The Exile of The Lariat/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
UNCLE BOOKIE
CUSTOMERS were even fewer than usual, if possible, that day, and the old man thought a great deal about himself and his boy.
Before the day was over, he regretted his refusal to allow Hugh to bring his cot to The Lariat. After all, wasn’t his influence over the boy better than Jessie’s? Might he not still win Hugh to something big, if he could have the young man with him as in the old days on the ranch?
That evening he began to make room in the rear of the store for Hugh’s cot. The famous bookcases never had been filled with books. But an accumulation of magazines during the years had packed the case at the rear from floor to ceiling. Bookie had an idea that if he set the great bookcase at right angles to the wall, letting it stand partitionwise as did the stacks in the library at Cheyenne, a natural screen, as it were, would be formed between his cot and Hugh’s. He liked a certain amount of privacy in his old age, did Bookie, after a youth lived naked to the stars. So he grasped the shelves and pulled them free of the wall.
The next morning Hugh, immediately after breakfast, fastened his horse before The Lariat and found the door locked. He grunted with surprise. Bookie had not been at the hotel for breakfast that morning. He put his hands round his eyes and peered through the window. One of the bookcases in the rear had fallen with its mass of magazines. Hugh seized his saddle axe, broke the lock on the door and ran the length of the room. A lean old hand protruded from beneath the fallen book stack.
“Uncle Bookie!” shouted Hugh, beginning to heave madly at the bundle of magazines.
There was no reply. But when he had cleaned the débris away, Hugh found that the old man was still breathing. He ran for help and returned with the doctor, Pink, Mrs. Morgan and Jessie. There was not much to be done. Internal hemorrhages. In an hour, Hugh was alone with the old man, still breathing faintly. The doctor had thought he would not waken, but he did.
All the golden May day Hugh sat beside the cot, his hand on Bookie’s. Folk drifted softly in and out, none venturing to speak to Hugh, after a glance at his face. The mail-plane, across the river, took on its daily gorge of oil, gasoline and letters, preened and burred like a grounded pigeon, then rose in a long, proud spiral and disappeared in the blue above the castellated ramparts of the canyon. At sunset a sheep wagon, with canvas top flapping in the spring wind, wound down the distant corkscrew trail and made camp on the river bank opposite The Lariat’s rear window. Above the rush of the river, as the setting sun turned its troubled brown to bronze, rose the song of the Mexican sheep herder:
“Whither so swiftly flies the timid swallow?
What distant bourne seeks her untiring wing?
To reach her nest, what needle does she follow
When darkness wraps the poor, wee, storm-tossed thing?”
Bookie’s brown eyes opened slowly and his fine gaze rested on the square of burning bronze light that the window frame still outlined.
“Old Pablo making ready for the spring herding,” he said. “Light the lamp, Hughie.”
Hugh obeyed and the wistful brown eyes followed the line of Hugh’s noble head against the untrimmed wick.
“I was conscious for quite a while after the smash,” Bookie said, scarcely above a whisper. “I was fixing up a bedroom for you. Sort of glad it was books finished me off after all. I always thought it would be Indian Massacre pies.”
“Don’t!” said Hugh tensely, his hand again seeking Bookie’s.
“Don’t feel too bad, my boy! After all, I’ve read all the books that are really filling. Give Red Wolf that old copy of Roderick Random. He always wanted it. Likes the pictures. My will is in the bottom of the cash register.”
His voice trailed off. But Hugh knew that he hadn’t finished. He seemed to be listening to the familiar lines of Pablo’s song—
“… here to my couch I’ll call her,
Why go so far, dark and strange skies to seek,
Safe would she be, no evil should befall her,
For I’m an exile, sad, too sad to weep”
And indeed, he opened his eyes again to say: “I’ve heard him sing that every spring for ten years. Exiles. So we are. From what, Hughie? From our own best selves, perhaps— Don’t make my mistake—for God’s sake don’t! Give all—all—all”
Bookie’s head jerked back on the pillow. He fought for a moment, face distorted, while death rattled in his throat, and he was gone, leaving his face serenely beautiful.
Hugh stood beside him, looking down at the sunken eyes. “The best friend I’ll ever have,” he thought. “My only real friend I’ll never get over missing him.”
After a moment he stopped the trembling of his lips by pressing his clenched fist against them, and turned the light low. Then he went to the door and sent a passer-by for the undertaker.
Three or four days later, Judge Proctor, who never had been a judge but was everybody’s lawyer, met Hugh and the three Morgans at The Lariat, to read the will. Bookie had written it himself, about three weeks previous to his death.
“I want Hugh to have all that I possess. The ranch of five thousand acres and all the appurtenances thereto. And I want him to have the ten thousand acres of unimproved land between the ranch and the river, known as the Old Sioux Tract. And I want him to have The Lariat Book Store with all its appurtenances, some of which I herewith list.
“First of all, the feeling of leisure brought by living in four walls that are lined with books.
“Second, the calm feeling that comes when you know that everything you have thought or suffered has been thought and suffered before and set down in books that are under your roof.
“Third, the voice of the river which tells more than Homer ever dreamed.
“Fourth, the pictures that every day pass the window of The Lariat.
“Fifth, the solicitude for Wyoming which comes when you see the attitude of its citizens toward books and the understanding of these people which comes when you realize what they refuse to read.
“All these with the ranch and the Old Sioux Tract go to Hugh, with one proviso. That from the date of my death for the period of two years, giving up the business of fossil hunting, he devote himself entirely to running The Lariat. If he refuses to do this, I direct Judge Proctor, acting as my executor, to dispose of my entire property and turn the proceeds over to the Boston Public Library, the fund to be known by my mother’s name, the Mary Haverford Smith Memorial.”
The will had been duly signed and witnessed. Judge Proctor read the signatures, then looked at Hugh. He was perched on the counter as usual, his face haggard from grief. Mrs. Morgan looked at him, too, glancing quickly from his somber eyes to the uneasy fingers that worked over his pipe bowl. Jessie looked at him, her gorgeous hair like masses of rose gold above her blue dress, with tired shadows dominating her gaze. And Pink looked at him, holding a piece of plug half-way to his lips.
Hugh spoke slowly. “Go ahead and sell the property, Judge. The dear old chap had no right to do that to me. He’s even tried to bribe me with the Old Sioux Tract!”
“No, Hugh! No!” cried Jessie, suddenly. “Not such a quick decision. Sleep on it!”
“Jess has a right to say something about your giving away a property like that!” exclaimed Pink.
Mrs. Morgan turned suddenly from Hugh to the lawyer. “Isn’t there some law to keep a man from making that kind of a fool of himself, Judge?” she demanded.
Hugh was staring at Jessie with all the disillusion of his years of marriage in his eyes. “I’ll sleep on it, Jessie, but I warn you, I can’t be changed.”
“You’ve got to be changed!” cried Mrs. Morgan, and she electrified them all by bursting into tears. She refused at any one’s more or less earnest solicitation to explain the tears, and after a moment she rose and left the store.
“Hughie—” began Pink, drawing a long breath. Jessie interrupted him abruptly.
“O you run along home, Dad. You just add to the confusion.”
Pink was seriously offended. He threw the perfectly good plug of tobacco violently out of the window. “Of course,” he said, “it’s yours and Hughie’s business. Come on, Judge, let’s get out.”
“I’ll take the will along and send you back a copy, Hughie,” said the Judge. “Take time to this, my boy. Old Bookie was the wisest man I ever knew.”
Hugh did not reply. He remained leaning against the book shelves and Jessie sat facing him for a long time after they were left alone. Hugh had the feeling that everything that either of them had to say to the other on this or any other topic had long ago been said. He stood with his jaw set, obstinately. And after all, Jessie said something that she never had said before!
“Hughie, what is it you dislike about me?”
Her husband did not betray his surprise. “I dislike your lazy mind,” he replied, with what must have seemed to Jessie insulting readiness.
But she did not even blink. “Anything else, Hughie?”
“I dislike your using your physical charms on me to gain what you want.”
“Anything else, Hughie?”
“No!”
“How do you mean, lazy mind?” The phrase was going to stick by her.
“Anybody born with a good brain that won’t use it is lazy minded.”
“Hughie, I have an idea that I need The Lariat as much as you do.”
“Huh! So that’s the game, is it?” ejaculated Hugh. He had been managed for years by Jessie and every hostile instinct was constantly on the alert.
Jessie ignored the thrust. “I’d stay in the store with you, Hughie, and I’d read whatever you wanted me to read.”
“The tragic part of that is,” returned Hugh, “that I don’t care any more whether you read or not. Don’t deceive yourself, Jessie. I can’t be won back by intrigue. When a man loves his work as I do mine and his wife laughs at it, it’s all he can do to keep from growing to hate her. You and your mother between you have done a sweet job of bronco-breaking on me.”
“And aren’t you at all to blame, Hughie?”
“I suppose I am. But at least, I’m doing something, even if every one does think that something is futile. You’ve no idea how you’ve given up doing anything but nagging me.”
“Hugh,” said Jessie, suddenly, “you loved me once, didn’t you?”
Hugh returned her steady look with one of tragic earnestness. “You’ll never know how much that boy who used to be Hugh, cared about you. Why, in those first days, Jessie, if you’d only shown that you cared for what I was doing, you and I could have made a big job of our marriage. But it’s too late now. You chose to take me not as I was but as something you thought you could make of me. You’ve turned me from a lover into a bitter and resentful husband.”
“And I am a bitter and disappointed wife,” said Jessie.
“I’m sorry,” returned Hugh. “I would have changed it all at first if I could Now, I don’t care.”
“I think we both care,” Jessie spoke slowly, “or we wouldn’t both be so bitter.”
Hugh again looked at her suspiciously. “I don’t care,” he insisted. “Don’t start off on some intrigue connected with me, Jessie. I always find you out and it makes me angry.”
“It’s so easy to make you angry these days,” sighed Jessie, turning away.
“Then surely it would be wisest and kindest to let me alone,” said her husband.
Jessie looked from Hugh to the open door, watched the sand blow up the empty, ugly street; then she turned on her heel and left The Lariat.
Hugh locked the door, opened the rear window, lighted his pipe and began to pace the floor. And began to think.
Twilight came on.
Only the man whose work fulfills the urgent desire of his mind and absorbs the best of his talents, whose work fits the peculiar needs of his temperament and appeals to every angle of his imagination can understand Hugh’s love for the particular branch of geology which he had made his own, or appreciate fully the devastating nature of the demand in Bookie’s will.
How could he, how could he cut himself off for two years from his all-engrossing pursuit? How could he refuse to heed that thrilling urge which even now tingled beneath his grief and bewilderment?
The fragment of fossil skin still lay on the counter beside the row of western novels. Hugh traced its scaly surface with his fingers. Instantly his imagination closed the door on the wretched present and the stone beneath his fingers became the armor plate of a giant lizard, striding on mighty hind legs along a sandy beach. He saw its terrible pointed teeth, its sharp curved claws, its little pestilent head, towering forty feet in the air. He saw similar beasts moving among the fern-like trees that bordered the beach. He beheld the sun glowing through the gentle mists and smelled the odors of vast waters and vaster vegetation.
He saw another dinosaur, fit mate in size to this, devouring the broken carcass of a huge turtle; saw the two great brutes meet in mortal conflict and heard the whir of mighty wings as lesser creatures fled the environs of the unthinkable battle.
And then, his imagination leaped across countless ages, across the inconceivably slow movement of geologic time; past the imperceptible piling of sand grain on sand, the unnoted lap of waters on waters, of encroaching and receding seas, of lifting and of sinking mountains and the interminable coursing of the ageless winds. Across all these, in an instant his vision leaped to the tiny figure of a man, digging in the Old Sioux Tract to uncover the bones of two giant dinosaurs, still locked in mortal combat, the broken carcass of the turtle still beneath their feet, the tracks of the fleeing lesser beasts still traced in the imperishable sands of that long-perished beach.
Hugh pushed the bit of fossil skin back beside the last western novel and turned to the book shelves. Row on row, the thoughts of the few men who had been able to express themselves in the little time that had elapsed since man replaced the dinosaur. God, thought Hugh, what an exchange! To take from him the work of uncovering the priceless manuscript of the ages and offer him in return the bartering of a book for a pair of moccasins.
Every fiber of his nature said no!
Every fiber?
Slowly he made his way back to the open window, and pulling a chair before it, he put his elbows on the window sill and with his eyes on the dim, black rolling of the river, he fell to thinking of Bookie and of all that Bookie had been to him after his father and mother had died. How necessary the rancher had been to him then, and how completely Bookie had shared with the boy all that he had accumulated of wisdom and wealth! He had been a very, very wise man, and because this was so and because he had loved Bookie deeply and truly, Hugh never had felt fully justified in refusing to follow Bookie’s plan for his career.
And heavens, how weary he was of this constant sense of people’s disapproval. Two years! Two whole years of his tiny, tiny span of life!
As for Jessie—no, beyond decently supporting her, he acknowledged no sense of obligation there. She was fully competent to build up a life of her own that she would find far more satisfactory than her marriage with him had been.
Two years! Two whole years of his tiny, tiny life.
Over the serene top of the black canyon wall surged the yellow moon. Across its mellow face moved a line of diminutive silhouetted horses. Some one was belated on the trail. Johnny Parnell, perhaps, bringing down a few mounts for such enterprising dudes as would wish to use the saddle on the ride to the ranch, instead of the jitney.
There were lights on the canyon floor in the air-mail camp. The west-going mail must be late.
If you refuse to accede to a loved one’s wishes while he lives, of what avail is it to accede to them after death?
Ah, but Bookie had wished it to be so! Two years! Bookie, after giving all that he had to Hugh for twenty-five years, asked in return two years, and he meant, Hugh knew, that these two years should be given to books and to Bookie’s thought on them and on the people of Wyoming who passed the window of The Lariat. To exile himself for two years from his work. Exile! What a tragic word! “Exiles. So we are. From what—from what, Hugh? Don’t make my mistake, for God’s sake, don’t. Give all—all”
What had the old man meant?
Hugh buried his face in his hands and retreated into that inner sanctuary whose walls are truth and whose altar is sacrifice; the sanctuary into which a man dares to retreat but once or twice in his life, lest the clarity of vision wrought within unbalance his will. When Hugh emerged, his hands were shaking and his eyes were contracted. But his decision was made. He would give the two years to Bookie.
The next morning, Pink entered the shop with an air of solemn purposefulness. Hugh looked up from the letter he was writing.
“I want to take up that matter of the will,” Pink announced.
“It’s not necessary,” returned Hugh. “I’ve made up my mind to stay here for two years.”
“Here! By gosh!” exclaimed Pink “I told the Missis the bait would be too tempting for you not to swaller it. She can quit her sniveling now.”
“Yes,” Hugh set his jaw, “you all can rest in peace for two years.”
“Huh! If you live a white man’s life for two years, you’ll never quit it. And I’ll guarantee that the women folks shan’t pester you, Hughie.”
Hugh smiled. “What’s the use of giving a guarantee you know you can’t keep, Pink?”
Pink drew himself up with offended dignity. “I tell you,” he shouted, “I’ve turned over a new leaf. From now on, I’m going to be master in my own house! From now on”
He did not finish his sentence, for Johnny Parnell strolled in. “What’s the row?” he inquired.
“Hughie’s always insinuating that I ain’t a man,” declared Pink, “and I’m sick of it.”
“Hughie, how do you know he isn’t a man?” grinned Johnny.
“If you hadn’t interrupted, Pink would have proved it in a minute!” Hugh blotted his letter, smiling up at his father-in-law whimsically.
“Oh, you two go to thunder!” said Pink sheepishly. “Did many dudes come in on the Limited for you, Johnny?”
“Quite a bunch. They are touring Fort Sioux while they wait for dinner. Some of ’em will be in here, Hughie. Get ready to rob ’em.”
“I’m not going to begin to sell things for a day or two, not till I get a little accustomed to the idea,” said Hugh.
“You are a wonder!” exclaimed Pink. “Let me keep store for you, if you are too refined for the job. Just for today! Come on, Hugh Let me! I’ll show you real salesmanship”
“Go to it!” Hugh acquiesced, with a relieved air.
Two men, obviously tourists, entered The Lariat at that moment and Pink, with a large air of proprietorship, lounged forward to meet them.
“What can I show you folks?” he asked
“We’re just looking around, if that’s permitted,” replied one of the men.
“Sure! Help yourself! Looks is cheap” Pink grinned affably. “Come in, ladies!” as several women hesitated in the doorway. “Walk right up and see the elephant. Them jars, sir,” as one of the visitors lifted a Mohave olla, “is made by the Sioux squaws. You’ll see some of ’em go along the street shortly”
Hugh stirred uneasily Pink went on:
“That blue and gray blanket is a part of a Sioux chief’s war outfit. Belonged to old Red Wolf. You’re liable to see him any moment”
“That’s a Chemhuive chief’s robe, Pink,” protested Hugh. “The tribe that made it is extinct and the blanket is almost priceless.”
“O, dry up, Hughie! I’m salesman here!” protested Pink.
Johnny put his hand on Hugh’s arm and again Hugh subsided. The visitors smiled and one of the men pointed to a fossil fragment that filled a shelf behind the stove. “What may that be?” he asked
“That,” replied Pink, scowling defiantly at Hugh, “is the collar bone of a fossilized ostrich.”
“How does that check up with your ideas?” the visitor turned to Hugh.
“Well,” Hugh was smiling now, himself, “my ideas and Pink’s agree on horse-breaking, but not on fossils and Indian remains. Not belittling your selling ability any Pink, I’d like to say that that fragment, I hope, is part of the foreleg of a gigantic dinosaur, a reptile, you know, that lived around here in bygone ages.”
“My word, you don’t mean it!” With varied exclamations the visitors eyed the fragment.
“I’ve seen them in museums,” said one of the women, a slender, well-groomed person, in brown. “But somehow that bone means more out here.”
“Want to buy it, anybody?” demanded Pink, still belligerently.
“Wait a moment, Pink!” Hugh put his hand on his father-in-law’s shoulder, “that’s not for sale, you know.”
“O for the Lord’s sake, Hughie, butt out!” roared Pink. “I swear, you’ll bankrupt this place before you’ve had it two months. I’ve always suspected you was a fool and now I know it.” For a moment he continued to revile Hugh, the newcomers looking on half curiously, half in embarrassment.
Johnny Parnell would have interfered had not the look of anger on Hugh’s face suddenly been replaced by his charming smile. “All right, Pink, old man!” he interrupted. “All you say about me, I’ve often thought myself. So don’t hold the facts against me.”
There was something infinitely appealing in Hugh’s voice and manner.
“I won’t,” said Pink, mollified in spite of himself. “But you keep out from now on.”
“Let me make just one suggestion.” Hugh’s eyes were twinkling. “Give these people their dinner before you try to sell anything to them. Remember that the dining car was dropped at Cheyenne early this morning.”
Pink looked hastily at his watch. “Gosh! It is dinner time. Come on, folks!” and he led the way out of the shop. In spite of all his vilification of the Indian Massacre, Pink loved nothing better than presiding at a table filled with tourists.
One of the visitors remained behind. It was the woman who had spoken of the fossil. She was tall and slender and the most perfectly groomed woman that Hugh ever had seen. From the shining waves of her brown hair, to the shining vamps of her tan shoes, she was flawless. Her delicate skin was without blemish. So were the lines of her regular, clean-cut features. Her eyebrows arched in two fine curves. Her mouth was exquisitely turned. When she lifted clear hazel eyes to Plugh, her lips parted over the whitest teeth he ever had seen.
“Well,” she said, casually, “he left without bloodshed.”
Hugh chuckled, “I’m a constant irritant to Pink. You see, I know his weak points better than he knows mine.”
“He is the hotel keeper?” asked the visitor.
“Yes, Pink Morgan. An old cowman and not a bad fellow at all. Just restless because he is trying to be something he wasn’t intended to be.”
Hugh sighed as he spoke. His auditor gave him a curious glance, then turned to the book shelves.
“You run largely to western fiction, I see,” she said.
Hugh nodded. “My uncle was told by the librarian at Cheyenne that seventy-five per cent of the fiction called for up there was western stuff.”
“That’s naïve!” exclaimed the visitor
Hugh considered before he answered. “The westerners I know are not naïve. Anything but that! You’ve probably guessed wrong.”
“What is the answer then?” smiling as she spoke.
“I haven’t tried to think of one. You see, I’m new at this game”
“But you are a westerner?”
“Yes, ma’am! Born and bred in the sage brush. My name is Hugh Stewart”
“I am Miss Page Miriam Page. Do you mind if I tell you that I enjoyed your encounter with Mr. Morgan very much?”
“I suppose it was funny, to an outsider,” agreed Hugh, a little ruefully.
“No, it really wasn’t funny,” said Miriam Page. “It was the thing you put over on Morgan and the rest of us. You are a curious person to be a book-store keeper”
“Aren’t I!” agreed Hugh again, comically. “At the same time let me return the compliment by saying that you look exactly the way a lady dude ought to look!”
“Are you sure that’s a compliment?” asked Miss Page, hastily.
“Absolutely!” Hugh hesitated, eyeing his caller’s animated face with interest. “When you’re not a lady dude, would you mind telling me what you are?”
She smiled, showing her beautiful teeth again. “When I’m at home, in Boston, I’m an investment adviser in a bank.”
“My word!” Hugh frankly was impressed. “Do you expect to be happy at the dude ranch?”
“I feel as if I’d begun well,” returned Miss Page. “You aren’t a cowboy, are you?” looking in a puzzled way at Hugh’s riding clothes.
“No, I’m a maverick!” Hugh shook his head. “I expect eventually to go loco and be shot by a stock inspector!” Then, as she smiled in a puzzled way, he added, “I’m a paleontologist, a digger of fossils. I’m afraid that you are going to miss your lunch.”
“I want to,” said Miss Page. “I’ve had a headache.”
Hugh gave her a sudden, slow, steady look. “The outfit won’t start for the ranch until two. I wish you would sit down and talk.”
Neither Miriam Page nor Hugh ever was to forget that hour. For each of them knew before that hour was over that this was to each of them far more than a casual meeting.
People drifted in and out of The Lariat and Hugh took care of them in the half cursory, half whimsical manner of which he was so entirely unconscious. He was not a good salesman, but he was a delightful curio-shop keeper. Miriam caught at once the sense of Hugh’s elusive charm. It had not deserted him even when he had been out of temper with Pink. It was present now in his badinage, in his wide impersonal viewpoint and his eager looking beyond the walls as he spoke of his work. She felt, too, his restlessness and his mental hunger. And she had a strange conviction, as, under her skilled questioning, he told her more of himself, that here was a man far too big to remain in The Lariat or in Fort Sioux.
And Hugh—Hugh who had finished with the sex for ever—was meeting in Miriam Page that which he had not known a woman could possess: a mind long trained in competitive thinking with keen-thinking men, a mind with the suavity and complexity of a widely experienced man’s. Coupled with this, a physical presence that was the very essence of the feminine. Hugh was disturbed, bewildered, fascinated. He was meeting sex attraction in one of its most subtle and intoxicating forms.
They talked of many things, Miriam watching Hugh with more and more interest. She was naturally an impulsive human being. But her business training had refined the impulsiveness into a capacity for making instant decisions of a far-seeing kind. An hour’s conversation with Hugh brought Miriam to making the most important decision of either hers or Hugh’s life.
She wanted Hugh. She proposed to have him.
Love at first sight is a normal and not at all uncommon phenomenon. Miriam had cared before for men. But toward Hugh, even at this first meeting, she was experiencing a depth of sensation utterly foreign to her experience.
Hugh, on the other hand, did not realize at all what had happened to him. He knew that he was meeting a woman by whom he was unprecedentedly attracted. He was not, never had been interested in women in general. He had been deeply disappointed in his wife. He had not the slightest desire to complicate his life by contact with any other woman. And so even his habit of self-analysis did not suffice to warn him, until it was too late. Perhaps, even had he recognized his own feeling from the first moment of meeting Miriam, it would have been too late. A man of Hugh’s type has very little chance to escape from a woman like Miriam. Only Miriam herself could provide that chance.
They talked rapidly of many things in this first meeting. They said much and they felt more. But both of their faces were mask-like when they turned them toward Jessie, sauntering in at the open door. Carefully mask-like on Hugh’s part, as Jessie saw at once.
“Hello,” she said casually. “I think you must be the Miss Page Johnny Parnell is looking for. The outfit is ready to start.”
“Yes, I’m Miss Page.” Miriam rose. “I had not realized that it was so late.”
“Miss Page,” said Hugh, still without expression, “this is my wife.”
Miriam held out her hand. “I suppose, Mrs. Stewart,” she said, “that if you were going out to this ranch, you’d go horseback. I wish I were enough of a horsewoman to do it.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” returned Jessie, with her usual lazy casualness. “I prefer a car to a horse for a long ride. Any one would.”
“Are the western horses really so difficult to ride?” Miss Page went on, pleasantly, but studying Jessie quite frankly.
“It all depends on the horse,” replied Jessie. “You will find you’ll have no trouble if your mount is chosen carefully. Though you’ll be very muscle sore at first, no matter how carefully you choose your animal.”
“I suppose saddle soreness is unknown to you, though,” suggested the eastern woman.
“O I was practically born on a horse,” replied Jessie. “Even at that, I’m no such horseman as Hughie.”
“Nonsense!” Hugh laughed. “Miss Page, Jessie is the finest thing in Wyoming on a horse.”
A curious gleam that a close observer might have classed as jealousy showed for a moment in Miriam’s eyes.
“I wonder if the guide won’t be growing impatient,” she said as she rose. “Of course, not having your physique, Mrs. Stewart, I never could have competed with you even had I too been fortunate enough to have been born on a horse.”
“Yes, it’s a handicap to be so slight, out in this country,” agreed Jessie genially. “However, you might make a fair rider. If Johnny Parnell doesn’t turn out to be a satisfactory, teacher, I’d be glad to give you a few lessons.”
“What is your price?” asked Miriam in a business-like tone.
Jessie flushed. “O not money!” she returned, soberly “I’d get my—er—price some other way.”
Johnny Parnell put his head in the door. “Waiting for you, Miss Page!”
“Good-by,” cried Miriam, following after Johnny.
Jessie turned to Hugh. “She’s as old as you and she powders, rouges and plucks her eyebrows.”
“Is that so?” returned Hugh, indifferently.
“How long was she here?”
“Quite some time” Then he added, clearly, “She has a fine mind.”
“Is that so?” countered Jessie, also indifferently.
Then they stared at each other with a whole lost world of disillusioned youth in their eyes and with open defiance and with fearful determination.
It was Hugh who broke the silence. “Leave me alone, Jessie,” he said. “You and your mother needn’t worry over me for two years. I’m staked out. All I ask of you is that you leave me alone.”
Jessie’s broad shoulders lifted slightly. But she still spoke casually. “You mean, Hughie, that you don’t want me to come into The Lariat at all?”
“No, I don’t mean that. Come and go as you will, but leave me alone. What little work there is here I’ll attend to. But don’t dream for a minute that this will of Uncle Bookie’s is going to change me. When the two years’ exile is over, I’m going back to my work.”
“What am I to do during that time?” she asked, without for a moment losing her look of indolence.
“What you’ve always done. Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
In sudden desperation Hugh cried, “For heaven’s sake, Jess, get yourself a job somewhere!”
“You mean you want me to support myself?” The indolence was replaced now by a voice of incredulous shock.
“I mean I want you to get interested in something besides me,” insisted Hugh.
Jessie gave him a long look and left the shop.
A day or so later, Pink sauntered into the shop to deliver himself of news. “Jessie and her mother have had another row. Jessie has took a job with Johnny Parnell. She just started up to the ranch. He give her a job as lady guide. She’s already took on that Page woman for lessons.”
Hugh slowly laid down a book, while his mind took in Jessie’s plan. She was going out to the dude ranch to heckle Miriam Page—to insult her with her magnificent strength, as only Jessie could. Irritation flamed into violent protest. It should not be.
“Mind the store for me, Pink,” he exclaimed, as he rushed out of the door to the hotel corral.
Not five minutes later, he thundered across the bridge on Fossil. Jessie already had reached the foot of the corkscrew trail. He thrust the spurs into Fossil’s flanks.
Jessie was half-way up the canyon wall when Hugh, setting Fossil to the first up-grade, shouted to her. He could see Magpie’s impatient champing jaw and Jessie’s face peering soberly above it.
“Wait for me, Jessie!” he shouted.
“I can’t hold Magpie on this grade. He’s too fresh.”
“Then wait for me at the top.”
There was a moment’s silence, then amidst a rattle of small stones, Jessie’s voice floated down to him. “I will!”
She was sitting carelessly astride her mount when Fossil panted up the last turn, a lazy half smile on her lips, but her eyes defiant. Hugh pulled his horse in head to head with Magpie.
“What’s the idea of your undertaking to teach Miss Page to ride?”
“My first job. It’s all I know—riding.” She grinned slowly, showing her strong white teeth.
“I don’t like it,” said Hugh. “You’d better give it up and try something else.”
Jessie watched a jackrabbit lope slowly across the road. He was big and white and he moved as though he used only the surface of his strength and speed.
“You’re too late, Hughie,” she said.
“Of course, it’s not too late! Don’t try to bluff me, Jessie. I know exactly what your idea is and I tell you I won’t have it!”
“Won’t have what?” asked Jessie, lazily examining her left spur.
“I won’t have Miss Page annoyed.”
“You sure do flatter me,” murmured Jessie. “Anything else you want right now, while I’m in my usual genial mood?”
“You’re not a genial person,” said Hugh. “You are just lazy. There’s a big difference.”
Jessie lifted her head and stared at her husband and slowly the look of easy grace left her as though a veil had dropped, showing her in broad lines of strength and determination.
“No, I’m not genial, Hughie,” she returned, finally, “not any more. You don’t understand me yet, though. I’ve been ambitious for you. That’s done with. Now I’m ambitious for myself.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I want you to be ambitious for yourself. I’ll help you any way I can.”
“O no you won’t, not with this particular ambition, not after you understand what it is.”
Hugh’s tired eyes returned Jessie’s defiant gaze irritably.
“What is it you plan for yourself?” he demanded. “Why don’t you speak plainly?”
“I told you you didn’t understand me. You’re fine stuff, Hughie, with a splendid mind and a charming personality. But you’re selfish.”
“Perhaps I am. But what are you?”
Both were speaking in hushed voices of indescribable bitterness.
“I’ve been selfish and lazy, too. But that isn’t all there is to me, Hughie. I’m strong and I’m a great lover, Hughie. A great lover.”
Hugh lifted his fine head. “And do you think,” he exclaimed, “that all there is to me is that sort of love a young man gives when he’s mating? Faugh! Somewhere in me there is possible a love that you couldn’t appreciate.”
“And yet,” said Jessie, “you have told me a hundred times that you are through with love. Careful, Hughie. You don’t know me. Me—I can fight for my own.”
“And so can I,” returned her husband.
“Get me clearly, Hughie. I shall never let her have you.”
“And get me clearly, Jessie. Life is short and I intend to live it as I will.”
“We’ll see!” exclaimed Jessie, roweling Magpie suddenly onto the trail.
Hugh watched her grimly for a moment, then he turned his horse homeward.