The Iron Furrow.
by George C. Shedd.
CHAPTER I
The Ventisquero Range stretches across the circ.u.mference of one"s vision in a procession of mountains that come tall and blue out of the distant north and seemingly march past to vanish in the remote south like azure phantoms. The mountains wall the horizon and dominate the mesa, their black forest-clad flanks crumpled and broken and gashed by canons, lifting above timber-line peaks of bare brown rock that pierce the clouds floating along the range. At sunrise they cast immense shadows upon the mesa spreading westward from their base; and at sunset they reflect golden and purple glows upon the plain until the earth appears swimming in some iridescent sea of ether; while over them from dawn till dusk, traversed by a few fleecy clouds, lies the turquoise sky of New Mexico.
At a certain point in the range a small canon opens upon the mesa with a gush of gravel and sand that flows a short way into the sagebrush and forms a creek bed. Tucked back in the little canon there is a considerable growth of bushes and trees, cool and fresh-looking in the shadow of the gorge during the summer season, a splash of vivid green there at the bottom of the dusty gray mountain, but at the canon"s mouth this verdure ceases.
Only an insignificant stream of water ran, one day, in the stony creek bed that meandered out upon the mesa, and it appeared under the hot July sun and among the hot stones for all the world like a rivulet of liquid gla.s.s. That was all the mesa had to show, only its endless gray sagebrush and the creek bed almost dry--unless one should reckon the three parched cottonwood trees beside the stream, a little way down from the canon, and the flat-roofed adobe house near by, and the empty corral behind built of aspen poles. In that immensity of mountain and mesa the house looked like a brick of sun-baked mud, the corral like a child"s device of straws, the three cottonwoods like three twigs stuck in the earth. Or, at any rate, that is how they appeared to a horseman regarding them from the main mesa trail a mile away.
The rider, a slender tanned young fellow of about twenty-eight, sat in the saddle with the relaxed ease of habit which allowed his body to accommodate itself to the steady jogging trot of his horse. A roll comprising clothes wrapped in a black rubber coat was tied behind the cantle. His Stetson hat was tilted up at the rear and down in front almost on his nose--a thin, bony nose, slightly curved and with the suggestion of a hook in the tip, just the sort of nose to accord with his lean, sunburnt cheeks and clean-cut chin and straight-lipped mouth. Under the hat brim drawn forward to his line of vision his eyes, notwithstanding his air of lounging indolence, gazed forth keen and observant. He had the appearance of a man who might be seeking a few stray cattle, or riding to town for mail, and in no particular hurry about it, either, this hot afternoon; but, for all that, Lee Bryant was proceeding on important business--important for him, anyhow. When everything one possesses is about to be risked on a venture, the matter is naturally vital; and at this moment he was moving straight to the initiative of his enterprise.
Where the road crossed the creek bed to continue northward, a trail branched off and followed up the stream to the little ranch house by the three cottonwood trees. Here the creek had not yet begun to cut an arroyo and had washed merely a course five or six feet deep and some fifty feet wide through the mesa, so that from a distance the shallow gash was invisible and the ground appeared unbroken. It was because of the flat character of the mesa, too, that Bryant on reaching the bank of the stream was able to see on the opposite side two persons a quarter of a mile off riding toward him; women, he perceived. Far north of them on the road, a black spot in a haze of dust, seemingly motionless but as one could guess advancing rapidly, was an automobile.
Bryant rode his horse down into the creek bed and turned him aside to a small pool on the upper side of the crossing, under the cut-bank, where the horse thrust his muzzle into the water and drank greedily.
The rider swung himself out of the saddle, knelt a pace beyond, where the rivulet trickled into the pool, and also drank.
"Wet anyway, even if warm, eh, d.i.c.k?" he remarked, when done. "Don"t drink it all, old scout; leave a swallow for the ladies." Still on his knees he looked appraisingly down the creek and then up it, and added derisively, "Some stream, this Perro, some stream!"
After rolling and lighting a cigarette, he meditated for a time in the same kneeling position. His horse finished drinking and moved a step nearer his master, where he stood with head lowered, water dripping from his lip, body inert. But presently he p.r.i.c.ked his ears and turning his head toward the other bank gave a low whinny. Bryant got to his feet.
The two women he had beheld at a distance had now reached the ford.
Their ponies snuffing water immediately dipped into the creek bed and crossed its sandy bottom with quickened steps. Young women the riders were, scarcely more than girls, it seemed to Bryant; wearing divided khaki skirts and white shirt waists and wide-brimmed straw hats tied with thongs under their chins. In this region where white men were none too numerous, and women of their own kind scarcer yet, and girls scarcest of all, the presence here of the pair aroused in the young fellow a lively interest.
He led d.i.c.k aside that their ponies might approach the pool.
"Thank you; they are very thirsty," said the nearer girl, with a nod.
The ponies plunged forefeet into the water and stood thus with noses buried, drinking with eager gulps. "The afternoon is so hot and the road so dusty," the speaker continued, "that the poor things were almost choked."
She was the smaller of the pair, of medium height and having a graceful, well-molded figure, with frank gray eyes, a nose showing a few freckles, smooth soft cheeks slightly reddened by sun, and an expressive mouth. Bryant judged that she had small, firm hands, but could not see them as she wore gauntlets. He further decided that she was neither plain nor pretty: just average good-looking, one might say. An air of friendliness was in her favour, though what might or might not be a prepossessing trait, depending on circ.u.mstances, was the suggested obstinacy in her round chin.
"Don"t you yourselves wish a drink? You must be thirsty, too," Bryant addressed the young ladies. "If your ponies won"t stand, I"ll look after them."
"Oh, they"ll not run off, unless we forget to let the reins hang, as has happened once or twice," said the girl who previously had spoken.
"For they"re regular cow-ponies. At first we had a hard time remembering just to drop the lines when we dismounted instead of tying them to a post somewhere; and for a while we had a feeling that they certainly would gallop off if we did let the reins hang, as we"d been instructed. But they never did." She turned to her companion. "Imo, aren"t you thirsty? I"m going to get down and have a drink." With which she swung herself down from her saddle upon the sand.
The second girl was tall and thin, lacking both the spirits and stamina of the other; a crown of fluffy golden hair was hinted by the little of it the young fellow could see under the brim of her big hat; her eyes were of a soft blue colour, probably weak; while her face, the skin of which was exceedingly white with but a tinge of the sun"s fiery burn, was regular of feature and delicately formed.
She walked to the rill languidly, where stooping she drank from her palm. Most of the water that she dipped escaped before reaching her lips; and Bryant doubted if she were really successful in quenching her thirst. The heat, the dust, and the ride appeared to have been almost too much for her strength, exhausting her slender store of vitality. The other girl, who had coiled herself down by the trickling stream and bent forward resting her hands in the water, drank directly from the rivulet.
"There, that"s the way to do it, Imo," she declared, when she had straightened up, hat-brim, nose, chin, all dripping. "Like the ponies!
I hope I haven"t lost my handkerchief." And she began to search about her waist.
"I"d fall flat in the water if I tried it, as sure as the world," the taller girl responded.
They rose to their feet and joined Bryant.
"You"re the young ladies who are homesteading just south of here, aren"t you?" he inquired, politely.
"Yes, two miles south on Sarita Creek," the smaller answered. Then after an appraising regard of him she continued, "We took our claims only last April. And they"re not very good claims, either, we"re beginning to fear; the creek goes dry about this time. That"s why no one had filed on the locations before. Have you a ranch somewhere near?"
"No. That is, not yet. I"m a civil engineer, but I"m thinking strongly of settling down here. If I do, we shall be neighbours. My name is Lee Bryant; this is my horse d.i.c.k; and I"ve a dog called Mike, which stopped aways back on the road to investigate a prairie dog hole. Now you know who we are," he concluded, with a smile.
The girl thereupon told him her name was Ruth Gardner and that of her companion Imogene Martin.
"We"ll be very glad to have you call at our little ranch when you"re riding by," Ruth Gardner said, graciously. "Aside from Imogene"s uncle and aunt, who live in Kennard and who"ve come to see us several times, we"ve not had a single visitor in the three months and a half we"ve been there, except once an old Mexican who was herding sheep near by and came to ask for matches. Of course, not many people know we"re there, I imagine. From the road one can"t see our cabins--we had to have two, you know, one for each claim, and they sit side by side--because they"re in the mouth of the canon among the trees. It"s really cool and pleasant there during the heat of the day. Any time you come, you"ll be welcome."
"Yes, Mr. Bryant," Imogene Martin affirmed. "A man now and then in the scenery will help out wonderfully."
"I"ll stop the first time I"m pa.s.sing," he stated.
Lee Bryant understood the significance of the invitation: they were starved for company and would be grateful for the society of a person they believed respectable. He had seen a good deal of homesteading conditions in the West; he knew the hardships involved in "holding down" claims, of which the dreary monotony and loneliness of the life were not the least. One earned ten times over every bit one got of a free government homestead. For men it was bad enough; but for woman, for girls like these, who had probably come from the East in trustful ignorance and with rosy visions, the homestead venture impressed him not only as pitiful but as tragic.
"I"ll certainly ride down to see you," he a.s.sured them again.
"And perhaps, being an engineer, you"ll show us why the water doesn"t run downhill in our bean patch, as it ought to do," Imogene Martin remarked.
Bryant laughed and nodded agreement.
"You"ll find that it"s your eyes, and not the water, that have been playing tricks," he said. "Ground levels and ditch grades are deceiving things close to the mountains, because the latter tilt one"s natural line of vision. That"s why water seems to run uphill when you look toward the range. I"ll soon fix your ditch line when I set an instrument in your bean patch and sight through it once or twice. The water will behave after that, I promise you."
They continued to chat of this and of the failing of Sarita Creek, until the automobile that Bryant had earlier sighted shot into view on the northern bank of the creek, whence at decreased speed it descended into the bottom and ground its way across through sand and gravel.
Driving the hooded car was a man of about thirty years, of slim figure and with a pale olive skin that betrayed an admixture of American and Mexican blood. Beside him in the front seat sat a girl whose clear pink complexion made plain that in her was no mingling of races; her hat held by a streaming blue veil and her form incased in a silk dust coat. The tonneau was occupied by two men: one an American with a van d.y.k.e beard sprinkled with gray, the other a short, stout, swarthy Mexican, whose sweeping white moustache was in marked contrast to his coffee-coloured face.
The car, with radiator steaming and hissing, was stopped at a spot close to where Lee Bryant and his companions stood. The young man at the wheel, unlatching the door, stepped out.
"I"ll bet the stop-c.o.c.k of the radiator is open," he addressed the girl with the blue veil, "or the engine wouldn"t be so hot." After making an examination of the faucet, he returned to the door and procured a folding canvas bucket, saying, "That"s the trouble, and the radiator is empty."
But the young lady scarcely heeded him. She had loosened the blue veil knotted at her throat and pushed it back from her cheeks to free them to the air; she sat regarding with interested eyes the group of three standing a few paces off by the horses. In her gaze, too, there was a faint curiosity, as if she wondered who the persons might be, and what they were doing here, and of what they had been conversing when interrupted. An exceedingly lovely girl she was, as the engineer had instantly perceived; her features molded in soft lines and curves that enchanted, a tint like that of peach petals in her cheeks, with warm, sensitive lips and brown, shining eyes--a radiant, intelligent face.
Against the background of the place, the creek bed of sand and stones and the banks fringed with dusty sagebrush, she glowed with the freshness of a desert rose.
The driver of the car took a step toward Bryant, extending the bucket.
"Dip me some water out of that hole while I look at my tires, will you?" he said.
At the words, which were rather more of a command than a request, the engineer regarded him fixedly while the blood stirred beneath his tan, but finally took the bucket. The other turned back to the car, where he made a pretense of inspecting a front wheel and then, with a foot on the running-board and elbow resting on knee, twisting indolently a point of his small moustache, he began to converse with his companion of the blue veil.
Bryant filled the radiator. Two trips to the pool were necessary to obtain enough water for that purpose, but he finished the job with the same thoroughness that he went through with any business once undertaken, whether pleasant or otherwise. As he poured the contents of the bucket into the radiator"s spout, he took stock of the automobile party. His face hardened with a slight contempt when he considered the effeminate-appearing young Mexican who had bade him bring water and the girl talking with him; which she must have noticed and taken to herself, for when their eyes met he saw that a flush dyed her cheeks and that she bit her lip nervously.
He snapped the radiator cap shut. At the click the man stopped fingering his moustache, ended his talk, mounted to his seat, and started the engine. Bryant handed him the bucket, folded flat again, which the recipient tossed down by his feet.
"Here, my man," said the olive-skinned young fellow at the wheel, with a forefinger and thumb searching a waistcoat pocket as the car began slowly to move forward.
He tossed a quarter to the engineer. Bryant instinctively caught it, as one catches any suddenly thrown object. For an instant he remained transfixed, incredulous, astounded, then the blood flamed in his face and he cast the coin back at its donor.
"No Mexican can throw money to me!" he exclaimed.