_ CHAPTER XI. THE SHADOW OF THE PAST
The gleaming prongs of the fork were sharply withdrawn, and a pleasant voice greeted the girl.
"Guess that was a near thing," it said half-warningly.
Joan had started back, but at the sound of the voice she quickly recovered herself.
"It was," she agreed. Then as she looked into the smiling eyes of the stranger she began to laugh.
"Another inch an' more an' you'd sure have been all mussed up on that pile of barn litter," he went on, joining in her laugh.
"I s'pose I should," Joan nodded, her mirth promptly sobering to a broad smile.
She had almost forgotten her purpose so taken up was she in observing this "scallawag," as Mrs. Ransford had called him. Nor did it take her impressionable nature more than a second to decide that her worthy housekeeper was something in the nature of a thoroughly stupid woman. She liked the look of him. She liked his easy manner. More than all she liked the confident look of his dark eyes and his sunburnt face, so full of strength.
"Hayforks are cussed things anyway," the man said, flinging the implement aside as though it had offended him.
Joan watched him. She was wondering how best to approach the questions in her mind. Somehow they did not come as easily as she had anticipated. It was one thing to make up her mind beforehand, and another to put her decision into execution. He was certainly not the rough, uncouth man she had expected to find. True, his language was the language of the prairie, and his clothes, yes, they surely belonged to his surroundings, but there was none of the uncleanness about them she had anticipated.
It was his general manner, however, that affected her chiefly. How tall and strong he was, and the wonderful sunburn on his clean-cut face and massive arms! Then he had such an air of reserve. No, it was not easy.
Finally, she decided to temporize, and wait for an opening. And in that she knew in her heart she was yielding to weakness.
"My housekeeper tells me it was you who handed the farm over to her?" she said interrogatively.
The man's eyes began to twinkle again.
"Was that your--housekeeper?" he inquired.
"Yes--Mrs. Ransford."
Joan felt even less at her ease confronted by those twinkling eyes.
"She's a--bright woman."
The man casually picked up a straw and began to chew it.
Joan saw that he was smiling broadly, and resented it. So she threw all the dignity she could summon into her next question.
"Then you must be Mr. Moreton Kenyon!" she said.
The man shook his head.
"Wrong. That's the 'Padre,'" he announced curtly.
Joan forgot her resentment in her surprise.
"The 'Padre'! Why, I thought Mr. Kenyon was a farmer!"
The man nodded.
"So he is. You see folks call him Padre because he's a real good feller," he explained. Then he added: "He's got white hair, too. A whole heap of it. That sort o' clinched it."
The dark eyes had become quite serious again. There was even a tender light in them as he searched the girl's fair face. He was wondering what was yet to come. He was wondering how this interview was to bear on the future. In spite of his easy manner he dreaded lest the threats of Mrs. Ransford were about to be put into execution.
Joan accepted his explanation.
"I see," she said. Then, after a pause: "Then who are you?"
"Me? Oh, I'm 'Buck,'" he responded, with a short laugh.
"Buck--who?"
"Jest plain 'Buck.'" Again came that short laugh.
"Mr. Kenyon's son?"
The man shook his head, and Joan tried again.
"His nephew?"
Again came that definite shake. Joan persisted, but with growing impatience.
"Perhaps you're--his partner?" she said, feeling that if he again shook his head she must inevitably shake him.
But she was spared a further trial. Buck had been quick to realize her disappointment. Nor had he any desire to inspire her anger. On the contrary, his one thought was to please and help her.
"You see we're not related. Ther's nuthin' between us but that he's jest my great big friend," he explained.
His reward came promptly in the girl's sunny smile. And the sight of it quickened his pulses and set him longing to hold her again in his arms as he had done only yesterday. Somehow she had taken a place in his thoughts which left him feeling very helpless. He never remembered feeling helpless before. It was as though her coming into his life had robbed him of all his confidence. Yesterday he had found a woman almost in rags. Yesterday she was in trouble, and it had seemed the simplest thing in the world for him to take her in his arms and carry her to the home he knew to be hers. Now--now, all that confidence was gone. Now an indefinable barrier, but none the less real, had been raised between them. It was a barrier he felt powerless to break down. This beautiful girl, with her deep violet eyes and wonderful red-gold hair, clad in her trim costume of lawn and serge, seemed to him like a creature from an undreamed-of world, and as remote from him as if thousands of miles separated them. He sighed as Joan went on with her examination--
"I suppose you have come to fetch some of your big friend's belongings?" she said pleasantly.
For answer Buck suddenly flung out a protecting arm.
"Say, you're sure getting mussed with that dirty litter," he said almost reproachfully. "See, your fixin's are right agin it. Say----"
Joan laughed outright at his look of profound concern.
"That doesn't matter a bit," she exclaimed. "I must get used to being 'mussed-up.' You see, I'm a farmer--now."
The other's concern promptly vanished. He loved to hear her laugh.
"You never farmed any?" he asked.
"Never." Joan shook her head in mock seriousness. "Isn't it desperate of me? No, I'm straight from a city."
Buck withdrew his gaze from her face and glanced out at the hills. But it was only for a moment. His eyes came back as though drawn by a magnet.
"Guess you'll likely find it dull here--after a city," he said at last. "Y' see, it's a heap quiet. It ain't quiet to me, but then I've never been to a city--unless you call Leeson Butte a city. Some folks feel lonesome among these big hills."
"I don't think I shall feel lonesome," Joan said quickly. "The peace and quiet of this big world is all I ask. I left the city to get away from--oh, from the bustle of it all! Yes, I want the rest and quiet of these hills more than anything else in the world."
The passionate longing in her words left Buck wondering. But he nodded sympathetically.
"I'd say you'd get it right here," he declared. Then he turned toward the great hills, and a subtle change seemed to come over his whole manner. His dark eyes wore a deep, far-away look in which shone a wonderfully tender affection. It was the face of a man who, perhaps for the first time, realizes the extent and depth of his love for the homeland which is his.
"It's big--big," he went on, half to himself. "It's so big it sometimes makes me wonder. Look at 'em," he cried, pointing out at the purpling distance, "rising step after step till it don't seem they can ever git bigger. An' between each step there's a sort of world different from any other. Each one's hidden all up, so pryin' eyes can't see into 'em. There's life in those worlds, all sorts of life. An' it's jest fightin', lovin', dyin', eatin', sleepin', same as everywhere else. There's a big story in 'em somewhere--a great big story. An' it's all about the game of life goin' on in there, jest the same as it does here, an' anywher'. Yes, it's a big story and hard to read for most of us. Guess we don't ever finish readin' it, anyway--until we die. Don't guess they intended us to. Don't guess it would be good for us to read it easy."
He turned slowly from the scene that meant so much to him, and smiled into Joan's astonished eyes.
"An' you're goin' to git busy--readin' that story?" he asked.
The startled girl found herself answering almost before she was aware of it.
"I--I hope to," she said simply.
Then she suddenly realized her own smallness. She felt almost overpowered with the bigness of what the man's words had shown her. It was wonderful to her the thought of this--this "scallawag." The word flashed through her mind, and with it came an even fuller realization of Mrs. Ransford's stupidity. The man's thought was the poet's insight into Nature's wonderlands. He was speaking of that great mountain world as though it were a religion to him, as if it represented some treasured poetic ideal, or some lifelong, priceless friendship.
She saw his answering nod of sympathy, and sighed her relief. Just for one moment she had been afraid. She had been afraid of some sign of pity, even contempt. She felt her own weakness without that. Now she was glad, and went on with more confidence.
"I'm going to start from the very beginning," she said, with something akin to enthusiasm. "I'm going to start here--right here, on my very own farm. Surely the rudiments must lie here--the rudiments that must be mastered before the greater task of reading that story is begun." She turned toward the blue hills, where the summer clouds were wrapped about the glistening snowcaps. "Yes," she cried, clasping her hands enthusiastically, "I want to learn it all--all." Suddenly she turned back and looked at him with a wonderful, smiling simplicity. "Will you help me?" she said eagerly. "Perhaps--in odd moments? Will you help me with those--lessons?"
Buck's breath came quickly, and his simple heart was set thumping in his bosom. But his face was serious, and his eyes quite calm as he nodded.
"It'll be dead easy for you to learn," he said, a new deep note sounding in his voice. "You'll learn anything I know, an' much more, in no time. You can't help but learn. You'll be quicker to understand, quicker to feel all those things. Y' see I've got no sort of cleverness--nor nuthin'. I jest look around an' see things--an' then, then I think I know." He laughed quietly at his own conceit. "Oh, yes! sometimes I guess I know it all. An' then I get sorry for folks that don't, an' I jest wonder how it comes everybody don't understand--same as me. Then something happens."
"Yes, yes."
Joan was so eager she felt she could not wait for the pause that followed. Buck laughed.
"Something happens, same as it did yesterday," he went on. "Oh, it's big--it sure is!" he added. And he turned again to his contemplation of the hills.
But Joan promptly recalled his wandering attention.
"You mean--the storm?" she demanded.
Buck nodded.
"That--an' the other."
"What--other?"
"The washout," he said.
Then, as he saw the look of perplexity in the wide violet eyes, he went on to explain--
"You ain't heard? Why, there was a washout on Devil's Hill, where for nigh a year they bin lookin' for gold. Y' see they knew the gold was there, but couldn't jest locate it. For months an' months they ain't seen a sign o' color. They bin right down to 'hard pan.' They wer' jest starvin' their lives clear out. But they'd sank the'r pile in that hill, an' couldn't bring 'emselves to quit. Then along comes the storm, an' right wher' they're working it washes a great lump o' the hill down. Hundreds o' thousands o' tons of rock an' stuff it would have needed a train load of dynamite to shift."
"Yes, yes." Joan's eagerness brought her a step nearer to him. "And they found----"
"Gold!" Buck laughed. "Lumps of it."
"Gold--in lumps!" The girl's eyes widened with an excitement which the discovery of the precious metal ever inspires.
The man watched her thoughtfully.
"Why aren't you there?" Joan demanded suddenly.
"Can't jest say." Buck shrugged. "Maybe it's because they bin lookin' fer gold, an'--wal, I haven't."
"Gold--in lumps!" Again came the girl's amazed exclamation, and Buck smiled at her enthusiasm.
"Sure. An' they kind o' blame you for it. They sort o' fancy you brought 'em their luck. Y' see it came when you got around their hut. They say ther' wasn't no luck to the place till you brought it. An' now----"
Joan's eyes shone.
"Oh, I'm so glad. I'm so glad I've brought them----"
But her expression of joy was never completed. She broke off with a sharp ejaculation, and the color died out of her cheeks, leaving her so ghastly pale that the man thought she was about to faint. She staggered back and leant for support against the wall of the barn, and Buck sprang to her side. In a moment, however, she stood up and imperiously waved him aside.
There was no mistaking the movement. Her whole manner seemed to have frozen up. The frank girlishness had died as completely as though it had never been, and the man stood abashed, and at a loss for understanding.
Now he saw before him a woman still beautiful, but a woman whose eyes had lost every vestige of that happy light. Despair was written in every feature, despair and utter hopelessness. Her mouth, that beautiful mouth so rich and delicate, was now tight shut as of one in great suffering, and deep, hard lines had suddenly gathered about the corners of it. The change smote him to the heart, but left him utterly helpless.
Realization had come. Joan had suddenly remembered all that lay behind her--all that had driven her to seek the remoteness of the wild Western world. She had sought to flee from the fate which her Aunt Mercy had told her was hers, and now she knew that she might as well try to flee from her own shadow.
Oh, the horror of it all! These people believed that she had brought them their luck.
She knew that she had. What was the disaster that must follow? What lives must go down before the sword a terrible Fate had placed in her hand? For the moment panic held her in its grip. For a moment it seemed that death alone could save her from the dread consequences of the curse that was upon her. It was cruel, cruel--the desolation, the hopelessness of it all. And in her sudden anguish she prayed that death might be visited upon her.
But even amidst the horror of her realization the influence of the man's presence was at work. She knew he was there a witness to the terror she could not hide, and so she strove for recovery.
Then she heard him speak, and at the sound of his quiet tone her nerves eased and she grew calmer.
"I don't guess you recovered from the storm. I'd sure say you need rest," Buck said in his gentle, solicitous fashion. And in her heart Joan thanked him for the encouragement his words gave her. He had asked no questions. He had expressed no astonishment, and yet she knew he must have realized that her trouble was no physical ailment.
"Yes," she said, jumping at the opening he had given her, "I'm tired. I'll--I'll go back to the house."
Buck nodded, disguising his anxiety beneath a calm that seemed so natural to him.
"Jest get back an' rest. You needn't worry any 'bout the hosses, an' cows, an' things. I'm fixin' them for the night, an' I'll be right along in the morning to do the chores. Y' see I know this farm, an' all that needs doin'. Guess I was raised on it," he added, with a smile, "so the work's sort o' second nature to me."
Joan's chance had come, but she passed it by. She knew she ought to have refused his help. She ought to have, as Mrs. Ransford had said, sent him about his business. But she did nothing of the sort. She accepted. She did more. She held out her hand to him, and let him take it in both of his in a friendly pressure as she thanked him.
"I'm--I'm very grateful," she said weakly. And the man flushed under his sunburn, while his temples hammered as the hot young blood mounted to his brain.
A moment later Buck stood staring at the angle of the barn round which Joan had just vanished. He was half-dazed, and the only thing that seemed absolutely real to him was the gentle pressure of her hand as it had rested in his. He could feel it still; he could feel every pressure of the soft, warm flesh where it had lain on his hard palms. And all the time he stood there his whole body thrilled with an emotion that was almost painful.
At last he stirred. He stooped and picked up the discarded fork. He had no definite purpose. He was scarcely aware of his action. He held it for a moment poised in the air. Then slowly he let the prongs of it rest on the ground, and, leaning his chin on his hands clasped about the haft, stared out at the hills and gave himself up to such a dream as never before had entered his life.
The sun was dipping behind the snowcaps, and for half an hour the work he had voluntarily undertaken remained untouched.
How much longer he would have remained lost in his wonderful dreaming it would have been impossible to tell. But he was ruthlessly awakened, and all his youthful ardor received a cold douche as the evening quiet was suddenly broken by the harsh voices of the crowd of gold-seekers, whom he suddenly beheld approaching the farm along the trail. _