She pushed on down the slope, riding hard, but it was nearly two o"clock when they drew up at Meeker"s house, which was a long, low, stone structure built along the north side of the road. The place was distinguished not merely by its masonry, but also by its picket fence, which had once been whitewashed. Farm-wagons of various degrees of decay stood by the gate, and in the barn-yard plows and harrows--deeply buried by the weeds--were rusting forlornly away. A little farther up the stream the tall pipe of a sawmill rose above the firs.
A pack of dogs of all sizes and signs came clamoring to the fence, followed by a big, slovenly dressed, red-bearded man of sixty or thereabouts.
"h.e.l.lo, Uncle Joe," called the girl, in offhand boyish fashion. "How are you _to-day_?"
"Howdy, girl," answered Meeker, gravely. "What brings you up here this time?"
She laughed. "Here"s a boarder who wants to learn how to raise cattle."
Meeker"s face lightened. "I reckon you"re Mr. Norcross? I"m glad to see ye. Light off and make yourself to home. Turn your horses into the corral, the boys will feed "em."
"Am I in America?" Norcross asked himself, as he followed the slouchy old rancher into the unkempt yard. "This certainly is a long way from New Haven."
Without ceremony Meeker led his guests directly into the dining-room, a long and rather narrow room, wherein a woman and six or seven roughly dressed young men were sitting at a rudely appointed table.
"Earth and seas!" exclaimed Mrs. Meeker. "Here"s Berrie, and I"ll bet that"s Sutler"s friend, our boarder."
"That"s what, mother," admitted her husband. "Berrie brought him up."
"You"d ought "o gone for him yourself, you big lump," she retorted.
Mrs. Meeker, who was as big as her husband, greeted Norcross warmly, and made a place for him beside her own chair.
"Highst along there, boys, and give the company a chance," she commanded, sharply. "Our dinner"s turrible late to-day."
The boys--they were in reality full-grown cubs of eighteen or twenty--did as they were bid with much noise, chaffing Berrie with blunt humor. The table was covered with a red oil-cloth, and set with heavy blue-and-white china. The forks were two-tined, steel-p.r.o.nged, and not very polished, and the food was of the simplest sort; but the girl seemed at home there--as she did everywhere--and was soon deep in a discussion of the price of beef, and whether it was advisable to ship now or wait a month.
Meeker read Sutler"s letter, which Norcross had handed him, and, after deliberation, remarked: "All right, we"ll do the best we can for you, Mr.
Norcross; but we haven"t any fancy accommodations."
"He don"t expect any," replied Berrie. "What he needs is a little roughing it."
"There"s plinty of that to be had," said one of the herders, who sat below the salt. ""is the soft life I"m nadin"."
"Pat"s strong on soft jobs," said another; and Berea joined the laugh which followed this pointless joke. She appeared to be one of them, and it troubled Norcross a little. She had so little the s.e.x feeling and demanded so few of the rights and privileges of a girl. The men all admired her, that was evident, almost too evident, and one or two of the older men felt the charm of her young womanhood too deeply even to meet her eyes; but of this Norcross was happily ignorant. Already in these two days he had acquired a distinct sense of proprietorship in her, a feeling which made him jealous of her good name.
Meeker, it turned out, was an Englishman by way of Canada, and this was his second American wife. His first had been a sister to Mrs. McFarlane.
He was a man of much reading--of the periodical sort--and the big sitting-room was littered with magazines both English and American, and his talk abounded in radical and rather foolish utterances. Norcross considered it the most disorderly home he had ever seen, and yet it was not without a certain dignity. The rooms were large and amply provided with furniture of a very mixed and gaudy sort, and the table was spread with abundance.
One of the lads, Frank Meeker, a dark, intense youth of about twenty, was Berea"s full cousin. The others were merely hired hands, but they all eyed the new-comer with disfavor. The fact that Berrie had brought him and that she seemed interested in him added to the effect of the smart riding-suit which he wore. "I"d like to roll him in the creek," muttered one of them to his neighbor.
This dislike Berrie perceived--in some degree--and to Frank she privately said: "Now you fellows have got to treat Mr. Norcross right. He"s been very sick."
Frank maliciously grinned. "Oh, we"ll treat him _right_. We won"t do a thing to him!"
"Now, Frank," she warned, "if you try any of your tricks on him you"ll hear from me."
"Why all this worry on your part?" he asked, keenly. "How long since you found him?"
"We rode up on the stage day before yesterday, and he seemed so kind o"
blue and lonesome I couldn"t help trying to chirk him up."
"How will Cliff take all this chirking business?"
"Cliff ain"t my guardian--yet," she laughingly responded. "Mr. Norcross is a college man, and not used to our ways--"
"_Mister_ Norcross--what"s his front name?"
"Wayland."
He snorted. "Wayland! If he gets past us without being called "pasty"
he"s in luck. He"s a "lunger" if there ever was one."
The girl was shrewd enough to see that the more she sought to soften the wind to her Eastern tenderfoot the more surely he was to be shorn, so she gave over her effort in that direction, and turned to the old folks. To Mrs. Meeker she privately said: "Mr. Norcross ain"t used to rough ways, and he"s not very rugged, you ought "o kind o" favor him for a while."
The girl herself did not understand the vital and almost painful interest which this young man had roused in her. He was both child and poet to her, and as she watched him trying to make friends with the men, her indignation rose against their clownish offishness. She understood fully that his neat speech, his Eastern accent, together with his tailor-cut clothing and the delicacy of his table manners, would surely mark him for slaughter among the cow-hands, and the wish to shield him made her face graver than anybody had ever seen it.
"I don"t feel right in leaving you here," she said, at last; "but I must be ridin"." And while Meeker ordered her horse brought out, she walked to the gate with Norcross at her side.
"I"m tremendously obliged to you," he said, and his voice was vibrant.
"You have been most kind. How can I repay you?"
"Oh, that"s all right," she replied, in true Western fashion. "I wanted to see the folks up here, anyhow. This is no jaunt at all for me." And, looking at her powerful figure, and feeling the trap-like grip of her cinch hand, he knew she spoke the truth.
Frank had saddled his own horse, and was planning to ride over the hill with her; but to this she objected. "I"m going to leave Pete here for Mr.
Norcross to ride," she said, "and there"s no need of your going."
Frank"s face soured, and with instant perception of the effect her refusal might have on the fortunes of the stranger, she reconsidered.
"Oh, come along! I reckon you want to get shut of some mean job."
And so she rode away, leaving her ward to adjust himself to his new and strange surroundings as best he could, and with her going the whole valley darkened for the convalescent.
III
WAYLAND RECEIVES A WARNING
Distance is no barrier to gossip. It amazed young Norcross to observe how minutely the ranchers of the valley followed one another"s most intimate domestic affairs. Not merely was each man in full possession of the color and number of every calf in his neighbor"s herd, it seemed that nothing could happen in the most remote cabin and remain concealed. Any event which broke the monotony of their life loomed large, and in all matters of courtship curiosity was something more than keen, it was remorseless.
Living miles apart, and riding the roads but seldom, these lonely gossips tore to tatters every sc.r.a.p of rumor. No citizen came or went without being studied, characterized, accounted for, and every woman was scrutinized as closely as a stray horse, and if there was within her, the slightest wayward impulse some lawless centaur came to know it, to exult over it, to make test of it. Her every word, her minutest expression of a natural coquetry was enlarged upon as a sign of weakness, of yielding.
Every personable female was the focus of a natural desire, intensified by lonely brooding on the part of the men.
It was soon apparent to the Eastern observer that the entire male population for thirty miles around not only knew McFarlane"s girl; but that every unmarried man--and some who were both husbands and fathers--kept a deeply interested eye upon her daily motion, and certain shameless ones openly boasted among their fellows of their intention to win her favor, while the shy ones reveled in secret exultation over every chance meeting with her. She was the topic of every lumber-camp, and the shining lure of every dance to which the ranch hands often rode over long and lonely trails.