CHAPTER VIII
THE HOUSE ON THE MESA
Even more bleak than from a distance the house on the mesa appeared asthe riders approached it up the winding road. It stood solitary on itsdesert promontory, the bright sky behind it, not a shrub to ease itslines, not a barn or shed to make a rude background for its amazingproportions. Native grass grew sparsely on the great table where itstood; rains had guttered the soil near its door. There was about it theair of an abandoned place, its long, gaunt porches open to wind andstorm.
As they drew nearer the house the scene opened in a more domesticappearance. Beyond it in a little cup of the mesa the stable, cattlesheds, and quarters for the men were located, so hidden in their shelterthat they could not be seen from any point in the valley below. To theworld that never scaled these crumbling heights, Philbrook's mansionappeared as if it endured independent of those vulgar appendagesindeed.
"Looks like they've got the barn where the house ought to be," saidTaterleg. "I'll bet the wind takes the hide off of a feller up here inthe wintertime."
"It's about as bleak a place for a house as a man could pick," Lambertagreed. He checked his horse a moment to look round on the vast sweep ofcountry presented to view from the height, the river lying as bright asquicksilver in the dun land.
"Not even a wire fence to break it!" Taterleg drew his shoulders up andshivered in the hot morning sun as he contemplated the untrammeledroadway of the northern winds. "Well, sir, it looks to me like a cyclonecarried that house from somewheres and slammed it down. No man in hisright senses ever built it there."
"People take queer freaks sometimes, even in their senses. I guess wecan ride right around to the door."
But for the wide, weathered porch they could have ridden up to it andknocked on its panels from the saddle. Taterleg was for going to thekitchen door, a suggestion which the Duke scorned. He didn't want tomeet that girl at a kitchen door, even her own kitchen door. For that hewas about to meet her, there was no doubt in him that moment.
He was not in a state of trembling eagerness, but of calm expectation,as a man might be justified in who had made his preparations and feltthe outcome sure. He even smiled as he pictured her surprise, like a manreturning home unexpectedly, but to a welcome of which he held no doubt.
Taterleg remained mounted while Lambert went to the door. It was arather inhospitable appearing door of solid oak, heavy and dark. Therewas a narrow pane of beveled glass set into it near the top, beneath ita knocker that must have been hammered by a hand in some far landcenturies before the house on the mesa was planned.
A negro woman, rheumatic, old, came to the door. Miss Philbrook was atthe barn, she said. What did they want of her? Were they looking forwork? To these questions Lambert made no reply. As he turned back tohis horse the old serving woman came to the porch, leaving the doorswinging wide, giving a view into the hall, which was furnished with aprofusion and luxuriance that Taterleg never had seen before.
The old woman watched the Duke keenly as he swung into the saddle in thesuppleness of his youthful grace. She shaded her eyes against the sun,looking after him still as he rode with his companion toward the barn.
Chickens were making the barnyard lots comfortable with their noise,some dairy cows of a breed alien to that range waited in a lot to beturned out to the day's grazing; a burro put its big-eared head roundthe corner of a shed, eying the strangers with the alert curiosity of anino of his native land. But the lady of the ranch was not in sight norsound.
Lambert drew up at the gate cutting the employees' quarters from thebarnyard, and sat looking things over. Here was a peace and security, anatmosphere of contentment and comfort, entirely lacking in thesurroundings of the house. The buildings were all of far better classthan were to be found on the ranches of that country; even the bunkhousea house, in fact, and not a shed-roofed shack.
"I wonder where she's at?" said Taterleg, leaning and peering. "I don'tsee her around here nowheres."
"I'll go down to the bunkhouse and see if there's anybody around,"Lambert said, for he had a notion, somehow, that he ought to meet her onfoot.
Taterleg remained at the gate, because he looked better on a horse thanoff, and he was not wanting in that vain streak which any man with abackbone and marrow in him possesses. He wanted to appear at his bestwhen the boss of that high-class outfit laid her eyes on him for thefirst time; and if he had hopes that she might succumb to his charms,they were no more extravagant than most men's are under similarconditions.
Off to one side of a long barn Lambert saw her as he opened the gate.She was trying to coax a young calf to drink out of a bucket that an oldnegro held under its nose. Perhaps his heart climbed a little, and hiseyes grew hot with a sudden surge of blood, after the way of youth, ashe went forward.
He could not see her face fully, for she was bending over the calf, andthe broad brim of her hat interposed. She looked up at the sound of hisapproach, a startled expression in her frank, gray eyes. Handsome, intruth, she was, in her riding habit of brown duck, her heavy sombrero,her strong, high boots. Her hair was the color of old honeycomb, herface browned by sun and wind.
She was a maid to gladden a man's heart, with the morning sun upon her,the strength of her great courage in her clear eyes; a girl of breeding,as one could see by her proud carriage.
But she was _not_ the girl whose handkerchief he had won in his recklessrace with the train!