CHAPTER V
When Zen awoke next morning the mowing machines of Transley’s outfit were already singing their symphony in the meadows; she could hear the metallic rhythm as it came borne on the early breeze. She lay awake on her camp cot for a few minutes, stretching her fingers to the canvas ceiling and feeling that it was good to be alive. And it was. The ripple of water came from almost underneath the walls of her tent; the smell of spruce trees and balm-o’-Gilead and new-mown hay was in the air. She could feel the warmth of the sunshine already pouring upon her white roof; she could trace the gentle sway of the trees by the leafy patterns gliding forward and back. A cheeky gopher, exploring about the door of her tent, ventured in, and, sitting bolt upright, sent his shrill whistle boldly forth. She watched his fine bravery for a minute, then clapped her hands together, and laughed as he fled.
“Therein we have the figures of both Transley and Linder,” she mused to herself. “Upright, Transley; horizontal, Linder. I doubt if the poor fellow slept last night after the fright I gave him.” Slowly and calmly she turned the incident over in her mind. She wondered a little if she had been quite fair with Linder. Her words and conduct were capable of very broad interpretations. She was not at all in love with Linder; of that Zen was very sure. She was equally sure that she was not at all in love with Transley. She admitted that she admired Transley for his calm assumptions, but they nettled her a little nevertheless. If this should develop into a love affair—IF it should—she had no intention that it was to be a pleasant afternoon’s canter. It was to be a race—a race, mind you—and may the best man win! She had a feeling, amounting almost to a conviction, that Transley underrated his foreman’s possibilities in such a contest. She had seen many a dark horse, less promising than Linder, gallop home with the stakes.
Then Zen smiled her own quiet, self-confident smile, the smile which had come down to her from Y.D. and from the Wilsons—the only family that had ever mastered him. The idea of either Transley or Linder thinking he could gallop home with HER! For the moment she forgot to do Linder the justice of remembering that nothing was further from his thoughts. She would show them. She would make a race of it—ALMOST to the wire. In the home stretch she would make the leap, out and over the fence. She was in it for the race, not for the finish.
Zen contemplated for some minutes the possibilities of that race; then, as the imagination threatened to become involved, she sprang from her cot and thrust a cautious head through the door of her tent. The gang had long since gone to the fields, and friendly bushes sheltered her from view from the cook-car. She drew on her boots, shook out her hair, threw a towel across her shoulders, and, soap in hand, walked boldly the few steps to the stream rippling over its shiny gravel bed. She stopped and tested the water with her fingers; then brought it in fresh, cool handfuls about her face and neck.
“Mornin’, Zen!” said a familiar voice. “‘Scuse me for happenin’ to be here. I was jus’ waterin’ that Pete-horse after a hard ride.”
“Now look here, Mr. Drazk!” said the girl, whipping her scanty clothing about her, “if I had a gun that Pete-horse would be scheduled for his fastest travel in the next twenty seconds, and he’d end it without a rider, too. I won’t have you spying about!”
“Aw, don’ be cross,” Drazk protested. He was sitting on his horse in the ford a dozen yards away. “I jus’ happened along. I guess the outside belongs to all of us. Say, Zen, if I was to get properly interduced, what’s the chances?”
“Not one in a million, and if that isn’t odds enough I’ll double it.”