Peak and Prairie. Fuller Anna
Читать онлайн книгу.
the prairie, which had never yielded an inch of space before the cabin door. Off to the southward was a field of half-grown alfalfa that had taken on a weird, uncanny green in the first sunless light. She looked across to the remote prairie, and there, on the far horizon, the sunlight still shone, a golden circlet. No. She was not homesick; anything but that! She had been homesick almost ever since she could remember, but now she was in her father's house and everything must be well.
When Stanwood came to look for her he found her surrounded by the assiduous collies, examining with much interest the tall, ungainly windmill, with its broad wooden flaps.
On the whole, their first evening together was a pleasant one. Stanwood listened with amused appreciation to the account of her journey. She would be a credit to his name, he thought, out there in the old familiar world which he should never see again.
He had relinquished to her the seat on the door-step, and himself sat on a saw-horse outside the door, where the lamp-light struck his face. Her head and figure presented themselves to him as a silhouette, and somehow that suited him better than to see her features distinctly; it seemed to keep their relation back where it had always been, a sort of impersonal outline.
Elizabeth, for her part, thought that, for all his shabby clothes and thin, sunburnt face, her father was more manifestly a gentleman than any man she had ever seen.
She learned several things in the course of that conversation. She found that when she touched upon her reasons for coming to him, her feeling that they were only two and that they ought to be together, his eyes wandered and he looked bored; when she spoke of her mother he seemed uncomfortable.
Was she like her mother? No, he said, she was not in the least like her mother; he did not see that she took after anybody in particular. Then, as if to escape the subject, was her Uncle Nicholas as rabid a teetotaller as ever?
He liked best to hear about her school days and of the gay doings of the past year, her first year of "society."
"And you don't like society?" he asked at last, with a quizzical glance at her pretty profile. She had turned her eyes from the contemplation of his face, and seemed to be conjuring up interesting visions out of the darkness.
"Yes, I do!" she said with decision.
"You won't get much society out here," he remarked, and his spirits rose again. Of course she would be bored to death without it.
"I like some things better than society," she replied.
"For instance?"
She turned her face full upon him, and boldly said, "You."
"The deuce you do!" he cried, and was instantly conscious that it was the second time that he had forgotten himself.
A little crinkle appeared in the silhouette of a cheek, and she said, "I do like to hear you say 'the deuce.' I don't believe Uncle Nicholas ever said 'the deuce' in his life."
"Nick was always a bore," Stanwood rejoined, more pleased with the implied disparagement of his pet aversion than with the very out-spoken compliment to himself.
"I think Uncle Nicholas has done his duty by me," Elizabeth remarked demurely, "but I am glad he has got through. I came of age last Monday, the day I started for Colorado."
"When did you decide to come?"
"About five years ago. I always meant to start on the 7th of June of this year."
"You make your plans a long way ahead. What is the next step on the program?"
"I haven't the least idea."
"For such a very decided young lady, isn't that rather odd?"
"There are some things one can't decide all by one's self."
"Such as?"
"The next step."
"Perhaps you will find it easier after a week or two of ranching."
"You don't think I am going to like ranching?"
"Hardly."
"Don't you like it?"
"Oh, I'm an old man, with my life behind me."
The lamp-light on his face was stronger than he was aware; Elizabeth saw a good deal in it which he was not in the habit of displaying to his fellow-creatures. She stooped, and patted one of the collies, and told him she thought she really ought to go to bed; upon which Stanwood rose with alacrity, and conducted her to the museum, which had been turned into a very habitable sleeping-room.
Having closed the door upon his latest "curiosity," Stanwood proceeded to perform a solemn rite in the light of the stars. He took his demijohn of old rye, and, followed by the six collies, he carried it out a few rods back of the cabin, where he gravely emptied its contents upon the sandy soil. At the first remonstrating gulp of the demijohn, which seemed to be doing its best to arrest the flow, a strong penetrating aroma assailed his nostrils, but he never flinched. Great as his confidence was in his own supremacy in his peculiarly intimate relations with old rye, he did not wish to "take any chances" with himself.
The dogs stood around in an admiring circle, and sniffed perplexedly at the strange libation which was clearly not intended for their kind. Did they realize that it was poured before the altar of parental devotion? They stood there wagging their tails with great vigor, and never taking their eyes off their master's countenance. Perhaps they appreciated the odd, half-deprecating, half-satirical expression of the face they knew so well. It would have been a pity if somebody had not done so. It is to be feared, however, that the remark with which Stanwood finally turned away from the odorous pool and walked toward the house was beyond the comprehension of the canine intellect. To himself, at least, the remorseful pang was very real with which he said, half aloud, "Pity to waste good liquor like that! Some poor wretch might have enjoyed it."
The morning following his visitor's arrival, the two drove together in the rattling old ranch wagon to Cameron City. Elizabeth was enchanted with the ingenious introduction of odd bits of rope into the harness, by means of which the whole establishment was kept from falling apart. She thought the gait of the lazy old nag the most amusing exhibition possible, and as for the erratic jolts and groans of the wagon, it struck her that this was a new form of exercise, the pleasurable excitement and unexpectedness of which surpassed all former experiences. At Cameron City she made purchase of a saddle-horse, a very well-made bronco with dramatic possibilities in his eye.
"I don't know where you will get a sidesaddle," Stanwood had demurred when the purchase was first proposed.
"A sidesaddle? I have it in my trunk."
"You don't say so! I should think it would jam your bonnets."
"Oh, I packed it with my ranch outfit."
So they jogged and rattled over to Cameron City, where Elizabeth had made the acquisition, not only of a saddle-horse, but of two or three most interesting new acquaintances.
"I do like the people so much, papa," she declared as they drove out of town, having left the new horse to be shod.
"You don't mind their calling you 'Jake Stanwood's gal'?"
"No, indeed! I think it's perfectly lovely!"
"It cannot but be gratifying to me," Stanwood remarked, in the half-satirical tone he found easiest in conversation with this near relative; "in fact, I may say it is gratifying to me, to find that the impression is mutually favorable. Halstead, the ruffianly looking sheep-raiser who called you 'Madam,' confided to me that you were the first woman he had ever met who knew the difference between a horse and a cow; and Simmons, the light-haired man who looks like a deacon, but who is probably the worst thief in four counties, told me I ought to be proud of 'that gal'!"
"Oh, papa, what gorgeous compliments! Don't you want a swap?"
"A what?"
"A swap. That's what we call it when we pay back one compliment with another."
He