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 the lush grasses of the mesa. The mesa stream cleared from a ropy red to a sparkling thread of silver banked with vivid green. If infrequent thunderstorms left a haze in the cañons, it soon vanished in the light air.
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 for an after-dinner chat or when he prevailed upon Dorothy to play for them in his cabin. On such occasions she would entertain them with old melodies played softly as they smoked and listened, the lamp unlighted and the door wide open to the stars.
One evening, when Dorothy had ceased to play for them, Lorry mentioned that he was to leave on the following day for an indefinite time. There had been some trouble about a new outfit that was grazing cattle far to the south. Shoop had already sent word to the foreman, who had ignored the message. Lorry had been deputized to see the man and have an understanding with him. The complaint had been brought to Shoop by one of the Apache police that some cowboys had been grazing stock and killing game on the Indian reservation.
Dorothy realized that Lorry might be away for some time. She would miss him. And that night she asked her father if she might not invite a girl friend up for the summer. They were established. And Dorothy was much stronger and able to attend to the housekeeping. Bronson was quite willing. He realized that he was busy most of the time, writing. He was not much of a companion except at the table. So Dorothy wrote to her friend, who was in Los Angeles and had already planned to drive East when the roads became passable.
Lorry was roping the packs next morning when Dorothy appeared in her new silver-gray corduroy riding-habit—a surprise that she had kept for an occasion. She was proud of the well-tailored coat and breeches, the snug-fitting black boots, and the small, new Stetson. Her gray silk waist was brightened by a narrow four-in-hand of rich blue, and her tiny gauntlets of soft gray buckskin were stitched with blue silk.
She looked like some slender, young exquisite who had stepped from the stage of an old play as she stood smoothing the fingers of her gloves and smiling across at Lorry. He said nothing, but stared at her. She was disappointed. 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, the pack-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 some strange person that looked like Dorothy, but like a new Dorothy of such exquisite attitude and grace and so altogether charming that he could do nothing but wonder how the transformation had come about. He had always thought 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 toe of her tiny boot.
"Would you catch my pony for me?"
Lorry flushed. Of course she wanted Chinook. He swung up on Gray Leg and spurred across the mesa. His heart was pounding hard. He rode with a dash and a swing as he rounded up the ponies. As he caught up her horse he happened to think of his own faded shirt and overalls. He was wearing the essentially proper clothing for his work. For the first time he realized the potency of carefully chosen attire. As he rode back with the pastured pony trailing behind him, he felt peculiarly ashamed of himself for feeling ashamed of his clothing. Silently he saddled Chinook, accepted her thanks silently, and strode to his cabin. When he reappeared he was wearing a new shirt, his blue silk bandanna, and his silver-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 I look 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 when
I 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 I did last summer. Mr. Shoop weighed me on the store scales. I wanted to weigh 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 never ride 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 Lorry appeared.
Bronson stooped and kissed her. "And don't ride too far," he cautioned.
Lorry drove the pack-animals toward Bronson's cabin. He dismounted to tighten the cinch on Chinook's saddle.
The little cavalcade moved out across the mesa. Dorothy rode behind the pack-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 to take charge of the expedition.
Lorry, riding behind her, turned as they entered the forest, and waved farewell to Bronson.
To ride the high trails of the Arizona hills is in itself an unadulterated joy. To ride these wooded uplands, eight thousand feet above the world, with a sprightly Peter Pan clad in silver-gray corduroys and chatting happily, is an enchantment. In such companionship, when the morning sunlight dapples the dun forest carpet with pools of gold, when vista after vista unfolds beneath the high arches of the rusty-brown giants of the woodlands; when somewhere above there is the open sky and the marching sun, the twilight underworld of the green-roofed caverns is a magic land.
The ponies plodded slowly upward, to turn and plod up the next angle of the trail, without loitering and without haste. When Dorothy checked her pony to gaze at some new vista, the pack-animals rested, waiting for the word to go on again. Lorry, awakened to a new charm in Dorothy, rode in a silence that needed no interpreter.
At a bend in the trail, Dorothy reined up. "Oh, I just noticed! You are wearing your chaps this morning."
Lorry flushed, and turned to tie a saddle-string that was already quite secure.
Dorothy nodded to herself and spoke to the horses. They strained on up a steeper pitch, pausing occasionally to rest.
Lorry seemed to have regained his old manner. Her mention of the chaps had wakened him to everyday affairs. After all, she was only a girl; not yet eighteen, her father had said. "Just a kid," Lorry had thought; "but mighty pretty in those city clothes." He imagined that some women he had seen would look like heck in such a riding-coat and breeches. But Dorothy looked like a kind of stylish boy-girl, slim and yet not quite as slender as she had appeared in her ordinary clothes. Lorry could not help associating her appearance with a thoroughbred he had once seen; a dark-bay colt, satin smooth and as graceful as a flame. He had all but worshiped that horse. Even as he knew horses, through that colt he had seen perfection; his ideal of something beautiful beyond words.
From his pondering, Lorry arrived at a conclusion having nothing to do with ideals. He would buy a new suit of clothes the first time he went to Phoenix. It would be a trim suit of corduroy and a dark-green flannel shirt, like the suit and shirt worn by Lundy, the forestry expert.
At the base of a great gray shoulder of granite, the Big Spring spread in its natural rocky bowl which grew shallower toward the edges. Below the spring in the black mud softened by the overflow were the tracks of wild turkey and the occasional print of a lynx pad. The bush had been cleared from around the spring, and the ashes of an old camp-fire marked the spot where Lorry had often "bushed over-night" on his way to the cabin.
Lorry dismounted and tied the pack-horses. He explained that they were still a little too close to home to be trusted untied.
Dorothy decided that she was hungry, although they had been but two hours 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 making him laugh or laughing at him, talking to the horses, planning some little surprise for their occasional dinners in the Bronson cabin, quoting some fragment of poetry from an outland song,—she called these songs "outlandish," and had explained her delight in teasing her father with "outlandish" adjectives; whistling in answer to the birds, and amusing herself and her "men-folks" in a thousand ways as spontaneous as they were delightful.
With an armful of firewood, Lorry returned to the spring. The ponies nodded in the heat of noon. Dorothy, spreading their modest luncheon on a bright new Navajo blanket, seemed daintier than ever against the background of the forest. They made coffee and ate the sandwiches she had prepared. After luncheon Lorry smoked, leaning back against the granite 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 first for 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 faëryland; 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 hills are over there. Won't you say the rest of it?"
"Oh, the rest of it is about a venture planned that never came true. It couldn'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 the hills 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 sit and look at the hills and the cañons and mesas down below, and wonder what's the good of hustlin'. But somehow I got to quit loafin' after a spell—and go right to hustlin' again. It's a sure good way to get rested up; just to sit down and forget everything but the big world rollin' down to the edge of nothin'. It makes a fella's kickin' and complainin' 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 and mebby had to sweat my way out of some darned box cañon or make a ride through some down timber at night. I've said some lovely things them times."
"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 and unsaddle Chinook and say 'Hello' to father—and that's the end of our adventure."
"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. I know 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 is nearly as tall as you, and big and strong and really pretty. Bud Shoop told 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 hang down. Then it won't bother you gettin' on or off your horse. That's the way the Indians roll 'em."
He jerked the tie-strings tight. "Well, I reckon I'll be goin'," he said, 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 had never looked at her that way before. She hoped so much that he would say nothing 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 not expected 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 mind because you kissed me good-bye—if it was just good-bye and nothing else." 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. I ain't ashamed of it—only if you say it was wrong."
Dorothy had recovered herself. A twinkle of fun danced in her eyes. "I can't scold you now. You're going away. But when you get back—" And she shook her finger at him and tried to look very grave, which made him smile.
"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's awfully hot in the desert."
"Would you be wantin' me to come back?"
"Of course. Father would miss you."
[Illustration: They made coffee and ate the sandwiches she had prepared] "And that would make you unhappy—him bein' lonesome, so I reckon I'll come back."
"I shall be very busy entertaining my guests," she told him with a charming tilt of her chin. And she straightway swung to the saddle.
Lorry started the pack-horses up the hill and mounted Gray Leg. She sat watching him as he rode sideways gazing back at her.
As he turned to follow the pack-horses up the next ascent she called to him:—
"Perhaps I won't scold you when you come back."
He laughed, and flung up his arm in farewell. Dorothy reined Chinook round, and rode slowly down through the silent woodlands.
Her father came out and took her horse. She told him of their most wonderful 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, Peter
Pan?"
"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 two were just friends."
"Why, that's what I said to Lorry. Don't look so mournful, daddy. You didn't think for a minute that I'd marry him, did you?"
"Of course not. What would I do without you?"