Kitabı oku: «The Forester's Daughter: A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range», sayfa 12
XIV
THE SUMMONS
When Wayland caught the startled look on Berrie’s face he knew that she had learned from her father the contents of his telegram, and that she would require an explanation.
“Are you going away?” she asked.
“Yes. At least, I must go down to Denver to see my father. I shall be gone only over night.”
“And will you tell him about our trip?” she pursued, with unflinching directness. “And about – me?”
He gave her a chair, and took a seat himself before replying. “Yes, I shall tell him all about it, and about you and your father and mother. He shall know how kind you’ve all been to me.”
He said this bravely, and at the moment he meant it; but as his father’s big, impassive face and cold, keen eyes came back to him his courage sank, and in spite of his firm resolution some part of his secret anxiety communicated itself to the girl, who asked many questions, with intent to find out more particularly what kind of man the elder Norcross was.
Wayland’s replies did not entirely reassure her. He admitted that his father was harsh and domineering in character, and that he was ambitious to have his son take up and carry forward his work. “He was willing enough to have me go to college till he found I was specializing on wrong lines. Then I had to fight in order to keep my place. He’s glad I’m out here, for he thinks I’m regaining my strength. But just as soon as I’m well enough he expects me to go to Chicago and take charge of the Western office. Of course, I don’t want to do that. I’d rather work out some problem in chemistry that interests me; but I may have to give in, for a time at least.”
“Will your mother and sisters be with your father?”
“No, indeed! You couldn’t get any one of them west of the Hudson River with a log-chain. My sisters were both born in Michigan, but they want to forget it – they pretend they have forgotten it. They both have New-Yorkitis. Nothing but the Plaza will do them now.”
“I suppose they think we’re all ‘Injuns’ out here?”
“Oh no, not so bad as that; but they wouldn’t comprehend anything about you except your muscle. That would catch ’em. They’d worship your splendid health, just as I do. It’s pitiful the way they both try to put on weight. They’re always testing some new food, some new tonic – they’ll do anything except exercise regularly and go to bed at ten o’clock.”
All that he said of his family deepened her dismay. Their interests were so alien to her own.
“I’m afraid to have you go even for a day,” she admitted, with simple honesty, which moved him deeply. “I don’t know what I should do if you went away. I think of nothing but you now.”
Her face was pitiful, and he put his arm about her neck as if she were a child. “You mustn’t do that. You must go on with your life just as if I’d never been. Think of your father’s job – of the forest and the ranch.”
“I can’t do it. I’ve lost interest in the service. I never want to go into the high country again, and I don’t want you to go, either. It’s too savage and cruel.”
“That is only a mood,” he said, confidently. “It is splendid up there. I shall certainly go back some time.”
He could not divine, and she could not tell him, how poignantly she had sensed the menace of the cold and darkness during his illness. For the first time in her life she had realized to the full the unrelenting enmity of the clouds, the wind, the night; and during that interminable ride toward home, when she saw him bending lower and lower over his saddle-bow, her allegiance to the trail, her devotion to the stirrup was broken. His weariness and pain had changed the universe for her. Never again would she look upon the range with the eyes of the care-free girl. The other, the civilized, the domestic, side of her was now dominant. A new desire, a bigger aspiration, had taken possession of her.
Little by little he realized this change in her, and was touched with the wonder of it. He had never had any great self-love either as man or scholar, and the thought of this fine, self-sufficient womanly soul centering all its interests on him was humbling. Each moment his responsibility deepened, and he heard her voice but dimly as she went on.
“Of course we are not rich; but we are not poor, and my mother’s family is one of the oldest in Kentucky.” She uttered this with a touch of her mother’s quiet dignity. “Your father need not despise us.”
“So far as my father is concerned, family don’t count, and neither does money. But he confidently expects me to take up his business in Chicago, and I suppose it is my duty to do so. If he finds me looking fit he may order me into the ranks at once.”
“I’ll go there – I’ll do anything you want me to do,” she urged. “You can tell your father that I’ll help you in the office. I can learn. I’m ready to use a typewriter – anything.”
He was silent in the face of her naïve expression of self-sacrificing love, and after a moment she added, hesitatingly: “I wish I could meet your father. Perhaps he’d come up here if you asked him to do so?”
He seized upon the suggestion. “By George! I believe he would. I don’t want to go to town. I just believe I’ll wire him that I’m laid up here and can’t come.” Then a shade of new trouble came over his face. How would the stern, methodical old business man regard this slovenly ranch and its primitive ways? She felt the question in his face.
“You’re afraid to have him come,” she said, with the same disconcerting penetration which had marked every moment of her interview thus far. “You’re afraid he wouldn’t like me?”
With almost equal frankness he replied: “No. I think he’d like you, but this town and the people up here would gall him. Order is a religion with him. Then he’s got a vicious slant against all this conservation business – calls it tommy-rot. He and your father might lock horns first crack out of the box. But I’ll risk it. I’ll wire him at once.”
A knock at the door interrupted him, and Mrs. McFarlane’s voice, filled with new excitement, called out: “Berrie, the District office is on the wire.”
Berrie opened the door and confronted her mother, who said: “Mr. Evingham ’phones that the afternoon papers contain an account of a fight at Coal City between Settle and one of Alec Belden’s men, and that the District Forester is coming down to investigate it.”
“Let him come,” answered Berrie, defiantly. “He can’t do us any harm. What was the row about?”
“I didn’t hear much of it. Your father was at the ’phone.”
McFarlane, with the receiver to his ear, was saying: “Don’t know a thing about it, Mr. Evingham. Settle was at the station when I left. I didn’t know he was going down to Coal City. No, that’s a mistake. My daughter was never engaged to Alec Belden. Alec Belden is the older of the brothers, and is married. I can’t go into that just now. If you come down I’ll explain fully.”
He hung up the receiver and slowly turned toward his wife and daughter. “This sure is our day of trouble,” he said, with dejected countenance.
“What is it all about?” asked Berrie.
“Why, it seems that after I left yesterday Settle rode down the valley with Belden’s outfit, and they all got to drinking, ending in a row, and Tony beat one of Belden’s men almost to death. The sheriff has gone over to get Tony, and the Beldens declare they’re going to railroad him. That means we’ll all be brought into it. Belden has seized the moment to prefer charges against me for keeping Settle in the service and for putting a non-resident on the roll as guard. The whelp will dig up everything he can to queer me with the office. All that kept him from doing it before was Cliff’s interest in you.”
“He can’t make any of his charges stick,” declared Berrie.
“Of course he can’t. He knows that. But he can bring us all into court. You and Mr. Norcross will both be called as witnesses, for it seems that Tony was defending your name. The papers call it ‘a fight for a girl.’ Oh, it’s a sweet mess.”
For the first time Berrie betrayed alarm. “What shall we do? I can’t go on the stand! They can’t make me do that, can they?” She turned to Wayland. “Now you must go away. It is a shame to have you mixed up in such a trial.”
“I shall not run away and leave you and the Supervisor to bear all the burden of this fight.”
He anticipated in imagination – as they all did – some of the consequences of this trial. The entire story of the camping trip would be dragged in, distorted into a scandal, and flashed over the country as a disgraceful episode. The country would ring with laughter and coarse jest. Berrie’s testimony would be a feast for court-room loafers.
“There’s only one thing to do,” said McFarlane, after a few moments of thought. “You and Berrie and Mrs. McFarlane must get out of here before you are subpoenaed.”
“And leave you to fight it out alone?” exclaimed his wife. “I shall do nothing of the kind. Berrie and Mr. Norcross can go.”
“That won’t do,” retorted McFarlane, quickly. “That won’t do at all. You must go with them. I can take care of myself. I will not have you dragged into this muck-hole. We’ve got to think quick and act quick. There won’t be any delay about their side of the game. I don’t think they’ll do anything to-day; but you’ve got to fade out of the valley. You all get ready and I’ll have one of the boys hook up the surrey as if for a little drive, and you can pull out over the old stage-road to Flume and catch the narrow-gage morning train for Denver. You’ve been wanting for some time to go down the line. Now here’s a good time to start.”
Berrie now argued against running away. Her blood was up. She joined her mother. “We won’t leave you to inherit all this trouble. Who will look after the ranch? Who will keep house for you?”
McFarlane remained firm. “I’ll manage. Don’t worry about me. Just get out of reach. The more I consider this thing, the more worrisome it gets. Suppose Cliff should come back to testify?”
“He won’t. If he does I’ll have him arrested for trying to kill Wayland,” retorted Berrie.
“And make the whole thing worse! No. You are all going to cross the range. You can start out as if for a little turn round the valley, and just naturally keep going. It can’t do any harm, and it may save a nasty time in court.”
“One would think we were a lot of criminals,” remarked Wayland.
“That’s the way you’ll be treated,” retorted McFarlane. “Belden has retained old Whitby, the foulest old brute in the business, and he’ll bring you all into it if he can.”
“But running away from it will not prevent talk,” argued his wife.
“Not entirely; but talk and testimony are two different things. Suppose they call daughter to the stand? Do you want her cross-examined as to what basis there was for this gossip? They know something of Cliff’s being let out, and that will inflame them. He may be at the mill this minute.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Norcross, sadly. “Our delightful excursion into the forest has led us into a predicament from which there is only one way of escape, and that is flight.”
Back of all this talk, this argument, there remained still unanswered the most vital, most important question: “Shall I speak of marriage at this time? Would it be a source of comfort to them as well as a joy to her?” At the moment he was ready to speak, for he felt himself to be the direct cause of all their embarrassment. But closer thought made it clear that a hasty ceremony would only be considered a cloak to cover something illicit. “I’ll leave it to the future,” he decided.
McFarlane was again called to the telephone. Landon, with characteristic brevity, conveyed to him the fact that Mrs. Belden was at home and busily ’phoning scandalous stories about the country. “If you don’t stop her she’s going to poison every ear in the valley,” ended the ranger.
“You’d think they’d all know my daughter well enough not to believe anything Mrs. Belden says,” responded McFarlane, bitterly.
“All the boys are ready to do what Tony did. But nobody can stop this old fool’s mouth but you. Cliff has disappeared, and that adds to the excitement.”
“Thank the boys for me,” said McFarlane, “and tell them not to fight. Tell ’em to keep cool. It will all be cleared up soon.”
As McFarlane went out to order the horses hooked up, Wayland followed him as far as the bars. “I’m conscience-smitten over this thing, Supervisor, for I am aware that I am the cause of all your trouble.”
“Don’t let that worry you,” responded the older man. But he spoke with effort. “It can’t be helped. It was all unavoidable.”
“The most appalling thing to me is the fact that not even your daughter’s popularity can neutralize the gossip of a woman like Mrs. Belden. My being an outsider counts against Berrie, and I’m ready to do anything – anything,” he repeated, earnestly. “I love your daughter, Mr. McFarlane, and I’m ready to marry her at once if you think best. She’s a noble girl, and I cannot bear to be the cause of her calumniation.”
There was mist in the Supervisor’s eyes as he turned them on the young man. “I’m right glad to hear you say that, my boy.” He reached out his hand, and Wayland took it. “I knew you’d say the word when the time came. I didn’t know how strongly she felt toward you till to-day. I knew she liked you, of course, for she said so, but I didn’t know that she had plum set her heart on you. I didn’t expect her to marry a city man; but – I like you and – well, she’s the doctor! What suits her suits me. Don’t you be afraid of her not meeting all comers.” He went on after a pause, “She’s never seen much of city life, but she’ll hold her own anywhere, you can gamble on that.”
“She has wonderful adaptability, I know,” answered Wayland, slowly. “But I don’t like to take her away from here – from you.”
“If you hadn’t come she would have married Cliff – and what kind of a life would she have led with him?” demanded McFarlane. “I knew Cliff was rough, but I couldn’t convince her that he was cheap. I live only for her happiness, my boy, and, though I know you will take her away from me, I believe you can make her happy, and so – I give her over to you. As to time and place, arrange that – with – her mother.” He turned and walked away, unable to utter another word.
Wayland’s throat was aching also, and he went back into the house with a sense of responsibility which exalted him into sturdier manhood.
Berea met him in a pretty gown, a dress he had never seen her wear, a costume which transformed her into something entirely feminine.
She seemed to have put away the self-reliant manner of the trail, and in its stead presented the lambent gaze, the tremulous lips of the bride. As he looked at her thus transfigured his heart cast out its hesitancy and he entered upon his new adventure without further question or regret.
XV
A MATTER OF MILLINERY
It was three o’clock of a fine, clear, golden afternoon as they said good-by to McFarlane and started eastward, as if for a little drive. Berrie held the reins in spite of Wayland’s protestations. “These bronchos are only about half busted,” she said. “They need watching. I know them better than you do.” Therefore he submitted, well knowing that she was entirely competent and fully informed.
Mrs. McFarlane, while looking back at her husband, sadly exclaimed: “I feel like a coward running away like this.”
“Forget it, mother,” commanded her daughter, cheerily. “Just imagine we’re off for a short vacation. I’m for going clear through to Chicago. So long as we must go, let’s go whooping. Father’s better off without us.”
Her voice was gay, her eyes shining, and Wayland saw her as she had been that first day in the coach – the care-free, laughing girl. The trouble they were fleeing from was less real to her than the happiness toward which she rode.
Her hand on the reins, her foot on the brake, brought back her confidence; but Wayland did not feel so sure of his part in the adventure. She seemed so unalterably a part of this life, so fitted to this landscape, that the thought of transplanting her to the East brought uneasiness and question. Could such a creature of the open air be content with the walls of a city?
For several miles the road ran over the level floor of the valley, and she urged the team to full speed. “I don’t want to meet anybody if I can help it. Once we reach the old stage route the chances of being scouted are few. Nobody uses that road since the broad-gauge reached Cragg’s.”
Mrs. McFarlane could not rid herself of the resentment with which she suffered this enforced departure; but she had small opportunity to protest, for the wagon bumped and clattered over the stony stretches with a motion which confused as well as silenced her. It was all so humiliating, so unlike the position which she had imagined herself to have attained in the eyes of her neighbors. Furthermore, she was going away without a trunk, with only one small bag for herself and Berrie – running away like a criminal from an intangible foe. However, she was somewhat comforted by the gaiety of the young people before her. They were indeed jocund as jaybirds. With the resiliency of youth they had accepted the situation, and were making the best of it.
“Here comes somebody,” called Berrie, pulling her ponies to a walk. “Throw a blanket over that valise.” She was chuckling as if it were all a good joke. “It’s old Jake Proudfoot. I can smell him. Now hang on. I’m going to pass him on the jump.”
Wayland, who was riding with his hat in his hand because he could not make it cover his bump, held it up as if to keep the wind from his face, and so defeated the round-eyed, owl-like stare of the inquisitive rancher, who brought his team to a full stop in order to peer after them, muttering in a stupor of resentment and surprise.
“He’ll worry himself sick over us,” predicted Berrie. “He’ll wonder where we’re going and what was under that blanket till the end of summer. He is as curious as a fool hen.”
A few minutes more and they were at the fork in the way, and, leaving the trail to Cragg’s, the girl pulled into the grass-grown, less-traveled trail to the south, which entered the timber at this point and began to climb with steady grade. Letting the reins fall slack, she turned to her mother with reassuring words. “There! Now we’re safe. We won’t meet anybody on this road except possibly a mover’s outfit. We’re in the forest again,” she added.
For two hours they crawled slowly upward, with a roaring stream on one side and the pine-covered slopes on the other. Jays and camp-birds called from the trees. Water-robins fluttered from rock to rock in the foaming flood. Squirrels and minute chipmunks raced across the fallen tree-trunks or clattered from great boulders, and in the peace and order and beauty of the forest they all recovered a serener outlook on the noisome tumult they were leaving behind them. Invisible as well as inaudible, the serpent of slander lost its terror.
Once, as they paused to rest the horses, Wayland said: “It is hard to realize that down in that ethereal valley people like old Jake and Mrs. Belden have their dwelling-place.”
This moved Mrs. McFarlane to admit that it might all turn out a blessing in disguise. “Mr. McFarlane may resign and move to Denver, as I’ve long wanted him to do.”
“I wish he would,” exclaimed Berrie, fervently. “It’s time you had a rest. Daddy will hate to quit under fire, but he’d better do it.”
Peak by peak the Bear Tooth Range rose behind them, while before them the smooth, grassy slopes of the pass told that they were nearing timber-line. The air was chill, the sun was hidden by old Solidor, and the stream had diminished to a silent rill winding among sear grass and yellowed willows. The valley behind them was vague with mist. The southern boundary of the forest was in sight.
At last the topmost looming crags of the Continental Divide cut the sky-line, and then in the smooth hollow between two rounded grassy summits Berrie halted, and they all silently contemplated the two worlds. To the west and north lay an endless spread of mountains, wave on wave, snow-lined, savage, sullen in the dying light; while to the east and southeast the foot-hills faded into the plain, whose dim cities, insubstantial as flecks in a veil of violet mist, were hardly distinguishable without the aid of glasses.
To the girl there was something splendid, something heroical in that majestic, menacing landscape to the west. In one of its folds she had begun her life. In another she had grown to womanhood and self-confident power. The rough men, the coarse, ungainly women of that land seemed less hateful now that she was leaving them, perhaps forever, and a confused memory of the many splendid dawns and purple sunsets she had loved filled her thought.
Wayland, divining some part of what was moving in her mind, cheerily remarked, “Yes, it’s a splendid place for a summer vacation, but a stern place in winter-time, and for a lifelong residence it is not inspiring.”
Mrs. McFarlane agreed with him in this estimate. “It is terribly lonesome in there at times. I’ve had enough of it. I’m ready for the comforts of civilization.”
Berrie turned in her seat, and was about to take up the reins when Wayland asserted himself. “Wait a moment. Here’s where my dominion begins. Here’s where you change seats with me. I am the driver now.”
She looked at him with questioning, smiling glance. “Can you drive? It’s all the way down-hill – and steep?”
“If I can’t I’ll ask your aid. I’m old enough to remember the family carriage. I’ve even driven a four-in-hand.”
She surrendered her seat doubtfully, and smiled to see him take up the reins as if he were starting a four-horse coach. He proved adequate and careful, and she was proud of him as, with foot on the brake and the bronchos well in hand, he swung down the long looping road to the railway. She was pleased, too, by his care of the weary animals, easing them down the steepest slopes and sending them along on the comparatively level spots.
Their descent was rapid, but it was long after dark before they reached Flume, which lay up the valley to the right. It was a poor little decaying mining-town set against the hillside, and had but one hotel, a sun-warped and sagging pine building just above the station.
“Not much like the Profile House,” said Wayland, as he drew up to the porch. “But I see no choice.”
“There isn’t any,” Berrie assured him.
“Well, now,” he went on, “I am in command of this expedition. From this on I lead this outfit. When it comes to hotels, railways, and the like o’ that, I’m head ranger.”
Mrs. McFarlane, tired, hungry, and a little dismayed, accepted his control gladly; but Berrie could not at once slip aside her responsibility. “Tell the hostler – ”
“Not a word!” commanded Norcross; and the girl with a smile submitted to his guidance, and thereafter his efficiency, his self-possession, his tact delighted her. He persuaded the sullen landlady to get them supper. He secured the best rooms in the house, and arranged for the care of the team, and when they were all seated around the dim, fly-specked oil-lamp at the end of the crumby dining-room table he discovered such a gay and confident mien that the women looked at each other in surprise.
Berrie was correspondingly less masculine. In drawing off her buckskin driving-gloves she had put away the cowgirl, and was silent, a little sad even, in the midst of her enjoyment of his dictatorship. And when he said, “If my father reaches Denver in time I want you to meet him,” she looked the dismay she felt.
“I’ll do it – but I’m scared of him.”
“You needn’t be. I’ll see him first and draw his fire.”
Mrs. McFarlane interposed. “We must do a little shopping first. We can’t meet your father as we are.”
“Very well. I’ll go with you if you’ll let me. I’m a great little shopper. I have infallible taste, so my sisters say. If it’s a case of buying new hats, for instance, I’m the final authority with them.” This amused Berrie, but her mother took it seriously.
“Of course, I’m anxious to have my daughter make the best possible impression.”
“Very well. It is arranged. We get in, I find, about noon. We’ll go straight to the biggest shop in town. If we work with speed we’ll be able to lunch with my father. He’ll be at the Palmer House at one.”
Berrie said nothing, either in acceptance or rejection of his plan. Her mind was concerned with new conceptions, new relationships, and when in the hall he took her face between his hands and said, “Cheer up! All is not lost,” she put her arms about his neck and laid her cheek against his breast to hide her tears. “Oh, Wayland! I’m such an idiot in the city. I’m afraid your father will despise me.”
What he said was not very cogent, and not in the least literary, but it was reassuring and lover-like, and when he turned her over to her mother she was composed, though unwontedly grave.
She woke to a new life next morning – a life of compliance, of following, of dependence upon the judgment of another. She stood in silence while her lover paid the bills, bought the tickets, and telegraphed their coming to his father. She acquiesced when he prevented her mother from telephoning to the ranch. She complied when he countermanded her order to have the team sent back at once. His judgment ruled, and she enjoyed her sudden freedom from responsibility. It was novel, and it was very sweet to think that she was being cared for as she had cared for and shielded him in the world of the trail.
In the little railway-coach, which held a score of passengers, she found herself among some Eastern travelers who had taken the trip up the Valley of the Flume in the full belief that they were piercing the heart of the Rocky Mountains! It amused Wayland almost as much as it amused Berrie when one man said to his wife:
“Well, I’m glad we’ve seen the Rockies.”
“He really believes it!” exclaimed Norcross.
After an hour’s ride Wayland tactfully withdrew, leaving mother and daughter to discuss clothes undisturbed by his presence.
“We must look our best, honey,” said Mrs. McFarlane. “We will go right to Mme. Crosby at Battle’s, and she’ll fit us out. I wish we had more time; but we haven’t, so we must do the best we can.”
“I want Wayland to choose my hat and traveling-suit,” replied Berrie.
“Of course. But you’ve got to have a lot of other things besides.” And they bent to the joyous work of making out a list of goods to be purchased as soon as they reached Chicago.
Wayland came back with a Denver paper in his hand and a look of disgust on his face. “It’s all in here – at least, the outlines of it.”
Berrie took the journal, and there read the details of Settle’s assault upon the foreman. “The fight arose from a remark concerning the Forest Supervisor’s daughter. Ranger Settle resented the gossip, and fell upon the other man, beating him with the butt of his revolver. Friends of the foreman claim that the ranger is a drunken bully, and should have been discharged long ago. The Supervisor for some mysterious reason retains this man, although he is an incompetent. It is also claimed that McFarlane put a man on the roll without examination.” The Supervisor was the protagonist of the play, which was plainly political. The attack upon him was bitter and unjust, and Mrs. McFarlane again declared her intention of returning to help him in his fight. However, Wayland again proved to her that her presence would only embarrass the Supervisor. “You would not aid him in the slightest degree. Nash and Landon are with him, and will refute all these charges.”
This newspaper story took the light out of their day and the smile from Berrie’s lips, and the women entered the city silent and distressed in spite of the efforts of their young guide. The nearer the girl came to the ordeal of facing the elder Norcross, the more she feared the outcome; but Wayland kept his air of easy confidence, and drove them directly to the shopping center, believing that under the influence of hats and gloves they would regain their customary cheer.
In this he was largely justified. They had a delightful hour trying on millinery and coats and gloves. The forewoman, who knew Mrs. McFarlane, gladly accepted her commission, and, while suspecting the tender relationship between the girl and the man, she was tactful enough to conceal her suspicion. “The gentleman is right; you carry simple things best,” she remarked to Berrie, thus showing her own good judgment. “Smartly tailored gray or blue suits are your style.”
Silent, blushing, tousled by the hands of her decorators, Berrie permitted hats to be perched on her head and jackets buttoned and unbuttoned about her shoulders till she felt like a worn clothes-horse. Wayland beamed with delight, but she was far less satisfied than he; and when at last selection was made, she still had her doubts, not of the clothes, but of her ability to wear them. They seemed so alien to her, so restrictive and enslaving.
“You’re an easy fitter,” said the saleswoman. “But” – here she lowered her voice – “you need a new corset. This old one is out of date. Nobody is wearing hips now.”
Thereupon Berrie meekly permitted herself to be led away to a torture-room. Wayland waited patiently, and when she reappeared all traces of Bear Tooth Forest had vanished. In a neat tailored suit and a very “chic” hat, with shoes, gloves, and stockings to match, she was so transformed, so charmingly girlish in her self-conscious glory, that he was tempted to embrace her in the presence of the saleswoman. But he didn’t. He merely said: “I see the governor’s finish! Let’s go to lunch. You are stunning!”
“I don’t know myself,” responded Berrie. “The only thing that feels natural is my hand. They cinched me so tight I can’t eat a thing, and my shoes hurt.” She laughed as she said this, for her use of the vernacular was conscious. “I’m a fraud. Your father will spot my brand first shot. Look at my face – red as a saddle!”
“Don’t let that trouble you. This is the time of year when tan is fashionable. Don’t you be afraid of the governor. Just smile at him, give him your grip, and he’ll melt.”
