The Ranch at the Wolverine

"And this is Christmas, almost. I wonder what you'll be doing. Say, Ward, if you want to be a perfect jewel of a man, send me some of that jerky you've got hanging at the head of your bunk. I swiped some, that last time I was there. It would taste mighty good to me now, after all these hospital slops.

"And write me a nice, long letter, won't you? That's a good buckaroo. I've got to stop – mommie is beginning to wake up, and it's time for the doctor to come in and read the chart and look wise and say: 'Well, how are we to-day? Pretty bright, eh?' I'd like to kick him clear across the corridor – that is, the Billy of me would. And believe me, the Billy of me is sure going to break out, some of these days!

"I hope you like the neckerchief. I want you to wear it; if I come home and find it hasn't been washed a couple of times, there'll be something doing! Don't rub soap on it, kid. Make a warm lathery suds and wash it. And don't wave it by the corners till it dries. Hang it up somewhere. You'll have my stitches looking worse frazzled than my temper.

"Well, a merry Christmas, Pal-o'-mine – and here's hoping you and mommie and I will be eating turkey together at the Wolverine when next Christmas comes. Nummy-num! Wouldn't that taste good, though?

"Now remember and write a whole tablet full to

"WILLIAM LOUISA,

"WILHEMINA,

"BILL-LOO,

"BILL-THE-CONK,

"BILLY LOUISE,

"FLOWER OF THE RANCH-OH."

Phoebe put that letter on the mantel over the fireplace, the day after Christmas. Frequently she felt its puffy softness and its crackly crispness and wondered dully what Billy Louise had sent to Ward.

Billy Louise refrained from expecting any reply until after New Year's. Then she began to look for a letter, and when the days passed and brought her no word, her moods changed oftener than the weather.

Ward's literary efforts, along about that time, consisted of cutting notches in the window-sill beside his bunk.

On the day when the stage-driver gave Billy Louise's letter to Phoebe, Ward cut a deeper, wider notch, thinking that day was Christmas. Under the notch he scratched a word with the point of his knife. It had four letters, and it told eloquently of the state of mind he was in.

It was the day after that when Seabeck and one of his men rode up the creek and out into the field where Ward's cattle grazed apathetically on the little grass tufts that stuck up out of the snow. Ward was reading, and so did not see them until he raised himself up to make a cigarette and saw them going straight across the coulee by the line fence to the farther hills. He opened the window and shouted after them, but the wind was blowing keen from that direction, and they did not hear him.

Seabeck had been studying brands and counting, and he was telling Floyd Carson that everything was straight as a string.

"He must be out working this winter. I should think he'd stay home and feed these calves. The cows are looking pretty thin. I guess he isn't much of a stock hand; these nesters aren't, as a general thing, and if it's as Junkins says, and he puts all he makes into this place, he's likely hard up. Mighty nice little ranch he's got. Well, let's work over the divide and back that way. I didn't think we'd find anything here."

They turned and angled up the steep hillside, and Ward watched them glumly. He thought he knew why they were prowling around the place, but it seemed to him that they might have stretched their curiosity a little farther and investigated the cabin. He did not know that the snow of a week ago was banked over the doorstep with a sharp, crusty combing at the top, to prove that the door had not been opened for some time. Nor did he know that the two had ridden past the cabin on the other side of the creek and had seen how deserted the place looked; had ridden to the stable, noted there the unmistakable and permanent air of emptiness, and had gone on.

Floyd Carson alone might have prowled through both buildings, but Seabeck was a slow-going man of sober justice. He would not invade the premises of another farther than he thought it necessary. He had heard whispers that the fellow on Mill Creek might bear investigation, and he had investigated. There was not a shadow of evidence that the Y6 cattle had been gotten dishonestly. Therefore, Seabeck rode away and did not look into the snow-banked cabin, as another man might have done; and Ward missed his one chance of getting help from the outside.

Of course, he was doing pretty well as it was; but he would have welcomed the chance to talk to someone. Taciturn as Ward was with men, he had enough of his own company for once. And he would have asked them to make him a cup of coffee and warm up the cabin once more. Little comforts of that sort he missed terribly. If the room had not been so clammy cold, he could have sat up part of the time, now. As it was, he stayed in bed to keep warm; and even so he had been compelled to drag the two wolf-skins off the floor and upon the bed to keep from shivering through the coldest nights and days.

One day he did crawl out of bed and try to get over to the stove to start a fire. But he was so weak that he gave it up and crawled back again, telling himself that it was not worth the effort.

The letter with the silk neckerchief inside gathered dust upon the mantel, down at the Wolverine. When the postmark was more than two weeks old, another letter came, and Phoebe laid it on the fat one with fingers that trembled a little. Phoebe had a letter of her own, that day. Both were thin, and the addresses were more scrawly than usual. Phoebe's Indian instinct warned her that something was amiss.

This was Ward's letter:

"Oh, God, Ward, mommie's dead. She died last night. I thought she was asleep till the nurse came in at five o'clock. I'm all alone and I don't know what to do. I wish you could come, but if you don't get this right away, I'll see you at the ranch. I'm coming home as soon as I can. Oh, Ward, I hate life and God and everything. BILLY LOUISE."

"Please Ward, stay at the ranch till I come. I want to see you. I feel as if you're the only friend I've got left, now mommie's gone. She looked so peaceful when they took her away – and so strange. I didn't belong to her any more. I felt as if I didn't know her at all – and there is such an awful gap in my life – maybe you'll understand. You always do."

The day that letter was written, Ward drew a plan of the house he meant to build some day, with a wide porch on the front, where a hammock would swing comfortably. He figured upon lumber and shingles and rock foundation, and mortar for a big, deep fireplace. He managed to put in the whole forenoon planning and making estimates, and he was so cheerful afterwards that he whistled and sang, and later he tied a piece of jerky on the end of a string and teased a fat fieldmouse, whose hunger made him venturesome. Ward would throw the jerky as far as the string would permit and wait till the mouse came out to nibble at it; then he would pull the meat closer and closer to the bed and laugh at the very evident perturbation of the mouse. For the time being he was a boy indulging his love of teasing something.

And while Ward played with that mouse, Billy Louise was longing for his comforting presence while she faced alone one of the bitterest things in life – which is death. He had no presentiment of her need of him, which was just as well, since he was absolutely powerless to help her.

CHAPTER XX

"WE BEEN SORRY FOR YOU"

Billy Louise, having arrived unexpectedly on the stage, pulled off her fur-lined mittens and put her chilled hands before the snapping blaze in the fireplace. Her eyes were tired and sunken, and her mouth drooped pitifully at the corners, but aside from that she did not seem much changed from the girl who had left the ranch two months and more before.

"I'll take a cup of tea, Phoebe, but I'm not a bit hungry," she said. "I ate just before I left town. How have you been, Phoebe?"

"We been fine. We been so sorry for you – "

"Never mind that now, Phoebe. I'd rather not talk about it. Has – anybody been here lately?"

"Charlie Fox, he come las' week – mebby week before las'. Marthy, she got rheumatis in her knee. Charlie, he say she been pretty bad one night. I guess she's better now. I tol' I wash for her if he brings me clo'es, but he says he wash them clo'es hisself. I guess Charlie pretty good to that old lady. He's awful p'lite, that feller is."

"Yes, he is. I'll go up and see her when I get rested a little. I feel tired to death, somehow; maybe it's the drive. The road is terribly rough, and it was awful tiresome on the train. Has – Ward been around lately?"

"Ward, he ain't been here for long time. I guess mebbe it's been six weeks I ain't seen him. Las' time he was here he wrote that letter. He ain't come no more. You let me drag this couch up to the fire, and you lay down and rest yo'self. I'll put on more wood. Seems like this is awful cold winter. We had six little pigs come, and four of 'em froze. John, he brung 'em in by the fire, but it's no good; they die, anyway."

Billy Louise dropped apathetically upon the couch after Phoebe had helped her pull off her coat. She did not feel as though anything mattered much, but she must go on with life, no matter how purposeless it seemed. To live awhile and work and struggle and know the pain of disappointment and weariness, and then to die: she did not see what use there was in struggling. But one had to go on just the same. She had borrowed money for mommie's sickness, and she would have to repay it; and it was all so purposeless!

"How are the cattle wintering?" She forced herself to make some show of interest in things.

"The cattle, they're doing all right. One heifer, she got blackleg and die, but the rest they're all right. John, he couldn't find all; two or three, they're gone. He says mebby them rustlers got 'em. He looked good as he could."

"Are – has there been any more trouble about losing stock?" Billy Louise shut her hand into a fist, but she spoke in the same tired tone as before.

"I dunno. Seabeck, he told John they don't catch nobody yet. That inspector, he come by long time ago. I guess he stopped with Seabeck. He ain't come back yet. I dunno where he's gone. Seabeck, he didn't say nothing to John about him, I guess. Maybe he went out the other way."

"I – did you do what I told you, Phoebe, about – mommie's things?"

For once Phoebe did not answer garrulously. "Yes, I done it," she said softly. "The boxes is in the shed when you want 'em."

"All right, Phoebe. Is the tea ready?"

While she sipped creamy tea from a solid-silver teaspoon which had been a part of mommie's wedding-set, Billy Louise looked around the familiar room for which she had hungered so in those deadly, monotonous weeks at the hospital. The fire snapped in its stone recess, and the cheerful warmth of it comforted her body and in a measure soothed her spirit. She was chilled to the bones with facing that bitter east wind for hours, and she had not seen a fireplace in all the time she had been away.

But the place was empty, with no mommie fussing about, worrying over little things, gently garrulous. If mommie had come back well, she would have asked Phoebe about everything in the house and out of it. There would have been a housewifely accounting going on at this minute. Phoebe would be apologetic over those grimy windows, instead of merely sympathetic over the sorrow in the house. Billy Louise wondered wherein she lacked. For the life of her she could not feel that it mattered whether the windows were clean or dirty; life was drab and cheerless outside them, anyway.

Billy Louise in the last few months had tried to picture herself alone, with mommie gone. Her imagination was too alive and saw too clearly the possibilities for her never to have dwelt upon this very crisis in her life. But whenever she had tried to think what it would be like, she had always pictured Ward beside her, shielding her from dreary details and lightening her burden with his whimsical gentleness. She had felt sure that Ward would ride down every week for news of her, and she had expected to find him there waiting for her, after that last letter. Whatever could be the matter? Had he left the country?

Billy Louise's faith had compromised definitely with her doubts of him. Guilty or innocent, she would be his friend always; that was the condition her faith had laid down challengingly before her doubts. But unless he were innocent and proved it to her, she would never marry him, no matter how much she loved him. That was the concession her faith had made to her doubts.

Billy Louise had a wise little brain, for all she idealized life and her surroundings out of all proportion to reality. She told herself that if she married Ward with her doubts alive, her misery would be far greater than if she gave him up, except as a friend. Of course, her ideals stepped in there with an impracticable compromise. She brought back the Ward Warren of her "pretend" life. She dreamed of him as a mutely adoring friend who stood and worshiped her from afar, and because of his sins could not cross the line of friendship.

If he were a rustler, she would shield him and save him, if that were possible. He would love her always – Billy Louise could not conceive of Ward transferring his affections to another less exacting woman – and he would be grateful for her friendship. She could build long, lovely scenes where friendliness was put to the front bravely, while love hid behind the mask and only peeped out through the eyes now and then. She did not, of course, plan all this in sober reason; she just dreamed it with her eyes open.

It had been in such a spirit that she had written to Ward; though he would undoubtedly have read love into the lines and so have been encouraged in the planning of that house with the wide porch in front! She had dreamed all the way home of seeing Ward at the end of the journey. Perhaps he would come out and help her down from the stage, when it stopped at the gate, and call her Bill-Loo – never once had Ward spoken her name as others spoke it, but always with a twist of his own which made it different, stamped with his own individuality – and he would walk beside her to the house and comfort her with his eyes, and never mention mommie till she herself opened the way to her grief. Then he would call her Wilhemina-mine in that kissing way he had —

Someone came upon the doorstep and stood there for a moment, stamping snow off his feet. Billy Louise caught her breath and waited, her eyes veiled with her lashes and shining expectantly. A little color came into her cheeks. Ward had been delayed somehow, but he was coming now because she needed him and he wanted her —

It was only John Pringle, heavy-bodied, heavy-minded, who came in and squeaked the door shut behind him. Billy Louise gave him a glance and dropped her head back on the red cushion. "Hello, John!" she greeted tonelessly.

John grinned, embarrassed between his pleasure at seeing Billy Louise and his pity for her trouble. His white teeth showed a little under his scraggy, breath-frosted mustache.

"Hello! You got back, hey? She's purty cold again. Seems like it's goin' storm some more." He pulled off his mittens and tugged at the ice dangling at the corners of his lips. "You come on stage, hey? I bet you freeze." He went over and stood with his back to the fire, his leathery brown hands clasped behind him, his face still undecided as to the most suitable emotion to reveal. "Well, how you like town, hey? No good, I guess. You got plenty trouble now. Phoebe and me, we stick by you long as you want us to."

"I know you will, John." Billy Louise bit her lips against a sudden impulse to tears. It was not Ward, but the crude sympathy of this old halfbreed was more to her than all the expensive flowers that had been stacked upon mommie's coffin. She had felt terribly alone in Boise. But her chilled soul was beginning to feel the warmth of friendship in these two half-savage servants. Even without Ward, her home-coming was not absolutely cheerless, after all.

"Well, we make out to keep things going," John announced pridefully. "We got leetle bad luck, not much. One heifer, she die – blackleg. Four pigs, they froze – leetle fellers. I save the rest, all right. Ole Mooley, she goin' have a calf purty queeck now. I got her in leetle shed by hog-pen. Looks like it storm, all right."

"Felt like it, too." Billy Louise made an effort to get back into the old channels of thought. "We'll milk old Mooley, John; I feel as if I could live on cream and milk for the next five years. You ought to see the watery stuff they call milk in Boise! Star must be pretty near dry now, isn't she?"

"Purty near." John's voice was beginning to ooze the comfort that warmth was giving his big body. "She give two quart, mebby. Spot, she give leetle more. I got that white hog fat. I kill him any time now you say."

"If it doesn't storm, you might kill him to-morrow or next day, John. I'll take a roast up to Marthy when I go. I'll go in a day or two." She glanced toward the kitchen end of the long room. Phoebe was busy in the pantry with the door shut. "Have you seen or heard anything of Ward lately?" she asked carelessly.

"No. I ain't seen Ward for long time. I thought mebbe he be down long time ago. He ain't come." John shifted a little farther from the blaze and stood teetering comfortably upon the balls of his feet, like a bear. "Mebbe he's gone out other way to work."

"Did he say anything?"

"No, he don't say nothin' las' time he come. That's – " John rolled his black eyes seekingly at the farther wall while he counted mentally the weeks. "I guess that mus' be fo' or five weeks now. Charlie Fox, he come las' week."

"John, you better kill a chicken for Billy Louise. I bet she ain't had no chicken since she's gone." Phoebe came from the pantry with her hands all flour. "You go now. That young speckled rooster be good, mebby. He's fat. He's fightin' all the chickens, anyway."

"All right. I kill him." John answered with remarkable docility. Usually he growled at poor Phoebe and objected to everything she suggested.

His ready compliance touched Billy Louise more than anything since her return. She felt anew the warm comfort of their sympathy. If only Ward had been there also! She got up from the couch and went to the window where she could look across at the bleak hilltop. She stood there for some minutes looking out wistfully, hoping that she would see him ride into view at the top of the steep trail. After awhile she went back and curled up on the wide old couch and stared abstractedly into the fire.

John had gone out after the young speckled rooster that fought the other chickens and must now do his part toward salving the hurt and cheering the home-coming of Billy Louise. John returned, mumbled with Phoebe at the far end of the room, and went out again. Phoebe worked silently and briskly, rattling pans now and then and lifting the stove lids to put in more wood. Billy Louise heard the sounds but dimly. The fire was filled with pictures; her thoughts were wandering here and there, bridging the gap between the past and the misty future. After awhile the savory odor of the young speckled rooster, that had fought all the other chickens but was now stewing in a mottled blue-and-white granite pan, smote her nostrils and won her thoughts from dreaming. She sat up and pushed back her hair like one just waking from sleep.

"I'll set the table, Phoebe, when you're ready," she said, and her voice sounded less strained and tired. "That chicken sure does smell good!" She rose and busied herself about the room, setting things in order upon the reading-table and the shelves. Phoebe was good as gold, but her housekeeping was a trifle sketchy.

"Ward, he borried some books las' time," Phoebe remarked, lifting the lid of the stew kettle and letting out a cloud of delicious-smelling steam. "I dunno what they was. He said he'd bring 'em back nex' time he come."

"Oh, all right," said Billy Louise, and smiled a little. Even so slight a thing as borrowed books made another link between them. For a girl who means to be a mere friend to a man, Billy Louise harbored some rather dangerous emotions.

She picked up the two letters she had written Ward, brushed off the dust, and eyed them hesitatingly. It certainly was queer that Ward had not ridden down for some word from her. She hesitated, then threw the thin letter into the fire. Its message was no longer of urgent, poignant need. Billy Louise drew a long breath when the grief-laden lines crumbled quickly and went flying up the wide throat of the chimney. The other letter she pinched between her thumbs and fingers. She smiled a little to herself. Ward would like to get that. She had a swift vision of him standing over there by the window and reading it with those swift, shuttling glances, holding the handkerchief squeezed up in his hand the while. She remembered how she had begun it – "Brave Buckaroo" – and her cheeks turned pink. He should have it when he came. Something had kept him away. He would come just as soon as he could. She laid the letter back upon the mantel and set a china cow on it to keep it safe there. Then she turned brightly and began to set the table for Phoebe and John and herself, and came near setting a fourth place for Ward, she was so sure he would come as soon as he could. Mommie used to say that if you set a place for a person, that person would come and eat with you, in spirit if not in reality.

Phoebe glanced at her pityingly when she saw her hesitating, with the fourth plate in her hands. Phoebe thought that Billy Louise had unconsciously brought it for mommie. Phoebe did not know that love is stronger even than grief; for at that moment Billy Louise was not thinking of mommie at all.

CHAPTER XXI

SEVEN LEAN KINE

"And you looked good, all up above here?" Billy Louise held Blue firmly to a curved-neck, circling stand, while she had a last word with John before she went off on one of her long rides.

"All up in the hills, and round over by Cedar Creek, and all over." John's mittened gesture was even more sweeping than his statement. "I guess mebby them rustlers git 'em."

"Well, I'm going up to the Cove. I may not be back before dark, so don't worry if I'm late. Maybe I'll look along the river. I know one place where I believe cattle can get down to the bottom, if they're crazy enough to try it. You didn't look there, did you?"

"No, I never looked down there. I know they can't git down nohow."

"Well, all right; maybe they can't." Billy Louise slackened the reins, and Blue went off with short, stiff-legged jumps. It had been a long time since he had felt the weight of his lady, and his mood now was exuberant, especially so, since the morning was clear, with a nip of frost to tingle the skin and the glow of the sun to promise falsely the nearness of spring. The hill trail steadied him a little, though he went up the steepest pitch with rabbit-jumps and teetered on his toes the rest of the way.

Billy Louise laughed a little, leaned, and grabbed a handful of slatey mane. "Oh, you Blue-dog!" she said, for that was his full name. "Life is livable, after all, as long as a fellow has got you and can ride. You good-for-nothing old ten-dollar hoss! I – wonder would it be wicked to sing? What do you think, Blue? You'd sing, I know, at the top of your voice, if you could. Say, Blue! Don't you wish, you were a donkey, so you could stick out your neck and go Yee-ee-haw! Yee-ee– haw? Try it once. I believe you could. It's that or a run, one or the other. You'll bust, if you don't do something. I know you!"

At last on the high level, seeing Blue could not bray his joy to the world, Billy Louise let him go. She needed some outlet, herself, after those horrible, dull weeks weighted with tragedy. She had been raised on horseback, almost; and for two terrible months she had not been in the saddle. And there is nothing like the air of the Idaho hills to stir one's blood and send it singing.

Through the sagebrush and rocks, weaving in and out, slacking speed a little while he went down into deep gullies, thundering up the other side, and racing away over the level again, went Blue. And with him, laughing, tingling with new life, growing pinker-cheeked every minute, went Billy Louise. Her mother's death did not oppress her then. She thought of her as she raced, but she thought of her with a little, tender smile. Her mother was resting peacefully, and there was no more pain or worry for the little, pale, frail woman who had lived her life and gone her way.