Chapter XXVI
_Idle Noon_
The occasional raw winds of spring softened to the warm calm of summer.The horses had shed their winter coats, and grew sleek and fat on thelush grasses of the mesa. The mesa stream cleared from a ropy red to asparkling thread of silver banked with vivid green. If infrequentthunderstorms left a haze in the canons, it soon vanished in the lightair.
Bronson found it difficult to keep Dorothy from over-exerting herself.They arose at daybreak and went to bed at dusk, save when Lorry came foran after-dinner chat or when he prevailed upon Dorothy to play for themin his cabin. On such occasions she would entertain them with oldmelodies played softly as they smoked and listened, the lamp unlightedand the door wide open to the stars.
One evening, when Dorothy had ceased to play for them, Lorry mentionedthat he was to leave on the following day for an indefinite time. Therehad been some trouble about a new outfit that was grazing cattle far tothe south. Shoop had already sent word to the foreman, who had ignoredthe message. Lorry had been deputized to see the man and have anunderstanding with him. The complaint had been brought to Shoop by oneof the Apache police that some cowboys had been grazing stock andkilling game on the Indian reservation.
Dorothy realized that Lorry might be away for some time. She would misshim. And that night she asked her father if she might not invite a girlfriend up for the summer. They were established. And Dorothy was muchstronger and able to attend to the housekeeping. Bronson was quitewilling. He realized that he was busy most of the time, writing. He wasnot much of a companion except at the table. So Dorothy wrote to herfriend, who was in Los Angeles and had already planned to drive Eastwhen the roads became passable.
Lorry was roping the packs next morning when Dorothy appeared in her newsilver-gray corduroy riding-habit--a surprise that she had kept for anoccasion. She was proud of the well-tailored coat and breeches, thesnug-fitting black boots, and the small, new Stetson. Her gray silkwaist was brightened by a narrow four-in-hand of rich blue, and her tinygauntlets of soft gray buckskin were stitched with blue silk.
She looked like some slender, young exquisite who had stepped from thestage of an old play as she stood smoothing the fingers of her glovesand smiling across at Lorry. He said nothing, but stared at her. She wasdisappointed. She wanted him to tell her that he liked her new things,she had spent so much time and thought on them. But there he stood, thepack-rope slack in his hand, staring stupidly.
She nodded, and waved her hand.
"It's me," she called. "Good-morning!"
Lorry managed to stammer a greeting. He felt as though she were somestrange person that looked like Dorothy, but like a new Dorothy of suchexquisite attitude and grace and so altogether charming that he could donothing but wonder how the transformation had come about. He had alwaysthought her pretty. But now she was more than that. She was alluring;she was the girl he loved from the brim of her gray Stetson to the toeof her tiny boot.
"Would you catch my pony for me?"
Lorry flushed. Of course she wanted Chinook. He swung up on Gray Leg andspurred across the mesa. His heart was pounding hard. He rode with adash and a swing as he rounded up the ponies. As he caught up her horsehe happened to think of his own faded shirt and overalls. He was wearingthe essentially proper clothing for his work. For the first time herealized the potency of carefully chosen attire. As he rode back withthe pastured pony trailing behind him, he felt peculiarly ashamed ofhimself for feeling ashamed of his clothing. Silently he saddledChinook, accepted her thanks silently, and strode to his cabin. When hereappeared he was wearing a new shirt, his blue silk bandanna, and hissilver-studded chaps. He would cache those chaps at his first camp out,and get them when he returned.
Bronson came to the doorway.
Dorothy put her finger to her lips. "Lorry is stunned, I think. Do Ilook as spiff as all that?"
"Like a slim young cavalier; very dashing and wonderful, Peter Pan."
"Not a bit like Dorothy?"
"Well, the least bit; but more like Peter Pan."
"I was getting tired of being just Dorothy. That was all very well whenI wasn't able to ride and camp and do all sorts of adventures.
"And that isn't all," she continued. "I weigh twelve pounds more than Idid last summer. Mr. Shoop weighed me on the store scales. I wanted toweigh him. He made an awful pun, but he wouldn't budge."
Bronson nodded. "I wouldn't ride farther than the Big Spring, Peter.It's getting hot now."
"All right, daddy. I wish that horrid old story was finished. You neverride with me."
"You'll have some one to ride with you when Alice comes."
"Yes; but Alice is only a girl."
Bronson laughed, and she scolded him with her eyes. Just then Lorryappeared.
Bronson stooped and kissed her. "And don't ride too far," he cautioned.
Lorry drove the pack-animals toward Bronson's cabin. He dismounted totighten the cinch on Chinook's saddle.
The little cavalcade moved out across the mesa. Dorothy rode behind thepack-animals, who knew their work too well to need a lead-rope. It was_her_ adventure. At the Big Spring, she would graciously allow Lorry totake charge of the expedition.
Lorry, riding behind her, turned as they entered the forest, and wavedfarewell to Bronson.
To ride the high trails of the Arizona hills is in itself anunadulterated joy. To ride these wooded uplands, eight thousand feetabove the world, with a sprightly Peter Pan clad in silver-graycorduroys and chatting happily, is an enchantment. In suchcompanionship, when the morning sunlight dapples the dun forest carpetwith pools of gold, when vista after vista unfolds beneath the higharches of the rusty-brown giants of the woodlands; when somewhere abovethere is the open sky and the marching sun, the twilight underworld ofthe green-roofed caverns is a magic land.
The ponies plodded slowly upward, to turn and plod up the next angle ofthe trail, without loitering and without haste. When Dorothy checked herpony to gaze at some new vista, the pack-animals rested, waiting for theword to go on again. Lorry, awakened to a new charm in Dorothy, rode ina silence that needed no interpreter.
At a bend in the trail, Dorothy reined up. "Oh, I just noticed! You arewearing your chaps this morning."
Lorry flushed, and turned to tie a saddle-string that was already quitesecure.
Dorothy nodded to herself and spoke to the horses. They strained on up asteeper pitch, pausing occasionally to rest.
Lorry seemed to have regained his old manner. Her mention of the chapshad wakened him to everyday affairs. After all, she was only a girl; notyet eighteen, her father had said. "Just a kid," Lorry had thought; "butmighty pretty in those city clothes." He imagined that some women he hadseen would look like heck in such a riding-coat and breeches. ButDorothy looked like a kind of stylish boy-girl, slim and yet not quiteas slender as she had appeared in her ordinary clothes. Lorry could nothelp associating her appearance with a thoroughbred he had once seen; adark-bay colt, satin smooth and as graceful as a flame. He had all butworshiped that horse. Even as he knew horses, through that colt he hadseen perfection; his ideal of something beautiful beyond words.
From his pondering, Lorry arrived at a conclusion having nothing to dowith ideals. He would buy a new suit of clothes the first time he wentto Phoenix. It would be a trim suit of corduroy and a dark-green flannelshirt, like the suit and shirt worn by Lundy, the forestry expert.
At the base of a great gray shoulder of granite, the Big Spring spreadin its natural rocky bowl which grew shallower toward the edges. Belowthe spring in the black mud softened by the overflow were the tracks ofwild turkey and the occasional print of a lynx pad. The bush had beencleared from around the spring, and the ashes of an old camp-fire markedthe spot where Lorry had often "bushed over-night" on his way to thecabin.
Lorry dismounted and tied the pack-horses. He explained that they werestill a little too close to home to be trusted untied.
Dorothy decided that she was hungry, although they had been but
twohours on the trail. Could they have a real camp-fire and make coffee?
"Yes, ma'am; right quick."
"Lorry, don't say 'yes, ma'am.' I--it's nice of you, but just say'Dorothy.'"
"Yes, ma'am."
Dorothy's brown eyes twinkled.
Lorry gazed at her, wondering why she smiled.
"Yes, ma'am," she said stiffly, as though to a superior whom she feared.
Lorry grinned. She was always doing something sprightly, either makinghim laugh or laughing at him, talking to the horses, planning somelittle surprise for their occasional dinners in the Bronson cabin,quoting some fragment of poetry from an outland song,--she called thesesongs "outlandish," and had explained her delight in teasing her fatherwith "outlandish" adjectives; whistling in answer to the birds, andamusing herself and her "men-folks" in a thousand ways as spontaneous asthey were delightful.
With an armful of firewood, Lorry returned to the spring. The poniesnodded in the heat of noon. Dorothy, spreading their modest luncheon ona bright new Navajo blanket, seemed daintier than ever against thebackground of the forest. They made coffee and ate the sandwiches shehad prepared. After luncheon Lorry smoked, leaning back against thegranite rock, his hat off, and his legs crossed in lazy content.
"If it could only be like this forever," sighed Dorothy.
Lorry promptly shook his head. "We'd get hungry after a spell."
"Men are always hungry. And you've just eaten."
"But I could listen to a poem," he said, and he winked at a tree-trunk.
"It's really too warm even to speak of 'The Little Fires,' isn't it? Oh,I know! Do you remember the camp we made?"
"Where?"
"Oh, silly!"
"Well, I ain't had time to remember this one yet--and this is the firstfor us."
"Lorry, you're awfully practical."
"I got to be."
"And I don't believe you know a poem when you see one."
"I reckon you're right. But I can tell one when I hear it."
"Very well, then. Shut your eyes tight and listen:--
"'Do you remember the camp we made as we nooned on the mesa floor, Where the grass rolled down like a running sea in the wind-- and the world our own?You laughed as you sat in the cedar shade and said 't was the ocean shore Of an island lost in a wizardry of dreams, for ourselves alone.
"'Our ponies grazed in the idle noon, unsaddled, at ease, and slow; The ranges dim were a faeryland; blue hills in a haze of gray.Hands clasped on knee, you hummed a tune, a melody light and low; And do you remember the venture planned in jest--for your heart was gay?'"
Dorothy paused. "You may open your eyes. That's all."
"Well, it's noon," said Lorry, "and there are the ponies, and the hillsare over there. Won't you say the rest of it?"
"Oh, the rest of it is about a venture planned that never came true. Itcouldn't, even in a poem. But I'll tell you about it some day."
"I could listen right now."
Dorothy shook her head. "I am afraid it would spoil our real adventure.But if I were a boy--wouldn't it be fun! We would ride and camp in thehills at night and find all the little fires along the trail--"
"We'd make our own," said Lorry.
"Of course, Mr. Practical Man."
"Well, I can't help bein' like I am. But sometimes I get lazy and sitand look at the hills and the canons and mesas down below, and wonderwhat's the good of hustlin'. But somehow I got to quit loafin' after aspell--and go right to hustlin' again. It's a sure good way to getrested up; just to sit down and forget everything but the big worldrollin' down to the edge of nothin'. It makes a fella's kickin' andcomplainin' look kind of small and ornery."
"I never heard you complain, Lorry."
"Huh! You ain't been along with me when I been right up against it andmebby had to sweat my way out of some darned box canon or make a ridethrough some down timber at night. I've said some lovely things themtimes."
"Oh, I get cross. But, then, I'm a girl. Men shouldn't get cross."
"I reckon you're right. The sun's comin' through that pine there.Gettin' too hot?"
"No, I love it. But I must go. I'll just ride down to the cabin andunsaddle Chinook and say 'Hello' to father--and that's the end of ouradventure."
"Won't those city folks be comin' in soon?"
"Yes. And Alice Weston is lovely. I know you'll like her."
"Alice who, did you say?"
"Weston. Alice and her mother are touring overland from Los Angeles. Iknow you will admire Alice."
"Mebby. If she's as pretty as you."
"Oh, fudge! You like my new suit. And Alice isn't like me at all. She isnearly as tall as you, and big and strong and really pretty. Bud Shooptold me I wasn't bigger than a minute."
"A minute is a whole lot sometimes," said Lorry.
"You're not so practical as you were, are you?"
"More. I meant that."
Dorothy rose and began to roll the Navajo blanket.
Lorry stepped up and took it from her. "Roll it long and let it hangdown. Then it won't bother you gettin' on or off your horse. That's theway the Indians roll 'em."
He jerked the tie-strings tight. "Well, I reckon I'll be goin'," hesaid, holding out his hand.
"Good-bye, ranger man."
"Good-bye, Dorothy."
Her slender hand was warm in his. She looked up at him, smiling. He hadnever looked at her that way before. She hoped so much that he would saynothing to spoil the happiness of their idle noon.
"Lorry, we're great friends, aren't we?"
"You bet. And I'd do most anything to make you happy."
"But you don't have to do anything to make me happy. I _am_ happy.Aren't you?"
"I aim to be. But what makes you ask?"
"Oh, you looked so solemn a minute ago. We'll be just friends always,won't we?"
"Just friends," he echoed, "always."
Her brown eyes grew big as he stooped and kissed her. She had notexpected that he would do that.
"Oh, I thought you liked me!" she said, clasping her hands.
Lorry bit his lips, and the hot flush died from his face.
"But I didn't know that you cared--like that! I really don't mindbecause you kissed me good-bye--if it was just good-bye and nothingelse." And she smiled a little timidly.
"I--I reckon I was wrong," he said, "for I was tryin' not to kiss you.If you say the word, I'll ride back with you and tell your father. Iain't ashamed of it--only if you say it was wrong."
Dorothy had recovered herself. A twinkle of fun danced in her eyes. "Ican't scold you now. You're going away. But when you get back--" And sheshook her finger at him and tried to look very grave, which made himsmile.
"Then I'll keep right on ridin' south," he said.
"But you'd get lonesome and come back to your hills. I know! And it'sawfully hot in the desert."
"Would you be wantin' me to come back?"
"Of course. Father would miss you."
They made coffee and ate the sandwiches she hadprepared] "And that would make you unhappy--him bein' lonesome, so Ireckon I'll come back."
"I shall be very busy entertaining my guests," she told him with acharming tilt of her chin. And she straightway swung to the saddle.
Lorry started the pack-horses up the hill and mounted Gray Leg. She satwatching him as he rode sideways gazing back at her.
As he turned to follow the pack-horses up the next ascent she called tohim:--
"Perhaps I won't scold you when you come back."
He laughed, and flung up his arm in farewell. Dorothy reined Chinookround, and rode slowly down through the silent woodlands.
Her father came out and took her horse. She told him of their mostwonderful camp at the Big Spring. Bronson smiled.
"And Lorry kissed me good-bye," she concluded. "Wasn't it silly of him?"
Bronson glanced at her quickly. "Do you really care for Lorry, PeterPan?"
"Heaps! He's the nicest boy I
ever met. Why shouldn't I?"
"There's no reason in the world why you shouldn't. But I thought you twowere just friends."
"Why, that's what I said to Lorry. Don't look so mournful, daddy. Youdidn't think for a minute that I'd _marry_ him, did you?"
"Of course not. What would I do without you?"