Chapter 16

On all the ranches along the Coldstream there was water in plenty. The ditches ran brimful. In the fields the soil was dark with grateful moisture; the roots of the grain drank deep, fed full on the stored fertility of ages magically released by the water, and shot suddenly from small, frail plants, apparently lying thinly in the drills, into crowding, lusty growths, vigorous, strong-stemmed, robust, throwing millions of green pennants to the warm winds. Down the length of the fields at narrow intervals trickled little streams like liquid silver wires strung against a background of living emerald. Pullulation was forced, swift, marvellous; one could almost hear the grain grow.

Though everything pointed to a bumper crop, this depended on a continued water supply, and the ranchers took full advantage of the present, for none could tell how long the conditions would endure. As soon as one piece of land had sufficient moisture the water was shifted elsewhere; they allowed no overflow, no waste. This meant long hours, continuous, if not arduous work.

Naturally each ranch's main ditch was the heart of its water supply. From these, smaller ditches carried the supply to the different fields. These represented the arteries. The small streams trickling down the long irrigation marks through the grain and root crops might be likened to veins. To supply these it was necessary to tap the arteries every few yards; and the adjustment of these outlets, as ditches always lower during the heat of the day when suction and evaporation are the greatest and rise in the cooler hours of the night, was a matter of some skill and difficulty.

Dunne and his entire force worked overtime, taking all they could get while they could get it. Glass, the timorous would-be investor, paid him several visits. The first time Casey himself showed him over the ranch, explaining the theory and practice of irrigation, telling him what crops could be grown, what could not be grown, and what might perhaps be grown but as yet had not been proven. Glass absorbed this information like a sponge. Once more he recited his doubts and fears, going over the same ground with wearying detail. Casey, on the second visit, handed him over to Tom McHale, who listened pityingly.

"This here Glass sure needs a guardian or a nursemaid or something," he told Casey afterward. "He don't seem to know which way to string his chips. He makes me that tired I sorter suggests maybe he'd better pray about it; and he says he's done that, too, but don't seem to git no straight answer. So I tells him if the Lord don't know I surely don't. And then he says he'll ask his wife. His wife! Whatever do you think of that? I quit him right there!"

But Glass wandered from ranch to ranch, a harmless bore, relating his perplexities to people too busy to listen. Finally he announced that he had bought land and sent for his family. And on the strength of this began his rounds again, eager for agricultural information.

At this time Casey received a letter from Wade giving the date of his long-promised visit to Coldstream. He added that his wife and Miss Burnaby would accompany him. They would stay, he said, in town, at the hotel. Immediately Casey went into committee with Tom McHale.

"Wade was coming here," he said. "The ladies complicate matters, but we'll have to do the best we can. It's the house that worries me. It's not furnished the way I'd like to have it. And then it's small. I guess we'll have to move out, Tom."

"Sure," McHale agreed at once. "We can bed down anywheres. I'll rig up a couple of bunks in the new tool house. We're pretty well along with the water. I can 'tend to that while you show 'em the country."

Straightway Casey commanded Feng, his Chinaman, to clean and scrub, much to that Celestial's disgust.

"What foh?" he demanded. "Housee plenty clean. Las spling me _hiyu_ sclub, _hiyu_ wash, _hiyu_ sweep undeh bed. All light now."

"All right for man; no good for woman," Casey explained. "Two lady come stop, Feng."

"Ho!" said Feng, adjusting his mind to a new situation. "You and Tom mally him?"

"No," Casey responded. "One married already. Ladies all same my friends, Feng."

"No good." Feng announced with certainty. "Woman fliend no good. All time makee too much wo'k. All time kick at glub. Mebbyso want blekfust in bed. Mebbyso bling baby. Neveh give Chinaboy a dolla'. No good. S'pose you bling woman fliend me quit. Me go back to China."

"If you quit me now, one dead China boy stop," Casey threatened. He added craftily: "This lady _tyee_ lady. All same mandarin's daughter. _Hiyu_ rich!"

"Ho!" said Feng thoughtfully. "_Hiyu_ lich, eh? All light. Me clean housee."

But, though he had won this diplomatic victory, Casey was not satisfied. Finally he took his perplexities to Sheila, enlisting her aid in problems of decoration and the like.

"Where does this Miss Burnaby come in?" she asked. "Who is she?"

Casey told her, and she frowned dubiously.

"Seems to me you butted into real society when you went outside, Casey. If she has all that money she's apt to be pernickity. I hate fussy women. Is she pretty?"

"Why--yes, I think so," he admitted. "Oh, yes, she's pretty--no doubt about that. But I don't think she's fussy. You'll like her, Sheila. She doesn't scare or rattle easily. In some ways she reminds me of you."

"Thank you. And how do you know she doesn't scare or rattle?"

He evaded the question. "I don't think she would."

"Why didn't you ever mention her before?"

"Never thought of it. I hadn't the least notion that Mrs. Wade was coming, let alone Miss Burnaby. You see, it puts me up against it. I'll be ever so much obliged if you'll help me out."

"I'll come over and arrange things in the rooms, of course," Sheila acquiesced.

And so, when Casey awaited the coming of the train which bore his guests, it was with the knowledge that his rough-and-tumble, quarters had been made as presentable as possible.

Wade and his party descended, attended by an obsequious porter laden with bags, and in a moment Casey was shaking hands.

"And so this is your country!" said Mrs. Wade eying her surroundings rather dubiously. In her heart she was appalled at the prospect of passing several weeks in such a place.

"Well, some of it isn't mine," he laughed. "I wish it were. This is only the makings, Mrs. Wade. Wait a few years. Now, here's what we do. We have dinner at the hotel. Afterward we drive out to the ranch where you are all to stay."

Wade and his wife protested. They couldn't think of it. Clyde said nothing. Casey appealed to her.

"What do you say Miss Burnaby? Will you brave the discomforts of a shack in the dry belt?"

"I'm in the hands of my friends," she laughed.

"That includes me," said Casey. "Everything's fixed for you. This is my stamping ground, and I'm boss. What I say goes." He introduced Mr. Quilty, who was hovering in the background, and chuckled as that garrulous gentleman proceeded to unwind an apparently endless welcome.

"I like him," Clyde whispered.

"Pure gold," said Casey, and created a diversion. He helped Quilty deposit the bags in the station.

"Thon's a fine gyurrl," said the latter, with a jerk of his thumb toward the platform."

"Right," Casey replied.

"Oh, trust a quiet devil like yourself to pick wan out," said the little station agent. "I was the same meself, whin I was more younger nor what I am now. I fell dead in love with a fine, big gyurrl be th' name iv--iv--dom'd if I don't forget the name iv her, onless it was Mary or Josephine--no, thim came afther. What th' divil are ye laughin' at? Annyways, me an' this gyurrl that I loved that I forget the name iv, was strollin' wan night be moonlight, d'ye see me, now? And we come to where there was a stump risin' maybe two fut clear iv th' ground--ye'll wonder what th' stump had to do wid ut, but listen--and I stopped and put me arrm around her waist--or tried to; for a fine circumferenshus waist she had. Faix, a wan-arrmed man'd've been up against it intirely wid her--and I sez to her, 'Lena'--that was her name, Lena, I remimber now, and she was a Swede--'Lena,' I sez, 'luk at the moon!' 'Ay see him,' she sez. 'Turn yer sweet face a little more to the southeast,' I sez, that bein' to'rd the stump I mintioned before; an' when I had her at the right angle I made a lep up on the stump and kissed her. Faix, and the same was a forced play, me bein' the height I am, and her over six fut. 'I love yez,' I sez; 'say yez love me!'"

"Well, what did she say?" asked Casey, as Mr. Quilty paused for breath.

"She concealed her feelin's," Mr. Quilty replied sadly. "She said, 'Ay tenk ve go home now. Ay don't vant no feller vat have to mek love med a step-ladder!' And afther that, mind ye, what does she do but take up wid another little divil wid no legs at all, havin' lost them under a shuntin' ingin. But his artfulness is such that he gets extra-long imitation wans, like stilts, to do his coortin' on. An', though he looks like a cross bechune a sparrow and a crane and has to carry an oil can when he walks or else creak like a stable door in Janooary, she marries him and keeps him in luxury be takin' in washin' for the camps. And so, ye see, though I had stood on wan stump to kiss her, ivery time he done the likes he had to stand on _two_!"

"Corney," said Casey gravely, "you are an awful liar."

"I will not be insulted by yez," Mr. Quilty retorted with equal gravity. "I will consider the soorce from which ut comes. G'wan out of here, before I do yez injury."

Immediately after dinner Casey brought up his road team, two wiry, slashing chestnuts. The Wades occupied the rear seat. Clyde sat beside Casey. The horses started with a rush that brought a gasp from Mrs. Wade. Clyde involuntarily caught the seat rail.

"It's all right," Casey assured them. "A little fresh, that's all. They know they're going home. It's their way of saying they're glad. You, Dick--you, Doc! Behave, behave!" He had them in hand, checking their impatience to an easy jog, holding them fretting against the bit. "I'll let them out in a mile or two. Do you know horses, Miss Burnaby?"

"A very little. I ride and drive; but I like quiet animals."

"Oh, these are quiet." He smiled back at Mrs. Wade.

"Are they?" that lady commented. "Then I don't want to drive behind wild ones."

A light wind was in their faces, blowing the dust backward. The town vanished suddenly, lost behind swells of brown grasses. The road wound tortuously onward, skirting little groves of cottonwoods, swinging along gulches, sometimes plunging down them and ascending in long grades on the thither side.

Clyde drank in the sweet, thin air eagerly. The city and her everyday life seemed far behind. Heretofore her holidays had been passed in places where pleasure was a business. This was to be different. She would not look for amusement; she would let it come to her. She felt that she was entering a world of which she knew little, peopled by those whose outlook was strange. It seemed, somehow, that this journey was to be fateful--that she had placed herself in the grip of circumstances which moved her without volition. Where and how, she wondered vaguely, would it end?

She glanced at Dunne's profile, shaded by the hat brim tilted over his eyes against the sun; at his buckskin-gloved hands holding the reins against the steady pull of the big chestnuts; downward over the dashboard at their hoofs falling with the forceful impact of hammers and yet rising with the light springiness of an athlete's foot, throwing the miles behind them scornfully. And she was dreamily content.

"You're going to like it," said Dunne suddenly.

"Am I?" she smiled. "How do you know? How did you know?"

"It's largely a guess. I was nervous at first."

"And now?"

"No. This is a plain, dusty trail, the grass is so dry it's almost dead, the scenery is conspicuously absent, the smell of leather and horseflesh isn't especially pleasant--and yet you are not noticing these things. The bigness and the newness of the land have got you, Miss Burnaby. You don't know it and you can't put it into words--I can't myself--but the feeling is there. You are one of us at heart."

"Of 'us'?"

"The people of the new lands--the pioneers, if you choose, the modern colonists, the trail blazers."

"I wonder." The idea was new. She considered it gravely. "My parents were city folks; I have lived in the city all my life. And yet I think I have the feeling you speak of. Only I can't put it into words either."

"If you could you would be the most famous person in the world. The song is there, waiting the singer. It has always been there, waiting, and the singer has never come. We who hear it in our hearts have no voices. Now and then some genius strikes the chord by accident, almost, and loses it. I don't think any one will ever find it completely. But if some one should! Heavens! What a grand harmony it would be."

She glanced at him curiously. He was not looking at her. His eyes were on a little cloud, a white island in a sapphire sea. He seemed to be paying no attention whatever to the road, to his surroundings. But as one of the chestnuts stumbled over a loose stone he lifted him instantly with the reins and administered a sharp word of reproof and a light cut of the whip.

"He didn't mean to stumble," said Clyde.

"He should have meant not to. A horse that isn't tired and is paying attention to business should never stumble on a road. It's the slouchy horse that breaks his kind owner's neck some day. Now I'm going to let them out."

So far as Clyde could observe, he did absolutely nothing. But immediately, as though some subtle current had passed from his hands along the lines, the horses' heads came up, their ears pricked forward, their stride quickened and lengthened, and the measured beat of their hoofs became a quickstep. The horses themselves seemed to exult in the change of pace, filling their great lungs through widened nostrils and expelling the air noisily, shaking their heads, proud of themselves and their work.

Mrs. Wade laid a nervous hand on her husband's arm as the light wagon rattled down a descent. But Clyde sat quietly, her lips slightly parted, her eyes shining as the warm wind poured past in a torrent plucking at vagrant strands of her coppery golden hair.

"Fifteen miles an hour," said Casey. "Like it?"

"It's better than fifty in a car," she replied.

"The difference between God-made and man-made horsepower. Some people can't appreciate it."

"I can. It isn't the end--the pace alone. It's the means to the end."

"Plus the love of human flesh and blood for other flesh and blood. You've got it. I won't keep them at this. Too warm."

It was late afternoon when Chakchak came into view. It appeared suddenly as they swung around the corner of a butte, lying below them, the emerald of its fields drenched with the gold of the sloping sun.

"My kingdom!" said Casey. "Welcome to it!"

Clyde was surprised, in a measure disappointed. She had pictured it differently. With her the word "ranch" had connoted large prairie areas, bald landscapes, herds of cattle, lonely horsemen, buildings more or less ugly, unrelieved by any special surroundings. Here were green fields, trees, water, painted barns, and a neat little house of the bungalow type.

"Why," she exclaimed, "it's a farm!"

"Thank you," he responded; "that's what we're trying to make it. Only out here we call them 'ranches.' Slightly more picturesque term, glorified by fiction, calculated to appeal to the imagination. Gives the impression of a free, breezy life in which the horse does all the work. Invaluable in selling land. But in strict confidence I may say that work on a farm in the East and on a ranch in the West are twins--you can't tell t'other from which."

McHale appeared as they drove up, to relieve Casey of the horses. He was freshly shaven, and dressed with unusual care. Feng, in white jacket and apron, grinned from his quarters, appraising the "_hiyu_ lich gal," with an eye to possible dollars.

"Now, this house," Casey explained, as they entered, "belongs to you three. It's yours to have, hold, and occupy for your sole use and benefit while you are here. Is that sufficiently legal, Wade? The Chinaman is yours, too. He takes his orders from you. Mrs. Wade, your room is there. Miss Burnaby, that one is intended for you. But if you like to change about, do so, by all means."

"And which is your room?" Wade asked.

"I'm bunking in one of the other buildings."

"What? We're putting you out of your own house!" Wade exclaimed. "That won't do, Casey, really it won't. We won't let you."

"Of course not," his wife concurred.

"Indeed we won't," said Clyde.

But Casey was firm. He explained that he came and went at all hours, rose early, had to be where he could confer with McHale. He insisted on his fictions, and ended by half convincing them.

Clyde, entering the room he had pointed out as hers, was struck by its absolute cleanness and daintiness. The curtains were tastefully draped, tied with ribbon; there were scarfs on dresser and stand, pin-cushion and pins, little trays for trifles. The bed was made with hospital neatness.

A moment afterward Kitty Wade entered, looking around.

"Yours, too," she said. "No mere bachelor ever did these things, Clyde. The Chinaman is out of the question. It is to find the woman."

"We'll ask Mr. Dunne," said Clyde.

But it was not till after dinner that Kitty Wade did so.

"Miss McCrae was kind enough to fix up the rooms for you," Casey replied.

"Who is Miss McCrae?"

Casey pulled a handful of photographs from a drawer, and shuffled them. He handed one to Mrs. Wade.

"That's Sheila McCrae. I'll drive you over to Talapus, her father's place, one of these days."

Clyde, moved by an interest which she could not understand, bent over Kitty Wade's shoulder. The picture was an enlarged snapshot, but a splendid likeness. Sheila was standing, one hand by her side holding her riding hat, the other, half raised to her hair, as if to arrange it when the shutter had opened. Her dark, keen face with its touch of wistfulness looked full at them.

"What a nice-looking girl!" Kitty Wade exclaimed. "Don't you think so, Clyde?"

Clyde agreed perfunctorily. But, looking into the steady, fearless eyes of the pictured girl, she felt a vague, incomprehensible hostility. Kitty Wade glanced at her quickly, detecting the strained note. Clyde felt the glance, and inwardly resented it. Kitty Wade's eyes were altogether too observant.