The Cow Puncher

by Robert J. C. Stead

And again he stood, and she knew that he was turning over in his mind things weightier than life and death, and that when he spoke again his course would be set. Then, in the partial shadow, she saw his arms slowly extend; they rose, wide and strong, and extended toward her. There was a quick step, and they met about her, and the world swooned and went by.…

"I can explain everything," she said, when she could talk.

"You need explain nothing," he returned. "I have lived the torments of the damned. Edith Duncan was right; she said if it were real love it would never give up. 'Endureth all things,' she said. 'All things,' she said.… There is no limit."

She caressed his cheeks with her fingers, and knew by the touch that they were brown again as they had been in those great days of the foothills. "But I must tell you, dear," she said, "so that you may understand." And then she patched together the story, from what she knew, and from what Edith Duncan had told her, and Dave filled in what neither had known, including the incident earlier on that fateful evening. She could see his jaws harden as they pieced the plot together, and she knew what he was thinking.

"Your country needs you more," she whispered. "It is better that way. And what a man you are in uniform! I think I see you smashing heads instead of bottles. Six out of six, Dave! It's awful, but you must do it. Already we know what has happened in Belgium. You will forget your own wrongs in the greater wrongs of others.… And I shall join the service as a nurse. My father was a doctor, and I can soon pick it up."

She chatted on, but he had become suddenly grave. "I don't think that is your course, Irene," he said. "This is going to be a bigger job than it looked. The Government will get soldiers and nurses; the popular imagination turns to such things. But it will be neither soldiers nor nurses that will win the war. I feel sure of that now. It has come to me, perhaps as a kind of presentiment, but I feel absolutely sure. The determining factor will be food. The world's margin is narrow enough in normal times, and now we are plunged into the abnormal. Millions of men will be taken from production and turned to purposes of destruction. They will be taken from offices, where they need little food, and put in the trenches, where they need much food. Countries will be devastated; armies will retreat, destroying all food as they go. Ships will go down with cargoes of wheat; incendiary fires will swallow warehouses of food. I do not regret my decision, I believe my place is in the trenches; but those less fit for the fight than I must, in some form or other, produce food. That includes the women; it includes you."

"Me? But what can I do?"

"Since I left home I've thought a good deal of the old ranch. I despised it in those prosperous days—those days we thought we were prosperous—but the prosperity is gone and the ranch remains. It still lies out there, just as it did when you and your father motored down that afternoon a dozen years ago. I think you'll have to go back there, Reenie. I think you'll have to take the boy Charlie, and what other help you can get, and go back to the old ranch and raise something for the soldiers to eat. You can do it. There are good men to be had; men who can't very well carry a rifle, but can drive a plow. And believe me, Reenie, it's the plow that's going to win. Go back and put them at it. Think of every furrow as another trench in the defences which shall save your home from the fate of Belgium's homes. It's not as easy as going to the front; it hasn't got the heroic ring to it, and I suppose there are many who will commercialize it. Let them. We shall need their profits after the war to pay our debts. But it's the thing that must be done. And you'll do it, won't you?"

"I'll do what ever needs to be done, Dave. I'd rather be by your side, or as near as may be, but if you say that my duty lies back on the old ranch I shall go back to the old ranch and raise food for my soldier. And when it's all over we shall ride those old hillsides again.… Up the canyon, you remember, Dave? The little niche in the wall of the canyon, and all the silence and the sunlight?… Forever.…"