CHAPTER XII
A NEIGHBORLY CALL
The mountains which had been brown and saffron when Jane Hunter came to take possession of her ranch grew tinted with green as grasses sprouted under the coaxing sun. Piñons were edged with lighter tints, contrasting sharply with the deep color of older growth. Service bushes turned cream color with bloom and sage put out new growth; calves, high-tailed and venturesome, frolicked between frequent meals from swollen udders, birds nested and shy mountain flowers completed their scant cycle.
No life remained arrested and with the rest the girl developed. She took on a more robust color, her eyes which had always been clear and cool, possessed a different look and a thin sprinkling of tiny freckles appeared across her nose. She had taken to the ways of the mountains easily. Her modish clothing was discarded and she wore brightly colored shirts, a brimmed hat, drab riding skirt and the smallest pair of boots that had ever been manufactured in that country.
Two-Bits was wide-eyed in his enthusiasm.
"My gosh, Reverend!" he whispered, "look at them boots! Ain't they th' grandest little things you ever seen?... Gosh, they're too little for any spurs she can buy, ain't they? Gosh ..."—in helpless admiration.
Two-Bits and the Reverend had something on. This was evident from the manner in which they kept apart from the others. Each evening they would sit on a wagon seat or perch on a corral or Azariah would stand near while his brother groomed his little horse, Nigger, and they would talk, low and confidently, the Reverend gesticulating and Two-Bits looking far away and talking laboriously as though he were memorizing something.
The homely fellow took several mysterious trips to town and once he borrowed ten dollars from Beck and offered a buckskin bridle as security, which the other waved away with affectionate curses.
Hepburn had been commissioned to talk with Cole, the nester, and determine his plans as they might affect the HC. This took him away from the ranch repeatedly ... so many times, in fact, that it gave Beck one more thing to wonder about. Also, there was a letter for Hepburn, arriving a day or two after his return with the stolen horses, which sent him suddenly to Ute Crossing; thereafter he went frequently.
There seemed no way around the potential difficulty which the nester presented and, as one of her last resorts, Jane sent Tom to the Crossing to look up the record of the filing himself and to confer with the one remaining attorney in the town. He announced his going and Two-Bits, hearing, asked him to bring back a package which would be waiting there. When Tom returned that night he handed the gawky lad a small parcel which he immediately stuffed into his shirt and carried to the supper table.
"Them your jooles?" Oliver asked.
"None of your gol-darned business!"
"Ah, come on, old timer, an' let us in on it," the other pleaded. "I'll bet it's a present for your best girl."
"If you got to know, it's corn plasters for th' corns on your brains, Jimmy," Two-Bits countered.
He hurried through his meal and from the table and, with the Reverend, walked down toward the creek where they went through their usual performance, this time, however, with less prompting from the clergyman. Then, brushing the dust from his shirt, adjusting his scarf, Two-Bits walked nervously toward the ranch house.
Jane answered his knock with a call to enter. He stepped in with the package in his hand, but as he removed his hat the parcel dropped to the floor and when he regained an erect position after recovering it his face was fiery red.
"What's your trouble tonight, Two-Bits?" Jane asked, approaching him.
"In," he began and stopped to clear his throat. He swallowed with great difficulty. "In—In recognition of your—your God—" He coughed and swallowed once more.
"What?"—in amazement.
"In recognition of your God—your God given beauty, an' estim—estimable qualifications—"
He ran a finger inside his collar and dropped his hat. Perspiration stood on his lip in beads and his dismayed eyes roved the room. He moved his feet nervously.
"In recognition of your God—" he began again, but broke short:
"Hell, ma'am," he exploded, "my brother taught me a fine speech—
"Here!"—holding the package toward her with an unsteady hand and a great relief coming into his eyes. "I found this in th' road an' thought mebby you might want 'em."
Controlling her desire to laugh at his confusion Jane took the package and turned it over in her hands.
"What is it, Two-Bits? Why do you bring it to me?"
"I can't use it—'em. I thought ... I ..." he began, backing rapidly toward the door, moving with accelerated speed as he put distance between them.
"Two-Bits, you wait!" she commanded. "I'm going to find out what this is before you go."
He looked about in a fresh agony of embarrassment but her order had rendered him unable to move. Jane broke the string, took off the wrapping and opened a paper box. Within reposed a pair of spurs, as small spurs as her boots were small boots. They were beautiful products of some mountain forge, one-piece steel, heavily engraved by hand, silver plated. Small silver chains and hand-tooled straps were attached and as she held them up the delicate rowels jingled like tiny bells.
"Two-Bits!" she cried. "Aren't they beautiful?"
"Yes, ma'am," he said, and made for the door again.
She caught him by the arm that time, else he would have fled, and she made him look at her.
"Two-Bits, you lied to me! You didn't find these on the road, now, did you?"
"Well, that is.... Not exactly, ma'am,"—weakly.
"Where did they come from?"
"A fella, he made 'em an' give 'em to me an' they was too small for me—"
"Don't you tell me another single lie! Where did you get them?"
"Well ... I had 'em made,"—swallowing again, and very weakly.
"Two-Bits!"—seizing his rough, cold hand while a suggestion of tears came into her eyes. "You had these made for me? Why, bless your heart, I've never had a finer gift before. And to think—
"You're a dear!"
"Oh, my gosh!" he whimpered, and despite her detaining hand, fled the disquieting presence.
Of all men in that country, Two-Bits was the only one who openly accepted Jane Hunter and his devotion was caused by an awed appreciation of her beauty. The others, even her own riders, remained stolidly skeptical of her ability to measure up to the task she had undertaken and when men talked of the business of the country they unconsciously spoke of the prestige of the HC as a thing of the past.
Hepburn had brought back some of her property that was being driven off but he had not halted attempts to make away with her horses and cattle. There were rumors, vague but persistent, of other depredations and those who best knew the ways of the cattle country awaited that time when the situation must reach a crisis, when Jane Hunter must be put to the ordeal that would test her mettle.
She was yet unconscious of much of this for her urge to make a place for herself centered on penetrating the callousness of the one man she wanted to impress most of all. He remained aloof, watching her either with that tantalizing amusement or a subtle challenge to win his open friendship. There were moments when, as on that night after their drive to Ute Crossing, she wanted to throw herself on him, to beg, to plead that he lower his reserve and give her a place ... a place in his heart.
But that, reason told her, would be the last thing to win him. She must trust to the force of her personality to drive her way into his life....
Occasionally he would talk, for she offered a sympathetic audience to the things he had to say but never did their conversation become intimate; the subjects he discussed were invariably abstract and impersonal. While listening she studied the man, striving to define that quality about him which lay behind his reserve and drew her on. She could not seize and analyze it.... He was, aside from obvious minor qualities, a closed book.
Still she saw him at night patrolling the cottonwoods before he slept!
She could not know what went on in the heart of that man, of the fight he waged with himself, of the struggle he made to stick to his creed: never to take a chance. He did not know that she was aware of those nightly vigils. The first had been on that night after he had played with her pride and her high spirits. Returned to the bunk house he had suddenly seen her not a smart, capable stranger but as a girl, alone, facing a new life, surrounded by strange people and unfriendly influences. He sensed a pity for her and walked back to look about the place and see that all was well, as he might have watched over a sleeping child.
And then, the day that the sorrel threw her, he had felt her body and the man in him had been stirred and when next he paced those shadows it was not as a protector of some defenseless life, but as one who quite tenderly lays siege to the heart of a woman.
He did not admit that even to himself. He reasoned that he was protecting her because she was a stranger in a strange land and that the impulse was only kindness. But his reason in that was a conscious lie for as he stood under the stars with the cool, quiet night all about him he could hear her voice in the murmur of the creek, hear her limbs rustling her skirts in the soft sigh of wind in the trees, could feel her presence there ... when he was stark alone....
And he fought it off, fought stubbornly, coldly because he did not know, he did not know love, did not know the ground into which he was being carried.
Women? He had had many but the experiences had been casual, mere surface rifflings, and he had never been stirred as this woman stirred him. It was new, entirely new, and Tom Beck feared that which he did not know.
He was accustomed to talk to his horses as men will who love them and while he rode the gulches alone he would in later days reason aloud with his own roan or the HC black or bay he used.
"Why, old stager, we can't take a chance like that!" he said time after time. "We've kept our heels out of trouble by playing a close game, not gettin' out on a limb, but up to now everything that come along has been boy's play ... compared to this.
"If an hombre took a chance with his love that'd be the limit, wouldn't it? He'd have his stack on the table, an' the deal wouldn't be more than started!"
He talked over the loves of other men with those horses, earnestly, soberly. He recalled the marriages he had known between men and women who were from the same stocks, who knew none but the same life; so many were failures! And this girl, this girl of whom he dreamed at night and thought by day, scarcely yet spoke his language!
But he could not argue away the disturbing impulse. He could cover it, hide it from others, hide it from himself at times, but drive it out? Never!
Tom's report to Jane after his trip to town offered no encouragement. The filing had been legally accomplished and its significance was further impressed on the girl when he said:
"It's a mighty popular subject in town, ma'am. Everybody's interested."
"I suppose they all think it will mean trouble for me?"
"Yes, an' they're likely to be right."
She shook her head sharply.
"We don't want trouble, but if it does come we must meet it half way!" She leaned forward determinedly and Beck stirred in his chair. It was a gesture of delight for those were almost his very words to Hepburn when they cleared their relationships of pretense; but he said only:
"That's the easiest way to take trouble on."
Just then Hepburn came in with his report on his visit to the Hole.
"The old fellow seems reasonable, Miss Hunter," he said ponderously. "He don't look like he's a permanent neighbor even if he has bought some cows from Webb, which I found out today. He's poor as a church mouse to begin with—"
"And buyin' more cattle?" put in Beck.
"Oh, they were old stock an' I guess Webb was glad to get rid of 'em," the foreman said with a wave of his hand, yet he did not return Beck's searching gaze.
"Cole told me he didn't have any intention of fencin' up the water so I guess there ain't anything to fret you, Miss Hunter. I sounded him out on buyin' but didn't get far. He's a shiftless old cuss, from th' look of things, so I don't anticipate any trouble at all. He may not even last the summer out."
Tom left and afterward Hepburn talked at length of the situation, minimizing the menace the others saw, urging Jane to put the matter out of her mind. But the girl was not satisfied and the next day, with Tom, rode off toward the Hole.
They made an early start, riding out of the ranch just as the sun topped the heights to the eastward. Dew hung heavily on the sage from which fresh, clean fragrance rose as their horses stirred the brush. Their shadows were thrown far in advance as they followed a narrow gulch and the sunlight was caught and concentrated and scattered again as the drops flew from leaf and twig.
The girl breathed deeply of the light, sweet air and looked at Beck with a little laugh as of relief.
"When I sit at that desk, I feel like a prosaic business woman whose interest is in ledgers," she said, "but when I ride in this country I feel like a character in some romantic story."
Tom scratched his chin thoughtfully.
"That's too bad, 'ma'am," he said.
"Which?"
"Both."
"I can see disadvantages to the first, but why the other?"
"I guess I ain't struck much with stories. Used to read 'em, used to get real interested in some but that was before I commenced to get interested in folks."
"Yes?" she encouraged after a moment.
"You see, I think the folks I see and hear and live with and get to know are a lot more interestin' than the folks somebody's thought up out of his head.
"A man in a book talks and acts like a man in a book an' nothing else. You never hear men talk out here in the bunk house or ridin' the country like a writer would make 'em talk on the page of a book; take my word for that....
"Folks are mighty interestin'. The best fun I get is watching folks, studying them. It's a lot more fun than reading about some man or woman you know ain't real, ma'am.
"Life is mighty interesting if you look at it right. If you try to glorify and lie about it you cheapen the whole works. It's either damned serious or a joke. There's no in between. I don't know which it is, yet, but I do know that most of the books I ever read was th' in-between kind, neither one thing nor the other.
"I've been around considerable among men but I never seen things happen in life like writers make things happen in books. Everything works out so lovely in books, folks never make mistakes in anything ... that is, the heroes don't. Why, love even works out right in books!"
He spoke the last in a lowered voice as if he talked of a sacred thing that had been mistreated. Unconsciously he had voiced the fear that had grown in his own soul and when he turned to look at her his eyes reflected a queer mental conflict, almost fright!
She caught something of his mood and waited a moment to summon the courage to ask very gently:
"And doesn't it ... doesn't love work out in life?"
He shook his head.
"Seldom, ma'am. In books folks gamble with it like it was ... why, ma'am, like their love was a white chip!"
Again he spoke as of a sacrilege and his earnestness, though he did not appear to be thinking of her, confused the girl. The wordless interval which followed was distressing to her so she said:
"And the other forms of expression? Music? Poetry? Painting?"
"You've got me on music," he confessed with a laugh. "I've heard greasers playin' fandangoes on busted old guitars that sounded a lot sweeter to me than any band I ever heard.
"As for poetry ... I don't know,"—shaking his head. "I read some; tried to understand it, but it seems all messed up with words as if poets liked to take the long, painful way of telling things.
"I expect poets want to tell something that's sort of ... delicate an' beautiful.... Now and then I've got a funny feel out of poetry, but it ain't anything to me like, say, seeing a bunch of little quail run along under the brush, heads up, lookin' back at you, whistlin' to each other. That's the most delicate thing I've ever seen or heard....
"I've seen some paintings, in Los and San Francisco; once in Chicago and once in Denver. I don't know. They don't get my idea of it. I never want to see anything more beautiful than sunrise over the Grand Cañon, or sunsets over these hills, dust storm on the desert, snow blowin' before a norther off the ridges, and things like that. God, who's such a close friend to the Reverend, and who I don't know much about, is as good a painter as any I've ever seen."
He said no more but rode apparently thinking of much more that might be said and Jane watched him carefully, a hungry look coming into her eyes. His words had partly analyzed him for her:
He was real.
He was the most real human being she had ever known, real because he lived a real life, because he appreciated realities; he was sufficient to himself, finding such an interest in life about him that his own impressions and reactions occupied the foreground of his consciousness.
All her life she had been fed on the artificial, living on a soft pad of unrealities which softened and hid the bed-rock foundation of existence from her. Within the last weeks she had had her first taste of the real, was face to face with life and with herself; it had been sweet and inspiring; she felt a great urge for more of that experience and her mind sped ahead into the vague future, the future which her imagination could not even conjure because the new foundation beneath her feet was as yet unfamiliar. But for all that vagueness she thrilled and as she peered forward eagerly she saw this man, this clean, frank man ever at her side....
And yet he had spoken of love as a gamble which did not work itself out in life! A sharp stab of shame shot through her heart, for she had once handled her love as though it had been a white chip, she had been willing to chance it as a thing of little value and she knew that to him that would be the outraging of a sacred thing.
And again she heard the pronouncement of Hilton: You cannot stand alone! You will fail! A knave, she now knew, but he knew her as she had been. And could he be right? Could she measure up to where a real man's love would not be wasted upon her? She did not know; she dared not think further, so driving back these doubts, she said:
"There's one question I want to ask and I want your honest answer. What is your opinion of Hepburn?"
He looked at her with that twinkle in his eye again.
"In just what way, ma'am?"
"At times he seems reluctant to talk to me, as though he knew more than he wanted to tell and again I've had a notion he didn't want me asking about certain ranch matters at all.
"I confess to you that with all the talk of thieving I've wondered if he didn't know more about it than he gave me to understand, but what he did the other day seems, in all reason, to wipe that suspicion out."
He said: "It seems you've answered your own question. When you've said that he went a long ways to prove that he's the man you want by what he's just done, you've said all there was to say."
"But do you mean that? Are you keeping some suspicion of your own from me?"
He deliberated a moment, then smiled.
"It's easy to suspect but it don't pay very big until you know somethin'. Then you don't need to."
They climbed out of the gulch, horses breathing loudly as they made the last steep ascent and gained the ridge they were to follow and there was little more talk until they stopped and sat looking down across the great flat-bottomed cavity of Devil's Hole. It was a pear-shaped depression, perhaps four miles from rim to rim at the widest point and fully a score of miles in length. Its sides were sprinkled with cedars which clung to the sheer cliffs determinedly, but its bottom was blanketed with thrifty sage brush, purple in the sunlight that was just then slanting across the floor and beneath this sheen they could see the bright green of new grasses. A dark line marked with the clarity of a map the course of the creek and half way down toward the neck of the Hole was a small cabin erected by the man who had filed on the land for Colonel Hunter and who had drifted on without establishing title.
"There's your neighbor," Beck said.
Jane looked for a moment, then lifted her eyes to the country which showed through the narrow outlet of the deep valley. Behind her endless ridges tossed upward to a sharp horizon, but out through that gap the range lay in a vast basin, rising gently to diminutive lavendar buttes plastered against the sky many miles away. It seemed soft and vague and unreal ... like one of the unreal paintings Beck had seen hanging within walls.
Tom led the way through trees and among upstanding ledges of rock into the narrow, dangerous trail and as he went down, his big roan picking the way quickly yet cautiously, he half turned in his saddle to explain the significance of the descent.
It was the only egress on that side of the Hole. There was one trail on the far side, so steep and hazardous that a man must lead his horse either up or down. The only other outlet was through the narrow Gap where the wash of flood water during storms had made the going easy for men and stock. Out to the northwest, however, lay miles of desert, the great basin of which Jane had had a glimpse, well enough to use for range in three seasons, but in summer it became parched and useless. In the Hole cattle could feed on the abundant gramma, could drink from the creek, but getting them out and over the divide to the more plentiful water of Coyote Creek was an undertaking.
"That's the danger," he told her, "It's a long, hard climb for stock in good shape, but if anything should happen to prevent your stock from drinkin' down here and they should get low from lack of water, why then you'd leave a lot of 'em down there if you tried to bring 'em up."
He pointed over the abrupt drop at his left where a pebble would fall hundreds of feet before striking again and as he indicated his right chap scrubbed the face of the cliff, so narrow was the way to which they clung.
Finally they reached the flat and swung along at a free trot through the brash sage.
"There's water here now," he explained, as they followed the steep creek bank, "but that don't last. It's mighty low right this mornin'. The creek sinks when it don't rain an' its been comin' up in just one spot for years. That's what makes a nester dangerous for you."
They approached the cabin. A mare and a newly born colt eyed them suspiciously. An ancient wagon, its top tattered, its tires red with rust, stood close beside a frail corral. Fire wood was scattered about; here was an axe with a broken helve, there a rust-eaten shovel, and the whole place spoke of poverty.
And yet piled against the cabin was spool upon spool of new barbed wire!
"Fence!" muttered Beck.
"But Mr. Hepburn said—"
"Yeah, I recall what he said!"
Just then the canvas which served as a door was thrown back and the girl stepped out. She stood just across the threshold looking at them, sullen and defiant.
"Good-morning," said Jane.
"Howdy," replied the girl indifferently.
An awkward pause. Surely, she would volunteer no more and Beck asked:
"Your dad around?"
"What do you want with him?"—a demand rather than a question.
"I am Miss Hunter. I own the—"
"Oh, I know who you are!" the girl cut in defiantly.
"I came down to talk to your father. We are neighbors. If we are to be good neighbors there are things we must discuss."
Jane was unpoised by the attitude of the other but she dismounted and walked toward the cabin.
"What did you want with him?" the girl asked again.
"I want to ask some things about your plans."
"And what is our business to you?" The girl's eyes snapped and her vivid color intensified.
"It may be a great deal to me. That is why I am frank in coming here. For years this place has been range for H C cattle. Recently water has been short. You have wire and evidently are going to fence.
"I don't come as an enemy. Now that you are here I want to make the best of it."
"But you don't want us here!"
The simple declaration, voiced with that same defiance, confused Jane; then she met the other on her own ground.
"No, we don't want you here unless you will work with us as we all try to work together. I think you will do that because it is the wiser—"
"So you start out workin' with us by lookin' up our claim, the way we filed it, before you come to talk!"
"Yes, I did that,"—frankly. "I wanted to be sure just what your rights were before I came to talk business."
"Well, you know now. You know no lawyers can run us off. Ain't that enough? If you know we've got rights, what do you come here for?" She stopped, but before Jane could reply went on, her eyes flashing sudden heat: "You don't want us here but we've come to stay an' from the way you've started in to talk your business I guess that's all you'll find out."
Jane eyed her for an interval then said:
"You and I are the only women for miles about in this country. We are near neighbors as neighbors go in the mountains; do you think this is the best way to start in being friends?"
"Who said anything about bein' friends?"
"I want to be your friend." The sincerity of this balked the girl and her eyes became puzzled. "I want to be your friend and want you for my friend. We can help each other in a good many ways."
"I don't recollect askin' for your help."
"No, but I want to give it to you and I want to ask yours in return. We are here in a big country. We are all dependent to an extent on those about us. None of us can get along so well alone as we can by working together."
"Like turnin' folks out in the rain at night, for instance?"
Jane's cheeks flamed.
"I don't understand," she said.
"Think it over an' maybe you will!"
The girl's eyes blazed uncovered hate, but as they took Jane in again from hat to boots a curious envy showed in them.
"I've seen how much you big outfits want to help poor folks before," she said. "I know all about that,"—bitterly. "Maybe it's a good thing you come here today so you'll get to understand, first hand, instead of sendin' your men around to learn things for you.
"We've come a long ways. We've been on th' move ever since I can recollect. Folks have offered to help us before, an' they have helped us ... to decide to move. We've come to stay here; we can take care of ourselves; we don't ask nothin' but to be let alone, an' we're goin' to be let alone if we have to make it stick with gun play."
She had advanced and, hands on her hips, weight on one foot, spoke the last with her face close to Jane's, her head nodding in slow emphasis.
"I trust it won't come to that," Jane said evenly. She had not flinched, but studied the girl carefully, impersonally, though the color in her cheeks had died; her face was in repose, her bearing dignified and assured, yet without suggestion of any superficial superiority. "If it does come to that it will not be because I am unwilling to do all that is reasonable. I have come down here to talk to you, which should be evidence of my good faith; I have been frank. You meet me as though I had come to cheat you or drive you out. I don't think that is fair."
The other drew back a step, clearly puzzled again. Her face, in spite of its forbidding expression, was very beautiful.
"That sounds all right," she said at length, "but I've heard it before and I know how much it's worth. You ain't my kind. You don't belong here and I do. You don't want to be my friend ... you wouldn't know how.
"All we want is to be let alone. Our business ain't yours an' we won't try to make yours ours. Have you said all you wanted to say?"
"No, not quite all, but if you won't listen to me, if you won't believe me, there is only one more thing I can say: You will know where to find me any time you want to talk to me. I will be ready to work with you, to do my share, and maybe a little more. I hope there will be no trouble, for it would force me to make my share of that."
She turned abruptly and walked toward Beck.
The man had purposely held aloof to watch the encounter between the two women. He had been certain that the meeting would be anything but amicable and it was like other situations into which he had let Jane Hunter walk, needlessly and only to see how she would handle herself. Usually the result only amused him but today he had watched Jane bear up admirably under difficult circumstances, refusing to be angered or confused, refusing to plead yet, while retaining dignity, leaving the door to friendship open.
As Jane mounted Bobby Cole stepped back into the cabin with no word and the riders turned back on the way they had come.
"I've been wonderin'," Beck said after a time, "how this old codger rakes up the dust to buy cattle and wire."
Jane did not reply. She wondered at that, too, but there was another wonder in her mind about another, more human mystery, going back to a night of storm in the heavens and storm in hearts. How did Bobby Cole know she had turned Dick Hilton out?
As they went silently each thinking of significant things which had been revealed the girl threw back the curtain in the doorway and watched them.
"I hate you!" she whispered at Jane Hunter. "I hate you!... Because you turned him out ... because you're ... you're you."
She stood a long time watching them and with the darkness in her face another quality finally mingled: that envy again.
After a time Jane said:
"A queer creature, that girl."
"On the peck from the start!" Beck replied.
"And beautiful!"
"Ain't she, though?... Poor kid! I've seen 'em before, kids of movers like that, not so good lookin', not so smart as she is, but like her because they was always suspicious, always ready to scrap....
"That's because they've never had a chance to be decent, brought up in a wagon that way."
"A shame!" Jane whispered.
"I like kids," he said later, as though his mind had been on nothing else. "I like all kids, but I feel sorry for a lot of 'em ... for most of 'em.... Every kid that's born ought to have a chance, a fair show against the world, because the old world don't seem to like kids any too much.
"That girl didn't have a chance, never will have it. She was marked from the day she was born.
"Why, ma'am, one winter I worked for a cow man down in the Salt River valley which is in Arizona. He didn't have a big outfit, he didn't have much luck; trouble with his water, his cattle got sick and his horses didn't do well and he had just one dose of trouble after another.
"But he had three kids, all in a row they seemed,"—indicating progressive heights with his hand. "I think they was the happiest kids I've ever seen. I always think of 'em when I see kids that've had to grow up like that girl. I remember those mornin's when we used to start out for a day's ride, looking back and seeing those kids playing in the dirt beside the rose bushes. Their clothes was dirty the minute they stepped outside and their hands an' faces was a sight from the 'dobe, but there was roses in their cheeks as bright as th' roses on the bushes and they laughed loud and their eyes always smiled ... like that Arizona sky, which ain't got a match anywhere....
"This man and his wife just buckled down an' bucked old Mister Hard Luck from the word Go, for them kids! They sure thought the world of 'em. I guess that was what put the roses in their cheeks an' the smiles in their eyes....
"I'll never forget those kids by the rose bushes with somebody to care for 'em, an' work their hearts out for 'em. That's the way kids ought to grow up; not like that catamount grew up."
He smiled in reminiscence and his smile was tender.
"Roses and kids," he repeated after a while. "They ought to go together."
He looked at Jane and saw that her eyes were filmed.
She rode closer to him, until her knee touched his chap and said:
"I think that is beautiful: Roses and kids. I shall always remember it; always...."
She knew, now, the man she loved, the man whose love she would win, the man behind that exasperating front of caution. His clear eyes and keen mind were interested only in realities and yet he could display a tenderness more delicate than she had ever before encountered in men. He was strong, and as gentle as he was strong; he was generous while a skeptic; he had poise and personality. And he could liken love to a poker chip; without using the word make her know that he held love sacred!
She raised her hand to that locket again and held it tightly in her small palm.