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Range Dwellers

<h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2> <h3>The Old Life—and the New.</h3> Now that I was there, I was no good to anybody. The nurse wouldn't let me put my nose inside dad's door for a week, and I hadn't the heart to go out much while he was so sick. Rankin was about all the recreation I had, and he palled after the first day or two. I told him things about Montana that made him look painful because he hardly liked to call me a liar to my face; and the funny part was that I was telling him the truth. Then dad got well enough so the nurse had no excuse for keeping me out, and I spent a lot of time sitting beside his bed and answering questions. By the time he was sitting up, peevish at the restraint of weakness and doctor's orders, we began to get really acquainted and to be able to talk together without a burdensome realization that we were father and son—and a mighty poor excuse for the son. Dad wasn't such bad company, I discovered. Before, he had been mostly the man that handled the carving-knife when I dined at home, and that wrote checks and dictated letters to Crawford in the privacy of his own den—he called it his study. Now I found that he could tell a story that had some point to it, and could laugh at yours, in his dry way, whether it had any point or not. I even got to telling him some of the scrapes I had got into, and about Perry Potter; dad liked to hear about Perry Potter. The beauty of it was, he could understand everything; he had lived there himself long enough to get the range view-point. I hate telling a yarn and then going back over it explaining all the fine points. I remember one night when the fog was rolling in from the ocean till you could hardly see the street-lamps across the way, we sat by the fire—dad was always great for big, wood fires—and smoked; and somehow I got strung out and told him about that Kenmore dance, and how the boys rigged up in my clothes and went. Dad laughed harder than I'd ever heard him before; you see, he knew the range, and the picture rose up before him all complete. I told that same yarn afterward to Barney MacTague, and there was nothing to it, so far as he was concerned. He said: "Lord! they must have been an out-at-heels lot not to have any clothes of their own." Now, what do you think of that? Well, I went on from that and told dad about my flying trips through King's Highway, too—with the girl left out. Dad matched his finger-tips together while I was telling it, and afterward he didn't say much; only: "I knew you'd play the fool somehow, if you stayed long enough." He didn't explain, however, just what particular brand of fool I had been, or what he thought of old King, though I hinted pretty strong. Dad has got a smooth way of parrying anything he doesn't want to answer straight out, and it takes a fellow with more nerve than I've got to corner him and just make him give up an opinion if he doesn't want to. So I didn't find out a thing about that old row, or how it started—more than what I'd learned at the Ragged H, that is. Frosty had written me, a week or two after I left, that our fellows had really burned King's sheds, and that Perry Potter had a bullet just scrape the hair off the top of his head, where he hadn't any to spare. It made him so mad, Frosty said, that he wanted to go back and kill, slay, and slaughter—that is Frosty's way of putting it. Another one of the boys had been hit in the arm, but it was only a flesh wound and nothing serious. So far as they could find out, King's men had got off without a scratch, Frosty said; which was another great sorrow to Perry Potter, who went around saying pointed things about poor markmanship and fellows who couldn't hit a barn if they were locked inside—that kept the boys stirred up and undecided whether to feel insulted or to take it as a joke. I wished that I was back there—until I read, down at the bottom of the last page, that Beryl King and her Aunt Lodema had gone back to the East. The next day I learned the same thing from another source. Edith Loroman had kept her promise—as I remembered her, she wasn't great at that sort of thing, either—and sent me a picture of White Divide just before I left the ranch. Somehow, after that, we drifted into letter-writing. I wrote to thank her for the picture, and she wrote back to say "don't mention it"—in effect, at least, though it took three full pages to get that effect—and asked some questions about the ranch, and the boys, and Frosty Miller. I had to answer that letter and the questions—and that's how it began. It was a good deal of a nuisance, for I never did take much to pen work, and my conscience was hurting me half the time over delayed answers; Edith was always prompt; she liked to write letters better than I did, evidently. But when she wrote, the day after I got that letter from Frosty, and said that Beryl and Aunt Lodema had just returned and were going to spend the winter in New York and join the Giddy Whirl, I will own that I was a much better—that is, prompt—correspondent. Edith is that kind of girl who can't write two pages without mentioning every one in her set; like those Local Items from little country towns; a paragraph for everybody. So, having a strange and unwholesome hankering to hear all I could about Beryl, I encouraged Edith to write long and often by setting her an example. I didn't consider that I was taking a mean advantage of her, either, for she's the kind of girl who boasts about the number of her proposals and correspondents. I knew she'd cut a notch for me on the stick where she counted her victims, but it was worth the price, and I'm positive Edith didn't mind. The only drawback was the disgusting frequency with which the words "Beryl and Terence Weaver" appeared; that did rather get on my nerves, and I did ask Edith once if Terence Weaver was the only man in New York. In fact, I was at one time on the point of going to New York myself and taking it out of Mr. Terence Weaver. I just ached to give him a run for his money. But when I hinted it—going to New York, I mean—dad looked rather hurt. "I had expected you'd stay at home until after the holidays, at least," he remarked. "I'm old-fashioned enough to feel that a family should be together Christmas week, if at no other time. It doesn't necessarily follow that because there are only two left—" Dad dropped his glasses just then, and didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to. I'd have stayed, then, no matter what string was pulling me to New York. It's so seldom, you see, that dad lowers his guard and lets you glimpse the real feeling there is in him. I felt such a cur for even wanting to leave him, that I stayed in that evening instead of going down to the Olympic, where was to be a sort of impromptu boxing-match between a couple of our swiftest amateurs. Talking to dad was virtuous, but unexciting. I remember we discussed the profit, loss, and risk of cattle-raising in Montana, till bedtime came for dad. Then I went up and roasted Rankin for looking so damned astonished at my wanting to go to bed at ten-thirty. Rankin is unbearably righteous-looking, at times. I used often to wish he'd do something wicked, just to take that moral look off him; but the pedestal of his solemn virtue was too high for mere human temptations. So I had to content myself with shying a shoe his way and asking him what there was funny about me. After dad got well enough to go back to watching his millions grow, and didn't seem to need me to keep him cheered up, life in our house dropped back to its old level—which means that I saw dad once a day, maybe. He gave me back my allowance and took to paying my bills again, and I was free to get into the old pace—which I will confess wasn't slow. The Montana incident seemed closed for good, and only Frosty's letters and a rather persistent memory was left of it. In a month I had to acknowledge two emotions I hadn't counted on: surprise and disgust. I couldn't hit the old pace. Somehow, things were different—or I was different. At first I thought it was because Barney MacTague was away cruising around the Hawaii Islands, somewhere, with a party. I came near having the Molly Stark put in commission and going after him; but dad wouldn't hear of that, and told me I'd better keep on dry land during the stormy months. So I gave in, for I hadn't the heart to go dead against his wishes, as I used to do. Besides, he'd have had to put up the coin, which he refused to do. So I moped around the clubs, backed the light-weight champion of the hour for a big match, put up a pile of money on him, and saw it fade away and take with it my trust in champions. Dad was good about it, and put up what I'd gone over my allowance without a whimper. Then I chased around the country in the Yellow Peril and won three races down at Los Angeles, touring down and back with a fellow who had slathers of money, wore blue ties, and talked through his nose. I leave my enjoyment of the trip to your imagination. When I got back, I had the Yellow Peril refitted and the tonneau put back on, and went in for society. I think that spell lasted as long as three weeks; I quit immensely popular with a certain bunch of widows and the like, and with a system so permeated with tea and bridge that it took a stiff course of high-balls and poker to take the taste out of my mouth. I think it was in March that Barney came back; but he came back an engaged young man, so that in less than a week Barney began to pall. His fiancée had got him to swear off on poker and prize-fighting and smokers and everything. And I leave it to you if there would be much left of a fellow like Barney. All he was free to do—or wanted to do—was sit in a retired corner of the club with Shasta water and cigarettes for refreshments, and talk about Her, and how It had happened, and the pangs of uncertainty that shot through his heart till he knew for sure. Barney's full as tall as I am, and he weighs twenty-five pounds more; and to hear a great, hulking brute like that talking slush was enough to make a man forswear love in all forms forever. He'd show me her picture regular, every time I met him, and expect me to hand out a jolly. She wasn't so much, either. Her nose was crooked, and she didn't appear to have any eyebrows to speak of. I'd like to have him see—well, a certain young woman with eyelashes and—Oh, well, it wasn't Barney's fault that he'd never seen a real beauty, and so was satisfied with his particular Her. I began to shy at Barney, and avoided him as systematically as if I owed him money; which I didn't. I just couldn't stand for so much monologue with a girl with no eyebrows and a crooked nose for the never-failing subject. My next unaccountable notion was manifested in an unreasoning dislike of Rankin. He got to going to some mission-meetings, somewhere down near the Barbary Coast; I got out of him that much, and that he sometimes led the meetings. Rankin can't lie—or won't—so he said right out that he was doing what little he could to save precious souls. That part was all right, of course; but he was so beastly solemn and sanctimonious that he came near sending my soul—maybe it isn't as precious as those he was laboring with—straight to the bad place. Every morning when he appeared like the ghost of a Puritan ancestor's remorse at my bedside, I swore I'd send him off before night. To look at him you'd think I had done a murder and he was an eye-witness to the deed. Still, it's pretty raw to send a man off just because he's the embodiment of punctiliousness and looks virtuously grieved for your sins. In his general demeanor, I admit that Rankin was quite irreproachable—and that's why I hated him so. Besides, Montana had spoiled me for wanting to be dressed like a baby, and I would much rather get my own hat and stick; I never had the chance, though. I'd turn and find him just back of my elbow, with the things in his hands and that damned righteous look on his face, and generally I'd swear he did get on my nerves so. I'm afraid I ruined him for a good servant, and taught him habits of idleness he'll never outgrow; for every morning I'd send him below—I won't state the exact destination, but I have reasons for thinking he never got farther than the servants' hall—with strict—and for the most part profane—orders not to show his face again unless I rang. Even at that, I always found him waiting up for me when I came home. Oh, there was no changing the ways of Rankin. I think it was about the middle of May when my general discontent with life in the old burgh took a virulent form. I'd been losing a lot one way and another, and Barney and I had come together literally and with much force when we were having a spurt with our cars out toward Ingleside. The Yellow Peril looked pretty sick when I picked myself out of the mess and found I wasn't hurt except in my feelings. Barney's car only had the lamps smashed, and as he had run into me, that made me sore. We said things, and I caught a street-car back to town. Barney drove in, about as hot as I was, I guess. So, when I got home and found a letter from Frosty, my mind was open for something new. The letter was short, but it did the business and gave me a hunger for the old days that nothing but a hard gallop over the prairie-lands, with the wind blowing the breath out of my nostrils, could satisfy. He said the round-up would start in about a week. That was about all, but I got up and did something I'd never done before. I took the letter and went straight down to dad's private den and interrupted him when he was going over his afternoon letters with Crawford. Dad was very particular not to be interrupted at such times; his mail-hours were held sacred, and nothing short of a life-or-death matter would have taken me in there—in any normal state of mind. Crawford started out of his chair—if you knew Crawford that one action would tell you a whole lot—and dad whirled toward me and asked what had happened. I think they both expected to hear that the house was on fire. "The round-up starts next week, dad," I blurted, and then stopped. It just occurred to me that it might not sound important to them. Dad matched his finger-tips together. "Since I first bought a bunch of cattle," he drawled, "the round-up has never failed to start some time during this month. Is it vitally important that it should not start?" "I've got to start at once, or I can't catch it." I fancied, just then, that I detected a glimmer of amusement on Crawford's face. I wanted to hit him with something. "Is there any reason why it must be caught?" dad wanted to know, in his worst tone, which is almost diabolically calm. "Yes," I rapped out, growing a bit riled, "there is. I can't stand this do-nothing existence any longer. You brought me up to it, and never let me know anything about your business, or how to help you run it—" "It never occurred to me," drawled dad, "that I needed help to run my business." "And last spring you rose up, all of a sudden, and started in to cure me of being a drone. The medicine you used was strong; it did the business pretty thoroughly. You've no kick coming at the result. I'm going to start to-morrow." Dad looked at me till I began to feel squirmy. I've thought since that he wasn't as surprised as I imagined, and that, on the whole, he was pleased. But, if he was, he was mighty careful not to show it. "You would better give me a list of your debts, then," he said laconically. "I shall see that your allowance goes on just the same; you may want to invest in—er—cattle." "Thank you, dad," I said, and turned to go. "And I wish to Heaven," he called after me, "that you'd take Rankin along and turn him loose out there. He might do to herd sheep. I'm sick of that hark-from-the-tombs face of his. I made a footman of him while you were gone before, rather than turn him off; but I'm damned if I do it again." I stopped just short of the door and grinned back at him. "Rankin," I said, "is one of the horrors I'm trying to leave behind, dad." But dad had gone back to his correspondence. "In regard to that Clark, Marsden, and Clark affair, I think, Crawford, it would be well—" I closed the door quietly and left them. It was dad's way, and I laughed a little to myself as I was going back to my room to round up Rankin and set him to packing. I meant to stand over him with a club this time, if necessary, and see that I got what I wanted packed. The next evening I started again for Montana—and I didn't go in dad's private car, either. Save for the fact that I had no grievance with him, and that we ate dinner alone together and drank a bottle of extra dry to the success of my pilgrimage, I went much as I had gone before: humbly and unheralded except for a telegram for some one to meet me at Osage. Rankin, I may say, did not go with me, though I did as dad had suggested and offered to take him along and get him a job herding sheep. The memory of Rankin's pained countenance lingers with me yet, and cheers me in many a dark hour when there's nothing else to laugh over. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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