Chapter 4

She took the horse's rein from him, and together they started toward the stables. As she stepped over and around the old hoofs and meat-bones--which littered the way--without comment, Wayland again wondered at her apparent failure to realize the disgusting disorder of the yard. "Why don't she urge the men to clean it up?" he thought.

This action of stabling the horses--a perfectly innocent and natural one for her--led one of the hands, a coarse-minded sneak, to watch them from a corral. "I wonder how Cliff would like that?" he evilly remarked.

Berea was frankly pleased to see Wayland, and spoke of the improvement which had taken place in him. "You're looking fine," she said, as they were returning to the house. "But how do you get on with the boys?"

"Not very well," he admitted. "They seem to have it in for me. It's a constant fight."

"How about Frank?"

"He's the worst of them all. He never speaks to me that he doesn't insult me. I don't know why. I've tried my best to get into his good graces, but I can't. Your uncle I like, and Mrs. Meeker is very kind; but all the others seem to be sworn enemies. I don't think I could stand it if it weren't for Landon. I spend a good deal of time with him."

Her face grew grave. "I reckon you got started wrong," she said at last. "They'll like you better when you get browned up, and your clothes get dirty--you're a little too fancy for them just now."

"But you see," he said, "I'm not trying for their admiration. I haven't the slightest ambition to shine as a cow-puncher, and if those fellows are fair samples I don't want anybody to mistake me for one."

"Don't let that get around," she smilingly replied. "They'd run you out if they knew you despised them."

"I've come down here to confer with you," he declared, as they reached the door. "I don't believe I want any more of their company. What's the use? As you say, I've started wrong with them, and I don't see any prospect of getting right; and, besides, I like the rangers better. Landon thinks I might work into the service. I wonder if I could? It would give me something to do."

She considered a moment. "We'll think about that. Come into the kitchen. I'm cook to-day, mother's gone to town."

The kitchen was clean and ample, and the delicious odor of new-made bread filled it with cheer. As the girl resumed her apron, Wayland settled into a chair with a sigh of content. "I like this," he said aloud. "There's nothing cowgirl about you now, you're the Anglo-Saxon housewife. You might be a Michigan or Connecticut girl at this moment."

Her cheeks were ruddy with the heat, and her eyes intent on her work; but she caught enough of his meaning to be pleased with it. "Oh, I have to take a hand at the pots and pans now and then. I can't give all my time to the service; but I'd like to."

He boldly announced his errand. "I wish you'd take me to board? I'm sure your cooking would build up my shattered system a good deal quicker than your aunt's."

She laughed, but shook her head. "You ought to be on the hills riding hard every day. What you need is the high country and the air of the pines."

"I'm not feeling any lack of scenery or pine-tree air," he retorted. "I'm perfectly satisfied right here. Civilized bread and the sight of you will do me more good than boiled beans and camp bread. I hate to say it, but the Meeker menu runs largely to beef. Moreover, just seeing you would help my recovery."

She became self-conscious at this, and he hastened to add:

"Not that I'm really sick. Mrs. Meeker, like yourself, persists in treating me as if I were. I'm feeling fine--perfectly well, only I'm not as rugged as I want to be."

She had read that victims of the white plague always talk in this cheerful way about themselves, and she worked on without replying, and this gave him an excellent opportunity to study her closely. She was taller than most women and lithely powerful. There was nothing delicate about her--nothing spirituelle--on the contrary, she was markedly full-veined, cheerful and humorous, and yet she had responded several times to an allusive phrase with surprising quickness. She did so now as he remarked: "Somebody, I think it was Lowell, has said 'Nature is all very well for a vacation, but a poor substitute for the society of good men and women.' It's beautiful up at the mill, but I want some one to enjoy it with, and there is no one to turn to, except Landon, and he's rather sad and self-absorbed--you know why. If I were here--in the valley--you and I could ride together now and then, and you could show me all the trails. Why not let me come here and board? I'm going to ask your mother, if I may not do so?"

Quite naturally he grew more and more personal. He told her of his father, the busy director of a lumber company, and of his mother, sickly and inert.

"She ought never to have married," he said, with darkened brow. "Not one of her children has even a decent constitution. I'm the most robust of them all, and I must seem a pretty poor lot to you. However, I wasn't always like this, and if that young devil, Frank Meeker, hadn't tormented me out of my sleep, I would have shown you still greater improvement. Don't you see that it is your duty to let me stay here where I can build up on your cooking?"

She turned this aside. "Mother don't think much of my cooking. She says I can handle a brandin'-iron a heap better than I can a rollin'-pin."

"You certainly can ride," he replied, with admiring accent. "I shall never forget the picture you made that first time I saw you racing to intercept the stage. Do you _know_ how fine you are physically? You're a wonder." She uttered some protest, but he went on: "When I think of my mother and sisters in comparison with you, they seem like caricatures of women. I know I oughtn't to say such things of my mother--she really is an exceptional person--but a woman should be something more than mind. My sisters could no more do what you do than a lame duck can lead a ballet. I suppose it is because I have had to live with a lot of ailing women all my life that I feel as I do toward you. I worship your health and strength. I really do. Your care of me on that trip was very sweet--and yet it stung."

"I didn't mean to hurt you."

"I know you didn't, and I'm not complaining. I'm only wishing I could come here and be 'bossed' by you until I could hold my own against any weather. You make me feel just as I used to do when I went to a circus and watched the athletes, men and women, file past me in the sawdust. They seemed like demigods. As I sit here now I have a fierce desire to be as well, as strong, as full of life as you are. I hate being thin and timid. You have the physical perfection that queens ought to have."

Her face was flushed with inward heat as she listened to his strange words, which sprang, she feared, from the heart of a man hopelessly ill; but she again protested. "It's all right to be able to throw a rope and ride a mean horse, but you have got something else--something I can never get. Learning is a thousand times finer than muscle."

"Learning does not compensate for nine-inch shoulders and spindle legs," he answered. "But I'm going to get well. Knowing you has given me renewed desire to be a man. I'm going to ride and rough it, and sleep out of doors till I can follow you anywhere. You'll be proud of me before the month is out. But I'm going to cut the Meeker outfit. I won't subject myself to their vulgarities another day. Why should I? It's false pride in me to hang on up there any longer."

"Of course you can come here," she said. "Mother will be glad to have you, although our ranch isn't a bit pretty. Perhaps father will send you out with one of the rangers as a fire-guard. I'll ask him to-night."

"I wish you would. I like these foresters. What I've seen of them. I wouldn't mind serving under a man like Landon. He's fine."

Upon this pleasant conference Cliff Belden unexpectedly burst. Pushing the door open with a slam, he confronted Berrie with dark and angry face.

"Why, Cliff, where did you come from?" she asked, rising in some confusion. "I didn't hear you ride up."

"Apparently not," he sneeringly answered. "I reckon you were too much occupied."

She tried to laugh away his black mood. "That's right, I was. I'm chief cook to-day. Come in and sit down. Mother's gone to town, and I'm playing her part," she explained, ignoring his sullen displeasure. "Cliff, this is Mr. Norcross, who is visiting Uncle Joe. Mr. Norcross, shake hands with Mr. Belden." She made this introduction with some awkwardness, for her lover's failure to even say, "Howdy," informed her that his jealous heart was aflame, and she went on, quickly: "Mr. Norcross dropped in on his way to the post-office, and I'm collecting a snack for him."

Recognizing Belden's claims upon the girl, Wayland rose. "I must be going. It's a long ride over the hill."

"Come again soon," urged Berrie; "father wants to see you."

"Thank you. I will look in very shortly," he replied, and went out with such dignity as he could command, feeling, however, very much like a dog that has been kicked over the threshold.

Closing the door behind him, Belden turned upon the girl. "What's that consumptive 'dogie' doing here? He 'peared to be very much at home with you--too dern much at home!"

She was prepared for his displeasure, but not for words like these. She answered, quietly: "He just dropped in on his way to town, and he's not a dogie!" She resented his tone as well as his words.

"I've heard about you taking him over to Meeker's and lending him your only slicker," he went on; "but I didn't expect to find him sittin' here like he owned you and the place. You're taking altogether too much pains with him. Can't he put his own horse out? Do you have to go to the stable with him? You never did have any sense about your actions with men. You've all along been too free of your reputation, and now I'm going to take care of it for you. I won't have you nursin' this runt any longer!"

She perceived now the full measure of his base rage, and her face grew pale and set. "You're making a perfect fool of yourself, Cliff," she said, with portentous calmness.

"Am I?" he asked.

"You sure are, and you'll see it yourself by and by. You've no call to get wire-edged about Mr. Norcross. He's not very strong. He's just getting well of a long sickness. I knew a chill would finish him, that's why I gave him my slicker. It didn't hurt me, and maybe it saved his life. I'd do it again if necessary."

"Since when did you start a hospital for Eastern tenderfeet?" he sneered; then his tone changed to one of downright command. "You want to cut this all out, I tell you! I won't have any more of it! The boys up at the mill are all talkin' about your interest in this little whelp, and I'm getting the branding-iron from every one I meet. Sam saw you go into the barn with that dude, and _that_ would have been all over the country to-morrow, if I hadn't told him I'd sew his mouth up if he said a word about it. Of course, I don't think you mean anything by this coddlin'."

"Oh, thank you," she interrupted, with flaming, quick, indignant fury. "That's mighty nice of you. I went to the barn to show Mr. Norcross where to stall his horse. I didn't know Sam was here."

He sneered: "No, I bet you didn't."

She fired at this. "Come now! Spit it out! Something nasty is in your mind. Go on! What have I done? What makes you so hot?"

He began to weaken. "I don't accuse you of anything. I--but I--"

"Yes you do--in your heart you distrust me--you just as much as said so!"

He was losing his high air of command. "Never mind what I said, Berrie, I--"

She was blazing now. "But I _do_ mind--I mind a whole lot--I didn't think it of you," she added, as she realized his cheapness, his coarseness. "I didn't suppose you could even _think_ such things of me. I don't like it," she repeated, and her tone hardened, "and I guess you'd better pull out of here--for good. If you've no more faith in me than that, I want you to go and never come back."

"You don't mean that!"

"Yes, I do! You've shown this yellow streak before, and I'm tired of it. This is the limit. I'm done with you."

She stood between tears and benumbing anger now, and he was scared. "Don't say that, Berrie!" he pleaded, trying to put his arm about her.

"Keep away from me!" She dashed his hands aside. "I hate you. I never want to see you again!" She ran into her own room and slammed the door behind her.

Belden stood for a long time with his back against the wall, the heat of his resentment utterly gone, an empty, aching place in his heart. He called her twice, but she made no answer, and so, at last, he mounted his horse and rode away.

IV

THE SUPERVISOR OF THE FOREST

Young Norcross, much as he admired Berrie, was not seeking to exchange her favor for her lover's enmity, and he rode away with an uneasy feeling of having innocently made trouble for himself, as well as for a fine, true-hearted girl. "What a good friendly talk we were having," he said, regretfully, "and to think she is to marry that big, scowling brute. How could she turn Landon down for a savage like that?"

He was just leaving the outer gate when Belden came clattering up and reined his horse across the path and called out: "See here, you young skunk, you're a poor, white-livered tenderfoot, and I can't bust you as I would a full-grown man, but I reckon you better not ride this trail any more."

"Why not?" inquired Wayland.

Belden glared. "Because I tell you so. Your sympathy-hunting game has just about run into the ground. You've worked this baby dodge about long enough. You're not so almighty sick as you put up to be, and you'd better hunt some other cure for lonesomeness, or I'll just about cave your chest in."

All this was shockingly plain talk for a slender young scholar to listen to, but Norcross remained calm. "I think you're unnecessarily excited," he remarked. "I have no desire to make trouble. I'm considering Miss Berea, who is too fine to be worried by us."

His tone was conciliating, and the cowman, in spite of himself, responded to it. "That's why I advise you to go. She was all right till you came. Colorado's a big place, and there are plenty other fine ranges for men of your complaint--why not try Routt County? This is certain, you can't stay in the same valley with my girl. I serve notice of that."

"You're making a prodigious ass of yourself," observed Wayland, with calm contempt.

"You think so--do you? Well, I'll make a jack-rabbit out of you if I find you on this ranch again. You've worked on my girl in some way till she's jest about quit me. I don't see how you did it, you measly little pup, but you surely have turned her against me!" His rage burst into flame as he thought of her last words. "If you were so much as half a man I'd break you in two pieces right now; but you're not, you're nothing but a dead-on-the-hoof lunger, and there's nothing to do but run you out. So take this as your final notice. You straddle a horse and head east and keep a-ridin', and if I catch you with my girl again, I'll deal you a whole hatful of misery--now that's right!"

Thereupon, with a final glance of hate in his face, he whirled his horse and galloped away, leaving Norcross dumb with resentment, intermingled with wonder.

"Truly the West is a dramatic country! Here I am, involved in a lover's wrath, and under sentence of banishment, all within a month! Well, I suppose there's nothing to do but carry out Belden's orders. He's the boss," he said as he rode on. "I wonder just what happened after I left? Something stormy, evidently. She must have given him a sharp rebuff, or he wouldn't have been so furious with me. Perhaps she even broke her engagement with him. I sincerely hope she did. She's too good for him. That's the truth."

And so, from point to point, he progressed till with fine indignation he reached a resolution to stay and meet whatever came. "I certainly would be a timorous animal if I let myself be scared into flight by that big bonehead," he said at last. "I have as much right here as he has, and the law must protect me. It can't be that this country is entirely barbaric."

Nevertheless, he felt very weak and very much depressed as he rode up the street of the little town and dismounted at the hotel. The sidewalks were littered with loafing cowboys and lumber-jacks, and some of them quite openly ridiculed his riding-breeches and his thin legs. Others merely grinned, but in their grins lay something more insulting than words. "To them I am a poor thing," he admitted; but as he lifted his eyes to the mighty semicircular wall of the Bear Tooth Range, over which the daily storm was playing, he forgot his small worries. What gorgeous pageantry! What life-giving air! "If only civilized men and women possessed this glorious valley, what a place it would be!" he exclaimed, and in the heat of his indignant contempt he would have swept the valley clean.

As his eyes caught the flutter of the flag on its staff above the Forest Service building, his heart went out to the men who unselfishly wrought beneath that symbol of federal unity for the good of the future. "That is civilized," he said; "that is prophetic," and alighted at the door in a glow of confidence.

Nash, who was alone in the office, looked up from his work. "Come in," he called, heartily. "Come in and report."

"Thank you. I'd like to do so; and may I use your desk? I have a letter to write."

"Make yourself at home. Take any desk you like. The men are all out on duty."

"You're very kind," replied Wayland, gratefully. There was something reassuring in this greeting, and in the many signs of skill and scientific reading which the place displayed. It was like a bit of Washington in the midst of a careless, slovenly, lawless mountain town, and Norcross took his seat and wrote his letter with a sense of proprietorship.

"I'm getting up an enthusiasm for the Service just from hearing Alec Belden rave against it," he said a few minutes later, as he looked up from his letter.

Nash grinned. "How did you like Meeker?"

"He's a good man, but he has his peculiarities. Belden is your real enemy. He is blue with malignity--so are most of the cowmen I met up there. I wish I could do something for the Service. I'm a thoroughly up-to-date analytical chemist and a passable mining engineer, and my doctor says that for a year at least I must work in the open air. _Is_ there anything in this Forest Service for a weakling like me?"

Nash considered. "The Supervisor might put you on as a temporary guard. I'll speak to him if you like?"

"I wish you would. Tell him to forget the pay. I'm not in need of money, but I do require some incentive--something to do--something to give me direction. It bores me stiff to fish, and I'm sick of loafing. If McFarlane can employ me I shall be happy. The country is glorious, but I can't live on scenery."

"I think we can employ you, but you'll have to go on as fire-guard or something like that for the first year. You see, the work is getting to be more and more technical each year. As a matter of fact"--here he lowered his voice a little--"McFarlane is one of the old guard, and will have to give way. He don't know a thing about forestry, and is too old to learn. His girl knows more about it than he does. She helps him out on office work, too."

Wayland wondered a little at the freedom of expression on the part of Nash; but said: "If he runs his office as he runs his ranch he surely is condemned to go."

"There's where the girl comes in. She keeps the boys in the office lined up and maintains things in pretty fair shape. She knows the old man is in danger of losing his job, and she's doing her best to hold him to it. She's like a son to him and he relies on her judgment when a close decision comes up. But it's only a matter of time when he and all he represents must drift by. This is a big movement we're mixed with."

"I begin to feel that that's why I'd like to take it up. It's the only thing out here that interests me--and I've got to do something. I can't loaf."

"Well, you get Berrie to take up your case and you're all right. She has the say about who goes on the force in this forest."

It was late in the afternoon before Wayland started back to Meeker's with intent to repack his belongings and leave the ranch for good. He had decided not to call at McFarlane's, a decision which came not so much from fear of Clifford Belden as from a desire to shield Berea from further trouble, but as he was passing the gate, the girl rose from behind a clump of willows and called to him: "Oh, Mr. Norcross! Wait a moment."

He drew rein, and, slipping from his horse, approached her. "What is it, Miss Berrie?" he asked, with wondering politeness.

She confronted him with gravity. "It's too late for you to cross the ridge. It'll be dark long before you reach the cut-off. You'd better not try to make it."

"I think I can find my way," he answered, touched by her consideration. "I'm not so helpless as I was when I came."

"Just the same you mustn't go on," she insisted. "Father told me to ask you to come in and stay all night. He wants to meet you. I was afraid you might ride by after what happened to-day, and so I came up here to head you off." She took his horse by the rein, and flashed a smiling glance up at him. "Come now, do as the Supervisor tells you."

"Wait a moment," he pleaded. "On second thought, I don't believe it's a good thing for me to go home with you. It will only make further trouble for--for us both."

She was almost as direct as Belden had been. "I know what you mean. I saw Cliff follow you. He jumped you, didn't he?"

"He overtook me--yes."

"What did he say?"

He hesitated. "He was pretty hot, and said things he'll be sorry for when he cools off."

"He told you not to come here any more--advised you to hit the out-going trail--didn't he?"

He flushed with returning shame of it all, but quietly answered: "Yes, he said something about riding east."

"Are you going to do it?"

"Not to-day; but I guess I'd better keep away from here."

She looked at him steadily. "Why?"

"Because you've been very kind to me, and I wouldn't for the world do anything to hurt or embarrass you."

"Don't you mind about me," she responded, bluntly. "What happened this morning wasn't your fault nor mine. Cliff made a mighty coarse play, something he'll have to pay for. He knows that right now. He'll be back in a day or two begging my pardon, and he won't get it. Don't you worry about me, not for a minute--I can take care of myself--I grew up that way, and don't you be chased out of the country by anybody. Come, father will be looking for you."

With a feeling that he was involving both the girl and himself in still darker storms, the young fellow yielded to her command, and together they walked along the weed-bordered path, while she continued:

"This isn't the first time Cliff has started in to discipline me; but it's obliged to be the last. He's the kind that think they own a girl just as soon as they get her to wear an engagement ring; but Cliff don't own me. I told him I wouldn't stand for his coarse ways, and I won't!"

Wayland tried to bring her back to humor. "You're a kind of 'new woman.'"

She turned a stern look on him. "You bet I am! I was raised a free citizen. No man can make a slave of me. I thought he understood that; but it seems he didn't. He's all right in many ways--one of the best riders in the country--but he's pretty tolerable domineering--I've always known that--still, I never expected him to talk to me like he did to-day. It certainly was raw." She broke off abruptly. "You mustn't let Frank Meeker get the best of you, either," she advised. "He's a mean little weasel if he gets started. I'll bet he put Cliff up to this business."

"Do you think so?"