The Ranchman Part 8

Looking backward, she could see Dawes. Already the buckboard had traveled two or three miles, but the town seemed near, and she had quite a shock when she looked back at it and saw the buildings, mere huddled shanties, spoiling the beauty of her picture.

A mile or so farther-four miles altogether, Parsons told her-and they came in sight of a house. She had difficulty restraining her delight when they climbed out of the buckboard and Parsons told her the place was to be their permanent home. For it was such a house as she had longed to live in all the days of her life.

The first impression it gave her was that of s.p.a.ciousness. For though only one story in height, the house contained many rooms. Those, however, she saw later.

The exterior was what intrigued her interest at first glance. So far as she knew, it was the only brick building in the country. She had seen none such in Dawes.

There was a big porch across the front; the windows were large; there were vines and plants thriving in the shade from some big cottonwood trees near by-in fact, the house seemed to have been built in a grove of the giant trees; there were several outhouses, one of which had chickens in an enclosure near it; there was a garden, well-kept; and the girl saw that back of the house ran a little stream which flowed sharply downward, later to tumble into the big basin far below the irrigation dam.

While Parsons was superintending the unloading of the buckboard, Marion explored the house. It was completely furnished, and her eyes glowed with pleasure as she inspected it. And when Parsons and the driver were carrying the baggage in she was outside the house, standing at the edge of a b.u.t.te whose precipitous walls descended sharply to the floor of the irrigation basin, two or three hundred feet below. She could no longer see the cultivated level, with its irrigation ditches, but she could see the big dam, a mile or so up the valley toward Dawes, with the water creeping over it, and the big valley itself, slumbering in the pure, white light of the morning.

She went inside, slightly awed, and Parsons, noting her excitement, smirked at her. She left him and went to her room. Emerging later she discovered that Parsons was not in the house. She saw him, however, at a distance, looking out into the valley.

And then, in the kitchen, Marion came upon the housekeeper, a negro woman of uncertain age. Parsons had not told her there was to be a housekeeper.

The negro woman grinned broadly at her astonishment.

"Lawsey, ma'am; you jes' got to have a housekeeper, I reckon! How you ever git along without a housekeeper? You're too fine an' dainty to keep house you'self!"

The woman's name, the latter told her, was Martha, and there was honest delight-and, it seemed to Marion, downright relief in her eyes when she looked at the new mistress.

"You ain't got no 'past,' that's certain, honey," she declared, with a delighted smile. "The woman that lived here befo' had a past, honey. A man named Huggins lived in this house, an' she said she's his wife.

Wife! Lawsey! No man has a wife like that! She had a past, that woman, an' mebbe a present, too-he, he, he!

"He was the man what put the railroad through here, honey. I done hear the woman say-her name was Blanche, honey-that Huggins was one of them ultra rich. But whatever it was that ailed him, honey, didn't help his looks none. Pig-eye, I used to call him, when I'se mad at him-which was mostly all the time-he, he, he!"

The girl's face whitened. Was she never to escape the atmosphere she loathed? She shuddered and Martha patted her sympathetically on the shoulder.

"There, there, honey; you ain't 'sponsible for other folks' affairs.

Jes' you hold you' head up an' go about you' business. n.o.body say anything to you because you' livin' here."

But Martha's words neither comforted nor consoled the girl. She went again to her room and sat for a long time, looking out of a window. For now all the cheer had gone out of the house; the rooms looked dull and dreary-and empty, as of something gone out of them.

CHAPTER VIII-CONCERNING "SQUINT"

Marion Harlan had responded eagerly to Carrington's fabrication regarding the rumor of Lawrence Harlan's presence in Dawes. Carrington's reference to her father's sojourn in the town had been vague-he merely told her that a rumor had reached him-a man's word, without details-and she had accepted it at its face value. She was impatient to run the rumor down, to personally satisfy herself, and she believed Carrington.

But she spent a fruitless week interrogating people in Dawes. She had gone to the courthouse, there to pa.s.s long hours searching the records-and had found nothing. Then, systematically, she had gone from store to store-making small purchases and quizzing everyone she came in contact with. None had known a man named Harlan; it seemed that not one person in Dawes had ever heard of him.

Parsons had returned to town in the buckboard shortly after noon on the day of their arrival at the new house, and she had not seen him again until the following morning. Then he had told her that Carrington had gone away-he did not know where. Carrington would not return for a week or two, he inferred.

Parsons had bought some horses. A little bay, short-coupled but wiry, belonged to her, Parsons said-it was a present from Carrington.

She hesitated to accept the horse; but the little animal won her regard by his affectionate mannerisms, and at the end of a day of doubt and indecision she accepted him.

She had ridden horses in Westwood-bareback when no one had been looking, and with a side-saddle at other times-but she discovered no side-saddle in Dawes. However, she did encounter no difficulty in unearthing a riding-habit with a divided skirt, and though she got into that with a pulse of trepidation and embarra.s.sment, she soon discovered it to be most comfortable and convenient.

And Dawes did not stare at her because she rode "straddle." At first she was fearful, and watched Dawes's citizens furtively; but when she saw that she attracted no attention other than would be attracted by any good-looking young woman in more conventional attire, she felt more at ease. But she could not help thinking about the sanctimonious inhabitants of Westwood. Would they not have declared their kindly predictions vindicated had they been permitted to see her? She could almost hear the chorus of "I-told-you-so's"-they rang in her ears over a distance of many hundreds of miles!

But the spirit of the young, unfettered country had got into her soul, and she went her way unmindful of Westwood's opinions.

For three days she continued her search for tidings of her father, eager and hopeful; and then for the remainder of the week she did her searching mechanically, doggedly, with a presentiment of failure to hara.s.s her.

And then one morning, when she was standing beside her horse near the stable door, ready to mount and fully determined to pursue the Carrington rumor to the end, the word she sought was brought to her.

She saw a horseman coming toward her from the direction of Dawes. He was not Parsons-for the rider was short and broad; and besides, Parsons was spending most of his time in Dawes.

The girl watched the rider, a.s.sured, as he came nearer, that he was a stranger; and when he turned his horse toward her, and she saw he _was_ a stranger, she leaned close and whispered to her own animal:

"Oh, Billy; what if it _should_ be!"

An instant later she was watching the stranger dismount within a few feet of where she was standing.

He was short and stocky, and undeniably Irish. He was far past middle age, as his gray hair and seamed wrinkles of his face indicated; but there was the light of a youthful spirit and good-nature in his eyes that squinted at the girl with a quizzical interest.

With the bridle-rein in the crook of his elbow and his hat in his hand, he bowed elaborately to the girl.

"Would ye be Miss Harlan, ma'am?" he asked.

"Yes," she breathed, her face alight with eagerness, for now since the man had spoken her name the presentiment of news grew stronger.

The man's face flashed into a wide, delighted grin and he reached out a hand, into which she placed one of hers, hardly knowing that she did it.

"Me name's Ben Mullarky, ma'am. I've got a little shack down on the Rabbit-Ear-which is a crick, for all the name some locoed ignoramus give it. You c'ud see the shack from here, ma'am-if ye'd look sharp."

He pointed out a spot to her-a wooded section far out in the big level country southward, beside the river-and she saw the roof of a building near the edge of the timber.

"That's me shack," offered Mullarky. "Me ol' woman an' meself owns her-an' a quarter-section-all proved. We call it seven miles from the shack to Dawes. That'd make it about three from here."

"Yes, yes," said the girl eagerly.

He grinned at her. "Comin' in to town this mornin' for some knickknacks for me ol' woman, I hear from Coleman-who keeps a store-that there's a fine-lookin' girl named Harlan searchin' the country for news of her father, Larry Harlan. I knowed him, ma'am."

"You did? Oh, how wonderful!" She stood erect, breathing fast, her eyes glowing with mingled joy and impatience. She had not caught the significance of Mullarky's picturesque past tense, "knowed;" but when he repeated it, with just a slight emphasis:

"I _knowed_ him, ma'am," she drew a quick, full breath and her face whitened.

"You knew him," she said slowly. "Does that mean--"

Mullarky scratched his head and looked downward, not meeting her eyes.

"Squint Taylor would tell you the story, ma'am," he said. "You see, ma'am, he worked for Squint, an' Squint was with him when it happened."

"He's dead, then?" She stood rigid, tense, searching Mullarky's face with wide, dreading eyes, and when she saw his gaze s.h.i.+ft under hers she drew a deep sigh and leaned against Billy, covering her face with her hands.