CHAPTER VIII
Beneath the cool shadows of the north porch the master of Ganado, booted and spurred, rested after a long ride in the hot sun, sipping a long, cool glass of peach brandy and orange juice, and talking with his wife. A broad barley field lay below them, stretching to the State highway half a mile to the north. The yellowing heads of the grain stood motionless beneath the blazing sun. Inside the myriad kernels the milk was changing into dough. It would not be long now, barring fogs, before that gorgeous pageant of prosperity would be falling in serried columns into the maw of the binder.
“We’re going to have a bully crop of barley this year, Julia,” remarked the colonel, fishing a small piece of ice from his glass. “Do you know, I’m beginning to believe this is better than a mint julep!”
“Heavens, Custer—whisper it!” admonished his wife. “Just suppose the shades of some of your ancestors, or mine, should overhear such sacrilege!”
The colonel chuckled.
“Is it old age, or has this sunny land made me effeminate?” he queried. “It’s quite a far cry from an old-fashioned mint julep to this home-made wine and orange juice. You can’t call it brandy—it hasn’t enough of what the boys call ‘kick’ to be entitled to that honor; but I like it. Yes, sir, that’s bully barley—there isn’t any better in the foothills!”
“The oats look good, too,” said Mrs. Pennington. “I haven’t noticed the slightest sign of rust.”
“That’s the result of the boy’s trip to Texas last summer,” said the colonel proudly. “Went down there himself and selected all the seed—didn’t take anybody’s word for it. Genuine Texas rustproof oats was what he went for and what he got. I don’t know what I’d do without him, Julia. It’s wonderful to see one’s dreams come true! I’ve been dreaming for years of the time when my boy and I would work together and make Ganado even more wonderful than it ever was before; and now my dream’s a reality. It’s great, I tell you—it’s great! Is there another glass of this Ganado elixir in that pitcher, Julia?”
They were silent then for a few minutes, the colonel sipping his “elixir,” and Mrs. Pennington, with her book face down upon her lap, gazing out across the barley and the broad valley and the distant hills—into the future, perhaps, or back into the past.
It had been an ideal life that they had led here—a life of love and sunshine and happiness. There had been nothing to vex her soul as she reveled in the delight of her babies, watching them grow into sturdy children and then develop into clean young manhood and womanhood. But growing with the passing years had been the dread of that day when the first break would come, as come she knew it must.