The Wrong Woman Part 11

"Oh!" remarked Janet.

She felt, however, that it would be easier to be doing something. She gathered things together and made general unrest among the dishes. Mr.

Brown, instead of being stirred by this operation of cleaning up, stretched himself out more contentedly, moved up a little closer, and took still fuller possession of her presence; and as he did so he poked up the fire and struck her a light on a new topic. But this time the train of conversation did not catch. Janet was thinking. And like most of us she could not talk well while thinking.

Mr. Brown seemed quite contented, then, with silence and peace.

Evidently he too was thinking. After a little time he sat up and reached into an inside pocket. He drew forth a large leather wallet which, upon being opened, disclosed two compartments well filled with bank-notes and doc.u.mentary-looking papers. There was another compartment with a flap on it and a separate fastening, opening which he took out an object wrapped in tissue paper. Having carefully unwrapped it, he folded the paper again and placed it where it would not blow away.

"That's my mother's picture," he said, handing it over formally to his guest.

Janet received it rather vaguely and sat looking at it, saying nothing.

"She died just last winter," he added, in his usual deliberate way.

"Oh, did she?"

What else to say, she hardly knew. Turning it to the light she studied it more closely and noted each resemblance to his own features, looking up at him in an impersonal sort of way and with a soberness of countenance which was a reflection of his own entirely serious mood.

"She had a very kind-looking face," she said.

To this there was no reply. Janet, about to hand it back, was momentarily in doubt as to how long a proper respect should prompt her to retain it; this, however, settled itself when she observed that he had ready to offer her a long newspaper clipping.

"I had the editor put some of that in myself," he said, reaching the long ribbon of paper over to her.

It was an obituary of Mrs. Stephen P. Brown, who pa.s.sed to "the realms beyond" on the eighteenth of November. With this Janet found no difficulty.

"But," he added suddenly as it occurred to him, "I did n't have him print that part at the bottom. He just put that in himself. I mean that stuff about me."

Janet at once turned her attention to the bottom. He sat silently with the wallet in hand, his countenance a shade more solemn than usual. In the midst of this waiting there came a wail from the corral and he left suddenly upon one of his unexplained errands, this time without excusing himself. He got back while Janet was still engaged upon the article. When she looked up he was standing beside the fire looking down at her. There was something new in his face, a look half lugubrious, semi-humorous, apologetic.

"We've got another lamb," he announced.

"Oh!--another little lamb?" she exclaimed.

"There are only three so far. Three lambs and two mothers. It has n't really got started yet, but I 'm afraid it will. My herder ought to have got back yesterday and brought help along."

"Then you have a great deal to do?" queried Janet.

"Yes; after it once gets really started. Then it never rains but it pours. I have been hoping it would hold off a day or two longer; but you can't tell exactly."

He put more wood on the fire and took his place again.

"You mustn't let me interfere with your work," she suggested.

"Oh, that is n't it at all. I was just explaining. I'll get through somehow; it won't amount to anything."

With a characteristic sweep of his arm he waved the whole subject aside as if he did not want to have it interfere with her reading of the newspaper clipping. Janet had dropped it absent-mindedly in her lap; she now took it up again. Besides the tribute to Mrs. Brown's character, who was not a native of Texas but had come to the state in her girlhood from West Virginia, there was a considerable memoir of Stephen Brown, senior, relating his activities and adventures as a Texas patriot. He had "crossed the Great Divide" six years before.

Finally, there was a paragraph of sympathy with the only son, "one of our most valued citizens."

"Your father knew Houston, did n't he?" remarked Janet.

"Oh, yes; he knew a lot about him."

"How interesting that must have been. Your father was a pioneer, was n't he?"

"Oh, no. You 've got to go back pretty far in history to be a Texas pioneer. He was just a Texan."

She gave another perusal to certain parts and offered it back.

"There is another piece on the other side," he said.

She turned it over and found a shorter clipping carefully pasted to the back. This also she read.

AN ARTISTIC MONUMENT

Mr. Stephen Brown yesterday received from Austin the monument which he had made for the grave of his mother, Mrs. Stephen P. Brown, who died last November. It is a most beautiful work of art and was much admired by those who saw it. It is a ma.s.sive block of imported gray granite skillfully carved with cl.u.s.ters of grapes in high relief. Mr. Brown ordered it from the leading marble-cutters in Austin. The reverse side of the stone was cut after his own design, and consists simply of a Lone Star. On the base is the word Mother. Many of our citizens were enabled to inspect it as it went up Main Street, Mr. Jonas Hicks stopping his three yoke of oxen to accommodate those who wished to look it over. It will be by far the most beautiful work of art in our local cemetery.

Janet folded up the clipping carefully, according to the creases in it, and pa.s.sed it back. When he had returned it to its compartment in the wallet,--an operation which was somewhat delayed by his difficulties with the tissue paper around the picture,--she questioned him further about the Comanche Indians and his father's adventures in the war with Mexico. Now the conversational situation was turned about, Janet becoming the interlocutor; and as she had the advantage of so copious a source of information, there was no end to her questioning. And as the stream of talk broadened, it began to include his own experiences and adventures, most interesting of which, to Janet, was a short account of the fight of a sheriff's posse with the train-robbers intrenched near the Post Oaks, a most determined encounter in which the sheriff was among those killed while Steve Brown received only a blunted thumb, for the clumsy appearance of which his story was rather an apology.

"That's all I got," he said. "And it works as good as ever."

To demonstrate which fact, he held it up and made it work.

Now that she had material by which to lead the conversation, she found him not nearly so taciturn as she had at first thought him. Indeed, he talked on without remembering to fix the fire. And when it had nearly faded out he continued on, unconscious of the fact that the real Janet was no longer in sight except as she was partially lit by the moon which now hove upon the scene.

"But I am keeping you up too late," she said, suddenly rising.

Steve gathered himself together and stood up, hat in hand.

"Oh, I am used to all hours," he said. "Anyway, I 've got to keep an eye on things."

"And I am sorry to put you out," she added.

"Don't mention it. I put myself out. I could let you have a lantern if you need it. There 's a piece of candle and some matches on the top bunk. It's down near the foot."

"Oh, that will be all the light I need. Good-night."

"Good-night, Miss Janet,"--saluting her by raising his hat to the side of his head and then bringing it down with a large sweep.

When the door had closed upon her and the shack showed light at all its cracks, he turned and went to the corral, closely followed by Shep. He took a look at the two sheep, each confined in one of the narrow little prison-pens along with the lamb whose property it was. The lambs were evidently full of milk; they were sleeping. Seeing that all was well, he got an old discarded saddle out of the shed, threw it on his shoulder, and descended to the general level to find himself a buffalo-wallow. Having picked one out he kicked a longhorn skull away from its vicinity, threw the saddle down at its edge, and lined the gra.s.sy interior with his slicker. Then he sat down in the middle, crus.h.i.+ng the slicker deep into the spring bloom. Here he sat a while.

It is not easy for the human mind, const.i.tuted as it is, to pick out a bed on a prairie. It offers such a large field of choice, and no grounds for preference. Steve had long ago formed the habit of sleeping in a wallow, always to be found within a short distance, and, when found, possessing the advantage of being a "place." Such a place--a bowl-like depression--was made by the bison who pawed away the tough sward to get at mother earth, and then wore it deep and circular as he tried to roll on his unwieldy hump. Steve Brown, anywhere between Texas and Montana, had often slept in the "same old place,"

though in a different locality, and for some reason he was never so content--either because it was really a "place," or because he liked a bed that sagged in the middle, or because (which is more likely) he found a certain atmosphere of sleep in one of these places so long ago dedicated to rest and comfort. Which hollow is all that is now left of the buffalo--a vacancy.

He sat down in the middle, his attention fixed upon the shack, which now existed as a sort of picture of itself drawn in lines of light.

When suddenly it was erased from the night, he pressed the slicker down and lay back with his head in the saddle. He folded his hands and waited, looking straight up. In a little while the world receded and he was only conscious of sundry stars. Thus, looking heaven in the eye, his hands clasped across his chest, Steve Brown sunk to sleep, his head and feet sticking up at the ends. Again Eternity held sway; and only Shep was left.