The long shadow, p.12
The Long Shadow, page 12
CHAPTER XII.
_Dilly Hires a Cook._
It is rather distressful when one cannot recount all sorts of excitingthings as nicely fitted together as if they had been carefully plannedand rehearsed beforehand. It would have been extremely gratifying andromantic if Charming Billy Boyle had dropped everything in the line ofwork and had ridden indefatigably the trail which led to Bridger's;it would have been exciting if he had sought out the Pilgrim andprecipitated trouble and flying lead. But Billy, though he might haveenjoyed it, did none of those things. He rode straight to the ranchwith Dill--rather silent, to be sure, but bearing none of the marksof a lovelorn young man--drank three cups of strong coffee with fourheaping teaspoonfuls of sugar to each cup, pulled off his boots, laydown upon the most convenient bed and slept until noon. When the smellof dinner assailed his nostrils he sat up yawning and a good dealtousled, drew on his boots and made him a cigarette. After that he atehis dinner with relish, saddled and rode away to where the round-upwas camped, his manner utterly practical and lacking the faintesttinge of romance. As to his thoughts--he kept them jealously tohimself.
He did not even glimpse Miss Bridger for three months or more. He wasfull of the affairs of the Double-Crank; riding in great haste to theranch or to town, hurrying back to the round-up and working much ashe used to work, except that now he gave commands instead of receivingthem. For they were short-handed that summer and, as he explained toDill, he couldn't afford to ride around and look as important as hefelt.
"Yuh wait, Dilly, till we get things running the way I want 'em,"he encouraged on one of his brief calls at the ranch. "I was kindasurprised to find things wasn't going as smooth as I used to think;when yuh haven't got the whole responsibility on your own shoulders,yuh don't realize what a lot of things need to be done. There's themcorrals, for instance: I helped mend and fix and toggle 'em, butit never struck me how rotten they are till I looked 'em over thisspring. There's about a million things to do before snow flies, or wewon't be able to start out fresh in the spring with everything runningsmooth. And if I was you, Dilly, I'd go on a still hunt for anothercook here at the ranch. This coffee's something fierce. I had mydoubts about Sandy when we hired him. He always did look to me like hewas built for herding sheep more than he was for cooking." This was inAugust.
"I have been thinking seriously of getting some one else in hisplace," Dill answered, in his quiet way. "There isn't very much to dohere; if some one came who would take an interest and cook just whatwe wanted--I will own I have no taste for that peculiar mixture whichSandy calls 'Mulligan,' and I have frequently told him so. Yet heinsists upon serving it twice a day. He says it uses up the scraps;but since it is never eaten, I cannot see wherein lies the economy."
"Well, I'd can him and hunt up a fresh one," Billy repeatedemphatically, looking with disapproval into his cup.
"I will say that I have already taken steps toward getting one on whomI believe I can depend," said Dill, and turned the subject.
That was the only warning Billy had of what was to come. Indeed, therewas nothing in the conversation to prepare him even in the slightestdegree for what happened when he galloped up to the corral late oneafternoon in October. It was the season of frosty mornings and oflanguorous, smoke-veiled afternoons, when summer has grown weary ofresistance and winter is growing bolder in his advances, and the twohave met in a passion-warmed embrace. Billy had ridden far withhis riders and the trailing wagons, in the zest of his youngresponsibility sweeping the range to its farthest boundary of riveror mountain. They were not through yet, but they had swung back withinriding distance of the home ranch and Billy had come in for nearly amonth's accumulation of mail and to see how Dill was getting on.
He was tired and dusty and hungry enough to eat the fringes off hischaps. He came to the ground without any spring to his muscles andwalked stiffly to the stable door, leading his horse by the bridlereins. He meant to turn him loose in the stable, which was likelyto be empty, and shut the door upon him until he himself had eatensomething. The door was open and he went in unthinkingly, seeingnothing in the gloom. It was his horse which snorted and settledback on the reins and otherwise professed his reluctance to enter theplace.
Charming Billy, as was consistent with his hunger and his wearinessand the general mood of him, "cussed" rather fluently and jerked thehorse forward a step or two before he saw some one poised hesitatinglyupon the manger in the nearest stall.
"I guess he's afraid of _me_," ventured a voice that he felt to histoes. "I was hunting eggs. They lay them always in the awkwardestplaces to get at." She scrambled down and came toward him, bareheaded,with the sleeves of her blue-and-white striped dress rolled to herelbows--Flora Bridger, if you please.
Billy stood still and stared, trying to make the reality of herpresence seem reasonable; and he failed utterly. His most coherentthought at that moment was a shamed remembrance of the way he hadsworn at his horse.
Miss Bridger stood aside from the wild-eyed animal and smiled upon hismaster. "In the language of the range, 'come alive,' Mr. Boyle," shetold him. "Say how-de-do and be nice about it, or I'll see thatyour coffee is muddy and your bread burned and your steak absolutelyimpregnable; because I'm here to _stay_, mind you. Mama Joy and I havepossession of your kitchen, and so you'd better--"
"I'm just trying to let it soak into my brains," said Billy. "You'rejust about the last person on earth I'd expect to see here, huntingeggs like you had a right--"
"I _have_ a right," she asserted. "Your Dilly--he's a perfect love,and I told him so--said I was to make myself perfectly at home. So Ihave a perfect right to be here, and a perfect right to hunt eggs;and if I could make that sentence more 'perfect,' I would do it." Shetilted her head to one side and challenged a laugh with her eyes.
Charming Billy relaxed a bit, yanked the horse into a stall and tiedhim fast. "Yuh might tell me how it happened that you're here," hehinted, looking at her over the saddle. He had apparently forgottenthat he had intended leaving the horse saddled until he had restedand eaten--and truly it would be a shame to hurry from so unexpected atete-a-tete.
Miss Bridger pulled a spear of blue-joint hay from a crack in the walland began breaking it into tiny pieces. "It sounds funny, but Mr.Dill bought father out to get a cook. The way it was, father has beensimply crazy to try his luck up in Klondyke; it's just like him toget the fever after everybody else has had it and recovered. When thewhole country was wild to go he turned up his nose at the idea. Andnow, mind you, after one or two whom he knew came back with some gold,he must go and dig up a few million tons of it for himself! Your Dillyis rather bright, do you know? He met father and heard all about hiscomplaint--how he'd go to the Klondyke in a minute if he could onlyget the ranch and Mama Joy and me off his hands--so what does Dilly dobut buy the old ranch and hire Mama Joy and me to come here and keephouse! Father, I am ashamed to say, was _abjectly_ grateful to getrid of his incumbrances, and he--he hit the trail immediately." Shestopped and searched absently with her fingers for another spear ofhay.
"Do you know, Mr. Boyle, I think men are the most irresponsiblecreatures! A _woman_ wouldn't turn her family over to a neighbor andgo off like that for three or four years, just chasing a sunbeam.I--I'm horribly disappointed in father. A man has no right to a familywhen he puts everything else first in his mind. He'll be gone threeor four years, and will spend all he has, and we--can shift forourselves. He only left us a hundred dollars, to use in an emergency!He was afraid he might need the rest to buy out a claim or getmachinery or something. So if we don't like it here we'll have tostay, anyway. We--we're 'up against it,' as you fellows say."
"WE--WE'RE 'UP AGAINST IT,' AS YOU FELLOWS SAY."]
Charming Billy, fumbling the latigo absently, felt a suddenbelligerence toward her father. "He ought to have his head punchedgood and plenty!" he blurted sympathetically.
To his amazement Miss Bridger drew herself up and started for thedoor. "I'm very sorry you don't like the idea of us being here, Mr.Boyle," she replied coldly, "but we happen to _be_ here, and I'mafraid you'll just have to make the best of it!"
Billy was at that moment pulling off the saddle. By the time he hadcarried it from the stall, hung it upon its accustomed spike andhurried to the door, Miss Bridger was nowhere to be seen. He said"Hell!" under his breath, and took long steps to the house, butshe did not appear to be there. It was "Mama Joy," yellow-haired,extremely blue-eyed, and full-figured, who made his coffee and gavehim delicious things to eat--things which he failed properly toappreciate, because he ate with his ears perked to catch the faintestsound of another woman's steps and with his eyes turning constantlyfrom door to window. He did not even know half the time what MamaJoy was saying, or see her dimples when she smiled; and Mama Joy wasrather proud of her dimples and was not accustomed to having themoverlooked.
He was too proud to ask, at supper time, where Miss Bridger was. Shedid not choose to give him sight of her, and so he talked and talkedto Dill, and even to Mama Joy, hoping that Miss Bridger could hearhim and know that he wasn't worrying a darned bit. He did not considerthat he had said anything so terrible. What had she gone on like thatabout her father for, if she couldn't stand for any one siding in withher? Maybe he had put his sympathy a little too strong, but that isthe way men handle each other. She ought to know he wasn't sorry shewas there. Why, of _course_ she knew that! The girl wasn't a fool, andshe must know a fellow would be plumb tickled to have her around everyday. Well, anyway, he wasn't going to begin by letting her lead himaround by the nose, and he wasn't going to crumple down on his kneesand tell her to please walk all over him.
"Well, anyway," he summed up at bedtime with a somewhat doubtfulsatisfaction, "I guess she's kinda got over the notion that I'm soblame _comfortable_--like I was an old grandpa-setting-in-the-corner.She's _got_ to get over it, by thunder! I ain't got to that point yet;hell, no! I should say I hadn't!"
It is a fact that when he rode away just after sunrise next morning(he would have given much if duty and his pride had permitted him tolinger a while) no one could have accused him of being in any degree acomfortable young man. For his last sight of Miss Bridger had been theflutter of her when she disappeared through the stable door.
