THIRTY-ODD miles to her brother's ranch down near the line of the Nation was nothing to Maud Kelly. She appeared at the hotel on Sunday morning in a buckboard with her valise lashed to its slatted deck, a spunky span of young horses fretting at the stop, to pick up Louise and carry her away into the cowboy-infested wilds.
Maud wanted Tom Laylander to go along, insisting that the seat was plenty wide enough for three. When Tom expressed doubt of the comfort they would have with him crowding in, Maud suggested that she and Louise could take turn about sitting on his lap, to ease the crowding and give them elbow room.
If anything had been lacking to keep Tom out of the expedition, Maud's ingenuous proposal settled it for him. He backed off, fairly crippled by confusion. Louise had better success. She suggested a ride down to visit them at the ranch, to which Tom agreed. He said he would be going down in that direction to look over his cattle and see how they were filling out in a day or two. He'd be proud to ride on down to the ranch.
As the girls drove away, Tom waving them farewell from the hotel corner with his hat, they talked of the way he still claimed ownership of the cattle, neither of them able to account for his apparent stupidity in clinging to something that was already hopelessly lost. He seemed just as much interested in the cattle as if nothing had happened. Whether it was his simplicity, sustained by some glamorous hope, or some deep intention of an act of reprisal against Withers, they could not understand.
"I'd like to help the kid out," said Maud, who was cattle-wise, as well as worldly-wise.
"It looks hopeless," Louise declared. "He's so touchy about taking anything from anybody, even help. If anybody ever helps Tom Laylander they'll have to put it over on him in the dark."
"He'd just as well go on down there and kiss them cows good-by, they're the same as Cal Withers's now. But say; I wonder!"
"You wonder what, Maud?"
"I was just thinkin'. I believe I know where the sheriff's got that herd—it must be down a few miles from Jim's ranch. Jim could be trusted to go in on anything that would soak old Cal Withers; he owes that old boy one that he's been itchin' a long time to pay."
"What's your scheme, Maud?"
"I'm not sayin' much about it right now, kid," Maud said, but with a grin on her big honest mouth as she turned a roguish eye to Louise. "Somebody's got to help that red-headed boy out of his troubles."
"It isn't just what you could call red, Maud," Louise corrected, knowing very well that her face was positively so.
"Near enough to pass. He'll be down tomorrow."
"I don't know."
"Sure he will. He can take a hand—no, he can't, but he can sit in the hammock and hold yours. That'll leave me alone to work out my desperate scheme."
"How about Mr. Cook?"
"Mr. Cook?" Maud repeated blankly. "Who's Mr. Cook?"
"Why, the man you're going to marry! the baggage—"
"Oh, you mean Sam. He'll not be down; he's got his orders, straight from headquarters, to give me a rest for two solid weeks."
There was not much more of a road going down to Jim Kelly's ranch than a ship leaves after it on the sea. Every driver struck a course to suit his own pleasure in the vastness of that untrammeled country. Sometimes Maud followed where somebody else had gone, again she drove for miles where a wheel seemed never to have pressed before.
It was a broken prairie, thrown in easy-rising long ridges, gently heaving, like nothing so much as an ocean whose swells had been fixed by some strange caprice of nature in these grassy undulations. At a distance the prairie appeared level to the eye, the farthest bound of the vision defined sharply, as the horizon comes down upon the sea. The ridges were bare of all growth except short buffalo grass, grayish-green in this summer season, brighter in the swales, where clumps of wild briars and fire-stunted shrubs huddled as if hiding away out of the incessant wind.
They passed a few sod ranch-houses, out of which children came running to pile up against the wire fences and stare, like tumble-weeds rolled up and lodged by the wind. Women sometimes appeared in the dark doors to wave greeting to Maud. Distant herds were spread wide over the gray pasture lands. It was a melancholy country, a lonely and depressing ride. At least Louise found it so. To Maud it was home, with nothing more remarkable nor peculiar about it than home has for anybody, anywhere.
Toward evening, the whole day being consumed in the leisurely drive, they struck Tom Laylander's herd, watched over by two young men who came galloping when Maud pulled up and waved her hat. They were lonesome and tired of their job, neither of them being arange man. As a regular business, one was employed in the livery stable at McPacken, the other as office deputy by the sheriff. They had a chuck-wagon and a negro cook over on a little creek among the trees, they said.
Maud expressed surprise that they two were alone with the cattle, the report in McPacken being that no fewer than ten men were holding them. There had been more, the herders said; the sheriff had called them off to chase the bank robbers, and they never had come back. Sick of the job, just like themselves, the office 'man said; glad to get back to town, and stay there. Nothing to it down there on the edge of nowhere watching a lot of fool cows at two dollars a day. A man could make more than that shootin' pool up in town.
"Just as well not have us here, they go where they darn please anyhow," the youth complained.
"That's right," Maud agreed. "There's no more need for a man along with a bunch of cattle this time of the year, especially a little bunch like this, than I've got foranurse. How's the grub?"
"Bum!" said the office man, with explosive disgust. "I'd give six dollars for a dish of steak and onions like you used to bring us up at the hotel, Louise."
"That's one of the luxuries of your past that you'll never enjoy from my fine Italian hand again," Louise told him. "There's another lady on that job now."
"You don't mean to tell me you've quit the hotel, Louise?"
"Yes, I'm a tax-eater now, the same as you."
"Court house job, you mean, Louise?"
"Sure," said Maud. "She's got my job."
The young man was voluble in his congratulations. He was also somewhat astonished by the sudden and spectacular rise of a biscuit-shooter to a position at the public manger. But he was shrewd enough to run the mystery of her rise quickly to its source. That source was old man Kelly. He was still a dictator in the party councils of that county. So there was nothing extraordinary about it after all, except that a girl whom he had counted in as just a common sort with an uncommonly handsome figure and face, should spring at a bound from the bottom of the social ladder in McPacken to the very top. She would be worth cultivating when he went back to his clean and easy job. The young man made a large and impressive note of that.
"We're going to be down at Jim's for a week or so. Maybe we can cheer you up a little until the cattle are sold," Maud suggested.
The deputy sheriffs had not heard of the court decision, although they had expected it would go that way. It cheered them greatly to learn that their unremunerative and unromantic employment was nearly at an end.
"We're going to have a little dance over at Jim's tomorrow night," Maud announced, although it was news to Louise. "Round up your cows so the cook can keep his eye on 'em and come over."
Sure they would, they promised. The fool cows didn't need any watching, not at night, anyhow. Nobody ever watched them at night—what was the sense? When they got ready to bunk, they bunked, and when they wanted to get up and snort around they didn't wait for no little cowboy to come and call them. Sure they'd come. They'd wear the girls' feet off up to their knees dancin', and that wasn't no lie.
"You know where Jim's ranch is? down here about four miles," said Maud.
Sure they knew where it was. Them fool cows had roamed off down there a day or two ago, and stood with their necks over Jim's fence like they'd come home and found the door locked. They'd hung around there till Jim's wife had come out with the broom and run 'em off. Sure they'd come. Ten to one them darn cows would foller them, and line up along the fence.
"That's a good looking bunch of cattle, surprising good," said Maud, as they drove along the edge of the scattered herd. "It's a darn shame that kid's got to lose 'em, they'd sell for forty to forty-five a head right now."
"Tom said he believed they'd net twenty thousand dollars on the Kansas City market," Louise sighed. "It's a lot of money to be swindled out of."
"Ye-es," Maud drawled, her eyes fixed on a point miles ahead, as jf making a far-off calculation of her own.
"I never heard anything about a dance tomorrow night," said Louise.
"Neither did I," Maud replied. "But you heard what I said."
"Where are you going to scare up enough people for a dance in this country?"
"There'll be you and I and Jinny, Jim's wife, for a starter, right on the spot. We'll shoot around tomorrow and spread the alarm. It'll surprise you how many girls will jump up out of the short grass down here."
"But what's the scheme, Maud?"
"Entertainment, my darling; entertainment for two poor little cowboys far away from the pool hall at MePacken."
Jim Kelly's house was built of straight up-and-down planks, stripped with battens, like a barn. It was not as comfortable as a sod house, and nothing could have been more unattractive, its raw planks stark and unpainted against the harmony of gray prairie and blue sky in that treeless immensity. But it was a mark of affluence and superiority to live in a plank house where sod houses were the rule. Comfort and æsthetics have been sacrificed to the same vanity in other places at other times.
Kelly's house was a notable one on the old cattle trail leading from Texas through the Cherokee Outlet; there was nothing as grand or as costly within many a day's travel to the south. The material had been freighted from McPacken, in itself not much of a task, the house knocked together like a huge box without foundation or previous leveling of the land. There were irregular pillars of rock under one end of it to lift it to a level, making a convenient place beneath the floor for chickens and dogs.
It was a long quadrangular building, with five doors opening in its front. It looked like a barracks, or a bunk-house, with all these exits ready to the necessity of men in a hurry, but it was devoted solely to the use of Jim's family, which comprised himself and his wife Jinny, a little Jim and a littler Jinny.
There was no doubt which was the main door among all the doors. It was easily picked out by the grease where little Jim and Jinny had pushed it, and the abrasions where their copper-toed shoes had kicked it, with numerous marks of dogs' claws between.
There was only the width of a township, six miles, between Jim's ranch and the Indian Territory line. The Indian country to the south of them was spoken of by everybody in that part of Kansas as the Nation, the possessions of the Cherokee Nation lying along there. The Cherokees leased a great deal of their land to Kansas cattlemen, among whom Jim Kelly was one.
Jim was a man of importance in the cattle industry, prosperous and shrewd, well on the way to independence. Jinny was figuring seriously on a house in McPacken, with cupolas and bay windows, stained glass side-lights in the front entrance, a design in stained glass in the transom over the front door. That was cattleman luxury in those days. Beyond the achievement of such a house, in such a town as McPacken, the world had nothing more to give.
A barbed wire fence enclosed Jim's house, his weak looking garden and such structures for the shelter of poultry and livestock as he possessed. These latter were inconsiderable, the cattleman's last thought being for the comfort or welfare of the beasts that served him, or from which his profits were drawn. Altogether the premises had a temporary, homeless, cheerless, bare, uninviting appearance. Louise was surprised to find the place so bleak. She had expected better things of anybody belonging to Maud.
Jim was at home, on account of it being Sunday and company expected. He was at the gap in the wire fence, the cut strands unhooked to let them drive in, shaved to a rather raw look about the chin, which was several shades lighter than the upper part of his face. Louise concluded a considerable growth of whiskers had fallen to Jim's razor that day, a long-deferred sacrifice, doubtless due to pressure afield.
Jim was a tall flat man, with a large red mustache, having a gaunt look about the eyes such as seemed to be the Kelly brand. He was an affable and loquacious man, loud and familiar in his way.
Jinny came out, her little Kellys running before, looking rather Teutonic and robust, her long and abundant yellowish hair wound in a shining braid around herhead. It was plain at a glance that she was quite content in her long flimsy house with many doors, just about the sort of woman one would expect to come out of it, indeed. She had many years ahead of her to enjoy the cupolas and stained glass windows, as well as the groundwork for the flesh that would accumulate with idleness and grandeur.
Jinny had a piano in her parlor, a wonder and delight in a land where pianos afterwards became as common as toadstools. Jinny could not play it, but Jim could do enough for all the rest of the family and the neighborhood for sixty miles around, if volume of sound could be taken as a measure of his musical proficiency. His repertory was not large, yet it was sufficient for the needs and understanding of those who stopped to hear him slam his tunes off with such forceful pedaling that shook the house.
Maud was something better at the piano than Jim. Her selections covered a wider range, including the latest songs. She was obliged to play them all after supper for Jim and Jinny, and an ancient cowboy with harsh white hair that stood erect, giving his countenance a constant expression of mild astonishment.
This old-timer sat with his chair reared back against the wall, his feet on the forward rungs, holding an unlit cigarette plastered to his under lip. He put out his tongue frequently and shifted it a little, working his mouth afterwards as if tasting it. Louise grew nervous waiting for him to light it, which he did not do, although he held a match ready all the time. It was not delicacy that restrained him, she was certain, for Jim was smoking a cigar that brought recollections of Pap Cowgill.
The cowboy, or the cow grandfather, as Louise thought suited his years better, was greatly interested in the dance proposed by Maud for the next night. Jim consulted him gravely on the prospect of this one and that one being able to come, and whether so-and-so could be rounded up to fiddle, and somebody else, who must have been a notable person from their glowing enthusiasm in speaking of him, might be roped in to call off. Frank, the shock-haired veteran, believed he could reach this accomplished person by setting out at once, to which Jim agreed.
Louise was not surprised by the eagerness with which Jim and Jinny took up the arrangements for the dance. It was plain to see that any sort of diversion in their cattle-hedged existence was welcome, both of them young and full of healthful enjoyment in association with their kind. Jinny took stock of her canned oysters, to make sure whether there would be enough for soup, Jim standing ready to despatch one of his men to McPacken at once to replenish the supply.
Jim did not seem relieved nor greatly concerned when Jinny reported sufficient oysters for the occasion on hand. A little ride of sixty miles for a dollar's worth of cove oysters would have been only a trifling incident in Jim's daily habit of encompassing wide spaces, nothing at all to interfere with the success of a dance in his house, famous for its hospitality.
Maud said it would be her farewell to the range, and she was going to throw a leg over the moon. This pleased Frank so greatly that he struck his match as he stood in the door taking his leave, and lifted it to within a few inches of his cigarette, where he seemed to remember something, and blew it out. They heard him galloping away presently on his quest of the man whose calling off was so essential to the happiness of everybody.
"It's too bad Mr. Cook can't be here," said Louise.
"Mr. Cook?" said Jim, staring at her. "Who's Mr. Cook?"
"Maud's beau, the baggage—"
"Oh, Sam. I guess he'll have dancin' enough when he marries Maud—dancin' around to make a livin'. He'd better take all the rest he can beforehand."
Maud was at the piano. She slewed her head to make a big grin at her humorous brother, who poked his comfortable wife in the side. Jinny jumped, squealing like a mare.
And steel I know it soon weel come—
sang Maud, her wild, rich voice flooding out into the prairie through the five doors of the long, low house.