CHAPTER VII
The Heart of the Wild Dove
The damper was closed and smoke from the newly kindled fire was pouring from every crevice of the stove, but Mrs. Blakely, absent-mindedly washing dishes in cold water, was above such small annoyances.
"Edie," her ungartered stockings slipping over the heels of her carpet slippers, muffled her footsteps as she walked across the floor and pulled aside a red calico curtain behind which her daughter was changing to her riding clothes.
"Edie, that gipsy feller told the right of it when he said a strange girl was goin' to cut you-all out."
Edith winced a little, but said nothing.
"We ain't had a sight of Ben Evans for three weeks, have we?"
Edith replied shortly:
"He's busy; they're branding at the L.X."
"Not too busy to ride his string of horses down a gittin' to Las Rubertas every time they're camped within thirty miles of the place," retorted Mrs. Blakely.
"How do you know!"
"I was tole," replied Mrs. Blakely with offended dignity.
Edith declared stoutly:
"I don't believe it!"
"You'll find out too late. When I was a girl"—Mrs. Blakely sighed sentimentally—"pa couldn't keep enough hay to winter his stock for the saddle-horses tied to his stacks. You know that song, 'The Yeller Rose of Texas beats the Belles of Tennessee'? Well, they's some says that was wrote about me. Anyway, I never lost a beau through bein' cut out. Edie"—Mrs. Blakely grew melodramatic—"I'd resort to nearly any vermifuge first!"
"What?"
"Fair means or foul, I'd keep him if I wanted him."
Edith pinned on her hat and did not look at her mother as she asked:
"But how would you keep him if he didn't want you?"
"They's ways!" Mrs. Blakely raised a mysterious finger. Tiptoeing to the door to peer out she inadvertently stepped on her stocking with the other foot. "Drat it!" Coming back. "I'd charm him!"
Edith looked a question.
"They's ways," she repeated, and Edith lingered. "If you'll jest do what I tell you it'll fetch him." Mrs. Blakely was more than pleased at this rare opportunity to discuss the art and gentle practises of love. It was a subject which was never very far from her thoughts, but her sentimental tendencies received small encouragement from her prosaic husband and eldest daughter.
"Edie," she whispered, "you sprinkle the ashes of the heart of a wild dove on him and you got him! The receipt is to kill it yoahself, burn its heart to ashes and slip it in his pocket or sprinkle him."
"Did you try it on dad?"
Mrs. Blakely tossed her head.
"Never had to. An ole lady what had charmed and buried foah husbands, poah soul, tole me."
Edith heard her father calling impatiently, and hurried out. There was a furrow between Blakely's eyebrows and fine lines of anxiety in his face.
"You ride the range I went over yesterday, Edie. I thought I covered it well, but there's a chance I may have missed them. They might have been in the brush somewhere's out of the way of the flies. I hope so; but in my heart I know they ain't. We're short fifteen head now, and if we don't find them to-day I'll be sure that they're rustled, and that means that we've got to fight or git. We won't hardly dare to sleep now."
"No, dad." They separated to ride the range in different directions in search of the missing cattle, each with a heavy heart, but from different causes.
Blakely's face was dark with thoughts of Spiser, the unscrupulous bully who would trample him and his into the earth without a qualm for a little strip of water and a few miles of range. Stinging tears blinded Edith's eyes as instinctively she turned her horse up the trail which led out of the cool thicket to the hot mesa.
"It isn't fair!" she sobbed softly, bending over her horse's neck—"isn't fair at all! She has everything and I have nothing, but she's taken Ben! It ain't right." Her tears fell on the pony's mane. "I like him more than she does—I know I do."
The injustice of life and the seeming futility of combating it fell upon her young shoulders that morning with crushing weight. It was a relief to be alone and to sob her heart out to the unanswering air. She could not make a confidant of her foolish, sentimental mother, nor add to her father's depression by telling him of this new sorrow.
She loved Ben simply and unreservedly, with none of the conflicting emotions which disturbed Nan's peace of mind. He was a man like her father, the only type that had entered into her girlish dreams; she had no romantic notions of a rich husband and a life of which she was ignorant.
She would have been content to have lived over again the life of her mother with its poverty and hardships, providing it was with Ben. She loved him loyally, jealously, with her whole heart, and she wanted him—oh, how she wanted him!—and she had lost him.
This strange girl, whom she could not really hate because she was so kind, with her daintiness, her unaffected graces, her unconscious coquetry, had taken him from her without an effort.
And Edith had not her rival's ready wit, her merry laugh, her sparkling eyes, with which to win him back; she had only her commonplace prettiness and her commonplace devotion to offer him. These harsh truths did not make his frank desertion of her any easier to bear.
"Oh my! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!" she sobbed, and the tears fell faster—miserably conscious that she was commonplace, even in her grief.
She had been so buoyant, life had been so sweet in spite of the struggle, until Nan came. Ben never had exactly told her that he cared more for her than for any of the few women of his acquaintance, but he had looked it. He frequently rode out of his way to eat with them, and he had given her presents at Christmas.
The reins were loose on the pony's neck, and he was going his own gait and direction when the familiar cowboy whoop made her raise her head. Ben Evans was galloping towards her, and already too close for her to remove all traces of her tears, though she quickly did her best.
His face, which had been alight with a friendly smile, sobered.
"What's the matter? What's happened?"
She bit her lip hard and turned her head from him.
"Tell me, Edie," he demanded solicitously, and laid his hand upon her arm.
The familiar action started her tears afresh.
"Nothing—oh, I don't know!" she sobbed.
"Of course you do. You ain't the girl to cry for nothing."
But she had too much woman's pride to tell him the truth if he was too dense, too little interested, to guess.
"It's the cattle"—she kept her face from him—"we're losing them."
"Disease—dyin' you mean?"
"Rustlers."
"The greasers, you think?"
She shook her head.
They're goin' too fast for that. The greasers only kill for beef. Some one's running them off."
Ben's face was a mixture of many emotions.
"Who do you think it is?"
"Who do you think it would be?" demanded Edith bitterly. "There's only one person that wants to break us."
"Look here, Edie," he caught her arm and demanded angrily: "You don't think I've had any hand in it or knew anything about it?"
She looked at him squarely.
"No, Ben, not a minute. You know too well what this little bunch of cattle means to us. You've seen me ridin' these mesas and arroyos summer and winter, just like a boy. Doin' anything to help dad, now he's got a little start.
"You know what it is to ride with the wind scorching you, blowing red-hot like it came out of a furnace, the sun fair dryin' up the blood in your veins, and your eyes half-blind and bloodshot from the glare.
"And you know what it is to ride in winter with your hands so numb you can't hold the bridle reins or feel your feet in the stirrups."
"You bet I know," he replied with emphatic sympathy, "and you're the nerviest girl in the country, Edie. I sure brag on you whenever I get the chance. You-all deserve to make your stake and I'm mighty glad that you didn't think I knew anything about the cattle you been losin'. I won't say I never rustled none for maybe I have, but rustlin' from a friend—why, say, that's downright stealin'."
"I like to think that you consider me—us that," with a touch of shy coquetry.
"What"—he turned in his saddle and looked at her in astonishment—you haven't been thinkin' that I don't look on you folks as my friends?"
"We haven't seen much of you lately," Edith replied, very busy straightening her stirrup that she need not meet his eye. "We waited Sunday dinner twice."
"Did you now?—why, you shouldn't a done that."
"You used to come so regular we kinda got in the way of expectin' you." Her voice shook a little but Ben did not seem to notice it.
"I was a pretty steady boarder there for a while," he admitted unconcernedly, "but you shouldn't a put yourself out none."
His indifference hurt her so much that she could think of nothing more to say, and they rode for nearly half a mile in silence before he asked:
"How long since the count on your cattle didn't come out right, Edie!"
"About ten days, or two weeks."
He frowned in thought.
It was a week, ten days—yes, two weeks ago, that Spiser had sent Kansas Ed to ride this particular range and brand. That yellowback cowpuncher was just the petty-larceny thief he would send to do a trick of the kind.
"I've got to quit you here"—he brought his horse to a standstill—"but tell your dad I'll keep my eyes open, and if I learn anything I'll send him word."
"All right, Ben," she said with an effort, and added in a kind of desperation, "I s'pose you couldn't come yourself?"
"Can't promise—I might—but"—with a short laugh—"Spiser's ridin' herd on me pretty close lately. I'm liable to get my time if I don't look out."
He knew, and he knew that Edith knew, why Spiser was "riding herd" on him, but he could not resist the temptation to boast to Edith of his attachment to Nan, even while more than dimly aware of the stab it gave her.
He was as sure of Edith and her devotion as of the rising of the sun and, while he enjoyed it and would have missed it, he accepted it with the same complacency with which he accepted the benefits of that luminary.
Yet after he had nodded a careless good-by, the reproach in her eyes prompted him to turn impulsively and call after her:
"Oh, Edie, wait a minute!"
He rode back and said with more of the old familiar voice and manner than he had displayed:
"Say, Edie, they're talkin' of a baile at Las Rubertas; will you go?"
Glad surprise shone in her face.
"Why, yes, Ben, I'd love to."
But it faded when he said:
"We can stop for Nan and all go together."
She must share him with her rival—and he called her "Nan." Edith's heart lay heavier in her breast than before but she answered bravely:
"Yes; that will be nice."
The knowledge that she would see him again shortly was something to which to look forward and, deep down, there was always the hope that in some way he might come back to her. All that day as she searched the arroyos and the thickets for the missing cattle, the thought of her mother's foolish love-charm returned persistently until a half-formed purpose grew in her mind to try on Ben the charm of the heart of the wild dove which, if it did no good, at least would do no harm.