Claim Number One Part 29

Smith hung up his voice there as if something had crossed his mind. He stood looking down the valley in a speculative way.

"Yes?" she inquired, respectfully recalling him.

"Yes," repeated Smith. "If I had a woman around the house I'd take a shot at that feller as quick as I would at a lobo-wolf!"

Smith jangled on, his sc.r.a.per making toadish hops and tortoise-like tips and amblings over the inequalities in the way. She looked after him, a new light s.h.i.+ning from her eyes, a new pa.s.sion stirring her bosom, where his words had fallen like a spark upon tinder.

So that was the estimation in which men held Jerry Boyle--men like Smith, who moved along the lower levels of life and smoothed over the rough places for others to pa.s.s by and by! It must be but the reflection of thought in higher planes--"If I had a woman around the place!" Such then was the predatory reputation of Jerry Boyle, who was capable of dishonorable acts in more directions than one, whose very presence was a taint.

And he would ride back there tomorrow evening, perhaps after the sun had set, perhaps after darkness had fallen, to receive the answer to his dishonorable proposal that she sacrifice her friend to save herself from his spite, and the consequences of her own misguided act.

"If I had a woman around the place!"

The spark in the tinder was spreading, warming, warming, glowing into a fierce, hot flame. Like a wolf--like a wolf--Smith would take a shot at him--like a wolf! Smith had compared him to a wolf; had said he could be as mean as a wolf--and if there was a woman around the place!

She went into the tent, the blood rising hot to her temples, beating, singing in her ears. The revolver which she had brought with her on the doctor's advice hung at the head of her cot. With it strapped around her she went back to her stove, which she fed with a wild vigor, exulting in seeing the flames pour out of the pipe and the thin sides grow red.

"Like a wolf--like a wolf!"

The words pounded in her mind, leaped through her circulation like quickening fire.

"Like a wolf--if there was a woman around the house----"

And a man like that was coming back, perhaps when the darkness had let down over that still valley, expecting her to say that she had killed the hope of her dearest friend to s.h.i.+eld herself from his smirched and guilty hand!

CHAPTER XV

AN ARGUMENT ENDS

Morning found Agnes only the more firmly determined to bear her troubles alone. Smith came by early. He looked curiously at the revolver, which she still carried at her waist, but there was approval in his eyes. The sight of the weapon seemed to cheer Smith, and make him easier in his mind about something that had given him unrest. She heard him singing as he pa.s.sed on to his work. Across the river the bride was singing also, and there seemed to be a song in even the sound of the merry axes among the cottonwoods, where her neighboring settler and his two lank sons were chopping and hewing the logs for their cabin. But there was no song in her own heart, where it was needed most.

She knew that Jerry Boyle had camped somewhere near the stage-road, where he could watch her coming and going to carry the demand on Dr.

Slavens which he had left with her. He would be watching the road even now, and he would watch all day, or perhaps ride up there to learn the reason when he failed to see her pa.s.s. She tied back the flaps of her tent to let the wind blow through, and to show any caller that she was not at home, then saddled her horse and rode away into the hills. It needed a day of solitude, she thought, to come to a conclusion on the question how she was to face it out with Jerry Boyle. Whether to stay and fight the best that she was able, or to turn and fly, leaving all her hopes behind, was a matter which must be determined before night.

In pensive mood she rode on, giving her horse its head, but following a general course into the east. As her wise animal picked its way over the broken ground, she turned the situation in her mind.

There was no doubt that she had been indiscreet in the manner of taking up her homestead, but she could not drive herself to the belief that she had committed a moral crime. And the doctor. He would drop all his prospects in the land that he held if she should call on him, she well believed. He was big enough for a sacrifice like that, with never a question in his honest eyes to cloud the generosity of the act. If she had him by to advise her in this hour, and to benefit by his wisdom and courage, she sighed, how comfortable it would be.

Perhaps she should have gone, mused she, pursuing this thought, to his place, and put the thing before him in all its ugliness, with no reservations, no attempts to conceal or defend. He could have told her how far her act was punishable. Perhaps, at the most, it would mean no more than giving up the claim, which was enough, considering all that she had founded on it. Yes, she should have ridden straight to Dr.

Slavens; that would have been the wiser course.

Considering whether she would have time to go and return that day, wasted as the morning was, she pulled up her horse and looked around to see if she could estimate by her location the distance from her camp.

That she had penetrated the country east of the river farther than ever before, was plain at a glance. The surroundings were new to her. There was more vegetation, and marks of recent grazing everywhere.

She mounted the hill-crest for a wider survey, and there in a little valley below her she saw a flock of sheep grazing, while farther along the ridge stood a sheep-wagon, a strange and rather disconcerting figure striding up and down beside it.

Doubtless it was the shepherd, she understood. But a queer figure he made in that place; and his actions were unusual, to say the least, in one of his sedate and melancholy calling. He was a young man, garbed in a long, black coat, tattered more or less about the skirts and open in front, displaying his red s.h.i.+rt. His hair was long upon his collar, and his head was bare.

As he walked up and down a short beat near his wagon, the shepherd held in his hand a book, which he placed before his eyes with a flourish now, and then with a flourish withdrew it, meantime gesticulating with his empty hand in the most extravagant fas.h.i.+on. His dog, sharper of perception than its master, lay aside from him a little way, its ears p.r.i.c.ked up, its sharp nose lifted, sniffing the scent of the stranger.

But it gave no alarm.

Agnes felt that the man must be harmless, whatever his peculiarities.

She rode forward, bent on asking him how far she had strayed from the river. As she drew near, she heard him muttering and declaiming, ill.u.s.trating his arguments of protestation with clenched fist and tossing head, his long hair lifting from his temples in the wind.

He greeted her respectfully, without sign of perturbation or surprise, as one well accustomed to the society of people above the rank of shepherd.

"My apparent eccentric behavior at the moment when you first saw me, madam, or miss, perhaps, most likely I should say, indeed----"

Agnes nodded, smiling, to confirm his penetration.

"So, as I was saying, my behavior may have led you into doubt of my balance, and the consequent question of your safety in my vicinity," he continued.

"Nothing of the kind, I a.s.sure you," said she. "I thought you might be a--a divinity student by your dress, or maybe a candidate for the legal profession."

"Neither," he disclaimed. "I am a philosopher, and at the moment you first beheld me I was engaged in a heated controversy with Epictetus, whose _Discourses_ I hold in my hand. We are unable to agree on many points, especially upon the point which he a.s.sumes that he has made in the discussion of grief. He contends that when one is not blamable for some calamity which bereaves him or strips him of his possessions, grief is unmanly, regret inexcusable.

"'How?' say I, meeting him foot to foot on the controversy, 'in case I lose my son, my daughter, my wife--the wife of my soul and heart--shall I not grieve? shall I not be permitted the solace of a tear?'

"And Epictetus: 'Were you to blame for the disease which cut them off?

Did you light the fire which consumed them, or sink the s.h.i.+p which carried them down?'

"'No,' I answer; 'but because I'm blameless shall I become inhuman, and close my heart to all display of tenderness and pain?'

"And there we have it, miss, over and over again. Ah, I am afraid we shall never agree!"

"It is lamentable," Agnes agreed, believing that the young man's life in the solitudes had unsettled his mind. "I never agree with him on that myself."

The philosopher's hollow, weathered face glowed as she gave this testimony. He drew a little nearer to her, shaking the long, dark, loose hair back from his forehead.

"I am glad that you don't think me demented," said he. "Many, who do not understand the deeper feelings of the soul, do believe it. The hollow-minded and the unstable commonly lose their small balance of reason in these hills, miss, with no companions.h.i.+p, month in and month out, but a dog and the poor, foolish creatures which you see in the valley yonder. But to one who is a philosopher, and a student of the higher things, this situation offers room for the expansion of the soul.

Mine has gone forth and enlarged here; it has filled the universe."

"But a man of your education and capabilities," she suggested, thinking to humor him, "ought to be more congenially situated, it seems to me.

There must be more remunerative pursuits which you could follow?"

"Remuneration for one may not be reward for another," he told her. "I shall remain here until my mission is accomplished."

He turned to his flock, and, with a motion of the arm, sped his dog to fetch in some stragglers which seemed straying off waywardly over the crest of the opposite hill. As he stood so she marked his ascetic gauntness, and noted that the hand which swung at his side twitched and clenched, and that the muscles of his cleanly shaved jaws swelled as he locked his teeth in determination.

"Your mission?" she asked, curious regarding what it might be, there in the solitude of those barren hills.

"I see that you are armed," he observed irrelevantly, as if the subject of his mission had been put aside. "I have a very modern weapon of that pattern in the wagon, but there is little call for the use of it here.

Perhaps you live in the midst of greater dangers than I?"

"I'm one of the new settlers over in the river bottom," she explained.