Lonesome Land (8 page)

C
OLD
S
PRING
R
ANCH

F
OR ALMOST THREE YEARS THE LETTERS FROM
M
ANLEY HAD BEEN
headed “Cold Spring Ranch.” For quite as long Val had
possessed a mental picture of the place—a picture of a gurgly little brook with rocks and watercress and distracting little pools the size of a bathtub, and with a great, frowning
boulder—a cliff, almost—at the head. The brook bubbled out and formed a basin in the shadow of the rock. Around it grew trees, unnamed in the picture, it is true, but trees,
nevertheless. Below the spring stood a picturesque little cottage. A shack, Manley had written, was but a synonym for a small cottage, and Val had many small cottages in mind, from which she
sketched one into her picture. The sun shone on it, and the western breezes flapped white curtains in the windows, and there was a porch where she would swing her hammock and gaze out over the
great, beautiful country, fascinating in its very immensity.

Somewhere beyond the cottage—“shack,” she usually corrected herself—were the corrals; they were as yet rather impressionistic; high, round, mysterious inclosures forming
an effective, if somewhat hazy, background to the picture. She left them to work out their attractive details upon closer acquaintance, for at most they were merely the background. The front yard,
however, she dwelt upon, and made aglow with sturdy, bright-hued flowers. Manley had that spring planted sweet peas, and poppies, and pansies, and other things, he wrote her, and they had come up
very nicely. Afterward, in a postscript, he answered her oft-repeated questions about the flower garden:

In spite of that, the flowers bloomed luxuriantly in her mental picture, though she conscientiously remembered that they weren’t doing as well as they might. They were weedy and unkempt,
she supposed, but a little time and care would remedy that; and was she not coming to be the mistress of all this, and to make everything beautiful? Besides, the spring, and the brook which ran
from it, and the trees which shaded it, were the chief attractions.

Perhaps she betrayed a lack of domesticity because she had not been able to “see” the interior of the cottage—“shack”—very clearly. Sunny rooms, white
curtains, bright cushions and books, pictures and rugs mingled together rather confusingly in her mind when she dwelt upon the inside of her future home. It would be bright, and cozy, and
“homy,” she knew. She would love it because it would be hers and Manley’s, and she could do with it what she would. She bothered about that no more than she did about the dresses
she would be wearing next year.

Cold Spring Ranch! Think of the allurement of that name, just as it stands, without any disconcerting qualification whatever! Any girl with yellow-brown hair and yellow-brown eyes to match, and
a dreamy temperament that beautifies everything her imagination touches, would be sure to build a veritable Eve’s garden around those three small words.

With that picture still before her mental vision, clear as if she had all her life been familiar with it in reality, she rode beside Manley for three weary hours, across a wide, wide prairie
which looked perfectly level when you viewed it as a whole, but which proved all hills and hollows when you drove over it. During those three hours they passed not one human habitation after the
first five miles were behind them. There had been a ranch, back there against a reddish-yellow bluff. Val had gazed upon it, and then turned her head away, distressed because human beings could
consent to live in such unattractive surroundings. It was bad in its way as Hope, she thought, but did not say, because Manley was talking about his cattle, and she did not want to interrupt
him.

After that there had been no houses of any sort. There was a barbed-wire fence stretching away and away until the posts were mere pencil lines against the blue, where the fence dipped over the
last hill before the sky bent down and kissed the earth.

The length of that fence was appalling in a vague, wordless way. Val unconsciously drew closer to her husband when she looked at it, and shivered in spite of the midsummer heat.

“You’re getting tired.” Manley put his arm around her and held her there.

“We’re over halfway now. A little longer and we’ll be home.” Then he bethought him that she might want some preparation for that homecoming. “You mustn’t
expect much, little wife. It’s a bachelor’s house, so far. You’ll have to do some fixing before it will suit you. You don’t look forward to anything like Fern Hill, do
you?”

Val laughed, and bent solicitously over the suitcase, which her feet had marred. “Of course I don’t. Nothing out here is like Fern Hill. I know our ranch is different from anything I
ever knew—but I know just how it will be, and how everything will look.”

“Oh! Do you?” Manley looked at her a bit anxiously.

“For three years,” Val reminded him, “you have been describing things to me. You told me what it was like when you first took the place. You described everything, from Cold
Spring Coulee to the house you built, and the spring under the rock wall, and even the meadow lark’s nest you found in the weeds. Of
course
I know.”

“It’s going to seem pretty rough, at first,” he observed rather apologetically.

“Yes—but I shall not mind that. I want it to be rough. I’m tired to death of the smug smoothness of my life so far. Oh, if you only knew how I have hated Fern Hill, these last
three years, especially since I graduated. Just the same petty little lives lived in the same petty little way, day in and day out. Every Sunday the class in Sunday school, and the bells ringing
and the same little walk of four blocks there and back. Every Tuesday and Friday the club meeting—the Merry Maids, and the Mascot, both just alike, where you did the same things. And the same
round of calls with mamma, on the same people, twice a month the year round. And the little social festivities—ah, Manley, if you only knew how I long for something rough and real in my
life!” It was very nearly what she said to the tired-faced teacher on the train.

“Well, if that’s what you want, you’ve come to the right place,” he told her dryly.

Later, when they drew close to a red coulee rim which he said was the far side of Cold Spring Coulee, she forgot how tired she was, and felt every nerve quiver with eagerness.

Later still, when in the glare of a July sun they drove around a low knoll, dipped into a wide, parched coulee, and then came upon a barren little habitation inclosed in a meager fence of the
barbed wire she thought so detestable, she shut her eyes mentally to something she could not quite bring herself to face.

He lifted her out and tumbled the great trunks upon the ground before he drove on to the corrals. “Here’s the key,” he said, “if you want to go in. I won’t be more
than a minute or two.” He did not look into her face when he spoke.

Val stood just inside the gate and tried to adjust all this to her mental picture. There was the front yard, for instance. A few straggling vines against the porch, and a sickly cluster or two
of blossoms—those were the sweet peas, surely. The sun-baked bed of pale-green plants without so much as a bud of promise, she recognized, after a second glance, as the poppies. For the rest,
there were weeds against the fence, sun-ripened grass trodden flat, yellow, gravelly patches where nothing grew—and a glaring, burning sun beating down upon it all.

The cottage—never afterward did she think of it by that name, but always as a shack—was built of boards placed perpendicularly, with battens nailed over the cracks to keep out the
wind and the snow. At one side was a “lean-to” kitchen, and on the other side was the porch that was just a narrow platform with a roof over it. It was not wide enough for a rocking
chair, to say nothing of swinging a hammock. In the first hasty inspection this seemed to be about all. She was still hesitating before the door when Manley came back from putting up the
horses.

“I’m afraid your flowers are a lost cause,” he remarked cheerfully. “They were looking pretty good two or three weeks ago. This hot weather has dried them up. Next year
we’ll have water down here to the house. All these things take time.”

“Oh, of course they do.” Val managed to smile into his eyes. “Let’s see how many dishes you left dirty; bachelors always leave their dishes unwashed on the table,
don’t they?”

“Sometimes—but I generally wash mine.” He led the way into the house, which smelled hot and close, with the odor of food long since cooked and eaten, before he threw all the
windows open. The front room was clean—after a man’s idea of cleanliness. The floor was covered with an exceedingly dusty carpet, and a rug or two. Her latest photograph was nailed to
the wall; and when Val saw it she broke into hysterical laughter.

“You’ve nailed your colors to the mast,” she cried, and after that it was all a joke. The homemade couch, with the calico cushions and the cowhide spread, was a matter for
mirth. She sat down upon it to try it, and was informed that chicken wire makes a fine spring. The rickety table, with tobacco, magazines, and books placed upon it in orderly piles, was something
to smile over. The chairs, and especially the one cane rocker which went sidewise over the floor if you rocked in it long enough, were pronounced original.

In the kitchen the same masculine idea of cleanliness and order obtained. The stove was quite red, but it had been swept clean. The table was pushed against the only window there, and the back
part was filled with glass preserve jars, cans, and a loaf of bread wrapped carefully in paper; but the oilcloth cover was clean—did it not show quite plainly the marks of the last washing?
Two frying pans were turned bottom up on an obscure table in an obscure corner of the room, and a zinc water pail stood beside them.

There were other details which impressed themselves upon her shrinking brain, and though she still insisted upon smiling at everything, she stood in the middle of the room holding up her skirts
quite unconsciously, as if she were standing at a muddy street crossing, wondering how in the world she was ever going to reach the other side.

“Isn’t it all—deliciously—primitive?” she asked, in a weak little voice, when the smile would stay no longer. “I—love it, dear.” That was a lie;
more, she was not in the habit of fibbing for the sake of politeness or anything else, so that the words stood for a good deal.

Manley looked into the zinc water pail, took it up, and started for an outer door, rattling the tin dipper as he went. “Want to go up to the spring?” he queried, over his shoulder.
“Water’s the first thing—I’m horribly thirsty.”

Val turned to follow him. “Oh, yes—the spring!” She stopped, however, as soon as she had spoken. “No, dear. There’ll be plenty of other times. I’ll stay
here.”

He gave her a glance bright with love and blind happiness in her presence there, and went off whistling and rattling the pail at his side.

Val did not even watch him go. She stood still in the kitchen and looked at the table, and at the stove, and at the upturned frying pans. She watched two great horseflies buzzing against a
windowpane, and when she could endure that no longer, she went into the front room and stared vacantly around at the bare walls. When she saw her picture again, nailed fast beside the kitchen door,
her face lost a little of its frozen blankness—enough so that her lips quivered until she bit them into steadiness.

She went then to the door and stood looking dully out into the parched yard, and at the wizened little pea vines clutching feebly at their white-twine trellis. Beyond stretched the bare hills
with the wavering brown line running down the nearest one—the line that she knew was the trail from town. She was guilty of just one rebellious sentence before she struggled back to
optimism.

“I said I wanted it to be rough, but I didn’t mean—why, this is just squalid!” She looked down the coulee and glimpsed the river flowing calmly past the mouth of it, a
majestic blue belt fringed sparsely with green. It must be a mile away, but it relieved wonderfully the monotony of brown hills, and the vivid coloring brightened her eyes. She heard Manley enter
the kitchen, set down the pail of water, and come on to where she stood.

“I’d forgotten you said we could see the river from here,” she told him, smiling over her shoulder. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I don’t suppose, though,
there’s a boat within millions of miles.”

“Oh, there’s a boat down there. It leaks, though. I just use it for ducks, close to shore. Admiring our view? Great, don’t you think?”

Val clasped her hands before her and let her gaze travel again over the sweep of rugged hills. “It’s—wonderful. I thought I knew, but I see I didn’t. I feel very small,
Manley; does one ever grow up to it?”

He seemed dimly to catch the note of utter desolation. “You’ll get used to all that,” he assured her. “I thought I’d reached the jumping-off place, at first. But
now—you couldn’t dog me outa the country.”

He was slipping into the vernacular, and Val noticed it, and wondered dully if she would ever do likewise. She had not yet admitted to herself that Manley was different. She had told herself
many times that it would take weeks to wipe out the strangeness born of three years’ separation. He was the same, of course; everything else was new and—different. That was all. He
seemed intensely practical, and he seemed to feel that his love-making had all been done by letter, and that nothing now remained save the business of living. So, when he told her to rest, and that
he would get dinner and show her how a bachelor kept house, she let him go with no reply save that vague, impersonal smile which Kent had encountered at the depot.

While he rattled things about in the kitchen, she stood still in the doorway with her fingers doubled into tight little fists, and stared out over the great, treeless, unpeopled land which had
swallowed her alive. She tried to think—and then, in another moment, she was trying not to think.