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Title: Corduroy

Author: Ruth Comfort Mitchell

Release date: March 15, 2023 [eBook #70289]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: D. Appleton and Company

Credits: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Library of Congress)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CORDUROY ***





CORDUROY

RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL




Books by

RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL

  CORDUROY
  NARRATIVES IN VERSE
  JANE JOURNEYS ON
  PLAY THE GAME

  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
  New York              London


[Illustration: THE NEXT MORNING SHE WAS EARLY ON HER HORSE AND SHE WORE
HER WORN AND MELLOW CORDUROYS
                                                             [Page 31]]




  CORDUROY

  BY
  RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL

  AUTHOR OF “PLAY THE GAME,”
  “JANE JOURNEYS ON,” ETC.

  [Illustration]

  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
  NEW YORK : : LONDON : : 1923




  COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

  Copyright, 1922, by The Crowell Publishing Company
  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




  TO

  W. S. Y.

  WHO HAS PUT ON CORDUROY
  AND WEARS IT WELL




CORDUROY




CHAPTER I


FOR the first time in her life--she had been alive twenty-two vivid
and zestful years--Virginia Valdés McVeagh, nicknamed, descriptively,
“Ginger,” felt something like reverence for a male creature of her own
species.

Her father, that stolid Scot, had died while she was a hearty and
unimaginative child; Aleck, her only brother, killed on the last day of
fighting in the Great War, had been her pal and play-fellow, as were,
in lesser and varying degrees, the young ranchers of the miles-wide
neighborhood, while the _vaqueros_ and old Estrada, _mayordomo_ of her
cattle ranch, were her henchmen, loyal, admiring, unquestioning. Always
she had been able to divide the men of her world unhesitatingly into
two classes--her equals, her inferiors.

Dean Wolcott was different. He was framed in mystery and hallowed by
grief, coming to her--almost like a visitant from another world--in
the dawn of a Christmas Day she had vowed not to keep, bringing her
the word of her dead brother for which she had thirsted, and a stained
and crumpled letter in Aleck’s own hand. It was the first shred of
information she had had since the official communication, nearly four
months after the armistice. That had come on a delicate day of early
California spring; the rains had been late and the hills were only
faintly brushed with green, but the wild flowers were out, brilliant,
arresting, and the oaks were vocal with linnets and orioles; meadow
larks sank liltingly on the low ground; the narrow little creek was
lively and vehement, and the air was honey and wine. Everything was
awake and alive except Aleck, and Aleck was dead. The grave official
statement regretted to inform her that Lieutenant Alexander McVeagh was
dead. _Dead_; not alive any more; never coming back to Dos Pozos; never
to ride with her over the range again.

Something in Virginia Valdés McVeagh died likewise. When Aleck was
there she had seemed less than her age; now she was more. She ceased
at once to be “Ginger.” Swiftly, almost, it seemed, with a single
motion, she grew up. She had always been cognizant of every detail
of enterprise on the big cattle ranch, and now, with Estrada’s help,
she took competent charge. She rode with him over the rolling hills
on Aleck’s horse, brought in her cattle from remote pastures, saw to
the planting of her alfalfa crops and the harvesting of her wheat,
held _rodeos_, marketed her stock. Leaving off the mellow corduroys
which toned alluringly with her skin and eyes and hair, and the brave
scarlet sweaters and wine-red velvet dresses which sharply underlined
her Spanish coloring, she swathed herself in black as bitterly as her
Valdés grandmother would have done. She knew that it cut her beauty in
two and she was glad: there had been _flagelantes_ on her mother’s side
of the house, three generations earlier.

The slow and difficult year had crawled away; February ... December.
Virginia had refused to go to relatives in Los Angeles or San Francisco
and asked them not to come to her. This first black Christmas (the one
a year earlier had been vibrant with hope) she must be allowed to spend
alone, in the luxury of uninterrupted and unconsoled grief. Even the
servants--Estrada and his men, old Manuela, the housekeeper, Ling,
the moon-faced Chinese cook--were banished to San Luis Obispo on the
morning of the twenty-fourth, not to return until the twenty-sixth, but
her gift to herself of solitude had been snatched away from her. Dos
Pozos was five miles off the highway, but in good weather motorists
often took the dirt road for a short cut. This year Virginia had
neglected to have it kept up; the bridge, half a mile from the house,
was a frail and ancient structure. Aleck had meant to replace it with
a permanent one of concrete, and Estrada had begged her to carry out
the young _señor’s_ plan, but she would not. Later, perhaps; for the
present, she was thankful for anything which made for isolation.

And then, ironically enough, the very thing which was to have kept the
world away, brought it to her. It rained in torrents, lavish, riotous
California rain; the road sank down into a batter of soft mud; the
bridge whined in the storm; at seven o’clock on Christmas Eve four
machines and ten persons, wailing children among them, were stranded
and helpless. The telephone line was down; the _vaqueros_ spending
their holiday in town; and tradition was rigid; no one, gentle or
simple, ever lifted the latch of Dos Pozos in vain. Grudgingly, with
unadorned civility, Virginia had taken them into the old _adobe_ ranch
house and prepared to give them camp fare, for there was no way in
which she could summon her servants.

It immediately appeared, however, that her servants did not require
summoning; they were already there. The good creatures had merely
driven round the turn of the road in the morning, waited until she
had ridden off in the rain, and crept back again, hiding themselves
discreetly in their quarters. Their idea had been to feed her as the
ravens fed the prophet and to keep out of her sight, for they were on
intimate terms with her temper and her tongue. When the house party
enforced descended upon their mistress they had come boldly forth,
rather giving themselves airs; what--they wanted respectfully to
know--would she have done without them?

So it fell out that two brisk and cheerful school-teachers and a
forlorn widower and his shabby children and a couple of Stanford
students and a personage in a limousine made philosophically merry
beneath the roof which had fully intended to cover nothing but desolate
grief and decent silence, and Ling plied happily between his table and
his glowing range, his queue snapping smartly out behind him, and old
Manuela built fires and made up beds in the guest rooms, and Estrada
rode into San Luis Obispo to send telegrams to distracted families.

When she went to bed at midnight Virginia had worked out something of
her rebellion in weariness. She had resurrected toys for the pinched
children, helped the school-teachers and the Stanford students to trim
a tree for them and to decorate the big rooms with snowberries and
scarlet _toyon_--spurred herself to a civil semblance of hospitality.
As she fell asleep she was aware of a feeling she had sometimes had
when she was a rather bad and turbulent child--that, having been good,
unusually, laboriously good--something good should and must come to her.

It came at sunrise, when Estrada wakened her, calling excitedly in
front of her window. She slipped her feet into Indian moccasins and
threw a _serape_ about her and padded down the long corridor and out
on to the veranda. She heard people stirring as she passed the guest
rooms; one of the children was whimpering with eagerness to be dressed
and allowed to hunt for its Christmas stocking.

Behind the _mayordomo_ stood a tall man in uniform: for one mad moment
her heart stood still and her eyes dilated and blurred and the figure
in khaki swam dizzily in the keen morning light.

Then the old Spaniard stepped quickly forward and she saw that his
eyes were wet. “_Gracias a Dios, Señorita_--it is a friend of _Señor
Alejandrino_! At last he has come, over the sea and over the land, to
bring you the message!”

The stranger came slowly nearer, staring at her. She saw then that he
was a young man, but he did not look young. His eyes were intolerably
tired and tragic and he was weary with weakness. He blinked a little
as he looked at her; it was as if the brightness of her eyes and mouth
and the gay _serape_ hurt and dazed him. “You are--‘Ginger’?” he wanted
gravely to know.

He spoke in a hoarse whisper and in a whisper she answered him,
breathing fast. “Yes. I am Ginger. Aleck----”

He began to speak, very slowly and carefully, pushing the words before
him, one at a time, as a feeble invalid pushes his feet along the
floor. He had been with her brother for a month; they had come to
regard each other as friends, in the red intimacy of war; they had had
a feeling ... something ... that last day, that they would not both
come through it. They had written letters and exchanged them, promised
each other----

She cried out at that. “A letter? He wrote--you’ve brought me a
letter?” She held out her hands, shaking.

He was fumbling at a pocket and his fingers were likewise unsteady.
He explained, very humbly, why he had been so long in coming. He had
been wounded, too, not an hour later. Shattering wounds ... he moved
his thin body uncomfortably as if at a bad memory; shell shock; he had
forgotten everything, even to his own name. A month ago, in England,
he had started in to remember, and he had been traveling to her ever
since. He gave her a worn and soiled bit of paper, folded up like a
child’s letter. Estrada slipped softly into the house.

She snatched at it hungrily and read it three times through before she
looked up again. Aleck’s crude and boyish backhand; Aleck’s crude and
boyish words, hearty, heartening, lifting the black blanket of silence;
_Aleck_.

Then she looked up and caught her breath sharply. A strong shaft of
winter morning sunlight had fallen along the veranda, and it was
shining on his face and through his face. Virginia had never in all
her days harbored an eerie imagining, but she was harboring one now.
Her Valdés mother had died when she was a baby, and her upbringing
had been along the gray lines of the McVeagh Scotch Presbyterianism;
nevertheless, from old Manuela, the housekeeper, she had heard many a
colorful tale of the _santos_. Now, it flashed upon her swiftly, this
worn young soldier, more than a man in spirit, less than a man in body,
was like a saint; a warrior saint; a martyr saint. He swayed a little,
backward, away from her; it seemed entirely possible that he might
melt into the bar of sunlight, into the morning.... She had hoped and
imagined so many things for so many months ... it was conceivable that
she was only hoping and imagining _this_....

Estrada came out again. His quick Spanish cut into her phantasy.
“_Señorita_, this gentleman is very tired and ill--he must rest!” He
put a steadying hand under the young man’s arm and he sagged heavily
against him.

Virginia came out of her abstraction with a sharp sigh. “Yes, he
must rest. Come!” She caught the _serape_ together with one hand and
she was magnificently unaware of her bare brown ankles and her bare
brown throat, and the tumbled ropes of black hair swinging over her
shoulders, and held open the door. “Come,” she said again, smiling
mistily back at him.

The widower’s children were registering shrill rapture over their
stockings and the tree; the older members of the house party, having
been enlightened by Estrada, drew quietly back and watched with
leashed curiosity as the trio went through the room and down the long
corridor. Virginia halted before the door of the last bedroom, the
heavy old-fashioned iron latch in her hand. “This is Aleck’s room. No
one ever comes here but myself; no one else ever takes care of it.”
She flung open the door. Then, at the dim prompting of some Spanish
forbear, she made a little ritual of it, taking his hand and leading
him over the threshold. “Now I give it to you.” She led him gently
across the red tiled floor to a great armchair, cushioned with a
brilliant Navaho blanket. “This was Aleck’s chair.” She began quite
steadily. “He always sat here. And now you are sitting here. And you
saw him die, didn’t you? I saw him live, all the years of his life,
riding the range, in this house, in this room--and you saw him die. You
saw--Aleck--_die_.” Then she started to cry, very quietly. She slipped
down and sat huddled on the floor beside him, her forehead against the
big arm of the chair. He leaned over and laid his hand uncertainly on
her hair, but he could not manage to say anything to her. It was as if
the courage and energy which had driven and dragged him across an ocean
and a continent had left him utterly, now that his pledge was kept, his
message given.

So they stayed there, in silence, save for the slight sound of her
grief, until old Manuela bustled in and took soothing but competent
charge. Manuela was not unaware of her mistress’ bare ankles and
throat. She cast a scandalized black eye upon them, hurried her off
to her own room to dress, flung up a window to the quick morning air,
brought a footstool, tucked the Navaho snugly about the young soldier.

“And now, I go to bring the _señor_ something warm to drink. Would you
like coffee or chocolate, _Señor_?”

Dean Wolcott roused himself with a palpable effort. “I must not stay.
My cousin is waiting at San Obispo; he will be anxious--”

“Coffee or chocolate, _Señor_?” The old woman slipped a soft, small
pillow behind his head.

“Coffee, then,” said the stranger, wearily.

“Chocolate will be better, _Señor_.” She beamed approval on him, quite
as if he had chosen chocolate. “I go now to bring chocolate for the
_señor_.”

She was back in ten minutes with a steaming cup and stood over him
until he had drunk the last velvet drop of it. “And now the _señor_
will rest.”

The warm comfort of it went over him like a drug. He leaned his head
back acquiescently. “Yes; I will rest for a few moments.”

Manuela turned back the spread of delicate Mexican drawnwork and
patted the pillows. “The _señor_ would rest better upon the bed,” she
said silkily.

Dean Wolcott shook his head. “Thank you; I do not care to lie down. I
will sit here for a few moments....”

She was kneeling before him, swiftly and surely divesting him of his
shoes. “The _señor_ will rest better upon the bed,” she stated with
soft conviction. He got up out of the chair when it became clear that
she would lift him out if he did not, and at once he found himself
lying in utter lassitude on Aleck McVeagh’s bed. “For an hour ... no
longer ...” he said with drowsy dignity.

The old woman drew a light _serape_ up to his chin, nodded indulgently,
shaded the window, and went away, treading with heavy softness down the
corridor.

She met her mistress at the end of it. The girl had flung herself
swiftly into her riding clothes and her eyes were shining. “I must talk
to him, Manuela! There are a thousand things to ask!”

“Not yet, my heart,” said the old woman. “First he must sleep. He is
broken with weariness.”

Ginger turned reluctantly. Her house party enforced was at breakfast
and her place was with her motley guests. What she wanted to do was
to wait outside Aleck’s door until Dean Wolcott wakened, but she was
feeling amazingly gentle and good, so she went at once to the dining
room and presided with her best modern version of the Valdés tradition.

She kept on being gentle with the wayfarers; she was not annoyed with
them any longer for having mired down on her neglected road before her
neglected bridge. It seemed almost as if she would never be annoyed
with anything or anybody again, now that the black blanket of silence
was lifted; now that she had word--warm, human, close-range word--of
Aleck, and Aleck’s letter.

Her heart lifted when she thought of the messenger. Aleck had sent him
to her, and he had come--over the sea and over the land, as Estrada
said, fighting his weakness as he had fought the enemy. She summoned up
the echo of his tired voice, pushing the words before him slowly, one
by one, the memory of him there in the shaft of morning sunlight, the
austere beauty of his worn young face. Her guests, filled with lively,
kind curiosity, wanted to hear about him, but she let Estrada tell what
there was to tell. When she spoke of him it was in a hushed voice--as
if he might hear and be disturbed, the length of the rambling old house
away; as if he were something to be spoken of in deep respect. It was
that way in her own mind; she whispered about him in her thoughts.




CHAPTER II


BY three o’clock Estrada had mended the road and propped the bridge and
gotten the four machines under way. Ginger saw them off very patiently.
They were volubly grateful and expressive and she let them take all the
time they wanted for the thanks and farewells, and waited to wave them
out of sight. The last car to round the curve was the one containing
the widower and his children--forlorn no longer but exuding sticky
satiety and clutching their new treasures.

Then she hurried into the house. The soldier guest was still sleeping,
the housekeeper reported. Ginger went on tiptoe to the door and
listened. There were the countless questions to ask him about Aleck;
she grudged every missed moment.

“We dare not wake him,” said Manuela with authority. “And he must eat
before he talks again. Go away, my heart. I will keep watch.” She sat
down again in a chair in the corridor and folded her hard brown hands
on her stomach. “Listen! Some one comes!”

There was the sound of a motor and Ginger went to see who it was--the
house party might have found worse going beyond, and turned back. It
was a car from the garage at San Luis Obispo, and before it reached the
house she saw that it carried one person beside the driver--a young man
who held himself singularly erect. He was, he announced, the cousin who
had been waiting, waiting all day, at San Luis Obispo, for Mr. Dean
Wolcott. He wanted to know where Mr. Wolcott was. His manner rather
conveyed that Mr. Wolcott might have met with foul play; that almost
anything might occur in a wilderness of this character.

Miss McVeagh explained that Mr. Dean Wolcott was sleeping; he was
greatly exhausted and had been asleep since morning.

The other Mr. Wolcott was clearly annoyed. The trip from Boston to
California, undertaken only a day after his cousin had landed from
England, had been wholly against his advice and judgment. He had been
unable to understand why his cousin could not have _mailed_ Miss
McVeagh her brother’s letter, and written her any details.

Ginger, looking levelly at him, saw at once that he had been and always
would be unable to understand. She said, very civilly, that she hoped
they would both rest for a few days at Dos Pozos before making the
return journey.

“Thank you, but that will be quite impossible,” said the young man,
hastily. “It will be necessary to leave Los Angeles to-morrow. The
entire Wolcott connection--” it was as if he had said--“The Allied
Nations,” or “The Nordic Peoples”--“will postpone the holiday
festivities until Mr. Dean Wolcott’s return.” He desired to be shown
where his cousin was sleeping, and he went briskly in to rouse him,
past the protesting Manuela.

Ginger went out of the house. Large as it was, there did not seem to be
room enough in it for the newcomer and herself. He brought her sharply
out of her mood of whispering gentleness, and she walked a little way
toward the bridge and planned to begin work at once on the permanent
structure of Aleck’s intention. A big and beautiful idea came to her;
there was no way of marking Aleck’s grave, but this bridge should be
built in his memory, inscribed to him. It brought the tears to her
eyes and she turned, at sound of feet on the path, and saw Dean Wolcott
coming toward her, and now, as in the morning, the sun was on him--this
time the evening sun, slipping swiftly down behind the hills.

He was faintly flushed with sleep and his voice was stronger and
steadier. “I am ashamed,” he said. “I have slept away my one day with
you. I had concentrated for so long on the single purpose of bringing
Aleck’s message to you that, once it was done, everything seemed to be
done. I sank into that sleep as if it were a bottomless pit. I must go
back to-night. My mother--my people--You see, I spent only a day with
them.”

“You must go,” said Ginger. “You were good--oh, you were _good_ to
come!”

They stood then without talking, looking at each other, gravely. They
seemed to be groping toward each other through the mists of grief
and tragedy and strangeness which encompassed them. The little scene
had--and would always have in their memories--a lovely and lyric
quality. It was a fresh-washed world; the hills, the roads, the trails,
the _chaparral_ were a clean and shining bronze; the distant alfalfa
fields were emerald counterpanes and the _toyon_ berries, freed from
the last stubborn summer dust, were little shouts of color.

He passed a hand across his troubled eyes. “There is so much to tell
you.... Every day, every hour, things grow clearer; I remember more and
more. But I will write to you. I will write you everything.”

“I don’t know, I can’t explain--” Ginger was whispering again--“but
it almost seems as if you’d brought Aleck back to me. I can never see
him again, but--it’s different, somehow. That dreadful, black, _lost_
feeling is gone. I won’t wear black any more; Aleck hated black. And
I’m going to build that bridge, as he planned to build it, of stone,
and--and put his name on it. It’s--all I can do for him.”

His tired eyes lighted. “Will you let me share it with you--let me
design it? I do that sort of thing, you know. I should love helping
you with Aleck’s bridge.” His voice was kindling to warmth now. “A
bridge--there could be nothing better for a memorial.” He fumbled in
his pocket and brought out a notebook and pencil. “Shall we go a
little nearer? I’ll make just a rough sketch of the situation.” They
walked on.

The cousin came to the edge of the veranda and called a warning; there
was very little time. Dean Wolcott frowned and kept steadily on, Ginger
walking beside him in her strange new silence. He did not speak again
until he had made the small, unsteady sketch on a leaf of his notebook.
Then he came a little closer to her, peering at her through the fading
light. The sun had gone and the brief afterglow was going. “I will send
the design as soon as I am sure of doing it decently--within a few
weeks, I hope.” It was as if he were seeing her--_her_--not merely the
person to whom with incredible difficulty and delay he had delivered
a message. “And after a while, when I am--myself--may I come again?”
His voice was huskily eager. “May I come back? I want to know Aleck’s
country; I want to know Aleck’s--_you_.”

She took his thin fingers into a warm brown grasp. “Please come! Please
come and stay!” The other Mr. Wolcott was coming down the path, picking
his way neatly through the mud, but she did not let Dean Wolcott’s
hand go. “And please come--soon!”

       *       *       *       *       *

The capable cousin took him away at dusk. They would get a train out
of San Luis Obispo at midnight and leave Los Angeles for Boston the
next forenoon. He had it all compactly figured out. If they made proper
connections--and he looked as if trains rarely if ever trifled with
him--they would reach home on the day and at the hour when he had
planned to reach home.

Ling and Manuela had hastily cooked and served an early supper and
Ginger sat across the table from her two guests, looking at them and
listening to them, eating nothing herself. It was to be observed that
the worn young soldier and his kinsman shared certain characteristics
of face and figure--the same established look of race--but they were
two distinct variations on the family theme.

For the first time in her assured and unquestioning life Ginger was
acutely aware of her table--of the contrast between the fine old silver
and glass which her mother, Rosalía Valdés, had brought with her to
Dos Pozos as a bride and the commonplace and stupid modern china
which she herself had bought at San Luis Obispo; of old Manuela’s
serene crudities of service. The other Mr. Wolcott was carefully
civil, but he managed to make her stingingly conscious of the number
and variety of miles between Boston and her ranch: he had rather the
air of a cautious and tactful explorer among wild tribes. Whenever
he looked at her, which was not often, she felt like a picture in a
travel magazine--“native belle in holiday attire”--like a young savage
princess with strings of wampum and a copper ring in her nose.

But she did feel, at any rate, like a princess: he aroused in her an
absurd desire to talk about the McVeaghs in Scotland and the Valdés
family in Spain; to drag out heirlooms and ancient treasures.

Dean Wolcott was very white again and said little. When they were
in the machine he rallied himself with a visible effort. “I will
send the sketch soon,” he said, rather hollowly, “and I will write
you--everything.” Then he seemed to sink back into his weary weakness;
even the glow died out of his eyes.

Ginger watched the machine’s little red tail light disappear around the
curve. She was certain that, directly they were under way, the other
Mr. Wolcott was telling him how very much wiser and more sensible, how
much less exhausting and expensive it would have been to mail Aleck’s
letter to her.

Then she went briskly into her own room and came out into the corridor
presently with her arms overflowing with black clothing--black riding
things, black waists and skirts, black dresses.

“Manuela,” she said, as the old woman came up to her, staring, “these
are for you and your daughters. I’ve done with them.”

Manuela squealed with rapture. “_Mil gracias y gracias a Dios, Señorita
mía!_” she purled. She had begged her mistress to leave off mourning,
much as her Spanish soul approved it, and now she had her wish, and
this bountiful precipitation of manna besides. She gathered it up
gleefully and waddled off with her dark face creased into lines of
supreme content.

Ginger was very much pleased with herself. This was the way in which
she--Ginger McVeagh--did things. She decided to lay off black, and
instantly, with one gesture, she cleansed her wardrobe completely and
forever of its somber presence.

The next morning she was early on her horse and she wore her worn and
mellow brown corduroys and her seasoned old Stetson, and Estrada and
his men nodded knowingly at each other and smiled shyly at her. It
was curious how shy and how respectful they were, the hard-riding,
hard-drinking _vaqueros_. The Spanish and Mexican ones among them had
a manner which was just as good and decidedly pleasanter than that of
the other Mr. Wolcott, and the Americans, old grizzled chaps in the
main who had ridden for her father, had a whimsical poise and a rugged
picturesqueness of diction.

It was an oddly feudal life for a twenty-two-year-old girl in the
up-to-the-minute days of the twentieth century, the more so, of
course, because of her brother’s death, but it had been sufficiently
so, even before he went to war. Her mother had died when she was a
baby, her father when she was a child; Aleck had firmly sent her away
to boarding school three times, and three times he had weakly let her
come home. He was bleakly lonesome without her; he concurred, in his
happy and simple soul, with the ranchers who laughed and said--“Oh,
let her alone--she knows twice as much now as most young ones of her
age!” Family connections in San Francisco and Los Angeles protested
mildly, but they were busy with their own problems and Dos Pozos was a
marvelous place to take the children and spend vacations, and Ginger
had probably had about all the schooling she needed for that life
and that was undoubtedly the life she meant always to lead. Thus,
comfortably, they dismissed the matter, and sent her an occasional new
novel for cultural purposes and came months later to find half the
leaves uncut. Ginger would have read it with a good deal of enjoyment
if she could have stayed indoors long enough; evenings she was apt to
be sleepy very early.

Now the word went over the wide neighborhood that Aleck McVeagh’s
buddy had come and brought a letter from him, and told his sister all
about his life over there, and his death, and Ginger had given away
all her mourning and put on her regular clothes and the ranchers rode
over on their hard-mouthed, wind-swift horses or drove up in their
comfortable, battered cars and asked her to barbecues and _rodeos_
again.

’Rome Ojeda, who lived thirty miles away, heard the news, came the
thirty miles at a Spanish canter in a little over four hours, flung the
reins over the head of his lathered horse to the ground, walked with
jingling spurs on to her veranda and made hearty love to her.

He had intended to marry her ever since she came home from boarding
school for the last time and he saw her in a scarlet sport coat and a
scarlet tam. He was Aleck’s best friend and Aleck had looked on with
satisfaction; he wasn’t keen to give Ginger up to anybody, but it
wouldn’t be really giving her up to have her marry old ’Rome, and she’d
be mortally certain to marry somebody. Ginger, however, wasn’t at all
sure that she was. By and by, _perhaps_; certainly not now, when she
had many much more interesting things to do. So ’Rome Ojeda had bided
his time good-naturedly; she was pretty young, and he wasn’t so old
himself; just as well, probably, to play around awhile. He let it be
rather well known, however, that she was going to marry him as soon as
she was ready to marry anybody.

Now he was direct and forceful. “Ginger, look here! You’re old enough
now, and you’re all alone, and I’ve waited the deuce of a while. No
sense waiting any longer!” He showed his very white teeth in a sudden
smile and flung a quick arm about her. He was a big and beautiful
creature, Jerome Ojeda, Spanish-American, hot-headed, hot-tongued,
warm-hearted. He had almost graduated from the High School at San
Luis Obispo; there had been a _rodeo_ in which he wanted to ride, so
he rode in it. He took a spectacular first place in the “Big Week” as
the affair was called, and he had never experienced the palest pang of
regret for the little white cylinder tied with a blue ribbon.

Ginger got herself promptly out of his arms. She wasn’t in the least
shocked or resentful but she was disconcertingly cool. “I don’t want to
marry--anybody, ’Rome,” she said.

He caught her shoulders in his dark hands and gave her a small shake.
“Don’t be a little fool! Of course you want to marry somebody.
It’s--what you’re _for_. You want to marry me, only you don’t know it
yet. But you will.” He brought his brown face nearer. “When I make up
my mind, I generally put it over, don’t I?” He gave her another little
shake. “Don’t I?”

She considered him calmly. “Generally, yes,” she said.

He enveloped her swiftly in a rough, breathtaking hug, and as swiftly
let her go again. “All right; I can wait a while longer.” He strode,
spurs jingling, toward his horse.

Ginger called after him, hospitably: “Don’t go now,’Rome! Stay for
dinner. Look at Pedro--he’s dead tired.”

He swung himself into the saddle without touching the stirrups and
smiled back at her. His smile was very white and dazzling in his brown
face. “When I stay, _querida_, I’ll stay--right. And Pedro’ll take me
where I want to go; there’ll be horses when I’m gone.” He struck spurs
into the dripping horse and was off at a smooth and rhythmic gallop.

Ginger frowned, looking after him. She did like old ’Rome a lot. She
liked everything about him except the way he treated his stock. Still,
he was no worse than most of them. But she didn’t want to marry him;
she didn’t want to marry anybody; she was much too busy and happy.




CHAPTER III


DEAN WOLCOTT sent a dignified and satisfying design for the bridge,
and Ginger had it executed in rough stone brought down from the hills.
When it was finished it was a sincere and lasting thing, and she never
went over it too quickly to rest her eyes on the plate set into the
rock which bore Aleck’s name and the dates of his birth and death, and,
beneath--“From his sister and his friend.”

After a little time the letters had begun to come; long, fluent, vivid
letters; realistic stories of the life he and Aleck had lived together.
Ginger read them with laughter and with tears, and wrote short, shy
answers on cheap stationery. Ordinarily, she would have used the
official ranch paper, with the name at the top--“Dos Pozos, Virginia
Valdés McVeagh, sole proprietor,” and a neat cut of a long-horned steer
at one side and a bucking horse at the other--but she had a dim sense
of what the other Mr. Wolcott’s expression would be when he saw.
Therefore, she used tablet paper and envelopes which did not quite
match; sometimes she used the regular stamped envelopes. Her writing
was unformed and uninteresting; she loathed composing letters and they
sounded and looked as if she did. She had never cared about getting
them, save Aleck’s. The Los Angeles and San Francisco relatives wrote
chiefly to ask if they might come and bring the children for a little
visit with dear Virginia, and grateful bread-and-butter notes after
they had gone home. She liked getting letters now, however; she found
Dean Wolcott’s many-sheeted ones the most enthralling reading she had
ever done. He was steadily gaining weight and strength and poise again,
he told her. In the early summer he began to talk about coming, and
in July he announced that he would arrive at San Luis Obispo on the
twenty-sixth.

Ginger sat a long time with this letter in her hand. Then she went to
the telephone and called up her favorite aunt by long distance, in San
Francisco, and asked if she might come up to her next day and do some
shopping.

Her Aunt Fan was cordial and kind. She was really very fond of Ginger;
fond enough to like having her with her for little visits but not quite
fond enough to visit her on the ranch. Aunt Fan’s idea of the country
was a tiresome geographical division through which you passed on your
way to a city. Besides, it was a place of beguiling cream and broilers
and hot breadstuffs; a place where one invariably and weakly ate too
much.

Now she said that Ginger was to come at once and they’d have a
wonderful time together; she’d been meaning to send for her, anyway.

Ginger took the day train from San Luis Obispo and reached San
Francisco in the evening; this, she knew, was an easier time for her
aunt to meet her than in the morning. Aunt Fan had a taxi waiting and
bundled her delightedly into it.

“Dearie, are you simply _dead_? I told the doctor we might join him at
Tait’s for a little while, to hear the music and-- But I don’t know--”
she broke off, looking at her niece’s costume, and shaking her head.
“My dear child, _where_ did you get that dress?”

It was a one-piece thing in blue serge of ordinary quality, listlessly
trimmed with black braid, and the neck line was just too low and a
good deal too high.

“In San Luis,” said Ginger, meekly. She was always meek with her aunt
on the subject of clothes. “It was only twenty-two fifty.”

“It looks it,” said Aunt Fan, briefly. “And that mal-formed hat, and
light-topped shoes (there hasn’t been a light-topped shoe worn since
the flood!) and brown gloves! _My dear!_” She hailed the chauffeur.
“Straight back to the St. Agnes, please.”

“I bought all these things ages ago,” said Ginger, humble still,
“before I went into mourning. I’ve given all the black stuff to
Manuela. I didn’t think it mattered, just for the train.”

“My child,” said her aunt with solemn and passionate conviction,
“clothes _always_ matter. I wouldn’t be _divorced_ in a dress like
that.” She sighed. “How you, with your Spanish blood, can have so
little sense of line and color-- Oh, I know you look well enough on
the ranch, on a horse--‘Daring Nell, the Cattle Queen’--that sort of
thing, but you can’t ride your horse into restaurants and drawing-rooms
and theaters, and as soon as you dismount you look like the hired
help!” She was heartily angry with her by the time they arrived at the
apartment house. No one could fathom why it had been named the St.
Agnes; it was a good deal more like the Queen of Sheba.

Ginger followed her into Apartment C. It was the first time she had
visited her aunt here, and it struck her that it was like the inside of
a silk-lined and padded candy box _de luxe_; it was a good deal like
Aunt Fan herself.

It began to strike Mrs. Featherstone that her niece was turning the
other cheek with unprecedented docility. “Look here,” she cried,
catching hold of her and turning her face to the light, “let me look at
you. What is it? What’s come over you?” She shook her as ’Rome Ojeda
had shaken her but with less muscular authority. “What do you want
clothes for?”

“Because I have only things like this, and--” she was entirely
unflurried and direct about it--“because Dean Wolcott, Aleck’s friend,
you know, is coming out for a visit.”

Aunt Fan studied her thoughtfully. “When’s he coming?”

“The twenty-sixth--a week from Saturday.”

“Oh, _Lord_!” said her aunt with deep feeling. “How I _do_ detest the
country in July! Well, Manuela’ll simply have to bring me a breakfast
tray, whether she thinks it immoral or not. I will _not_ get up in the
middle of the night.”

“But, Aunt Fan, I didn’t expect you to come.” Ginger was wholly frank
about it.

“My dear girl, I don’t suppose you want me any more than I want to come
and listen to the crickets with their mufflers open all night, but--I
ask you--can you entertain a strange young man, _Boston_, too, isn’t
he?--alone?”

“I don’t see why not,” said her niece, coolly. “He isn’t strange at
all; he was Aleck’s friend.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter whether you see or not,” said Mrs.
Featherstone, crisply. “I’m coming. I suppose I’ll gain eighteen
pounds as I did before. See here, will you promise not to let Ling
make waffles?” Her carefully tinted face broke up suddenly into little
wrinkles of smiles. “There, never mind! I love you if you do weigh a
hundred and ten and eat everything!”

Mrs. Featherstone weighed a hundred and sixty-nine and she ate like
a canary and thought about food most of the time, and her large,
comely face had a chronic expression of wistful yearning. Clergymen
and lecturers and interpreters liked having her in the front row;
they found her intense concentration and her blue-eyed gaze extremely
helpful and inspiring, and they had no way of knowing that she was
thinking raptly to herself-- “If I should go over to the Palace for
lunch and have turkey hash and potatoes _au gratin_ and popovers and a
cup of chocolate, and walk all the way home, _fast_, I don’t believe
I’d gain an _ounce_!”

She was Ginger’s father’s half sister, and she had been twice married.
Her first husband had died and her second had been divorced, but she
was still on very kindly and pleasant terms with him. He gave her a
generous alimony and she was able to live in a smart apartment with a
smart maid and wear the smartest of clothes and she wanted for nothing
in the world except food.

“Here’s your room, dearie,” she said, piloting her niece into a tiny
apricot-colored guest chamber. “I suppose it looks small after the
ranch; you couldn’t rope a steer in it, but it’s large enough, if
you’re not boisterous. You had to sleep on the davenport when I was
at the Livingston, didn’t you? This is no end nicer; it ought to be,
heaven knows, with what I pay for it. Jim voluntarily gave me another
hundred a month, did I tell you?” She sighed and winked her blue eyes
violently. “He’s a prince, if ever there was one. He said it was only
fair--H. C. of L., and all that. Now, I’ll just slip into something
loose and we’ll have a chatter. Lucinda,” she called the little trim
negress, “you make Miss McVeagh a cup of chocolate. You’ll see,” she
turned to her niece again, “I’ll watch you drink it without a quiver. I
ought to be a martyr or something--you know--hunger strikes--” She went
away breathlessly to get out of her armor, and Ginger opened the window
and let the keen, foggy night air into the little soft room. She always
felt trapped in her Aunt Fan’s pretty abiding places. Nevertheless,
she stayed a whole week this time, and got snugly into her aunt’s good
graces by buying everything she suggested.

“We’ll get downtown _early_.” Mrs. Featherstone planned earnestly, the
night of her arrival, “oh, bright and early, before any one’s out--by
eleven o’clock if we can possibly manage it--and get you some things
you can wear right out of the shop, before any one sees you.”

She had an excellent sense of values, Ginger’s Aunt Fan, and she let
the girl keep true to type in her selections--a mannish coat suit of
heather brown jersey, sport blouse of rough creamy silk, snub-nosed
little Scotch brogues and wool stockings, fabric gloves with gauntlet
cuffs and smart buckles, and a small brown hat which had plenty of
assurance even without its stab of burnt orange. “_Now_,” said Mrs.
Featherstone with a sigh of deep relief, “let’s go!”

They went tirelessly, late forenoons and solid afternoons and Ginger
had presently a large trunkful of clever clothes--gay ginghams and
crisp organdies, boldly plaided sport skirts and sweaters in solid
colors to match, and two evening frocks (though these Ginger protested
she would never need) in scarlet and persimmon. “I’m having a color
spree,” said Aunt Fan. “All the things I’d adore to wear and can’t.”

They were at Dos Pozos four days before Dean Wolcott was due. Mrs.
Featherstone had been watching her niece narrowly. “What’s he like,
this chap?” she had wanted to know a day or so after Ginger had come to
her.

The girl waited an instant before answering. “I--don’t know, Aunt Fan.”

“You don’t know?”

The girl shook her head. “You see, he was only at the ranch one day,
and he slept most of that--he was so exhausted. I don’t believe I saw
him for two hours in all.”

Aunt Fan stared. “Well--but you must have formed some impression. What
do you _think_ he’s like, if you don’t know?”

This time she waited even longer before answering. She was calling up
the memory of the Christmas day--the first meeting in the morning; the
look of him as he came toward her in the rich light of the setting
sun, his weary speech; the way his eyes had kindled. “I think,” she
said, wholly unaware that she was speaking with the same whispering
gentleness with which she had spoken to him, “he is different
from--everybody else in the world.”

Aunt Fan said nothing more, and tiptoed hastily away from the subject.
She wrote that night to her former husband--she always wrote to thank
him for the alimony--“Jim, I’m keeping my fingers crossed! She’s
simply bowled over by this chap, and he certainly must be interested,
to cross the continent in July. Heavens, but I’d be glad to see
her settled--married to somebody beside a cow-puncher--living in
civilization! I wish you’d slip down to Boston and look him up, will
you? That’s a lamb! His name is Dean Wolcott and he’s a Harvard man,
and a sort of architect. When I think what it would mean to me, to be
sure I’d never have to visit her on the ranch again! Be careful not to
rush around in the heat, Jim; Boston air is like pudding sauce and you
know you never had any sense of taking care of yourself. Let me hear
immediately what you find out.”

Ginger had been honest with her aunt. She didn’t know what Dean Wolcott
was like, but she would know on Friday! She was not analytical or
introspective enough to know what he stood for; to realize that he
was--up to that time--not a person to her, but a quality, a substance;
he was all the heroes of all the books she had never read; he was the
music she had never heard; the far places she had never seen. And he
was silvered and hallowed by his association with her beloved dead
brother.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dean Wolcott’s cousin--the other Mr. Wolcott who had disapprovingly
guided him across the continent and back--asked him, searchingly, what
he was going out to California _for_. Dean Wolcott wasn’t able to
tell him; he wasn’t able to tell himself. He said to his kinsman and
reiterated to himself that he wanted to have a look at that bridge; he
had designed it in a white heat of enthusiasm, and while he believed it
was good, he was anxious to see it finished. Also, he was at some pains
to tell his cousin and his own consciousness, he felt he ought to see
Miss McVeagh again; he had been a spineless weakling, sleeping away his
one day there; it was the very least he could do for old Aleck to see
her once more, and tell her, by word of mouth, the things which were
flat and cold on the written page.

Nevertheless, passing up many pleasant summer plans made by his family
and his friends, making his little explanation over and over again,
he felt rather foolish, and the Wolcott connection, as the cousin
would have said, did not enjoy feeling foolish. The trip across the
sweltering states was unendurably hot; while they were going through
Kansas he thought several times of wiring to Dos Pozos that he was ill
again, and must turn back. He was still wondering, in Los Angeles, just
why he had come, and he wondered from eight to three, in the parlor car
of the coast-line day train, rumbling through scenery that was brown
and dry and hot, but when he got out at San Luis Obispo he stopped
wondering. He knew, at once and definitely, why he had come.

The reason was waiting for him on the platform. She wore a white
flannel sport skirt and a scarlet coat of jersey and a black hat with
scarlet poppies on it, and she glowed like a poppy herself in heat
which wilted other people and made them look faded and drained.

She was driving Aleck’s car, a seasoned and dependable old vehicle,
and they said very little, after the necessities of luggage had been
seen to, until they had left the town behind and were mounting into the
hills. It was hot; Dean Wolcott thought he had never known such heat,
but it had a fine, dry, shimmering quality; the breeze, though it might
have blown out of an oven, was electric, bracing. He took off his hat
and let the sun shine on his head and the wind muss up the precision of
his hair. Ginger did not look at him; she never took her eyes from the
road when she was driving--a promise she had made Aleck--but she could
feel that he was looking at her. She felt very silent and shy and a
good deal frightened.

Dean, on the other hand, was feeling, with every minute and every mile,
more serene confidence; a greater sense of glad decision. This was why
he had come; he must always have known, secretly, in his depths.

“I want to see the bridge,” he said, after the longest of their pauses.

“Yes. I’ll tell you when to begin looking. You can see it a long way.”
Eyes rigidly front, even though they had left the worst of the grade
now.

He knew that she was frightened and it made him feel tremendously
triumphant; surer of himself than he had been since he went down on the
last day of fighting.

“Now you can see the bridge,” said Ginger, lifting one hand from the
wheel to point it out to him.

“Yes,” said Dean. He did not speak again until they had reached it.
Then pride rose in him for an instant. “It _is_ good,” he sighed,
contentedly. “I couldn’t be sure. It’s _good_!” He got out of the car
and waited for her to follow, but she would not.

“No; I want you to see it first--alone.”

He went over it, beyond it; stood well away from it and studied it.
Then he came on to it again, halting half-way, looking at her. “Now
will you come?”

And, just as he had stopped wondering, Ginger stopped being afraid. She
went to him steadily, her head high.

He was bareheaded still, and she noticed now for the first time that
his hair was very fair and very fine, brushed sleekly back from his
forehead, shining; that he was taller than she had realized; that
there was a look of power about him for all his slimness and his cool
coloring. Then she stopped noticing altogether, because he had come
swiftly to her and caught her in his arms.

“Here, on Aleck’s bridge,” he said, happily. “We’ve come to each other
across Aleck’s bridge; it was Aleck who brought us together.” Then he
ceased talking about Aleck and kissed her. “Scotch granite and Spanish
flame; that is what you are,” he told her, holding her away from him
for an instant to consider her. “There was never any one like you; you
have a stern Scotch chin and a soft Spanish mouth; you are--” then,
aware of the way he was wasting time, he left off making phrases and
kissed her Spanish mouth, and Estrada, riding in from the range, reined
in his horse and stared, wide-eyed, and Aunt Fan, coming out on to the
veranda, looked down at them and gasped, and wondered when the result
of Jim’s investigations would come, and old Manuela, watching from a
window, crossed herself and called fervently upon her favorite saint.

But for the two on Aleck’s bridge there was, for that slender, golden,
perishable moment, no one else in the glowing world.




CHAPTER IV


THE world continued to be otherwise uninhabited and to glow rosily for
almost a fortnight. Ginger’s Aunt Fan received a very satisfactory
letter from Jim Featherstone; the Wolcott Family was as solid as
Plymouth Rock, and contemporaneous with it. Dean Wolcott was a young
man of excellent lineage, character, and achievement--known already, at
twenty-eight, for unusual and original work in his line. He had gone in
mildly for athletics at Harvard, topped his classes, made two of the
best clubs. He had been popular in a quiet and discriminating fashion.

At the end of his letter Aunt Fan’s ex-husband allowed himself a
bit of facetiousness. “I’ve sleuthed the lad down very thoroughly.
But--Tremont Street and Dos Pozos! Well, it may work out, if he likes
paprika on his Boston beans!”

Mrs. Featherstone was extremely pleased with this report, but she was
likewise thorough, so she sent out a hurry call for her good friend,
Doctor Gurney Mayfield. This was the doctor with whom they should
have supped at Tait’s on the night of Ginger’s shabby arrival in San
Francisco, and he had known Aunt Fan since she was nineteen years old
and weighed ninety-eight pounds and she would always be Miss Fanny to
him. He had taken care of her first husband through his last illness,
the more zealously and devotedly because he had always considered him a
rival, and he had thought then, after a decent interval, to renew his
suit (that was what he called it in his courtly and chivalrous heart)
but his Miss Fanny, some time before his idea of that interval had
elapsed, met and married Jim Featherstone and went with him to New York
and lived unhappily ever after. He was honestly regretful and soberly
elated to have her back in California again, and calling on him as
always for escort and counsel, and now he came at once at her summons,
driving down from the prosperous ranch where he spent his time after
retiring from a beloved and almost boundless practice.

Ginger was a great favorite with him; he was keenly concerned about
her choice. The thought of her marriage had always made him a little
anxious; she was her father and her mother--truly, as her lover had
said in his rhapsodic moment, Scotch granite and Spanish flame. The
doctor had seen something of the home life of Rosalía Valdés and
Alexander McVeagh; it had been quite lyrically perfect, but very high
keyed, and he had wondered if it would--or could--last down the years.
The Spanish woman had a small velvet voice, convent-trained, and she
sat often at the rosewood spinnet which had belonged to her mother
before her and sang the songs of the period. They were very sweet and
very sentimental and packed with pathos, and some one invariably died
in the second verse. He remembered that she had loved best one which
ran something after this fashion--

  _Perhaps it is better we lived as we did,
    The summer of love together,
  And that one of us tired and lay down to rest,
    Ere the coming of wintry weather--_

and always turned away from the spinnet with her dark eyes wet.

That was exactly what she had done, herself, and Alexander McVeagh had
followed her, ten years later, contentedly, for all his devotion to his
son and daughter. He wasn’t at all sure, in his rugged and unadorned
version of his forbears’ belief, that he should find her again in the
world to come, but he was very sure that the world he was leaving was
not much of a world without her. Aleck, the son, had been a simple
and uncomplex creature; all McVeagh. It was the girl who combined her
father and her mother in a baffling and intricate fashion. The doctor
wondered; it would have been simpler and safer, he considered, for
Virginia Valdés McVeagh to marry a neighboring rancher--even Jerome
Ojeda--though he lacked a little of the fineness the doctor wanted for
her--than a Wolcott of Boston.

Doctor Mayfield’s opportunities for studying them together were
limited; when they were together--save at meal-times--they took
excellent care to be alone together. They motored all over the
surrounding landscape by day and by night--it was, by a special
dispensation of Providence, a time of white and silver moonlight--and
tramped high into the hills. This in itself was an amazing
spectacle--Ginger McVeagh afoot; from her tiny childhood she had
never walked except on her way to a horse. Dean Wolcott loved walking,
however, and she loved Dean Wolcott and the thing was accomplished.
Besides, by an odd and dramatically arranged combination of
circumstances, she had not, for that period, a horse to offer him.
Aleck’s horse, Felipe, which she usually rode, had a wrenched foot,
and was turned out, and she was riding her own horse Diablo, about the
business of the ranch. Estrada and his men were using all the others,
bringing in the stock from the farther feeding pastures. Ordinarily,
she would have borrowed a mount for him from a neighbor, but it was
a part of the newness and strangeness of things to be motoring and
tramping with her strange new lover.

At such times, however, as she had to be about the business of Dos
Pozos, the doctor held satisfying converse with Dean Wolcott. He liked
him heartily, and reported to Aunt Fan as favorably as Jim Featherstone
had done, and after five days he went north again, satisfied with the
newcomer as an individual, hopeful about him as Ginger’s husband, and
Aunt Fan was left alone.

“Well, it’s ‘_the summer of love_’ they’re living now, Miss Fanny,” he
told her at leaving. “We can only hope it’ll be big enough to see them
through ‘_the coming of wintry weather_.’” But he shook his head. Since
he had given up the patching and mending of bodies he had given a lot
of thought to minds and souls and temperaments; he was rather well up
on them.

       *       *       *       *       *

Ginger jumped up from the dinner table one day and flew to the
telephone. “I _must_ get you a horse,” she said, excitedly. “I don’t
know what I’ve been thinking about!” Then she colored hotly and
suddenly; she knew very well what she had been thinking about. “You’ve
been here nearly two weeks and we haven’t had a ride together, and
Friday’s the big day!” She gave her number and stood waiting, the
receiver in her hand.

“But--look here,” said Dean Wolcott. “I don’t ride, you know. I’ve told
you that before, haven’t I?”

He had told her several times, but it simply didn’t register. For a
man--a hundred per cent man, who had been a soldier and her brother’s
comrade, who was, above all, _her_ man--not to ride was--ridiculous.
He was using a phrase which didn’t mean anything; he probably didn’t
care especially about riding (Boston was without doubt a wretched
place in which to ride) or didn’t ride especially well; city men
didn’t as a rule. But to say he didn’t _ride_-- She was speaking into
the telephone. “Hello! Hello! Oh, ’Rome, is that you? How are you?...
’Rome, can you lend us a horse? Felipe’s turned out with a bad foot,
and we haven’t a thing for Dean to ride.... Oh, fine,’Rome! Thanks a
lot! Bring him over with you Friday morning, will you?” She came back
to the table radiant. “’Rome says he’s got just the thing for you; I
knew he’d help us out.”

(’Rome Ojeda had heard, as all the countryside had heard, of Ginger’s
eastern suitor; it was the chief topic in a land which was ordinarily
bare of conversational thrills, but he had taken it quite coolly. He
wasn’t, he had been quoted as saying, “worrying none.” Ginger hadn’t
given him any thought. He had not, to be sure, telephoned to her or
ridden over with congratulations as others had done, but he had been
gay and good-natured when they met up on horseback.)

Dean looked at her quizzically. He was beginning, in the last day or
two, to look at her with his mind instead of his heart, and he had
made several discoveries. One of these was that she was as high-handed
and autocratic as a feudal duchess; it was not only that she always
wanted and took her own way--she was unaware that there was any other
way to want, or to take. But, up to that time, he was not worrying
any more than ’Rome Ojeda was. It was picturesque, it was pretty--her
high-handedness.

The night before the “big day” she refused to walk or motor or even sit
on the veranda, but told him a resolute good night at eight o’clock.
“Ling will call you at three, and breakfast’s at three-thirty.”

“We attack at dawn, I see,” said Dean, steering her cleverly into an
alcove and out of her aunt’s range of vision. “Then, if my evening is
to end at eight instead of ten or eleven, I certainly consider myself
entitled to something in the way of recompense.” He swept her into his
arms and kissed her.

“Honey,” said Ginger, persuasively, “let me go! And you must get to
sleep yourself--we’ve got a big day ahead of us!”

“My dear, I’ve told you several times, though you’ve seemed not to
listen to me, that I’m no horseman. I rather think you’d better let me
off, to-morrow; it’s highly probable that I’d cut a sorry figure in the
saddle.”

Ginger drew back in his arms, wide-eyed. “But you’ll _have_ to ride,
Dean! You couldn’t possibly drive the car--we go by trail and straight
over the hills--and you couldn’t walk.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’ll be a forty-mile trip, and--why, it wouldn’t be safe,
goose! You _are_ a tenderfoot, aren’t you? The steers are all right
when you’re on horseback, but they’d rush over you in a wink, afoot.”

“Forty miles,” said Dean, thoughtfully. “It sounds rather a large
order, Ginger, dear. Suppose I don’t go?”

“Suppose you don’t--_go_?” She stared at him and her voice was cold
with astonishment. “Why--what’ll everybody think?”

“I don’t understand you.”

“What’ll everybody think about _you_, if you don’t go--when it’s my
ranch and my cattle, and everybody coming back here for the big feed at
night and the dance?” she wanted hotly to know.

Dean Wolcott colored slowly. “I fail to see where it is any one’s
affair but my own--and yours, of course. If we decide that it is
wiser----”

“But we haven’t and we aren’t going to!” she flamed out at him. “Oh,
can’t you see how it is? Everybody, Estrada and his men and all the
neighbors and people I’ve known ever since I was born, think it’s
funny and queer, my being--engaged to you. They think easterners are
just like _foreigners_. I did, too,” she was gentle for an instant,
“before you came! And if you ditch the ride, and just sit around the
house and wait for the big feed and the dance, they’ll say--anyhow,
’Rome Ojeda’ll say--that you’re bluffed out. ’Rome Ojeda’s been trying
to make me say I’d marry him ever since I was fifteen; _he_’ll say
you’re--afraid.”

He did not speak at once, and Ginger, watching him, breathing fast
after her long speech, saw that he was looking a lot like the other Mr.
Wolcott. “And what will you say, Ginger, if I tell you that I won’t
ride? What will you say?” He was very quiet about it. “It doesn’t
matter in the least to me what a lot of ranchers and cowboys think or
say--Ojeda or any one else. But--what will you say?”

Even a resemblance to the cousin who had convoyed him disapprovingly
across the continent made her truculent, and his voice was even more
like the other than his expression. “I’ll say you _must_--” she caught
herself midway, aghast to find how nearly she had said the unforgivable
thing. She came close to him again and put her arms around his neck and
clasped her hands behind his head, and pulled his grave face down to
her. “I won’t have to say anything, because I know you’re going to do
it for me--aren’t you, Dean--_dearest_?”

It was the first time she had ever, alone and unassisted--uninvited--
kissed him upon the mouth. He caught her hard against him with
a strength which seemed ready for any feats of prowess. “I’ll
ride--anything--anywhere--you ask me,” he said, unsteadily.

Ling called him at three o’clock. It was dark and unbelievably cold,
and he dressed himself with stiff fingers and went heavy-eyed into the
dining room. He felt old and jaded and depressed; unhappily conscious
of all the strength which hadn’t yet come back to him.

Ginger was there before him, dressed in her oldest riding things, a
worn old Stetson on her head, a scarlet bandanna tied, cowboy fashion,
about her neck, and she was warm and glowing. She looked as if she had
just emerged from the conclusion of their ardent little scene of the
night before; Dean felt as if it were something which had happened to
him in his youth, and as if his youth had passed a long time ago. He
had no appetite, and could barely manage a cup of coffee, and he was
almost annoyed with her for eating with excellent relish. They spoke in
low tones, remembering Aunt Fan’s earnest pleas that she should not be
wakened, but before they left the table there was a pounding of hoofs
and a shout from the front of the house.

“There’s ’Rome!” said Ginger, jumping up. “Come along!” She ran out
onto the veranda and he followed her slowly.

’Rome Ojeda had ridden in from his ranch the night before and stayed
with Ginger’s nearest neighbor, and his horses--the one he rode and
the one he was leading--were quite fresh. He swung himself to the
ground, dropped the reins, pulled off a buckskin gauntlet and strode
over to Dean, holding out his hand. “Mighty pleased to make your
acquaintance,” he said, displaying very briefly his white smile in his
brown face. “Here’s your mount, Mr. Wolcott,” he nodded toward the red
roan.

“Very good of you,” said Dean, stiffly. He felt stiff, body and brain,
aching for sleep, cramped and cold.

“Oh--the lunches!” cried Ginger. “Almost forgot them!” She bolted into
the house.

Dean Wolcott looked at his horse and hunted wearily through his mind
for something sapient to say about him. The fact was that he had not
been astride a horse six times in his twenty-eight years. Others of
the Wolcott family rode--several of his friends rode; it had merely
happened that he had gone in, instead, in what leisure he had from
school and college and later, the office, for tennis and golf and
walking trips. He had very nearly made tackle in his junior year; three
years on the squad. Now he would have traded all these glad activities
for a good working knowledge of horseflesh.

One of Ginger’s men brought up her Diablo; there were a dozen riders in
the distance, coming nearer at a swinging lope.

The _vaquero_ looked at the roan. “I see you got new horse, Meester
Ojeda, no?”

“Yeh,” Ojeda nodded. “Mr. Wolcott’s ridin’ him to-day.” Then he said,
very slowly, “Only been rode a coup’la saddles.”

Dean Wolcott pulled himself up. “What do you call him, Ojeda?”

’Rome Ojeda rolled a cigarette. “I call him ‘Snort,’” he said. “He
mostly does.”

Ginger’s suitor walked down the shallow steps and went up to the horse
with outstretched hand. “Hello, Snort, old chap! Do you----”

The animal pulled back sharply, flinging up his head with a sound
vividly descriptive of his name, and ’Rome Ojeda grinned, enjoyingly.
“Aside from that, he’s as gentle as a kitten,” he drawled. “Look here,
Mr. Wolcott--where’s your spurs?”

“Oh, I sha’n’t need spurs,” said Dean, easily. Just as Ginger had
disliked his correct cousin in less than five minutes of acquaintance,
so now did he detest this brown and beautiful ’Rome Ojeda with his
appalling bigness, his flashing smile, and his crude sureness. He
loathed the whole commonplace, rubber-stamp situation in which he found
himself--competent wild westerner, eastern tenderfoot, cattle-queen
heroine, mob scene of cow-punchers; it was like finding himself placed
on the printed page of a tawdry story--like seeing himself on the
screen in a cheap and stupid moving picture; like seeing himself in the
rôle of unwitting comedian. He knew that, unescapably, he was about to
be made to appear ridiculous; and that was a thing no Wolcott ever was.
They had reverses, disappointments; they were ill, they suffered, they
died; they were never ridiculous. And now Dean Wolcott, whose mother
kept his Congressional Medal and his Croix de Guerre in the box with
her delicate handkerchiefs, so that, with no parade of them, she could
see and touch them every day, was about to afford rude mirth to yokels.

He went again and firmly to his mount, clutched at the mane and the
reins, got one foot into the jerking stirrup, scrambled and clawed his
way up. The horse, simultaneously with these motions on his part,
noisily demonstrating the aptness of his cognomen, did incredibly swift
and sudden things with his head, his neck, all four of his legs and
his torso. Dean Wolcott, just as the riders came loping up and Ginger
stepped out on to the veranda with the packets of lunch in her hands,
rose clear of the saddle, appeared to hang an instant in mid-air,
sailed over the head of his steed and fell heavily to the sun-baked
earth.




CHAPTER V


IT was thus that Virginia Valdés McVeagh, sole owner and proprietor of
Dos Pozos, saddle-wise from babyhood, cool and competent as any man
among them, presented her betrothed to the friends of her youth, to her
world.

Her betrothed, in those swift seconds between his departure from the
saddle and his arrival upon the ground, hoped fervently that he might
have the good fortune to break his neck, but it appeared immediately
that he had not broken anything whatever. He was dizzy, jarred and
bruised and lamed, but he was entirely intact, as he curtly made clear
to ’Rome Ojeda. ’Rome Ojeda, his white smile flashing, was first to
rush to the rescue.

Dean Wolcott picked himself up and brushed himself off, resolutely
keeping his eyes away from the veranda and Ginger; he felt he could
bear all the rest of it if she would only keep away from him. She was
there, however, almost as soon as ’Rome was, her face as pale as
possible beneath its brown warmth. She wanted breathlessly and with
unashamed anguish in her voice to know if he was hurt, but directly she
saw--and heard--that he was not, the color rushed hotly back into her
cheeks and she turned shortly away on a spurred heel.

“A _little_ too much hawse, maybe,” said ’Rome Ojeda, smoothly. “Change
with Mr. Wolcott, somebody with a quieter cayuse!”

Two or three of the riders promptly dismounted and came forward, but
Dean Wolcott shook his head. “Thank you,” he said, stubbornly, “I
shall ride this horse or none.” He sounded blatantly dramatic to his
own ears. Why hadn’t he laughed it off, made determined comedy of
the situation, made them laugh with him, instead of at him? He hated
himself for the bombastic attitude he had struck; he hated ’Rome Ojeda
and his quivering red roan; he hated his own fatuous folly of weakening
the evening before under Ginger’s lips and promising her to make this
ghastly fiasco; he was not at all sure that he didn’t hate Ginger.

Old Estrada came forward, respectful, helpful. Dean was fitted out
with spurs and quirt, the horse was firmly held until the rider was
solidly in the saddle, his feet braced, the reins in a tense grip. But
now Snort, as if he had had his little joke, conducted himself in what
was, for him, a staid and dignified manner; he pranced, he curvetted,
he tossed his handsome head, but he made no effort to dislodge his
passenger, and Dean, his head aching dully, his aching body intolerably
jolted and jarred, followed in the wake of the procession.

The old _mayordomo_, riding beside him, explained. They were to
drive two hundred and forty steers--two-year-olds that he and his
men had been bringing in from the remote pastures--to the shipping
point--approximately eighteen miles. On the way back they would collect
close to two hundred yearlings and bring them back to the main ranch.
It sounded, on the Spaniard’s lips, as simple as hailing a taxicab and
driving down Tremont Street.

The other riders, Ginger among them, had spurred ahead. Dean could
see through the steadily brightening light that the _vaqueros_
were opening the gates of the great corrals, releasing sluggish,
slow-moving, brown streams.

Estrada said softly in his heavily accented English. “Eef you kip near
to me, I weel tell you all, _Señor_.”

“Thank you,” said Dean, civilly. “You are very kind.”

He was very kind, the black-eyed old _mayordomo_; there was no scorn
in his hawklike gaze, nothing but the most respectful desire to be
of service. Let others forget that here among them rode--however
clumsily--the friend and comrade of his young _señor_, Alejandrino
McVeagh; Vincente Estrada would not forget.

They came up with the other riders, with the brown stream. It was not
sluggish now; there were waves, breakers. Brown, twisting, turning
bodies, tossing horns, wild eyes; ceaseless bellowing; dust. Ginger
and her _vaqueros_ and her neighbors rode on the edges of the stream,
shouting, waving their _sombreros_, now spurring ahead to guard a gate,
now in sudden, swallow-swift pursuit of a bolting steer, passing him,
turning him, heading him back into the herd.

Dean Wolcott tried to detach himself from the spectacle, to regard it
objectively--something whose like he had never seen before, and never
would see--but of course, he told himself, after he married Ginger he
would often see this sort of thing. She would, he supposed, insist on
coming back to her ranch occasionally, unless he could persuade her to
sell it. He sought to see her in the frame and with the background of
Boston; it was actually the first time, since that moment when they
stood midway on Aleck’s bridge, that he had done this. The realization
came sharply that he had been looking into a kaleidoscope for two
glowing and highly colored weeks. On his summer vacations, when he was
a small and quiet child, he had visited at an uncle’s Connecticut farm,
and--better than the out-of-doors--he had loved the cool dimness of the
big “Front Room.”

Being a gentle and trustworthy child he was allowed the freedom of it.
He might turn the pages of the ancient album, lift the conch shells
from the whatnot in the corner and listen to the imprisoned sound of
the sea, climb carefully upon a chair to inspect the wax flowers and
the hair wreaths framed and hanging on the walls; best of all he loved
sitting on a slippery hair-cloth sofa, his eyes glued to the tiny
window of the kaleidoscope, his soul warm with the joy of color and
design. There was always, he remembered now, a distinct effort of his
will necessary to remove his reveling eye, to take it away from crimson
and jade and orange and ultramarine and deep purple, and return it to
the grays and browns and drabs of the material world. And the time had
come again, he told himself grimly, his head aching dully, his muscles
aching sharply, to take his eye away from the kaleidoscope.

He was following Estrada into the thick of it; he was surrounded by the
brown bodies; he was stifled by the brown dust which rose over him.
The sun was high, now, and he had stopped being chilled, but he was
miserable in so many other ways that he was not able to be thankful. He
wondered dully, disgusted, why the powerful creatures, horned, capable
of splendid battle, allowed themselves to be driven by a twentieth part
of their number of men, herded docilely down to their death.

“_Ur-r-ra, ur-r-ra, ur-rrrra!_” said Estrada softly to them,
“_Ur-r-ra!_”--and they gave way before him, backing, whirling, pawing
at the earth, the bolder ones rolling their red eyes, blowing futile
defiance through their dust-grimed nostrils. Now and then a couple of
them, truculent, locked horns for an instant, made a little whirlpool
of private strife in the brown stream, but at Estrada’s shout, his
whirling quirt, his swung _sombrero_, they gave up; they went on again
in their sacrificial procession. Estrada, what time he rode close
enough to him and the steers were not bellowing too loudly, gave him
bits of information. They would be loaded into the cattle cars at
noon, if all went well; they would not reach San Francisco for two
days or three, perhaps; yes, the railroad company was obliged to water
them--Estrada really did not know exactly what the law was, but there
was a law, he was comfortably sure. Yes--_those_ were “_loco_” steers;
the _señor_ would do well to keep his distance from them--they might
be sufficiently loco to hook his horse, and his horse, unhappily, was
not entirely trustworthy. The ones with the huge and hideous swellings
at the sides of their heads had “lumpy jaw”; it was hard to tell the
_señor_ exactly what caused it--a foxtail wedged between the teeth,
perhaps, made the beginning. No, he shrugged, there was no cure that
he had ever heard of; if it could be taken in the beginning--but it
was never taken in the beginning. No, it did not hurt the meat, except
that, as the _señor_ saw, the lumpy-jawed steers were always poor; he
thought--he was not certain of this, but he had heard that they went to
feed the prisoners in State’s Prison. This was a very fine herd; the
_señorita_ had excellent feeding pastures; she was a remarkable judge
of stock. And she was very kind, the _señorita_; the _señor_ could see
for himself that she allowed the cattle to go at a walk; she would not
allow them to be driven with dogs or with whips. That was very kind,
and it was also very sensible; dogs made them nervous and made them
hurry too much; they lost profitable pounds in transit; and the packers
did not like you to use whips--they made bruises on the meat. Was not
the _señorita_ a wonderful horsewoman? He himself had seen her riding
after the herd, just as she was riding to-day, at the age of seven. A
proud man, the father of _Señorita_ Ginger, the old _Señor_ Alejandro
McVeagh; a proud family. He let his raven-black eyes rest upon his
companion for an instant. If the _señor_ would let himself go _loose_
in the saddle, he would find himself riding in greater comfort.

Dean Wolcott tried it; he tried it faithfully. He was willing and
eager to try anything which would alleviate his wretchedness, but
there was no looseness in him anywhere. Everything was taut, shrieking
with painful tension. If he leaned forward, if he leaned back, if he
shifted the weight from the stirrups to the saddle, from the saddle to
the stirrups, it was worse in another strained or bruised or blistered
locality. He knew that his stirrups were too short but he would not
dismount to change them; he doubted if he could get on again. “How many
miles have we come, Estrada?” He knew they must be almost at their
destination, but it would be a comfort to hear it from the Spaniard’s
lips.

Estrada considered. “Oh, maybe seex mile, _Señor_. Maybe leetle more;
maybe not so moach.”

“Then we have twelve still to go?”

“Well, we call eet eighteen mile from Dos Pozos, _Señor_. The time
pass very queek now, _Señor_.”

But it seemed to the _señor_ that no day in his life, even in the
trenches, had ever been so long. It was hot, now, blazingly, glaringly
hot; it was incredible that he had ever been shivering.

It would last for hours yet, this personal misery, this unendurable
monotony; brown, twisting, turning bodies, tossing horns, wild eyes;
ceaseless bellowing; dust--stifling, choking, blinding dust; the smell
of sweating hides.

Shortly before eleven o’clock they took their lunches out of their
pockets and ate, in the saddle, but at any rate they were stationary.
The _vaqueros_ held the herd, loosely, in a shallow valley where there
was water for them. The neighboring ranchers rode up with Ginger and
hoped heartily that Mr. Wolcott was all right after his spill, and
they were cordial and kind. As a matter of fact, though he did not
dream it, they were very well aware of his plight, and they were
feeling a good deal of respect for his sporting endurance. The word
had passed more than once, that morning--“Pretty game bird, that boy
of Ginger’s!”--“Say, that feller’s not quittin’ any, is he?--sickly
lookin’ as he is, too!” A couple of the older men had sharply
criticized ’Rome Ojeda for putting a stranger and a guest on a horse
like the red roan, and they wondered at Ginger’s permitting it.

The girl rode close to her lover, bright-eyed and glowing and spoke
softly. “All right, Dean? Are you all right?”

He told her he was all right. (Could he sit like an old woman at a
summer resort and catalogue the number and character of his aches and
strains?) He swallowed one sandwich with difficulty; no one had thought
to bring a drinking cup, and besides, the steers had hopelessly muddied
the creek. Well, they would be at Santa Rita in about an hour.

Dean studied Ginger and Ojeda and the rest of them with angry and
grudging admiration, their boundless endurance, their lazy confidence,
their utter oneness with their mounts. Then, honestly disgusted
with himself, he set to work to see the thing as it was, not in its
interrelationship to his own unfitness. He told himself unsparingly
that he was like the type of American who goes to a foreign land
and talks disparagingly about the foreigners; his sense of balance
came back. He, Dean Wolcott, was the failure here. These people were
integral parts of the virile picture; they fitted strongly into the
high brown hills and the blue mountains far beyond, into the wide dry
valleys and the deep cañons: he belonged on the pavement, in the shadow
of grave buildings, art galleries, quiet clubs, dignified offices. It
was absurd to let himself be overcome with such a sense of bitterness
and rebellion; suppose he didn’t and couldn’t make good here, according
to their crude and simple standards? Could they make good in Boston,
according to his? He was weary enough to begin to quote, bromidically
to himself. East was east and west was west, and never the twain-- Ah,
but the twain did, occasionally, brilliantly, satisfyingly, as he and
Ginger had met on Aleck’s bridge, the good, simple Aleck who had opened
a window into a new world for him, in the trenches; who had given him
Ginger.

He looked at her through the blazing and merciless sunlight, blinking
as he had done on that first morning. She was in corduroy, worn,
rubbed, dusty corduroy, as were almost all of the men. It was the
only wear, in this lusty land, apparently. Corduroy; _corde du roi_:
he smiled inwardly; once, long ago, wider waled and softer, and
in delicate hues, kings had favored it; wine-red, emerald-green,
royal-purple, it had glowed in courts.... Now it had come down in the
world--drab, utilitarian ... dust-colored, dust-covered....

       *       *       *       *       *

They reached the shipping point at last; there was a hectic half hour
of getting the steers across the concrete highway; they advanced upon
it warily, putting their noses down to it, snorting, pawing, holding
back against the pressure of the herd behind them; then they went with
a rush, over, up and down, wild, terrified; plunging, slipping. Some
one told Dean, curtly, to tie his horse and go out on foot on to the
highway to stop the automobiles. It was exquisite relief and exquisite
torture to be walking; it was ludicrous to feel a sudden access of
power and authority, holding up his hand like a traffic policeman,
seeing the cars slam on their brakes and obey him, to have people lean
out and ask him questions about the cattle. He was busily useful for
thirty minutes; he was doing his job as well as any man of them. Then
he was hauling himself unhappily into the saddle again, and they were
off.

“Got to make time while we can,” said Ginger, “before we pick up the
yearlings. Let’s go!”

She was away at a swinging lope, and Snort, without notification from
his rider, went after her. In spite of shrieking muscles and weeping
blisters, there was a keen sense of exultation about it; he had
balance, equilibrium; he was able to conceive of liking this sort of
thing, loving it ... _dominion_....

’Rome Ojeda passed them, drew his horse back on his haunches, waited
for them. “Well, goin’ to make a hand with the yearlings, Mr. Wolcott?
That was easy this mornin’; they’d been moved two--three times, those
steers. These young-uns are different.”

“He sure is going to make a hand, ’Rome,” said Ginger, confidently.
“It’ll take all of us, and then some!”

He saw, presently, why it would take all of them, why he must strive,
in his awkward and unready fashion, to “make a hand.” The young steers
were timid, suspicious, quarrelsome; stupid, quick to get into a blind
and unreasoning panic--brown streaks of speed when they broke away from
the bunch. Ginger was here, there, everywhere, swallow-swift on Diablo,
darting after a fugitive--up a sheer bank, down a steep cañon, hanging
low out of her saddle, Indian-fashion, to dodge a dangerous branch.
Estrada had had to give up his duties as guide; he was in the thick of
the job. Dean rode alone, and Snort, who, by some miracle of mercy, had
been mild and tractable earlier in the day, now developed temper and
temperament. Any sort of riding, after the long hours in the saddle,
was active discomfort; riding Snort was torture.

A dog ran out of a ranch house and barked; the herd, which had settled
down for half an hour into something like order and calm, started
milling; round and round, like an eddying whirlpool, trying to turn, to
start back; there was the sharp sound of a fence giving way--they were
into the rancher’s orchard, they were into his field, and then over his
hill--they were off and away.

Thundering hoofs; shouts, curses; Ginger went by him in a furious
flash. “Dean! What’s the _matter_ with you? Make a hand, can’t you?
_Make a hand!_”

He made a hand, of sorts. He was part and parcel of the noisy,
breathless chaos. He was never to know by what magic he remained in or
near the saddle; certainly there was little left of power or volition
in his racked and tired body. They were back at last upon the road;
they were moving steadily forward again. ’Rome Ojeda came up to him.
“Well, you sure are makin’ a hand,” he said, genially. Dust had settled
thickly on his face; it made his smile whiter and more flashing than
ever by contrast. “But we got’a watch ’em, still! They’re sure one wild
bunch! They--” he broke off abruptly at Ginger’s cry--

“Dean! _Dean!_ Head him off! Get him! _Get him!_”

A lone young steer had sneaked away from his side of the herd, from
under his inattentive nose, and was galloping clumsily off across a
field.

“’Atta boy!” said ’Rome Ojeda, loudly. “Go get ’em! Dig in your spurs!
Ride ’em, cowboy!”

Doggedly, bitterly, he struck his spurs into his horse: they cleared
the edge of the road at a bound, they were after the steer, up with
him, beyond him, turning him: he was loping back to his fellows. Dean’s
head felt light and strange; it had ceased to belong to his body.

“’Atta _boy_!” sang out Ojeda.

Estrada was smiling: Ginger was smiling, too. It was the first time
she had smiled at him, in that fashion, all day. He was going to fall
off of Snort presently, any moment now, simply because he couldn’t sit
him any longer, but, meanwhile, he’d turned the steer. He was making
a hand. By some convulsive and involuntary motion of his aching leg
muscles he dug the spurs into Snort once more. Instantly the horse,
snorting, trumpeting, had bolted with him. He didn’t care, especially;
let him take him fast and far, away from the dissembled scorn of
Ginger’s world, away from ’Rome Ojeda’s cool appraisal, away from
Ginger. He would hold on a little longer; then he would let go. He
would hold on; he couldn’t stop Snort--there was nothing left in his
arms to stop him with--but he would hold on. Hold on ... hold on....
He thought, presently, that he must be saying it aloud, but it was
Ojeda’s voice.

“Hold on! Hold on! I’m a-comin’! Hold on!” There was, on the surface,
hearty reassurance in it; underneath, he knew, there was sneering
scorn. He came up with him, nearer, nearer, exactly like a rescuer in a
wild west film, came abreast of him, reached out, caught hold of Snort,
pulled him to a standstill, turned back his head so that he could not
buck. “He sure was goin’ wicked,” he said, gently. “He sure was goin’
wicked.”

If Ginger had seen it, she gave no sign. Estrada came back to ride
beside him. “Ur-r-ra!” he said soothingly to the wild young steers.
“Ur-rrr-ra! _Ur-rr-ra!_”

No one spoke to Dean Wolcott and he spoke to no one. He was too much
occupied with his black and seething hatred of ’Rome Ojeda. He had
been rescued, moving-picture style; moving-picture style he was hating
his rival, his rival who had shown him up; he was wishing passionately
that he might get even with him. He groped for his sense of humor,
of fitness. He, Dean Wolcott, hating this cow-puncher, planning to
be revenged upon him-- His sense of humor was gone, lost, swallowed
up in the dust. Now they were back again in the old monotony; brown,
twisting, turning bodies, tossing horns, wild eyes; ceaseless
bellowing; the stench of hot and sweating hides; dust; enveloping,
smothering dust. Ginger, save for her scarlet neckerchief and her
scarlet cheeks, was covered with dust, dust-covered, dust-colored;
dust-brown. Corduroy; what was it that plants and animals took on from
their surroundings? (Was it possible that he was beginning to _forget_
again?) What was it? He had learned it when he was a child. It was
gone, though. No! _Protective resemblance!_ That was what it was, and
that was what Ginger’s inevitable corduroy was; it was the color of
the dust, the blinding, stifling dust of this parched land of summer;
protective resemblance; dust; corduroy.

“_Señor_, we are here! We are arrive’ at home, _Señor_! Do you not
weesh to get down?” It was Estrada, dismounted, standing beside him,
and they were just below the veranda of the old _adobe_ at Dos Pozos.
“_Señor_, are you seek?”

He was not sick, he told him. (He was really not even suffering any
longer; it was some time, now, since there had been any feeling at
all in his arms or his legs.) “Yes, I wish to get down,” he said with
dignity. He wanted to keep his dignity; ’Rome Ojeda was watching him,
and Ginger was watching him, and the ranchers were watching him.

“Ees a long, hard day, _Señor_,” said Estrada, softly.

It was almost dusk now, and they had set out soon after dawn.
“Oh--somewhat,” said Dean Wolcott, jauntily. “Rather long, of course,
but very interesting.” Then he got down from his horse and stood for a
moment, smiling uncertainly at the old Spaniard before he dropped to
the warm earth for the second time that day. This time he had fainted.




CHAPTER VI


GINGER could understand bullets; she could understand a broken arm or
leg or collar bone; a broken neck was entirely comprehensible to her.
But she could not understand fainting; not, above all, a man’s fainting.

As soon as she was sure that he was not dead (she had heard of sudden
death by heart failure) she was not aware of any feeling but deep
chagrin. She did not follow when he was helped into the house and to
his room by Estrada and ’Rome Ojeda; she sent old Manuela to him but
she did not go herself. She went instead to her room and got out of her
dust-grimed riding things and under a cold shower, and into one of the
evening frocks which her Aunt Fan had made her buy. It was the scarlet
one, and she piled her dark hair high and put in her carved ivory comb
which had come down to her from her Valdés grandmother, and put a red
flower behind her ear, and regarded herself in her small mirror with
hearty and entire satisfaction. Not three times in her life had she
ever dressed herself so painstakingly, or been so pleased with the
result.

She went to the dining room and looked over the lavish supper and
summoned in her guests, and after the riotous meal she started the
dance with ’Rome Ojeda, and she was dancing with him for the fourth
time in an hour when her aunt came into the room and called her.

Mrs. Featherstone told her that she was annoyed beyond words, but this
seemed hardly a correct statement of her case, as she proceeded to emit
sharp staccato showers of them. She called her niece among other things
a heartless young savage and asked her what she thought of herself,
eating and dancing and flirting like that, when her sweetheart was
sick and suffering. Ginger, as a matter of fact, thought very well of
herself that evening; she was as hard and bright as polished metal
and no more tender. Presently--in the morning, perhaps--she would be
wretchedly aware of the crudeness and cruelty of her attitude; now she
was unyielding.

“Oh, does he want to see me?” She shrugged, and when she did that
she was all Valdés. Dean Wolcott would have been reminded of a Goya
painting, but Aunt Fan was too angry to be reminded of anything.

“Of course he wants to see you! Why shouldn’t he?”

“Did he ask you to bring me?” Her eyes were fathomless.

“No, he didn’t; he has too much pride, of course, but----”

“Pride!” said Ginger, bitterly. “I shouldn’t think he’d have much pride
left, after to-day!”

“Now, that just shows how childish and ridiculous your standards are,”
her aunt scolded. “Just because he happens not to be able to ride like
a buckeroo--because he’s lived a different sort of life----”

“You don’t understand,” said Ginger. Her voice was adamant, too. “You
don’t understand at all. Well--I’ll see him, for a minute.” She nodded
to a hovering partner and went down the long corridor to Aleck’s room.
Her aunt did not understand and she did not understand herself, all
that was swaying her. It wasn’t alone that her lover had cut a sorry
figure on horseback; it was that she, Ginger McVeagh, feudal lady of
the range, princess of the blood in the eyes of her henchmen, had said,
in effect--“There is no one among you all fit to be my mate; I must
have a stranger, an easterner, some one higher and finer. Now I have
found him! Wait until you see him--wait, and behold why I have chosen
him.” They had waited and they had beheld, and now, she knew, for all
their civility about it and their good-natured inquiries about him they
were amused and amazed that she should have picked Dean Wolcott; they
were aghast, as she was aghast.

Old Manuela was seated beside the bed but she rose at once and waddled
out into the hall. She had been waiting and watching anxiously for
her mistress for an hour, and she was sure, in her simple heart, that
everything would be all right now.

The big room was only dimly lit, but she could see how shockingly
white and ill he looked. Nevertheless, it roused in her no whispering
gentleness this time, as it had done on Christmas Day; healthy young
animal that she was--she had taken mumps and measles and chicken pox
on her feet and never spent an hour of daylight in bed in all her
life--it rather repelled her.

He opened his eyes in time to catch something of her mood in her
expression and his own face stiffened. “You shouldn’t have bothered to
come; I’m quite all right. Manuela and your aunt have looked after me.”
Again, he blinked his tired eyes a little, as he had at his first sight
of her, months ago; she was too bright, too vivid, too glowing.

It would not have been difficult to recapture the magic of the night
before; if Ginger had dropped to her knees and kissed him as she had
kissed him then--if Dean had managed a ragged sentence of regret for
disappointing her--’Rome Ojeda would have waited long for his next
dance. But instead, she stood looking down at his pallor and limpness
and he lay looking up at her scarlet cheeks and her incredible vigor,
and the moment got away from them. Presently, Ginger hoped with an edge
in her voice that he’d have a good night, and Dean trusted, with ice in
his, that she’d have a good time.

They did their best, in the week that followed. Dean was limping about
by noon and Ginger staying at home to be with him, and they were
gentle with each other, but it scared and sobered them to see that it
wasn’t any use. It was as if they had been blowing bubbles together,
lovely, shimmering iridescent ones, which had fallen and burst, and now
they were trying to gather up the little damp spots which were left and
make billowy, floating bubbles out of them again.

The truth was that they had arrived, simultaneously, at the third stage
of their knowledge of each other. The first had been her breathless
reverence for him, the messenger from her dead brother, the worn young
visitant from another world, and his dazed recognition of her warm
and vital beauty; next--when they had come together on Aleck’s bridge
and in the fortnight following--she had made him into a saint and
fairy prince and lover, and he--his senses smitten with loveliness,
his returning strength and virility leaping to meet hers, leaning
on it, mingling with it; now they were regarding each other quite
clearly, with detachment. She saw a rather pale and precise young man,
obviously out of drawing in her landscape, and he saw a highly colored
and careless young woman who fitted so snugly into the rough western
picture that he doubted the possibility of ever seeing her against a
different background.

For a little space they were painstakingly gentle with each other;
then, mysteriously, irritations sprang at them out of thin air. If it
made Ginger impatient to find him clumsy and inept at the things of her
world, it jarred increasingly upon him to have her say, “It sure does
look like we’re going to have a scorcher,” to find her utterly blank
about books and plays and music. In her milder moods it seemed as if
he might beguile her into reading, but the question of where to begin
appalled him. It was not what she should read, but what she should have
read. It was all summed up in that one sentence--the empty lack which
he found in her. In her swiftly melting moods of tenderness, when she
gave up a ride to stay with him in the cool old _adobe_, closed against
the hot air from eight o’clock in the morning, after the California
tradition, she was singularly unsatisfactory as a companion, what time
she was not in his arms. He discovered exactly why this was the case.
She might pull off her jingling spurs and fling aside her Stetson and
come into the big living room and sit down, and stay docilely for an
hour or more--but her _mind_ never came indoors. That was it. She might
sit as softly as her Valdés great-grandmother in Sevilla, but her whole
preoccupation was with the vigorous world outside.

He began to see, reluctantly, and with a chill sense of disaster, the
impermanence of their relation. While he was kissing Ginger there were
no questions and no problems, but life, he was cannily sure, could not
consist wholly of kissing Ginger. The house of their love had been
built upon the sands; shining, golden sands, but sands for all that,
and he told himself grimly--able, now and then, to stand away from his
situation and see it with a saving grain of humor--that the lasting
structure of his affection must be built not only upon the rock, but
upon Plymouth Rock. He found himself stressing his purity of speech,
professing even more ignorance than was really his with regard to
horses and cattle and crops; and Ginger, for her part, let the dresses
she had bought in San Francisco hang idle in her closet and strode in
to supper in her worn corduroy trousers and her brown shirt.

It needed, presently, only a small weight to tip the scales, and ’Rome
Ojeda supplied it. It was a day of dry and dazzling heat, and they had
planned a cool and quiet afternoon in the merciful sanctuary of the
house. Ginger had brought out the old Spanish chests which had come to
Dos Pozos with Rosalía Valdés and they were to revel in old Spanish
laces and embroideries and jewelry, and puzzle over yellowed Spanish
letters, and Dean was happier and more hopeful than he had been for
days. Ginger had changed her riding things for a thin thing in yellow,
and she was adorably gentle.

Then ’Rome Ojeda rode noisily up to the veranda and called them to come
for a ride. He was on Pedro, leading Snort, and he said he would slip
down to the corral and saddle Diablo while Ginger was changing her
clothes.

It was astonishing to see how quickly the cool old room, dimly shaded,
had changed into a field of hot battle. They were never able to
remember subsequently, either of them, just what went before the final
challenge; there must have been speeches ripe with bitterness on both
sides before Dean heard himself saying slowly--like a person in a
play--“Very well, then; if you go, this is the end.”

Ginger went, flinging herself into her riding suit and marching
through the house with her Scotch chin held high and her Spanish mouth
hard, slamming the door for good measure and springing into Snort’s
saddle and loping furiously away, but she didn’t really believe it
was the end. She had a very good time with ’Rome Ojeda and a wild and
satisfying ride, and when she came back, four hours later, she was
good-natured again. She wasn’t entirely ready to forgive Dean, but she
was ready to consider forgiving him, and she went into the house to
find him and tell him so.

She did not find him. She found, instead, an irate and voluble Aunt Fan
who had been generating rage for hours.

“You needn’t call him,” she said. “He won’t hear you, not unless you
can shout loud enough to make yourself heard at San Luis Obispo. I dare
say you could, if you put your mind to it--it’s simply horrible, the
way you yell to the men in the corral. Tomboys are all right and very
fetching, but let me tell you, Ginger McVeagh, you’ve grown up, and
tom-_women_ aren’t cunning at all, and if you can’t key down and act
more like a lady and less like a----”

“San Luis?” Ginger stood still and looked at her. She did not seem to
have heard anything else beside the name of the town. “_San Luis?_
What’s he doing there?”

“He’s catching the Coaster to Los Angeles to-night; that’s what he’s
doing there, Ginger McVeagh. And to-morrow morning he’ll be on his way
to Boston, and why he hasn’t gone before, heaven only knows--I don’t.
Now if you’ve got anything in your head but ’Rome Ojeda and long-horned
steers and alfalfa crops you’ll stop staring at me and get----”

“Did he _say_ anything?” she wanted to know in a mild and wondering
voice. “What did he say, Aunt Fan?”

“He said, ‘Tell her I’ve gone; she will understand,’ and he was white
as a sheet. If ever anybody in this world looked like death on a pale
horse, that boy did when he walked out of this house. He telephoned
into town for a machine and he was packed before it got here, and he
shook hands with me and with Manuela and Ling and out he marched, and
if you want my opinion, Ginger McVeagh----”

Ginger did not in the least want her opinion; she wanted Dean Wolcott,
sharply and imperatively. She walked out of the corridor and into
the living room where they had begun the afternoon together. The old
chests were there still, and the table was spread with a litter of
ancient treasures. She picked up a fichu of yellowed lace and put it
down again, and a fan with sticks of carved ivory and looked at it
gravely, as if she had never seen it before. It had surprised her and
worried her a little to find him so warmly interested in things of
that sort; she would have preferred having him clumsily ignorant about
them, good-humoredly tolerant. Now, she realized, it would never need
to worry her again. She stood staring down at the beautiful old things;
they looked mellow and very wise. Three generations of Valdés women had
used them before her, but she knew, suddenly, that she hated them and
never wanted to see them again. She began to stuff them hastily back
into the carved chests of dark and satiny wood, and called to Manuela
to put them away in the storeroom.

Her aunt followed her before she had finished. “If you hurry,” she said
urgently, “if you get out the car this minute and fly, you can catch
him at San Luis!”

Ginger did not answer her for an instant. Then she said, deliberately
and without passion, “I don’t want to catch him at San Luis, Aunt Fan.
I don’t want to catch him--anywhere.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Mrs. Featherstone went home to San Francisco the next day, thoroughly
out of temper with her niece and heartily willing to wash her hands
of her. She told her, at parting, that she had missed the one golden
and handsome opportunity of her life which was far beyond her deserts,
and that she would never have another such and it served her right;
she sincerely hoped she would marry ’Rome Ojeda and have seven wild
children, all born with spurs on. It sounded like the laying on of a
robust old-fashioned curse.

Ginger let Estrada drive her aunt in to town to take her train. She was
very tired of being berated; she didn’t want to talk about Dean Wolcott
any more and she didn’t want to think about him any more. She went
steadily about the business of Dos Pozos in the days that followed;
old Manuela wiped her eyes furtively and burned three candles to the
saint of the impossible, and Estrada was gravely regretful.

“I miss very much that young _señor_,” he said to his silent mistress.
“That is a very fine gentleman, _Señorita_.”

There were many inquiries for him at first among her rancher neighbors,
but after she had said--“He has gone. No, he is not coming back,” to a
few of them, the word went over the whole vicinity; they stopped asking
for him, and they were immensely cordial and approving in their manner
to Ginger.

’Rome Ojeda showed less restraint; he was openly triumphant about it.
“Snappy work,” he said to Ginger, with his flashing grin. “I guess
maybe we didn’t show him up, between us, me’n Snort! Say, I’m a-goin’
to get that hawse a medal! He sure did spill the Boston beans!”

Ginger listened to him at first without comment, but she said,
presently, “’Rome, he was Aleck’s friend; I’m never going to forget
that.”

“Lord,” said ’Rome Ojeda, comfortably, “I guess a feller’d bunk in
with ’most anybody, over there.” But he stopped talking about Dean
Wolcott and he did not immediately urge his own claims. There was
something about Ginger, about her looks and her voice, that he didn’t
quite understand. He told himself that he’d better just let things loaf
along, “as was,” for the present.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dr. Gurney Mayfield made a detour to take in Dos Pozos on his motor
trip next month. He was greatly surprised and disappointed not to find
his young friend, Dean Wolcott.

“Well, well,” he said, regretfully, “so Dean had to go home, did he?
Well, I expect he had to get back to business. How was he feeling?”

“He seemed to be feeling all right,” said Ginger briefly.

“That’s good,” said the doctor, heartily, “that’s _good_! You know,
Ginger, that boy isn’t out of the woods yet, not by a long sight. Shell
shock ... meanest thing in the world to get over, clear over! They’ll
think they are fit as a fiddle, and then let something out of the
ordinary happen--some slight shock, or strain or overexertion-- By the
way, Dean didn’t do any rough stuff here, did he? I thought afterward
that I should have warned him, but it never occurred to me that he’d
try it. Did he?”

“What do you mean by rough stuff?” said Ginger. Her voice was very low,
and she did not look at him.

“Oh--hard riding--all-day-in-the-saddle trips--anything that would tire
him beyond his strength, you know. It’ll be many a long day before he’s
absolutely himself again--body or brain. Was he pretty careful and
sensible? I know how hard it is to make these young chaps take care of
themselves, but I expect you could manage him, Ginger!” He twinkled
upon her, kindly. It was one of the dozen excellent reasons for his
belovedness that Dr. Gurney Mayfield always fitted people out with
the best possible motives and intentions. He presupposed them to have
justice and fairness and gentleness and good will, just as certainly as
they had tonsils and livers and lungs and spines, and he confidently
expected to see the manifestations of them.

“I don’t believe I--managed him--very carefully,” said Ginger. She did
not meet his eyes. “I expect he did--overdo, sometimes.”

Manuela came in, then, to say that dinner was waiting, and Ginger
jumped up thankfully and hurried the doctor in to the table, and
she began to talk briskly about her Aunt Fan and to ask interested
questions about his summer camp in Monterey County, and it was not
until he was well on his way again that Dr. Mayfield realized how
skillfully she had kept the talk away from the subject of Dean Wolcott.




CHAPTER VII


IN the last week of September Ginger went with a flag of truce to her
Aunt Fan and asked her to go east with her.

“Boston?” asked Aunt Fan, shrewdly.

“No,” said Ginger, coloring hotly but steady-eyed, “New York.” She
considered for a moment and then said, gravely. “But it is--connected
with Boston, in a way, Aunt Fan.”

She put it, rather stumblingly, into words. Dr. Mayfield had made her
realize how unjust she had been to Dean Wolcott with regard to his
riding, and that had made her understand the possibility of being
unjust in other ways. She was very brief and very dry about it; Mrs.
Featherstone was not the sort of person to whom one opened the shy
depths of one’s heart--she pounced too much, and chattered. It was
enough for her to know that her niece was open-mindedly going to
give eastern culture a chance at polishing the surface of her rugged
westernism.

Aunt Fan was delighted. “Of course I’ll go, child! We’ll have a
wonderful time--you’ll see! You’ll be crazy about it! Just wait till
you see Fifth Avenue--and Peacock Alley! You know, Jim’ll just be
pleased to the bone to beau us around--you can’t see anything of New
York at night without a man, of course--and if we see it with him,
we’ll see it _right_!” She beamed affectionately upon the girl for the
first time since Dean Wolcott’s exodus from Dos Pozos. “Honey, I’m
tickled _pink_ to go with you. We’ll see all the new shows, and you
know what I’m thinking of?-- You know, I _may_ have my face lifted!”

Ginger thought grimly that she, personally, might have her heart
lifted, but she didn’t say so. She went downtown and saw about
reservations and bought a wardrobe trunk and put her two evening gowns
in it (Aunt Fan had banned all the rest) and in a fortnight they were
on their way across the continent.

It surprised Ginger a great deal and at first annoyed her considerably
to find how much country there seemed to be outside of California.
She had known, of course, that New York would be larger and more
impressive than San Francisco or Los Angeles, but she had felt that
most of the desirable out-of-doors was contained in her own state.
The great city itself startled and saddened her; she had not realized
that there were as many people as that in the world, and most of
them tired-looking and pale and in a hectic hurry to get somewhere
else. They stopped at an opulent and ornate hotel and Aunt Fan was
very gay and amiable, and on their first day--they had arrived in the
morning--they shopped on the Avenue, lunched at the Ritz, did a matinée
and had tea, and then Jim Featherstone called for them and took them
down to dinner at the Brevoort and to a play, and afterwards to one of
the roofs, where they ate again and danced.

Jim Featherstone was a tall, thin, middle-aged man with a rather
melancholy expression and much skill in assembling a meal. He and Aunt
Fan were unfeignedly glad to see each other, and Ginger was content
to have them talk together and leave her to herself. They left her
to herself a great deal in the days and evenings which followed--not
that they ever forgot her or neglected her, but she had a sense of
being with them but not of them, and she felt that it always would
be so. Her aunt, languid as a wilted lily at Dos Pozos, developed an
amazing energy in New York; from their nine o’clock tray breakfast in
their sitting-room until one the next morning, she was in perpetual
and enthusiastic motion--always panting a little, taking her short,
chugging steps in her short-vamped, high-heeled pumps, her blue eyes
prominent, like a gold fish’s.

“This is the life, dearie,” she said, breathlessly, one day. “And you
know, I haven’t gained an ounce, for all I’ve eaten like a human being;
it’s being so active that saves me. Jim doesn’t want me to have my face
lifted; not for two or three years anyway, he says. He says you get a
sort of _hard_ look; he says he wouldn’t like to have my expression
changed.” She sighed. “Isn’t it a crime-- A man that can be a friend
like that, a total loss as a husband?” She patted Ginger’s arm (she was
very fond of her, in these days) affectionately. “Dearie, I don’t know
that I regret--_you_ know! He was a sweet boy, and _class_, class if
ever I saw it in my life, but I’m not so sure he would have made you
happy. If Jim Featherstone couldn’t make a woman happy, I don’t know
who----”

“I think,” said Ginger, almost to herself, “a woman has to make herself
happy, Aunt Fan. I guess no one can do it for you.” Ginger was saying
“I think” a good deal at that time, and she was actually thinking. She
was growing very tired of long parades of food, and the pavements made
her feet ache for the sun-baked earth, for her stirrups. She had seen
so many plays--“shows,” Jim Featherstone and her Aunt Fan invariably
called them--“a good show,” “a bad show,” “a peach of a little show,”
that they were blurred and jumbled in her memory, and her eyes wanted
distance and sky line instead of bright lights indoors and quivering
electric signs on the streets.

She had been more than a month, now, in the east, and she had docilely
done everything and bought everything she was asked to do and to
buy, and she had gone everywhere they wanted to take her, but she
was puzzled. Was this the sort of thing which had made Dean Wolcott
different from ’Rome Ojeda?

Her aunt sensed her restlessness and grew uneasy; she had no wish
to terminate her own holiday. “Jim,” she said urgently, “I wish to
goodness you could rustle up a man for Ginger--not just anybody,
of course, but some really nice chap. One that looks like a collar
ad--_you_ know! The child’s getting homesick and blue, and if we don’t
give her something to think about she’ll rush home and marry that
wild-man--that immorally good-looking Ojeda boy.”

Jim Featherstone was interested, but he really didn’t know what to do
about it. All the men he knew were his own sort and age; hard-boiled
old birds, he called them; wouldn’t do for Ginger. He had a very soft
spot in his leathery heart for Ginger, Jim Featherstone. They decided
that they must try to give her a better time, and they set earnestly
about it, but the girl did not respond.

“Dearie,” her aunt would say in the morning, “don’t you want to come
along with me while I get my henna rinse? You could have a manicure
while you’re waiting, or a facial. Or just sit and look out at the
Avenue--_that’s_ as good as a show, I always say.”

But Ginger had had a manicure two days earlier (she had come to like
the look of her brown fingers after careful grooming) and she never
had facials, and looking out at the Avenue made her long unendurably
for the range; and it seemed to her that Aunt Fan had had her mind as
well as her hair henna rinsed; as if she’d had a permanent wave in her
personality. Then, suddenly, she remembered Mary Wiley.

Mary Wiley was a girl she had known at boarding school in Los Angeles,
a slim, frail girl who had been sent west for the mildness of the
winters. She was three or four years older than Ginger, but they had
roomed together for several months and the younger child had liked
her warmly, without ever understanding why. She had very smooth, cool
hands and she was always delicately and pleasantly pale, and never in
a hurry. She always had her lessons learned and her themes written and
had generous margins of time for other people.

They had corresponded for a while; it was Ginger who had stopped
writing. Mary Wiley had sent her a brief, bracing little note when she
had heard, through other channels of the old school, of Aleck’s death,
but Ginger had never acknowledged it. Now she wanted to find her. The
telephone book was rich in Wileys but she knew she would recognize the
address when she saw it and she did--up in the Eighties, and just off
Riverside Drive, the hotel door man told her. She could take the bus.
Ginger liked taking the bus when she could ride on the top; it gave her
a comforting little sense of leashed freedom for a while, and she loved
the river. It was the first river she had ever known, personally, and
she had the merest bowing acquaintance with it now, but she knew that
she would like knowing it if she could.

It was a narrow, quiet-looking house; it made her think of Mary Wiley
herself. A neat, middle-aged maid answered her ring and took her name
and said that she would see if Miss Wiley was at home. She had hardly
finished her leisurely mounting of the stairs when Ginger heard a low
exclamation of pleasure and her friend came skimming down to her. (She
recalled, now, the way Mary Wiley had of moving, of coming downstairs.)

She did not kiss her but she took both her hands and glowed her deep
and quiet gladness. “Virginia McVeagh! My dear! It’s so nice to see
you! And how _lovely_ you are--much lovelier, even, than when you were
little!”

Mary Wiley was a plain young woman herself but she drank up Ginger’s
beauty thirstily. She was still slim and frail, with rather colorless
hair and skin, but she had good gray eyes and a singularly intelligent
sweetness of expression.

They sat down to talk in the small drawing-room which was rather
scantily furnished, Ginger thought, and presently she telephoned to her
aunt that she was staying for luncheon and would not be back until late
in the afternoon. It just happened, Mary Wiley said, to be her lazy
day, so they could have a fine visit.

Her mother and father were at luncheon, elderly, mellow people with low
voices and much gentle warmth of manner and they were extraordinarily
kind to their daughter’s school friend without in the least making
what Aunt Fan would have called “a fuss over her.” Luncheon was a
very simple meal--clear soup in dull blue bowls with thin slices of
lemon floating on it, something creamed on toast, tiny graham muffins
and a fruit salad, and there were the plainest possible doilies of
unbleached linen on the dark, lusterless table. The middle-aged maid
served silently and slowly, and--in contrast with the hotel and the
restaurants where Jim Featherstone had taken her--it was like leaving
the pounding surf and coming into a little still bay.

The Wiley family, it appeared, had not seen a fourth of the plays
which Ginger had seen; they were astonished at her energy. They had
seen three of the better ones and there were one or two more which
they meant to see during the winter; they did not--the parents--go
out very much at night. On the other hand, they seemed to have heard
a great deal of music; they had season tickets for the Symphony and
the Philharmonic, and they were going that afternoon to hear a young
Russian pianist whom their daughter had heard the evening before, and
they spoke of art exhibits in the smaller galleries. When they first
asked Ginger if she had seen any interesting pictures she thought they
meant on the screen and she answered accordingly that she had been too
busy seeing plays; she was relieved, an instant later, to see that they
had not realized her mistake. Mary Wiley said she would take her to
the Ehrich Galleries next day; there were some delectable old Dutch
things there now.

Mrs. Wiley wanted to know if Ginger had seen any other parts of the
east, and her husband and her daughter began to smile at her.

“What she really wants to know, Virginia,” said Mary Wiley, “is whether
you’ve seen Boston?”

Ginger could feel herself coloring. “No,” she said, “I haven’t seen
anything but New York--yet.”

“My wife is a Bostonian, you see, Miss Virginia,” said Mr. Wiley, “and
she still has, after thirty years, a little the feeling of the Children
of Israel in Egypt.” He chuckled enjoyingly and his wife defended
herself gently.

“My dear Walter, you know I have become--I am--a _loyal_ New Yorker!”
She gave a very small sigh. “New York is a wonderful city; it is stupid
to compare the two. Boston----”

“‘_By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we
remembered Zion_,’” her husband quoted, teasingly. “Though it is to be
admitted, Deborah, my dear, you have wept unobtrusively.”

“‘_For there they that carried us away captive required of us a
song_,’” she flashed back at him.

Her daughter leaned over and patted her hand. “She’s sung the Lord’s
song in a strange land, hasn’t she, father?”

“She has--loyally and lustily,” he laughed.

“Well,” said Mrs. Wiley, smiling pacifically upon them both, “I like to
think I’ve brought a little of Boston with me and transplanted it. My
people”--she turned to Ginger--“have never yet, after all these years,
become entirely reconciled to having me a New Yorker, but I say to
them--‘My dears, cannot one have a lamp, and a fire, and a book, even
in New York?’”

Ginger liked their voices and the way they looked at each other. She
wondered if Dean Wolcott’s mother was something like Mrs. Wiley.
Presently the parents went away to their concert and the girls talked
for an hour, and then Mary Wiley, who said she had been indoors all
day, offered to walk with Ginger back to her hotel. They went beside
the river as far as Seventy-second Street, and Mary Wiley walked with
her remembered smoothness of gait, swiftly and easily on her low heeled
and gray-spatted feet. Ginger, in footgear of her Aunt Fan’s choosing,
seemed to be on stilts in comparison. She learned, during the walk,
what her friend had meant by calling that her lazy day. Every other
week day she had classes at an Italian Settlement House far uptown; she
thought Ginger might enjoy visiting it with her, one day.

This was the beginning--when Mary Wiley walked back into Ginger’s life
on her low heels--of Ginger’s entrance into the inner city, where her
Aunt Fan, ardent pilgrim that she was, and Jim Featherstone, born
on West Fortieth Street, could never penetrate. She still went once
or twice a week with them to dinners and “shows,” but for the rest
of the time she was quietly busy with her friend: afternoons at the
Settlement, early morning walks in the Park, trips on the river--over
the river to the Palisades; the Russian quarter, the Syrian quarter;
a service at the Greek cathedral, performances at little theaters
which Jim Featherstone had shied away from as dangerously high-brow;
exhibitions of strange new pictures at the smaller galleries--or mellow
old pictures. Mary Wiley seemed always occupied but never hurried; her
life was a brimming cup which never ran over.

She took Ginger to an upstairs shop in a cross street where low-voiced
saleswomen conferred together over her and sent for certain special
models--“Miss Hadley, don’t you think that old-blue frock for Miss
McVeagh--the one with the silver fringe?”--or “I believe that Russian
peasant thing would suit Miss McVeagh----”

Mary Wiley urged her to take the Russian peasant thing; it was richly
red, of a soft wool stuff, boldly embellished in cobalt and dull
silver. “It’s the sort of thing I’ve longed all my life to wear,” she
said, and her satisfaction seemed all the deeper for being vicarious.
“You can’t think what a joy it is to see it on you, Virginia! My dear,
are you half thankful enough for being so beautiful? You ought to set
aside a Thanksgiving Day for every month in the year!”

Ginger liked her cool compliments. She liked everything she did with
Mary Wiley. Perhaps, best of all, she liked the luncheons at the
Woman’s City Club and the Query Club and others to which her friend
belonged or went as a guest, where she--Ginger--might sit in mouselike
silence and hear brisk and vigorous talk. Mary Wiley sometimes spoke,
quietly and effectively. Once, in the midst of a discussion on the
iniquities of the retailer, she said suddenly--“I think Miss McVeagh
could tell us something of interest on that subject; you know, she
owns and operates one of the largest cattle ranches in her part of
California.”

“That _baby_?” A lean, elderly woman bent forward in her seat and
smiled at Ginger, and--her cheeks crisping hotly--she heard herself
speaking. It was incredible that they should all stop, those keen and
purposeful women--and listen to Ginger McVeagh, but they did.

“Did you get that, Helen?” she heard them saying to each other when
she had finished her three or four sentences. “That’s all she gets a
pound--and consider what we pay our local butchers!”

Several came and spoke to her afterward; California was always a name
to conjure with, they said, but a California cattle ranch-- They made
her feel definite and worth while; once Mary Wiley asked half a dozen
of them in to meet her at tea, and made her wear the red peasant dress.

But most of all she found herself at the Symphony. When she was
homesick, which was often, in spite of her new contentment, she found
that music--not solo things nor chamber music, but the crash and volume
of an orchestra--most nearly approximated the breadth and freedom of
her life at home. Sitting beside her friend or quite alone, serenely
ignorant of composition and composer and interdependence of instrument,
she was as wholly content as when she was riding Felipe or Diablo into
the heart of a sunset. When she tried, gropingly, to tell Mary Wiley
what she felt, she quoted to her a line of Huneker’s; it ought, she
thought, to be graven over the door of every concert hall: “Other arts
give us defined pleasures, but music is the only art that restores us
to ourselves.”

It restored Ginger not only to herself but to her lover. Whether they
ever came together again, whether she ever saw him again, sitting
perched in her high balcony seat in Carnegie Hall, all the pride and
criticism and bitterness were cleansed away; she went to him once more
as she had gone to him on Aleck’s bridge; she found harmony in harmony.

“You are radiant,” said Mary Wiley to her as they came away from
Carnegie on an afternoon of dazzling snow. “I knew you would love
Tschaikowsky. You look--my dear, did you love it so much?”

Ginger fell into step beside her. “Let’s walk, shall we? Yes; I loved
it. But I was thinking just then about--Mary, I would like to go to
Boston.”

“Would you, really? How warmly mother will approve of you for that
chaste desire!”

“Mary, there is some one in Boston I must see. I was unjust, and
ignorant, and--_mean_. Mean and stupid. Now I’m going to Boston and
tell him so.”

Mary Wiley smiled at her. “I think that’s big and fine, Virginia. Shall
I go with you--to Boston, I mean? I’ve been wanting to run down for a
day or two, to see my cousin Sarah; she is ill again. There’s a mousy
little hotel just across the street from her house where you could
stay. Let me see ... my young aliens would adore not being Americanized
for a few days; suppose we go Monday and come back on Friday? That will
give you time for a little sedate sight-seeing to please mother--and
for--for your own affairs.” She smiled sunnily at her. “My dear, I’m
very glad. I’ve been sure that there was some one.”

Ginger shook her head, her color mounting. “I don’t know, Mary; I’m not
sure of anything, except that I must go--and tell him.”

“I’ve known there was some one,” said Mary Wiley. There had been some
one, with her, once, but he had not come home from France. Mrs. Wiley
had wept when she told Ginger about it, but if Mary Wiley ever wept she
made her tears turn the wheels of her serene and selfless activities.

       *       *       *       *       *

Aunt Fan lifted her plucked eyebrows when she learned that her niece
was going to Boston. “_I_ should say it would be much better form just
to drop him a line--one of those postcards with a picture of the hotel
on it--and say--oh, ‘West is East,’ or something kind of cute like
that, and wait for _him_ to make the first move!” Aunt Fan was feeling
a trifle acid; she and Jim Featherstone were getting on each other’s
nerves again, and in spite of being so triumphantly active she had
gained six pounds.

       *       *       *       *       *

On the way to Boston Ginger tried to formulate what she would say to
Dean Wolcott; she wanted to make it proudly clear to him that this was
no overture for a return to their former relation; it was simply and
solely an acknowledgment of her wrongness of attitude at Dos Pozos, of
her new respect and liking for the world he had always lived in, but
always when she rehearsed it her phrases were swallowed up in great
waves of gladness which rolled over her--like the music she had heard
from her high perch in Carnegie. After all, she was Virginia Valdés
McVeagh, feudal lady of her own land; under her novel humility there
was the conviction that she had only to extend her forgiveness and
her understanding. She summoned up the memory of his look, his tall
slimness, his walk, the tones of his voice; his arms, his lips.

Directly Mary Wiley left her at the hushed little hotel she wrote a
note to him--four lines--and sent it by messenger, and sat down to wait
in the lobby. A grave bell boy tried twice to show her to her room,
but she told him she wished to wait there for the answer to the letter
she had just sent. She was joyfully sure what form the answer would
take; Dean Wolcott would come himself. She could picture him, crossing
to her from the front door to the chair where she sat; he would look
as he had looked that golden day, when they came together on Aleck’s
bridge.

The door opened and closed nineteen times by count. She would know her
messenger the instant she saw him; he was a rather small boy, copiously
freckled, and he wore thick spectacles.

He returned in exactly twenty-seven minutes by the office clock and
handed Ginger’s note back to her, unopened. There was only a caretaker
at the Wolcott residence, he reported: she had told him that the entire
Wolcott family had gone to Florida.




CHAPTER VIII


MONTEREY; _Monterey_.... Dean Wolcott liked the look and the sound
of the word. Directly the train deposited him there he liked the
place itself. His one impression of California was of dust and
glare, of dry and dazzling heat: this was a land of gray and gentle
summer--June-veiled. Some one sent him down to the old wharf for his
luncheon and he ate zestfully of “Pop Ernst’s” piping hot chowder
and meltingly tender abalone and then set out for his afternoon of
exploring. He liked the old customhouse; he liked the “Sherman Rose,”
and the fishing boats in the bay; he liked the flavor of tradition in
everything; he hadn’t supposed there was as much background as this in
all of California. He drove out to the Mission at Carmel and had his
tea at a little house close by, and went back to Monterey and did the
seventeen-mile drive, and he kept stopping the car and getting out to
go close to the gnarled, embattled trees on the cliffs. He thought
they looked as if Arthur Rackham had drawn them; they satisfied him
deeply. He stayed the night at Del Monte and liked the old hotel and
the precise and formal gardens; he was amazed to find how heartily he
was liking everything he saw, for he had not undertaken his western
pilgrimage in the spirit of a joy ride. He had undertaken it grimly,
purposefully, resentfully, but it began to look as if he should
actually enjoy it. He felt his spirits mounting as he climbed into the
front seat of the Big Sur stage next morning and found himself the
only passenger. The driver told him that he didn’t carry much beside
the mail until around the Fourth of July; then people began to swarm
down to Pfeiffer’s Resort, and the deer hunters came in with the open
season, the first of August.

“Won’t be many folks where _you’ll_ be, though,” he said, grinning. “If
you’re the lonesome kind, you’re out of luck.”

Dean Wolcott said he did not believe he was the lonesome kind. He
was enjoying the five-hour drive enormously. The scenery was oddly
satisfying to him--now along a rocky and precipitous coast, now on
a bleakly barren hillside, and the sea shone with the colors of an
abalone shell; it made him think a little of Italy. And--just as he
had adjusted his mind to rigor and stern plainness--the road turned
inland to lush and lavish beauty--redwood trees mounting nobly, deep
carpeting of ferns, streams, wild flowers, enchanting sudden vistas of
the distant sea. They toiled gaspingly up the Serra grade and rushed
down the other side with hurtling speed; they stopped at every ranch
gate with mail and papers and parcel post and held leisurely converse
with unhurried men and women; they left the Little Sur country behind
and forged on through changing loveliness, now in the muted sunshine,
now in green shadow.

The stage driver looked at his watch. “Going to make it by five,
like I told you we would,” he said with satisfaction. “Look--there’s
Pfeiffer’s!” They made a last sharp turn and swung into the yard. “And
there’s the doc’, come to meet you!”

Dr. Gurney Mayfield was clambering out of an ancient surrey and he
secured a weary-looking, putty-colored horse to the fence before he
hurried over to meet the newcomer. “Well, _well_, my dear boy, but
it’s good to see you--_here_!” he twinkled at him. “Pardon my not
coming right over but I had to tie Sam; he may look as if he had the
sleeping sickness but he’d be off for camp the minute my back was
turned. Now, let’s have a look at you, Dean!” His keen eyes went
competently over him. “Feel as fit as you look?”

“Absolutely.”

“Ready for the rough stuff?”

“Quite.”

“Good!-- You’re going to have plenty of it. Well, did you enjoy the
work, the training?”

“Enormously, Doctor! It’s made me as hard as nails; exactly what I
needed.” He was crisp and brisk and confident; his color was wholesome,
emphasized just now by a flush of sunburn after his long day’s ride,
and his eyes were steady. “You have been no end kind, Doctor; I was
amazed at your being able to fix it up for me here.”

They had walked back to the surrey. “Get in,” said Dr. Mayfield. “Now,
I call it a rare treat, in an age of mad motors to ride behind old Sam
in this surrey.” He backed the venerable steed away from the fence and
started him down the road. “My camp is a mile and a half further; no
machines allowed--riders and hikers only. As to being able to arrange
things for you here, it wasn’t difficult; the regular Ranger is a very
good friend of mine, and he has had a real vacation coming to him for
a long time. He’ll stay with you for a while, of course, and put you
on to the ropes. Steady, Sam, old boy!” He applied a shrieking brake
as they jolted down a bank and into a shallow, hurrying stream. “The
Sur goes through the camp in three places,” he said. “This is great
country, my boy. Wildest county in California, and I hope it always
will be.” They splashed noisily across the little river and climbed
steeply out again.

“Well, I fancy you haven’t any difficulty in keeping machines out,”
commented Dean, looking back.

“They don’t often try it twice--not the _same_ machine,” his friend
exulted. They were jogging along on a curving road, now, through the
narrow valley. “The ocean’s over there, three miles,” he gestured to
the right. “Near enough to get the tang of it, but far enough to miss
the fog; the mountains on this side are the Santa Lucia range--Ventanas
off to the left. Just wait till I get you on a horse and give you the
first real glimpse of it! Oh, by the way--I got Snort for you!”

“Really! Great work, Doctor. I _am_ pleased!--But I don’t know how I
can ever thank you for taking so much trouble.”

But Dr. Mayfield had been taking trouble for people all his life and
now that he was retired from practice he considered that he had nothing
else to do. “’Rome Ojeda didn’t want to let him go, not a little bit,
but I said I simply had to have him for a friend of mine, a Ranger up
here, and Ginger brought him round. I guess Ginger can make him do just
about anything she wants,” he chuckled, “hard-boiled cow-puncher that
he is.” He was rather elaborately casual about it, and he thought he
saw the young man’s sunburn reinforced by a deeper color.

“Is she--I hope Ginger is well?” said Dean Wolcott civilly.

“Oh, good Lord, yes,” said the doctor, comfortably. “Never knew the
child to be anything else. I remember offering her a dollar a day for
every day she’d stay in bed while she had the measles but she took
it standing! I was in great luck to keep her off her pony. Come on,
Sam--can’t you spruce up a little? We’ve got company on board! Yes,
Ginger’s well; I should say she is--blooming! Busier than a whole
hive of bees, of course, running the ranch. Remarkable girl, Virginia
McVeagh; combines her father _and_ her mother to an astonishing
degree. They were an odd pair to come together, different as chalk
and cheese--but _they_ made a success of it.” There was the faintest
possible emphasis on the pronoun. “Heard a good deal of talk, the time
I went down there after Snort, about her being engaged to ’Rome Ojeda.”

“Yes?” said Dean, courteously attentive.

“Yes. In fact, ’Rome himself rather gave me to understand--but I don’t
know. I won’t believe it till I hear it from Ginger. I hope she won’t
be in too much of a hurry. Still, he’s a fine, upstanding boy, ’Rome
Ojeda, and he’s known her all her life and he understands her. Well,
Snort’s waiting for you in the corral! A good horse, but he hasn’t been
handled right--not what I call right. ’Rome’s pretty hard--and pretty
harsh, I consider, with his stock. I’m afraid you won’t find him a very
comfortable mount.”

“I don’t expect to,” said Dean Wolcott, grimly, a look of reminiscence
in his eyes. “But I expect to ride him. I--doubtless it seems rather
absurd to you, Doctor, my desire for that particular horse, but I
think I’ve come to consider him as a sort of symbol; he showed me--and
incidentally the rest of the world”--he was able to grin, ruefully, at
the memory--“my utter unfitness; it will be a satisfaction, now that
I can ride, to prove it on Snort. It will rather--redeem me in my own
eyes.”

“I can understand your feelings perfectly,” said the doctor cordially.
As a matter of fact, the young man had no idea as to how thoroughly the
doctor understood all of his feelings. “But I’m going to caution you
about overdoing; it’s hard work, and rough at times, as I said a little
while ago, but you can take it reasonably.”

“I’m hard as nails, Doctor; _quite_ fit.”

The doctor nodded. “Yes, I believe you are. But there may be slumps,
you know; I don’t want to alarm you, but--arm you for them.”

“You’re very kind; I will bear it in mind.” It was quite clear,
however, that he considered the warning wholly superfluous; there was a
triumphant strength and verve about him.

“That’s our gate,” said the doctor, presently, and his pleasant voice
warmed suddenly with pride. “Here we are at the camp!” He spoke of it
as if it might be the New Jerusalem. “Of course, we’ve kept things very
plain and crude but”--the doctor always tried to be modest about his
camp, to take the attitude that there were other camps in the state, in
the country, some of which, many of which, perhaps, might equal his,
but his voice and his eyes betrayed him. This was his promised land,
where, thanks to the everlasting mercy of things, he was to sojourn
for his life’s rich afternoon after long years of ardent service. It
was his creation and his recreation; his child. “You see, we have the
little individual cabins with a shower bath in every one, and the
central dining room, and we bring down a cook and a maid and a chore
boy, and there’s the little bathhouse where you can have a hot tub--oh,
we figure we’ve got camping down to a pretty fine art--all the glory
and none of the grime! Mild nights we sit round the camp fire, and
when it’s nippy we have the Lodge, and the phonograph to dance by, and
tables for bridge. You must join us whenever your duties will let you,
Dean.”

“Thank you,” said Dean Wolcott. “I fancy, however, that I shall be
busy by day and sleepy by night, sha’n’t I?” The fact was that he was
hungrily eager for the vigorous, muscle and nerve testing job he had
undertaken, and rather fed up on bridge and dancing, Boston--his own
very particular corner of it--having welcomed him home with a warmth
which was soothing and healing after Dos Pozos. “And--who are your
guests at camp, Doctor?”

“They’re not my guests, really; it’s a coöperative affair, this lodge
of ours in the wilderness--old friends, relatives, San José people, in
the main; some from San Francisco; jolly, folksy folks who like to get
their feet off the pavement.”

“Does Ginger come?” He was very direct about it.

“Oh, Ginger came once, long ago--twice, I believe, come to think of
it--but I’ll tell you what it is, we’re not wild enough for Miss
Ginger! We take some pretty hard trips--as you’ll find out--and
do some pretty stiff stunts, but we haven’t her hell-for-leather,
ride-’em-cowboy ideal!”

Dean Wolcott nodded. “I shall want to see her, once, before I go east
again,” he said, levelly.

“Oh, certainly,” said Dr. Mayfield, hastily. “Certainly! And here’s
Snort! Be careful how you go up to him, Dean; he has a very bad habit
of pulling back, and he’s due to hurt himself or somebody else. I
rather imagine he was tied up and beaten over the head when he was
first broken to saddle, and ’Rome Ojeda hasn’t exactly--soothed him!”
He paused in the unhitching of old Sam and watched the meeting between
the quiet young man and the quivering wild-eyed horse. The moment was
heavy with memory and challenge and promise.

“Hello, old son!” said Dean Wolcott, cordially. Snort trumpeted and
flung up his head at the touch, but the easterner’s voice was smooth.
“Steady, boy.... Those fireworks don’t register with me at all, now.
I’ve had almost a year of that sort of thing, you see. If you’re
feeding your fancy on what you’re going to do to the tenderfoot who
rode you that historic day, you’re foiled. You and I will never dazzle
the Big Week crowd, but I think you’ll find me remaining in or near the
saddle during all our excursions together.” The red roan cocked his
sensitive ears and rolled his eyes whitely.

Dr. Mayfield nodded approval. “That’s the idea, Dean. No quick
movements.... Steady does it, with Snort. You know, I consider that
there are very few essentially vicious horses; one now and then, of
course, but in the main it’s only terror, terror and suspicion and the
vivid memory of abuses.”

“Doctor,” the young man wanted to know, “is it too late for a ride?”

The doctor’s lips twitched. He liked the impetuous youngness of it ...
the lad couldn’t wait to show him, and to show himself.... “No, of
course not, Dean! I’ll saddle Ted--”

He noted with satisfaction the authority with which Dean Wolcott swung
himself into the saddle and set off, ahead of him, up the precipitous
Government Trail, and he kept his keen eyes on the slim figure--the
easy seat, the vigilant relaxing, the sure coördination of body and
brain. Beyond question, he told himself, deeply content, the boy had
learned to ride. When they finished the twisting climb and came out
on a level shoulder of the mountain he saw Dean Wolcott lean suddenly
forward in the saddle, and Snort shot ahead in a plunging lope; horse
and rider, a splendid, pulsing unit, flashed over the open space in the
warm glow of the sunset, wheeled sharply at the foot of the next rise,
and came back, Snort curveting, prancing, flinging up his handsome
head, his flanks lathered with excitement rather than heat.

“Well?” said the young man, nakedly bidding for praise. “Well, Doctor?”

The doctor had not seen the serio-comic exhibition at Dos Pozos but
he had had it fully and faithfully described to him, so he was able
to balance that day’s performance with this, and he was moved to warm
commendation. “Upon my word, Dean, it’s astonishing! In less than a
year’s time--and you’ve been physically fit for only a few months--
Well, this has removed my last lingering doubt of your ability to swing
the Ranger work. You’ve a good hand, a good seat; authority. I consider
you”--he went on, speaking with relish, bestowing his accolade, and
the words sounded richer to the young man than the ones which had
accompanied the pinning on of his medals--“I consider you a horseman.”

Dean Wolcott swung himself smoothly to the ground; there was a
silkiness of movement, now, a sure competence about him. “Then”--he
colored hotly but his gaze was steady--“then you think I should not cut
a ludicrous figure now, before--’Rome Ojeda--Ginger?”

“I should say _not_!” said Dr. Gurney Mayfield with immense heartiness.

The easterner slipped a hand under Snort’s mane and the roan, trembling
a little, let him rub his neck slowly and steadily. The young man
took time, at last, to look about him. They were on the shoulder of a
brown and rugged mountain, looking forward to range on range of other
mountains, brown, gray, blue, purple in distance, piling up against the
warm sky, looking back to the shining sea three thousand feet below
them, with a crimson sun sinking swiftly on the edge of the world.
With his hand on Snort’s arched neck it was a moment of highly colored
happiness such as he had not known for eleven months--since he had
taken his eye away from the kaleidoscope at Dos Pozos.

“This is--tremendous, Doctor!” He gave a long sigh of utter
satisfaction. “There aren’t any words for it.” Then he turned his
attention to the doctor’s mount. “I’ve been so engrossed in my horse I
haven’t noticed yours, Doctor. Splendid, isn’t he?”

“Well, now, I was beginning to wonder when you’d get round to old Ted,”
said Dr. Mayfield. “He’s used to compliments, Ted is. Wouldn’t sell him
for his weight in sapphires!” The horse, a tall and powerful creature,
turned his head and listened to his master with delicately twitching
ears. “See those ears? Many’s the time Ted’s pointed a deer for me,
before I saw it. He’s a gentleman; he’s a man and a brother; you can
count on him in a tight place. I’ll have to tell you how he saved
my life once. It was--but I guess we’ll have to be jogging along to
supper, right now.”

The young man, however, stood still, looking at him with an enhanced
color in his keen and eager face. “If you’ve a moment more to spare,
Doctor, I--I should like to make myself clear to you on the subject
of--Ginger; of my attitude toward Ginger.”

The older man saw that this, too, was immediate. Just as he had had
to justify himself in the saddle, so now he must clear his mind of a
studied explanation. He wanted his supper but he said comfortably, “Of
course, Dean.”

He began with entire composure. “You know the shape I was in last
year, body and mind. I was a miserable weakling, a supersensitive,
hysterical idiot, and my sense of humor, which I had always considered
as much a part of me as an arm or a leg, seemed to have been amputated.
We--Ginger and I--were utter strangers; not strangers as a Boston girl
and myself would have been, or Ginger and a western man, but--aliens.
We had lived in different worlds; we spoke different tongues.”

His friend nodded, understandingly. “That’s a fact, Dean. That’s a
fact.” He could see that the young man was not only telling him--he was
telling himself; urging himself to be convinced.

“We mistook a romance, a sort of midsummer, moving-picture romance,”
Dean went on, “for a solid and lasting affection. And it is, of
course,” he was very clear and definite about it but his expression
was rather bleak, “extremely fortunate that we became aware of our
mistake when we did.”

Again the doctor nodded. “I wonder if Ginger’s father and mother were
not assailed by doubts of that sort,” he mused. “Far apart as the
poles, they were--race, type, creed, training--and yet that marriage
was a success; an ardent success. Of course, Ginger’s mother, Rosalía
Valdés--and she was more beautiful than Ginger, I believe--died when
the girl was a baby. I’ve often asked myself if a marriage of that sort
can stand the slow procession of years, the humdrum cares, the fading--”

“I think not,” Dean Wolcott cut in. “Marriage,” he stated with young
sapience, “any marriage, where blood and breeding and background are
the same, presents _sufficient_ difficulties of adjustment. It was
undoubtedly a most fortunate termination.” He had pulled off his hat,
and now a brisk wind traveled up from the sea and mussed the shining
precision of his fine, fair hair, as a sudden confusion marred the
precision of his careful speech. “Doctor, I have--I needn’t say that I
have the highest--that I admire and shall always admire her beauty and
charm--and--and courage and ability--and I hope you won’t misunderstand
my motives, my feelings--” he got very warmly flushed and young looking
and his gaze besought his friend for credence. “I must see Ginger and
I must see Ojeda, simply as a matter of decent self-justification. It
is intolerable for me to leave any place, any persons, with such a
contemptible impression.”

“I can get your angle on it, Dean,” said the doctor, gravely, “but
aren’t you overemphasizing--exaggerating--the whole affair? After all,
why should you have been able to ride like a ‘buckeroo’--a city man,
an easterner? (Though a fellow from San Francisco or Los Angeles would
have been in the same boat.) And besides, you were in no shape to stand
such exertion; it was mad folly to attempt it. I blame myself bitterly
for not having warned you against that sort of thing, but I never
imagined----”

Again the young man interrupted him heedlessly. “Yes, of course, the
whole thing was absurd! If my sense of humor hadn’t been left on the
other side, if I had made determined comedy of myself for them, or
if I’d had sense enough to refuse to ride”--but his flush deepened
as he remembered why and how he had capitulated--“it need never have
happened. But it did happen, Doctor. I did make a sickening spectacle
of myself in the eyes of those people. I failed utterly according to
their standards, and--granted that their standards are immature and
crude ones--the fact is intolerable to me. That’s why I’ve learned to
ride, that’s why I wanted Snort; that’s why I must go once to Dos Pozos
for a day, before I--before I put a period to that episode.”

The doctor bent his head close to the Ted horse as he tightened his
cinch. “I understand perfectly, Dean. The chapter is closed. You wish
merely--and quite naturally--to show that girl and that buckeroo
boy--that you can succeed now along lines where you failed before.”

“Exactly,” said the young man, gratefully.

And that night, by candlelight in his cabin, Dr. Mayfield wrote to
Ginger’s favorite aunt, and he said, in closing--“And so, my dear Miss
Fanny, it is quite clear that the nice lad is still head over heels in
love with Ginger, and if your diagnosis of her condition is correct, we
shall be able to arrange matters very satisfactorily.”

He folded the sheet and slipped it into its envelope and sat smiling
to himself in the soft, uneven light. It was going to be a very
pleasant undertaking, he thought, to bring these two fine young things
together--to be the instrument, in a world where so much went stupidly
or viciously wrong, of setting something right.




CHAPTER IX


BEFORE he went back to San José Dr. Mayfield took keen satisfaction
in introducing Dean Wolcott to the precipitous trails and the secret
fastnesses of the wild land he loved, and in presenting him to the
people on widely separated ranches. Always he said, with possessive
pride, “I want you to shake hands with a mighty good friend of mine,
your new Forest Ranger!”

The regular Ranger stayed a fortnight with his deputy before he went
on his leave and left the easterner in full possession of the job. The
young man told himself that never in all his life--a singularly serene
one, save for the months in France and the episode of Dos Pozos--had he
been so solidly happy.

He headquartered in a snug cottage near Post’s and his housekeeping
was an amused delight to him. He had three cabins at various points
on his trails and gypsy, picnicking sojourns in them were novel and
fascinating. He rejoiced in a daily, almost hourly, sense of increased
vigor; he had a red-blooded feeling of boundless endurance. Always he
had lived--and the entire Wolcott connection, as his cousin in Boston
would have expressed it--had lived--in their mentalities; they had
been--and rather prided themselves on being--absent from the body and
present with the brain; they had stayed upstairs in their minds. Now he
was to know the hearty comfort of coming down and living lustily in his
flesh; to revel frankly and sensuously in the sound young body which
had come back to him. It was good to be too hot (for the sun scorched
sometimes on the bare hillsides) and to go into the deep shade; to be
chilled on a long ride home along the coast and to build up a roaring
fire and bask in it; to be ravenously hungry, when he came late to his
cabins, and to make himself an enormous meal and eat enormously of it;
to be healthily, heartily tired and to tumble into bed and sleep nine
dark and dreamless hours.

It was best of all, he thought, to be part of the large silence of
the mountains and the sea. The Wolcotts were talkers and all their
friends were talkers. They talked entertainingly and well but they
talked most of the time, and they had insisted that the Happy Warrior
should converse unsparingly of all he had seen and done, of all that
had been done to him, of his actions and reactions in the red welter
of conflict. Therefore, devoted as he was to the doctor and much as he
appreciated the time and pains the Ranger had spent upon him, he was
glad to be alone with Snort, with the extra horse whom the Ranger had
left as a sort of spare tire, and the Ranger’s dog, a small, shabby
Airedale of reserved manner. Making his daily rides according to
schedule he formed the habit of passing by the infrequent ranch houses
without a hail: later he would be more clubby with the cordially kind
people within them, but for the present he desired to be like the stout
(and, he recalled, incorrectly named) gentleman of the well-known
sonnet--silent upon a peak in Darien.

There were a great many peaks for him to be silent upon and he rode
tirelessly from one to the other. Ordinarily, his various “beats,” as
the Ranger had jocularly called them, were so arranged that he might
serve himself with human society at least every forty-eight hours,
but he determined upon a week’s fast from the sight and sound of his
fellows. By arriving late at his headquarters--the cabin at Post’s--and
leaving early, by passing Slate’s Springs with its lure of a hot and
comforting meal, making his own slender supper, and lodging in his
sleeping bag on the ground, he was able to manage his seven days
hermiting, and he told himself that--with every muscle in play--it was
still the most perfect rest he had ever known.

He believed that he now understood Snort perfectly, and that Snort was
on the way to understanding him. Rusty, the Ranger’s dog, had a faintly
scornful air of understanding him only too well; he sat disdainfully
aloof and watched the Bostonian at his saddling, his fire building, his
camp making, with an air of weary tolerance, and he was even guilty of
yawning in the young man’s face.

“All right, old top,” Dean Wolcott would say to him, “I dare say I’m a
pale imitation of your master, and that I shall never quite reach the
picturesqueness and dash of the ‘Virginian,’ but you might give me
credit for coming on, you know.”

On the third night of silence he camped on Pine Ridge. He had climbed
the tortuous Golden Stairs in the golden, burning afternoon, and
man and horse and dog were weary and warm. Once, on a narrow and
treacherous bit of trail, a rattler had sounded his warning just ahead
of them, and Snort, with a swift reversion to his earlier manner, had
trumpeted, reared, whirled dangerously, but his rider had sat him
capably until he was calmed, had dismounted and crept forward, reins
over his arm, revolver in hand, located the venomous sound, taken
cool aim, and shot the big snake neatly in two. Then, remembering the
doctor’s warning, had stamped on its head for good measure before he
cut off the twelve rattles. “Well, Rusty, not so bad, eh?” he had
inquired complacently of the Airedale, and the dog had replied with a
brief and grudging wag of his shabby tail.

He had watered his horse, staked him out to graze, made his supper and
fed Rusty, spread his sleeping bag on a foundation of crisp leaves,
lighted his pipe, folded his arms beneath his head; reveled. He was
the only human being in forty precipitous miles; sometimes the dog
gave a sleepy and luxurious sigh; there was the low sound of Snort’s
cropping of the dry grass; twice a twilight bird dropped his six silver
notes into the silence; otherwise, it was incredibly still. Beyond him
there was another mountain which presented a profile to him with a
forest of young pines dark against an apricot sky; far below, faintly
seen, the sea shone again like an abalone shell. Presently the glow
faded and the trees turned black, and a fairy-tale moon came out,
primly attended by one pale star.

He was up at dawn and off at six for his ride to Tassajara, tingling
with zestful well-being. He made a swift detour about the lively
Springs, picked up Tony’s Trail and followed it into the heat of the
afternoon, made an early camp at Willow Creek and was off again in
the morning dew, headed, the long way round, for home. Past Shovel
Handle Creek, through Strawberry Valley, gay as a garden with little
flowers of yellow and magenta and hearty pink, up and up, and up again,
unceasingly, to the summit of Marble Peak. He loosened his cinch,
lighted his pipe, granted himself a half hour for gazing.

He understood perfectly how the gentleman had felt in Darien. It was
beyond words, above words. Not even the Wolcott connection could do it
justice.

Then, greatly to his surprise, he found that he didn’t want to be
silent any longer. He wanted to talk, not to Snort and the tolerant
Airedale, but to some one who would reply. He wanted to point out Lost
Valley, far below and far away; to explain about the Ventana--how once,
the oldest settlers said, it had been closed across the top of that
sharp, square-cut space in the mountain’s upper edge, making a perfect
_ventana_--window; he needed a looker and a listener in order that he
might demonstrate how perfectly he remembered all the peaks and places
the doctor and the Ranger had named to him. It was probable that he
would have been moved to quote a restrained amount of poetry; the
Wolcotts quoted a good deal, not to be bookish or superior, but because
of their nice sense of values; people like Keats and Tennyson had said
these things so handily, had brought the art of poetic expression to
a fine point while the Wolcott connection was busy with the law and
medicine and anthropology....

Now he recalled that the stout (and misnamed) gentleman upon the peak
in Darien could be silent as long as he chose and then address his men
(there was distinct mention of them in the sonnet) and receive their
respectful raptures. He, however, could only address, unavailingly, a
horse and a frankly bored dog, so, with swift decision, he tightened
his cinch again and set off down the mountainside in the direction of
Slate’s. He would change his plan, make port there, hearten himself
with cheerful human intercourse and toothsome fare, and return to
Post’s next day. His beasts seemed to catch his idea and approve it,
and they made excellent speed.

But Slate’s was deserted. No promising smoke curled out of the chimney;
his hail brought no reply, but echoed hollowly against the big barn. It
was evidently one of the rare occasions when the head of the house made
a saddle trip over the long trail to the Post Office at Big Sur, and
his wife might be far afield on some ranch matter. There was nothing
for it but to push on to his headquarters at Post’s, by the long
route, now; he would not reach there until well after dark.

He set out, doggedly and joylessly. He could not even take time for
a rest and a meal; he munched at crackers and raisins as he rode.
Rusty began to lag wearily behind and he caught him by the collar and
dragged him up and across his saddle and held him there, crouched and
disapproving, his tail clamped dismally down. He passed three or four
little deserted houses on long-abandoned ranches; it was strange,
whatever could have brought people into that wilderness; it was pitiful
to think of the losing fight they must have put up before they admitted
themselves beaten and went away. Sometimes he drew rein and studied
them; at one there was a rattlesnake asleep in the sun on the worn sill
of the open door; after a little while, to accentuate his loneliness,
the sun went under a cloud and a damp and penetrating fog rushed in
from the sea; then the little, gray, ghostly houses seemed to shiver
and shrink. He found himself picturing the people who had pioneered in
them--the men who had come back to them at meal-times, aching-tired
and lagging with discouragement, the women who had swept the sagging
floors and tacked up calico curtains; women who had said, red-eyed,
“It’s more’n a month since we’ve had the mail,” and the other sort of
women, who had said--“Look! My seeds are comin’ up a’ready! We’ll have
a truck garden here before you can say ‘Jack Robinson!’”

Visualizing them kept him occupied for several miles and when he had
left them all behind and found the gray emptiness of the world more
and more trying he began to recite to himself--verse, fragments of
orations, scraps of old high school debates....

  _My name is Norval; on the Grampian hills
  My father feeds his flocks--_

What was the rest of it? Where was it from? He must have learned it
years ago, in grammar school, probably. Well, now, he exulted, this was
something to do; he _would_ remember the next line; he _would_ remember
the poem or whatever the lines came from, the author.

Even Snort, the wire-fibered, fire-breathing Snort, was lagging.
Overridden! Dean Wolcott was thankful Dr. Mayfield needn’t know. And
he, himself?--was he overridden and under-talked? The doctor had been
good enough to caution him, but he--fat-headed fool--hadn’t listened
or heeded. There would be slumps, his friend had said. There was one
now, right enough; perhaps he’d better dismount and make camp in the
next sheltered hollow. No; he must keep on; he might meet the Slate’s
Spring people, and go back with them, or at least, for a few heartening
moments, hear human speech, the blesséd sound of talk.

  _My name is Norval; on the Grampian hills--_

Just as soon as he had located and pigeonholed that thing he would be
all right. He was all right now, in his body--no sense of lameness or
weakness; it was just this childish, contemptible lonesomeness when
he wasn’t actually alone--the warm body of his horse beneath him, the
dog--even if he wasn’t a very expansive dog--across his saddle. They
came out of a lush green cañon with ferns and tall brakes and delicate
blooms and a rushing silver stream where the dampness pressed in to the
marrow, climbed a stiff trail. Then he looked down, with a gasp, upon a
chimney with a curl of smoke issuing from it; it was not able to mount
into the air on account of the fog but it made a brave start.

Dean Wolcott had to gather his thoughts before he could place exactly
where he was. This must be the ranch of Mateo Golinda, the Spaniard,
and his American wife. The doctor and the Ranger had spoken to him of
the Golindas and said that he must be sure to call upon them, but he
had forgotten, and then he had entered on his period of silence. He
was so glad that he wanted to swing his hat and shout. Now he was to
be among his kind again, with limitations, of course. The converse
would be crude and the fare would be rough; there would be no point of
mental contact. There would be--he grinned stiffly at the absurdity--no
afternoon tea; chilled and fog-drenched as he was, he would have to
wait for the late supper, if, indeed, it was his good fortune to be
invited to remain.

There was no dizzy sum, no cherished treasure he would not part with
for tea, hot and heartening tea in a delicate cup, and the sort of
talk which nourished the mind. And an open fire. But there would be a
“cookstove,” at least, and it would give out comforting warmth while
the woman was getting supper ... he would be warm....

He had let Rusty down and they were making for the house at a smooth
running walk. He would judge what sort she was, Mrs. Golinda; perhaps
he could ask her to make him--or to let him make himself--a cup of tea;
he could say quite honestly that he was cold and overdone. He knew
people of that sort called tea “eating between meals” or “piecing,”
but he didn’t care what she called it if only he could have it.
He got awkwardly down in the yard and found that he was shivering
uncontrollably and that his teeth were chattering, and he felt odd and
confused. He stood still and made himself rehearse for an instant. He
would march up to the door, he would knock at the door, and she would
come--she _must_ be home, with that smoke charging at the fog!--and he
would take off his hat, and try to keep from shaking and jerking, and
say--“My name is Dean Wolcott. I am the new Forest Ranger. May I--”

But he could not wait to complete his rehearsal. He found himself
moving swiftly upon the small, silvered house. It was very old and
weathered looking; it made him think a little of the houses on the
fog-drenched islands in Maine. He stood upon the gray, worn step and
rapped with blue knuckles, and almost instantly he heard the sound of
quick, light feet coming toward him, and the door flew open.

The woman who stood there was not quite young, but she would never be
old. She wore a smock of dull blue linen and her very smooth brown hair
was sleekly parted and coiled, and she looked at him keenly and gladly.
Her eyes were a dark hazel, fearless and friendly, and very bright.

He opened his lips and tried to keep his teeth from chattering. “My
name--” he began, steadily enough, “my name--” and then confusion and
chaos descended upon him. He might have been back in the hospital
in England, fighting for memory through black clouds. “‘_My name is
Norval_--’” he said, rapidly, and broke off gasping, horrified.

The woman stared at him for the fraction of a second, her eyes
widening; then they narrowed and warmed and fine little lines came
round the corners of them and she laughed aloud, delightedly. “Well,”
she said, “aren’t you a long way from the Grampian hills? Come in! Do
come in--I was just having to drink my tea all alone!”




CHAPTER X


HE stumbled over the threshold and found himself in an amazing room. He
was to observe, later on, that two partitions had been knocked out to
make three cubby-holes into a living room of pleasant dimensions, that
the floor sagged and that the walls slanted, that the raftered ceiling
was rough: at the moment he was aware only of a leaping, crackling fire
on the hearth, of a Chinese wicker tea table drawn up before it with a
wicker armchair on each side, and--beyond these joyful things--shelves
of books, books, books, running along one entire end of the place; the
gleam of good brass in the firelight; good prints on the walls.

“You are Mr. Wolcott, of course,” the woman said. “And I am Margaret
Golinda--but you know that! We have been hoping you would come to see
us. Sit down, and pull your chair closer to the fire--you must be
fog-chilled to your marrow! Tea is _just_ ready and piping hot--I just
lifted the kettle off as you knocked! You see, I always pull up another
chair for tea, on the hope that Mateo may come in and join me--and he
does, once in a blue moon!” Fine little lines of mirth framed her eyes
again. “He does like it, when he can spare the half hour, but I dare
say it’s a slothful habit for ranchers!”

“It’s a heavenly habit,” said Dean Wolcott, fervently. He leaned toward
the fire, holding his stiff fingers in the stinging, scorching heat. “I
must ask your pardon, Mrs. Golinda, for what must have seemed my clumsy
facetiousness, just now. I will tell you how I came to say--”

“Ah, but you mustn’t tell me anything until you’ve had your first cup,”
she said quickly, giving him a keen glance. She handed him his tea
in pale green china, with a thin old silver spoon, and watched him,
smiling. “You are an easterner, I have heard, and you haven’t realized
what our summers can be in Monterey County! Many mooded, they are. One
can shiver--and perspire--in two hours!” She talked on in her very low,
very clear voice, and there was no chance for him to speak until he had
drained his cup. “Now--the second cup, and toast, this time, with it,
and some of our wild sage honey--we brag about our honey, Mr. Wolcott.”
She filled his cup again, and this time she gave him an oblong wicker
tray to hold on his knees, with a pale green plate of toast and a small
fat pot of amber honey, and she kept on talking. He knew that she was
talking so that he would not have to talk.

“You must have another cup--all really sincere tea drinkers take
three!” He took it docilely. “I can see that you’re rather surprised
at my little house; tea tables and brass and prints amaze you--here?
And everything came here on the back of a mule, over that trail, for
there is no road beyond the Gomez ranch, as you know. There were eighty
loads!” She shook her sleek head, sighing a little at the memory. “But
I lost only two cups and one saucer! Now, I wonder if you’ll pardon my
leaving you for a few moments? There’s something rather urgent in the
oven!” She went swiftly out of the room and closed the door behind her,
and for a moment or two he heard sounds of activity in the kitchen--an
oven door opened and closed again, a faucet turned on and off. Then
he stopped listening and settled limply and luxuriously down into his
armchair. There was a cushion on the back which fitted into his neck
as if it had been measured for him, and he yielded body and brain to
a delicious drowsiness; he would hear her step, and rouse himself
before she opened the door. An old banjo clock on the wall stated that
it was twenty minutes past five ... she would doubtless be back in
five minutes and then he would chat a few moments, and be on his way
again....

He heard her step, just as he had known he would, and roused himself,
and looked at the clock to see if it had been more than five minutes,
but he could not see the clock very clearly.... He must be half blind
with sleep.... He got up out of his chair and went close to it, and saw
that it was twenty minutes before seven, and the room was soft with
dusk.

“I’ve been gone a fearful time,” said Mrs. Golinda, regretfully. “My
wicked little horse elected not to be caught and put in the barn, and
we’ve been holding a sort of field day all over the home ranch!” She
stirred the fire to brightness and threw on fresh wood. “I hope you
helped yourself to tea and toast and found something to read--or did
you just rest and get warmed through again?”

“I just rested and basked,” said Dean Wolcott, gratefully, “but I must
be off now, for I won’t make Post’s before nine o’clock and--” he
stopped aghast--“good heavens, my horse! I’ve left him standing in the
fog, when he was--”

“Oh, but I put him up, directly I went out,” said his hostess, easily.
“Of course you’re going to stop the night with us. What do you suppose
Mateo--with his traditions of Spanish hospitality--would say to me if
I confessed to having you here and letting you go? We can put you up
quite nicely, and you can fancy what it means to us to have a house
guest! Should you like to go to your room, now?”

She did not wait for him to answer but stepped briskly toward another
door. “This way--and a step down! My funny little house is on four
different levels, but I like it. Some day, when our ship comes in, we
mean to have sleeping porches--but it takes a long time for a ship to
come in, on this foggy coast--and to come ashore as high as this!” She
laughed with entire contentment. “Hot water in the pitcher, and towels
there, do you see? Perhaps I’d better light your candle--these tiny
windows let in very little light after the sun sets.” She lighted a
candle in a satiny brass candlestick and went away, and left him to the
comfort of hot water and rough, clean towels, and presently he heard a
hail from without and her glad answer, and then exchange of rippling
Spanish.

Mateo Golinda was a rather small, middle-aged Spaniard with piercing
eyes and a fine aquiline nose, and his welcome was as picturesque and
colorful as if it had been given in his father’s native _Valencia_.
Dean Wolcott remembered now, the things the doctor had told him of
this household, and he drank the wine of astonishment. Margaret Burton
had come into the Big Sur country on a sketching trip; she had left it
only long enough to go home and tell her aghast and staggered family
that she was to marry a Spanish rancher who spoke almost no English, to
live with him on his difficult ranch, fifteen high and winding miles
from a telephone. The young man had seen a generous portion of the
world considering his years, and he came to regard this as the most
remarkable marriage he had ever known; it could not, he felt, have
succeeded so signally if either Margaret Burton or Mateo Golinda had
brought less to it. They worked out-of-doors like peasants, both of
them, like pioneers, but when they came into the silver-gray house they
left the toil behind them; they came into a gentle world of candlelight
and firelight, of shining brass and thin, old silver spoons, of
limber-covered ancient Spanish books; probably nothing else would so
have completed the picture for Dean Wolcott as to find the current
number of the _Atlantic Monthly_ in one of the Chinese chairs.

The supper was excellent and a beautiful and dignified dog sat a little
withdrawn, watching his master worshipfully.

“Mateo,” said Mrs. Golinda, after Dean had noticed and commented upon
him, “let us show Mr. Wolcott how seriously he takes his position. You
see, Mr. Wolcott, Mateo had Lobo before he had me and Lobo wishes that
point to be very clear. He likes me--he is even fond of me--but he
considers me simply another of his master’s possessions, and a later
and less important one.”

“_Dame tu mano_,” said the Spaniard, softly, reaching his brown and
work-hardened hand across the table to his wife, who laid her own
within it. Instantly the dog arose, the pupils of his golden eyes
contracting, and went close to Margaret Golinda, growling. When she
drew her hand away he ceased growling and wagged his plumy tail,
slowly, approvingly, and after an instant, to make sure the incident
would not be repeated, he returned to his place. “You see?” said his
mistress, laughing. “Lobo likes women as many persons like dogs--‘in
their place!’”

Dean Wolcott felt his throat tighten, suddenly, but it was not because
of Lobo’s jealous fealty; it was because these people who had worked
unceasingly for years to win a livelihood from their steep and stubborn
acres, who had sometimes seen only each other for weeks on end, whose
existence was narrow and circumscribed, according to the ordinary
standard, had kept the gleam alight; still said--“Give me your hand.”
And--good heavens--how they _had_ given each other a hand, late and
early, in good weather and bad weather, in rich seasons and barren
seasons; it was sign and symbol. Now the ranch was almost clear; now
Mateo Golinda spoke a careful and correct English and his wife a
fluent Spanish; now, year by year, something of comfort was added,
something of hardship was conquered. It was a thing to have seen; a
thing to remember.

They set him on his way in the pearly morning, and not by look or word
did Margaret Golinda betray her knowledge of his condition on arriving
the day before. When he had tried the second time to explain she had
stopped him again. “It was odd that you’d been thinking of that old
thing--I expect you learned it in the grammar grades as I did?--for
it had come into my mind just a few days ago, when I was watching the
sheep for Mateo. One remembers the old things, in places like this!”
And when he rode away they called after him to come soon again, to
make them a regular port of call. There was no need to urge him; the
weathered gray house on the high hill above the sea would always spell
sanctuary to him; it would always be what he would have called, twenty
years earlier, “King’s X!”

That afternoon he wrote to an old Harvard friend who lived in San
Francisco and was ardently interested in a troop of Boy Scouts in one
of the poorer portions of the city; he had stopped over with him for
two days on his way to Monterey.

  I want you to send me one of your boys for the rest of the summer [he
  wrote], for I find that the solitude I so earnestly wanted is being
  served to me in rather too large portions. I see that I want and need
  companionship, of a sort. But, please, don’t send me your prize lad,
  your huskiest and handiest Scout! I want instead the unlikeliest one
  in your troop. I want the most utter little gutter snipe you can
  lay hands on, and the most ignorant of the woods and wilds. What I
  need--which you have already guessed and I may as well confess--is
  a young person to whom I can exhibit my new-found wisdom; I want a
  trusting child who will look up to me and regard me as a brilliant
  and dashing admixture of Daniel Boone and Dan Beard and Bill Hart.
  Kindly ship same to me charges paid and I will at once remit!

His friend replied at once and told him, rather doubtfully, that in
Elmer Bunty he had a youth who fulfilled all his specifications and
more, but if, after a week or so, he found him more than he could
stomach he might return him; the boy would be told that he was going
for a fortnight only. He was an orphan and made his home, so-called,
with a vinegar-visaged aunt and a mean and hectoring girl cousin; a
really determined daddy longlegs could put him to flight. He--the
friend of Dean Wolcott--had had something of a chore to make the aunt
consent to the outing for Elmer; she had planned for him to spend his
summer vacation in some gainful occupation, and he had only succeeded
by painting a dark picture of the boy’s physical unfitness and the
benefits which would unfailingly accrue to him. Not that the lady was
unduly moved at that, but she had had, she asserted, more than her
share of doctor’s bills for Elmer before--and she just taking him in
and doing for him like he was her own, and precious little thanks for
it, too! Dean Wolcott got a very sharp pen picture of Elmer’s aunt and
he answered his friend immediately and told him to send the boy, and to
tell his relative that he should receive a salary of ten dollars a week
for such services as he might prove able to render, and that he would
see that he sent the lion’s share home to her.

       *       *       *       *       *

The boy arrived at Pfeiffer’s by stage a few days later. He was,
he stated, thirteen, but it seemed improbable. He was thin to
emaciation--pipe-stem arms and legs which dangled from his lean little
torso as if they hardly belonged to it but had been carelessly hooked
on--a hollow chest, huge, flanging ears which looked ready to fly away
with his pinched small face and quite capable of doing it, friendly and
frightened eyes, and gopher teeth, all of which he was never able to
keep in his mouth at the same time.

He sat beside the good-natured driver, huddled in the corner of the
seat and clinging desperately to the iron rod which supported the top
of the stage, and the man told Dean that he didn’t believe the poor
young one had shifted his position once since they had left Monterey.

“Hello, old top!” said Dean, robustly, swinging him to the ground.
“Come along and meet Snort and Rusty, and your pony!” (He had succeeded
in renting a small and amiable old horse for him from one of the
ranchers.)

The boy went with him, setting his cramped legs stiffly to walk again.
He kept the Ranger’s hand and shrank back against him when they came
nearer the animals. “Does he bite?” he whispered when the Airedale
rose languidly and approached him, sniffing indifferently. “Do--do they
kick?” he wanted fearfully to know when he found himself within range
of the horses’ heels.

“Never!” said the Ranger, cheerily. He tied Elmer’s bundle to his own
saddle and lifted him on to the small horse. “Let’s see about these
stirrups--must always have your stirrups right, Scout.” He adjusted
them swiftly and capably. “Now, then, all set?”

“I g-guess so,” said Elmer Bunty, palely.

“We’re just going to walk our horses, this time--and lots of times till
you get used to it. Then we’ll ‘Ride ’em, Cowboy!’ like they do in the
movies, won’t we?”

“I g-guess so,” said the Scout again.

Dean sprang into his saddle and spoke to the two horses, and they set
off at a brisk walk, and instantly the boy leaned forward and clutched
the pommel of his small saddle desperately with both thin hands.

“Oh, come, Scout, that will never do--hanging on that way! That’s what
we call (‘we,’ he grinned to himself) ‘pulling leather,’ and any
regular cow-puncher would rather break his neck than be caught doing
it! It simply isn’t done in these circles, old top. Just try letting
go, and holding your reins, and keeping the balls of your feet in the
stirrups, and sitting _easy_--like this, see? You can’t fall off, and
even if you could, I’m right here to catch you!”

The Scout reluctantly unclasped his small claws and sat erect. He was
the color of thriftily skimmed milk, his eyes rolled with terror, and
he kept swallowing hard.

Snort, impatient at the snail’s pace, pranced and curvetted, but the
boy’s mount went sedately, and Dean kept up a running fire of casual
talk, and at the end of ten minutes he could see that his lad was
breathing more easily.

“That’s right,” he said, cordially. “Now you’re letting yourself go!
Isn’t it fine? Isn’t it fun?”

“Yes, sir,” said the Scout. After an instant, nodding toward the
drooping head of his steed, he inquired, “What’s his name?”

“His name is Mabel,” answered Dean, gravely.

“Oh...” said Elmer, pondering. “Is he--” he hesitated delicately, “is
he a lady horse?”

“He is a lady horse. Almost, I should say, by the gentleness of this
present performance, a perfect lady.”

They rode in silence for a few minutes. Then, “Mabel is a nice, pretty
name,” said the child, thoughtfully. “I think it’s a nicer name than
Edna ... Edna,” he added, after an instant of burdened silence, “is my
cousin’s name....”

“I see,” said the Ranger. “Now, do you think you would care to have
Mabel walk just a trifle faster?”

“Would he--stop again if I--if I didn’t care for it?”

“Instantly, when you pull on the reins and say ‘whoa,’ firmly and
decisively. It’s just like putting on a brake, you know. All set?” He
chirruped to Mabel who changed from a walk to a languid trot.

At once, involuntarily, the Scout clung to his pommel as to the Rock of
Ages, but after a shamed moment he let go of it and sat up again.

“Snappy work!” said the Ranger, cordially, once more.

“I g-guess,” said Elmer Bunty, a faint and furtive pink coming into his
small face, speaking jerkily with the motion of the clumsy old horse,
“I g-guess Edna c-couldn’t c-call me ’Fraid-Cat if she s-saw me _now_!”

There was the most astonishing amount of satisfaction, Dean Wolcott was
to discover, to be derived from the presence of an admittedly inferior
and worshipful companion. Never before had he been looked up to in
this fashion. He had been quite frank in writing to his San Francisco
friend, but he had not known, then, how much he wanted the qualities
he was ordering. A Wolcott among Wolcotts, he had been treated as one
of them, of course; a Wolcott had also been treated like a Wolcott
at Dos Pozos but in a very different sense indeed; to Elmer Bunty he
was the final word in horsemanship, in marksmanship, in woodcraft, in
courage and wide wisdom. The young man, holding himself up to his own
hearty mirth, nevertheless enjoyed it shamelessly. One thing he had not
counted upon, however, was his immediate fondness for the boy; it was
odd that so unbeautiful and unpromising a youth should seem to dive
headlong into his affections, but this was exactly what he had done.
It was a positive pleasure to feed him until his pallid skin grew
visibly more taut, to tuck him up at night with an extra blanket pulled
high about his meager neck, to guide and guard him in his timid steps
forward into a red-blooded world.

Rusty, the Airedale, adopted him at once. Elmer had never had a dog;
his aunt disliked and disapproved of them on sound, economic principles
and held, quite reasonably, that they made extra work and “dirtied
up a house,” and he had not known how to go about the business of
conciliating Rusty, but he had not needed to know; Rusty had known for
both of them. He still treated the new Ranger with a grudging civility,
but the Scout was taken into his heart on the second day. He taught him
to play; he unlocked starved chambers in his flat little chest, and in
the short evenings when Dean Wolcott read aloud from stout and hearty
boy-books he charged contentedly beside the lad, his chin on the small
sharp knee.




CHAPTER XI


THE middle of July Ginger’s Aunt Fan began writing her and begging her
earnestly to come to San Francisco and visit her at the St. Agnes.
She was lonely and blue, she wrote, and although she ate less than
a microbe she now tipped the scales at a hundred and seventy-three
pounds, and a New York friend had written her that Jim Featherstone was
“stepping out” with a woman young enough to be his daughter--not that
she cared, of course; her warm wish was to see old Jim happy, for he
was a prince if ever there was one, but _not_ to have him make a fool
of himself.

Ranch affairs were too numerous and pressing when the first letter
came, but after three of them, and a breathless long distance telephone
call, the girl put the reins into Estrada’s brown and weathered hands
and went north. It had been a hard and busy season and she found
herself, oddly, a little tired; it was not like her to be tired. She
would like a week or two of brisk San Francisco climate, a lecture, a
play; perhaps, most of all, she would be glad to be away from ’Rome
Ojeda’s ardent importunities. She was quite sure that she was never
going to marry ’Rome, but he was just as sure that she was, and was
beginning to get boisterous and vehement about it, and was drinking a
good deal, and she was rather worn with the struggle. Sometimes she
thought it might be simpler to marry him ... but she knew that it
wouldn’t be anything else.

This time her Aunt Fan met her without a criticism of her clothes.
“Well,” she said, looking her over pleasantly, “I’ll say this--if you
didn’t get anything else out of that--that Wolcott episode, you learned
how to dress, and that’s _something_! I suppose everything you bought
in the east is as good as new; that’s what it is to be a string-bean
figure. I’ve burst through every rag of mine like an elephant through
a jungle; I expect any day now I’ll have to get a larger apartment!
My dear,” she shook her intricately waved head, “you simply can’t
imagine how lucky you are--never having to go into shops and ask for
‘out-sizes’; never have to let saleswomen as flat as paper dolls show
you their ‘stylish stouts’ and patronize you! I’m about discouraged,
Ginger. And that’s one reason”--she spoke more briskly--“why I’m going
down to the doctor’s camp. He’s asked me, year after year, but you know
how I hate the country; ranches are bad enough, but camps-- Well, I
_know_ I’d lose there--rough fare, and exercise. The doctor _says_ I’d
lose.”

Ginger tried to be grave and sympathetic. She thought her Aunt Fan
would enjoy it, and it was surely only right to go, when the doctor had
asked her so often. “And you mustn’t let me keep you, Aunt Fan, if you
want to go at once. I intended to stay only a few days with you.”

Mrs. Featherstone opened her prominent blue eyes. “But I want you to go
with me, child! You must go with me!”

“Oh, Aunt Fan, that’s dear of you, but I don’t believe I can--possibly.”

“Nonsense! Of course you can--what’s Estrada for, I’d like to know? The
doctor particularly wanted you to come, too. He says there’s a lively
bunch of young people this season.”

“I know,” said Ginger. “He wrote and asked me, but I told him I was too
busy.” She had the feeling that she did not care to be with a bunch
of lively young people; she did not feel like a lively young person
herself; she felt like a serious-minded proprietor of a big and busy
ranch, and she meant to go east again in the winter and feel a little
like Mary Wiley.

“Well, you’re not too busy--that’s too absurd for words, Ginger--and
you are going! Let’s see--this is Tuesday. You can telephone Manuela to
send your riding things straight to the Big Sur, and whatever else you
think you’ll need, and we’ll go direct from here, say, Friday--I’d like
to get a facial and a henna rinse before I go off to the wilderness.
The doctor said he’d drive in to Monterey for us.”

“Oh, Aunt Fan, you go without me, please! I--some way, I’m not in the
mood for it.”

“‘Mood for it,’” mocked her aunt, severely. “Since when have you
been having moods, I’d like to inquire? You talk like a girl in a
sentimental novel. No; I won’t stir a step without you, Ginger McVeagh,
and if you have any gratitude, after the way I traipsed across the
continent with you last year--” then, as her niece looked dangerously
unmoved, she came closer to her and spoke in a breathless whisper.
“Listen, Ginger, I haven’t told you the real reason, and I didn’t
intend to, but you’re so stubborn I see I’ll have to.” Aunt Fan had
out-sizes in speech as well as in hose. “The fact is, I’ve made up my
mind to--_make up my mind about the doctor_!”

Ginger frowned. “To make up your mind--I don’t understand, Aunt Fan.”

“Then you’re a ninny-hammer if you don’t,” said her aunt, complacently.
“You must know--every one else in California does--that he’s admired
me for years--before I married Jim--even before I married Henry! I
feel this way about it; I’m not getting any younger; if ever I’m going
to--take another step, now’s the time. I wouldn’t make a spectacle of
myself as I hear Jim Featherstone’s doing, but a suitable, dignified--I
tell you, Ginger,” sudden tears shone in her very blue eyes, “there’s
nothing funny about the last years of your life alone. I shall be
all right for ten years more, and then--fancywork, chimney corners,
solitaire!” She began to cry a little.

Her niece put an arm about her as far as it would go. “Oh, don’t cry,
Aunt Fan! You’ll always have me, you know. We’ll do a lot of things
together--travel, spend winters in the east--”

But her aunt shook her head vigorously, producing a small, pale pink
handkerchief and delicately drying her tears. “It isn’t the same, as
you’ll know some day. Well, will you or won’t you come with me?”

“I’ll come with you for a little while, Aunt Fan; a week, perhaps.”

It was true that she owed her plump relative something in the way of
escort and companionship, after her good offices of last winter, but
the keynote of the pilgrimage rather shocked and startled her. She
thought her aunt must be mistaken; the keen, splendid, out-of-doors
doctor, and Aunt Fan tapping endlessly on high heels down restaurant
floors--breathing always steam-heated air, knowing as little about a
horse as a zebra--

“All right, then--go and telephone old Manuela this minute, and I’ll
drop the doctor a line. My--when I think what it may mean to me, what I
may lose--” she went with heavy swiftness, taking her short, chugging
steps, to a tiny pink-and-gold writing desk, and it seemed to the
watching Ginger that she was considerably keener about what she might
lose than what she might gain.

       *       *       *       *       *

The doctor, brown and hard and happy, met their train at Monterey and
motored them down to his camp. It was in full swing: thirty persons
sat down to meals together in the big screened dining room--pleasant,
poised people from San José and San Francisco, people who had achieved
and arrived and were comfortably slackening the pace--but for the rest
of the days and evenings they were scattered. The doctor, undisputed
chief, by right of discovery and conquest of the wilderness, captained
the hunts, the long rides over the mountain trails, the daybreak
fishing trips; the judge rallied two teams for lusty morning games
of volley ball; an ardent golfer found a meadow where enthusiasts
might improve their form; the women spent long, soft afternoons over
intricate needlework for an orphans’ home bazaar; there were tables of
bridges, hammocks and magazines, picnics at the beach, stories by the
camp fire, dancing in the evening.

Ginger knew most of the older people, but the three or four girls
were strangers to her, and it is doubtful if they welcomed her with
any deep degree of pleasure; everything that they were--in riding, in
pictorialness, Virginia McVeagh, the far-famed “Ginger” of Dos Pozos,
was--and more. She was the doctor’s prime favorite; his keen eyes
rested on her in affectionate approval. She was quieter than she used
to be, he believed, but it was a sure and serene quiet, not a shy one.

They had been discussing a two days’ riding and camping trip and a very
blond girl leaned forward in her chair at table and called down to
Ginger. “Listen, Miss McVeagh, I want to give you fair warning about
the new Forest Ranger! I saw him first--I’ve got my fingers crossed!”
She held up two slim digits, twisted. “Ah ... wait till you see him!
Wallie Reed and Tommy Meighan and Valentino rolled into one! We’ll
never be the same again, any of us! Even Laura”--Laura, a brown-eyed
beauty, was newly and patently betrothed--“has missed a mail or two!
He’s--”

“Now, now,” said the doctor, rather quickly, “he’s a nice, likely lad,
but nice, likely lads aren’t any treat for Ginger--she has a whole
landscape full of them, down south. Well, she can judge for herself;
she’s going to ride out to Cold Spring with me this afternoon, and meet
him and get our camp-fire permit.”

“Oh, _doctor_!” wailed the very blond girl. “That’s playing favorites!
You know Miss McVeagh looks as if she had _invented_ horseback
riding--it gives her a terrible handicap!”

“Won’t you come, too, Miss Milton?” Ginger wanted calmly to know.

“I should say not! I won’t be a mob scene. But it’s not fair. I shall
stay in my cabin all afternoon and think up ways in which I may
outshine you.”

“I’m sure it won’t take you long,” said Ginger, amiably. She felt a
great deal older than the chattering, pretty creature; she felt older
and wiser than all of them--immeasurably older and wiser than the
rapt-eyed Laura.

She was ready at one to ride with the doctor, but when she walked down
to the corral, her Aunt Fan, panting beside her, she found Dr. Mayfield
putting her saddle on his own horse.

“Ginger, I’m going to desert you,” he said. “I don’t know whether Miss
Fanny has confessed to you or not, but she’s inveigled me into a game
of bridge.”

“My dear, I simply have to play bridge after the lunches I eat here, or
I’d take a nap, and that’s _fatal_! I’ve been shamefully deceived about
this place, anyway--‘camp fare!’ Better food than you get at the Ritz,
and much more fattening--hot biscuits--honey--”

“But, by way of apology, I’m letting you ride Ted,” said the doctor,
handsomely. There was nothing beyond that in his gift. “You don’t mind,
do you?”

“Mind riding Ted?” Ginger smiled at him, putting a respectful hand on
the big beast’s cheek.

“Mind going alone, Miss! And you’re to take this--” he strapped a belt
about her waist and slipped his pistol into it.

“Of course I don’t mind going alone, but what is this for?”

“Oh, there have been several mountain lions about, recently, and it’s
just as well--not that any mountain lion living could catch Ted, of
course, even if it wanted to!” He nodded approvingly as she swung
herself surely to the tall steed’s back. “You remember the way, of
course--up the Government Trail to ours, where we went yesterday, on
over the hill, past Post’s old barn--”

“I know,” said the girl, securely. “How long should it take me?”

“Well, Ted’s admittedly the fastest walker in the state, and part of
the time you’ll be able to let him out, but it’ll be two hours, each
way; you’ll be back by five-thirty, I should say, if you don’t linger
too long at the spring.”

“I sha’n’t linger,” said Ginger, with dignity. “He won’t keep me
waiting, I hope. I am just to ask him for the camp-fire permits?” She
turned Ted toward the mountain.

“Yes, he’ll have them made out, and he’ll be on time. Oh, yes--and ask
him to come down for supper with us, Saturday night, if he can, and
dance.”

Ginger nodded and rode away, and the doctor and her Aunt Fan stood
looking after her.

“Gad, Miss Fanny,” he said, ruefully, taking out his cheerful red camp
handkerchief and wiping his moist brow, “I wonder what she’ll say to us
when she comes back?”

“She’ll say ‘Thank you,’ if she has any gratitude,” said Mrs.
Featherstone, severely. “_Now_ I’ll go and get my nap!”

       *       *       *       *       *

Ginger had said truly that she did not mind riding alone. Much as she
liked and looked up to the doctor, she was not quite comfortable when
she was alone with him; she found his keen eyes too searching, and she
was always a little afraid he might say in his brisk fashion, “Now,
then, Ginger, suppose you tell me all about it!”

It was a joy to ride Ted, to feel his great bulk and power beneath her,
like a stout ship, like an eight-cylindered machine, and the afternoon
was clear and jewel-bright. The inevitable after-luncheon languor left
her when she drew rein on the first crest; the Ted horse had his second
wind and they went on with smooth speed. Once, about midway of her
trip, she figured, the horse stopped short, his ears twitching, his
delicate nostrils distending; her heart quickened a beat at what she
saw before her on the trail; lion’s tracks, positive, unmistakable; a
big one, clearly. She leaned forward and patted the shining neck. “All
right, Ted; I see it. Maybe we’ll get him!”

But the prints of the big pads left the trail abruptly and went off
into the brush--for a hapless fawn, doubtless, and Ginger and the
doctor’s horse went forward without adventure, until they espied, half
an hour later, another horseman coming toward them; the Ranger, she
thought, had ridden on from the spring, and she was sorry; it was, she
remembered, the clearest and coldest water in all those mountains and
she was thirsty and warm.

Immediately, however, she saw that the figure was that of a child on
a small old horse. He kicked the animal into a livelier pace at sight
of her, and saluted her graciously. “How do you do?” he said in a thin
and piping voice. “I’m not the Ranger. I expect you thought I was, at
first, didn’t you?--but I’m not. He’s waiting at Cold Spring. I’m his
Scout, and I rode on alone to meet the doctor, because I’m not afraid
of anything, hardly, and I ride everywhere alone, almost. Where is the
doctor?”

“The doctor didn’t come,” said Ginger, smiling at him. She liked boys
enormously, and this one was engaging. “He sent me instead to get the
camp-fire permits.”

“Gee! He let you ride Ted, didn’t he? I guess you must be a pretty good
rider.”

“Pretty good,” admitted Ginger, modestly.

“I’m a pretty good rider, too, now,” said the Scout, frankly. “I
guess maybe this horse isn’t quite as good as Ted, but he’s a very
good horse. His name is Mabel. He”--he leaned toward her and sunk his
treble a tone or two--“he’s a lady horse. Well, I guess we’d better
be going back to Cold Spring.” He turned the lady horse in the trail,
looking over his shoulder to explain to her. “I don’t know if you
understand that you must always turn your horse with his nose _toward_
the cañon--then he can see what he’s doing. If you turned him the other
way, he might back over; many a horse and rider’s been lost that way.”

“I’ll remember that,” said the girl, gravely, “and thank you for
telling me.”

“That’s all right,” he said, easily. “I guess there’s a good many
things I could tell you about horses and camping. Of course”--he
was painstakingly honest about it--“the Ranger taught _me_. I
lived in the city, and a person can’t learn much there. The Ranger
knows--_everything_.”

“Does he, really?”

“You betcher. He can ride like anything and he can shoot like--like
_anything_! He was a soldier in the War, and I’ll bet he killed
two or three hundred Germans _himself_. But he doesn’t like to kill
things, the Ranger doesn’t. He won’t shoot deer--only rattlesnakes and
varmints. But he can shoot--oh, _boy_!” He glanced back at the shabby
Airedale who was heeling sedately behind Mabel. “I guess you didn’t
notice my dog. His name is Rusty.”

“Hello, Rusty!” said Ginger, politely.

“Of course he isn’t really my dog, but I call him my dog. He likes me
better than he does the Ranger, but you ought to see how Snort loves
the Ranger.”

“Snort?” she said sharply. “Why--oh, of course--this must have been the
man the doctor wanted him for!” It was strange how the sound of that
horse’s name, all these miles away, and after thirteen months, could
make her heart turn over. She had been thankful to persuade ’Rome Ojeda
to let him go because she hadn’t wanted ever to see him again; now, it
appeared, she must see him again.

“Look!” said the Scout as they rounded a sharp curve in the trail.
“You can see Cold Spring from here and the--” he stopped, catching his
breath, pointing. “_Looky!_” he gasped. “It’s a mountain lion, chasing
a fawn! Oh, gee ... _gee_--”

Cold Spring was in an elbow of the trail--it was like an arm sharply
crooked to hold it. Snort, his reins over his head, cropped the sparse,
green grass; the figure of a man lounged at ease. It was an entirely
peaceful picture. But, just beyond, in the opposite direction from that
in which the girl and the Scout were coming, there was no peace, but
war; relentless war of extermination by the strong upon the weak. A
young fawn, breathless, almost exhausted, ran stumbling and swaying, a
pitifully few paces before a lion, long, lithe, trotting easily, sure
of its prey.

Ginger, watching from above, saw the scene unwinding before her like
a film. The horse flung up his head and trumpeted wildly and the
man, catching up the rifle from the ground beside him, sprang to his
feet. The baby deer saw him; it hesitated, staggering, its great
eyes wide with terror, its mouth open: before it was the trail, and
the lion gaining steadily, inexorably, and to its left, just off the
trail--_Man_--Man with the black and shining stick which barked fire
and death.

“Come!” said the man, softly, too low for the girl to hear, but the
fawn heard him. “_Come!_ Come on!”

The little creature turned from the trail and ran weakly to the Ranger
and collapsed in a quivering heap at his feet. Instantly, above it, his
rifle spoke: the lion leaped, twisting, into the air and fell to the
ground, writhing, uttering a wild, unearthly cry.

“Oh, good work, Ranger!” cried Ginger, half sobbing. She spoke to Ted
and plunged heedlessly over the edge of the bank, cutting down without
waiting to take the winding trail. She had never seen a surer shot; she
had never seen grim tragedy changed in a flash to peace and security,
and no scene in a New York play and no passage in a symphony had ever
moved her more. Her eyes were wet and her lips were trembling. “Oh,
fine, Ranger!” she said, unsteadily. “Good work, Ranger!”

And then Dean Wolcott, turning round from his inspection of the fallen
lion, faced her.




CHAPTER XII


DEAN WOLCOTT had many times--on his solitary rides, in his cabin, after
the Scout had gone to sleep--rehearsed his next meeting with Ginger
McVeagh, planned it, pictured it, set the stage: never had he dreamed
of such utterly satisfying scenery, such glorious action; riding a
gentled Snort after cattle at Dos Pozos before the respectful gaze of
the girl and ’Rome Ojeda was a slow and pallid film beside this!

He had wheeled sharply at sound of her voice, and now they were looking
at each other. His face flamed scarlet, but the bright color slowly
drained out of Ginger’s and left it in golden, creamy pallor. They held
the pose for a stunned instant, the man, rifle in hand, standing over
the beautiful dead beast, the girl, wet-eyed and breathing fast, erect
upon the doctor’s splendid horse.

“I didn’t know you were ... at the camp.” He heard himself speaking.

“I didn’t know you were the Ranger,” Ginger said, unsteadily.

It seemed then as if they had said all there was to say, and a pause
stretched out silently between them. It was broken by the Scout who had
slipped swiftly from the Mabel horse and was kneeling on the ground,
his ecstatic arms about the fawn. It was panting and struggling, its
dappled sides heaving painfully in the battle for breath, and its big
eyes rolled in sick panic.

“Oh, Ranger, can I keep him? Can I keep him and tame him and have him
for a pet? Can I?” The boy shrilled into their silence. “Oh, say, _can_
I? I betcher Aunt Lizzie would let me keep a _baby deer_, maybe! We got
a back yard! _Can_ I, Ranger?”

There was rescue and relief in walking over to him, in addressing
himself wholly to him, his back toward the girl. “Well, Scout, you
could, of course, but I think it would be a pretty mean trick to play
on him, don’t you?”

The kindling eagerness in Elmer’s face died hard. “But--if I was awful
good to him and fed him--’n’ everything? And no mountain lions would
ever chase him in the city! Oh, Ranger, _can_ I?”

Dean Wolcott thought that perhaps the girl would speak--he remembered
her hot convictions on the subject of captive wild things--but she did
not; perhaps she was likewise thankful for this instant of shelter.

“You can put your rope around his neck and see how he takes it, Scout,”
he said. “See if you can get him to drink, first of all. He’s too weak
to run away, yet.” Then he turned back to Ginger. “Will you dismount?”

“Thank you, no,” she said.

Even through the mists of amazement he sensed a difference ... what was
it? Intonation? Phrasing? It was too tiny a thing to notice, really,
but hadn’t she always said--“No, thanks”--with a certain slouchiness
of articulation? He could not know that this was one of Mary Wiley’s
small, smooth habits of speech.

“Then, may I give you a drink?” He pulled out his folding cup.

“Please! I remember Cold Spring; I’ve been remembering it, thirstily,
for the last hour.”

Gravely, he knelt and rinsed his cup and filled it and carried it to
her, and gravely she drank, and the stillness about them was charged
and quivering. If they had been alone-- But they were not alone. The
Scout called upon them in a thrilled whisper to revel with him in the
spectacle of the fawn drinking from his cupped hands, and again they
were grateful to him, thankful for him. They watched absorbedly while
he got his hair rope from the neck of Mabel, the lady horse, and put
it, shaking with excitement, about the slim little throat of the young
deer.

Then Ginger turned her gaze to the mountain lion, round which Rusty,
the Airedale, was walking, the hair standing up in a line from the
crown of his head to the tip of his tail. He was emitting low,
ferocious growls. “That was a good shot,” she said, levelly.

“Thank you,” said Dean Wolcott, pleasantly. “The element of surprise
was the only doubt; one could hardly miss a target of that size, at
that distance.”

Another pause came down out of the blue and enveloped them thickly, and
again the boy and the little wild beast filled up the stage. The fawn
had staggered to its feet at the feel of the rope and now, refreshed
by the water, by the minutes of rest, it began to battle this fresh
terror.

“Careful, Scout! If he gets away from you with that rope he’ll be out
of luck; he’ll hang himself in the brush within an hour!” Dean’s voice
was sharp.

“Oh, gee--will he? Oh, golly! _Gee!_ Then--then _help_ me to let him
loose!”

“I’ll help you!” Ginger was out of the saddle, down beside him, her
arms about the madly struggling body. It had been more than she could
bear, Dean Wolcott had calculated surely. “I’ll hold him. Get your rope
off. And boy, Scout”--she looked at him earnestly across the head of
the fawn, just as he slipped the hair rope clumsily off--“never keep
anything--tied or in a cage! Never keep anything--that--that doesn’t
want to stay!”

“I guess I won’t,” said Elmer Bunty, soberly. “I thought I could take
awful good care of him, but-- Look! _Looky!_”

The baby deer was trotting unsteadily back in the direction from which
he had come, making all the speed his weakness and weariness would
allow, but at the bend in the trail he paused and looked back over his
shoulder; he stood there, looking back at them for a long instant.

“He’s thanking you,” said Ginger, gently. “He’s thanking you--_both_.”

Now the boy was free to give his undivided attention to the dead lion,
and he joined the Airedale in his sentry go, and now Ginger was aware
of being off her horse, aware that she was--good heavens, what had
the doctor said about “not lingering”? He had known, of course, and
planned it all, and Aunt Fan had known--and perhaps the very blond girl
had known, and the whole camp--the whole gay, jovial, joking camp had
known.... She blushed, swiftly and scorchingly, and sprang into her
saddle.

“I must go,” she said, curtly. “It’s a good two hours--”

She gave Ted his head, and he sprang forward on the trail. She could
not even say good-by.

“Oh--wait!” Dean Wolcott called after her, but she pretended not to
hear. She was in a hot fury; she had been tricked and fooled; this was
why Aunt Fan had brought her down here; they were all waiting for her
now at camp, talking her over, laughing, conjecturing. “_Ted!_” She
flecked the shining flank with her _ramal_ (sacrilege, this!) and they
sped fleetly up the trail. She heard him following her; Ted heard, too,
and laid back his ears; there would be no passing him on the trail--no
catching up with him.

She could not forbear a look behind; she must see him on Snort; it was
not enough to hear the thundering hoofs, to imagine him. The instant
she turned her head he waved his hand with something--a paper--a card
in it.

“Your--permits!” he called. “The doctor’s camp-fire permits.”

Then she must wait, pulling in the mettlesome Ted, furious at herself
for forgetting, for betraying her confused bewilderment. The crisping
color stayed in her face, but she had a cool hold on her voice. “Thank
you--I’m sorry. Seeing the lion, and the fawn--it went out of my mind--”

“Naturally,” said the Ranger, gravely. He handed her the permits, and
he did it slowly, filling up his eyes with the sight of her. It was he
who wore the corduroy now; Ginger was in creamy linen, smartly cut,
with a scarlet band on her linen hat and a soft scarlet tie under the
rolling collar of her sport shirt; she was more radiant, more glowing,
more breath-takingly lovely, even, than he had remembered, and he had
remembered a great deal.

Then, just to make entirely clear the fact that she was wholly at her
ease, that there were, for her, at least, no stinging memories, the
girl said pleasantly--“Snort is in fine condition, isn’t he?”

And the man, quite as coolly, made answer, “Yes; he’s a great
horse--I’ve enjoyed him.” Then, as if to paraphrase ’Rome Ojeda’s
drawling words on that gray and baleful morning of the cattle drive, he
added, slowly, “But I’m thinking of changing his name. You see ... he
_doesn’t_ ... any more!”

It was her turn, now, during his leisurely sentence, to snatch a fuller
look at him, to sense the breadth and vigor, the brown and vehement
power of him; he looked older, in the way of poise and serenity, yet
more boyish--younger, winningly young, and it seemed as she looked at
him, meeting the eagerness leashed in his eyes, as if some force beyond
their stiff young wills must pull them down off their horses and push
them back into each other’s arms.

She did not answer what he had said about Snort, but she was not aware
that she had not done so, for she had paid full and instant tribute in
her own mind, and she knew that she must go _now_ if she meant to go at
all. She nodded, and spoke to Ted, and he sprang forward, but before
he had gone a dozen lengths she had to halt again; she could have wept
with rage at herself, but it would be intolerable to go back to camp
and confess to a forgotten message.

She called after him, not “Dean,” not the ridiculous “Mr. Wolcott,”
just a hail; but it stopped him instantly. “The doctor”--he could feel
the emphasis she put on the two words--it seemed to make the doctor
stand out, unique in his strange desire--“_the doctor_ hopes you will
come to supper at the camp Saturday night, and stay to dance.”

He asked her to thank the doctor and to say that he would try to come.
Then they went steadily on in their opposite ways and neither one of
them looked back again, and Ginger had almost two hours (Ted made even
better speed on the home trail) in which to get herself thoroughly
in hand before she met the campers. It suited her to find them all
assembled at the “Civic Center” as they called the cleared space about
the camp fire. The mail had just been brought over from Pfeiffer’s,
and they had all had their tingling cold showers and made their bluff,
informal toilets for dinner, and there was a chattering over letters
and magazines which ceased instantly as Ginger rode up. She might be
imagining a sort of electric quiet on the part of the whole group, she
told herself, but she was not imagining anything about the doctor and
her Aunt Fan.

The doctor paused in the middle of his gesture in handing a plump
letter to the betrothed girl, and his eyes twinkled uncontrollably, and
Mrs. Featherstone put her pink sport handkerchief to her lips. “Well,”
said Dr. Mayfield, genially, “did you meet the Ranger? And did you get
our permits?”

“Yes,” said Ginger. “I met the Ranger at Cold Spring, and here are
your permits.” She leaned from the saddle to hand them to him. Then,
addressing herself to the others, smiling a little at the very blond
girl who was holding up two crossed fingers for her attention--“And it
was a very nice surprise! I find your Ranger is an old friend. Yes; he
was Aleck’s best friend--over there. He was with him--on the last day.”
(Let them laugh now, if they could! But they didn’t laugh; they smiled
at her and murmured kind little fragments of sentences, and she went
on.) “And he made Aunt Fan and me a visit at Dos Pozos last summer.
You’ll be glad to see how husky he’s grown in this work, Aunt Fan!”
Mary Wiley could not have done it more handily, with nicer values. “And
it was very thrilling--I saw him shoot a mountain lion! I’ll tell you
all about it at supper, but I must fly now, if I’m to have my shower!”

She delivered Ted over to his master with a warm word of homage, and
ran to her cabin and went into it and locked both doors. She didn’t
want her Aunt Fan’s prominent blue eyes. Swiftly, an eye on the little
traveling clock in its case of scarlet leather, she pulled off her
clothes and jumped under the shower, and her slim brown body was
shivering before the nipping water touched it.




CHAPTER XIII


AT supper time she told them, graphically, and with full and generous
credit to the Ranger, about the mountain lion and the fawn, and was
entirely amiable about repeating in detail to any one who wished to
hear more.

She said to the doctor, while they were at table, lifting her voice a
little over the neighboring talk, that she was delighted to see Dean
Wolcott so robust. This life must agree tremendously with him. How
long--she was brightly, coolly interested--had he been in the west?

“Well, he’s been west of Boston for almost a year, I should say, what
with his work at the School of Forestry, and riding in Wyoming, and
all, and he’s been here in the Big Sur since early in June.”

The doctor was a little puzzled; he did not quite understand and he
did not at all like this hard serenity; she had not the look of a girl
reunited to her lover, he told himself rather anxiously. Later on,
when they were settling to bridge, he managed a worried word aside to
Mrs. Featherstone.

“I wonder, Miss Fanny, if we bungled it?”

“Certainly not,” said Ginger’s Aunt Fan, comfortably. “She’ll have to
stand off and act like her great-grandmother Valdés for awhile, of
course--that’s part of the picture, but _I’m_ not worrying--not about
_them_, at least!” She reached a plump hand into a candy box on the
next table. “Doctor, can’t you make it a camp misdemeanor for those
girls to leave this stuff around?--Chocolate creams the size of young
sofa cushions--”

And when she and her niece had gone to their joint cabin, three hours
later, and the girl maintained her cool serenity, she rode blithely
over it.

“All right, my dear! Keep it up! I glory in your spunk. But don’t you
ever think you’re putting anything over on your Aunt Frances May!”

       *       *       *       *       *

Dean Wolcott came to supper on Saturday night. The doctor said he was
sorry he had not thought to include the little Scout, but the Ranger
shook his head. “No, I’ve parked him at the cottage with Rusty, the
Airedale, inside and the Mabel horse saddled and ready in case he has
to do a hasty Paul Revere to get me. He’s reading _Pontiac, Chief
of the Ottawas_, and listening for the telephone, and reflecting,
chestily, that Edna couldn’t call him a ’Fraid-Cat if she saw him now.
Edna is a slightly older cousin who has been a great help to her mother
in making life miserable for him.”

“I’m simply mad about him,” the very blond girl whispered to Ginger.
She was wearing a baby blue organdie and looked like the fairest of
all the very young angels, and she had a slight lisp which one felt
she had not made very stern efforts to eradicate. “I adore the way he
talks, and the things he says--and that golden, patent-leather effect
of hair--oh, and the way he carries himself, and everything!”

“Aside from that, you don’t admire him especially, I gather,” said
Ginger, smiling carefully at her. She felt like a swarthy gypsy beside
her, and crudely strong and weathered.

Dean asked the very blond girl for the first dance, and Ginger for the
second, and the betrothed girl with the dreaming eyes for the third,
and he did not dance with Ginger again after that, but divided himself
among the rest, with two or three extras with the pale blue organdie.
Ginger knew and was sure that he knew that the doctor and her aunt and
some of the others were watching them keenly, and she held her Scotch
chin at a firm angle, and her Spanish mouth did not look in the least
as it had that day upon Aleck’s bridge. She asked him if he had been
able to save the skin of the mountain lion and was cordially pleased to
hear that it was in excellent shape, and had been sent into San José to
be mounted. Dean inquired for her henchmen at Dos Pozos with especial
emphasis on Estrada, to whom he sent his remembrances.

If the contact set their hearts to galloping as Snort had done in the
historic runaway, there was no visible evidence of it. They danced
beautifully together, and Dean applauded enthusiastically for an
encore, and they finished it out, and then he relinquished her to a
gray-haired, black-eyed gallant whose heels had remained as light as
his heart, and sat chatting pleasantly with Mrs. Featherstone. Almost
at once he was aware that she and her niece had spent the greater
portion of the winter in the far east, and when he went away to dance
again he said bitterly to himself:

“Well, that does settle it. Months in the east, and never a sign, never
a word--” and he asked the Fra Angelico angel in the blue organdie
to walk down to the creek in the moonlight after their next fox trot
together.

And Ginger, for her part, had told herself a hundred times, “He has
been here since early in June; he has never let me know; it is simply
over, that’s all; finished between us,” and she wondered just how soon
she could reasonably and with dignity persuade Aunt Fan to go back to
town.

Before the Ranger left that evening the doctor had persuaded him to go
with them on a riding trip, or rather, to let them time their excursion
with his regular ride to Slate’s Springs. The very blond girl was
to go; she had had a riding suit made by the smartest tailor in San
Francisco for just such an occasion as this, and--last and greatest
wonder of the world--Mrs. Featherstone was to go. The doctor had
told her seriously that the heroism of her diet must be supplemented
by exercise if she meant to melt her too too solid flesh--strenuous
exercise, not chugging down to the camp gate in her high heels and
short vamps after supper--and she had dared two or three very brief
equestrian outings on old Sam.

Ginger was amazed. “I think it’s sporting of you, Aunt Fan, but I don’t
think you realize how hard it’s going to be--and the doctor doesn’t
realize how soft you are! You keep telling that you lead an active
life, and he believes you, but if he knew that you think it’s activity
to walk from the St. Agnes to the Palace Hotel for lunch--”

“Now, don’t be a crape hanger, my child,” said her aunt, severely.
“Just because you’re out of sorts yourself--honestly, Ginger, the way
you let Dean Wolcott be gobbled up alive by that little, pale blue
string bean--”

Ginger was brushing her mane of black hair, and it hung over her head
and down before her face in a thick curtain. Her voice came through it,
muffled but wholly amiable, “He seems to be enjoying it, doesn’t he?”

“_Seems_, of course! That’s just it. Any man with the spirit of a
caterpillar-- Do you expect him to sit in a corner and twiddle his
thumbs until--”

“I expect him to do just as he’s doing,” said her niece, pleasantly.
She was giving her hair, it appeared, an especially thorough brushing.

“Ginger,” said Mrs. Featherstone, sniffing, “_Ginger!_ I guess we’ll
have to get another nickname for you. _Very_ weak Lemon Extract ...
Vanilla....”

The girl flung up her head and the black mane swung back over her
shoulders, thick and shining. Her face was a little flushed. “I’m
worrying about your riding to Slate’s, Aunt Fan. I’m positive it will
be too much for you.”

“Well, I don’t say I’ll enjoy it,” Mrs. Featherstone conceded. “That
isn’t the idea; I shall take it as I would take a dose of medicine.”

“But you can’t swallow it down with one brave gulp, Aunt Fan! You
haven’t any idea what it will be like, hours and hours--and _hours_!
Three days in the saddle, and one of the nights you’ll camp out and
sleep on the ground--”

“I’m not going to sleep on the ground; the doctor’s loaning me his
pneumatic-cushioned sleeping bag!” Then, as Ginger still shook her
head, “I’ll tell you, dearie, it’s this way. I haven’t quite made up
my mind about the doctor yet, but I’m making it up, and if I do--well,
I must learn to like the sort of things he likes, mustn’t I?” She
finished very sweetly, with a great deal of wistful earnestness in her
blue eyes.

“Well, I wish I could follow you with an ambulance, that’s all,” said
her niece, darkly.

       *       *       *       *       *

The doctor was much surprised and a little hurt to find that Ginger was
going to stay in camp and not make the ride with them, but she was very
logical about it. She knew his well-known preference for taking only a
small party; more than six made a cumbersome excursion, he held--they
were only as fast as the slowest horse in the string, and there was
constant dismounting for cinching and saddle-setting, and endless
delays; there would be seven in this party without her. She pointed
out, gently, that riding wasn’t after all such a treat, such a new
experience to her as it was to Aunt Fan, and the very blond girl.

They got off at nine on a blue-and-gold morning and Ginger was very
helpful and attentive to her aunt, who was large and impressive upon
old Sam in her borrowed riding things. Some one among the women had
produced an old-fashioned divided skirt of corduroy and her legs were
wound with spiral puttees of khaki. She was not ill-pleased with
herself. “Of course, I’m stout,” she whispered to Ginger, “but I do
taper. I have the wrists and ankles of a woman half my weight. This
isn’t a very snappy outfit, is it? But who knows--if I keep up this
sort of thing, by next summer I may be able to ride in pants and get
away with it!”

The doctor rode up to them. “Won’t change your mind, Ginger, even if I
let you ride Ted?”

“Thank you, no, Doctor. I’m going to be a magazine and hammock person.”
She held, indeed, a magazine, one of the sober and substantial ones.
She waved them out of sight and then found a hammock in the sun and
devoted herself to a rather stiff article on California’s attitude
toward the Japanese problem, and at luncheon she was very gay with
every one, and let the black-eyed gallant (who was just a little
flattered at her staying behind) take her down to his improvised golf
course and instruct her in driving off, which involved a good deal of
minute demonstration as to the position of her hands on the club.

Later in the afternoon she saddled a horse and rode over the hills to
the ocean and visited the valiant little old grandmother of most of
the families in the vicinity. She had come from Alsace when she was
a child, and she had crossed the plains in a prairie schooner when
she was a very young girl, and married and settled in that remote and
difficult spot. She had borne and reared nine children and buried four
of them, and she had been a widow for long years. Ginger had come to
see her on her last visit to the camp, and the old lady remembered her
perfectly and thought she was even prettier than she had given promise
of being, but she was a little worried to find she was not married,
at twenty-three, and had no prospects. Twenty-three was high time,
“Gramma” considered, to be about the real business of life. Clearly
sorry for her, she made haste to show her all her treasures--the many
patchwork quilts which she made in the wet winters when she couldn’t
work out-of-doors, slowly, because she had two paralyzed fingers
and the rest somewhat warped with work and rheumatism, the quaint,
water-colored picture which symbolized her father’s honorable discharge
from the French army, the curios her most venturesome son had brought
back from Alaska, her clock. This was a massive affair of onyx,
elaborately embellished, and there was a plate upon its front with an
inscription. The old lady had risen, one night of wild and violent wind
and rain, impelled by she knew not what impulse, and placed a lighted
lamp in her upper window, and hours later the shipwrecked crew of a
coast steamer had groped to her door. “Gramma” had warmed and dried and
fed them and put them to bed, and after their sojourn with her they had
sent the clock from San Francisco, inscribed with their names and her
name and the date.

“The boys fetched it down in the hay wagon, dearie, and it’s never
run,” she said regretfully, looking up at its silent and impassive
countenance--it was stating, mendaciously, in late afternoon, that it
was only ten o’clock--but clearly she bore it no grudge; it was almost
too much, she seemed to feel, to expect a clock as handsome as that to
keep time; the kitchen clock could do that: this one was dedicated to
being a thing of beauty, and therefore a joy forever.

Ginger, looking down at the dauntless small figure, the work-warped
hands and the unconquered brightness of the eyes, put an arm about
her suddenly and gave her a little hug. If the very blond girl and the
betrothed girl made her feel old and wise, “Gramma” made her feel her
untried youth. She had crossed an ocean and a continent, and helped
to hew a home out of a stubborn wilderness; she had borne and reared
and buried--there was a little graveyard on the high hill above the
ranch--done a woman’s work and a man’s work: three wars had roared and
flamed and guttered out again in her ken; the world had leaped forward
in science and invention, but she had lived on in her quiet corner, and
she seemed as old and as wise as the hills, and as glad as the morning.

She pulled Ginger down and kissed her warm cheek. “You hurry up,
dearie,” she said, urgently. “You hurry up! And I’ll give you a
quilt--that’s what I’ll do! A basket pattern, or a log cabin, or a
rising sun--you can take your choice!” She stood nodding and beaming
like an ancient seeress at the door of her cave. “You hurry up! You’re
young, dearie, but time goes fast--spring and summer, and then the fall
comes and the winter--_you hurry_!”




CHAPTER XIV


THEY had expected the riding party back for luncheon on Saturday, but
they did not come, and Ginger was unhappily sure that it was her Aunt
Fan who was retarding the procession. Some one raised a shout at six
o’clock that they were on the trail above the camp; ordinarily, they
would arrive in ten minutes, but it was half an hour before they wound
down beside the creek and through the rustic gate. The doctor rode
first.

“A fine trip,” he said stoutly. “Yes, it was a remarkably fine trip,
but Miss Fanny is pretty tired; it was just a little too much of an
undertaking for her, I’m afraid.”

“Just a little,” said Mrs. Featherstone, bitterly. She was bracing
herself in the saddle with both hands on the pommel, and her feet were
out of the stirrups, dangling. Her hat was pulled far forward and wisps
of damp hair adhered pastily to her face, and she was grimed with dust.

“I’d ride right up to my cabin, if I were you, Miss Fanny,” said the
doctor, his kind eyes solicitous.

“Yes,” said Ginger’s Aunt Fan through set teeth, “I shouldn’t like to
miss anything.”

Ginger, running beside old Sam, thought that he looked haggard and
sagged a little at the knees. One of the boys followed them, and with
his help she got her aunt to the ground. Mrs. Featherstone did not
speak until the boy had led the horse away to the corral, and then,
leaning heavily on her niece’s shoulder and breathing hard, she hissed,
“If you tell me that you ‘told me so’ I’ll kill you; I’ll kill you with
my bare hands.”

Ginger bent her head and bit her lips. “Let’s get into the cabin, Aunt
Fan.” She was very gentle about helping her. “Now, I’ll get those
puttees and shoes off, the first thing! You sit right down--”

“Sit down?” said her aunt, with bitter fury. “_Sit down?_ I never
expect to sit down again. If you can get my clothes off me standing up,
all right. Otherwise, they stay on.” She braced herself against the
wall and looked truculently down at the kneeling girl.

“Wait a minute,” said Ginger. “Aunt Fan, if you could walk up to the
bathhouse and get a hot tub--”

“Walk?” said Mrs. Featherstone. “_Walk?_” She looked as if she would
enjoy doing her young kinswoman an injury. “I guess you’d better leave
everything on; if you can lash me to the wall, some way, I dare say I
can sleep standing up; they say the men often did, in the War.”

“Oh, do let me get your things off,” Ginger pleaded. “You don’t know
how much better you’ll feel!”

“No, I don’t,” said her aunt, grimly. She shut her eyes and maintained
a brooding silence while her niece dragged off her puttees and shoes
and stockings and got her hot and swollen feet into soft knitted
slippers. “I can give you a foot bath, one foot at a time, Aunt Fan,”
she said, soothingly. “Don’t you worry--I can manage nicely!” She set a
basin of water to heating over an alcohol stove and ran back to divest
her of her other clothing, and to cold cream the dust from her burning
face; sometimes she had to rush into the tiny dressing room and fight
down a positive hysteria of mirth, but at last she had the large lady
cleansed and in her nightdress and kimono. “And now, if you’ll get into
bed, Aunt Fan, I’ll bring your supper!” she said, cheerfully.

“I sha’n’t move,” said the sufferer, firmly. “You can bring me food--”

“Yes--a little soup, and some hot tea--” said Ginger.

“_Food_,” said her aunt, with sudden vigor. “_Added_ to everything
else, I’m half starved. Bring--everything you find.”

She was still standing, braced against the wall, when the girl came
back with a laden tray, and Ginger put it on the waist-high shelf which
served for a dressing table and she was able to manage very nicely.
Nourishment seemed to unseal Aunt Fan’s lips. “I’ve made up my mind
about the doctor,” she said, darkly. “My _Lord_--that man isn’t a
suitor; he’s a mule driver! It wasn’t so bad the first hour, and even
the second hour I could stand it by thinking about other things, but we
rode until one before we stopped for lunch, and then I had to get off
... and to get on again ... and then we rode until six, and had supper
and went to bed--to _bed_!” She groaned aloud, pausing with a bit of
buttered biscuit half-way to her mouth. “He picked out the steepest
hillside in the entire Santa Lucia Range, and the one with the most
rocks on it ... all those rocks couldn’t have been born on it; he must
have lugged some of them there! Then he blew up that sleeping bag;
_sleeping_ bag! I’d like to know the village wag that invented it. It
was like trying to rest on a school of hot-water bags; first I rolled
off one side of it and then off the other, and then it slid down the
grade--it was as slippery as if it had been buttered! It slid down
five times and I guess I’d have gone straight down to the ocean and I
wouldn’t have cared much, either, if the doctor hadn’t caught me as I
went past, every time; he was ’way below that girl and me. Finally, he
tied it to a tree.... I never closed my eyes all night, and that Dr.
Rawdon never closed his mouth all night. I give you my word it sounded
as if he was doing it on purpose; I should think his wife would poison
him. And when I dozed off at four o’clock--I was so weak and exhausted
I just lost myself for a moment--the doctor began calling people to
get up! Ginger, I swear to you, if I’d had a weapon within reach I’d
have murdered him. That’s all he’s done on this trip--call people to
get up--up in the morning, up from a nap, up on the horses again. If
he ever gets to Heaven they’ll retire Gabriel on pension and give him
the trump!” She stopped, gasping a little, and ate earnestly for a
moment. “Can you imagine me, making my toilet at quarter after four in
the morning on a glassy hillside, Ginger McVeagh? I’d lost most of my
hairpins and my lip stick and my powder in those slides, and I had to
borrow from that canary-headed paper doll that’s vamping Dean Wolcott
till he doesn’t know whether he’s afoot or horseback. The doctor
started us off again before it was light, and we rode and we rode and
we _rode_--”

“I know, Aunt Fan. I know,” said Ginger, soothingly. “Now if you’ll
just get to bed--”

“Will you wait till I finish my supper? I tell you I’m weak for the
want of food. And when we got to Slate’s, late yesterday afternoon, the
doctor said I must take the hot sulphur bath or whatever it is, and I
thought I would; I might be finished with him as a friend, but I could
still take his advice as a physician. Well....”

“I know what it’s like, Aunt Fan; I’ve been there, you know,” said
Ginger, turning back the covers of the bed.

But nothing could stem the tide of her monologue. “It’s about seven
miles from the house, to begin with--”

“Oh, Aunt Fan--half a mile!”

“--seven miles down a horrible trail above the ocean, and that paper
doll went with me, and there was no bathhouse; there was no bathhouse
but a flag; you put the flag up or down at the top of the trail and
that shows whether there’s anybody bathing, and if you’ve got the
signal right, perhaps nobody comes down.... There were simply two tubs
right out in the landscape; it’s the most indecent thing I ever----”

“But, Aunt Fan, it’s under the side of the hill; no one could possibly
see you, and the flag was----”

“What about the ocean?” her aunt wanted indignantly to know. “What
about the Pacific Ocean? A steamer and a tug and two fishing boats
went by; I felt like a mermaid without even the privacy of a tail. But
I didn’t mind the ocean and the boats as much as I did that girl; I
detested her the first minute I laid eyes on her, and now she’s my most
intimate friend!”

“Aunt Fan, you _must_ try to rest! Just try lying down and see if you
don’t--”

“I suppose I can lie on my face,” said Mrs. Featherstone, staggering
weakly to the bed. “I shall faint away and die if I don’t get off my
feet; they’ve ulcerated.” She eased herself with sharp groans, to a
kneeling posture upon the bed. “I wish you could have heard the way the
doctor spoke to me, coming down that ghastly trail, just above camp.
The way he----”

“Now, Aunt Fan,” said Ginger, loyally, “the doctor may have been a
little impatient, and no doubt he was anxious about you, but----”

“That’s right,” said her aunt, heavily. “Turn against your own! It was
a hideously dangerous piece of trail, and I said I was going to get off
and walk--I was being shaken right up between the horse’s ears--and
I _wish_ you could have heard the tone in which he told me to stay
on. I give you my sacred word of honor, no man has ever spoken to me
in a tone like that--not even Jim Featherstone at his worst, and as
for Henry--Henry would have _died_ before-- Well, I’ve made up my
mind, all right. Dr. Gurney Mayfield could never make a woman happy;
I suppose he might make her healthy, if he got her young enough, but
not”--she stopped suddenly--“where are you going?”

“I thought I’d go up to the Lodge for a few minutes, Aunt Fan, after I
take this tray back,” said Ginger. “I think you’ll relax and rest if
you are quiet.”

“Oh, very well,” said Mrs. Featherstone, letting herself down, inch
by inch, “go on and leave me! I came here for you, and suffered and
endured all of this for you, but never mind that. Go on and dance!
_Dance!_” She writhed at the thought. “But I suppose it would be
easier”--the words came muffled from the pillow--“for me to dance a
dance than to--_sit_ it out....”

Ginger put the tray down again and ran to draw the covers up over the
plump shoulders. “I’ll come back very soon, Aunt Fan, and please try to
sleep!”

“Sleep!” said her aunt, sniffing angrily and burrowing into the
feathery depths. “I’ll probably smother, but I guess there won’t be
much mourning,” and just as Ginger stepped outside she heard her
murmuring--“suppose I’ll have to sleep this way for a month ... thank
the Lord I didn’t waste a fortune getting my face lifted--a lot of good
it’d do now! I should have had my head examined instead!”

Ginger carried the tray to the kitchen and the kind little waitress
said she was glad to see the poor lady’d kept her appetite, and then
she walked out into the soft dusk and stood looking about the doctor’s
beloved camp. It was not quite dark, but the circling hills were
closing in, somber in silhouette, and the stars were very remote and
cold and bright; the tall redwoods seemed to stand guard over the
little cuddling cabins, and the trim little paths showed up whitely
against the darker earth surrounding them. It was a night of brisk
weather and there was no camp fire; they were all gathered in the
Lodge, and there were leaping flames on the hearth and a teasing tune
going on the phonograph, and the sound of rhythmic feet. Ginger stood
irresolute; she hadn’t thought she wanted the Lodge’s robust gayety
to-night, but she didn’t want to go back to the cabin until her poor
aunt had fallen asleep. While she was hesitating the doctor came to
the door and called her in.

“I’m might sorry about Miss Fanny,” he said remorsefully. “There won’t
be any serious consequences, of course, but I see now--as I should
have seen before--that she wasn’t equal to it.” He sighed a little. “I
expect my enthusiasm carries me away, sometimes.”

Ginger wondered if the doctor, too, had been making up his mind to make
up his mind--and had made it up. He was looking rather pensive, and a
good deal relieved.

The Lodge, save where the bridge players sat, was only dimly lighted
by Chinese lanterns and it was several minutes before Ginger saw that
Dean Wolcott was among the slow-moving dancers. The doctor went back
to the card table and she sat down in a dusky corner and hoped no one
would see her and ask her to dance. They were all very gay to-night;
the whole camp seemed vibrating with the laughing, lazy tune the
machine was grinding out; she decided to take her Aunt Fan back to San
Francisco as soon as she could stand the trip, and to go home to Dos
Pozos. She wanted work. And in December she would go on to visit Mary
Wiley.

The dance was finished and another one started, and Dean Wolcott bent
over her, suddenly. “Will you dance with me, Ginger?”

“I don’t think--I shall have to go back to Aunt Fan--” she began
uncertainly.

“Please,” he said, very low, and she got to her feet. The music was a
slow, throbbing thing, built on an old slave melody; there was longing
in it, and recklessness, and a little recurrent strain of poignant
pathos. They danced twice the length of the Lodge without speaking.
Then, without warning, when they were near the door, his arms tightened
about her. “Come out,” he said, imperatively. “Come down to the creek;
I must talk to you. Will you come, Ginger? You must come.” Still
dancing, her feet were guided almost over the threshold, and Dean
thrust out his arm to open the screen door.

But he stood still, staring, and his other arm fell away from her, for
a horseman was galloping furiously up the inviolate Main Street of the
tidy camp. “It’s the Scout!”

“Fire!” shouted Elmer Bunty, loping the Mabel horse to the very door
of the Lodge and making a spectacular stop. “Forest fire, Ranger!”

“Where?”

Some one had turned off the phonograph and the dancers were crowding
out and the card players were pushing back their chairs.

“Lost Valley, coming this way with a high wind and coming fast!” This
was the moment Elmer Bunty had been living for; there were thirty
people looking at him and listening to him now, and Ginger saw with a
little clutch at her heart that Dean Wolcott was not unmindful of it.

“Good work, Scout!” he said roundly. “Doctor, my Scout brings big news
and bad news--fire in Lost Valley, coming this way with a high wind.”
It was the new Ranger’s first fire, every one knew.

“And coming _fast_!” said Elmer Bunty, importantly.

       *       *       *       *       *

Gayety fell from the camp, slipping from its shoulders like a bright
cape. The doctor, veteran fire fighter himself, mobilized his forces to
join the regulars of the vicinity--seasoned soldiers at Pfeiffer’s,
at Post’s; it was said that Mateo Golinda moved on the creeping flames
like a wave rolling up from the sea. The women put away their pretty
needlework and made stacks of hearty sandwiches and gallons of coffee,
and the boys and Ginger rode up to the first fire line and carried them
to the men.

Ginger’s Aunt Fan thought the most sensible thing for them to do was
to take the stage back to Monterey--agony as the trip would be for
her--but she found her niece adamant. “I can help the doctor,” she
said. “I’m not going to leave, Aunt Fan.”

She knew that the doctor had a double anxiety; beside and beyond the
red terror that menaced his camp and the country he loved, there was
his concern for Dean Wolcott. He had stood sponsor for him to these
people, persuading their own tried Ranger to go away on leave and give
his friend a chance, and now they were waiting and watching to see him
make good.

“Doctor,” said Ginger to him on the third day, riding up to meet him
with supplies, “I wish you would let me help you! I know how--I’ve
fought fire at home a dozen times with Aleck and Estrada.”

“You are helping me, Ginger, bringing up our food, looking after things
at camp-- It’s a great comfort for me to know that you are in charge
there.”

“But I’m not really needed there, doctor. In case of danger they could
all walk over to Pfeiffer’s--even Aunt Fan”--she smiled a little--“and
be taken in to Monterey. And I am needed here; you’re terribly
short-handed.”

“I know we are, just now, Ginger, but Dean has telephoned in to King
City to the Chief; he’ll be coming in to-morrow himself, with twenty
men, bringing their own supplies.”

“Yes, but to-day, and to-night?”

“We’ll manage; we’ll manage.” His eyes were bloodshot and his face was
lined with weariness and grimed with smoke, but he pulsed with energy.
He was dedicating himself gladly to the wild land which had been, quite
literally, his recreation; it had given him endless joy and content,
and now he was fighting in its service.

“Please let me stay?” Ginger put a hand on his arm. “I thought you
might; that’s why I came alone to-day, without the boys, and I left
word for them not to be anxious at camp if I didn’t come back--that I’d
be with you.”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t think of it, Ginger. Miss Fanny would
never forgive me; I expect she never will, as it is! No, you must go
back to camp.”

Ginger swung into the saddle. She flushed, but her gaze was very
steady. “Doctor, how is Dean doing? Are you satisfied?”

The taut lines of his face loosened and his tired eyes warmed. “Ginger,
that boy’s doing splendidly--remarkably! I’m no end pleased with him.
Fighting like an old campaigner, but he’s trying to swing too much
alone. He’s handling all the Marble Peak slope by himself--just the
youngster with him. Insisted on it, but it’s too much; he has all the
theory, but he hasn’t had the practice. Still, he’s doing great work,
Ginger, great work! If I had a man to spare, I’d send him over to him,
but we’re short ourselves, and we’ve got a nasty stretch. Well, I must
be getting back to work, and you must be getting back to camp. Tell the
folks not to worry--we’re getting it under.”

“I wish you’d let me stay,” said the girl, mutinously, but she turned
her horse and started down, and waved back at him just before she
rounded the bend. He was a gallant figure as he stood there, swinging
his old wide hat, fighting guardian of the hills and the trees he loved.

Ginger rode very slowly down the trail, and when she came to the
forks she drew rein. The right-hand trail led down to camp, and the
other wound back by a rising and circuitous route to the Marble Peak
territory. The air was heavily sultry and there was a brooding and
ominous feeling in it; flakes of ashes and bits of charred leaves
and now and then a spark fell to the ground; the sky was obscured
by a low-hanging curtain of smoke. There was a sense of menace and
foreboding, of the relentless advance of an implacable foe.

She sat there for a long moment and she was so still that a gray
squirrel, anxiously sniffing the sinister breeze, came close to her
before he was aware of her presence. She took swift account of her
equipment--two large canteens freshly filled with water, a compact
little case of sandwiches, a sharp hatchet in its leather case, three
sacks tied to the back of her saddle. Then, with her Scotch chin thrust
a little forward and her Spanish mouth smiling and tender, she turned
her horse and set swiftly forth on the red trail that led to Marble
Peak.




CHAPTER XV


THE new Forest Ranger for the Big Sur District and Elmer Bunty, his
Scout, rode rapidly away from the doctor’s camp on the night of the
fire alarm. They spoke sharply and concisely to each other and were
immensely cool and collected about it all, but each of them was high
keyed with excitement. To the boy, it was a vivid drama, staged for his
especial benefit, and to Dean Wolcott it was the final stage of his
proving. Hotly as he had exulted when Ginger yielded for that instant
and keenly as he had wanted that moment with her by the creek, away
from the gay and strident music and the gay and friendly people, he
was glad, now, for its postponement. When he had conquered his first
fire he would go to her with another decoration, another evidence of
his citizenship in her vigorous world: he smiled at his heroics but he
continued to be satisfied that things had worked out as they had.

Snort was making for the cottage at Post’s at an eager pace and the
Mabel horse galloped earnestly and clumsily after them, and sometimes
the rhythm of the hurrying hoofs was like the lilt and swing of the
music, back at the Lodge ... when Ginger was in his arms.

There was an hour of swift and sure preparation and then a snatch of
sleep; and at the first graying light of dawn they were on their way.
Rusty, the Airedale, was left at Post’s, but before they had ridden an
hour he had overtaken them, panting with a violence which seemed almost
to rend him asunder, a bit of torn rope hanging to his collar.

“He _has_ to be with me,” said Elmer Bunty, proudly. “I’ll take care of
him, Ranger.” So the shabby little dog went on with them, and rested
thankfully while they made a brief stop at the Golinda ranch; Mateo
Golinda had left an hour earlier for the fire, and his wife would ride
after them with food and coffee late in the afternoon.

“It’s your first fire, isn’t it?” she said, regarding him thoughtfully
with her bright and friendly eyes. “It’s hard, heart-breaking work, but
I think you’ll enjoy fighting--and winning. Mateo is wonderful; he
will be at your right hand.”

She had cleverly calculated the time they would be passing and had
stirrup cups of hot chocolate for them; she set them off as blithely
as if they had been going to a barbecue. A heartening person, Margaret
Golinda; across a continent and an ocean, down the long corridor of the
years, her house would always be “King’s X!” to Dean Wolcott.

They rode on together, the Ranger and the Scout on Snort and the Mabel
horse with the Airedale plodding sturdily behind, and soon there
was tangible evidence of the red demon in the distance. The boy was
stout-heartedly ready for action and the young man considered him with
warm and possessive pride. Air and exercise and good food had nourished
his meager little body and comradely appreciation had fed his starved
soul. A very different creature, this, from the one who had come into
Pfeiffer’s on the stage that day, clinging and timid, and yet the old
wise women of the ranches told Dean Wolcott--“that boy’ll never make
old bones,” and the doctor shook his head. “If you’d gotten hold of
him two years ago--” he said once.

But the Ranger refused to accept these dark forebodings; young Elmer
Bunty had wriggled his way deep into his reserved affections and he had
no intention of leaving a stone unturned to save him, body and brain.
For a week, now, he had been revolving schemes in his mind. His San
Francisco friend had written him, acknowledging receipt of the Scout’s
salary for delivery to the aunt.

  Your Scout’s relative appeared to-day with her usual punctuality
  to collect the reckless wage which you are lavishing upon him, but
  after bestowing it in what I think she would call her safety pocket
  she remarked that it would be her last collecting call; she was, she
  stated, taking Edna and going “back east to her husband’s folks.” She
  has long contemplated such a step, it appears, but has been deterred
  by her tender consideration for the son of her sister, deceased--said
  Scout above mentioned. Now, however, that he is self-supporting and
  has found a protector--my impression is that she thinks you are not
  quite all there, old son--she is about to fold her tents like the
  Arabs. Elmer may in future keep his entire wage, she says, and saying
  which, departs--so thoroughly that the places which knew her, know
  her no more. The Edna must have been waiting for her outside my
  office, I gather, booted and spurred and ready to ride. Thus, in a
  word, you are now the only known human being to whom my measliest
  Scout can turn, and I earnestly urge that you continue to be as human
  as is Bostonly possible!

Dean Wolcott had made up his mind to leave Elmer Bunty in the best
California outdoor school he could find--somewhere near Santa Barbara,
perhaps, or in the Santa Cruz mountains--whichever climate was best
for him, and at holiday time--but his mind refused to function coolly
on plans for the future. That instant’s yielding of Ginger to his
insistent arms--who could say where he would be himself at holiday
time? He dragged his thoughts resolutely back to the subject of his
Scout. The time had come, he thought, to tell the youngster that he was
going to be his guardian--he would go thoroughly into the matter with
his San Francisco friend, of course.

But Elmer Bunty broke the silence, before he had formulated his plan of
announcement. “Ranger--say, I don’t guess Edna could call me ’Fraid-Cat
now, could she?-- Riding to a forest fire’n everything?”

“She could not, Scout,” said Dean, cordially. This was an excellent
opening. “And speaking of Edna----”

The boy appeared not to have heard him. “Ranger,” he said shyly, “do
you think I--oh, not yet, but _some_time--do you think I’ll be--not
just a good Scout, but--but like men call each other--‘_a good scout_’?
You know how they say, ‘He’s a good scout’? Do you guess I ever will,
Ranger?”

“I guess you _will_,” said Dean Wolcott, roundly. “I consider you a
‘good scout’ now.”

“Honest-to-goodness, Ranger?” He flushed so riotously that even his
flanging ears grew rosy. “Cross-your-heart-hope-never-to-see-the-back-
of-your-neck?”

The Ranger nodded gravely. “In speaking of you to a friend I feel I
should be certain to use that term. ‘Who is this fellow Bunty you’re
always talking about?’ some one might say to me, and I would say, ‘Oh,
he’s a great friend of mine,’ and then if the other fellow said, ‘What
sort of a person is he?’-- I should without hesitation reply, ‘He’s a
good scout; he’s--a _good scout_!’”

Elmer Bunty was silent from pure pleasure; it fairly pulsated from him.
He leaned forward and put his arms warmly about the neck of the lady
horse, and then he leaned down out of the saddle (much as the Indians
did, he firmly believed) and petted Rusty.

“And, feeling that way,” said Dean Wolcott, “it’s going to be pretty
hard for me just to shake hands with you and let you go, when your
vacation is over, and my time here in the Big Sur.”

“I know,” said the boy, soberly. “But we can write each other postcards
and maybe letters, can’t we, Ranger? And maybe, next summer----”

“How would you like to--well, belong to me, Scout? If it can be
arranged-- I mean, not go back to your aunt and cousin, but stay
with me, and go to one of those mountain schools and have a horse to
ride--all that sort of thing? Take a trip east with me, and see the
Grand Cañon on the way, and perhaps Niagara”--he turned to look at him.

Elmer Bunty’s face was white under its hasty coat of tan, and his eyes
were wide. “Oh, gee!” he breathed, “Oh, gee--_golly_!” Then the light
went swiftly out of him. “It would be great, Ranger, but I don’t guess
I could. I don’t guess I could leave my Aunt Lizzie and Edna.”

“But if they--”

He shook his head. He was very regretful, but very firm about it. “You
see, I’m the only male person there is in the family, and they depend
on me an awful lot. Even if we asked them, and they said they would
let me go with you, I don’t guess I could; I’d know they were just
_pretending_ they didn’t need me!” His flat chest swelled visibly at
the thought. Then he thought hungrily of the glories that might be his.
“Do they honest-to-goodness let you have a _horse_ at those schools,
Ranger?”

“They honest-to-goodness do, Scout.”

“Oh, gee--_golly_....” His pale eyes visioned it for a dreaming
instant, and then he squared his narrow shoulders. “But it isn’t as if
I didn’t have my fam’ly, Ranger. Of course, I’ll be with you just as
much as I can, and we’ll write each other shads of letters, won’t we?
But--”

And Dean Wolcott perceived that there was before him a task of extreme
delicacy which must wait for a less crowded hour. It was going to be a
difficult thing to save his Scout’s self-esteem alive for him, and to
make his joy in the new world opening up before him outweigh his bleak
sense of uselessness; the Ranger’s rage rose in him at the thought of
Aunt Lizzie and Edna ... crossing the continent smugly in a tourist
sleeper with food in a greasy shoebox and complacency in their hearts.

But presently they arrived at the fire’s first trench and found Mateo
Golinda already at work, and all lesser concerns gave way. The Spaniard
was cool and capable and tireless, and almost at once he paid Dean
Wolcott the supreme compliment of leaving him to work alone with the
boy while he took charge of another spur of the mountain.

Long before noon the heat was almost unbearable; the August sun bored
down through the canopy of smoke and the smoke folded the heat about
them, close and stifling, and their eyes stung and watered and their
throats were parched in spite of frequent sips at the canteens. They
chopped; they beat the creeping fire with wet sacks; they chopped
again; then, for a while, they worked with spades; then it was time
to chop once more, and then the wet sacks. They settled down into a
steady, unhurried routine--digging, chopping, beating, resting for a
moment or two, snatching a gulp of water; digging, chopping, beating.
The boy worked gamely and the shabby Airedale stayed at his heels,
yelping now and then when a spark fell on his thinly upholstered hide.
He kept his tail between his legs and at intervals he put his nose in
the air and howled dismally but he refused to stay behind with the
horses; Dean Wolcott sent the Scout back from time to time to make sure
they were safely tethered and more especially to give him a breathing
space, and the dog went thankfully with him, and disapprovingly back
again to the battle line.

A party of deer hunters had promised to come before twelve o’clock
but they did not appear. Mateo thought some one might come up from
Tassajara the next day, and Dean had gotten a message through to the
Chief Ranger at King’s City, but there were other bad fires in the
vicinity; he might not be able to send help to them at once.

They stopped at dark for a short night’s sleep, Mateo Golinda and
the Ranger standing watch, turn about, and at dawn they were fighting
again--digging, chopping, beating at the red tongues with their wet
sacks. The fire was not getting away from them, but they were not
getting it under; it was an even break between them and the red demon.
By a miracle of mercy the spring, an eighth of a mile below, was on
the untouched side, and the men took turns in carrying water for their
sacks, and in filling the canteens.

Margaret Golinda had ridden up to them, late on the first day, with
coffee and food, and they had sent the Scout far down the trail to meet
her.

Dr. Mayfield came on the afternoon of the second day, tired and
dauntless and full of optimism: he admitted that it was a nasty
fire--the way the wind kept veering about--harder to fight than as if
it had been concentrated; too bad those deer hunters had failed them,
but they were holding their own in every section; a good, stiff fight
(the doctor clearly liked a good, stiff fight whether it was to save a
man or a forest of shining _madroña_) but they were going to win.

His own crowd from the camp had come across nobly and the women
were working like beavers to keep them fed; the boys and Ginger were
constantly in the saddle.

“But--look here, Dean--you ought to have somebody with you beside your
boy. Mateo’s almost too far away in case of anything sudden, I’ve told
you how fast it travels when it starts in the bottom of a cañon; it’s
as if it were sucked through a funnel--simply races up--_up_, roaring.”

“I think I can swing it,” said Dean Wolcott. He looked uncommonly fit
and eager and fresh.

“It means working like two men instead of one,” said the doctor,
doubtfully.

“Well, can’t you figure the satisfaction it is to me to be able--at
last--to work like two men?” He swung his arms and pulled in a deep
contented breath. “I’m enormously happy, Doctor. Please don’t give me a
thought.”

The doctor gave him a great many thoughts and they were singularly
proud and pleasant ones. He stayed an hour with them so that his Ted
might have a little rest, tethered down the trail by Snort and Mabel
with his saddle and bridle off, but he himself did not require any
rest, apparently, for he used a shovel and a hatchet and swung a sack
all the time he was with them.

They allowed themselves more sleep that night, and at dawn Mateo
Golinda decided to leave them. “I think you will not have more
trouble,” he said in his careful English, warmed still with accent and
intonation. “I go home for a day; I return to-morrow to make sure all
is finished.”

The Scout sat up and rubbed his eyes. He was intensely sleepy and very
tired but a little loath to have the adventure ended. He made a tour of
inspection while Dean Wolcott heated their coffee, and came importantly
back to report that everything was quiet--a sullen smoldering here and
there in the charred blackness, that was all.

“Fine, Scout. But”--he consulted him gravely--“I don’t believe we ought
to leave yet, do you?”

“No; I don’t guess we ought to leave, Ranger. We ought to stay on
the job to-day and to-night; you never can tell.” He wagged his head
owlishly.

“That’s the way I feel about it, Scout.” This would be a good time, he
thought--the long and lazy day of patroling--to tell Elmer Bunty of
his aunt’s defection and to spread before him the happy plans he had
made. Directly they had eaten their scanty breakfast they walked down
the trail to the horses and saddled them and rode two miles to a place
where there was lush and lavish feed for them--they had been on short
rations for three days now. It was a gently sloping hillside covered
with white pines and carpeted with fresh and hardy green. The Mabel
horse whinnied with pleasure at sight of it. They removed the saddles
and bridles and Snort was staked out with a generous length of rope;
the lady horse would be canny enough to remain without being tied.

Dean Wolcott meant to have his talk with Elmer Bunty as they walked
back up the trail but they found themselves a little spent and languid;
the mere business of climbing, afoot, was sufficiently engrossing. They
would rest, when they got back to their station, and talk in the warm,
still afternoon.

But there was to be no rest for the Ranger and his Scout that day. A
slim snake of fire had crawled over from the floor of one cañon to
another, coaxed on by a treacherous wind, whispering close to the
ground; by seven in the morning it had grown to be a dragon in size
and strength and it was roaring up the side of the mountain which had
been inviolate before; in half an hour it would be upon the spot which
harbored the spring.

Their tired bodies and their weary wills grew taut again. “Water,
first,” said Dean Wolcott, curtly. They filled their canteens and
soaked their sacks and staggered up the slope three times with slopping
buckets, and then they worked fast and furiously on their firebreak.
Almost without pause birds flew past them, coming up from below,
uttering strange cries, and presently small, shy beasts began to run up
to them and past them.

“Look, Scout,” said Dean, softly. “I’ve heard about it and read of it,
but I’ve never seen it before--wild things fleeing before a forest
fire. Let’s stand aside here and watch for a moment. Come over here,
where you can see down.”

They came swiftly and silently, panting with haste, their soft eyes
wild--squirrels and little bush rabbits scurrying by the dozen; now a
pair of small foxes running low; a wildcat, crouching, slinking, belly
to the ground; coyotes, gaunt and gray and furtive; does and fawns, and
four or five great bucks driven out of cover at last, and at the end
of the hurrying horde a mountain lion and his mate. There was something
primeval about it; something simple, and far away; Dean Wolcott held
his breath.

“Oh, gee--_golly_, Ranger,” the boy whispered, pressing against him,
“get your gun! Get your gun! _Get your gun!_”

“No, Scout,” he whispered back. “It’s against the law--written and
unwritten; wild things fleeing from a forest fire are protected. Look
at their eyes as they go past. Could you?--”

“No, I don’t guess I could, Ranger.” His chin quivered a little.

“What does it make you think of, Scout?”

“A circus?” His face fell. “I saw a moving picture once--”

“It’s like creation; it’s the first chapter of Genesis.... Boy, it
isn’t given to many to see a thing like this; we must remember it all
the days of our life. We are watching _the earth bring forth the living
creature ... cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth_....”

“Yes, sir,” said the Scout, earnestly.

All the animals for miles about must have been congregated in that
cañon; it had been, until now, scatheless, and there was water, but
their sanctuary had betrayed them and they were fleeing for their lives
from the red terror, passing the lesser enemy with hardly a conscious
look. They came on for an incredible time but there was an end of them
at last. Small stragglers came gasping at the heels of the procession
and scurried by; then the slope was empty of movement.

Dean Wolcott drew a long breath. “Now, we’ll get to work, Scout; plenty
of time to stop it.”

But the boy pointed excitedly. “Look--there’s one more lion, all alone!”

It was far below them, standing still, a beautiful great beast, and it
lifted its head and called, a long, seeking, mournful cry.

“It’s lost its mate, Scout; it doesn’t want to go without it. That’s
pretty fine, isn’t it, with the fire just three jumps behind?”

Elmer Bunty nodded solemnly and they set to work. They already had
a firebreak of sorts in that direction and now they widened it as
fast as they could, plying hatchets and shovels. The fire came up the
mountainside just as the doctor had said it did, as if sucked through a
funnel, roaring, unbearably hot. The lone lion fled before it at last,
loping forlornly and calling as it came; it passed between the two
human beings heedlessly, engulfed in its private woe.

Their break held; the fire stopped when it came up to it, hissing and
snarling; burning twigs snapped with a sharp, incisive sound. “We’ve
got it,” said the Ranger, exulting. “It’s just like a football game,
Scout!--” He chanted hoarsely a slogan of old gridiron days--“‘Hold
that line! Hold that line! Hold that line--_hard_!’” But it appeared
immediately that they would have to hold a great deal harder yet and in
a great many more places, for a whirling dervish of a wind sprang up,
whisked here, whisked there, twisted and turned unexpectedly, caught
up a flaming leaf and carried it carefully to a distant patch of dried
grass, ran impishly back and forth, whistling, whining, making hot
havoc.

Again they went about their dogged routine; they chopped with their
hatchets, they spaded, they beat upon the fire with their wet
sacks--until there was no water left to make the sacks wet with. Dean
Wolcott thought with worshipful longing of summer rains in the east;
why did they never come to this parched land of summer? A downpour now
... the sound of rushing rain....

They worked, the young man and the thin Boy Scout, until it seemed
certain that they could not work any longer, and then they worked
on. They dug frantically into the sun-baked earth; they chopped
frantically with their hatchets into the singeing chaparral; they
slapped frantically at the flames with their dry sacks; and sometimes
the sacks caught on fire. Then the witch-wind went away as suddenly
as it had come, and up from the ocean--as if impelled by the Ranger’s
rain-prayer--rose a dense gray fog, blessédly cool, blessédly wet,
blessédly enveloping.

At the end of another hour they were able to stop; a charred world was
smudging sullenly into a soft, gray curtain. They went a few yards back
on the trail and dropped thankfully to the ground. They were utterly
spent; their hair was singed, and their eyebrows, and they could
hardly see out of their bleared and smarting eyes, and they had both
burned their hands again and again. They were too weary to speak, but
somewhere in the great gray space they heard the lone lion, calling ...
calling....




CHAPTER XVI


AT first, when she set out on the trail for Marble Peak, Ginger hurried
a little. She had a guilty fear that the doctor might have read her
mutinous purpose in her face and ridden after her to make sure, but
when ten minutes had passed she knew she was not being followed, and
she ceased to urge her mount. The fire fighters had exhausted the
camp’s supply of good horses and this was an old and spiritless beast,
hardly more than adequate for the daily trip with supplies.

“Easy, now, Pedro,” she patted the lean neck. “We’ll take it easy, old
boy.” She saw she would have to nurse him along very carefully to make
the ride, but once they came up with Dean he could rest, and she felt
rather ruthless. Her only real concern was getting to Dean, and she
felt as she had felt that day in Boston, waiting in the hushed little
hotel for an answer to her note. Yet there was a great and shining
difference. That had been undertaken as a duty of decent reparation;
beyond the fact that she was going to ask his pardon or at least to
state her regret for her crude and callous behavior at Dos Pozos, she
had not mentally set the stage.

This was no penitential pilgrimage but a glad and glorious journey,
ending, as journeys should, in lovers’ meeting, and this time she had
indeed set the stage; she had been doing it ever since she had felt the
sudden tightening of his arms about her as they danced in the Lodge to
the wheedling, coaxing music of the old slave tune. “Come out!” he had
said, imperatively. “Come down to the creek; I must talk to you. Will
you come, Ginger? You _must_ come!” She remembered every commonplace
syllable and invested it with poesy and ardor, and she planned rosily
for the scene of their reunion and reconciliation. She wished a little
that she might have worn her riding suit of deep cream linen with the
scarlet tie and hat band instead of her seasoned corduroy, but corduroy
was the only wear for work of this sort, and Dean Wolcott himself,
the new Dean Wolcott, wore corduroy now; he had put on the official
uniform of the outdoor working west. And besides, she told herself
contentedly, she was bringing him other adornments; she took stock,
with a proud humility which was new and strange to Ginger McVeagh, of
her more careful speech, her gentler judgments, the clever choosing
of her clothes, her honest appreciation of the things of his world.
Her heart warmed at the memory of Dean Wolcott’s sympathy with Elmer
Bunty’s great moment, the other night, riding madly up on the lady
horse to bring the news of the forest fire, of the way in which he
had kept his Scout in the limelight for an instant. Dr. Mayfield had
told her that the child would never live to grow up; he gave him, in
fact, hardly more than a year, but Ginger, riding the high wave of
happiness, told herself that she would prove her friend wrong for once
in his wise life. Elmer Bunty should go to Dos Pozos to be cuddled by
old Manuela and fed by Ling, to drink golden milk and sleep out in the
tonic air all through the calendar; death on a pale horse riding should
be routed--she felt strong and victorious as she thought of it. Great
surges of joy went over her as they had done when she sat in her perch
at Carnegie Hall, hearing her first symphonies.

But no surges of joy of any size whatever were going over Pedro; the
wretched animal was plodding miserably, his head hanging, and the girl
drew rein, dismounted, and pulled off the saddle with guilty haste. She
would give him a half hour of rest while she ate her supper, and then
go on at a very moderate pace, walking where the grade was steepest.

The horse managed a precarious roll where the trail widened a trifle
and stayed level for a brief space, and then he cropped without
enthusiasm at the sere grass. Ginger ate her substantial sandwich
with hearty young hunger and regarded the rest of her supply somewhat
wistfully: she could have finished it, to the last crumb, but she was
sure Dean Wolcott would need extra rations. It was an amazing thing:
at Dos Pozos, when he had been weak and wasted, she had been hard; now
that he was as fit as she was herself, she yearned over him. She had
met his weakness with scornful strength, and now she met his strength
with a rich and mothering tenderness.

Dusk was creeping up the cañon when she flung the saddle on Pedro
again. “We’ll do it in two hours,” she told herself, “taking it
slowly.” It was hard to be hobbled by a stumbling, tired, old horse
when she wanted a Pegasus, a steed who could--

She halted sharply, the bridle in her hand. A horse was coming down
the trail, running, plunging, the stones scattering before his flying
feet, and it sounded like disaster of some sort. People did not ride
down the Marble Peak trail at a pace like that. An instant later Snort
came into view and with him came reassurance, for he was without saddle
and bridle and a long grazing rope swung behind him. One never tied
Snort securely, the girl remembered, because of his dangerous habit of
pulling back, and he had evidently become terrorized at the approach
of the fire, discovered that his rope was merely wound in and out of a
stout bush, and taken to his heels.

He halted now, at sight of her, trumpeting as wildly as ever in the
days of ’Rome Ojeda, clearly considered the inadvisability of trying
to pass her and her mount, wheeled, started up the trail again in
the direction from which he had come, remembered the thing that had
frightened him, turned again and plunged down the steep incline which
led to the cañon’s floor. She could hear him crashing, fighting his way
through the tangle of brush and low-growing shrubs and tripping vines,
snorting as he went.

He was down at last, but hysterical with nerves; he could be heard
dashing forward, dashing back, stumbling, plunging into traps and
fighting his way out again; shrilly sounding his fear.

Ginger nodded with satisfaction. Here was a task; here was a thing to
do for Dean. There would be a tremendous satisfaction in bringing Snort
back to him.... The stage for their meeting was hastily reset. Not on
the tired and stumbling Pedro, after all, but mounted on the historic
steed who had parted them and was to bring them together again.

“I’ve brought Snort back to you!”

It made good imagining, the look on his face when he should see the two
of them.

She tied the uninterested Pedro securely and hung her saddle with the
canteens and sacks and the packet of sandwiches over a limb, took her
little hatchet in hand and climbed carefully down into the cañon. It
was too dimly lighted to make out the animal at the bottom, but he was
clearly to be heard, and she called to him, soothingly, coaxingly,
cajolingly, and he stopped plunging to listen for an instant.

“Good old boy, Snort ... good ... old ... boy!” The velvet voice
steadied him. She could hear his great gasping breaths but he was not
trumpeting; it was going to be easy, after all, and she was conscious,
tolerantly amused at herself, of a little regret. The longer the chase,
the harder the struggle, the more she was doing; the handsomer her
service, the more dramatic her entrance. Dusk was coming rapidly up
above and the green depths were in dark shadow; she should have brought
her flash light. If the pixie steed refused to be taken in hand at
once, if there ensued even a slight delay, they would be in darkness.
With a sigh of impatience at her heedlessness, Ginger turned and
scrambled up the steep incline again, slipping, pulling herself up by
vines and roots, reached the trail, dug out the flash, and started down
again.

This time, a little breathless, hurrying, careless of the failing
light, she did not watch her footholds and a large and permanent
looking stone turned under her, almost tripping her, and went hurtling
down.

“It won’t--it won’t--it _won’t_ hit him!” she told herself vehemently,
in prayerful assertion, but, if it did not, it grazed him closely
enough to have the same result, for she could hear him rearing and
crashing in a way that made his former panic seem like composure by
comparison. Presently, the sounds warned her, he had headed back toward
Marble Peak and the conflagration.

And now the episode left off being an amusing little adventure and
assumed the outlines of a grim task. Ginger shook off her temper and
her disgust at her own carelessness, and looked intently about her. It
would be half an hour, and perhaps more, before she brought Snort up,
and she must make sure of finding her station on the trail, and Pedro.
She mentally catalogued an oddly square rock, a grotesquely twisted
root, took off her scarlet bandanna and tied it to a low limb, before
she made her cautious descent.

Two hours, dark and difficult ones, were to pass before she found her
landmarks again. Her little wish to do her lover a service had come
largely true: she had toiled in his cause as she had never toiled
before in all her vigorous young life.

Snort had reverted swiftly to type; he was ’Rome Ojeda’s horse, and not
Dean Wolcott’s. Memories of remorseless punishments for misdemeanors
like this came back to him; clearly he weighed in his mind the relative
tragedies of proceeding into the heart of the burning district and of
permitting himself to be caught. He would turn, snorting with fear as a
gust of wind brought hot smoke and stinging sparks, and start backward,
yet when Ginger, edging and inching craftily closer, the velvet of her
voice roughening with huskiness--“Steady, boy, Snort ... good ... old
... boy ...”--put out her hand to take his rope he would wheel again,
choosing the red danger ahead.

Ginger’s hat went in the first quarter of an hour and her hair was
dragged down and filled with leaves and bits of broken vines and there
was a red scratch on her cheek; she was hot, breathless, dripping. The
easy and comfortable thing which she would have called her religion was
a quaint quilting of Alexander McVeagh’s rugged Scotch Presbyterianism
and old Manuela’s handy and available _santos_, Aleck’s sane and
hearty creed of playing the game, and her own childishly cherished
habit of wishing on white horses and red-headed girls, on loads of hay
and shooting stars, and she brought it out now and aired it and shook
it into service and kept up her courage, for there was a brief period
when it seemed that she would not only fail in bringing the wild horse
to her lover but would inevitably lose herself.

“Steady, Snort, old boy ... good ... old ... boy!” she would croon,
adding, between tight shut teeth--“_Devil--demon--fiend!_ Oh, if I only
knew what it was that Balaam did to the horse in _The Virginian_ I’d
do it to you--when I catch you--only _harder_!--No, I wouldn’t, Snort,
poor old boy, dear old boy.... Good ... old ... boy....”

The climax came suddenly, after all. Snort twisted his rope round a
tree, went three times round himself, and was prisoned, pulling back,
snorting shrilly, throwing himself twice, but standing still at last,
showing the whites of his eyes in the moonlight which now poured down
into the cañon in a silver flood, his heaving sides lathered with
sweat.

Ginger sat limply down close by and leaned her head back against a cool
rock. “I tried just as hard as that, to get away from him--and stay
away from him--” she said, grimly. “But I’m going back, and you’re
going with me.” She sighed, utterly tired and utterly content. “It sure
does look,” she spoke as ’Rome Ojeda would have spoken, “it sure does
look like he’s gentled us both!”

Presently, when girl and beast were breathing normally again, she led
him back to the point where she had left the trail, and Pedro made his
one valuable contribution to the expedition by whinnying loudly and
guiding them up.

Ginger flung the saddle blanket over Snort’s steaming back, turned up
her collar, and sat down, the runaway’s rope in her hand, to wait for
the first graying of the dawn.

“I have brought Snort back to you.”

After all, she was going to be able to say it. She folded her arms
across her knees and laid her throbbing head on them, and slept a
little in snatches, dreaming high-colored, stirring dreams.




CHAPTER XVII


DEAN WOLCOTT and his Scout slept soddenly for hours and woke, aching
and hungry, in the early dusk.

“Well, this is a bone-headed business, Scout,” said the Ranger,
disgustedly. “We should have got back to the horses by daylight. Tumble
out! We’ll have to shake a leg!”

The boy pulled himself gallantly together but he was clearly exhausted.
“Oh, we’ve got our flash light, Ranger. We’ll be all right!”

“We’ll be all right as long as the flash holds out, but it needs a new
battery, and the new battery is in the saddlebags at White Pines.” He
shook off the mantling fatigue. “We’ll be all right anyway, of course.
It won’t be pitch dark for an hour yet, and we’ll save the light till
we absolutely need it. Wait--let’s see how we’re fixed for water!” He
picked up the canteens and investigated. “Water’s your best friend, old
son, and we’re going to have prize thirsts for days to come. What?--
Yes, of course, there’s the spring at White Pines, but it’s beastly
hard to locate after dark.”

He found that they had less than a canteen between them so he made the
boy rest again while he clambered down the charred and fog-drenched
slope to the spring. It was trampled and muddied by the fleeing animals
and choked with burnt leaves and twigs; it was a slow job to fill the
two canteens and make his way back to the trail, and he found the Scout
asleep.

“Tumble, out, old boy!” he said, rousing him reluctantly, for he looked
white and spent and very childish in the half light. “But we want to
get back to Snort and Mabel, don’t we?”

“You betcher!” said Elmer Bunty, stoutly.

“All set? Right! Hike along behind me; we can see for almost an hour,
and it won’t take us long to get there.”

“Say, Ranger, why don’t we go the short cut over the hill--the one Mr.
Golinda showed me? It saves a mile.”

“I’m not sure enough of it in the dusk, Scout; we might waste more time
fooling about looking for it than in keeping to the main trail.”

“No, we wouldn’t! I know it, sure as shooting, Ranger. He showed me
that first day when I went down to meet Mrs. Golinda and I came back
all alone! I can find it, Ranger!”

It didn’t matter particularly, Dean thought, if they did poke about
in the twilight for an extra half hour; if the youngster could
dramatize the dreary stumble through the damp dusk, let him. He had a
surprisingly good sense of direction.

“That’s a Scout’s business, _scouting_,” said the boy, contentedly.

“Right. Lead off, old top.”

The Scout with Rusty at heel set forward with amazing briskness. “I
remembered this funny shaped _madroña_ tree right here. And a little
ways ahead there’s a big rock, hanging right over us....” He trudged
sturdily. “I don’t guess we’ll have much to eat to-night, will we,
Ranger?”

“Well, not what you’d call a banquet, Scout. But we’ll munch a few
raisins and a cracker and do a Rip Van Winkle, and dream about the
breakfast Mrs. Golinda’s going to give us in the morning. We’ll be up
with the lark and pop in on her and meanwhile we can feed our fancies
on the thought of her coffee and golden muffins and broiled ham and
scrambled----”

“Ow,” said the Scout, ruefully. “I wisht you wouldn’t.... I betcher
she’ll give Rusty a bone, too. I like that lady an awful lot, don’t
you, Ranger?”

“Best in the world, Scout.”

“And I like that girl that the doctor lets ride Ted, don’t you, Ranger?”

“Yes,” said Dean Wolcott, “yes, son, I like that girl.” He threw back
his head and laughed aloud. “Oh, boy, I like that girl!”

“Me, too,” said Elmer Bunty.

He was making good progress considering the fast fading light but the
dark was coming down on them like a released curtain. Dean experimented
with his flash and found that it gave out only the palest possible
gleam; it must be kept for emergencies.

“Oh, gee--_golly_!” said the boy, suddenly. “It’s still burning down
there, Ranger! Look!”

Some of the territory which Mateo Golinda had considered out of danger
had relapsed again; it was not a dangerous burning--a low, smudging,
stubborn fire which could not make great headway against the fog.

“I don’t think it can do any harm, Scout. Mateo Golinda will be back in
the morning to look things over.”

“Oh, gee ...” said the Scout, “this way seems most as long as the
regular trail, doesn’t it? But we’re nearly there, I guess.” Then he
quite evidently revived his fainting spirits with stimulant. “Say,
Ranger, we might be trappers or pioneers or--_anything_, mightn’t
we?--sneaking along like this? Or Pontiac, Chief of the Ottawas! Say,
I betcher it was slick to be an Indian chief ... or even an Indian
brave.... Gee, _golly_, but it’s getting dark, isn’t it, Ranger?”

“Shut your eyes for a minute, Scout, and then open them; it will seem
lighter.”

“Say, it does, doesn’t it?” He plodded sturdily on.

“I’d keep away from the edge, Scout; it’s wet and slippery, and a
misstep would mean a bad tumble.”

“All right, Ranger; only, we have to keep _pretty_ near the edge
because that’s where the trail is.... Yes, sir, I betcher it was fine
to be an Indian brave--hunting and fishing and having the squaws to do
all the messy things; and battles ... hanging down on your horse and
shooting under his neck--_Ow!_” He stumbled and caught himself. “Gee, I
nearly did fall that time, Ranger.”

“Look here, Scout,” said Dean sharply, “I believe we’d better stretch
right out here and wait till daylight. Let me go ahead, at any rate. My
turn to lead, now!”

“I want to get back to Mabel,” said the boy, doggedly. “It must be
pretty near, now, Ranger.... And when a brave died in battle they tied
him on his faithful horse and brought him back to camp, didn’t they?
Gee ... I betcher all the squaws cried like _any_thing.... Tied on
his faithful horse.... Say, Ranger, you know I think that’s lot more
exciting than just hearses and hacks, don’t you?”

“_Much_ more exciting, old son!” His heart warmed within him--the game
little sport, plodding through the damp darkness, aching-tired, hungry.

“When my uncle died, Aunt Lizzie, she had an awful stylish hearse
and there was eleven hacks; she hated to pay out such a lot of money
but she said nobody could never say she didn’t give him a stylish
funeral.... It was a grand hearse, all right, but I think ‘tied on his
faithful horse....’” He was silent then, for he had to stop and peer
owlishly through the darkness and take hold of trees and get down on
his hands and knees and feel for the path. “It’s all right, Ranger!
We’re keeping on the trail, all right!” He got up and went forward
again, inching his way. “Say, I don’t guess Edna could ever--” he
broke off at a disturbing thought. “Say, Ranger, you know, Edna’s an
awful funny girl ... she just won’t _believe_ a person. If I tell her
about riding Mabel and fighting fires and finding trails in the dark,
she’ll just laugh and say ‘_Uh_-huh! _Uh_-huh! Yes, you did! Yes, you
did _not_!’ I was just wondering ... if you should ever come to see my
Aunt Lizzie and me and my cousin Edna, maybe you could kind of--drop a
word--”

“I could tell that Edna girl things that would make her hair grow
upside down,” said Dean Wolcott, heartily. “I could tell her things
I’ve seen you do, and dangers I’ve seen you experiencing that would
keep her awake nights! I could--and I would, with pleasure.” (As long
as he said could and would instead of can and will, he wasn’t lying to
the child; when they were fed and bathed and rested he would tell him
about his Aunt Lizzie and his cousin.) “Scout, let me go ahead, now.
You walk behind me and hang on to my belt. It’s too dark for you to--”

But the boy gave a little chuckle of delighted satisfaction. “Well, if
_you_ told her....” Although they could not see each other, he turned
his head and spoke to him over his shoulder. His voice was hoarse and
he choked a little. “Oh, gee--_golly_, Ranger, I do like you! I _do_--”
He slipped, and struggled to catch himself, battled for an instant
while Dean Wolcott sprang toward him, toppled over the edge of the
slippery trail into the black cañon.

He screamed as he fell. It seemed to the young man that the long,
thin scream of terror would never stop, but when it stopped suddenly,
utterly, as if it had been turned off by machinery, it was worse.

“Scout! Oh, Scout! Are you all right? I’ll come after you, Scout!
Scout! Can you call, so I can find you? Oh, Scout!”

The Airedale, whining, terrified, flung himself against him. “Find,
Rusty! Find!” he said. “Find Scout! Find, Rusty, find!” The dog went
swiftly over the edge and down, and Dean could hear his sharp staccato
barks; it was much as if he were trailing a rabbit.

The Ranger leaned over and turned his feeble spot light into the
blackness, but it made a little mocking circle--a tiny tunnel into the
dark which led nowhere. He started down; he could hear the dog and
follow him, and the dog would find the boy. “Scout!” he called. “Oh,
Scout! I’m coming, old son! I’m coming!”

Then his feet shot from under him and he fell. He clutched frantically
at the chaparral and at the ground as he slid over it, and he had a
clear instant of horrified realization that it was hot ... _hot_. Then
some one seemed to rise up out of the night and fell him with a blow
upon his head, and he stopped realizing altogether.

The thing that disturbed him and brought him back to consciousness,
that made him struggle back from pleasant peacefulness to pain and
bewilderment was a prolonged and bitter howling.... He thought at
first that it was the mountain lion which had lost its mate; then he
recognized the voice as that of Rusty, the Airedale, and everything
that had happened came back to him.

He found that he was lying with his head against a tree; no one would
ever know why he hadn’t broken his neck. He got his arms around the
tree and dragged himself to his feet, and collapsed again, giddy and
faint, but the howling kept up, unbearably, and this time he pulled
himself to his hands and knees and started at a snail’s progress in the
direction of the sound.

They were not very far away from him, the Airedale and the Scout,
though it took him some time to reach them. The dog was circling about,
varying his lament now and then with a yelp of pain for the ground was
almost covered with smudging embers, but the boy was wholly still.

The young man laid shaking hands upon him and found to his horror that
the Scout’s uniform was on fire in several places, and he pulled off
his coat and wrapped it about the inert body and beat out the little
blazes with his bare hands, and still Elmer Bunty made no sound. It was
necessary, first of all, Dean told himself, forcing himself to think
collectedly in spite of the wild throbbing of his head, of the sense
of nightmare unreality about it, to get him away from this particular
spot where there was so much smoldering fire. Back there by the tree,
where he had struck, there had been no fire; therefore, he would take
him over there--he was sure he could locate it. Besides, the moon was
coming up; the radium face of his wrist watch said that it was time for
the moon to come up; he counted childishly upon its coming. Now he got
his hands under the boy’s armpits and began to drag him, cautiously,
for fear of slipping, along the ground, and at the first movement the
Scout came out of his swoon and screamed as he had screamed when he
fell.

“It’s all right, old son,” said the Ranger, soothingly, “it’s all
right! You had a nasty fall, but Rusty found you, and then I found you,
and now we’re all----”

But the boy cried out again in agony. “Don’t--move me! Don’t _touch_
me!”

“I know, Scout--those burns hurt horribly, but as soon as I get you up
on the trail--” he began gently to drag him again, but Elmer Bunty beat
at him with one feeble hand.

“Oh--Ranger--_don’t_! I can’t--_breathe_--I’m all--broken--to
_pieces_--” he was sobbing, gasping.

Then the young man stopped dragging him and laid him gently down on the
ground and began to feel of his legs and his arms and his back with
slow, probing fingers, and the Scout bore it with what heroism he could
muster until Dean reached his back, and then he screamed again, more
terribly than before, and mercifully fainted. This time the Ranger was
able with infinite pains and unbelievable exertion to get him back up
the slope to the trail before he recovered consciousness and began the
dreadful sobbing again. He could move one arm and hand and he touched
the back of his head.

“My head is ... leaking,” he said. “I don’t guess it’s ... blood, do
you ... Ranger?”

“It is bleeding, a little, Scout.” He was stripping off his own shirt
and tearing it into bandages. “I expect you struck it on a rock; I
whanged into a tree myself, you know, or I’d have been over there with
you sooner.” He wound the khaki strips about the head, covering the
great jagged cut; the blood spurted warmly over his fingers while he
worked.

“Now, Scout,” he said, kneeling over him, “this is the stiffest job we
ever had to do together; it’s worse than ten forest fires. Are you game
for it? Are you going to stand by me? Rusty found you, and I’ve brought
you up, and Mabel is waiting for you, but you’ve got the hardest part
of all; you’ve got to let me carry you.” He bent closer. “There’s a
good Scout!”

“No, Ranger, no! I can’t--_please_--”

“I know how those burns are smarting, and I know there’s something for
the doctor to mend, but we’ve got to get out of here--that fire is
coming up again, Scout; we’ve got to go; we’ve got to go as the animals
went yesterday--remember? Now I’m going to carry you just as gently and
easily as I can, but--I’m going to carry you. We’re going to Golindas’,
and Mrs. Golinda will help us till Mateo can bring the doctor--there’ll
be a soft bed, Scout, and warm food, and dressing for the burns--” His
own emergency case--he cursed his heedlessness--was in the saddlebag at
White Pines.

Once Dean Wolcott had seen a small bedraggled kitten defending itself
against a terrier. He had broken its back, apparently, for it could
not rise, but it lay there, embattled, fending him off with its tiny,
futile claws. Before he could rush downstairs and out into the yard--it
was over. It was like that now, he thought, sickened, the way the child
beat him off with his one hand ... the way he must close in on him....
“I don’t dare let you wait, Scout; I don’t _dare_--not to do this!”

He got him up at last, face downward, over his shoulder, steadying
him and holding him with both hands, talking to him, crooning to him,
soothing him, walking slowly for fear of falling, walking faster for
fear of the galloping moments. Every atom of his will, every cell of
his brain, every nerve of his body was mobilized; he felt curiously
light and free and strong; he could carry his burden like this for
hours if need be.

Then the moon came up, just as he had calculated that it must, the
waning moon, lopsided and sagging, pouring its clear effulgence down on
the somber hills, on the black mountain peaks, spilling it down into
the depths of cañons--into his cañon there, and into Ginger’s cañon,
miles away on the home trail.

“Ah,” he said, joyfully, “now we’re all right, aren’t we, Scout? Now we
can make speed! But first I’m going to put you down and have another
look, and see if I can’t make you a little more comfortable.” He eased
him to the ground with passionate care but the child never ceased his
low sobbing.

The moon illumined him whitely; it showed the Ranger everything there
was to see; it played over Elmer Bunty like a searchlight of radium; it
seemed to pierce through and through his broken little body.

Dean Wolcott got up from his inspection and walked away a few paces and
stood looking blindly down into the silvered ravine. When he came back
and sat down beside the boy his voice sounded ragged and uneven. “I
think we’ll rest here awhile, Scout,” he said. “We won’t try to go on,
just now.”

“No,” said the Scout, gasping, grateful, “we won’t--go on--” The
Airedale snuggled close to him and lapped his hand and wrist without
ceasing. “Rus-ty ...” said the boy with difficulty, and then--“...
wisht that Mabel was ...”

“What is it, Scout?” Dean bent his head low to listen.

“I don’t guess Edna ...”--the words trailed away, feeble,
uncertain--“’Fraid-Cat ... all burnt’n everything ... not crying ...
_much_....”

And then, in spite of what he had said, the Scout left his friend and
his dog and went on, alone.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now it was hideously easy to carry him. It seemed to Dean Wolcott as if
he must walk on without pausing, past Golindas’, through the doctor’s
camp, to Monterey, to San Francisco, bearing the small, broken body
in his arms until he found the Scout Master, and said--“See, I have
brought him back to you, Elmer Bunty, the boy you sent me, the one I
ordered especially--to whom I could boast and brag of my woodcraft and
wisdom. I said I would make a man of him. You see what I have made of
him.”

It was almost grotesque to find how near they had been to White Pines
all along, and it was another world, clean and green and fresh. He laid
the Scout down on a bed of bending brakes and went methodically to look
after the horses.

Snort was gone. The Mabel horse greeted him thankfully, but his own
mount, the wild red roan who had betrayed him at Dos Pozos, had
deserted him now in his dark hour.

He offered a cracker to Rusty but the dog refused it in bitter
preoccupation. The lone lion was calling his mate quite close to them
now, but the Airedale paid no heed.

Dean Wolcott sat down beside the body of his Scout, his head bare, his
heart heavy, his face hidden in his hands. The sound of the mourning
beast’s lament fitted blackly into his mood. The world was a bleak
place of loss. The quaint, engaging little creature who had established
himself so snugly in his heart was dead; Snort was gone; he had only
imagined that Ginger yielded to his arms that night, that far-away
night of laughing and music at the Lodge. Ginger would go back to her
cattle ranch and marry ’Rome Ojeda: she had spent a whole winter in the
east and never made him a sign. It would not be necessary, now that he
had seen her, and demonstrated his brilliant ability to sit a horse, to
go to Dos Pozos. He would telegraph the regular Ranger to come back and
release him: then he would return to Boston, to the Wolcott connection,
to cool, correct, comfortable people who lived upstairs in their
minds--who did not harry body and heart like this.

And then his aching and rebellious grief for his good Scout came over
him and shook him like a harsh wind, and he gave way to it unashamed,
thankful for solitude.

But Rusty, the Airedale, rose at the strange sound and left his
deathwatch to come padding softly over to him. He pressed hard against
him with his shabby little body; he put his forefeet on the young man’s
knees and reached upward, lapping the cold, clenched hands with his
warm tongue.




CHAPTER XVIII


GINGER came to him in the morning, riding over the crest of the hill
with the sunrise. It was as if she had found the new day, somewhere in
the black misery of the night, and given it to him.

He was saddling Mabel and he stopped and stared at her, bewildered,
unbelieving.

“I have brought Snort back to you,” she said, just as she had planned
to say. Her hair was twisted into a knot but there were still leaves
and bits of vines clinging to it, and the bramble scratch was red on
her brown cheek. “I was coming to help you, when I found him. The
doctor wouldn’t let me come, but I came. I was hours catching Snort,
but I was coming to you all the time. I’ve been coming to you all
night--all year!” She rode close to him and slipped into his arms,
and they clung to each other wordlessly. It was their peak in Darien,
and they were silent upon it. Silence flowed over them, clarifying,
healing, and when it passed it took away with it forever their
stubborn pride, the bitterness and the bleak misunderstanding.

“I did try to find you,” said Ginger, lifting her face and looking
gravely into his eyes. “In the east, I mean. I went to Boston to find
you and tell you--and ask you--I sent a note to you at your house,
and I waited in a little hotel. I waited twenty-seven minutes; I know
how long it was because I was watching the clock. Then the messenger
came back and told me your home was closed and all your family gone to
Florida.”

“You came to find me! You did come!” He bent his head again; it was
beyond language; there was nothing he could say about it in words. “But
I wasn’t in Florida. I was at the School of Forestry, trying to make
myself--fit for you. And I was coming to Dos Pozos before I went back.
I was coming to you. You believe that, don’t you? You knew it.”

“Yes, I knew it,” said Ginger, contentedly. “I tried to pretend that
I didn’t, but I knew it, all the time.” She dropped her head to his
shoulder and stood leaning against him so closely that she seemed to
be part of him, to belong to him. Never in the bright days of last
summer, in the days of the house built upon the golden sands, had she
given herself to him like this.

The morning which she had brought with her grew warm about them and
it was very still. He wondered a little at the perfect stillness of
the young day: then he realized that it was because the lone lion had
stopped calling.

Then Ginger remembered, and looked about her, startled. “Where is your
Scout? Oh--I see! He is asleep.” She could see the quiet figure on the
bed of great ferns with the shabby little dog charging rigidly beside
it.

“Yes,” he said, unsteadily, grief and remembrance rushing over him
again. “He is--asleep. My good Scout is--asleep.” Then he told her,
not in careful phrasing, like a Wolcott, but brokenly, raggedly, his
red-rimmed eyes stinging, his smoke-grimed face working, and they
walked across the crisp grass and over the bending brakes and stood
beside him, looking down.

Ginger was a little above Dean on the hillside; she looked at him
pitifully and then down at Elmer Bunty and back again at her lover.
Then she put her arms about him. “I wish you could cry,” she said. She
pulled his head with its fine fair hair down upon her breast. “I wish
you could cry--_here_.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Mateo Golinda shouted to them presently and rode over the crest.
He had come up at daybreak, as he had promised, and he had seen,
understandingly, all that had happened with the latest fire, and he had
grave words of praise for the Ranger. Then he rode swiftly on ahead of
them; he would ask his wife to have ready a stirrup cup as they passed,
and he would go on to the doctor’s camp, and tell them there. He would
find Pedro on the trail and take him home.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was just as the Scout would have wished it to be; just as he had
envisaged it. “Tied on his faithful horse”; not Pontiac, Chief of
the Ottawas, could have come with greater dignity back to sorrowing
followers. Mabel, the lady horse, submitted docilely to the strange
burden, seeming to understand and to have a solemn pride in the
undertaking; there was a statelier carriage of the homely old head.
Rusty, the Airedale, heeled steadily; sometimes he lifted his nose and
gave a thin and mournful howl, but in the main he padded down the long
trail in silence.

Margaret Golinda was waiting for them with hot coffee and with serene
and steady cheer; she was as sure, as strong as the hills.

Her bright and friendly eyes grew dim when she looked at the burden the
lady horse was carrying. “But it was a glorious way for him to go,” she
said. “The doctor told me what was coming; if he had lived.”

“I wouldn’t believe it,” said Dean Wolcott. “I wouldn’t have let it
come! I would have fought it!”

She smiled. “This was a better fight. And you must remember this: you
gave him all the life he ever had.” Then she turned to Ginger and held
out her hands to her. “And you are--the girl?”

“Yes,” said Ginger, gladly, meeting the brown hard grip.

“I knew you were--somewhere. I’m glad he has you, _now_.” She stood
in the doorway of her wise, little gray house and watched them riding
away, the small solemn cavalcade.

They talked but little, Ginger and her lover. There was too much grief
in the air--and too much quiet and believing joy, but she told him
about Mary Wiley.

“And this winter,” she said, “I will be with Mary Wiley again.”

“This winter,” he said quietly, “you will be with me.”

There was something in the brief sentence that made her heart turn
over; it was the authority, the conviction; it was all that the small
group of words meant, all that it stood for. This winter she would be
with him. East or west, going to symphonies and settlements and seeing
new plays, or riding the range and bringing in the cattle; it didn’t in
the least matter where they would be or what they would be doing: this
winter--and all the winters in the world and all the summers--she would
be with him.

So they came at length to the doctor’s camp, riding in single file,
the Ranger, and the girl, and the Scout, “tied on his faithful
horse,” and the shabby, tired, little dog trotting behind, and the
gay, kindly people came out to meet them with sober faces and with
tears.... “Betcher all the squaws cried like _any_thing”--he had said,
dramatizing the last hour of his life, and it was indeed “much more
exciting than just hearses and hacks.”

At last he was filling the stage, Elmer Bunty, of whom the Scout Master
had said that a really determined daddy longlegs could put him to
flight--Elmer Bunty, the ’Fraid-Cat; Elmer Bunty, who had fought the
good fight; the _good scout_. All the prosperous, poised people stood
about him sorry and grave, to do him homage.

       *       *       *       *       *

Ginger forgot her grief and her gladness for an instant when she saw
her Aunt Fan coming toward her. She was limping painfully still and her
short chugging steps were unsteady, and there was no sea-shell tint on
her round face, and her eyes were red with weeping. “Oh, Aunt Fan,” she
said remorsefully, “I’m sorry you worried so! I thought _you’d_ know I
was going to find Dean, and that you wouldn’t----”

“I haven’t been crying about you,” said Mrs. Featherstone, with
asperity. “I worried, of course, but I knew you could take care of
yourself, and I had other things to think about. It’s--” she gulped
back a sob--“it’s Jim!”

“Aunt Fan--I’m _sorry_! What is it? What has happened?”

“It hasn’t happened yet; it’s going to happen, just as soon as I get
there.” She pulled out one of her flippant, little sport handkerchiefs
of pink linen embroidered in blue and dabbed at her eyes. “I had
a telegram, a night letter, telephoned down to Pfeiffer’s. He’s
sick--terribly sick, and the doctor wants to operate, and there’s a
chance--a big chance--that he won’t--come through.” Her chin quivered
uncontrollably. “His heart--his heart--” She had to stop.

They stood looking at her and listening to her in deep-eyed sympathy,
the Ranger and the girl. Ginger took one of her hands and kept patting
it softly.

“_He_ thinks he won’t come through it,” Mrs. Featherstone went on,
after an instant. “And he wants me to come--as quick as the Limited’ll
bring me, for he won’t let them operate till I get there. And he wants
me to marry him again. He says if he doesn’t come through--” she choked
on it--“he wants to go knowing I’m his wife; he wants me to have--what
he’s got.” She gave a sudden decisive sniff and threw up her head.
“And I guess it might just as well come to me as to those two sisters
of his that are rolling--simply _rolling_--already, and always treated
me like the dirt under their feet!” She came out of her personal
preoccupation for a moment and considered her niece and her lover.
“Well!--So you’ve made it up, have you? You’ve come to your senses?”

They told her, without resentment, that they had come to their senses.

“Well, I’m sure _I’ve_ done what I could. I certainly haven’t left a
stone unturned-- Look here--” she addressed herself exclusively to the
young man--“you’ll transplant her from that ranch, the very first thing
you do, won’t you? You’ll take her east, won’t you? I won’t have to--”

“I’ll take her east, yes,” said Dean Wolcott. “I’ll take her east
with me as soon as I’ve finished here, but I’ll bring her west again
whenever she says the word.”

“Oh, _Lord_!” said Ginger’s Aunt Fan in exasperation. “If you’re going
to be as soft as that she’d better have married ’Rome Ojeda. Well, if
ever you want to see _me_, you can stop off in San Francisco!”

Then she grew tender and her very blue eyes looked as they did when
she was thinking about food and making mental menus for herself, and
she laid hold of them both with her plump, pretty hands. “My dears,
I’m glad for you; I _am_ glad. I think you’ve got something to hold
to, and see that you hold on to it! Henry and I had it, once, and Jim
and I thought”--her face contracted swiftly. “I must fly and pack. The
doctor’s driving me in to Monterey to catch the train so I can start
east in the morning. I don’t know what I’m going to do; I won’t know
till I get there.” She shook her head. “The minute I get into New York
I’ll have a good, straight talk with that surgeon and see if things are
really as desperate-- Of course, the idea of marrying Jim again never
entered my head. But if I don’t, and he does die, I suppose I’ll never
forgive myself. And if I _do_--and he _doesn’t_”--her eyes snapped blue
fire--“I’ll never forgive him!”

       *       *       *       *       *

Elmer Bunty, the Scout, lay in state in a vacant cabin and the Airedale
charged outside the door. The very blond girl went in with an armful
of wild flowers and tall ferns, and when she came out again her eyes
were red-rimmed. She saw Dean and Ginger and nodded to them, smiling
mistily, and when the young man was not looking she held up two fingers
to Ginger’s gaze, uncrossed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dean Wolcott had to go back to his headquarters at Post’s; there were
reports to be made, telephones to the Chief Ranger at King City, to
the Scout Master in San Francisco. He would come to her again in the
evening.

The doctor was unsaddling Mabel, the lady horse, and he had warm words
for his Ranger; Mateo Golinda had told him things which would make an
eastern name long remembered in that wild county of the west. He had
warm and hearty words for the two of them, his tired eyes kindling.
He remembered Rosalía Valdés McVeagh and her tearful old song, but he
believed that “_the coming of wintry weather_” would find them ready
and strong. He went away from them smiling to himself, and not looking
back.

They were alone, then, save for the grave and tolerant horses, and
Ginger went swiftly into his arms. “I don’t want to say good-by even
for three hours,” she said, rebelliously. “But you’ll be coming back;
always you’ll be coming back, and always it will be as it was on
Aleck’s bridge.”

Snort came nearer and nosed jealously at Dean Wolcott’s shoulder,
and he spared a hand for him. Then he looked down and kissed the red
scratch on Ginger’s cheek where it rested against his dull sleeve. It
was dust-colored, dust-covered. Suddenly he threw back his head and
laughed aloud, gladly, triumphantly. Accolade of victory; sign and
symbol of battles and beatitudes. “Corduroy,” he said, touching the
fabric of his coat and of hers, “_corde du roi!_”

“Of course,” Ginger said, wondering a little, but too deeply content to
wonder very much, “corduroy.”


THE END




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