The Ranch at the Wolverine Read online

  CHAPTER II

  A STORM AND A STRANGER

  Jase began to complain of having "all-gone" feelings during the winterafter Billy Louise came home and took up the whole burden of theWolverine ranch. He complained to Billy Louise, when she rode over oneclear, sunny day in January; he said that he was getting old--which wasperfectly true--and that he was not as able-bodied as he might be, anddidn't expect to last much longer. Billy Louise spoke of it to Marthy,and Marthy snorted.

  "He's able-bodied enough at mealtimes, I notice," she retorted. "I'veheard that tune ever since I knowed him; he can't fool me!"

  "Not about the all-goneness, have you?" Billy Louise was preparing towipe the dishes for Marthy. "I know he always had 'cricks' indifferent parts of his anatomy, but I never heard about his feelingall-gone, before. That sounds mysterious, don't you think?"

  "No; and he never had nothin' the matter with his anatomy, neither; hisanatomy's just as sound as mine. Jase was born lazy, is all ails him."

  "But, Marthy, haven't you noticed he doesn't look as well as he usedto? He has a sort of gray look, don't you think? And his eyes are sopuffy underneath, lately."

  "No, I ain't noticed nothing wrong with him that ain't always beenwrong." Marthy spoke grudgingly, as if she resented even thepossibility of Jase's having a real ailment. "He's feelin' his years,mebby. But he ain't no call to; Jase ain't but three years older 'n Ibe, and I ain't but fifty-nine last birthday. And I've worked andslaved here in this Cove fer twenty-seven years, now; what it is I'vemade it. Jase ain't ever done a hand's turn that he wasn't obliged todo. I've chopped wood, and I've built corrals and dug ditches, andJase has puttered around and whined that he wasn't able-bodied enoughto do no heavy lifting. That there orchard out there I planted andpacked water in buckets to it till I got the ditch through. Themcorrals down next the river I built. I dug the post-holes, and Jaseset the posts in and held 'em steady while I tamped the dirt! Inwinter I've hauled hay and fed the cattle; and Jase, he packed a bucketuh slop, mebby, to the pigs! If he ain't as able-bodied as I be, it'sbecause he ain't done nothing to git strong on. He can't come aroundme now with that all-gone feeling uh his; I know Jase Meilke like abook."

  There was more that she said about Jase. Standing there, a squat,unkempt woman with a seamed, leathery face and hard eyes now quitefaded to gray, she told Billy Louise a good deal of the bitterness ofthe years behind; years of hardship and of slavish toil and no love tolighten it. She spoke again of Minervy, and the name brought back toBilly Louise poignant memories of her own lonely childhood and of her"pretend" playmate.

  Half shyly, because she was still sometimes touched with theinarticulateness of youth, Billy Louise told Marthy a little of thatplaymate. "Why, do you know, every time I rode old Badger anywhere,after that day you told me about Minervy, I used to pretend thatMinervy rode behind me. I used to talk to her by the hour and take herplaces. And up our canyon is a cave that I used to play was Minervy'scave. I had another one, and I used to go over and visit Minervy. AndI had another pretend playmate--a boy--and we used to have adventures.It's a queer place; I just found that cave by accident. I don'tbelieve there's another person in the country who knows it's there atall. Well, that's Minervy's cave to me yet. And, Marthy--" BillyLouise giggled a little and eyed the old woman with a sidelong lookthat would have set a young man's blood a-jump--"I hope you won't bemad; I was just a kid, and I didn't know any better. But just to showyou how much I thought: I had a little pig, and I named it Minervy,after you told me about her. And mommie told me that was no name forit; it was--it wasn't a girl pig, mommie said. So I called itMan-ervy, as the next best thing." She gave Marthy another wastedglance from the corners of her eyes. "Oh, Marthy!" she criedremorsefully, setting down the gravy bowl that she might pat Marthy onher fat, age-rounded shoulder. "What a little beast I am! I shouldn'thave told that; but honest, I thought it was an honor. I--I justworshiped that pig!"

  Jase maundered in at that moment, and Marthy, catching up a corner ofher dirty apron--Billy Louise could not remember ever seeing Marthy ina perfectly clean dress or apron--wiped away what traces of emotion herweathered face could reveal. Also, she turned and glared at Jase withwhat Billy Louise considered a perfectly uncalled-for animosity. Inreality, Marthy was covertly looking for visible symptoms of theall-goneness. She shut her harsh lips together tightly at what shesaw; Jase certainly was puffy under his watery, pink-rimmed eyes, andthe withered cheeks above his thin graying beard really did have apasty, gray look.

  "D' you turn them calves out into the corral?" she demanded, her voiceharder because of her secret uneasiness.

  "I was goin' to, but the wind's changed into the north, 'n' I thoughtmebby you wouldn't want 'em out." Jase turned back aimlessly to thedoor. His voice was getting cracked and husky, and the deprecatingnote dominated pathetically all that he said. "You'll have to face thewind goin' home," he said to Billy Louise. "More 'n likely you'll befacin' snow, too. Looks bad, off that way."

  "You go on and turn them calves out!" Marthy commanded him harshly."Billy Louise ain't goin' home if it storms; I sh'd think you'd knowenough to know that."

  "Oh, but I'll have to go, anyway," the girl interrupted. "Mommie can'tbe there alone; she'd worry herself to death if I didn't show up bydark. She worries about every little thing since daddy died. I oughtto have gone before--or I oughtn't to have come. But she was worryingabout you, Marthy; she hadn't seen or heard of you for a month, and shewas afraid you might be sick or something. Why don't you get someoneto stay with you? I think you ought to."

  She looked toward the door, which Jase had closed upon his departure."If Jase should--get sick, or anything--"

  "Jase ain't goin' to git sick," Marthy retorted glumly. "Yuh don'twant to let him worry yuh, Billy Louise. If I'd worried every time heyowled around about being sick, I'd be dead or crazy by now. I dunnobut maybe I'll have somebody to help with the work, though," she added,after a pause during which she had swiped the dish-rag around the sidesof the pan once or twice, and had opened the door and thrown the waterout beyond the doorstep like the sloven she was. "I got a nephew thatwants to come out. He's been in a bank, but he's quit and wants to giton to a ranch. I dunno but I'll have him come, in the spring."

  "Do," urged Billy Louise, perfectly unconscious of the potentialitiesof the future. "I hate to think of you two down here alone. I don'tsuppose anyone ever comes down here, except me--and that isn't often."

  "Nobody's got any call to come down," said Marthy stolidly. "They sureain't going to come for our comp'ny and there ain't nothing else tobring 'em."

  "Well, there aren't many to come, you know," laughed Billy Louise,shaking out the dish towel and spreading it over two nails, as she didat home. "I'm your nearest neighbor, and I've got six miles toride--against the wind, at that. I think I'd better start. We've gota halfbreed doing chores for us, but he has to be looked after or heneglects things. I'll not get another chance to come very soon, I'mafraid; mommie hates to have me ride around much in the winter. Yousend for that nephew right away, why don't you, Marthy?" It was likeBilly Louise to mix command and entreaty together. "Really, I don'tthink Jase looks a bit well."

  "A good strong steepin' of sage'll fix him all right, only he ain'tsick, as I see. You take this shawl."

  Billy Louise refused the shawl and ran down the twisted path fringedwith long, reaching fingers of the hare berry bushes. At the stableshe stopped for an aimless dialogue with Jase and then rode away, pastthe orchard whose leafless branches gave glimpses of the low,sod-roofed cabin, with Marthy standing rather disconsolately on therough doorstep watching her go.

  Absently she let down the bars in the narrowest place in the gorge andlifted them into their rude sockets after she had led her horsethrough. All through the years since Marthy had gone down that rockygash in search of Buck and Bawley, no human being had entered or leftthe Cove save through that narrow opening. The tingle of romance whichswept always
the nerves of the girl when she rode that way fastenedupon her now. She wished the Cove belonged to her; she thought shewould like to live in a place like that, with warlike Indians allaround and that gorge to guard day and night. She wished she had beenMarthy, discovering that place and taming it, little by little, insolitary achievement the sweeter because it had been hard.

  "It's a bigger thing," said Billy Louise aloud to her horse, "to make ahome here in this wilderness, than to write the greatest poem in theworld or paint the greatest picture or--anything. I wish..."

  Blue was climbing steadily out of the gorge, twitching an ear backwardwith flattering attention when his lady spoke. He held it so for aminute, waiting for that sentence to be finished, perhaps; for he waswise beyond his kind--was Blue. But his lady was staring at the rockwall they were passing then, where the winds and the cold and heat hadcarved jutting ledges into the crude form of cabbages; though BillyLouise preferred to call them roses. Always they struck her with a newwonder, as if she saw them for the first time. Blue went on, calmlystepping over this rock and, around that as if it were the simplestthing in the world to find sure footing and carry his lady smoothly upthat trail. He threw up his head so suddenly that Billy Louise wasstartled out of her aimless dreamings, and pointed nose and ears towardthe little creek-bottom above, where Marthy had lighted her camp-firelong and long ago.

  A few steps farther, and Blue stopped short in the trail to look andlisten. Billy Louise could see the nervous twitchings of his musclesunder the skin of neck and shoulders, and she smiled to herself.Nothing could ever come upon her unaware when she rode alone, so longas she rode Blue. A hunting dog was not more keenly alive to hissurroundings.

  "Go on, Blue," she commanded after a minute. "If it's a bear oranything like that, you can make a run for it; if it's a wolf, I'llshoot it. You needn't stand here all night, anyway."

  Blue went on, out from behind the willow growth that hid the open. Hereturned to his calm, picking a smooth trail through the scatteredrocks and tiny washouts. It was the girl's turn to stare andspeculate. She did not know this horseman who sat negligently in thesaddle and looked up at the cedar-grown bluff beyond, while his horsestood knee-deep in the little stream. She did not know him; and therewere not so many travelers in the land that strangers were a matter ofindifference.

  Blue welcomed the horse with a democratic nicker and went forwardbriskly. And the rider turned his head, eyed the girl sharply as shecame up, and nodded a cursory greeting. His horse lifted its head tolook, decided that it wanted another swallow or two, and lowered itsmuzzle again to the water.

  Billy Louise could not form any opinion of the man's age orpersonality, for he was encased in a wolfskin coat which covered himcompletely from hatbrim to ankles. She got an impression of a thin,dark face, and a sharp glance from eyes that seemed dark also. Therewas a thin, high nose, and beyond that Billy Louise did not look. Ifshe had, the mouth must certainly have reassured her somewhat.

  Blue stepped nonchalantly down into the stream beside the strange horseand went across without stopping to drink. The strange horse moved onalso, as if that were the natural thing to do--which it was, sincechance sent them traveling the same trail. Billy Louise set her teethtogether with the queer little vicious click that had always been herhabit when she felt thwarted and constrained to yield to circumstances,and straightened herself in the saddle.

  "Looks like a storm," the fur-coated one observed, with a perfectlytransparent attempt to lighten the awkwardness.

  Billy Louise tilted her chin upward and gazed at the gray sweep ofclouds moving sullenly toward the mountains at her back. She glancedat the man and caught him looking intently at her face.

  He did not look away immediately, as he should have done, and BillyLouise felt a little heat-wave of embarrassment, emphasized byresentment.

  "Are you going far?" he queried in the same tone he had employed before.

  "Six miles," she answered shortly, though she tried to be decentlycivil.

  "I've about eighteen," he said. "Looks like we'll both get caught outin a blizzard."

  Certainly, he had a pleasant enough voice--and after all it was not hisfault that he happened to be at the crossing when she rode out of thegorge. Billy Louise, in common justice, laid aside her resentment andlooked at him with a hint of a smile at the corners of her lips.

  "That's what we have to expect when we travel in this country in thewinter," she replied. "Eighteen miles will take you long after dark."

  "Well, I was sort of figuring on putting up at some ranch, if it gottoo bad. There's a ranch somewhere ahead, on the Wolverine, isn'tthere?"

  "Yes." Billy Louise bit her lip; but hospitality is an unwritten lawof the West--a law not to be lightly broken. "That's where I live.We'll be glad to have you stop there, of course."

  The stranger must have felt and admired the unconscious dignity of hertone and words, for he thanked her simply and refrained from lookingtoo intently at her face.

  Fine siftings of snow, like meal flung down from a gigantic sieve,swept into their faces as they rode on. The man turned his face towardher after a long silence. She was riding with bowed head and face halfturned from him and the wind alike.

  "You'd better ride on ahead and get in out of this," he said curtly."Your horse is fresh. It's going to be worse and more of it, beforelong; this cayuse of mine has had thirty miles or so of rough going."

  "I think I'd better wait for you," she said primly. "There are badplaces where the trail goes close to the bluff, and the lava rock willbe slippery with this snow. And it's getting dark so fast that astranger might go over."

  "If that's the case, the sooner you are past the bad places the better.I'm all right. You drift along."

  Billy Louise speculated briefly upon the note of calm authority in hisvoice. He did not know, evidently, that she was more accustomed togiving commands than to obeying them; her lips gave a little quirk ofamusement at his mistake.

  "You go on. I don't want a guide." He tilted his head peremptorilytoward the blurred trail ahead.

  Billy Louise laughed a little. She did not feel in the leastembarrassed now. "Do you never get what you don't want?" she asked himmildly. "I'd a lot rather lead you past those places than have you goover the edge," she said, "because nobody could get you up, or even godown and bury you decently. It wouldn't be a bit nice. It's muchsimpler to keep you on top."

  He said something, but Billy Louise could not hear what it was; shesuspected him of swearing. She rode on in silence.

  "Blue's a dandy horse on bad trails and in the dark," she observedcompanionably at last. "He simply can't lose his footing or his way."

  "Yes? That's nice."

  Billy Louise felt like putting out her tongue at him, for the coolremoteness of his tone. It would serve him right to ride on and lethim break his neck over the bluff if he wanted to. She shut her teethtogether and turned her face away from him.

  So, in silence and with no very good feeling between them, they wentprecariously down the steep hill (the hill up which Marthy and the oxenand Jase had toiled so laboriously, twenty-seven years before) andacross the tiny flat to where the cabin window winked a welcome at themthrough the storm.