Cavanaugh-Forest Ranger Page 4

  While yet Lee Virginia was wondering how to begin the day’s work, some one knocked on her door, and in answer to her invitation a woman stepped in—a thin blond hag with a weak smile and watery blue eyes. “Is this little Lee Virginy?” she asked.

  The girl rose. “Yes.”

  “Well, howdy!” She extended her hand, and Lee took it. “My name’s Jackson—Mrs. Orlando Jackson. I knew yore pa and you before ‘the war.’”

  Lee Virginia dimly recalled such a family, and asked: “Where do you live?”

  “We hole up down here on a ranch about twenty miles—stayed with yore ma last night—thought I’d jest nacherly look in and say howdy. Are ye back fer to stay?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Will you sit down?”

  Mrs. Jackson took a seat. “Come back to see how yore ma was, I reckon? Found her pretty porely, didn’t ye?” She lowered her voice. “I think she’s got cancer of the stummick—now that’s my guess.”

  Virginia started. “What makes you think so?”

  “Well, I knew a woman who went just that way. Had that same flabby, funny look—and that same distress after eatin’, I told her this mornin’ she’d better go up to Sulphur and see that new doctor. You see, yore ma has always been a reckless kind of a critter—more like a man than a woman, God knows—an’ how she ever got a girl like you I don’t fairly understand. I reckon you must be what the breedin’ men call ‘a throw-back,’ for yore pa wa‘n’t much to brag of, ‘ceptin’ for looks—he certainly was good-lookin’. He used to sober down when he got where you was; but my—good God!—weren’t they a pair to draw to? I’ve heard ’Lando tell tales of yore ma’s doin’s that would ’fright ye. Not that she fooled with men,” she hastened to say. “Lord, no! For her the sun rose and set in Ed Wetherford. She’d leave you any day, and go on the round-up with him. It nigh about broke her up in business when Ed hit the far-away trail.”

  The girl perceived that in her visitor she had one of these self-oiled human talking-machines “with tongue hung in the middle,” as the old saying goes, and she was dimly conscious of having heard her many times before. “You don’t look very well yourself,” she said.

  “Me? Oh, I’m like one o’ these Injun dawgs—can’t kill me. I’ve been on the range so long I’m tough as dried beef. It’s a fierce old place for a woman—or it was before ‘the war’—since then it’s kind o’ softened down a hair.”

  “What do you mean by ‘the war’?”

  “Why, you remember the rustler war? We date everything out here from that year. You was here, for I saw ye—a slob of a child.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Virginia. “I understand now. Yes, I was here. I saw my father at the head of the cowboys.”

  “They weren’t cowboys; they were hired killers from Texas. That’s what let yore pa out o’ the State. He were on the wrong side, and if it hadn’t ‘a’ been for the regular soldiers he’d ‘a’ been wiped out right hyer. As it was he had to skip the range, and hain’t never been back. I don’t s’pose folks will lay it up agin you—bein’ a girl—but they couldn’t no son of Ed Wetherford come back here and settle, not for a minute. Why, yore ma has had to bluff the whole county a’most—not that I lay anything up agin her. I tell folks she was that bewitched with Ed she couldn’t see things any way but his way. She fought to save his ranch and stawk and—but hell! she couldn’t do nothin’—and then to have him go back on her the way he did—slip out ’twixt two days, and never write; that just about shot her to pieces. I never could understand that in Ed, he ’peared so mortally fond of you and of her, too. He sure was fond of you!” She shook her head. “No, can’t anybody make me believe Ed Wetherford is alive.”

  Lee Virginia started. “Who says he’s alive?”

  “Now don’t get excited, girl. He ain’t alive; but yet folks say we don’t know he’s dead. He jest dropped out so far as yore ma is concerned, and so far as the county is concerned; but some thought you was with him in the East.”

  The girl was now aware that her visitor was hoping to gain some further information, and so curtly answered: “I’ve never seen my father since that night the soldiers came and took him away to the fort. And my mother told me he died down in Texas.”

  Mrs. Jackson seemed a little disappointed, but she smoothed the dress over her sharp knees, and continued: “Right there the good old days ended for yore ma—and for us. The cattle business has been steadily on the chute—that is, the free-range business. I saw it comin’, an’ I says to Jackson, ‘Camp on some river-bottom and chuck in the alfalfy,’ I says. An’ that’s what we did. We got a little bunch o’ cattle up in the park—Uncle Sam’s man is lookin’ after ’em.” She grinned. “Jackson kicked at the fee, but I says: ‘Twenty cents a head is cheap pasture. We’re lucky to get any grass at all, now that everybody’s goin’ in for sheep. ’Pears like the sheepmen air gettin’ bolder and bolder in this free-range graft, and I’m a-bettin’ on trouble.’” She rose. “Well, I’m glad to ’ve had a word with ye; but you hear me: yore ma has got to have doctor’s help, or she’s a-goin’ to fall down some day soon.”

  Every word the woman uttered, every tone of her drawling voice, put Lee Virginia back into the past. She heard again the swift gallop of hooves, saw once more the long line of armed ranchers, and felt the hush of fear that lay over the little town on that fateful day. The situation became clearer in her mind. She recalled vividly the words of astonishment and hate with which the women had greeted her mother on the morning when the news came that Edward Wetherford was among the invading cattle-barons—was, indeed, one of the leaders.

  In Philadelphia the Rocky Mountain States were synonyms of picturesque lawlessness, the theatre of reckless romance, and Virginia Wetherford, loyal daughter of the West, had defended it; but in the coarse phrase of this lean rancheress was pictured a land of border warfare as ruthless as that which marked the Scotland of Rob Roy.

  Commonplace as the little town looked at the moment, it had been the scene of many a desperate encounter, as the girl herself could testify, for she had seen more than one man killed therein. Some way the hideousness of these scenes had never shown itself to her—perhaps because she had been a child at the time, and had thrilled to the delicious excitement of it; but now, as she imagined it all happening again before her eyes, she shivered with horror. How monstrous, how impossible those killings now seemed!

  Then her mind came back to her mother’s ailment. Eliza Wetherford had never been one to complain, and her groans meant real suffering.

  Her mind resolved upon one thing. “She must see a doctor,” she decided. And with this in mind she reentered the café, where Lize was again in violent altercation with a waitress.

  “Mother,” called Lee, “I want to see you.”

  With a parting volley of vituperation, Mrs. Wetherford followed her daughter back into the lodging-house.

  “Mother,” the girl began, facing her and speaking firmly, “you must go to Sulphur City and see a doctor. I’ll stay here and look after the business.”

  Mrs. Wetherford perceived in her daughter’s attitude and voice something decisive and powerful. She sank into a chair, and regarded her with intent gaze. “Hett Jackson’s been gabblin’ to you,” she declared. “Hett knows more fool things that ain’t so than any old heffer I know. She said I was about all in, didn’t she? Prophesied I’d fall down and stay? I know her.”

  Lee Virginia remained firm. “I’m not going by what she said, I’ve got eyes of my own. You need help, and if the doctor here can’t help you, you must go to Sulphur or to Kansas City. I can run the boarding-house till you get back.”

  Eliza eyed her curiously. “Don’t you go to countin’ on this ‘chivalry of the West’ which story-writers put into books. These men out here will eat you up if you don’t watch out. I wouldn’t dare to leave you here alone. No, what I’ll do is sell the place, if I can, and both of us get out.”

  “But you need a doctor this minute.”

  “I’ll be all r
ight in a little while; I’m always the worst for an hour or two after I eat. This little squirt of a local doctor gave me some dope to ease that pain, but I’ve got my doubts—I don’t want any morphine habit in mine. No, daughter Virginny, it’s mighty white of you to offer, but you don’t know what you’re up against when you contract to step into my shoes.”

  Visions of reforming methods about the house passed through the girl’s mind. “There must be something I can do. Why don’t you have the doctor come down here?”

  “I might do that if I get any worse, but I hate to have you stay in the house another night. It’s only fit for these goats of cowboys and women like Hett Jackson. Did the bugs eat you last night?”

  Virginia flushed. “Yes.”

  Eliza’s face fell. “I was afraid of that. You can’t keep ’em out. The cowboys bring ’em in by the quart.”

  “They can be destroyed—and the flies, too, can’t they?”

  “When you’ve bucked flies and bugs as long as I have, you’ll be less ’peart about it. I don’t care a hoot in Hades till somebody like you or Reddy or Ross comes along. Most of the men that camp with me are like Injuns, anyway—they wouldn’t feel natural without bugs a ticklin’ ’em. No, child, you get ready and pull out on the Sulphur stage to-morrow. I’ll pay your way back to Philadelphy.”

  “I can’t leave you now, mother. Now that I know you’re ill, I’m going to stay and take care of you.”

  Lize rose. “See here, girl, don’t you go to idealizin’ me, neither. I’m what the boys call an old battle-axe. I’ve been through the whole war. I’m able to feed myself and pay your board besides. Just you find some decent boarding-place in Sulphur, and I’ll see that you have ten dollars a week to live on, just because you’re a Wetherford.”

  “But I’m your daughter!”

  Again Eliza fixed a musing look upon her. “I reckon if the truth was known your aunt Celia was nigher to being your mother than I ever was. They always said you was all Wetherford, and I reckon they were right. I always liked men better than babies. So long as I had your father, you didn’t count—now that’s the God’s truth. And I didn’t intend that you should ever come back here. I urged you to stay—you know that.”

  Lee Virginia imagined all this to be a savage self-accusation which sprang from long self-bereavement, and yet there was something terrifying in its brutal frankness. She stood in silence till her mother left the room, then went to her own chamber with a painful knot in her throat. What could she do with elemental savagery of this sort?

  The knowledge that she must spend another night in the bed led her to active measures of reform. With disgustful desperation, she emptied the room and swept it as with fire and sword. Her change of mind, from the passive to the active state, relieved and stimulated her, and she hurried from one needed reform to another. She drew others into the vortex. She inspired the chambermaid to unwilling yet amazing effort, and the lodging-house endured such a blast from the besom that it stood in open-windowed astonishment uttering dust like the breath of a dragon. Having swept and garnished the bed-chambers, Virginia moved on the dining-room. As the ranger had said, this, too, could be reformed.

  Unheeding her mother’s protests, she organized the giggling waiters into a warring party, and advanced upon the flies. By hissing and shooing, and the flutter of newspapers, they drove the enemy before them, and a carpenter was called in to mend screen doors and windows, thus preventing their return. New shades were hung to darken the room, and new table-cloths purchased to replace the old ones, and the kitchen had such a cleaning as it had not known before in five years.

  In this work the time passed swiftly, and when Redfield and Cavanagh came again to lunch they exclaimed in astonishment—as, indeed, every one did.

  “How’s this?” queried Cavanagh, humorously. “Has the place ’changed hands?’”

  Lize was but grimly responsive. “Seem’s like it has.”

  “I hope the price has not gone up?”

  “Not yet.”

  Redfield asked: “Who’s responsible for this—your new daughter?”

  “You’ve hit it. She’s started right in to polish us all up to city standards.”

  “We need it,” commented Cavanagh, in admiration of the girl’s prompt action. “This room is almost civilized, still we’ll sort o’ miss the flies.”

  Lize apologized. “Well, you know a feller gits kind o’ run down like a clock, and has to have some outsider wind him up now and again. First I was mad, then I was scared, but now I’m cheerin’ the girl on. She can run the whole blame outfit if she’s a mind to—even if I go broke for it. The work she got out o’ them slatter-heels of girls is a God’s wonder.”

  Ross looked round for Virginia, but could not find her. She had seen him come in, and was out in the kitchen doing what she could to have his food brought in and properly served.

  Redfield reassured the perturbed proprietor of “the joint.” “No fear of going broke, madam—quite the contrary. A few little touches like this, and you’ll be obliged to tear down and build bigger. I don’t believe I’d like to see your daughter run this eating-house as a permanent job, but if she starts in I’m sure she’ll make a success of it.”

  Lee Virginia came in flushed and self-conscious, but far lighter of spirit than at breakfast; and stood beside the table while the waitress laid the dishes before her guests with elaborate assumption of grace and design. Hitherto she had bumped them down with a slash of slangy comment. The change was quite as wonderful as the absence of the flies.

  “Do we owe these happy reforms to you?” asked Cavanagh, admiring Virginia’s neat dress and glowing cheeks.

  “Partly,” she answered. “I was desperate. I had to do something, so I took to ordering people around.”

  “I understand,” he said. “Won’t you sit at our table again?”

  “Please do,” said Redfield. “I want to talk with you.”

  She took a seat—a little hesitantly. “You see, I studied Domestic Science at school, and I’ve never had a chance to apply it before.”

  “Here’s your opportunity,” Redfield assured her. “My respect for the science of domestics is growing—I marvel to think what another week will bring forth. I think I’ll have to come down again just to observe the improvement in the place.”

  “It can’t last,” Lize interjected. “She’ll catch the Western habits—she’ll sag, same as we all do.”

  “No she won’t,” declared Ross, with intent to encourage her. “If you give her a free hand, I predict she’ll make your place the wonder and boast of the county-side.”

  “When do you go back to the mountains?” Lee Virginia asked, a little later.

  “Immediately after my luncheon,” he replied.

  She experienced a pang of regret, and could not help showing it a little. “Your talk helped me,” she said; “I’ve decided to stay, and be of use to my mother.”

  Redfield overheard this, and turned toward her.

  “This is a rough school for you, Lee Virginia, and I should dislike seeing you settle down to it for life: but it can’t hurt you if you are what I think you are. Nothing can soil or mar the mind that wills for good. I want Mrs. Redfield to know you; I’m sure her advice will be helpful. I hope you’ll come up and see us if you decide to settle in Sulphur—or if you don’t.”

  “I should like to do so,” she said, touched by the tone as well as by the words of his invitation.

  “Redfield’s house is one of the few completely civilized homes in the State,” put in Cavanagh. “When I get so weary of cuss-words and poaching and graft that I can’t live without killing some one, I go down to Elk Lodge and smoke and read the Supervisor’s London and Paris weeklies and recover my tone.”

  Redfield smiled. “When I get weak-kneed or careless in the service and feel my self-respect slipping away, I go up to Ross’s cabin and talk with a man who represents the impersonal, even-handed justice of the Federal law.”

  Cavanagh lau
ghed. “There! Having handed each other reciprocal bouquets, we can now tell Miss Wetherford the truth. Each of us thinks very well of himself, and we’re both believers in the New West.”

  “What do you mean by the New West?” asked the girl.

  “Well, the work you’ve been doing here this morning is a part of it,” answered Redfield. “It’s a kind of housecleaning. The Old West was picturesque and, in a way, manly and fine—certain phases of it were heroic—and I hate to see it all pass, but some of us began to realize that it was not all poetry. The plain truth is my companions for over twenty years were lawless ruffians, and the cattle business as we practiced it in those days was founded on selfishness and defended at the mouth of the pistol. We were all pensioners on Uncle Sam, and fighting to keep the other fellow off from having a share of his bounty. It was all wasteful, half-savage. We didn’t want settlement, we didn’t want law, we didn’t want a State. We wanted free range. We were a line of pirates from beginning to end, and we’re not wholly, reformed yet.”

  He was talking to the whole table now, for all were listening. No other man on the range could say these things with the same authority, for Hugh Redfield was known all over the State as a man who had been one of the best riders and ropers in his outfit—one who had started in as a common hand at herding, and who had been entirely through “the war.”

  Lee Virginia listened with a stirring of the blood. Her recollections of the range were all of the heroic. She recalled the few times when she was permitted to go on the round-up, and to witness the breaking of new horses, and the swiftness, grace, and reckless bravery of the riders, the moan and surge of herds, the sweep of horsemen, came back and filled her mind with large and free and splendid pictures. And now it was passing—or past!

  Some one at the table accused Redfield of being more of a town-site boomer than a cattle-man.

  He was quite unmoved by this charge. “The town-site boomer at least believes in progress. He does not go so far as to shut out settlement. If a neat and tidy village or a well-ordered farmstead is not considered superior to a cattle-ranch littered with bones and tin cans, or better than even a cow-town whose main industry is whiskey-selling, then all civilized progress is a delusion. When I was a youngster these considerations didn’t trouble me. I liked the cowboy life and the careless method of the plains, but I’ve some girls growing up now, and I begin to see the whole business in a new light. I don’t care to have my children live the life I’ve lived. Besides, what right have we to stand in the way of a community’s growth? Suppose the new life is less picturesque than the old? We don’t like to leave behind us the pleasures and sports of boyhood; but we grow up, nevertheless. I’m far more loyal to the State as Forest Supervisor than I was when I was riding with the cattle-men to scare up the nester.”