"Now remember and write a whole tablet full to
"WILLIAM LOUISA, "WILHEMINA, "BILL-LOO, "BILL-THE-CONK, "BILLY LOUISE, "FLOWER OF THE RANCH-OH."
Phoebe put that letter on the mantel over the fireplace, the day after Christmas. Frequently she felt its puffy softness and its crackly crispness and wondered dully what Billy Louise had sent to Ward.
Billy Louise refrained from expecting any reply until after New Year"s.
Then she began to look for a letter, and when the days pa.s.sed and brought her no word, her moods changed oftener than the weather.
Ward"s literary efforts, along about that time, consisted of cutting notches in the window-sill beside his bunk.
On the day when the stage-driver gave Billy Louise"s letter to Phoebe, Ward cut a deeper, wider notch, thinking that day was Christmas. Under the notch he scratched a word with the point of his knife. It had four letters, and it told eloquently of the state of mind he was in.
It was the day after that when Seabeck and one of his men rode up the creek and out into the field where Ward"s cattle grazed apathetically on the little gra.s.s tufts that stuck up out of the snow. Ward was reading, and so did not see them until he raised himself up to make a cigarette and saw them going straight across the coulee by the line fence to the farther hills. He opened the window and shouted after them, but the wind was blowing keen from that direction, and they did not hear him.
Seabeck had been studying brands and counting, and he was telling Floyd Carson that everything was straight as a string.
"He must be out working this winter. I should think he"d stay home and feed these calves. The cows are looking pretty thin. I guess he isn"t much of a stock hand; these nesters aren"t, as a general thing, and if it"s as Junkins says, and he puts all he makes into this place, he"s likely hard up. Mighty nice little ranch he"s got. Well, let"s work over the divide and back that way. I didn"t think we"d find anything here."
They turned and angled up the steep hillside, and Ward watched them glumly. He thought he knew why they were prowling around the place, but it seemed to him that they might have stretched their curiosity a little farther and investigated the cabin. He did not know that the snow of a week ago was banked over the doorstep with a sharp, crusty combing at the top, to prove that the door had not been opened for some time. Nor did he know that the two had ridden past the cabin on the other side of the creek and had seen how deserted the place looked; had ridden to the stable, noted there the unmistakable and permanent air of emptiness, and had gone on.
Floyd Carson alone might have prowled through both buildings, but Seabeck was a slow-going man of sober justice. He would not invade the premises of another farther than he thought it necessary. He had heard whispers that the fellow on Mill Creek might bear investigation, and he had investigated. There was not a shadow of evidence that the Y6 cattle had been gotten dishonestly. Therefore, Seabeck rode away and did not look into the snow-banked cabin, as another man might have done; and Ward missed his one chance of getting help from the outside.
Of course, he was doing pretty well as it was; but he would have welcomed the chance to talk to someone. Taciturn as Ward was with men, he had enough of his own company for once. And he would have asked them to make him a cup of coffee and warm up the cabin once more.
Little comforts of that sort he missed terribly. If the room had not been so clammy cold, he could have sat up part of the time, now. As it was, he stayed in bed to keep warm; and even so he had been compelled to drag the two wolf-skins off the floor and upon the bed to keep from shivering through the coldest nights and days.
One day he did crawl out of bed and try to get over to the stove to start a fire. But he was so weak that he gave it up and crawled back again, telling himself that it was not worth the effort.
The letter with the silk neckerchief inside gathered dust upon the mantel, down at the Wolverine. When the postmark was more than two weeks old, another letter came, and Phoebe laid it on the fat one with fingers that trembled a little. Phoebe had a letter of her own, that day. Both were thin, and the addresses were more scrawly than usual.
Phoebe"s Indian instinct warned her that something was amiss.
This was Ward"s letter:
"Oh, G.o.d, Ward, mommie"s dead. She died last night. I thought she was asleep till the nurse came in at five o"clock. I"m all alone and I don"t know what to do. I wish you could come, but if you don"t get this right away, I"ll see you at the ranch. I"m coming home as soon as I can. Oh, Ward, I hate life and G.o.d and everything. BILLY LOUISE."
"Please Ward, stay at the ranch till I come. I want to see you. I feel as if you"re the only friend I"ve got left, now mommie"s gone.
She looked so peaceful when they took her away--and so strange. I didn"t belong to her any more. I felt as if I didn"t know her at all--and there is such an awful gap in my life--maybe you"ll understand. You always do."
The day that letter was written, Ward drew a plan of the house he meant to build some day, with a wide porch on the front, where a hammock would swing comfortably. He figured upon lumber and shingles and rock foundation, and mortar for a big, deep fireplace. He managed to put in the whole forenoon planning and making estimates, and he was so cheerful afterwards that he whistled and sang, and later he tied a piece of jerky on the end of a string and teased a fat fieldmouse, whose hunger made him venturesome. Ward would throw the jerky as far as the string would permit and wait till the mouse came out to nibble at it; then he would pull the meat closer and closer to the bed and laugh at the very evident perturbation of the mouse. For the time being he was a boy indulging his love of teasing something.
And while Ward played with that mouse, Billy Louise was longing for his comforting presence while she faced alone one of the bitterest things in life--which is death. He had no presentiment of her need of him, which was just as well, since he was absolutely powerless to help her.
CHAPTER XX
"WE BEEN SORRY FOR YOU"
Billy Louise, having arrived unexpectedly on the stage, pulled off her fur-lined mittens and put her chilled hands before the snapping blaze in the fireplace. Her eyes were tired and sunken, and her mouth drooped pitifully at the corners, but aside from that she did not seem much changed from the girl who had left the ranch two months and more before.
"I"ll take a cup of tea, Phoebe, but I"m not a bit hungry," she said.
"I ate just before I left town. How have you been, Phoebe?"
"We been fine. We been so sorry for you--"
"Never mind that now, Phoebe. I"d rather not talk about it.
Has--anybody been here lately?"
"Charlie Fox, he come las" week--mebby week before las". Marthy, she got rheumatis in her knee. Charlie, he say she been pretty bad one night. I guess she"s better now. I tol" I wash for her if he brings me clo"es, but he says he wash them clo"es hisself. I guess Charlie pretty good to that old lady. He"s awful p"lite, that feller is."
"Yes, he is. I"ll go up and see her when I get rested a little. I feel tired to death, somehow; maybe it"s the drive. The road is terribly rough, and it was awful tiresome on the train. Has--Ward been around lately?"
"Ward, he ain"t been here for long time. I guess mebbe it"s been six weeks I ain"t seen him. Las" time he was here he wrote that letter.
He ain"t come no more. You let me drag this couch up to the fire, and you lay down and rest yo"self. I"ll put on more wood. Seems like this is awful cold winter. We had six little pigs come, and four of "em froze. John, he brung "em in by the fire, but it"s no good; they die, anyway."
Billy Louise dropped apathetically upon the couch after Phoebe had helped her pull off her coat. She did not feel as though anything mattered much, but she must go on with life, no matter how purposeless it seemed. To live awhile and work and struggle and know the pain of disappointment and weariness, and then to die: she did not see what use there was in struggling. But one had to go on just the same. She had borrowed money for mommie"s sickness, and she would have to repay it; and it was all so purposeless!
"How are the cattle wintering?" She forced herself to make some show of interest in things.
"The cattle, they"re doing all right. One heifer, she got blackleg and die, but the rest they"re all right. John, he couldn"t find all; two or three, they"re gone. He says mebby them rustlers got "em. He looked good as he could."
"Are--has there been any more trouble about losing stock?" Billy Louise shut her hand into a fist, but she spoke in the same tired tone as before.
"I dunno. Seabeck, he told John they don"t catch n.o.body yet. That inspector, he come by long time ago. I guess he stopped with Seabeck.
He ain"t come back yet. I dunno where he"s gone. Seabeck, he didn"t say nothing to John about him, I guess. Maybe he went out the other way."
"I--did you do what I told you, Phoebe, about--mommie"s things?"
For once Phoebe did not answer garrulously. "Yes, I done it," she said softly. "The boxes is in the shed when you want "em."
"All right, Phoebe. Is the tea ready?"
While she sipped creamy tea from a solid-silver teaspoon which had been a part of mommie"s wedding-set, Billy Louise looked around the familiar room for which she had hungered so in those deadly, monotonous weeks at the hospital. The fire snapped in its stone recess, and the cheerful warmth of it comforted her body and in a measure soothed her spirit.
She was chilled to the bones with facing that bitter east wind for hours, and she had not seen a fireplace in all the time she had been away.
But the place was empty, with no mommie fussing about, worrying over little things, gently garrulous. If mommie had come back well, she would have asked Phoebe about everything in the house and out of it.
There would have been a housewifely accounting going on at this minute.
Phoebe would be apologetic over those grimy windows, instead of merely sympathetic over the sorrow in the house. Billy Louise wondered wherein she lacked. For the life of her she could not feel that it mattered whether the windows were clean or dirty; life was drab and cheerless outside them, anyway.
Billy Louise in the last few months had tried to picture herself alone, with mommie gone. Her imagination was too alive and saw too clearly the possibilities for her never to have dwelt upon this very crisis in her life. But whenever she had tried to think what it would be like, she had always pictured Ward beside her, shielding her from dreary details and lightening her burden with his whimsical gentleness. She had felt sure that Ward would ride down every week for news of her, and she had expected to find him there waiting for her, after that last letter. Whatever could be the matter? Had he left the country?
Billy Louise"s faith had compromised definitely with her doubts of him.
Guilty or innocent, she would be his friend always; that was the condition her faith had laid down challengingly before her doubts. But unless he were innocent and proved it to her, she would never marry him, no matter how much she loved him. That was the concession her faith had made to her doubts.
Billy Louise had a wise little brain, for all she idealized life and her surroundings out of all proportion to reality. She told herself that if she married Ward with her doubts alive, her misery would be far greater than if she gave him up, except as a friend. Of course, her ideals stepped in there with an impracticable compromise. She brought back the Ward Warren of her "pretend" life. She dreamed of him as a mutely adoring friend who stood and worshiped her from afar, and because of his sins could not cross the line of friendship.