by Max Brand
“Does Rose know anything of this?” asked the sheriff suddenly.
“No,” said Glenhollen. “The fact is, sir, I have only seen her half a dozen times or so; of course she hadn’t even noticed me. That’s why I’m calling on you today, so that I’ll have a chance either to make her notice me or else to find out that she doesn’t care to be troubled — in fact, Mr. Kenworthy, I’m confoundedly out in these things. I’ve never looked at a girl twice before in my whole life. I have a sister, you know, and she’s about all the women I knew. Sometimes she was a little too much,” he added with his grin, and his forelock, which had been pasted into place, rose and flared in the draught from the open window.
“Well, sir?” he added, very pale and equally brusque. “What do you say? Is she engaged somewhere else?”
Mr. Kenworthy arose. He took one of the brawny brown hands of the young man between both of his pudgy ones.
“My boy, my boy,” he said with a quivering voice, “this is one of the greatest days in my life. Go on and win her. There are no other engagements — certainly there are no others!”
They drove out to the ranch that afternoon. Mr. Kenworthy had forgotten all about The Whisperer. He had forgotten all about every other trouble in this world. He was deep in the rosy contemplation of millions. With the financial hand of the giant Glenhollen behind him, all of his schemes could be put into being and made fruitful at once.
He gave himself five years for the erection of a giant corporation whose power should be felt across the continent — across the world. He saw himself summoned to Manhattan; he met the godlike powers of the Street; they shook him by the hand and called him by his first name; he sat down with them, enshrined in shimmering mahogany and soundless rugs; he squeezed between his fingers a hand-made cigar of choice-selected leaf; they were silent — they leaned forward in their chairs — he told them of the West and its possibilities, what it could do for them, and what they could do for it.
He looked still further into the heart of this golden cloud. He saw his services recognized by his home community, and that home community was now all the great realm between the Rockies and the Sierras; he found his name inserted in the histories which the school children must study.
Here the equipage rolled into the view of the ranch, and he was dragged from the heart of his dream into acute consciousness of his companion and his conversation, which had been maintained steadily during the entire trip from the town. It had been of a nature which required only a monosyllable now and again, for young Mr. Glenhollen was deep in the description of how he had first met Rose Kenworthy, and of a mysterious rose-colored dress which she was wearing at the time, and of how, when she turned her head toward him, she had smiled, not at him, but toward him, and he had told himself that to have this smile given to him for his own sake would be more delightful than to own all the riches of the world.
That was not all. There were other anecdotes which followed. The low voice and the dreamy air of her father led him on. He talked to himself rather than to a listener. Indeed, he was unheard, and the rancher only awakened enough, now and again, to murmur to himself: “It is true; it is not a dream, the fish is still wriggling upon the hook! Oh, what a blessing is a daughter with a lovely face.”
So they swung over the top of the hill and came in view of the ranch house. Northward, in a great semicircle, were the mountains, lifted to the region of eternal snows. From their knees the foothills rippled away toward the south, sliced with gorges, brilliant with silver streaks where the snow-fed streams raced away toward the southland. Kenworthy House was like a small town, so great was the surrounding and the supporting cluster of his barns, sheds, corrals, and outbuildings of half a dozen different kinds. His practiced eye could distinguish the roofs of the granaries, the blacksmith shop which was one of the prides of his heart, the big wagon sheds, one after the other, the barn set apart for the shelter of the milk cows — and on and on, like separate lines of an exquisite poem. His companion had stopped talking with a gasp.
“The boy has sense,” said the sheriff, with a sigh of satisfaction. “He has sense enough to see that a silly girl is one thing, but that a ranch is another — it’s a — a creation!”
He had never yet been able to find just the word for it. But he was sure that when God looked down upon the world, His eye lingered longest on one special spot.
But what young Glenhollen said was: “My God, Mr. Kenworthy, do you think that I’ll have a chance to win her?”
The rancher breathed out his disappointment. After all, he decided that the boy was shallow, as all young fellows are shallow; he needed time to ripen him.
“A chance?” said he. “There is no question about that; I have made up my mind; at this instant you are as good as married to her!”
They encountered Rose in her best humor. She had been riding a new mount, a cow pony gifted by nature, or a reversion to ancient ancestry, with the slender, strong legs, and the noble head of a true Arab. That first ride had been like a first conversation with a new and delightful mind, and she came in from the stables with her color high in her brown cheeks and her eyes merry and kind. Young Glenhollen almost swooned with joy and with fear.
“Courage, man!” said the father kindly. “Alec, you shall have her — a neat trick of a girl, eh, my boy? But why are you backing into the wall? She’ll not bite you, lad!”
Her manner to the prince royal was, in the eyes of her father, shockingly careless and full of a reckless bonhommie rather than a maidenly and blushing dignity. She came straight up to him, called him by his first name, shook him heartily by the hand, and then excused herself to go change for dinner, which came early on the ranch. The rancher looked after her with alarm and dismay; he was about to apologize for such tomboy carelessness when he observed that young Glenhollen had fallen into a foolish ecstasy; and that he was so moved that his unruly and stiff-standing forelock was trembling without the touch of any wind.
He conducted Glenhollen into the library to wait for dinner, but that young worthy was incapable of conversation.
“If he is going to play the ass,” said the rancher to himself, “I shall have a time with Rose, confound him!”
Play the ass he did, acting during dinner in such a fashion that Rose cast half a dozen wondering looks at him and then at her father; for when young Glenhollen made a conversational break, her father came nobly to his assistance and carried him through the crisis. There was only one good feature in the evening, and this was that Glenhollen insisted on leaving shortly after dinner, but with a promise to return the next day.
XIV. IN THE GARDEN
WHAT ON EARTH!” cried Rose when she was alone with her father again. “What on earth have you done to poor Alec. He’s been transformed from a darling to a blockhead!”
“Can you guess what’s happened?” cried her father, trembling with joy as he spoke.
“You and Alec are mixed up in some sort of a business deal.”
“Right, girl, right. Can you guess what sort of business? It’s you, my dear. You’re to marry Alec — the Glenhollen and Kenworthy fortunes rolled together shall be the pedestal on which I-er-mount to great”
She listened to him first in horror, then in amusement, then in consternation.
“But, dad,” she broke in at last, “is this really not a joke?”
“Joke?” he thundered. “Joke? If there’s a joke in this, I’ll have the young puppy shot! No, there’s no joke in it. I watched his face, and it was all there. He was delirious with love. He—”
“Poor Alec!” cried the girl.
“Poor? He’s not to be pitied. How could he do better than marry my daughter? After my death, he gets the estate with you!”
“Dad, is this serious? Am I to be married to — to — a football player who never had a thought in his life?”
“Hell’s fires!” exclaimed the father, who fell back upon this oath whenever he was moved. “Does a man who has ten millions at his disposal have to be
able to think also?”
“I suppose,” said Rose, “that he does not have to be loved, either.”
“Certainly not,” said her father. “Will you tell me, silly girl, that you cannot be enough interested in such a fortune to marry the master of it? Besides,” he continued, warned to be cautious by a certain familiar light in the eye of his daughter, “you have never yet found a young fellow you could care for, my dear, and if you ever expect to marry, I imagine you had better marry out of friendship and let love take care of itself.”
He saw that he had here struck a point that moved her; for she began to frown thoughtfully, and he could have rubbed his hands with satisfaction. She was twenty-two, but a girl at 22 is apt to consider herself well on in life; and with all the impulsiveness of Rose there was a touch of hard practical sense in her that made her ponder the words of her father the more deeply. It was true that she was beginning to think that she should never find love, and certainly more than one successful marriage had been founded upon nothing more than friendship.
“Take a walk in the garden,” said her father kindly, “and think it over. Alec has come to a foolish age, I’m afraid. When a man takes it into his head to marry, if he’s foiled in one direction he’ll take the next easiest road, and if you let him slip or stand him off with a bit of hard treatment he’s apt to throw his cap into another ring.”
So it was that Rose went into the garden obediently. It was a bit of conventionalized wilderness. A brawling mountain stream, drove across the grounds of the ranch-house toward the corrals, where it was piped into various troughs and pools lined with stone flagging and furnished the horses and cattle with the purest of drinking water. It flowed past a corner of the house, and thence under a stone wall which enclosed the garden, dipping out beneath another arch on the farther side.
The garden was of some size, and the trees had been allowed to stand as they were originally found, but the undergrowth had been cleared away and stretches of lawn were planted here and there. A partial dam served to back the water in one place into a long and twisting pond whose banks were covered with flowers and flowering shrubs; and the walks with which the garden was interspersed were allowed to wander here and there where the contours led them.
She followed the first one she came to and finally sat down on a bench with her back to a tree and her face to the pool and the mountains beyond it. The surface of the water was bright with the alpenglow, and the snowy summits beyond were now all delicate rose on the western sides and translucent purples to the east. So that the girl in half a minute had forgotten the problem which she had come here to solve. That alpenglow was beginning to fade when she became aware of someone standing behind her. She turned and looked up into the face of the man of the forest.
He was leaning against the broad trunk of the tree, his arms folded across his breast, and his glance fixed on the same picture which she had been watching. She started, not only in wonder, but a little guiltily at the sight of him, for the memory of that first meeting by night had grown more and more into a dreamlike texture, and this day she had come close to disclosing the adventure to her father.
“I’ve come for the rest of the questions,” he told her, still looking at the northern mountains and not at her. “I suppose you have them all in order by this time.”
“You promised to come to me within a day,” she reminded him.
“I have been in great trouble,” said the stranger soberly.
“I’m sorry for that.”
“I found the honey,” he said.
He held out to her, what she had not hitherto noticed, a little cone of twisted bark, the inner bark of the birch, almost as supple and tough as leather and snowy in whiteness. A flap of the same substance covered the top of this improvised cup, and, lifting the flap, he allowed her to look down into a mine of amber honey, glistening as if lighted from within.
“Is this for me?” she asked.
He nodded, and when she looked up to him sharply, quizzically, to make out what could be the meaning behind this gift, she found his face as immobile as ever. He had remembered her in mere friendship; this was no woodland courtship, to be sure; and she felt herself a little baffled and confused on account of her first suspicion.
“After I found the honey,” he said, “I came back, and crossed the trail of Madame Grizzly, headed in the same direction. But the same day a batch of dogs and hunters came after her and cornered her. I went along with her to help out. That was hard work, too. Dogs are a nuisance, you know; and while I was working for Bruin I had to keep out of sight of the hunters, which made it harder still.”
She was on fire with excitement at this.
“You saved the poor creature!”
“It was a narrow squeeze. They ran her from the early morning until the evening, straight-away over the mountains nearly fifty miles. She had three rifle bullets in her, so that she left a trail of crimson, and when the blood stopped running, she was a bit weakened and began to grow stiff. She was ugly as an old Tartar, too, and if I came too close to her, she was apt to make a pass at me with her paws. One pass will knock a man into eternity, you know! I’ve seen a dead cow with her ribs torn out by one such pass!”
“The terrible old — fool!” cried the girl. “Hasn’t she sense enough to know a friend?”
“It’s a bit confusing to a brute mind,” he explained. “When some men shoot at one and one man is friendly — it’s rather hard for an eye which cannot recognize faces to make out the difference. If she had not been so excited, I suppose she would have been amiable enough. At any rate, in the evening they cornered her.
“She had taken a path up a canyon — Donnelly Gulch, you know, planning to go up the side of the cliff where the horses could not follow her after she had worked her way to the top of the pass. But when she got there, she found that luck was against her. A landslide had whisked down the side of the cliff and rolled away all the boulders she had planned to climb by. There was nothing left for a clawhold except the smooth face of the rock, and it was very steep. She tried it a couple of times and slid back to the bottom almost at once. Then she looked around for another way out, but she was securely bottled. Behind her the hunt was coming; and in front of her there was the smooth rock on the one hand and a gulch thirty feet wide on the other.
“She saw that she was done for unless a miracle happened, so she got up on her hind legs, gave a battle roar, and then started ambling down the pass to make her last stand, as a good bear ought to do. I looked around for something to do, and presently I found something which I thought might serve.”
“Thank heavens!” cried the girl, clasping her hands together in her excitement.
“I whistled to bruin. It was a call I used to use when I found that the fish were biting fast in a pool, and that there would be a good fat remnant left after I had all that I needed for myself. She could hear that call for miles, it seemed. You know their ears are wonderfully sensitive. I’ve seen that old lady sit up and clap her paws over her ears when a landslide came thundering down into a valley where she happened to be.”
“But how did you get her safely across the gulch? That was the only way, I suppose?”
He smiled at her impatience.
“Yes. That was the only way. She came back to me, when she heard me whistle, and she sat up and looked me in the face as though she wondered what the devil I could possibly do to be of assistance.”
“Poor thing!”
“I got out my hatchet and tackled a tree. It was a big fellow, half ripped across at the base, and already leaning toward the gulch. The lightning had sawed it half in two; it had rotted part way. But there was still enough sound rind to keep it nearly erect. I couldn’t cut through what remained in hours with such a light tool as a hatchet. But I hoped that I might weaken it enough to make it fall of its own landing weight.
“In the meantime, that roar of the bear’s seemed to have huddled the hunters together for a time. They whistled in their dogs and seemed
to get ready for her rush. But when they found she did not come, they started up the ravine again and sent the dogs ahead. I could hear those big brutes yelling like devils as they came. I was working in uncomfortable quarters, too. I didn’t know when my friend the grizzly would make a pass at me with one of those dangling forepaws of hers, and she was near enough to reach me with the nearest flip.”
He paused again to indulge in one of those silent laughs of his, and then his soft voice went on again. She was more fascinated than ever as she saw that he was not so much simply telling the narrative to her as he was rehearsing the tale for his own benefit, recalling the least incidents with delight like the joy of a child.
“I blazed away with my hatchet like a madman. The old tree began to groan; and at the same time a host of dogs came out of the trees on the rush; they bayed for their kill like good fellows, and then began to yell in a different note when they saw a man actually standing there in company with a hundred-per-cent grizzly. They couldn’t make this out, while Madame sat back on her haunches and prepared to bat them into a future life with either hand if they came within reach. I sank the blade of the hatchet with all my might into the central cord of the rind of sound wood; and it was like cutting the cable that holds a ship.
“The whole top of the tree lurched down and made a sound like the rising of a great wind over our heads. It landed on a fir on the opposite edge of the gulch and smashed that tree into kindling wood as though it were a hollow match box. The stump had ripped in two, of course, and the big, rotten butt of the tree made a side jump at me. It missed me by an inch.”
He paused to recall the shudder of that falling monster.
“There was our bridge, of course,” he went on, “and Madame needed no explanation of why I had chopped the tree down. She ambled across the trunk of the tree and I ran along after her. But just as she got to the end of the trunk the old demon turned around, wrinkled her nose at me, and gave me a snarl that turned my blood to ice.”