by B. M. Bower
Billy Louise had a wise little brain, for all she idealized life and her surroundings out of all proportion to reality. She told herself that if she married Ward with her doubts alive, her misery would be far greater than if she gave him up, except as a friend. Of course, her ideals stepped in there with an impracticable compromise. She brought back the Ward Warren of her “pretend” life. She dreamed of him as a mutely adoring friend who stood and worshiped her from afar, and because of his sins could not cross the line of friendship.
If he were a rustler, she would shield him and save him, if that were possible. He would love her always—Billy Louise could not conceive of Ward transferring his affections to another less exacting woman—and he would be grateful for her friendship. She could build long, lovely scenes where friendliness was put to the front bravely, while love hid behind the mask and only peeped out through the eyes now and then. She did not, of course, plan all this in sober reason; she just dreamed it with her eyes open.
It had been in such a spirit that she had written to Ward; though he would undoubtedly have read love into the lines and so have been encouraged in the planning of that house with the wide porch in front! She had dreamed all the way home of seeing Ward at the end of the journey. Perhaps he would come out and help her down from the stage, when it stopped at the gate, and call her Bill-Loo—never once had Ward spoken her name as others spoke it, but always with a twist of his own which made it different, stamped with his own individuality—and he would walk beside her to the house and comfort her with his eyes, and never mention mommie till she herself opened the way to her grief. Then he would call her Wilhemina-mine in that kissing way he had—
Someone came upon the doorstep and stood there for a moment, stamping snow off his feet. Billy Louise caught her breath and waited, her eyes veiled with her lashes and shining expectantly. A little color came into her cheeks. Ward had been delayed somehow, but he was coming now because she needed him and he wanted her—
It was only John Pringle, heavy-bodied, heavy-minded, who came in and squeaked the door shut behind him. Billy Louise gave him a glance and dropped her head back on the red cushion. “Hello, John!” she greeted tonelessly.
John grinned, embarrassed between his pleasure at seeing Billy Louise and his pity for her trouble. His white teeth showed a little under his scraggy, breath-frosted mustache.
“Hello! You got back, hey? She’s purty cold again. Seems like it’s goin’ storm some more.” He pulled off his mittens and tugged at the ice dangling at the corners of his lips. “You come on stage, hey? I bet you freeze.” He went over and stood with his back to the fire, his leathery brown hands clasped behind him, his face still undecided as to the most suitable emotion to reveal. “Well, how you like town, hey? No good, I guess. You got plenty trouble now. Phoebe and me, we stick by you long as you want us to.”
“I know you will, John.” Billy Louise bit her lips against a sudden impulse to tears. It was not Ward, but the crude sympathy of this old halfbreed was more to her than all the expensive flowers that had been stacked upon mommie’s coffin. She had felt terribly alone in Boise. But her chilled soul was beginning to feel the warmth of friendship in these two half-savage servants. Even without Ward, her home-coming was not absolutely cheerless, after all.
“Well, we make out to keep things going,” John announced pridefully. “We got leetle bad luck, not much. One heifer, she die—blackleg. Four pigs, they froze—leetle fellers. I save the rest, all right. Ole Mooley, she goin’ have a calf purty queeck now. I got her in leetle shed by hog-pen. Looks like it storm, all right.”
“Felt like it, too.” Billy Louise made an effort to get back into the old channels of thought. “We’ll milk old Mooley, John; I feel as if I could live on cream and milk for the next five years. You ought to see the watery stuff they call milk in Boise! Star must be pretty near dry now, isn’t she?”
“Purty near.” John’s voice was beginning to ooze the comfort that warmth was giving his big body. “She give two quart, mebby. Spot, she give leetle more. I got that white hog fat. I kill him any time now you say.”
“If it doesn’t storm, you might kill him tomorrow or next day, John. I’ll take a roast up to Marthy when I go. I’ll go in a day or two.” She glanced toward the kitchen end of the long room. Phoebe was busy in the pantry with the door shut. “Have you seen or heard anything of Ward lately?” she asked carelessly.
“No. I ain’t seen Ward for long time. I thought mebbe he be down long time ago. He ain’t come.” John shifted a little farther from the blaze and stood teetering comfortably upon the balls of his feet, like a bear. “Mebbe he’s gone out other way to work.”
“Did he say anything?”
“No, he don’t say nothin’ las’ time he come. That’s—” John rolled his black eyes seekingly at the farther wall while he counted mentally the weeks. “I guess that mus’ be fo’ or five weeks now. Charlie Fox, he come las’ week.”
“John, you better kill a chicken for Billy Louise. I bet she ain’t had no chicken since she’s gone.” Phoebe came from the pantry with her hands all flour. “You go now. That young speckled rooster be good, mebby. He’s fat. He’s fightin’ all the chickens, anyway.”
“All right. I kill him.” John answered with remarkable docility. Usually he growled at poor Phoebe and objected to everything she suggested.
His ready compliance touched Billy Louise more than anything since her return. She felt anew the warm comfort of their sympathy. If only Ward had been there also! She got up from the couch and went to the window where she could look across at the bleak hilltop. She stood there for some minutes looking out wistfully, hoping that she would see him ride into view at the top of the steep trail. After awhile she went back and curled up on the wide old couch and stared abstractedly into the fire.
John had gone out after the young speckled rooster that fought the other chickens and must now do his part toward salving the hurt and cheering the home-coming of Billy Louise. John returned, mumbled with Phoebe at the far end of the room, and went out again. Phoebe worked silently and briskly, rattling pans now and then and lifting the stove lids to put in more wood. Billy Louise heard the sounds but dimly. The fire was filled with pictures; her thoughts were wandering here and there, bridging the gap between the past and the misty future. After awhile the savory odor of the young speckled rooster, that had fought all the other chickens but was now stewing in a mottled blue-and-white granite pan, smote her nostrils and won her thoughts from dreaming. She sat up and pushed back her hair like one just waking from sleep.
“I’ll set the table, Phoebe, when you’re ready,” she said, and her voice sounded less strained and tired. “That chicken sure does smell good!” She rose and busied herself about the room, setting things in order upon the reading-table and the shelves. Phoebe was good as gold, but her housekeeping was a trifle sketchy.
“Ward, he borried some books las’ time,” Phoebe remarked, lifting the lid of the stew kettle and letting out a cloud of delicious-smelling steam. “I dunno what they was. He said he’d bring ’em back nex’ time he come.”
“Oh, all right,” said Billy Louise, and smiled a little. Even so slight a thing as borrowed books made another link between them. For a girl who means to be a mere friend to a man, Billy Louise harbored some rather dangerous emotions.
She picked up the two letters she had written Ward, brushed off the dust, and eyed them hesitatingly. It certainly was queer that Ward had not ridden down for some word from her. She hesitated, then threw the thin letter into the fire. Its message was no longer of urgent, poignant need. Billy Louise drew a long breath when the grief-laden lines crumbled quickly and went flying up the wide throat of the chimney. The other letter she pinched between her thumbs and fingers. She smiled a little to herself. Ward would like to get that. She had a swift vision of him standing over there by the window and reading it with those swift, shuttling glances, holding the handkerchief squeezed up in his hand the while. She remember
ed how she had begun it—“Brave Buckaroo”—and her cheeks turned pink. He should have it when he came. Something had kept him away. He would come just as soon as he could. She laid the letter back upon the mantel and set a china cow on it to keep it safe there. Then she turned brightly and began to set the table for Phoebe and John and herself, and came near setting a fourth place for Ward, she was so sure he would come as soon as he could. Mommie used to say that if you set a place for a person, that person would come and eat with you, in spirit if not in reality.
Phoebe glanced at her pityingly when she saw her hesitating, with the fourth plate in her hands. Phoebe thought that Billy Louise had unconsciously brought it for mommie. Phoebe did not know that love is stronger even than grief; for at that moment Billy Louise was not thinking of mommie at all.
CHAPTER XXI
SEVEN LEAN KINE
“And you looked good, all up above here?” Billy Louise held Blue firmly to a curved-neck, circling stand, while she had a last word with John before she went off on one of her long rides.
“All up in the hills, and round over by Cedar Creek, and all over.” John’s mittened gesture was even more sweeping than his statement. “I guess mebby them rustlers git ’em.”
“Well, I’m going up to the Cove. I may not be back before dark, so don’t worry if I’m late. Maybe I’ll look along the river. I know one place where I believe cattle can get down to the bottom, if they’re crazy enough to try it. You didn’t look there, did you?”
“No, I never looked down there. I know they can’t git down nohow.”
“Well, all right; maybe they can’t.” Billy Louise slackened the reins, and Blue went off with short, stiff-legged jumps. It had been a long time since he had felt the weight of his lady, and his mood now was exuberant, especially so, since the morning was clear, with a nip of frost to tingle the skin and the glow of the sun to promise falsely the nearness of spring. The hill trail steadied him a little, though he went up the steepest pitch with rabbit-jumps and teetered on his toes the rest of the way.
Billy Louise laughed a little, leaned, and grabbed a handful of slatey mane. “Oh, you Blue-dog!” she said, for that was his full name. “Life is livable, after all, as long as a fellow has got you and can ride. You good-for-nothing old ten-dollar hoss! I—wonder would it be wicked to sing? What do you think, Blue? You’d sing, I know, at the top of your voice, if you could. Say, Blue! Don’t you wish, you were a donkey, so you could stick out your neck and go Yee-ee-haw! Yee-ee—haw? Try it once. I believe you could. It’s that or a run, one or the other. You’ll bust, if you don’t do something. I know you!”
At last on the high level, seeing Blue could not bray his joy to the world, Billy Louise let him go. She needed some outlet, herself, after those horrible, dull weeks weighted with tragedy. She had been raised on horseback, almost; and for two terrible months she had not been in the saddle. And there is nothing like the air of the Idaho hills to stir one’s blood and send it singing.
Through the sagebrush and rocks, weaving in and out, slacking speed a little while he went down into deep gullies, thundering up the other side, and racing away over the level again, went Blue. And with him, laughing, tingling with new life, growing pinker-cheeked every minute, went Billy Louise. Her mother’s death did not oppress her then. She thought of her as she raced, but she thought of her with a little, tender smile. Her mother was resting peacefully, and there was no more pain or worry for the little, pale, frail woman who had lived her life and gone her way.
“Dear old mommie!” said Billy Louise under her breath. “Your kid is almost as happy as you are, right now. Don’t be shocked, there’s a dear, or think I’m going to break my neck. Blue and I have just simply got to work off steam. You, Blue!” She leaned another inch forward.
Blue threw up his head, lifted his heels, and ran like a scared jackrabbit over the uneven ground. They were not keeping to the trail at all; trails were too tame for them in that mood. They ran along the rim-rock at the last, where Billy Louise could glance down, now and then, at the river sliding like a bright-blue ribbon with icy edges through the gray, snow-spotted hills.
“Hold on, Blue!” Billy Louise pulled up on the reins. “Quit it, you old devil! A mile ought to be enough for once, I should think. There’s cattle down there in that bottom, sure as you live. And we, my dear sir, are going down there and take a look at them.” She managed to pull Blue down to stiff-legged jumps and then to a walk. Finally she stopped him, so that she could the better take in her surroundings and the possibilities of getting down.
In the country it is as in the cities. One forms habits of journeying. One becomes perfectly familiar with every hill and every little hollow in certain directions, while some other, closer part remains practically unexplored. Billy Louise had always loved the Wolverine canyon, and its brother, Jones canyon, which branched off from the first. As a child she had explored every foot of both, and had ridden the hills beyond. As a young woman she had kept to the old playground. Her cattle ranged at the head of the canyons.
The river bottoms came as near being unknown territory as she could have found within forty miles of her home. For one thing, the river bottom was narrow, except where was the Cove, and pinched in places till there seemed no way of passing from one to another. Little pockets there were, tucked away under the rocky bluff with its collar of “rim-rock” above. One might climb down afoot, but Billy Louise was true to her range breeding; she never went anywhere afoot if she could possibly get there on a horse. And down there by the river she never had happened to find it necessary to go, either afoot or a-horseback. Still, if cattle could get down there—
“I guess we’ll have to ride back a way,” she said, after a brief inspection, during which Blue stood so close to the rim that Billy Louise must have had a clear head to feel no tremor of nerves or dizziness.
She turned and rode slowly back along the edge, looking for the place where she believed cattle could get down if they were crazy enough to try.
“Don’t look very encouraging, does it, Blue?” Billy Louise stared doubtfully at the place, leaning and peering over the rim. “What d’ye think? Reckon we can make it?”
Blue had caught sight of the moving specks far down next the river and up the stream half a mile or more. He was a cow-horse to the bone. He knew those far-off specks for cattle, and he knew that his lady would like a closer look at them. That’s what cattle were made for: to haze out of brush and rocks and gullies and drive somewhere. So far as Blue knew, cattle were a game. You hunted them out of ungodly places, and the game was to make them go somewhere else against their wishes. He prided himself on being able to play that game, no matter what were the odds against him.
Now he tilted his head a little and looked down at the bluff beneath him. The game was beginning. He must get down that bluff and overtake those specks and drive them somewhere. He glanced up and down the bluff to see if a better trail offered. Billy Louise laughed understandingly.
“It’s this or nothing, Blue. Looks pretty fierce, all right, doesn’t it? Of course, if you’re going to make a perfect lady get off and walk—”
Blue snuffed at the ledge with his neck craned. The rim-rock had crumbled and sunk low into the bluff, like a too rich pie-crust when the oven is not quite hot enough. From a ten- or fifteen-foot wall it shrunk here to a three-foot ledge. And below the rocks and bowlders were not actually piled on top of one another; there were clear spaces where a wary, wise, old cow-horse might possibly pick his way.
Blue chose his trail and crumpled at the knees with his hoofs on the very edge of the ledge; went down with a cat-jump and landed with all four feet planted close together. He had no mind to go on sliding in spite of himself, and the bluff was certainly steep enough to excuse a bungle.
“So far so good.” Billy Louise glanced ruefully back at the ledge. “We’re down; but how the deuce do you reckon we’ll get up again?”
Blue was not worrying about that part. He went on, pickin
g his way carefully among the bowlders, with his nose close to earth, setting his hindlegs stiffly and tobogganing down loose, shale slopes. Billy Louise sat easily in the saddle and enjoyed it all. She was making up in big doses for the drab dullness of those hospital weeks. She ought to walk down the bluff, for this was dangerous play; but she craved danger as an antidote to that shut-in life of petty rules and regulations.
It was with a distinct air of triumph that Blue reached the bottom, even though he slid the last forty feet on his haunches and landed belly-deep in a soft snow-bank. It was with triumph to match his perky ears that Billy Louise leaned and slapped him on the neck. “We made it!” she cried, “and I didn’t have to walk a step, did I, Blue? You’re there with the goods, all right!”
Blue scrambled out of the bank to firm footing on the ripened grass of the bottom, and with a toss of his head set off in a swinging lope, swerving now and then to avoid a badger hole or a half-sunken rock. They had done something new, those two; they had reached a place where neither had ever been before, and Blue acted as if he knew it and gloried in the escapade quite as much as did his lady.
The cattle spied them and went trotting away up the river, and Blue quickened his stride a little and followed after. Billy Louise left the reins loose upon his neck. Blue could handle cattle alone quite as skillfully as with a rider, if he chose.
The cattle dodged into a fringe of bushes close to the river and disappeared, which was queer, since the bluff curved in close to the bank at that point. Blue pricked up his ears and went clattering after, slowed a little at the willow-fringe, stuck his nose straight out before him, and went in confidently. The cattle were just ahead. He could smell them, and his listening ears caught their heavy breathing. It was very rocky there in the willows, and he must pick his way with much care. But when he crashed through on the far side, and Billy Louise straightened from leaning low along his neck to avoid the stinging branches, the cattle gave a snort and went lumbering away, still following the river.