CHAPTER XX
BUSINESS, AND MORE
"You stand out like an Indian water monument up here," she saidreprovingly, as she came scrambling up, taking the hand that he hastenedforward to offer and boost her over the last sharp face of crumblingshale.
"I expect Hargus could pick me off from below there anywhere, but Ididn't think of that," he said.
"It wouldn't be above him," seriously, discounting the light way inwhich he spoke of it; "he's done things just as cowardly, and so haveothers you've met."
"I haven't got much opinion of the valor of men who hunt in packs,Vesta. Some of them might be skulking around, glad to take a shot at us.Don't you think we'd better go down?"
"We can sit over there and be off the sky-line. It's always the safething to do around here."
She indicated a point where an inequality in the hill would be abovetheir heads sitting, and there they composed themselves--the shelteringswell of hilltop at their backs.
"It's not a very complimentary reflection on a civilized community thatone has to take such a precaution, but it's necessary, Duke."
"It's enough to make you want to leave it, Vesta. It's bad enough tohave to dodge danger in a city, but out here, with all this lonesomenessaround you, it's worse."
"Do you feel it lonesome here?" She asked it with a curious softslowness, a speculative detachment, as if she only half thought of whatshe said.
"I'm never lonesome where I can see the sun rise and set. There's a lotof company in cattle, more than in any amount of people you don't know."
"I find it the same way, Duke. I never was so lonesome as when I wasaway from here at school."
"Everybody feels that way about home, I guess. But I thought maybe you'dlike it better away among people like yourself."
"No. If it wasn't for this endless straining and watching, quarrelingand contending, I wouldn't change this for any place in the world. Onnights like this, when it whispers in a thousand inaudible voices, andbeckons and holds one close, I feel that I never can go away. There's acall in it that is so subtle and tender, so full of sympathy, that Ianswer it with tears."
"I wish things could be cleared up so you could live here in peace andenjoy it, but I don't know how it's going to come out. It looks to melike I've made it worse."
"It was wrong of me to draw you into it, Duke; I should have let you goyour way."
"There's no regrets on my side, Vesta. I guess it was planned for me tocome this far and stop."
"They'll never rest till they've drawn you into a quarrel that will givethem an excuse for killing you, Duke. They're doubly sure to do it sinceyou got away from them that night. I shouldn't have stopped you; Ishould have let you go on that day."
"I had to stop somewhere, Vesta," he laughed. "Anyway, I've found herewhat I started out to find. This was the end of my road."
"What you started to find, Duke?"
"A man-sized job, I guess." He laughed again, but with a colorlessartificiality, sweating over the habit of solitude that leads a man intothinking aloud.
"You've found it, all right, Duke, and you're filling it. That's somesatisfaction to you, I know. But it's a man-using job, a life-wastingjob," she said sadly.
"I've only got myself to blame for anything that's happened to me here,Vesta. It's not the fault of the job."
"Well, if you'll stay with me till I sell the cattle, Duke, I'll thinkof you as the next best friend I ever had."
"I've got no intention of leaving you, Vesta."
"Thank you, Duke."
Lambert sat turning over in his mind something that he wanted to say toher, but which he could not yet shape to his tongue. She was looking inthe direction of the light that he had been watching, a gleam of whichshowed faintly now and then, as if between moving boughs.
"I don't like the notion of your leaving this country whipped, Vesta,"he said, coming to it at last.
"I don't like to leave it whipped, Duke."
"That's the way they'll look at it if you go."
Silence again, both watching the far-distant, twinkling light.
"I laid out the job for myself of bringing these outlaws around here upto your fence with their hats in their hands, and I hate to give it upbefore I've made good on my word."
"Let it go, Duke; it isn't worth the fight."
"A man's word is either good for all he intends it to be, or worth nomore than the lowest scoundrel's, Vesta. If I don't put up works toequal what I've promised, I'll have to sneak out of this country betweentwo suns."
"I threw off too much on the shoulders of a willing and gallantstranger," she sighed. "Let it go, Duke; I've made up my mind to sellout and leave."
He made no immediate return to this declaration, but after a while hesaid:
"This will be a mighty bleak spot with the house abandoned and dark onwinter nights and no stock around the barns."
"Yes, Duke."
"There's no place so lonesome as one where somebody's lived, and put hishopes and ambitions into it, and gone away and left it empty. I can hearthe winter wind cuttin' around the house down yonder, mournin' like awidow woman in the night."
A sob broke from her, a sudden, sharp, struggling expression of hersorrow for the desolation that he pictured in his simple words. She benther head into her hands and cried. Lambert was sorry for the pain thathe had unwittingly stirred in her breast, but glad in a glowingtenderness to see that she had this human strain so near the surfacethat it could be touched by a sentiment so common, and yet so precious,as the love of home. He laid his hand on her head, stroking her soft,wavy hair.
"Never mind, Vesta," he petted, as if comforting a child. "Maybe we canfix things up here so there'll be somebody to take care of it. Nevermind--don't you grieve and cry."
"It's home--the only home I ever knew. There's no place in the worldthat can be to me what it has been, and is."
"That's so, that's so. I remember, I know. The wind don't blow as soft,the sun don't shine as bright, anywhere else as it does at home. It'sbeen a good while since I had one, and it wasn't much to see, but I'vegot the recollection of it by me always--I can see every log in thewalls."
He felt her shiver with the sobs she struggled to repress as his handrested on her hair. His heart went out to her in a surge of tendernesswhen he thought of all she had staked in that land--her youth and thepromise of life--of all she had seen planned in hope, built inexpectation, and all that lay buried now on the bleak mesa marked by twowhite stones.
And he caressed her with gentle hand, looking away the while at thespark of light that came and went, came and went, as if through blowingleaves. So it flashed and fell, flashed and fell, like a slow, slowpulse, and died out, as a spark in tinder dies, leaving the far nightblank.
Vesta sat up, pushed her hair back from her forehead, her white handlingering there. He touched it, pressed it comfortingly.
"But I'll have to go," she said, calm in voice, "to end this trouble andstrife."
"I've been wondering, since I'm kind of pledged to clean things up here,whether you'd consider a business proposal from me in regard to takingcharge of the ranch for you while you're gone, Vesta."
She looked up with a quick start of eagerness.
"You mean I oughtn't sell the cattle, Duke?"
"Yes, I think you ought to clean them out. The bulk of them are in ashigh condition as they'll ever be, and the market's better right nowthat it's been in years."
"Well, what sort of a proposal were you going to make, Duke?"
"Sheep."
"Father used to consider turning around to sheep. The country would cometo it, he said."
"Coming to it more and more every day. The sheep business is the bigfuture thing in here. Inside of five years everybody will be in thesheep business, and that will mean the end of these rustler camps thatgo under the name of cattle ranches."
"I'm willing to consider sheep, Duke. Go ahead with the plan."
"There's twice the money in them, and not half the exp
ense. One man cantake care of two or three thousand, and you can get sheepherders anyday. There can't be any possible objection to them inside your ownfence, and you've got range for ten or fifteen thousand. I'd suggestabout a thousand to begin with, though."
"I'd do it in a minute, Duke--I'll do it whenever you say the word. ThenI could leave Ananias and Myrtle here, and I could come back in thesummer for a little while, maybe."
She spoke with such eagerness, such appeal of loneliness, that he knewit would break her heart ever to go at all. So there on the hilltop theyplanned and agreed on the change from cattle to sheep, Lambert to havehalf the increase, according to the custom, with herder's wages for twoyears. She would have been more generous in the matter of pay, but thatwas the basis upon which he had made his plans, and he would admit nochange.
Vesta was as enthusiastic over it as a child, all eagerness to begin,seeing in the change a promise of the peace for which she had soardently longed. She appeared to have come suddenly from under a cloudof oppression and to sparkle in the sun of this new hope. It was onlywhen they came to parting at the porch that the ghost of her old troublecame to take its place at her side again.
"Has she cut the fence lately over there, Duke?" she asked.
"Not since I caught her at it. I don't think she'll do it again."
"Did she promise you she wouldn't cut it, Duke?"
She did not look at him as she spoke, but stood with her face averted,as if she would avoid prying into his secret too directly. Her voice waslow, a note of weary sadness in it that seemed a confession of theuselessness of turning her back upon the strife that she would forget.
"No, she didn't promise."
"If she doesn't cut the fence she'll plan to hurt me in some other way.It isn't in her to be honest; she couldn't be honest if she tried."
"I don't like to condemn anybody without a trial, Vesta. Maybe she'schanged."
"You can't change a rattlesnake. You seem to forget that she's a Kerr."
"Even at that, she might be different from the rest."
"She never has been. You've had a taste of the Kerr methods, but you'renot satisfied yet that they're absolutely base and dishonorable in everythought and deed. You'll find it out to your cost, Duke, if you let thatgirl lead you. She's a will-o'-the-wisp sent to lure you from thetrail."
Lambert laughed a bit foolishly, as a man does when the intuition of awoman uncovers the thing that he prided himself was so skilfullyconcealed that mortal eyes could not find it. Vesta was reading throughhim like a piece of greased parchment before a lamp.
"I guess it will all come out right," he said weakly.
"You'll meet Kerr one of these days with your old score between you,and he'll kill you or you'll kill him. She knows it as well as I do. Doyou suppose she can be sincere with you and keep this thing covered upin her heart? You seem to have forgotten what she remembers and plots onevery minute of her life."
"I don't think she knows anything about what happened to me that night,Vesta."
"She knows all about it," said Vesta coldly.
"I don't know her very well, of course; I've only passed a few wordswith her," he excused.
"And a few notes hung on the fence!" she said, not able to hide herscorn. "She's gone away laughing at you every time."
"I thought maybe peace and quiet could be established through her if shecould be made to see things in a civilized way."
Vesta made no rejoinder at once. She put her foot on the step as if toleave him, withdrew it, faced him gravely.
"It's nothing to me, Duke, only I don't want to see her lead you intoanother fire. Keep your eyes open and your hand close to your gun whenyou're visiting with her."
She left him with that advice, given so gravely and honestly that itamounted to more than a warning. He felt that there was something morefor him to say to make his position clear, but could not marshal hiswords. Vesta entered the house without looking back to where he stood,hat in hand, the moonlight in his fair hair.