The Ranch at the Wolverine

by B. M. Bower

For once Phoebe did not answer garrulously. "Yes, I done it," she said softly. "The boxes is in the shed when you want 'em."

"All right, Phoebe. Is the tea ready?"

While she sipped creamy tea from a solid-silver teaspoon which had been a part of mommie's wedding-set, Billy Louise looked around the familiar room for which she had hungered so in those deadly, monotonous weeks at the hospital. The fire snapped in its stone recess, and the cheerful warmth of it comforted her body and in a measure soothed her spirit. She was chilled to the bones with facing that bitter east wind for hours, and she had not seen a fireplace in all the time she had been away.

But the place was empty, with no mommie fussing about, worrying over little things, gently garrulous. If mommie had come back well, she would have asked Phoebe about everything in the house and out of it. There would have been a housewifely accounting going on at this minute. Phoebe would be apologetic over those grimy windows, instead of merely sympathetic over the sorrow in the house. Billy Louise wondered wherein she lacked. For the life of her she could not feel that it mattered whether the windows were clean or dirty; life was drab and cheerless outside them, anyway.

Billy Louise in the last few months had tried to picture herself alone, with mommie gone. Her imagination was too alive and saw too clearly the possibilities for her never to have dwelt upon this very crisis in her life. But whenever she had tried to think what it would be like, she had always pictured Ward beside her, shielding her from dreary details and lightening her burden with his whimsical gentleness. She had felt sure that Ward would ride down every week for news of her, and she had expected to find him there waiting for her, after that last letter. Whatever could be the matter? Had he left the country?

Billy Louise's faith had compromised definitely with her doubts of him. Guilty or innocent, she would be his friend always; that was the condition her faith had laid down challengingly before her doubts. But unless he were innocent and proved it to her, she would never marry him, no matter how much she loved him. That was the concession her faith had made to her doubts.

Billy Louise had a wise little brain, for all she idealized life and her surroundings out of all proportion to reality. She told herself that if she married Ward with her doubts alive, her misery would be far greater than if she gave him up, except as a friend. Of course, her ideals stepped in there with an impracticable compromise. She brought back the Ward Warren of her "pretend" life. She dreamed of him as a mutely adoring friend who stood and worshiped her from afar, and because of his sins could not cross the line of friendship.

If he were a rustler, she would shield him and save him, if that were possible. He would love her always—Billy Louise could not conceive of Ward transferring his affections to another less exacting woman—and he would be grateful for her friendship. She could build long, lovely scenes where friendliness was put to the front bravely, while love hid behind the mask and only peeped out through the eyes now and then. She did not, of course, plan all this in sober reason; she just dreamed it with her eyes open.

It had been in such a spirit that she had written to Ward; though he would undoubtedly have read love into the lines and so have been encouraged in the planning of that house with the wide porch in front! She had dreamed all the way home of seeing Ward at the end of the journey. Perhaps he would come out and help her down from the stage, when it stopped at the gate, and call her Bill-Loo—never once had Ward spoken her name as others spoke it, but always with a twist of his own which made it different, stamped with his own individuality—and he would walk beside her to the house and comfort her with his eyes, and never mention mommie till she herself opened the way to her grief. Then he would call her Wilhemina-mine in that kissing way he had—

Someone came upon the doorstep and stood there for a moment, stamping snow off his feet. Billy Louise caught her breath and waited, her eyes veiled with her lashes and shining expectantly. A little color came into her cheeks. Ward had been delayed somehow, but he was coming now because she needed him and he wanted her—