Kitabı oku: «The Ranchman», sayfa 4
CHAPTER VII – THE SHADOW OF THE PAST
Marion Harlan and her uncle, Elam Parsons, did not accompany Carrington to the Castle Hotel. By telegraph, through Danforth, Carrington had bought a house near Dawes, and shortly after Quinton Taylor left the station platform accompanied by his friends and admirers, Marion and her uncle were in a buckboard riding toward the place that, henceforth, was to be their home.
For that question had been settled before the party left Westwood. Parsons had declared his future activities were to be centered in Dawes, that he had no further interests to keep him in Westwood, and that he intended to make his home in Dawes.
Certainly Marion had few interests in the town that had been the scene of the domestic tragedy that had left her parentless. She was glad to get away. For though she had not been to blame for what had happened, she was painfully conscious of the stares that followed her everywhere, and aware of the morbid curiosity with which her neighbors regarded her. Also – through the medium of certain of her “friends,” she had become cognizant of speculative whisperings, such as: “To think of being brought up like that? Do you think she will be like her mother?” Or – “What’s bred in the bone, et cetera.”
Perhaps these good people did not mean to be unkind; certainly the crimson stains that colored the girl’s cheeks when she passed them should have won their charity and their silence.
There was nothing in Westwood for her; and so she was glad to get away. And the trip westward toward Dawes opened a new vista of life to her. She was leaving the old and the tragic and adventuring into the new and promising, where she could face life without the onus of a shame that had not been hers.
Before she was half way to Dawes she had forgotten Westwood and its wagging tongues. She alone, of all the passengers in the Pullman, had not been aware of the heat and the discomfort. She had loved every foot of the great prairie land that, green and beautiful, had flashed past the car window; she had gazed with eager, interested eyes into the far reaches of the desert through which she had passed, filling her soul with the mystic beauty of this new world, reveling in its vastness and in the atmosphere of calm that seemed to engulf it.
Dawes had not disappointed her; on the contrary, she loved it at first sight. For though Dawes was new and crude, it looked rugged and honest – and rather too busy to hesitate for the purpose of indulging in gossip – idle or otherwise. Dawes, she was certain, was occupying itself with progress – a thing that, long since, Westwood had forgotten.
Five minutes after she had entered the buckboard, the spirit of this new world had seized upon the girl and she was athrob and atingle with the joy of it. It filled her veins; it made her cheeks flame and her eyes dance. And the strange aroma – the pungent breath of the sage, borne to her on the slight breeze – she drew into her lungs with great long breaths that seemed to intoxicate her.
“Oh,” she exclaimed delightedly, “isn’t it great! Oh, I love it!”
Elam Parsons grinned at her – the habitual smirk with which he recognized all emotion not his own.
“It does look like a good field for business,” he conceded.
The girl looked at him quickly, divined the sordidness of his thoughts, and puckered her brows in a frown. And thereafter she enjoyed the esthetic beauties of her world without seeking confirmation from her uncle.
Her delight grew as the journey to the new home progressed. She saw the fertile farming country stretching far in the big section of country beyond the water-filled basin; her eyes glowed as the irrigation ditches, with their locks and gates, came under her observation; and she sat silent, awed by the mightiness of it all – the tall, majestic mountains looming somberly many miles distant behind a glowing mist – like a rose veil or a gauze curtain lowered to partly conceal the mystic beauty of them.
Intervening were hills and flats and draws and valleys, and miles and miles of level grass land, green and peaceful in the shimmering sunlight that came from somewhere near the center of the big, pale-blue inverted bowl of sky; she caught the silvery glitter of a river that wound its way through the country like a monstrous serpent; she saw dark blotches, miles long, which she knew were forests, for she could see the spires of trees thrusting upward. But from where she rode the trees seemed to be no larger than bushes.
Looking backward, she could see Dawes. Already the buckboard had traveled two or three miles, but the town seemed near, and she had quite a shock when she looked back at it and saw the buildings, mere huddled shanties, spoiling the beauty of her picture.
A mile or so farther – four miles altogether, Parsons told her – and they came in sight of a house. She had difficulty restraining her delight when they climbed out of the buckboard and Parsons told her the place was to be their permanent home. For it was such a house as she had longed to live in all the days of her life.
The first impression it gave her was that of spaciousness. For though only one story in height, the house contained many rooms. Those, however, she saw later.
The exterior was what intrigued her interest at first glance. So far as she knew, it was the only brick building in the country. She had seen none such in Dawes.
There was a big porch across the front; the windows were large; there were vines and plants thriving in the shade from some big cottonwood trees near by – in fact, the house seemed to have been built in a grove of the giant trees; there were several outhouses, one of which had chickens in an enclosure near it; there was a garden, well-kept; and the girl saw that back of the house ran a little stream which flowed sharply downward, later to tumble into the big basin far below the irrigation dam.
While Parsons was superintending the unloading of the buckboard, Marion explored the house. It was completely furnished, and her eyes glowed with pleasure as she inspected it. And when Parsons and the driver were carrying the baggage in she was outside the house, standing at the edge of a butte whose precipitous walls descended sharply to the floor of the irrigation basin, two or three hundred feet below. She could no longer see the cultivated level, with its irrigation ditches, but she could see the big dam, a mile or so up the valley toward Dawes, with the water creeping over it, and the big valley itself, slumbering in the pure, white light of the morning.
She went inside, slightly awed, and Parsons, noting her excitement, smirked at her. She left him and went to her room. Emerging later she discovered that Parsons was not in the house. She saw him, however, at a distance, looking out into the valley.
And then, in the kitchen, Marion came upon the housekeeper, a negro woman of uncertain age. Parsons had not told her there was to be a housekeeper.
The negro woman grinned broadly at her astonishment.
“Lawsey, ma’am; you jes’ got to have a housekeeper, I reckon! How you ever git along without a housekeeper? You’re too fine an’ dainty to keep house you’self!”
The woman’s name, the latter told her, was Martha, and there was honest delight – and, it seemed to Marion, downright relief in her eyes when she looked at the new mistress.
“You ain’t got no ‘past,’ that’s certain, honey,” she declared, with a delighted smile. “The woman that lived here befo’ had a past, honey. A man named Huggins lived in this house, an’ she said she’s his wife. Wife! Lawsey! No man has a wife like that! She had a past, that woman, an’ mebbe a present, too – he, he, he!
“He was the man what put the railroad through here, honey. I done hear the woman say – her name was Blanche, honey – that Huggins was one of them ultra rich. But whatever it was that ailed him, honey, didn’t help his looks none. Pig-eye, I used to call him, when I’se mad at him – which was mostly all the time – he, he, he!”
The girl’s face whitened. Was she never to escape the atmosphere she loathed? She shuddered and Martha patted her sympathetically on the shoulder.
“There, there, honey; you ain’t ’sponsible for other folks’ affairs. Jes’ you hold you’ head up an’ go about you’ business. Nobody say anything to you because you’ livin’ here.”
But Martha’s words neither comforted nor consoled the girl. She went again to her room and sat for a long time, looking out of a window. For now all the cheer had gone out of the house; the rooms looked dull and dreary – and empty, as of something gone out of them.
CHAPTER VIII – CONCERNING “SQUINT”
Marion Harlan had responded eagerly to Carrington’s fabrication regarding the rumor of Lawrence Harlan’s presence in Dawes. Carrington’s reference to her father’s sojourn in the town had been vague – he merely told her that a rumor had reached him – a man’s word, without details – and she had accepted it at its face value. She was impatient to run the rumor down, to personally satisfy herself, and she believed Carrington.
But she spent a fruitless week interrogating people in Dawes. She had gone to the courthouse, there to pass long hours searching the records – and had found nothing. Then, systematically, she had gone from store to store – making small purchases and quizzing everyone she came in contact with. None had known a man named Harlan; it seemed that not one person in Dawes had ever heard of him.
Parsons had returned to town in the buckboard shortly after noon on the day of their arrival at the new house, and she had not seen him again until the following morning. Then he had told her that Carrington had gone away – he did not know where. Carrington would not return for a week or two, he inferred.
Parsons had bought some horses. A little bay, short-coupled but wiry, belonged to her, Parsons said – it was a present from Carrington.
She hesitated to accept the horse; but the little animal won her regard by his affectionate mannerisms, and at the end of a day of doubt and indecision she accepted him.
She had ridden horses in Westwood – bareback when no one had been looking, and with a side-saddle at other times – but she discovered no side-saddle in Dawes. However, she did encounter no difficulty in unearthing a riding-habit with a divided skirt, and though she got into that with a pulse of trepidation and embarrassment, she soon discovered it to be most comfortable and convenient.
And Dawes did not stare at her because she rode “straddle.” At first she was fearful, and watched Dawes’s citizens furtively; but when she saw that she attracted no attention other than would be attracted by any good-looking young woman in more conventional attire, she felt more at ease. But she could not help thinking about the sanctimonious inhabitants of Westwood. Would they not have declared their kindly predictions vindicated had they been permitted to see her? She could almost hear the chorus of “I-told-you-so’s” – they rang in her ears over a distance of many hundreds of miles!
But the spirit of the young, unfettered country had got into her soul, and she went her way unmindful of Westwood’s opinions.
For three days she continued her search for tidings of her father, eager and hopeful; and then for the remainder of the week she did her searching mechanically, doggedly, with a presentiment of failure to harass her.
And then one morning, when she was standing beside her horse near the stable door, ready to mount and fully determined to pursue the Carrington rumor to the end, the word she sought was brought to her.
She saw a horseman coming toward her from the direction of Dawes. He was not Parsons – for the rider was short and broad; and besides, Parsons was spending most of his time in Dawes.
The girl watched the rider, assured, as he came nearer, that he was a stranger; and when he turned his horse toward her, and she saw he was a stranger, she leaned close and whispered to her own animal:
“Oh, Billy; what if it should be!”
An instant later she was watching the stranger dismount within a few feet of where she was standing.
He was short and stocky, and undeniably Irish. He was far past middle age, as his gray hair and seamed wrinkles of his face indicated; but there was the light of a youthful spirit and good-nature in his eyes that squinted at the girl with a quizzical interest.
With the bridle-rein in the crook of his elbow and his hat in his hand, he bowed elaborately to the girl.
“Would ye be Miss Harlan, ma’am?” he asked.
“Yes,” she breathed, her face alight with eagerness, for now since the man had spoken her name the presentiment of news grew stronger.
The man’s face flashed into a wide, delighted grin and he reached out a hand, into which she placed one of hers, hardly knowing that she did it.
“Me name’s Ben Mullarky, ma’am. I’ve got a little shack down on the Rabbit-Ear – which is a crick, for all the name some locoed ignoramus give it. You c’ud see the shack from here, ma’am – if ye’d look sharp.”
He pointed out a spot to her – a wooded section far out in the big level country southward, beside the river – and she saw the roof of a building near the edge of the timber.
“That’s me shack,” offered Mullarky. “Me ol’ woman an’ meself owns her – an’ a quarter-section – all proved. We call it seven miles from the shack to Dawes. That’d make it about three from here.”
“Yes, yes,” said the girl eagerly.
He grinned at her. “Comin’ in to town this mornin’ for some knickknacks for me ol’ woman, I hear from Coleman – who keeps a store – that there’s a fine-lookin’ girl named Harlan searchin’ the country for news of her father, Larry Harlan. I knowed him, ma’am.”
“You did? Oh, how wonderful!” She stood erect, breathing fast, her eyes glowing with mingled joy and impatience. She had not caught the significance of Mullarky’s picturesque past tense, “knowed;” but when he repeated it, with just a slight emphasis:
“I knowed him, ma’am,” she drew a quick, full breath and her face whitened.
“You knew him,” she said slowly. “Does that mean – ”
Mullarky scratched his head and looked downward, not meeting her eyes.
“Squint Taylor would tell you the story, ma’am,” he said. “You see, ma’am, he worked for Squint, an’ Squint was with him when it happened.”
“He’s dead, then?” She stood rigid, tense, searching Mullarky’s face with wide, dreading eyes, and when she saw his gaze shift under hers she drew a deep sigh and leaned against Billy, covering her face with her hands.
Mullarky did not attempt to disturb her; he stood, looking glumly at her, reproaching himself for his awkwardness in breaking the news to her.
It was some minutes before she faced him again, and then she was pale and composed, except for the haunting sadness that had come into her eyes.
“Thank you,” she said. “Can you tell me where I can find Mr. Taylor – ‘Squint,’ you called him? Is that the Taylor who was elected mayor – last week?”
“The same, ma’am.” He turned and pointed southward, into the big, level country that she admired so much.
“Do you see that big timber grove ’way off there – where the crick doubles to the north – with that big green patch beyond?” She nodded. “That’s Taylor’s ranch – the Arrow. You’ll find him there. He’s a mighty fine man, ma’am. Larry Harlan would tell you that if he was here. Taylor was the best friend that Larry Harlan ever had – out here.” He looked at her pityingly. “I’m sorry, ma’am, to be the bearer of ill news; but when I heard you was in town, lookin’ for your father, I couldn’t help comin’ to see you.”
She asked some questions about her father – which Mullarky answered; though he could tell her nothing that would acquaint her with the details of her father’s life between the time he had left Westwood and the day of his appearance in this section of the world.
“Mebbe Taylor will know, ma’am,” he repeated again and again. And then, when she thanked him once more and mounted her horse, he said:
“You’ll be goin’ to see Squint right away, ma’am, I suppose. You can ease your horse right down the slope, here, an’ strike the level. You’ll find a trail right down there. You’ll follow it along the crick, an’ it’ll take you into the Arrow ranchhouse. It’ll take you past me own shack, too; an’ if you’ll stop in an’ tell the ol’ woman who you are, she’ll be tickled to give you a snack an’ a cup of tea. She liked Larry herself.”
The girl watched Mullarky ride away. He turned in the saddle, at intervals, to grin at her.
Then, when Mullarky had gone she leaned against Billy and stood for a long time, her shoulders quivering.
At last, though, she mounted the little animal and sent him down the slope.
She found the trail about which Mullarky had spoken, and rode it steadily; though she saw little of the wild, virgin country through which she passed, because her brimming eyes blurred it all.
She came at last to Mullarky’s shack, and a stout, motherly woman, with an ample bosom and a kindly face, welcomed her.
“So you’re Larry Harlan’s daughter,” said Mrs. Mullarky, when her insistence had brought the girl inside the cabin; “you poor darlin’. An’ Ben told you – the blunderin’ idiot. He’ll have a piece of my mind when he comes back! An’ you’re stoppin’ at the old Huggins house, eh?” She looked sharply at the girl, and the latter’s face reddened. Whereat Mrs. Mullarky patted her shoulder and murmured:
“It ain’t your fault that there’s indacint women in the world; an’ no taint of them will ever reach you. But the fools in this world is always waggin’ their tongues, associatin’ what’s happened with what they think will happen. An’ mebbe they’ll wonder about you. It’s your uncle that’s there with you, you say? Well, then, don’t you worry. You run right along to see Squint Taylor, now, an’ find out what he knows about your father. Taylor’s a mighty fine man, darlin’.”
And so Marion went on her way again, grateful for Mrs. Mullarky’s kindness, but depressed over the knowledge that the atmosphere of suspicion, which had enveloped her in Westwood, had followed her into this new country which, she had hoped, would have been more friendly.
She came in sight of the Arrow ranchhouse presently, and gazed at it admiringly. It was a big building, of adobe brick, with a wide porch – or gallery – entirely surrounding it. It was in the center of a big space, with timber flanking it on three sides, and at the north was a green stretch of level that reached to the sloping banks of a river.
There were several smaller buildings; a big, fenced enclosure – the corrals, she supposed; a pasture, and a garden. Everything was in perfect order, and had it not been for the aroma of the sage that assailed her nostrils, the awe-inspiring bigness of it all, the sight of thousands of cattle – which she could see through the trees beyond the clearing, she could have likened the place to a big eastern farmhouse of the better class, isolated and prosperous.
She dismounted from her horse at a corner of the house, near a door that opened upon the wide porch, and stood, pale and hesitant, looking at the door, which was closed.
And as she stared at the door, it swung inward and Quinton Taylor appeared in the opening.
CHAPTER IX – A MAN LIES
Taylor was arrayed as Marion had mentally pictured him that day when, in the Pullman, she had associated him with ranches and ranges. Evidently he was ready to ride, for leather chaps incased his legs. The chaps were plain, not even adorned with the spangles of the drawings she had seen; and they were well-worn and shiny in spots. A pair of big, Mexican spurs were on the heels of his boots; the inevitable cartridge-belt about his middle, sagging with the heavy pistol; a quirt dangled from his left hand. Assuredly he belonged in this environment – he even seemed to dominate it.
She had wondered how he would greet her; but his greeting was not at all what she had feared it would be. For he did not presume upon their meeting on the train; he gave no sign that he had ever seen her before; there was not even a glint in his eyes to tell her that he remembered the scornful look she had given him when she discovered him listening to the conversation carried on between her uncle and Carrington. His manner indicated that if she did not care to mention the matter he would not. His face was grave as he stepped across the porch and stood before her. And he said merely:
“Are you looking for someone, ma’am?”
“I came to see you, Mr. Taylor,” she said. (And then he knew that the negro porter on the train had not lied when he said the girl had paid him for certain information.)
But Taylor’s face was still grave, for he thought he knew what she had come for. He had overheard a great deal of the conversation between Parsons and Carrington in the dining-car, and he remembered such phrases as: “That fairy tale about her father having been seen in this locality; To get her out here, where there isn’t a hell of a lot of law, and a man’s will is the only thing that governs him;” and, “Then you lied about Lawrence Harlan having been seen in this country.” Also, he remembered distinctly another phrase, uttered by Carrington: “That you framed up on her mother, to get her to leave Larry.”
All of that conversation was vivid in Taylor’s mind, and mingled with the recollection of it now was a grim pity for the girl, for the hypocritical character of her supposed friends.
To be sure, the girl did not know that Parsons had lied about her father having been seen in the vicinity of Dawes; but that did not alter the fact that Larry Harlan had really been here; and Taylor surmised that she had made inquiries, thus discovering that there was truth in Carrington’s statement.
He got a chair for her and seated himself on the porch railing.
“You came to see me?” he said, encouragingly.
“I am Marion Harlan, the daughter of Lawrence Harlan,” began the girl. And then she paused to note the effect of her words on Taylor.
So far as she could see, there was no sign of emotion on Taylor’s face. He nodded, looking steadily at her.
“And you are seeking news of your father,” he said. “Who told you to come to me?”
“A man named Ben Mullarky. He said my father had worked for you – that you had been his best friend.”
She saw his lips come together in straight lines.
“Poor Larry. You knew he died, Miss Harlan?”
“Mullarky told me.” The girl’s eyes moistened. “And I should like to know something about him – how he lived after – after he left home; whether he was happy – all about him. You see, Mr. Taylor, I loved him!”
“And Larry Harlan loved his daughter,” said Taylor softly.
He began to tell her of her father; how several years before Harlan had come to him, seeking employment; how Larry and himself had formed a friendship; how they had gone together in search of the gold that Larry claimed to have discovered in the Sangre de Christo Mountains; of the injury Larry had suffered, and how the man had died while he himself had been taking him toward civilization and assistance.
During the recital, however, one thought dominated him, reddening his face with visible evidence of the sense of guilt that had seized him. He must deliberately lie to the daughter of the man who had been his friend.
In his pocket at this instant was Larry’s note to him, in which the man had expressed his fear of fortune-hunters. Taylor remembered the exact words:
Marion will have considerable money and I don’t want no sneak to get hold of it – like the sneak that got hold of the money my wife had, that I saved. There’s a lot of them around. If Marion is going to fall in with one of that kind, I’d rather she wouldn’t get what I leave; the man would get it away from her. Use your own judgment and I’ll be satisfied.
And Taylor’s judgment was that Carrington and Parsons were fortune-hunters; that if they discovered the girl to be entitled to a share of the money that had been received from the sale of the mine, they would endeavor to convert it to their own use. And Taylor was determined they should not have it.
The conversation he had overheard in the dining-car had convinced him of their utter hypocrisy and selfishness; it had aroused in him a feeling of savage resentment and disgust that would not permit him to transfer a cent of the money to the girl as long as they held the slightest influence over her.
Again he mentally quoted from Larry’s note to him:
The others were too selfish and sneaking. (That meant Parsons – and one other.) Squint, I want you to take care of her… Sell – the mine – take my share and for it give Marion a half-interest in your ranch, the Arrow. If there is any left, put it in land in Dawes – that town is going to boom. Guard it for her, and marry her, Squint; she’ll make you a good wife.
Since the first meeting with the girl on the train Taylor had felt an entire sympathy with Larry Harlan in his expressed desire to have Taylor marry the girl; in fact, she was the first girl that Taylor had ever wanted to marry, and the passion in his heart for her had already passed the wistful stage – he was determined to have her. But that passion did not lessen his sense of obligation to Larry Harlan. Nor would it – if he could not have the girl himself – prevent him doing what he could to keep her from forming any sort of an alliance with the sort of man Larry had wished to save her from, as expressed in this passage of the note: “If Marion is going to fall in with one of that kind, I’d rather she wouldn’t get what I leave.”
Therefore, since Taylor distrusted Carrington and Parsons, he had decided he would not tell the girl of the money her father had left – the share of the proceeds of the mine. He would hold it for her, as a sacred trust, until the time came – if it ever came – when she would have discovered their faithlessness – or until she needed the money. More, he was determined to expose the men.
He knew, thanks to his eavesdropping on the train, at least something regarding the motives that had brought them to Dawes; Carrington’s words, “When we get hold of the reins,” had convinced him that they and the interests behind them were to endeavor to rob the people of Dawes. That was indicated by their attempt to have David Danforth elected mayor of the town.
Taylor had already decided that he could not permit Marion to see the note her father had left, for he did not want her to feel that she was under any obligation – parental or otherwise – to marry him. If he won her at all, he wanted to win her on his merits.
As a matter of fact, since he had decided to lie about the money, he was determined to say nothing about the note at all. He would keep silent, making whatever explanations that seemed to be necessary, trusting to time and the logical sequence of events for the desired outcome.
He was forced to begin to lie at once. When he had finished the story of Larry’s untimely death, the girl looked straight at him.
“Then you were with him when he died. Did – did he mention anyone – my mother – or me?”
“He said: ‘Squint, there is a daughter’” – Taylor was quoting from the note – “‘she was fifteen when I saw her last. She looked just like me – thank God for that!’” Taylor blushed when he saw the girl’s face redden, for he knew what her thoughts were. He should not have quoted that sentence. He resolved to be more careful; and went on: “He told me I was to take care of you, to offer you a home at the Arrow – after I found you. I was to go to Westwood, Illinois, to find you. I suppose he wanted me to bring you here.”
The speech was entirely unworthy, and Taylor knew it, and he eased his conscience by adding: “He thought, I suppose, that you would like to be where he had been. I’ve not touched the room he had. All his effects are there – everything he owned, just as he left them. I had given him a room in the house because I liked him (that was the truth), and I wanted him where I could talk to him.”
“I cannot thank you enough for that!” she said earnestly. And then Taylor was forced to lie again, for she immediately asked: “And the mine? It proved to be worthless, I suppose. For,” she added, “that would be just father’s luck.”
“The mine wasn’t what we thought it would be,” said Taylor. He was looking at his boots when he spoke, and he wondered if his face was as red as it felt.
“I am not surprised.” There was no disappointment in her voice, and therefore Taylor knew she was not avaricious – though he knew he had not expected her to be. “Then he left nothing but his personal belongings?” she added.
Taylor nodded.
The girl sat for a long time, looking out over the river into the vast level that stretched away from it.
“He has ridden there, I suppose,” she said wistfully. “He was here for nearly three years, you said. Then he must have been everywhere around here.” And she got up, gazing about her, as though she would firmly fix the locality for future reminiscent dreams. Then suddenly she said:
“I should like to see his room – may I?”
“You sure can!”
She followed him into the house, and he stood in the open doorway, watching her as she went from place to place, looking at Larry’s effects.
Taylor did not remain long at the door; he went out upon the porch again, leaving her in the room, and after a long time she joined him, her eyes moist, but a smile on her lips.
“You’ll leave his things there – a little longer, won’t you? I should like to have them, and I shall come for them, some day.”
“Sure,” he said. “But, look here, Miss Harlan. Why should you take his things? Leave them here – and come yourself. That room is yours, if you say the word. And a half-interest in the ranch. I was going to offer your father an interest in it – if he had lived – ”
He realized his mistake when he saw her eyes widen incredulously. And there was a change in her voice – it was full of doubt, of distrust almost.
“What had father done to deserve an interest in your ranch?” she demanded.
“Why,” he answered hesitatingly, “it’s rather hard to say. But he helped me much; he suggested improvements that made the place more valuable; he was a good man, and he took a great deal of the work off my mind – and I liked him,” he finished lamely.
