Chapter 5

Virginia was indeed greatly pleased and pleasantly excited by this message, for she had heard much of Mrs. Redfield's exclusiveness, and also of the splendor of her establishment. She hurried away to dress with such flutter of joyous anticipation that Redfield felt quite repaid for the pressure he had put upon his wife to induce her to write that note. "You may leave Lize Wetherford out of the count, my dear," he had said. "There is nothing of her discernible in the girl. Virginia is a lady. I don't know where she got it, but she's a gentlewoman by nature."

Lize said: "Don't you figure on me in any way, Reddy. I'm nothing but the old hen that raised up this lark, and all I'm a-livin' for now is to make her happy. Just you cut me out when it comes to any question about your wife and Virginia. I'm not in their class."

It was hot and still in the town, but no sooner was the car in motion than both heat and dust were forgotten. Redfield's machine was not large, and as he was content to go at moderate speed, conversation was possible.

He was of that sunny, optimistic, ever-youthful nature which finds delight in human companionship under any conditions whatsoever. He accepted this girl for what she seemed--a fresh, unspoiled child. He saw nothing cheap or commonplace in her, and was not disposed to impose any of her father's wild doings upon her calendar. He had his misgivings as to her future--that was the main reason why he had said to Mrs. Redfield, "The girl must be helped." Afterward he had said "sustained."

It was inevitable that the girl should soon refer to the ranger, and Redfield was as complimentary of him as she could wish. "Ross hasn't a fault but one, and that's a negative one: he doesn't care a hang about getting on, as they say over in England. He's content just to do the duty of the moment. He made a good cow-puncher and a good soldier; but as for promotion, he laughs when I mention it."

"He told me that he hoped to be Chief Forester," protested Virginia.

"Oh yes, he says that; but do you know, he'd rather be where he is, riding over the hills, than live in London. You should see his cabin some time. It's most wonderful, really. His walls are covered with bookshelves of his own manufacture, and chairs of his own design. Where the boy got the skill, I don't see. Heaven knows, his sisters are conventional enough! He's capable of being Supervisor, but he won't live in town and work in an office. He's like an Indian in his love of the open."

All this was quite too absorbingly interesting to permit of any study of the landscape, which went by as if dismissed by the chariot wheels of some contemptuous magician. Redfield's eyes were mostly on the road (in the manner of the careful driver), but when he did look up it was to admire the color and poise of his seat-mate, who made the landscape of small account.

She kept the conversation to the desired point. "Mr. Cavanagh's work interests me very much. It seems very important; and it must be new, for I never heard of a forest ranger when I was a child."

"The forester is new--at least, in America," he answered. "My dear young lady, you are returned just in the most momentous period in the history of the West. The old dominion--the cattle-range--is passing. The supremacy of the cowboy is ended. The cow-boss is raising oats, the cowboy is pitching alfalfa, and swearing horribly as he blisters his hands. Some of the rangers at the moment are men of Western training like Ross, but whose allegiance is now to Uncle Sam. With others that transfer of allegiance is not quite complete, hence the insolence of men like Gregg, who think they can bribe or intimidate these forest guards, and so obtain favors; the newer men are college-bred, real foresters. But you can't know what it all means till you see Ross, or some other ranger, on his own heath. We'll make up a little party some day and drop down upon him, and have him show us about. It's a lonely life, and so the ranger keeps open house. Would you like to go?"

"Oh, yes indeed! I'm eager to get into the mountains. Every night as I see the sun go down over them I wonder what the world is like up there."

Then he began very delicately to inquire about her Eastern experience. There was not much to tell. In a lovely old town not far from Philadelphia, where her aunt lived, she had spent ten years of happy exile. "I was horribly lonely and homesick at first," she said. "Mother wrote only short letters, and my father never wrote at all. I didn't know he was dead then. He was always good to me. He wasn't a bad man, was he?"

"No," responded Redfield, without hesitation. "He was very like the rest of us--only a little more reckless and a little more partisan, that's all. He was a dashing horseman and a dead-shot, and so, naturally, a leader of these daredevils. He was popular with both sides of the controversy up to the very moment when he went South to lead the invaders against the rustlers."

"What was it all about? I never understood it. What were they fighting about?"

"In a sense, it was all very simple. You see, Uncle Sam, in his careless, do-nothing way, has always left his range to whomever got there first, and that was the cattle-man. At first there was grass enough for us all, but as we built sheds and corrals about watering-places we came to claim _rights_ on the range. We usually secured by fraud homesteads in the sections containing water, and so, gun in hand, 'stood off' the man who came after. Gradually, after much shooting and lawing, we parcelled out the range and settled down covering practically the whole State. Our adjustments were not perfect, but our system was working smoothly for us who controlled the range. We had convinced ourselves, and pretty nearly everybody else, that the State was only fit for cattle-grazing, and that we were the most competent grazers; furthermore, we were in possession, and no man could come in without our consent.

"However, a very curious law of our own making was our undoing. Of course the 'nester' or 'punkin roller,' as we contemptuously called the small farmer, began sifting in here and there in spite of our guns, but he was only a mosquito bite in comparison with the trouble which our cow-punchers stirred up. Perhaps you remember enough about the business to know that an unbranded yearling calf without its mother is called a maverick?"

"Yes, I remember that. It belongs to the man who finds him, and brands him."

"Precisely. Now that law worked very nicely so long as the poor cowboy was willing to catch and brand him for his employer, but it proved a 'joker' when he woke up and said to his fellows: 'Why brand these mavericks at five dollars per head for this or that outfit when the law says it belongs to the man who finds him?'"

Lee Virginia looked up brightly. "That seems right to me!"

"Ah yes; but wait. We cattle-men had large herds, and the _probabilities_ were that the calf belonged to some one of us; whereas, the cowboy, having no herd at all, _knew_ the maverick belonged to some one's herd. True, the law said it was his, but the law did not mean to reward the freebooter; yet that is exactly what it did. At first only a few outlaws took advantage of it; but hard years came on, the cattle business became less and less profitable, we were forced to lay off our men, and so at last the range swarmed with idle cow-punchers; then came the breakdown in our scheme! The cowboys took to 'mavericking' on their own account. Some of them had the grace to go into partnership with some farmer, and so claim a small bunch of cows, but others suddenly and miraculously acquired herds of their own. From keeping within the law, they passed to violent methods. They slit the tongues of calves for the purpose of separating them from their mothers. Finding he could not suck, bossy would at last wander away from his dam, and so become a 'maverick.' In short, anarchy reigned on the range."

"But surely my father had nothing to do with this?"

"No; your father, up to this time, had been on good terms with everybody. He had a small herd of cattle down the river, which he owned in common with a man named Hart."

"I remember him."

"He was well thought of by all the big outfits; and when the situation became intolerable, and we got together to weed out 'the rustlers,' as these cattle-thieves were called, your father was approached and converted to a belief in drastic measures. He had suffered less than the rest of us because of his small herd and the fact that he was very popular among the cowboys. So far as I was concerned, the use of violent methods revolted me. My training in the East had made me a respecter of the law. 'Change the law,' I said. 'The law is all right,' they replied; 'the trouble is with these rustlers. We'll hang a few of 'em, and that will break up the business.'"

Parts of this story came back to the girl's mind, producing momentary flashes of perfect recollection. She heard again the voices of excited men arguing over and over the question of "mavericking," and she saw her father as he rode up to the house that last day before he went South.

Redfield went on. "The whole plan as developed was silly, and I wonder still that Ed Wetherford, who knew 'the nester' and the cowboy so well, should have lent his aid to it. The cattle-men--some from Cheyenne, some from Denver, and a few from New York and Chicago--agreed to finance a sort of Vigilante Corps composed of men from the outside, on the understanding that this policing body should be commanded by one of their own number. Your father was chosen second in command, and was to guide the party; for he knew almost every one of the rustlers, and could ride directly to their doors."

"I wish he hadn't done that," murmured the girl.

"I must be frank with you, Virginia. I can't excuse that in him. It was a kind of treachery. He must have been warped by his associates. They convinced him by some means that it was his duty, and one fine day the Fork was startled by a messenger, who rode in to say that the cattle-barons were coming with a hundred Texas bad men 'to clean out the town,' and to put their own men into office. This last was silly rot to me, but the people believed it."

The girl was tingling now. "I remember! I remember the men who rode into the town to give the alarm. Their horses were white with foam; their heads hung down, and their sides went in and out. I pitied the poor things. Mother jumped on her pony, and rode out among the men. She wanted to go with them, but they wouldn't let her. I was scared almost breathless."

"I was in Sulphur City, and did not hear of it till it was nearly all over," Redfield resumed, his speech showing a little of the excitement which thrilled through the girl's voice. "Well, the first act of vengeance was so ill-considered that it practically ended the whole campaign. The invaders fell upon and killed two ranchers--one of whom was probably not a rustler at all, but a peaceable settler, and the other one they most barbarously hanged. More than this, they attacked and vainly tried to kill two settlers whom they met on the road--German farmers, with no connection, so far as known, with the thieves. These men escaped, and gave the alarm. In a few hours the whole range was aflame with vengeful fire. The Forks, as you may recall, was like a swarm of bumblebees. Every man and boy was armed and mounted. The storekeepers distributed guns and ammunition, leaders developed, and the embattled 'punkin rollers,' rustlers, and townsmen rode out to meet the invaders."

The girl paled with memory of it. "It was terrible! I went all day without eating, and for two nights we were all too excited to sleep. It seemed as if the world were coming to an end. Mother cried because they wouldn't let her go with them. She didn't know father was leading the other army."

"She must have known soon, for it was reported that your father was among them. She certainly knew when they were driven to earth in that log fort, for they were obliged to restrain her by force from going to your father. As I run over those furious days it all seems incredible, like a sudden reversal to barbarism."

"How did it all end? The soldiers came, didn't they?"

"Yes; the long arm of Uncle Sam reached out and took hold upon the necks of both parties. I guess your father and his band would have died right there had not the regular army interfered. It only required a sergeant wearing Uncle Sam's uniform to come among those armed and furious cowboys and remove their prisoners."

"I saw that. It was very strange--that sergeant was so young and so brave."

He turned and smiled at her. "Do you know who that was?"

Her eyes flashed. She drew her breath with a gasp. "Was it Mr. Cavanagh?"

"Yes, it was Ross. He was serving in the regular army at the time. He has told me since that he felt no fear whatever. 'Uncle Sam's blue coat was like Siegfried's magic armor,' he said; 'it was the kind of thing the mounted police of Canada had been called upon to do many a time, and I went in and got my men.' That ended the war, so far as violent measures went, and it really ended the sovereignty of the cattle-man. The power of the 'nester' has steadily increased from that moment."

"But my father--what became of him? They took him away to the East, and that is all I ever knew. What do you think became of him?"

"I could never make up my mind. All sorts of rumors come to us concerning him. As a matter of fact, the State authorities sympathized with the cattle-barons, and my own opinion is that your father was permitted to escape. He was afterward seen in Texas, and later it was reported that he had been killed there."

The girl sat still, listening to the tireless whir of the machine, and looking out at the purpling range with tear-mist eyes. At last she said: "I shall never think of my father as a bad man, he was always so gentle to me."

"You need not condemn him, my dear young lady. First of all, it's not fair to bring him (as he was in those days) forward into these piping times of dairy cows and alfalfa. The people of the Forks--some of them, at least--consider him a traitor, and regard you as the daughter of a renegade, but what does it matter? Each year sees the Old West diminish, and already, in the work of the Forest Service, law and order advance. Notwithstanding all the shouting of herders and the beating to death of sheep, no hostile shot has ever been fired within the bounds of a National Forest. In the work of the forest rangers lies the hope of ultimate peace and order over all the public lands."

The girl fell silent again, her mind filled with larger conceptions of life than her judgment had hitherto been called upon to meet. She knew that Redfield was right, and yet that world of the past--the world of the swift herdsman and his trampling, long-horned, half-wild kine still appealed to her imagination. The West of her girlhood seemed heroic in memory; even the quiet account of it to which she had just listened could not conceal its epic largeness of movement. The part which troubled her most was her father's treachery to his neighbors. That he should fight, that he should kill men in honorable warfare, she could understand; but not his recreancy, his desertion of her mother and herself.

She came back to dwell at last on the action of that slim young soldier who had calmly ridden through the infuriated mob. She remembered that she had thrilled even then at the vague and impersonal power which he represented. To her childish mind he seemed to bear a charm, like the heroes of her story-books--something which made him invulnerable.

After a long pause Redfield spoke again. "The memory of your father will make life for a time a bit hard for you in Roaring Fork--perhaps your mother's advice is sound. Why not come to Sulphur City, which is almost entirely of the new spirit?"

"If I can get my mother to come, too, I will be glad to do so, for I hate the Fork; but I will not leave her there, sick and alone."

"Much depends upon the doctor's examination to-morrow."

They had topped the divide now between the Fork and Sulphur Creek Basin, and the green fields, the alfalfa meadows, and the painted farm-houses thickened beneath them. Strange how significant all these signs were now. A few days ago they had appeared doubtful improvements, now they represented the oncoming dominion of the East. They meant cleanliness and decent speech, good bread and sweet butter. Ultimately houses with hot water in their bath-rooms and pianos in their parlors would displace the shack, the hitching-pole, and the dog-run, and in those days Edward Wetherford would be forgotten.

Redfield swept through the town, then turned up the stream directly toward the high wall of the range, which was ragged and abrupt at this point. They passed several charming farm-houses, and the western sky grew ever more glorious with its plum-color and saffron, and the range reasserted its mastery over the girl. At last they came to the very jaws of the canon; and there, in a deep natural grove of lofty cottonwood-trees, Redfield passed before a high rustic gate which marked the beginning of his estate. The driveway was of gravel, and the intermingling of transplanted shrubs and pine-trees showed the care of the professional gardener.

The house was far from being a castle; indeed, it was very like a house in Bryn-Mawr, except that it was built entirely of half-hewn logs, with a wide projecting roof. Giant hydrangeas and other flowering shrubs bordered the drive, and on the rustic terrace a lady in white was waiting.

Redfield slowed down, and scrambled ungracefully out; but his voice was charming as he said: "Eleanor, this it Miss Wetherford. She was on the point of getting the blues, so I brought her away," he explained.

Mrs. Redfield, quite as urban as the house, was a slim little woman of delicate habit, very far from the ordinary conception of a rancher's wife. Her manner was politely considerate, but not heatedly cordial (the visitor was not precisely hers), and though she warmed a little after looking into Virginia's face, she could not by any stretch of phrase be called cordial.

"Are you tired? would you like to lie down before dinner?" she asked.

"Oh no, indeed. Nothing ever tires me," Virginia responded, with a smile.

"You look like one in perfect health," continued her hostess, in the envious tone of one who knew all too well what ill-health meant. "Let me show you to your room."

The house was not precisely the palace the cowboy had reported it to be, but it was charmingly decorated, and the furnishings were tasteful. To the girl it was as if she had been transported with instant magic from the horrible little cow-town back to the home of one of her dearest friends in Chester. She was at once exalted and humbly grateful.

"We dine at seven," Mrs. Redfield was saying, "so you can take a cup of tea without spoiling your dinner. Will you venture it?"

"If you please."

"Very well; come down soon, and I'll have it ready. Mr. Redfield, I'm sure, will want some."

Virginia's heart was dancing with delight of this home as she came down the stairs a little later. She found Mr. Redfield at the farther end of a long sitting-room, whose dim light was as restful (after the glare of the tawny plains) as the voice of her hostess was to her ears, which still ached with the noise of profane and vulgar speech.

Redfield heard her coming and met her half-way, and with stately ceremony showed her a seat. "I fear you will need something stronger than tea after my exhausting conversation."

"I hope, Hugh, you were not in one of your talking moods?"

"I was, Eleanor. I talked incessantly, barring an occasional jolt of the machine."

"You poor thing!" This to Virginia. "Truly you deserve a two hours' rest before dinner, for our dinner is always a talk-fest, and to-night, with Senator Bridges here, it will be a convention."

He turned to Virginia. "We were talking old times 'before the war,' and you know it never tires veterans to run over their ancient campaigns--does it, Lee Virginia?"

As they talked Mrs. Redfield studied the girl with increasing interest and favor, and soon got at her point of view. She even secured a little more of her story, which matched fairly well with the account her husband had given. Her prejudices were swept away, and she treated her young guest as one well-born and well-educated woman treats another.

At last she said: "We dress for dinner, but any frock you have will do. We are not ironclad in our rules. There will be some neighbors in, but it isn't in any sense a 'party.'"

Lee Virginia went to her room, borne high upon a new conception of the possibilities of the West. It was glorious to think that one could enjoy the refinement, the comfort of the East at the same time that one dwelt within the inspiring shadow of the range. She caught some prophetic hint in all this of the future age when each of these foot-hills would be peopled by those to whom cleanliness of mind and grace of body were habitual. Standing on the little balcony which filled the front of her windows, she looked away at the towering heights, smoky purple against a sky of burning gold, and her eyes expanded like those of the young eagle when about to launch himself upon the sunset wind.

The roar of a waterfall came to her ears, and afar on the sage-green carpet of the lower mesa a horseman was galloping swiftly. Far to the left of this smoothly sculptured table-land a band of cattle fed, while under her eyes, formal as a suburban home, lay a garden of old-fashioned English flowers. It was a singular and moving union of the old and new--the East and the West.

On her table and on the pretty bookshelves she found several of the latest volumes of poetry and essays, and the bed, with its dainty covering and ample spread, testified quite as plainly of taste and comfort. Her hands were a-tremble as she put on the bright muslin gown which was all she had for evening wear. She felt very much like the school-girl again, and after she had done her best to look nice, she took a seat in the little rocker, with intent to compose herself for her meeting with strangers. "I wish we were dining without visitors," she said, as she heard a carriage drive up. A little later a galloping horse entered the yard and stopped at the door.

"It all sounds like a play," she said to herself, forgetting for the moment that she was miles away from a town and in a lonely ranch-house under the very shadows of the mountains.

She heard voices in the hall, and among them one with a very English accent--one that sounded precisely like those she had heard on the stage. It was the voice of a man, big, hearty, with that thick, throaty gurgle which is so suggestive of London that one is certain to find a tweed suit and riding-breeches associated with it.

At last she dared wait no longer, and taking courage from necessity, descended the stairs--a pleasant picture of vigorous yet somewhat subdued maidenhood.

V

TWO ON THE VERANDA

REDFIELD met his young guest in dinner-coat, looking extremely urban, and presented his "friend and neighbor, Mr. Enderby."

Enderby turned out to be the owner of the voice with the English accent which Lee Virginia had heard in the hall, but he was very nice, and a moment later Mrs. Redfield entered with Mrs. Enderby, a large lady with a smiling face. Then a voice she knew spoke from behind her: "I don't need a presentation. Miss Wetherford and I have already met."

She turned to meet Ross Cavanagh, the young ranger.

"How did you get here?" she asked, in wonder.

"I rode across the hills; it's not far."