Part 8 (2/2)
She shrugged lightly.
”More's the pity.”
”Do you mean that?” Consternation banished the smile from his lips. He caught her hands in his. ”The day Uncle Nick arrived I heard you say----”
”Nex' stop Slippy Bend, Miss. Porter for your bags,” interrupted a Jamaican voice with a Chicago accent. Jerry's face flushed with relief as the black head with its gleaming eyes and teeth bobbed in at the door. She pointed to the bags. As the man went out with them she turned to Courtlandt with an embarra.s.sed laugh.
”You've won this time, Steve. I had forgotten the porter. You'll have to tip him and the maid for me. However, as this is really a deferred wedding-trip the expenses naturally fall to the groom, don't they?” with reckless daring.
He looked at her until her laughing eyes fell before the glow of his.
”You've said it--if this can be called a wedding-trip--but take it from me, sometime, Mrs. Courtlandt, I'll show you what a real honeymoon can be. Porter, here's another bag.”
He followed the black man into the corridor. Jerry settled her smart toque and pinned on her veil before the mirror, but she couldn't see her own face, only Steve's with that curious I'm-biding-my-time look in his eyes. What had he meant about a honeymoon? Did he mean that he and Felice--no, _no_, Steve was not that kind. She looked about the compartment to make sure that she had left nothing. Three roses still glowing with beauty remained of the dozen. She pinned them to the front of her coat. She would take so much of her father into her new life with her.
The wooden shanty which served as a shelter for telegraph, freight and pa.s.sengers at Slippy Bend was as depressing as rain, flapping s.h.i.+ngles and a skewed roof could make it. The road which struggled up a slope to hide between two shabby buildings was a river of mud. A knock-kneed man with a string of slat-ribbed calico horses and cayuses following him, waded downward through the middle of it. Every few steps he would stop to yank a howling, red-eyed bulldog from a hole which had betrayed him.
Jerry valiantly blinked back the tears as she watched him. She had never seen anything quite as sordid and depressing as her surroundings. The only note of civilization in the dreary scene was the large, curtained touring car by the platform. As she looked at it, two legs, which had acquired Queen Anne curves from many hours spent in the saddle, wriggled from under the curtains followed by a large body. A Belgian police dog, tawny, n.o.ble, aloof, followed the man. Courtlandt who had been busy with the luggage turned with a boyish laugh and held out his hand.
”It sure is great to be back, Pete. Down, Goober, down, boy!” to the dog who, after an uncertain second, had leaped to lick his face. He kept one hand on the animal's head as he turned to the girl beside him. ”Jerry, this is Pete Gerrish, who taught me all I know about ranching. He is Uncle Nick's right-hand man. Pete, this is Mrs. Courtlandt.”
”He's got me wrong, ma'am. I _was_ the old gentleman's right-hand man, but Ranlett's in the saddle now. I'm sure pleased to meet you an' I hope you'll be downright happy with us.”
”Thank you, Mr. Gerrish.” Jerry felt the tears absurdly near as she looked up at him. He was regarding her with unqualified approval. His large face was cross-currented with fine lines and smiles; his Stetson came close to ears which looked as though the Almighty had designed them as hat-rests and had made a surprisingly good job of it. He carried the marks of his calling in the devil-may-care poise of his body, in his clothing, in his rollicking Irish eyes.
”I'll give Baldy Jennings a hand with the trunks to get 'em out of the rain till the boys get here for them. They're teamin' in. How the devil did yer expect to get all them things out to the ranch over these spring roads, Steve--I would say Chief? The boys has decided that even if they did teach the new owner most of what he knows about ranchin', it won't do to be familiar-like no more. So we've decided to call him chief, ma'am,” Gerrish inserted the bit of information to Jerry in the midst of his dissertation on the condition of the roads. ”I went up to the hubs gettin' here with no load. By cripes, I don't know what'll happen goin'
back.”
Jerry was tempted to echo that ”By cripes!” later, when the big car laboring through what seemed rivers of mud, foundered in a hole. She unfastened the curtain and looked out. Goober on the running-board, plastered with mud, looked like nothing so much as a model sketchily done in clay as he peered down inquiringly. Gerrish expressed himself in language which the girl was sure was being painfully expurgated because of her. The wheels groaned and choked as they churned up fountains of mud. As she watched the wheel under her Jerry could think of nothing but a gigantic egg-beater gone mad from the futility of its efforts. The back of Gerrish's neck had taken on a dangerous, apoplectic color generated, doubtless, by restraint from the fullest self-expression.
”Would it help if I got out?” she ventured in the lull while the engine rested.
”Haw! I guess if yer did we'd have to haul you out in a hurry or send a rescue-party through to China,” Gerrish discouraged while Courtlandt commanded:
”Stay where you are! I'll take the wheel, Pete. We have nothing to put under the back wheels; it would do no good if we had. The engine will have to do the trick.”
He threw on the switch. The engine started. The spinning wheels. .h.i.tched forward, he reversed, hitched forward, reversed, hitched forward till Jerry experienced all of the discomforts, and none of the stimulation, of being aboard s.h.i.+p on a high and choppy sea. Courtlandt grimly pursued his tactics till with a roar from the motor and a lurch which sent Jerry's teeth into her lower lip, the car, looking like an uncanny prehistoric animal which had been wallowing in a mud bath, dragged itself from its hole, skidded with hair-raising irresponsibility, came back to the road and struggled on. The rain stopped. The sky showed shapeless spots of light where the clouds were thinning. Vapors floated lightly above the fields.
It was twilight, a crimson and gold twilight, when Courtlandt turned into the avenue of cottonwoods which led to the ranch-house of the Double O. The air was fragrant with fresh washed earth and the spicy breath which the storm had beaten from the pines. From somewhere a meadow-lark trilled an ecstatic greeting and as though frightened at its temerity as suddenly subsided. The naming color in the west might have been the glow from a blazing forest, but it was only the sun flinging its good-night over sky and fields and mountains in the whole-hearted Western way. Against the red light squatted the shadowy shape of the ranch-house.
When the car stopped Goober sprang to the porch and stood as if awaiting orders. In the background hovered two Chinese servants, a man and a woman. Their slant-eyes in their moon faces were ludicrously alike. The woman in her gay silks and embroideries looked like a painting on rice-paper.
Pete and Hopi Soy carried in the bags. At a nod from Courtlandt the woman followed. Steve held the door wide. With a curious choked feeling Jerry entered the house. Then her emotion found vent in a little cry of delight. After the grayness and mud of the ride out the great living-room glowed like a jewel. The color stole through her senses like an elixir and rested and refreshed her. Her eyes shone, her lips curved in a faint smile as she looked about her. The servants had disappeared.
She and Steve were alone.
Logs blazed in the great stone fireplace. Safely out of scorching distance a white cat dozed in front of it, her fluffy coat rosy in the firelight, her wide eyes like blinking topaz as she regarded the newcomers. Gorgeous serapes from old Mexico, Hopi saddle-blankets, heavily beaded garments of the Blackfeet, Apache bows and quivers full of arrows, Navaho blankets, skins of mountain lions and lynx there were, each one placed in artistic relation to its neighbor. A profusion of books and magazines, a baby-grand piano, a phonograph _de luxe_, softly shaded lamps, added their note of civilization to the array of savage trophies and over the mantel----
”Why, Steve! There's Mother!” whispered Jerry softly.
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