Cavanaugh-Forest Ranger Read online

  “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.”

  He too was in evening dress, and as she stared at him in surprise he laughingly protested. “Please don’t scrutinize this coat too closely. It’s the only one I’ve owned for ten years, and this is the only house in which I’d dare to wear it.”

  Bridges (who turned out to be a State senator) was a farmer-like elderly man wearing a badly fitting serge suit. He was markedly Western; so was his wife, who looked rather uneasy and hot.

  It was all delightfully exciting to Lee Virginia, and to be taken in to dinner by the transfigured ranger completed her appreciation of the charming home and its refined hostess.

  Redfield shone as host, presenting an admirable mixture of clubman and Western rancher. His natural sense of humor, sharpened by twenty years of plains life, was Western. His manner, his habits of dress, of dining, of taking wine, were uncorruptedly Manhattan. Enderby, large, high-colored, was naturally a bit of what we know as the “haw-haw type” of Englishman—a thoroughly good fellow, kindly, tolerant, brave, and generous, who could not possibly change his spots. He had failed utterly to acquire the American idiom, and his attempts at cowboy slang were often amusing—especially to Redfield, who prided himself on being quite undistinguishable in a cow-camp.

  Virginia and Ross, being the only young folk at the table, were seated together, and Enderby remarked privately: “Ross, you’re in luck.”

  “I know I am,” he replied, heartily.

  He was (as Redfield had said) highly susceptible, made so by his solitary life in the mountains, and to be seated close beside this maid of the valley stirred his blood to the danger-point. It was only by an effort of the will that he kept in touch with Redfield’s remarks.

  “Enderby never can grow accustomed to his democratic neighbors,” Redfield was saying. “He’s been here six years, and yet when one of his cowboy friends tells him to ‘go to hell’ he’s surprised and a bit offended.”

  “Oh, it isn’t that,” explained Mrs. Enderby; “it’s to have your maids say ‘All right’ when you ask them to remove the soup. It’s a bit shocking also to have your cook or housemaid going about the house singing some wretched ditty. What was that one, Charley, that Irma Maud sang till we were nearly wild (Irma Maud was my chambermaid). What was it? Something about ‘Tixey Ann.’”

  “Oh, I know it perfectly!” exclaimed Enderby. “‘If you want to make a niggah feel good—’”

  “No, no; that’s another one.”

  Redfield interposed. “You wouldn’t have them go about in sullen stealth, would you? Think how song lightens their drudgery.”

  “Ah yes; but if it drives the family out-of-doors?”

  “It shouldn’t. You should take it all as a part of the happy world of democracy wherein even the maid-servant sings at her toil.”

  “But our democratic neighbors are all the time coming to look round the place. We’ve no privacy whatever. On Sunday afternoon they drive through the grounds in procession; you’d think our place a public park and we the keepers.”

  In all this banter Virginia was given the English viewpoint as to Western manners and conditions. She perceived that the Enderbys, notwithstanding their heavy-set prejudices, were persons of discernment and right feeling. It certainly was impertinent of the neighbors to ride through the grounds as if they were public, and Mrs. Enderby was justified in resenting it.

  Ross turned to her. “Enderby is the kind of Englishman who wants to adapt himself to new conditions, but can’t.”

  “You don’t seem like an Englishman at all.”

  “Well, I was caught young, and, besides, I’m really Irish—on my father’s side.”

  “Oh, that’s different!” she exclaimed, as though that somehow brought him nearer to her own people.

  “It is, isn’t it?” he laughingly agreed. “But Enderby—I suppose his pedigree goes back to Cedric and his swineherds. You can’t change that kind.”

  “I hadn’t the least thought of seeing you here. How did you happen to come?”

  “Redfield telephoned me at the mill, and I came at once. I haven’t been here since May, and I just thought I’d take a half a day off. Luckily, my understudy was with me. I left him ‘on the job.’”

  He did not tell her that she was the principal reason for this sudden descent upon Elk Lodge, and no one but Redfield knew the killing ride he had taken in order to be in at the beginning of the dinner. The girl’s face and voice, especially her voice, had been with him night and day as he went about his solitary duties. Her life problem had come to fill his mind to a disturbing degree, and he was eager to know more of her and of her struggle against the vice and vulgarity of the Forks.

  “How is your mother?” he asked, a few minutes later.

  “Not at all well. Mr. Redfield is to take the doctor back with us to-morrow.” The ecstasy died out of her face, and the flexible lips drooped with troubled musing. “I am afraid she suffers more than she will admit.”

  “She needs a rest and change. She should get away from her seat at that cash-register, and return to the open air. A touch of camp-life would help her. She sticks too close to her work.”

  “I know she does, but she won’t let me relieve her, even for an hour. It isn’t because she doesn’t trust me; she says it’s because she doesn’t want me sitting there—so—publicly. She doesn’t oppose my housekeeping any more—”

  “You certainly have made the old hotel into a place of miraculous neatness.”

  She flushed with pleasure. “I have done something, but not as I’d like to do. I really think if mother wishes to sell she could do so now to much better advantage.”

  “I’ve no doubt of it. Really, I’m not being funny, Miss Wetherford, when I say you’ve done something heroic. It’s no easy thing to come into a place like that and make it habitable. It shows immense courage and self-reliance on your part. It’s precisely the kind of work this whole country needs.”

  His praise, sincere and generous, repaid her for all she had gone through. It was a great pleasure to hear her small self praised for courage and self-reliance by one whose daily work was heroic. All things conspired to make a conquest of her heart, for the ranger bore himself with grace, and dealt with his silver deftly. His face, seen from the side, was older and sterner than she had thought it, but it was very attractive in line.

  She said: “Mr. Redfield and I were talking of ‘the war’ to-day—I mean our ‘cattle-man’s invasion’—and I learned that you were the sergeant who came for the prisoners.”

  He smiled.
“Yes; I was serving in the regular army at that time.”

  “You must have been very young?”

  “I was—a kid.”

  “That was a brave thing to do.”

  “Not at all. I was a soldier under orders of the commander of the post. I dared not disobey.”

  She would not have it so. “But you knew that you were going into danger?”

  “To be honest about it, I did; but I relied on my blue coat to protect me.”

  “It was a terrible time. I was only a child, but I can remember how wild the men all seemed when you drove up and leaped out of the wagon. I didn’t realize that my father’s life depended on your coming, but we all knew it was brave of you.”

  “I think I was born a soldier. What I like about my present job is its definiteness. I have my written instructions, and there’s no need to argue anything. I carry out my orders. But I beg pardon, I’m not going to talk ‘shop’ to you. I want you to tell me about yourself. I hope you are not to return to the East, for if you do not I shall be able to see you occasionally.”

  Here Redfield appealed to the ranger. “Ross, you’re all sorts of a reactionary. What do you say to this? Senator Bridges is opposed to all Federal interference with State forests and State game.”

  The forester’s eyes lit up. “But are they State forests and State game? What makes them so? They are lands which the whole people purchased and which the whole people defended.”

  “Heah! heah!” cheered Enderby.

  Bridges bristled with anger, and went off into a long harangue on States rights and the dangers of centralization, to which Enderby replied: “Bosh! the whole trouble with your bally Government is its lack of cohesion. If I had my way, I’d wipe out the Senate and put a strong man like Roosevelt at the head of the executive. You’re such blooming asses over here; you don’t know enough to keep a really big man in your presidential chair. This fussing about every four years to put in some oily corporation lawyer is bloody rot. Here’s Roosevelt gets in the midst of a lot of the finest kind of reforms, y’ know, and directly you go and turn him out! Then if you get a bad man, you’ve to wait four years till you can fetch him a whack. Why not arrange it so you can pitch your President out the minute he goes wrong? I say your old rag of a Constitution is a ball-and-chain on your national leg. England is immeasurably better off so far as that goes.”