The Desert of Wheat. Zane Grey
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the Bend trip. So she could not look up and she could not say a word.
"Jake says that Nash has been tryin' to make up to you. Any sense in what he says?" asked her father, bluntly.
"Why, hardly. Oh, I've noticed Nash is—is rather fresh, as Rose calls it," replied Lenore, somewhat relieved at this unexpected query.
"Yes, he's been makin' eyes at Rose. She told me," replied Anderson.
"Discharge him," said Lenore, forcibly.
"So I ought. But let me tell you, Lenore. I've been hopin' to get Nash dead to rights."
"What more do you want?" she demanded.
"I mean regardin' his relation to the I.W.W. … Listen. Here's the point. Nash has been tracked an' caught in secret talks with prominent men in this country. Men of foreign blood an' mebbe foreign sympathies. We're at the start of big an' bad times in the good old U.S. No one can tell how bad. Well, you know my position in the Golden Valley. I'm looked to. Reckon this I.W.W. has got me a marked man. I'm packin' two guns right now. An' you bet Jake is packin' the same. We don't travel far apart any more this summer."
Lenore had started shudderingly and her look showed her voiceless fear.
"You needn't tell your mother," he went on, more intimately. "I can trust you an' … To come back to Nash. He an' this Glidden—you remember, one of those men at Dorn's house—they are usin' gold. They must have barrels of it. If I could find out where that gold comes from! Probably they don't know. But I might find out if men here in our own country are hatchin' plots with the I.W.W."
"Plots! What for?" queried Lenore, breathlessly.
"To destroy my wheat, to drive off or bribe the harvest-hands, to cripple the crop yield in the Northwest; to draw the militia here; in short, to harass an' weaken an' slow down our government in its preparation against Germany."
"Why, that is terrible!" declared Lenore.
"I've a hunch from Jake—there's a whisper of a plot to put me out of the way," said Anderson, darkly.
"Oh—good Heavens! You don't mean it!" cried Lenore, distractedly.
"Sure I do. But that's no way for Anderson's daughter to take it. Our women have got to fight, too. We've all got to meet these German hired devils with their own weapons. Now, lass, you know you'll get these wheatlands of mine some day. It's in my will. That's because you, like your dad, always loved the wheat. You'd fight, wouldn't you, to save your grain for our soldiers—bread for your own brother Jim—an' for your own land?"
"Fight! Would I?" burst out Lenore, with a passionate little cry.
"Good! Now you're talkin'!" exclaimed her father.
"I'll find out about this Nash—if you'll let me," declared Lenore, as if inspired.
"How? What do you mean, girl?"
"I'll encourage him. I'll make him think I'm a wishy-washy moonstruck girl, smitten with him. All's fair in war! … If he means ill by my father—"
Anderson muttered low under his breath and his big hand snapped hard at the nodding goldenrod.
"For my sake—to help me—you'd encourage Nash—flirt with him a little—find out all you could?"
"Yes, I would!" she cried, deliberately. But she wanted to cover her face with her hands. She trembled slightly, then grew cold, with a sickening disgust at this strange, new, uprising self.
"Wait a minute before you say too much," went on Anderson. "You're my best-beloved child, my Lenore, the lass I've been so proud of all my life. I'd spill blood to avenge an insult to you. … But, Lenore, we've entered upon a terrible war. People out here, especially the women, don't realize it yet. But you must realize it. When I said good-by to Jim, my son, I—I felt I'd never look upon his face again! … I gave him up. I could have held him back—got exemption for him. But, no, by God! I gave him up—to make safety and happiness and prosperity for—say, your children, an' Rose's, an' Kathleen's. … I'm workin' now for the future. So must every loyal man an' every loyal woman! We love our own country. An' I ask you to see as I see the terrible danger to that country. Think of you an' Rose an' Kathleen bein' treated like those poor Belgian girls! Well, you'd get that an' worse if the Germans won this war. An' the point is, for us to win, every last one of us must fight, sacrifice to that end, an' hang together."
Anderson paused huskily and swallowed hard while he looked away across the fields. Lenore felt herself drawn by an irresistible power. The west wind rustled through the waving wheat. She heard the whir of the threshers. Yet all seemed unreal. Her father's passion had made this place another world.
"So much for that," resumed Anderson. "I'm goin' to do my best. An' I may make blunders. I'll play the game as it's dealt out to me. Lord knows I feel all in the dark. But it's the nature of the effort, the spirit, that'll count. I'm goin' to save most of the wheat on my ranches. An' bein' a Westerner who can see ahead, I know there's goin' to be blood spilled. … I'd give a lot to know who sent this Nash spyin' on me. I'm satisfied now he's an agent, a spy, a plotter for a gang that's marked me. I can't prove it yet, but I feel it. Maybe nothin' worth while—worth the trouble—will ever be found out from him. But I don't figure that way. I say play their own game an' take a chance. … If you encouraged Nash you'd probably find out all about him. The worst of it is could you be slick enough? Could a girl as fine an' square an' high-spirited as you ever double-cross a man, even a scoundrel like Nash? I reckon you could, considerin' the motive. Women are wonderful. … Well, if you can fool him, make him think he's a winner, flatter him till he swells up like a toad, promise to elope with him, be curious, jealous, make him tell where he goes, whom he meets, show his letters, all without ever sufferin' his hand on you, I'll give my consent. I'd think more of you for it. Now the question is, can you do it?"
"Yes," whispered Lenore.
"Good!" exploded Anderson, in a great relief. Then he began to mop his wet face. He arose, showing the weight of heavy guns in his pockets, and he gazed across the wheat-fields. "That wheat'll be ripe in a week. It sure looks fine. … Lenore, you ride back home now. Don't let Jake pump you. He's powerful curious. An' I'll go give these I.W.W.'s a first dose of Anderson."
He turned away without looking at her, and he hesitated, bending over to pluck a stem of goldenrod.
"Lass—you're—you're like your mother", he said, unsteadily. "An' she helped me win out durin' my struggle here. You're brave an' you're big."
Lenore wanted to say something, to show her feeling, to make her task seem lighter, but she could not speak.
"We're pards now—with no secrets", he continued, with a different note in his voice. "An' I want you to know that it ain't likely Nash or Glidden will get out of this country alive."
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