Lonesome Land (25 page)

“Sure.” Kent regarded her thoughtfully. She really was looking brighter and happier, and her enthusiasm was not to be mistaken. Her world had changed. “Anything I can do to
help, you know—”

“Of course I know. I think it’s perfectly splendid, don’t you? We’ll divide the money—when there
is
any, and—”

“Will we?” His tone was noncommittal in the extreme.

“Of course. Now, don’t let’s quarrel about that till we come to it. I have a good idea of my own, I think, for the first story. A man comes out here and disappears, you know,
and after a while his sister comes to find him. She gets into all kinds of trouble—is kidnapped by a gang of robbers, and kept in a cave. When the leader of the gang comes back—he has
been away on some depredation—you see, I have only the bare outline of the story yet—and, well, it’s her brother! He kills the one who kidnapped her, and she reforms him. Of
course, there ought to be some love interest. I think, perhaps, one member of the gang ought to fall in love with her, don’t you know? And after a while he wins her—”

“She’ll reform him, too, I reckon.”

“Oh, yes. She couldn’t love a man she couldn’t respect—no woman could.”

“Oh!” Kent took a minute to apply that personally. It was of value to him, because it was an indication of Val’s own code. “Maybe,” he suggested tentatively,
“she’d get busy and reform the whole bunch.”

“Oh, say—that would be great! She’s an awfully sweet little thing—perfectly lovely, you know—and they’d all be in love with her, so it wouldn’t be
improbable. Don’t you remember, Kent, you told me once that a man would do
anything
for a woman, if he cared enough for her?”

“Sure. He would, too.” Kent fought back a momentary temptation to prove the truth of it by his own acquiescence in this pal business. He was saved from disaster by a suspicion that
Val would not be able to see it from his point of view, and by the fact that he would much rather be pals than nothing.

She would have gone on, talking and planning and discussing, indefinitely. But the sun slid lower and lower, and Kent was not his own master. The time came when he had to go, regardless of his
own wishes, or hers.

When he came again, the story was finished, and Val was waiting, with extreme impatience, to read it to him and hear his opinion before she sent it away. Kent was not so impatient to hear it,
but he did not tell her so. He had not seen her for a month, and he wanted to talk; not about anything in particular—just talk about little things, and see her eyes light up once in a while,
and her lips purse primly when he said something daring, and maybe have her play something on the violin, while he smoked and watched her slim wrist bend and rise and fall with the movement of the
bow. He could imagine no single thing more fascinating than that—that, and the way she cuddled the violin under her chin, in the hollow of her neck.

But Val would not play—she had been too busy to practice, all spring and summer; she scarcely ever touched the violin, she said. And she did not want to talk—or if she did, it was
plain that she had only one theme. So Kent, perforce, listened to the story. Afterward, he assured her that it was “outa sight.” As a matter of fact, half the time he had not heard a
word of what she was reading; he had been too busy just looking at her and being glad he was there. He had, however, a dim impression that it was a story with people in it whom one does not try to
imagine as ever being alive, and with a West which, beyond its evident scarcity of inhabitants, was not the West he knew anything about. One paragraph of description had caught his attention,
because it seemed a fairly accurate picture of the bench land which surrounded Cold Spring Coulee; but it had not seemed to have anything to do with the story itself. Of course, it must be
good—Val wrote it. He began to admire her intensely, quite apart from his own personal subjugation.

Val was pleased with his praise. For two solid hours she talked of nothing but that story, and she gave him some fresh chocolate cake and a pitcher of lemonade, and urged him to come again in
about three weeks, when she expected to hear from the magazine she thought would be glad to take the story; the one whose editor had suggested that she write of the West.

In the fall, and in the winter, their discussions were frequently hampered by Manley’s presence. But Val’s enthusiasm, though nipped here and there by unappreciative editors,
managed, somehow, to live; or perhaps it had developed into a dogged determination to succeed in spite of everything. She still wrote things, and she still read them to Kent when there was time and
opportunity; sometimes he was bold enough to criticize the worst places, and to tell her how she might, in his opinion, remedy them. Occasionally Val would take his advice.

So the months passed. The winds blew and brought storm and heat and sunshine and cloud. Nothing, in that big land, appreciably changed, except the people; and they so imperceptibly that they
failed to realize it until afterward.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

V
AL’S
D
ISCOVERY

W
ITH A BLOOD-RED SUN AT HIS BACK AND ROSY TINGE UPON ALL THE
the hills before him, Manley rode slowly down the western rim of Cold Spring Coulee,
driving five rebellious calves that had escaped the branding iron in the spring. Though they were not easily driven in any given direction, he was singularly patient with them, and refrained from
bellowing epithets and admonitions, as might have been expected. When he was almost down the hill, he saw Val standing in the kitchen door, shading her eyes with her hands that she might watch his
approach.

“Open the corral gate!” he shouted to her, in the tone of command. “And stand back where you can head ’em off if they start up the coulee!”

Val replied by doing as she was told; she was not in the habit of wasting words upon Manley; they seemed always to precipitate an unpleasant discussion of some sort, as if he took it for granted
she disapproved of all he did or said, and was always upon the defensive.

The calves came on, lumbering awkwardly in a half-hearted gallop, as if they had very little energy left. Their tongues protruded, their mouths dribbled a lathery foam, and their rough, sweaty
hides told Val of the long chase—for she was wiser in the ways of the range land than she had been. She stood back, gently waving her ruffled white apron at them, and when they dodged into
the corral, rolling eyes at her, she ran up and slammed the gate shut upon them, looped the chain around the post, and dropped the iron hook into a link to fasten it. Manley galloped up, threw
himself off his panting horse, and began to unsaddle.

“Get some wood and start a fire, and put the iron in, Val,” he told her brusquely.

Val looked at him quickly. “Now? Supper’s all ready, Manley. There’s no hurry about branding them, is there?” And she added: “Dear me! The round-up must have just
skimmed the top off this range last spring. You’ve had to brand a lot of calves that were missed.”

“What the devil is it to you?” he demanded roughly. “I want that fire, madam, and I want it
now.
I rather think I know when I want to brand without asking your
advice.”

Val curved her lips scornfully, shrugged and obeyed. She was used to that sort of thing, and she did not mind very much. He had brutalized by degrees, and by degrees she had hardened. He could
rouse no feeling now but contempt.

“If you’ll kindly wait until I put back the supper,” she said coldly. “I suppose in your zeal one need not sacrifice your food; you’re still rather particular about
that, I observe.”

Manley was leading his horse to the stable, and, though he answered something, the words were no more than a surly mumble.

“He’s been drinking again,” Val decided dispassionately, on the way to the house. “I suppose he carried a bottle in his pocket—and emptied it.”

She was not long; there was a penalty of profane reproach attached to delay, however slight, when Manley was in that mood. She had the fire going and the VP iron heating by the time he had
stabled and fed his horse, and had driven the calves into the smaller pen. He drove a big, line-backed heifer into a corner, roped and tied her down with surprising dexterity, and turned
impatiently.

“Come! Isn’t that iron ready yet?”

Val, on the other side of the fence, drew it out and inspected it indifferently.

“It is not, Mr. Fleetwood. If you are in a very great hurry, why not apply your temper to it—and a few choice remarks?”

“Oh, don’t try to be sarcastic—it’s too pathetic. Kick a little life into that fire.”

“Yes, sir—thank you, sir.” Val could be rather exasperating when she chose. She always could be sure of making Manley silently furious when she adopted that tone of respectful
servility—as employed by butlers and footmen upon the stage. Her mimicry, be it said, was very good.

“’Ere it is, sir—thank you, sir—’ope I ’aven’t kept you wyting, sir,” she announced, after he had fumed for two minutes inside the corral, and she
had cynically hummed her way quite through the hymn which begins “Blest be the tie that binds.” She passed the white-hot iron deftly through the rails to him, and fixed the fire for
another heating.

Really, she was not thinking of Manley at all, nor of his mood, nor of his brutal coarseness. She was thinking of the rebuilt typewriter, advertised as being exactly as good as a new one, and
scandalously cheap, for which she had sold her watch to Arline Hawley to get money to buy. She was counting mentally the days since she had sent the money order, and was thinking it should come
that week surely.

She was also planning to seize upon the opportunity afforded by Manley’s next absence for a day from the ranch, and drive to Hope on the chance of getting the machine. Only—she
wished she could be sure whether Kent would be coming soon. She did not want to miss seeing him; she decided to sound Polycarp Jenks the next time he came. Polycarp would know, of course, whether
the Wishbone outfit was in from round-up. Polycarp always knew everything that had been done, or was intended, among the neighbors.

Manley passed the ill-smelling iron back to her, and she put it in the fire, quite mechanically. It was not the first time, nor the second, that she had been called upon to help brand. She could
heat an iron as quickly and evenly as most men, though Manley had never troubled to tell her so.

Five times she heated the iron, and heard, with an inward quiver of pity and disgust, the spasmodic blat of the calf in the pen when the VP went searing into the hide on its ribs. She did not
see why they must be branded that evening, in particular, but it was as well to have it done with. Also, if Manley meant to wean them, she would have to see that they were fed and watered, she
supposed. That would make her trip to town a hurried one, if she went at all; she would have to go and come the same day, and Arline Hawley would scold and beg her to stay, and call her a fool.

“Now, how about that supper?” asked Manley, when they were through, and the air was clearing a little from the smoke and the smell of burned hair.

“I really don’t know—I smelled the potatoes burning some time ago. I’ll see, however.” She brushed her hands with her handkerchief, pushed back the lock of hair
that was always falling across her temple, and, because she was really offended by Manley’s attitude and tone, she sang softly all the way to the house, merely to conceal from him the fact
that he could move her even to irritation. Her best weapon, she had discovered long ago, was absolute indifference—the indifference which overlooked his presence and was deaf to his
recriminations.

She completed her preparations for his supper, made sure that nothing was lacking and that the tea was just right, placed his chair in position, filled the water glass beside his plate, set the
teapot where he could reach it handily, and went into the living room and closed the door between. In the past year, filled as it had been with her literary ambitions and endeavors, she had
neglected her music; but she took her violin from the box, hunted the cake of resin, tuned the strings, and, when she heard him come into the kitchen and sit down at the table, seated herself upon
the front doorstep and began to play.