The Trail of Conflict Part 19

"Two o'clock! Why, that was when I reached Slippy----" With heightened color she tightened her rein and touched Bubbles with her heels. "I'll race you to the farmhouse," she called over her shoulder, a curious breathlessness in her voice. She kept the lead till they reached the gate of the farm, then Benson caught her horse by the bridle.

"The back of your head is attractive but I like your face better. Don't you want to hear the romantic story of Mrs. Simms before we get there?

She's a Heart and Ringer."

"A--a what?"

It was no longer necessary to hold the bridle of the girl's horse. She forced him to a walk.

"Heart and Ringer. That is what they call the women who marry men who advertise in the matrimonial sheet, Heart and Ring."

"Really, Tommy! Did Mrs. Simms do that?"

"She did, and she got just what she paid for. Simms is a bounder but he's thrifty as the d.i.c.kens and an A 1 workman. That's what caught Old Nick in the beginning. He'd have employed the devil himself had he those characteristics. But the man is ugly and insolent. How Steve puts up with him beats me. It is because of Mrs. Simms, I suppose. She is a fine woman and a corker in the dairy. She lived in Montana. She was the daughter of a miner who had made his pile and gone to farming. Montana got on her nerves, so when she saw Simms' 'ad' in Heart and Ring she corresponded with him and married him. I'll bet a hat Montana has looked like heaven to her ever since. That was one of their children who met Steve. I'd give my Kipling de luxe to know why."

He drew rein before the white farmhouse which hugged the ground like a mammoth brooding hen. In the field beyond was a spatter effect of snowy dairies and cow-barns. Black and white Holsteins, creamy Jerseys, Guernseys and a few Ayres.h.i.+res grazed epicureanly in the lush pastures that climbed the foot-hills.

A slender, wiry woman, who gave a fresh-from-the-laundry impression, so immaculate, so clear of skin, so smooth of hair was she, greeted Peg and Benson as they dismounted. Her smile was obliterated as Tommy's eyes lingered on her arm. She hastily pulled down her sleeves and b.u.t.toned them snugly at the wrists.

"It sure is fine to see you, Mr. Benson. You ain't taken my advice so soon and got a wife, have you?" she asked with a laugh and twinkle in the eyes which nature had intended for a merry blue, but which Life, aided and abetted by Heart and Ring and--Simms, had threshed to an apprehensive gray.

"No such luck, Mrs. Simms. This is Mrs. Courtlandt's sister, Miss Margaret Glamorgan. We came with a message from the Chief for Simms.

Where is he? At the dairy?"

"I'm sure pleased to know you, Miss. Simms has gone to--to Slippy Bend, Mr. Tommy."

"She's lying," Benson decided, even as he directed: "When he gets back tell him to report at the office to-morrow noon, sharp, with his accounts. Has he been up to his old tricks again?" His eyes fell as though by accident to her arms.

The woman's eyes, her lips, changed in expression. It was as though her features, red-hot with life and interest, had been run into a mold and hardened.

"He has that, Mr. Tommy."

"Is there any use in repeating what I have said before, that you ought to leave him?"

"An' I say as I said before, you're wrong, Mr. Tommy. I promised in the sight of G.o.d and man to stick to him as long as we both lived. I wasn't forced to marry Simms. I did it of my own free Will--my own fool will,"

contemptuously. "I'd be a fine example to my children, wouldn't I, if I tried to get out of marriage just because it wasn't the romantic joy-ride I'd expected. It would be different if Simms abused the children; he never lays a hand on 'em. He wouldn't dare," with a glitter in her eyes. "You and Mr. Tommy'll stay and have a bite of lunch with us, won't you, Miss? Mr. Courtlandt always has his when he comes."

Her change of voice and subject was so sudden that it caught Peggy's hazel eyes, glistening with tears, fixed upon her face. The girl blinked the mist away, slipped her hand under the woman's firm arm and inquired with irresistible charm:

"Will there be jelly cookies, Mrs. Simms?"

The blue came back to the eyes for a moment.

"Surely. Aha, Mr. Tommy, now I know what you came for."

"I didn't tell her about them. It was the Big Chief."

"Mr. Steve!" The blue suffered a total eclipse. "Did he come with you?"

"As far as Lower Field. By the way, what's wrong with Johnny? He galloped up to Courtlandt, stuck out his hand, then beat it."

"But he stuck out his hand?"

"Surest thing you know."

Mrs. Simms exhaled to the limit of her flat chest.

"That's all right, then. Johnny--Johnny found a sparkling stone--and he said as how he thought 'twas gold--and he's--he's pestered me to death till I told him he could ask Mr. Steve if he could stake off a claim.

Minin's in his blood. My father was a miner, Miss. I guess I'd better get busy about dinner, not stand talking here," she explained as she hurried away.

Benson's eyes followed her as he perched on a corner of the porch railing and lighted his pipe. Peg had gone into the house to help. He could hear the two voices, the woman's a high strident tone, the girl's like music with a joyous note running through it. The delectable odor of bacon and frying chicken drifted out to him and set his already rampant appet.i.te clamoring for satisfaction. Mrs. Simms had cut that boy and pebble story from whole cloth, if he was a judge of human nature, and he'd bet his last dollar that he was, Benson thought, as he changed his seat to one from which he could look inside the room which served as living-room and dining-room at Upper Farm.

It was for all the world like the pictures one saw in mail-order catalogues, he thought with a smile. There was an old-time melodion in one corner and an up-to-date phonograph in another. There was golden oak furniture in profusion. The walls were covered with a paper on which impossible roses fought for supremacy with more impossible alleged birds of paradise. How could a person think between such walls, Tommy wondered. He had the feeling as he looked that birds and roses were being stuffed down his throat. In the midst of his reflections Mrs.

Simms called him.

The three children slipped shyly into their chairs after the strangers were seated. They were boys, ranging in age from four to ten. Johnny had not come home, apparently. They had almost white hair and eyes shaped like the eyes of sculpins, which they kept fixed on Peggy Glamorgan, after the hypnotic effect of the company blue and white checked table-cloth, the pressed gla.s.s spoon-holder, and the best gold-banded plates with a big S in a funereal-like wreath on the border, had worn off.

Benson smiled to himself as he watched them. They were doing frankly and unreproved what he longed to do. Extreme youth had some compensations.

He lost himself in a radiant dream of possibilities and became as absorbed with his inward vision as the scions of the house of Simms were with the material and fascinating Peg herself. He was quite unconscious that the girl was observing him in amused wonder.

"What did Johnny mean by staking a claim, Mrs. Simms?" she inquired as with the air of a dainty gourmand she set her teeth in a second cookie.

"I would have asked Mr. Benson, but who am I to rouse him from his dream of--of fair women, perhaps--yes?" with a ripple of laughter.

Tommy roused with a start and colored generously.

"I beg pardon, I was----"

"That's what miners do when they think they've found gold," interrupted Mrs. Simms, quite unconscious of the byplay. "They stake off a lot of land and post it. Sometimes they don't work it for a year or more."

"Then why take possession? Isn't that dog-in-the-manger stuff?"

"No, because they really want it. They stake their claim so that no other man can get it," broke in Benson. "And if you ask me, I'll say that it's a whale of an idea," he added with a curious light in his eyes. "Young woman, if you have finished your cookie gorge we will depart."

"Cookie gorge! Slanderer! Mrs. Simms, did I eat as many as he?"

"Don't perjure yourself, Mrs. Simms. Come, Peg-o'-my-heart!" He realized that his eyes were acting as town-criers for his emotions and s.h.i.+fted his gaze from the girl to the woman. She sensed their message and exclaimed impulsively:

"My stars, ain't it great to be young and--and free!"

"You've said it, Mrs. Simms," agreed Peg with her woman-of-the-world air as she drew on her riding gloves. "Catch me settling down. Never! And that's that!"

The woman's troubled eyes sought Benson's. He laughed and held out his hand. "Good-bye, Mrs. Simms. Don't you worry. Having attained the t.i.tanic and imposing age of eighteen the lady would naturally have caustic views on matrimony. It will come out right and--and that's that!" he observed cryptically. "Be sure that Simms reports to-morrow.

The Big Chief has about all he can handle now; we don't want him worried."

It was not until Benson and Peg neared the Double O ranch that they came back to the subject of their late hostess. They had spent a lazy, happy afternoon, making Tommy's daily round of inspection which he usually covered in two hours.

"Do you think Simms hurts her?" the girl broke out suddenly, apropos of nothing. "Did you see those marks on her arm? Why, oh why, does she stay with him?" with a shudder.

"You heard why."