Lonesome Land (24 page)

So the talk went on, as such things will, idly, without purpose save to pass the time. Shop talk of the range it was. Tales of stealing, of working brands, and of branding unmarked yearlings at
weaning time. Of this big cattleman and that, who practically stole whole herds, and thereby took long strides toward wealth. Range scandals grown old; range gossip all of it, of men who had
changed a brand or made one, using a cinch ring at a tiny fire in a secluded hollow, or a spur, or a jackknife; who were caught in the act, after the act, or merely suspected of the crime. Of
“sweat” brands, blotched brands, brands added to and altered, of trials, of shootings, of hangings, even, and “getaways” spectacular and humorous and pathetic.

Manley, being in a measure a pilgrim, and having no experience to draw upon, and not much imagination, took no part in the talk, except that he listened and was intensely interested. Two months
of mingling with men who talked little else had its influence.

That fall, when Manley had his hay up, and his cattle once more ranging close, toward the river and in the broken country bounded upon the west by the fenced-in railroad, three calves bore the
VP brand—three husky heifers that never had suckled a VP mother. So had the range gossip, sown by chance in the soil of his greed of gain and his weakening moral fiber, borne fruit.

The deed scared him sober for a month. For a month his color changed and his blood quickened whenever a horseman showed upon the rim of Cold Spring Coulee. For a month he never left the ranch
unless business compelled him to do so, and his return was speedy, his eyes anxious until he knew that all was well. After that his confidence returned. He grew more secretive, more self-assured,
more at ease with his guilt. He looked the Wishbone men squarely in the eye, and it seldom occurred to him that he was a thief; or if it did, the word was but a synonym for luck, with shrewdness
behind. Sometimes he regretted his timidity. Why three calves only? In a deep little coulee next the river—a coulee which the round-up had missed—had been more than three. He might have
doubled the number and risked no more than for the three. The longer he dwelt upon that the more inclined he was to feel that he had cheated himself.

That fall there were no fires. It would be long before men grew careless when the grass was ripened and the winds blew hot and dry from out the west. The big prairie which lay high between the
river and Hope was dotted with feeding cattle. Wishbones and Double Diamonds, mostly, with here and there a stray.

Manley grew wily, and began to plan far in advance. He rode here and there, quietly keeping his own cattle well down toward the river. There was shelter there, and feed, and the idea was a good
one. Just before the river broke up he saw to it that a few of his own cattle, and with them some Wishbone cows and a steer or two, were ranging in a deep, bushy coulee, isolated and easily passed
by. He had driven them there, and he left them there. That spring he worked again with the Wishbone.

When the round-up swept the home range, gathering and branding, it chanced that his part of the circle took him and Sandy Moran down that way. It was hot, and they had thirty or forty head of
cattle before them when they neared that particular place.

“No need going down into the breaks here,” he told Sandy easily. “I’ve been hazing out everything I came across lately. They were mostly my own, anyway. I believe
I’ve got it pretty well cleaned up along here.”

Sandy was not the man to hunt hard riding. He went to the rim of the coulee and looked down for a minute. He saw nothing moving, and took Manley’s word for it with no stirring of his
easygoing conscience. He said all right, and rode on.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

V
AL
B
ECOMES
A
N
A
UTHOR

Q
UITE AS MARKED HAD BENN THE CHANGE IN VAL THAT YEAR. EVERY
time Kent saw her, he recognized the fact that she was a little different; a little less
superior in her attitude, a little more independent in her views of life. Her standards seemed slowly changing, and her way of thinking. He did not see her often, but when he did the mockery of
their friendship struck him more keenly, his inward rebellion against circumstances grew more bitter. He wondered how she could be so blind as to think they were just pals, and no more. She did
think so. All the little confidences, all the glances, all the smiles, she gave and received frankly, in the name of friendship.

“You know, Kent, this is my ideal of how people should be,” she told him once, with a perfectly honest enthusiasm. “I’ve always dreamed of such a friendship, and
I’ve always believed that someday the right man would come along and make it possible. Not one in a thousand could understand and meet one halfway—”

“They’d be liable to go farther,” Kent assented dryly.

“Yes. That’s just the trouble. They’d spoil an ideal friendship by falling in love.”

“Darned chumps,” Kent classed them sweepingly.

“Exactly. Pal, your vocabulary excites my envy. It’s so forcible sometimes.”

Kent grinned reminiscently. “It sure is, old girl.”

“Oh, I don’t mean necessarily profane. I wonder what your vocabulary will do to the secret I’m going to tell you.” The sweet-peas had reached the desired height and
profusion of blossoms, thanks to the pails and pails of water Val had carried and lavished upon them, and she was gathering a handful of the prettiest blooms for him. Her cheeks turned a bit pinker
as she spoke, and her hesitation raised a wild hope briefly in Kent’s heart.

“What is it?” He had to force the words out.

“I—I hate to tell, but I want you to—to help me.”

“Well?” To Kent, at that moment, she was not Manley’s wife; she was not any man’s wife; she was the girl he loved—loved with the primitive, absorbing passion of the
man who lives naturally and does not borrow his morals from his next-door neighbor. His code of ethics was his own, thought out by himself. Val hated her husband, and her husband did not seem to
care much for her. They were tied together legally. And a mere legality could not hold back the emotions and the desires of Kent Burnett. With him, it was not a question of morals: it was a
question of Val’s feeling in the matter.

Val looked up at him, found something strange in his eyes, and immediately looked away again.

“Your eyes are always saying things I can’t hear,” she observed irrelevantly.

“Are they? Do you want me to act as interpreter?”

“No. I just want you to listen. Have you noticed anything different about me lately, Kent?” She tilted her head, while she passed judgment upon a cluster of speckled blossoms, odd
but not particularly pretty.

“What do you mean, anyway? I’m liable to get off wrong if I tell you—”

“Oh, you’re so horribly cautious! Have I seemed any more content—any happier lately?”

Kent picked a spray of flowers and pulled them ruthlessly to pieces. “Maybe I’ve kinda hoped so,” he said, almost in a whisper.

“Well, I’ve a new interest in life. I just discovered it by accident, almost—”

Kent lifted his head and looked keenly at her, and his face was a lighter shade of brown than it had been.

“It seems to change everything. Pal, I—I’ve been writing things.”

Kent discovered he had been holding his breath, and let it go in a long sigh.

“Oh!” After a minute he smiled philosophically. “What kinda things?” he drawled.

“Well, verses, but mostly stories. You see,” she explained impulsively, “I want to earn some money—of my own. I haven’t said much, because I hate whining; but
really, things are growing pretty bad—between Manley and me. I hope it isn’t my fault. I have tried every way I know to keep my faith in him, and to—to help him. But he’s
not the same as he was. You know that. And I have a good deal of pride. I can’t—oh, it’s intolerable having to ask a man for money! Especially when he doesn’t want to give
you any,” she added naïvely. “At first it wasn’t necessary; I had a little of my own, and all my things were new. But one must eventually buy things—for the house, you
know, and for one’s personal needs—and he seems to resent it dreadfully. I never would have believed that Manley could be stingy—actually stingy; but he is, unfortunately.

“I hate to speak of his faults, even to you. But I’ve got to be honest with you. It isn’t nice to say that I’m writing, not for any particularly burning desire to express
my thoughts, nor for the sentiment of it, but to earn money. It’s terribly sordid, isn’t it?” She smiled wistfully up at him. “But there seems to be money in it, for those
who succeed, and it’s work that I can do here. I have oceans of time, and I’m not disturbed!” Her lips curved into bitter lines. “I do so much thinking, I might as well put
my brain to some use.” With one of her sudden changes of mood, she turned to Kent and clasped both hands upon his arm.

“Now you see, pal, how much our friendship means to me,” she said softly. “I couldn’t have told this to another living soul! It seems awfully treacherous, saying it even
to you—I mean about him. But you’re so good—you always understand, don’t you, pal?”

“I guess so.” Kent forced the words out naturally, and kept his breath even, and his arms from clasping her. He considered that he performed quite a feat of endurance.

“You’re modest!” She gave his arm a little shake. “Of course you do. You know I’m not treacherous, really. You know I’d do anything I could for him. But this
is something that doesn’t concern him at all. He doesn’t know it, but that is because he would only sneer. When I have really sold something, and received the money for it, then it
won’t matter to me who knows. But now it’s a solemn secret, just between me and my pal.” Her yellow-brown eyes dwelt upon his face.

Kent, stealing a glance at her from under his drooped lids, wondered if she had ever given anytime to analyzing herself. He would have given much to know if, down deep in her heart, she really
believed in this pal business; if she was really a friend, and no more. She puzzled him a good deal, sometimes.

“Well—if anybody can make good at that business, you sure ought to; you’ve got brains enough to write a dictionary.” He permitted himself the indulgence of saying that
much, and he was perfectly sincere. He honestly considered Val the cleverest woman in the world.

She laughed with gratification. “Your sublime confidence, while it is undoubtedly mistaken, is nevertheless appreciated,” she told him primly, moving away with her hands full of
flowers. “If you’ve got the nerve, come inside and read some of my stuff; I want to know if it’s any good at all.”

Presently he was seated upon the couch in the little, pathetically bright front room, and he was knitting his eyebrows over Val’s beautifully regular handwriting—pages and pages of
it, so that there seemed no end to the task—and was trying to give his mind to what he was reading instead of to the author, sitting near him with her hands folded demurely in her lap and her
eyes fixed expectantly upon his face, trying to read his decision even as it was forming.

Some verses she had tried on him first. Kent, by using all his determination of character, read them all, every word of them.

“That’s sure all right,” he said, though, beyond a telling phrase or two—one line in particular which would stick in his memory:

he had no very clear idea of what it was all about. Certain lines seemed to go bumping along, and one had to mispronounce some of the final words to make them rhyme with others
gone before, but it was all right—Val wrote it.

“I think I do better at stories,” she ventured modestly. “I wrote one—a little story about university life—and sent it to a magazine. They wrote a lovely letter
about it, but it seems that field is overdone, or something. The editor asked me why, living out here in the very heart of the West, I don’t try Western stories. I think I shall—and
that’s why I said I should need your help. I thought we might work together, you know. You’ve lived here so long, and ought to have some splendid ideas—things that have happened,
or that you’ve heard—and you could tell me, and I’d write them up. Wouldn’t you like to collaborate—‘go in cahoots’ on it?”