and pulling the long end of the tarpaulin up she tucked it in all around. That done, she and Jake covered the rest of the floor space in the tent with the remaining boughs. Upon this springy carpet she spread the few Indian blankets she had. Jake fashioned a crude little rack to hold whatever she chose to hang upon it. Her duffle bag she placed in a comer. Then upon the chest, which could serve as a table, she placed her little mirror and the other toilet articles she possessed, her sewing kit, and a bag of sundry materials. Whereupon she surveyed the interior of her canvas home with a great deal of satisfaction, and sat down to consider which of her other numerous tasks she would begin first.
The hours sped apace. It was Melberne’s way in camp to have only two meals, breakfast and supper, and the latter usually came around sunset. Sue heard the men ride in, at different times, and she knew the afternoon was waning. But she kept at her mending until Mrs. Melbeme called that supper was ready.
“Sue, you should have been with me,” shouted Chess, the instant she appeared. And with a biscuit in one hand and a cup in the other he burst into the narrative ofdris adventures. She caught more of his thrilling enthusiasm and excitement than of his story. He was radiant. He had shot his first deer—a buck so big that Bonny had to help him pack it to camp.
The Irishman was evidently an inexperienced hunter. He had wasted a good deal of ammunition on deer, without success.
“Shure, I follered them,” said Bonny, “an’ loike as not I’d soon have hit one. But I saw a bear! He walked roight out of a thicket—a gray furry brute, big as a steer—an'' thot’s all I rimimber.”
“Say, mate, didn’t you heave a shot at him?” queried Captain Bunk.
“My horse run, an’ I thot I’d better run after him,” replied Bonny, seriously.
“Haw! Haw!” roared the seafaring man.
Sue’s father rode in just before dark, dusty and weary, but so elated over his day’s experience that, like Chess, he had to talk before he could eat. He had seen thousands of wild horses that apparently had never been chased, so tame were they.
“If there were only trees or brush down in the valley we could cut them and drag them into long fences leading to a trap!” he ejaculated. “What a haul we’d make! But there’s not a tree in this heah valley, so far as we rode. . . . Sue, I saw a sorrel today—the finest piece of horseflesh I ever beheld. He was light color, not red or brown, but something between. A stallion with mane and tail that almost swept the ground. He had a whole bunch of bays and blacks. As we rode toward them he drove them on. They shore wasn’t bad .scared. He whistled like a bugle note.”
“Dad, you may give him to me,” replied Sue, thrilled by his excitement.
Utah’s report appeared equally interesting to the men. Some ten miles or more down the slope of the valley he had come upon a canyon which he thought it well to explore. At the head of this he encountered a wild, broken-up section of ridges, all sloping down from two converging walls that met above. He discovered fine grass and water, and a drove of wild mules. They were in a natural trap, and it was Utah’s opinion they could be caught in one day.
“Wal, shore that’s fine,” declared Melbeme. “We’re going to be busy round heah.”
Miller was the last to come in, and he had his supper by the light of the camp fire. Manifestly he had unusual and good reports to make, but, unfortunately, it happened to be a time when his fatal stuttering affected him most. Once he nearly got launched into clear speech, but Utah, who seemed peculiarly irritated by his rider comrade’s failing, yelled out, “Whistle it, you Chinese poll-parrot!”
That was too much for the exhausted wrangler; casting a baleful glance at Utah he subsided into silence.
Long and earnestly the other wild-horse hunters talked. It was an interesting evening round the camp fire. Sue, inspired by Jake’s kind words, deliberately sought out Ora Loughbridge and persistently made herself agreeable. At first Ora was stiff and what Chess had called snippy. But she was not proof against Sue’s kindliness, and gradually she thawed. Somehow during that hour Sue got an impression of Ora’s reall
y deep attachment to Chess. She was about. Chess’s age, and a romantic girl of strong emotions. Sue noted that Ora could scarcely keep her eyes from wandering in his direction, yet at the same time she was trying to hide her secret. Her state of mind seemed no longer trivial and amusing; indeed, Sue found that by exerting herself to be kind she had roused her own sympathy for the girl.
Sue divided the mornings between her own tasks and helping her stepmother; in the afternoons she was free to idle or ride or read. The men had not yet completed their reconnaissance of the surrounding country, nor had her father hit upon a satisfactory plan to trap a large number of wild horses.
The first frosts had begun to tint the foliage of the deciduous trees, and this added fresher beauty and contrast to the evergreens. The cottonwood grove was half gold, half green; the oak brush of the canyons began to take on a bronze and russet hue; the vines overgrowing the ledges of rock back of camp showed red against the gray; and up in the canyons bright spots of scarlet stood out strikingly.
Sue liked colors. Blue was most becoming to her fair complexion and chestnut hair, but she was not partial to it. Red caught her eye, held her, thrilled her with something nameless, but it was purple which she loved. And it appeared that on the Indian summer afternoons the whole sweep of valley and stone barriers beyond slumbered under a haze of purple, ethereal and mysterious close at hand, dark and heavy and enveloping in the distance.
The autumn season had halted for the present and all nature seemed to slumber. Even the birds showed the spell, banding in flocks, seldom taking wing, twittering plaintively. Down on the valley floor the wild horses moved almost imperceptibly.
Sue rode far and high one afternoon, accompanied by Ora and Chess, who, however, were more concerned with other things than scenery or Indian summer. Chess had been complimented on his successful hunting and was eager to win more commendation. Ora was mostly concerned with Chess, and liked the hunting only because it furnished means to ride with him. They left Sue on a high open point, back of which was a big country of ridges and ravines, all thickly covered with brush and trees. Here the young hunters disappeared.
Dismounting to await their return, Sue found a comfortable seat and gave herself up to the solitude and loneliness of the surrounding hills, and the wonder of the purple open beneath her. The cottonwood grove which hid the camp appeared a golden patch on the edge of the green valley; the wild horses were but dim specks; the valley itself was only an oval basin lost in a country as wide as the horizons.
What lay and upreared and hid beyond that level rangeland was the thing which drew and chained Sue’s gaze. It was the canyon country of Utah. Long had she heard of it, and now it seemed to spread out before her, a vast shadowy region of rock—domes, spurs, peaks, bluffs, reaching escarpments, lines of cleavage, endless scalloped marching rocks; and rising grandly out of that chaos of colored rock the red- walled black-tipped flat-topped mountain that was Wild Horse Mesa. Here Sue could see a magnificent panorama of the canyon country, above which the great mesa towered a sentinel. If it had earned Sue’s interest from the valley far below, it now fascinated her. Indeed, the rock wilderness emphasized by this isolated tableland called forth feelings which were strange and unintelligible to Sue. Was it just the beauty, the loneliness, and the majesty of nature that had come to arrest her thought and trouble her soul? What was she going to meet out here in wild Utah? Of late her working hours, her idle hours, even her . dreams, her walks and rides and rests, had been vaguely ihaunted by the shadow of a mood that did not wholly break upon her consciousness.
“Something’s wrong,” sighed Sue, and her practical common sense did not drive away the conception. It was in the very solitude of her surroundings, and she could not grasp its meaning. But she divined that much as this new life in the open had come to mean, color and landscape and action, the fun afforded by the riders, and the interest of Ora’s love affair—these were not the secret of her subjection.
At last Sue confessed to her heart that she must be in love. It was one of the most secret of confessions, one of dreams almost, unaccepted by intelligence. But as the vague idea grew it developed out of that deep unconscious sphere where she had hidden her girlish fancies and ideals. It became a thought, amazing, ridiculous, inconceivable. It could not be supported by any facts. With whom could she be in love? Not Chess or Utah or any of the riders! Could it be with herself or life or this magnificent wilderness, or the nature that brooded there so solemnly? Sue tried to recall the dream hero, knight, lover that had been an evolution of her fairy-tale days, but he did not suit her new and masterful image. The new one seemed like this country, hard, rough, wild, untamed, exacting, dominating.
“But it’s only an idea!” burst out Sue, ashamed, astounded. Her cheeks were hot. Her blood ran strong from her heart. She felt it beat, beat, beat. Then there flashed into her mind what the boy Chess Weymer had said about his brother Chane, “You can’t help but love him!”
Sue at once laughed away the absurdity of any connection between the boy’s loyal worship of his brother and her own undivined yearnings. Yet there was something, and to strike a compromise with herself she acknowledged that any girl would have an interest in this wild-horse hunter who had such a great love for his brother and called him Boy Blue. There was enough romance in any girl for that, and if not romance, then a mother feeling.
“I’ve no work,” soliloquized Sue. “It’s this wandering, idle life, like an Indian’s. I think too much. But —there’s the other side to it. How beautiful the earth! I’ve learned to know the sunset, night, the stars, the moon, the sunrise, day—storm and cloud and rain, and now this purple summer. The birds, the animals— horses I love. I love the smell of the cedars, the pines, the earth, the grass. I love the feel of the rocks. . . , Oh, something has come into my life. There’s a step on my trail!”
Sue waited long for Ora and Chess, and at length they appeared riding under the trees, close together, without any game. Sue had a suspicion that they were holding hands just as they rode out of the timber, but she could not be certain. A further glance told her that they were no longer quarreling, which had been decidedly the case on the way up. Sue mounted her pony and started down the winding descent of the ridge.
About halfway down to camp, Ora and Chess caught up with her, and both appeared to overdo their excuses for such long absence.
“Were you gone long?” inquired Sue. “I hadn’t noticed that.”
Chess’s account of their hunt did not ring like those of former occasions, when he had found game. This time there was not a deer on the mountain-side.
“My brave hunter boy, I’m sure you found one dear,” said Sue, tantalizingly. She felt a tiny feminine twinge of pique. Chess had not long resisted the propinquity of the other girl.
“Aw, Sue, I reckon you are a lot older and wiser than me. There’s no fooling you,” declared Chess, half in regret and half resignedly.
This allusion to her proudly maintained maturity did not please Sue. It was all right for her to think it, but for Chess to accept it all of a sudden somehow irritated Sue. But she reflected that she was in a strange mood and not so kindly disposed as usual. She decided to let them do the talking.
Ora was overdoing it more than Chess. She was enthusiastic about the ride, and the canyon up there, and about a great deal in general, and nothing in particular. Ora’s big dark eyes were unusually bright, her cheeks were redder than seemed natural for slow riding, and her hair was disheveled. There was a singular radiance, a glow in her face, that contrasted markedly with the sullen shade which had characterized it recently. Sue concluded that this rascal Chess had really been making love to Ora.
“Sue, isn’t it just perfectly gorgeous?” murmured Ora, dreamily.
“What?” asked Sue, rather bluntly.
“Oh, everything—the bright colors, the sweet, sleepy something, the horses, riding out this way, this camp life,” babbled Ora.
“I think I know what you’re raving about
, Ora,” replied Sue. “I’m glad you’ve come to feel it. Not long ago you were disgusted with the desert, Utah, wild horses, wranglers, and yourself.”
“Yes, I know, Sue,” said Ora, somewhat dampened, .“but I—-I’m not now.”
There appeared to be a humility in Ora, at this moment, that Sue had never observed before. It strengthened Sue’s conviction as to the cause. Then Chess, who was riding half a horse’s length behind Ora, caught Sue’s eye and winked mysteriously, with a hint of deviltry. Almost it seemed that he was telling Sue that if he could not have her he could have Ora. Sue flashed him a very scornful and accusing glance, and did not deign to notice him again. A little later, however, she could have laughed. She was beginning to understand why this boy’s brother believed he needed looking after.
“Some stranger in camp,” spoke up Chess, quickly, as they rode into the back of the cottonwood grove. Whereupon he trotted on ahead of Sue and Ora. Sue sustained a little shock of excitement that made her conscious of her own interest in a strange rider. What if it might be Chane Weymer! She saw a muddy, weary pack horse sagging under a bedraggled pack. But trees obstructed her view of the rider.
Ora headed her horse for the quarters of the Lough- bridges and Sue turned for her tent. When she dismounted, Chess rode up at a lope and leaped off. One glance at his face told Sue that the newcomer was not Chane. Sue felt a sudden relief and vague disappointment! This annoyed her and made her resentful toward Chess.
“Doggone—it! I thought maybe Chane had come and I’d get even with you,” said Chess as he began to unsaddle her horse.
“Get even with me! What for?” queried Sue, exas- perated.
“Well, I reckon I’d call it lack of reci-pro-city,” declared Chess, cheerfully.
“Chess, you’re not very witty . . . and please explain how the possible arrival of your brother would enable you to get even with me, as you call it.”
“You’re sure likely to fall in love head over heels, and you might get the cold shoulder, as I got it.”
Grey, Zane - Novel 27 Page 6