Lonesome Land (23 page)

“Oh, no. Hardly ever the same one, luckily. Do you know—pal, I’ve quite forgotten what it was all about—the unburdening of my soul, I mean. After all, I think I must have
been just lonesome. The country is just as big, but it isn’t quite so—so
empty,
you see. Aren’t you awfully vain, to see how you have peopled it with your
friendship?” She clasped her hands behind her and regarded him speculatively. “I hope, Mr. Cowboy, you’re in earnest about this,” she observed doubtfully. “I hope you
have imagination enough to see it isn’t silly, because if I suspected you weren’t playing fair, and would go away and laugh at me, I’d—scratch—you.” She nodded
her head slowly at him. “I’ve always been told that, with tiger eyes, you find the disposition of a tiger. So if you don’t mean it, you’d better let me know at
once.”

Kent brought the color into her cheeks with his steady gaze. “I was just getting scared
you
didn’t mean it,” he averred. “If my pal goes back on me—why, Lord
help her!”

She took a slow, deep breath. “How is it you men ratify a solemn agreement?” she puzzled. “Oh, yes.” With a pretty impulse she held out her right hand, half grave, half
playful. “Shake on it, pal!”

Kent took her hand and pressed it as hard as he dared. “You’re going to be a dandy little chum,” he predicted gamely. “But let me tell you right now, if you ever get up
on your stilts with me, there’s going to be all kinds of trouble. You call me Kent—that is,” he qualified, with a little, unsteady laugh, “when there ain’t anyone
around to get shocked.”

“I suppose this
isn’t
quite conventional,” she conceded, as if the thought had just then occurred to her. “But, thank goodness, out here there aren’t any
conventions. Everyone lives as everyone sees fit. It isn’t the best thing for some people,” she added drearily. “Some people have to be bolstered up by conventions, or they
can’t help miring in their own weaknesses. But we don’t; and as long as we understand—” She looked to him for confirmation.

“As long as we understand, why, it ain’t anybody’s business but our own,” he declared steadily.

She seemed relieved of some lingering doubt. “That’s exactly it. I don’t know why I should deny myself a friend, just because that friend happens to be a man, and I happen to
be—married. I never did have much patience with the rule that a man must either be perfectly indifferent, or else make love. I’m so glad you—understand. So that’s all
settled,” she finished briskly, “and I find that, as I said, it isn’t at all necessary for me to unburden my soul.”

They stood quiet for a moment, their thoughts too intangible for speech.

“Come inside, won’t you?” she invited at last, coming back to everyday matters. “Of course you’re hungry—or you ought to be. You daren’t run away from
my cooking this time, Mr. Cowboy. Manley will be back soon, I think. I must get some lunch ready.”

Kent replied that he would stay outside and smoke, so she left him with a fleeting smile, infinitely friendly and confiding and glad. He turned and looked after her soberly, gave a great sigh,
and reached mechanically for his tobacco and papers; thoughtfully rolled a cigarette, lighted it, and held the match until it burned quite down to his thumb and fingers. “Pals!” he said
just under his breath, for the mere sound of the word. “All right—pals it is, then.”

He smoked slowly, listening to her moving about in the house. Her steps came nearer. He turned to look.

“What was it you wanted to see Manley about?” she asked him from the doorway. “I just happened to wonder what it could be.”

“Well, the Wishbone needs men, and sent me over to tell him he can go to work. The wagons are going to start tomorrow. He’ll want to gather his cattle up, and of course we know about
how he’s fixed—for saddle horses and the like. He can work for the outfit and draw wages, and get his cattle thrown back on this range and his calves branded besides. Get paid for doing
what he’ll have to do anyhow, you see.”

“I see.” Val pushed back the rebellious lock of hair. “Of course you suggested the idea to the Wishbone. You’re always doing something—”

“The outfit is short-handed,” he reiterated. “They need him. They ain’t straining a point to do Man a favor—don’t you ever think it! Well—he’s
coming,” he broke off, and started to the gate.

Manley clattered up, vociferously glad to greet him. Kent, at his urgent invitation, led his horse to the stable and turned him into the corral, unsaddled and unbridled him so that he could eat.
Also, he told his errand. Manley interrupted the conversation to produce a bottle of whisky from a cunningly concealed hole in the depleted haystack, and insisted that Kent should take a drink.
Kent waved it off, and Manley drew the cork and held the bottle to his own lips.

As he stood there, with his face uplifted while the yellow liquor gurgled down his throat, Kent watched him with a curiously detached interest. So that’s how Manley had kept his vow! He
was thinking, with an impersonal contempt. Four good swallows—Kent counted them.

“You’re hitting it pretty strong, Man, for a fellow that swore off last fall,” he commented aloud.

Manley took down the bottle, gave a sigh of pure, animal satisfaction, and pushed the cork in with an unconsciously regretful movement.

“A fellow’s got to get something out of life,” he defended peevishly. “I’ve had pretty hard luck—it’s enough to drive a fellow to most any kind of
relief. Burnt out, last fall—cattle scattered and calves running the range all winter—I haven’t got stock enough to stand that sort of a deal, Kent. No telling where I stand now
on the cattle question. I did have close to a hundred head—and three of my best geldings are missing—a poor man can’t stand luck like that. I’m in debt too—and when
you’ve got an iceberg in the house—when a man’s own wife don’t stand by him—when he can’t get any sympathy from the very one that ought to—but, then, I
hope I’m a gentleman; I don’t make any kick against
her—
my domestic affairs are my own affairs. Sure. But when your wife freezes up solid—” He held the bottle
up and looked at it. “Best friend I’ve got,” he finished, with a whining note in his voice.

Kent turned away disgusted. Manley had coarsened. He had “slopped down” just when he should have braced up and caught the fighting spirit—the spirit that fights and overcomes
obstacles. With a tightening of his chest, he thought of his “pal,” tied for life to this whining drunkard. No wonder she felt the need of a friend!

“Well, are you going out with the Wishbone?” he asked tersely, jerking his thoughts back to his errand. “If you are, you’ll need to go over there tonight—the wagons
start out tomorrow. Maybe you better ride around by Polly’s place and have him come over here, once in a while, to look after things. You can’t leave your wife alone without somebody to
kinda keep an eye out for her, you know. Polycarp ain’t going to ride this spring; he’s got rheumatism, or some darned thing. But he can chop what wood she’ll need, and go to town
for her once in a while, and make sure she’s all right. You better leave your gentlest horse here for her to use, too. She can’t be left afoot out here.”

Manley was taking another long swallow from the bottle, but he heard.

“Why, sure—I never thought about that. I guess maybe I
had
better get Polycarp. But Val could make out all right alone. Why, she’s held it down here for a week at a
time—last winter, when I’d forget to come home”—he winked shamelessly—“or a storm would come up so I couldn’t get home. Val isn’t like some fool
women, I’ll say that much for her. She don’t care whether I’m around or not; fact is, sometimes I think she’s better pleased when I’m gone. But you’re
right—I’ll see Polycarp and have him come over once in a while. Sure. Glad you spoke of it. You always had a great head for thinking about other people, Kent. You ought to get
married.”

“No, thanks,” Kent scowled. “I haven’t got any grudge against women. The world’s full of men ready and willing to give ’em a taste of pure, unadulterated
hell.”

Manley stared at him stupidly, and then laughed doubtfully, as if he felt certain of having, by his dullness, missed the point of a very good joke.

After that the time was filled with the preparations for Manley’s absence. Kent did what he could to help, and Val went calmly about the house, packing the few necessary personal
belongings which might be stuffed into a “war bag” and used during round-up. Beyond an occasional glance of friendly understanding, she seemed to have forgotten the compact she had made
with Kent.

But when they were ready to ride away, Kent purposely left his gloves lying upon the couch, and remembered them only after Manley was in the saddle. So he went back, and Val followed him into
the room. He wanted to say something—he did not quite know what—something that would bring them a little closer together, and keep them so; something that would make her think of him
often and kindly. He picked up his gloves and held out his hand to her— and then a diffidence seized his tongue. There was nothing he dared say. All the eloquence, all the tenderness, was in
his eyes.

“Well—good-by, pal. Be good to yourself,” he said simply.

Val smiled up at him tremulously. “Good-by, my one friend. Don’t—don’t get hurt!”

Their clasp tightened, their hands dropped apart rather limply. Kent went out and got upon his horse, and rode away beside Manley, and talked of the range and of the round-up and of cattle and a
dozen other things which interest men. But all the while one exultant thought kept reiterating itself in his mind: “She never said that much to
him!
She never said that much to
him!
”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

M
ANLEY’S
N
EW
T
ACTICS

T
O THE EAST, TO SOUTH, TO THE NORTH WENT THE RIDERS OF
the Wishbone, gathering the cattle which the fires had driven afar. No rivers stopped them, nor
mountains, nor the deep-scarred coulees, nor the plains. It was Manley’s first experience in real round-up work, for his own little herd he had managed to keep close at home, and what few
strayed afar were turned back, when opportunity afforded, by his neighbors, who wished him well. Now he tasted the pride of ownership to the full, when a VP cow and her calf mingled with the
milling Wishbones and Double Diamonds. He was proud of his brand, and proud of the sentiment which had made him choose Val’s initials. More than once he explained to his fellows that VP meant
Val Peyson, and that he had got it recorded just after he and Val were engaged. He was not sentimental about her now, but he liked to dwell upon the fact that he had been; it showed that he was
capable of fine feeling.

More dominant, however, as the weeks passed and the branding went on, became the desire to accumulate property—cattle. The Wishbone brand went scorching through the hair of hundreds of
calves, while the VP seared tens. It was not right. He felt, somehow, cheated by fate. He mentally figured the increase of his herd, and it seemed to him that it took a long while, much longer than
it should, to gain a respectable number in that manner. He cast about in his mind for some rich acquaintance in the East who might be prevailed upon to lend him capital enough to buy, say, five
hundred cows. He began to talk about it occasionally when the boys lay around in the evenings.

“You want to ride with a long rope,” suggested Bob Royden, grinning openly at the others. “That’s the way to work up in the cow business. Capital nothing! You don’t
get enough excitement buying cattle; you want to steal ’em. That’s what I’d do if I had a brand of my own and all your ambitions to get rich.”

“And get sent up,” Manley rounded out the situation. “No, thanks.” He laughed. “It’s a better way to get to the pen than it is to get rich, from all
accounts.”

Sandy Moran remembered a fellow who worked a brand and kept it up for seven or eight years before they caught him, and he recounted the tale between puffs at his cigarette. “Only they
didn’t catch him,” he finished. “A puncher put him wise to what was in the wind, and he sold out cheap to a tenderfoot and pulled his freight. They never did locate him.”
Then, with a pointed rock which he picked up beside him, he drew a rude diagram or two in the dirt. “That’s how he done it,” he explained. “Pretty smooth, too.”