Chapter 8

The afternoon was steeped in the warm fragrance of a California spring. Every crease and wrinkle in the velvet of the encircling hills was reflected in the blue stillness of the laguna. Patches of poppies blazed like bonfires on the mesa, and higher up the faint smoke of the blossoming buckthorn tangled its drifts in the chaparral. Bees droned in the wild buckwheat, and powdered themselves with the yellow of the mustard, and now and then the clear, staccato voice of the meadow-lark broke into the drowsy quiet--a swift little dagger of sound.

"The barley's headin' out fast." Parker raised his voice above the rattle of the wagon. "I wished now I'd 'a' put in that piece of Harrington's."

"Harvest's a poor time fer wishin'; it's more prof'table 'long about seedin'-time," said Idy, with a smile that threatened the meshes of her stylishly drawn veil.

Parker set one foot on the dashboard, and swung the other out of the wagon nervously.

"I do a good deal o' wishin' now that ain't very prof'table--time o' year don't seem to make much difference," he said plaintively.

"Well, I guess if I wanted anything I wouldn't wish fer it a _great_ while--not if I could set to work an' get it."

The vim of this remark seemed to communicate itself to the pinto through the tightened rein, and sent him forward with accelerated speed.

Parker glanced at his companion from under the conical shapelessness of his old felt hat, but she kept her eyes on the team, and gave him her jaunty profile behind its tantalizing barrier of meshes and dots.

"Well, I'll bet if you wanted what I want you'd be 'most afraid to mention it," he said, reaching down into the tall barley, and jerking up a handful of the bearded heads.

"Well, now, I bet I wouldn't."

"S'posin' I wanted to get married?"

There was a silence so sudden that it had the effect of an explosion. Then Miss Starkweather giggled nervously.

"That's just exactly what I do want," persisted Parker desperately, turning his toe inward, and kicking the wagon-box.

There was another disheartening silence. Then the girl's color flamed up under her rusty lace veil. She turned upon him witheringly.

"Well, what are ye goin' to do about it? Set 'round and wait till some girl asks ye?"

Her voice had a fine sarcastic sting in it.

Parker whipped his brown overalls with a green barley-head.

"No; I ain't such a bloomin' idiot as I look."

"I don't know 'bout that," answered the young woman coolly.

Parker faced about.

"Now, look here, Idy," he said; "you'd ought to quit foolin'. You know what I mean well enough; you're just purtendin'. You know I want to marry ye."

"Me!" The girl lifted her brows until they disappeared under the edge of her much-becurled bang. "Want to marry _me!_ Great Scott!"

"I don't see why it's great Scott or great anything else," said Parker doggedly.

Idy held the reins in her left hand, and smoothed her alpaca lap with the whip handle, in maiden meditation.

"Well, I don't know as 't is so very great after all," she said, rubbing the folds of her dress, and glancing at him in giggling confusion.

Parker made an experimental motion with his right arm toward the back of the seat. The girl repelled him dexterously with her elbow.

"You drop that, Parker Lowe!" she said, with dignity. "I ain't so far gone as all that. There's that Gonsallies felluh lookin' at us. You just straighten up, or I'll hit ye a cut with this whip!"

Her lover gave a short, embarrassed laugh.

"Oh, come now, Idy; Ricardo don't understand United States."

"Well, I don't care whether he understands United States or not. I guess idiots acts about the same in all languages. I'll bet a dollar he understands what you're up to, anyway; so there."

She drove on, in rigid perpendicularity, past the adobe ranch-house of the Gonzales family, and around the curve of the lake-shore, into the sunshine of the wild mustard that fringed the road. Through it they could see the pale sheen of the ripening barley-fields, broken here and there by the darker green of alfalfa.

As the mustard grew taller and denser, Idy's spine relaxed sufficiently to permit a covert, conciliatory glance toward her companion's arm, which hung from the back of the seat in the disappointed attitude it had assumed at her repulse.

"I s'pose you think I'm awful touchy," she broke out at last, "an' mebbe I am; but before I promise to marry anybody, there's two things he's got to promise _me_--he's got to sign the pledge, an' he's got to get even with that felluh Barden."

Parker's face, which had brightened perceptibly at the first requirement, clouded dismally at the second.

Idy dropped her chin on the silk handkerchief flaring softly at her throat, and looked at him deliciously sidewise from under her overshadowing frizz.

"I'll promise _any_thing, Idy," he protested, fervently abject.

Half an hour later they drove into Elsmore with the radiance of their betrothal still about them, and Idy drove the team up, with a skillful avoidance of the curb, before the "Live and Let Live Meat-Market."

"I'm goin' to get some round steak," she said, giving the lines to Parker, who sprang to the sidewalk, "an' then I'm goin' over to Saunders's to look at jerseys. You c'n go where you please, but if I see you loafin' 'round a saloon there'll be a picnic. If you tie the team, you want to put a halter on the pinto--he's like me, he hates to be tied; he pulls back. If you hain't got much to do, I think you'd better make a hitchin'-post of yerself, and not tie 'im."

She stood up in the wagon, preening her finery, and looking down at her lover before she gave him her hand.

"I won't be a hitchin'-post if you hate to be tied," he said, holding out his hands invitingly.

As he spoke, the rider of a glittering bicycle glided noiselessly around the corner, apparently steering straight for Eben's team of ranch-bred broncos. The pinto snorted wildly, and dashed into the street, jerking the reins from Parker's hand, and rolling him over in the dust. There was the customary soothing yell with which civilization always greets a runaway, and a man sprang from a doorway on the opposite side of the street, and flung himself in front of the frightened horses. The pinto reared, but the stranger's hand was on the bridle; a firm and skillful hand it seemed, for the horses came down on quivering haunches, and then stood still, striving to look around their blinders in search of the modern centaur that had terrified them.

Idy had fallen back into the seat without a word or cry, and sat there bolt upright, her face so white that it gleamed through the meshes of her veil.

"Well," she said, with a long panting breath, "that was a pretty close call fer kingdom come, wasn't it?"

The stranger, who was stroking the pinto's nose, and talking to him coaxingly, laughed.

"Hello, Park!" he said as the latter came up. "Cold day, wasn't it? Got your jacket pretty well dusted for once, I guess."

The crowd that had collected laughed, and two or three bareheaded men began to examine the harness. While this was in progress, the livery-stable keeper took a look at the pinto's teeth, and they all confided liberally in one another as to what they had thought when they first heard the racket. The young man who had stopped the team left them in the care of a newcomer, and walked around beside Idy.

"Won't you come into the office and rest a little?" he asked.

"Oh, thanks, no," said the girl, with a shuddering, nervous laugh; "I hain't done nothin' to make _me_ tired. I think you're the one that ought to take a rest. If it hadn't been fer you I'd been a goner, sure."

Her rescuer laughed again and turned away, moving his hand involuntarily toward his head, and discovering that it was bare. The discovery seemed to amuse him even more highly, and he made two or three strides to where his hat lay in the middle of the street, and went across to his office, dusting the hat with long, elaborate flirts of his gayly bordered silk handkerchief.

The knot of men began to disperse, and the boys, who lingered longest, finally straggled away, stifling their regret that no one was mangled beyond recognition. Parker climbed into the wagon, and drove over to Saunders's store.

"I don't know as I'd better buy a jersey to-day," giggled Idy, as she stepped from the wagon to the elevated wooden sidewalk. "I'm afraid it won't fit. I feel as if I'd been scared out o' ten years' growth."

IV.

As they drove home in the chill, yellow evening, Idy turned to her lover, and asked abruptly,--

"Who was that felluh?"

"What felluh?"

"The young felluh with the sandy _mus_tache, the one that stopped the team."

Parker's manner had been evasive from the first, but at this the evasiveness became a highly concentrated unconcern. He looked across the lake, and essayed a yawn with feeble success.

"There was a good many standin' around when I got there. What sort o' lookin' felluh was he?"

"I just told ye; with a sandy mustache, short, and middlin' heavy set."

"Sh-h-h!" said Parker, reaching for his gun. Idy stopped the horses.

A bronze ibis arose from the tules at the water's edge, and flapped slowly westward, its pointed wings and hanging feet dripping with the gold of the sunset. Parker laid down his gun.

"What did you want to shoot at that thing fer?" asked Idy. "They ain't fit to eat."

"The wings is pretty. I thought you might like another feather in your cap."

The girl gave him a look of radiant contempt, and he spoke again hurriedly, anxious to prevent a relapse in the conversation.

"You was sayin' somethin' to-day about signin' the pledge, Idy: I've been layin' off to sign the pledge this good while. The next time there's a meetin' of the W. X. Y. Z. women, you fetch on one o' their pledges, an' I'll put my fist to it."

"W. C. T. U.," corrected Idy, with emphasis.

"All right; W. C. T. me, if that suits you any better. It's a long time since I learned my letters, an' I get 'em mixed. But I've made up my mind on the teetotal business, and don't ye forget it."

"There ain't any danger of _me_ forgettin' it," said the young woman significantly. "What ye goin' to do about that other business?" she added, turning her wide eyes upon him abruptly--"about gettin' even with that cheatin' Barden?"

They had driven into the purple shadow of the mountains, and Parker seemed to have left his enthusiasm behind him with the sunlight.

"I don't know," he said gloomily. "Do ye want me to kill 'im?"

"_Kill_ him!" sneered the girl; "I want ye _to get even with 'im_! 'Tain't no great trick to kill a man; any fool can do that. I want ye to get ahead of 'im!"

She glowed upon him in angry magnificence.

"Idy," said her lover, sidling toward her tenderly, "when you flare up that a-way, you mustn't expect me to think about Barden. You look just pretty 'nough to eat!"

V.

A week later Eben began grubbing out the vineyard. The weather turned suddenly warm, and the harvest was coming on rapidly. Parker Lowe had gone to Temecula with Mose Doolittle, who was about to purchase a machine, presumably feminine, which they both referred to familiarly as "she," and styled more formally "a second-hand steam-thrasher." It was Monday, and Idy was putting the week's washing through the wringer with a loud vocal accompaniment of gospel hymn.

Eben had worked steadily since sunrise. The vines were young, and the ground was not heavy, but the day was warm, and he wielded the mattock rapidly, stooping now and then to jerk out a refractory root with his hands. An hour before noon his daughter saw him coming through the apricot orchard, walking wearily, with his soiled handkerchief pressed to his lips. The girl's voice lost its song abruptly, and then broke out again in a low, faltering wail. She bounded across the warm plowed ground to his side.

"Pappy! O pappy!" she cried, breathing wildly, "what is it? Tell me, can't you, pappy?"

The little man smiled at her with his patient eyes, and shook his head. She put her hand under his elbow, and walked beside him, her arm across his shoulders, her tortured young face close to his. When they reached the kitchen door he sank down on the edge of the platform, resting his head on his hand. The girl took off his weather-beaten hat, and smoothed the wet hair from his forehead.

"O pappy! Poor, little, sweet old pappy!" she moaned, rubbing her cheek caressingly on his bowed head.

Eben took the handkerchief from his lips, and she started back, crying out piteously as she saw it stained with blood. He looked up at her, a gentle, tremulous smile twitching his beard.

"Don't--tell--your--maw," he said, putting out his hand feebly.

The words seemed to recall her. She went hurriedly into the house and close to the lounge where her mother was lying.

"Maw," she said quickly, "you must get up! Pappy's got a hem'ridge. I want you to help me to get 'im to bed, an' then I'm goin' fer a doctor."

The woman got up, and followed her daughter eagerly.

"Why, Eben!" she said, when they reached the kitchen door. Her voice was almost womanly; and a real anxiety seemed to have penetrated her hysterical egoism.

They got him to bed tenderly, and propped him up among the white pillows. His knotted hands lay on the coverlet, gray and bloodless under the stains of hard work. Idy bent over him, tucking him in with little pats and crooning moans of sympathy. When she had finished, she dropped her wet cheek against his beard.

"I'm goin' fer the doctor, pappy," she whispered; "I won't be gone but a little while,"--then rushed down the path to the stable, and flung the harness on the pinto.

The buggy was standing in the shed, and she caught the shafts and dragged it out with superabundant energy, as if her anxiety found relief in the exertion. A few minutes later she drove out between the rows of pallid young eucalyptus-trees that led to the road, leaning eagerly forward, her young face white and set beneath the row of knobby protuberances that represented the morning stage of her much cherished bang. It was thus that she drove into Elsmore, the rattling of the old buggy and the spots of lather on the pinto's sides exciting a ripple of curiosity, which furnished its own solution in the fact that it was "that there Starkweather girl," who was generally conceded to be "a great one."

She stopped her panting horse before the doctor's office, and sprang out.

"Are you the doctor?" she asked breathlessly, standing on the threshold, with one hand on each side of the casing.

A man in his shirt-sleeves, who was writing at the desk, turned and looked at her. It was the same man who had prevented the runaway. He began to smile, but the girl's stricken face stopped him.

"Dr. Patterson has gone to the tin-mine," he said, getting up and coming forward; "he will not be home till to-morrow."

Idy grasped the casing so tightly that her knuckles shone white and polished.

"My fawther's got a hem'ridge," she said, swallowing after the words. "I don't know what on earth to do."

"A hemorrhage!" said the young man with kindly sympathy. "Well, now, don't be too much alarmed, Miss--"

"Starkweather," quavered Idy.

"Starkweather? Oh, it's Mr. Starkweather. Why, he's a friend of mine. And so you're his daughter. Well, you mustn't be too much alarmed. I've had a great many hemorrhages myself, and I'm good for twenty years yet." He had taken his coat from a nail at the back of the room, and was putting it on hurriedly. "Prop him up in bed, and don't let him talk, and give him a spoonful of salt-and-water now and then. My horse is standing outside, and I'll go right down to Maravilla and fetch a doctor. I'll come up on the other side of the lake, and get there almost as soon as you do--let me help you into your buggy. And drive right on home, and don't worry."

He had put on his hat, and they stood on the sidewalk together.

Idy made a little impulsive stoop toward him, as if she would have taken him in her arms.

"Oh!" she gasped, her eyes swimming, and her chin working painfully; "I just think you're the very best man I ever saw in all my life!"

A moment later she saw him driving a tall black horse toward the lake at a speed that brought her the first sigh of relief she had known, and made her put up her hand suddenly to her forehead.

"Good gracious me!" she exclaimed under her breath--"if I didn't forget to take down my crimps!"

Two or three times as she drove home through the warm odors of the harvest noon her anxiety was invaded by the recollection of this man, to whose promptness and decision her own vigorous nature responded with a strong sense of liking; and this liking did not suffer any abatement when he came into her father's sick-room with the doctor, and the invalid looked at the stranger, and then at her, with a faint, troubled smile.

"Don't try to speak, Mr. Starkweather," said the visitor cheerfully; "I've made your daughter's acquaintance already. We want you to give your entire attention to getting well, and let us do the talking."

He went out of the room, and strolled about the place while the doctor made his call, and when it was over he went around to the kitchen, where Idy was kindling a fire, and said:--

"Doctor Patterson thinks your father will be all right in a day or so, Miss Starkweather. Be careful to keep him quiet. I'm going to drive around to the station, so the doctor can catch the evening train, and save my driving him down to Maravilla; and I'll go on over to Elsmore and get this prescription filled, and bring the medicine back to you. Is there anything else you'd like from town--a piece of meat to make beef-tea, or anything?"

"Well, I wouldn't mind much if you _would_ bring me a piece of beef," said Idy, pausing with a stick of redwood kindling across her knee. Then she dropped it, and came forward. "We're _ever_ so much obliged to ye--pappy 'n' all of us. Seem 's if you always turn up. I think you've been just awful good and kind--an' us strangers, too."

"Oh, you're not strangers," laughed the young man, lifting his hat; "I've known your father ever since he came."

He went around the house, and got into the cart with the doctor. "Starkweather's a crank," he said, as they drove off, "but he's the kind of crank that makes you wish you were one yourself. When I see a man like that going off with consumption, and a lot of loafers getting so fat they crowd each other off the store boxes, I wonder what Providence is thinking of."

"He works too hard," growled the doctor, with the savagery of science. "What can Providence do with a man who grubs greasewood when he ought to be in bed!"

It was moonlight when the stranger returned, and handed the packages to Idy at the kitchen door.

"Pappy's asleep," she whispered, in answer to his inquiries; "he seems to be restin' easy."

"Is there no one about the place but yourself and mother, Miss Starkweather?"

Idy shook her head.

"Well, then, if you don't mind, I think I will put my horse in the barn, and sleep in the shed here, on the hay. If you should need any one in the night, you can call me. I haven't an idea but that your father will be all right, but it's a little more comfortable to have some one within call."

"Well," said Idy, dropping her hands at her sides, and looking at him in admiring bewilderment, "if you ain't just-- Have you had anythin' to eat?" she broke off, with sudden hospitality.

"Oh yes, thank you; I had dinner at Elsmore," laughed the young man, backing out into the shadow. "Good-night."

Half a minute later she followed him down the walk, carrying a heavy blanket over her arm. He had led his horse to the water-trough, and the moonlight shone full upon him as he stood with one arm thrown over the glossy creature's neck.

"I brought you this here blanket, Mr.--"

"Barden," supplied the young man, carelessly.

Idy sank back against the corral fence as if she were stunned.

"Barden!" she repeated helplessly. "Is your name Barden?"

"Yes."

She stood breathless a moment, and then burst out:--

"An' you're him! _you_--an' doin' this way, after the way you've done--an' him sick--an' me talkin' to ye--an'--an'--everything!"

The two torrents of hate and gratitude had met, and were whirling her about wildly.

The young man pushed his hat back on his head, and stared at her in sturdy, unflinching amazement.

"My dear young lady, what on earth do you mean?" he asked quietly.

"I mean that I didn't know that you was _him_--the man that sold my father this place, an' lied to him about the vineyard--told him they was raisin-grapes, an' they wasn't--an' you knowed he was a temp'rance man, a prohibitionist. An' him tryin' to grub 'em out, an' gettin' sick--an' bein' so patient, an' never hurtin' nobody--" she ended in a wild, angry sob that seemed to swallow up her voice.

"Miss Starkweather," said the young fellow steadily, "I certainly did sell this place to your father, and if I told him anything about the vineyard I most certainly told him they were raisin-grapes; and upon my soul I thought they _were_. Aren't they?"

"No," sobbed Idy, "they ain't; they're wine-grapes! He was grubbin' 'em out to-day. That's what hurt 'im--I'm afraid he'll die!"

"You mustn't be afraid of that. Dr. Patterson says he will get better. But we must see that he doesn't do any more grubbing. When Slater gave me this for sale," he went on, as if he were reflecting aloud, "he said there were ten acres of vineyard. I can't swear that he told me what the vines were, or that I asked him. But it never occurred to me that any man--even an Englishman--would plant ten acres of wine-grapes when there wasn't a winery within fifty miles of him."

VI.

Parker Lowe borrowed one of Mose Doolittle's mules Monday evening, and rode from Temecula to Jake Levison's saloon at Maravilla. It was understood when he left the thresher's camp that he would probably "make a night of it," and Mose gave him a word of friendly warning and advice.

"You want to remember, Park, that the old man is down on the flowing bowl; an' from what I've heard of the family I think it'll pay you to keep yourself solid with the old man."

"I'm a-goin' up to the drug-store to get some liniment for Dave Montgomery's lame shoulder," returned Parker, with a knowing wink at his companion, as he flung himself into the saddle; "but I hain't signed no pledge yet--not by a jugful," he called back, as the mule jolted lazily down the road.

It was a warm night, and half a dozen loafers were seated on empty beer-kegs in front of Levison's door when Parker rode up. Levison got up, and began to disengage himself from the blacksmith's story as he saw the newcomer dismount; but the blacksmith raised his voice insistently.

"'There don't no dude tell me how to pare a hoof,' says I; 'I'll do it my way, or I don't do it;' an' I done it, an' him kickin' like a steer all the time"--

"Who?" asked one of the other men.

"Barden."

"What was he doin' down here?"

"He came down for Doc Patterson. That teetotal wreck on the west side o' the lake took a hem'ridge--I furget his name, somethin'-weather: pretty dry weather, judgin' from what I hear."

"Starkweather?"

"Yes, Starkweather; I guess he's pretty low."

Parker started back to the post where his mule was tied. Then he turned and looked into the saloon. Levison had gone in and was wiping off the counter expectantly.

"It won't take but a minute," he apologized to himself.

It took a good many minutes, however, and by the time the minutes lengthened into hours Parker had ceased to apologize to himself, and insisted upon taking the by-standers into his confidence.