CHAPTER VII
PRAIRIE BELL
When Juliet Bissell rode back to the Bar T ranch after her parting withLarkin at the fork of Grass Creek, she was a decidedly more thoughtful andsober young woman than she had been at the same hour the day previous.
Although blessed with an adoring father and a rather eccentric mother, shehad, for the last year, begun to feel the stirrings of a tiny discontent.
Her life was a good example of the familiar mistake made by many a wealthycattle-owner. Her parents, realizing their crudity and lack of education,had seen to it that she should be given all the advantages denied them,and had sent her East to Chicago for eight consecutive years.
During this time, while hating the noise and confinement of the city, shehad absorbed much of its glamour, and enjoyed its alluring pleasures witha keen appreciation. Music had been her chief study, and her very decidedtalent had opened a busy career for her had she chosen to follow it.
But Julie was true to her best instincts, and refused to consider such athing. Her father and mother had done all in their power for her, shereasoned, and therefore it was but fair that she should return to them andmake the closing years of their lives happy.
Though nothing had ever been said, the girl knew that when she had leftthe ranch house, even for a week's visit with a girl friend two hundredmiles away, the sun might as well have fallen from the heavens,considering the gloom that descended upon the Bar T.
It was this knowledge of their need for her that had brought her back tofulfill what she considered her greatest happiness and duty in life.
Now, a monkey cannot wear clothes, smoke cigarettes, perform beforeapplauding audiences and return to the jungle without a certain feeling ofhateful unfitness among his gibbering brethren.
No more could this wild, lovely creature of the plains become one of themost sought-after girls of Chicago's North Shore set, and return to thepainful prose of the Bar T ranch without paying the penalty.
With the glory of health and outdoor life, she had failed to realizethis, but since the sudden appearance of Bud Larkin she had done littleelse.
He had brought back to her a sudden powerful nostalgia for the life shehad once known. And had old Beef Bissell been aware of this nostalgia, hewould have realized for the first time that in his desire to give hisdaughter everything he had created a situation that was alreadyunfortunate and might, with very little prompting, be unhappy.
But this knowledge was not vouchsafed to him, and Julie certainly wouldnever make it plain.
The evening after Bud's departure, that same evening, in fact, when he wasfighting toward water with his flocks, the cattleman and his daughter satoutside on the little veranda that ran across the front of the ranchhouse.
"That feller Larkin," remarked Bissell, terminating a long pause. "Kind ofa dude or something back East, wasn't he?"
"That's what the punchers would call him, father," returned the girlgravely. "But he was never anything but a gentleman in his treatment ofme."
"I don't know what you mean exactly by that word 'gentleman,' Julie, but Iallow that no real man ever went into raisin' sheep."
"Perhaps not, dear," she said, taking his rough, ungainly hand in both ofhers, "but I think there is bound to be money in it. Mr. Larkin himselfsays that in the end the cattle will have to give way before the sheep."
"An' he thought he was tellin' you something new when he said it, too,didn't he? Well, I've knowed that fact for the last five years. That's themain reason I won't let his animals through my range. Once they get afoothold, there's no stoppin' 'em. Judas! I'm tired of fightin' forthings!"
"Poor father," and the girl's voice was full of tenderness. "You're notdiscouraged, are you, dear?"
"No, Prairie Bell, but I reckon I'm gettin' old, an' I can't get up thefight I used to. I thought I had my hands full with the rustlers, but nowwith the sheep comin'--well, between you and me, little girl, I wish I hadsomebody to stand up and take the licks."
"There's Mike; he certainly can give and take a few."
"Yes, of course I've got Mike, but, when you're all done, he's only aforeman, an' his interest don't go much beyond his seventy-five a monthan' grub. Yet--by George!" He sat suddenly erect and slapped his thighwith his disengaged hand.
"What is it?"
"Oh, nothin'." They talked on in the affectionate, intimate way that hadalways characterized their relations since Julie had been a girl just bigenough to listen to involved harangues about cattle without actually goingto sleep. In the course of an hour Bissell suddenly asked:
"Did you ever think of marryin', Prairie Bell?"
"If thinking ever helped any, I would have been a Mormon by this time."
"Well, you are growed up, ain't you?" and Bissell spoke in the wonderingtone of a man who has just realized a self-evident fact "Fancy my littlegirl old enough to marry! How old are you, anyhow? 'Bout eighteen?"
"Twenty-five, you dear, old goose. Eighteen! The idea."
"Well, twenty-five, then. Of course, Julie, when I die I will leave thisplace to you, and that's what made me think about your marryin'. I want agood, sharp man to fight fer my cows an' my range, a man that knows it andcould make a success of it, an' yet wouldn't care because it was in yourname."
"Would you mind if I loved him a little bit, too?" asked the girl, withelaborately playful sarcasm.
"Bless you, no. Love him all you want to, but I 'low you couldn't love aman very long who didn't have all them qualifications I mentioned. Ifigger love out somethin' like this. First there's a rockbed of ability,then a top soil of decency, an' out o' these two, admiration kind o' growslike corn. Of course you always grind up the corn and soak it withsentiment; then you've got mush. An' the trouble with most people is theyonly think of the mush an' forget the rock an' the top soil."
"Why, you old philosopher!" cried the girl, laughing and squeezing his bigshoulders. "You're awfully clever, really." Which remark brought aconfused but pleased blush to Bissell's hard face that had becomewonderfully soft and tender during this hour with his daughter.
"Now, see here," went on the girl severely, "I think there's somethingback of all this talk about marriage. What is it?"
Bissell looked at her, startled, not having expected to encounter feminineintuition.
"Nothin', only I wish you could marry somebody that'd look out fer you theway I mentioned. Then I could die happy, though I don't expect to be onthat list fer a long while."
"Anybody in mind?" asked Julie banteringly.
"Well, not exactly," hesitated her father, with another sharp glance. "ButI allow I could dig up one if I tried very hard."
"Go ahead and try."
"Well, now there's Billy Speaker over on the Circle Arrow, as gentle a manfor a blond as I ever see."
"I've only met him twice in my life," remarked the girl. "Try again."
"There's Red Tarken, foreman on the M Square. He'd be good to yuh, I know,and he's a hum-dinger about cows."
"I am glad he has one qualification aside from his red hair," put in Julieseriously. "However, I am afraid that as a husband Red would be about assteady as a bronco saddled for the first time after the winter feeding.He'd better have free range as long as he lives. Once more, father."
"Well, see here, Julie, it seems to me you could do a lot worse than takeour own Mike Stelton. I've never thought of it much before, but to-nightit sort of occurred to me an'--"
Juliet Bissell broke into an uncontrollable fit of laughter, at which herfather fixed her with a regard as wondering as it was hurt. His cherishedinspiration so tactfully approached had burst like a soap-bubble under thegale of Juliet's merriment.
"Bud was right, after all," said the girl, after her nervous outbreak. "Hetold me Mike had some silly hope or other, and I believe Stelton has givenyou absent treatment until you have made this suggestion. Father, he'sjust as preposterous as the others."
"I don't agree with you," contended Bissell stubbornly. "Mike is faithful,and has bee
n for years. He knows the ins and outs of the business, and iswilling to take the hard knocks that I'm getting tired of. Then there'sanother thing. I could be half-blind an' still see what Mike has beenwanting these last five years."
Juliet suddenly rose to her feet, all the laughter gone from her eyes andher heart. With a feeling of frightened helplessness she realized that herfather was serious.
"Are you taking Mike's part against me?" she asked calmly.
"Well, I still don't see why you couldn't marry him."
"You've forgotten the mush, father, but that isn't all. There's somethingdifferent about Mike lately, something I have never noticed before. Hiseye seems shifty; he avoids all the family. If I didn't know him so well,I should think he was a criminal. Leaving out the fact that I don't lovehim, and that the very thought of his ever touching me makes me shudder,this distrust of him would be enough to block any such arrangements.Why"--and her lip curled scornfully--"I would marry Bud Larkin a hundredtimes rather than Mike Stelton once."
"What!"
Bissell rose to his feet with the quiet, amazed exclamation. He couldhardly credit his ears.
"Marry that dirty sheepman?" he continued in a tense, even voice. "I'dlike to know what put that crazy notion in yore head. Don't tell me youare in love with that dude."
"No, I am not," answered the girl just as evenly, "but I may as well tellyou frankly, that he is the only man within a radius of three hundredmiles who has certain things I must have in a husband. I'm sorry if Idisplease you, father!" she cried, going to him affectionately, "but Icould never love any one not of our class."
That diplomatic "our" did not deceive Bissell. For the first time he sawthat the greatest treasure of his whole life had grown beyond him; thatthere were needs and ideals in her existence of which he had but thefaintest inkling, and that in her way she was as much of a "dude" as theman she had mentioned.
He was encountering the seemingly cruel fate of parents who glorify theirchildren by their own immolation, and who watch those same children passup and out of their humble range of vision and understanding nevermore toreturn. Henceforth he could never see his daughter without feeling his ownlack of polish.
Such a moment of realization is bitter on both sides, but especially forthe one who has given all and can receive less in return than he hadbefore the giving. The iron of this bitterness entered into Beef Bissell'ssoul as he stood there, silent, on the low, rickety veranda under thestarlight of the plains.
With the queer vagary of a mind at great tension, his senses becameparticularly acute for a single moment. He saw the silver-pierced vault ofthe sky, smelled the fragrance of the plains borne on the gentle wind, andheard the rustle of the dappled cottonwoods and the howling of the distantcoyotes.
Then he came back to the reality of the moment, and exhibited the simplegreatness that had always been his in dealings with his daughter. Heslipped his heavy arm across her shoulders and drew her to him.
"Never mind, Prairie Bell," he said gently. "You know best in everything.Do as your heart dictates." He sighed and added: "I wish I was your motherto-night."