Читать книгу Troubled Waters - William MacLeod Raine - Страница 3
ОглавлениеAMONG THE APPLE BLOSSOMS
THE young man drew up his horse at the side of the dusty road and looked across the barbed-wire fence into the orchard beyond. Far distant against the horizon could be seen the blue mountain range of the Big Horns, sharp-toothed, with fields of snow lying in the gulches. But in the valley basin where he rode an untempered sun, too hot for May, beat upon his brown neck and through the gray flannel shirt stretched taut across his flat back.
The trees were clouds of soft blossoms and the green alfalfa beneath looked delightfully cool. Warm and dry from travel as he was, that shadowy paradise of pink and white bloom and lush deep grass called mightily to him. A reader of character might have guessed that handsome Larry Silcott followed the line of least resistance. If his face betrayed no weakness, certainly it showed self-satisfaction, an assured smug acceptance of the fact that he was popular and knew it. Yet his friends, and he had many of them, would have protested that word smug. He was a good fellow, amiable, friendly, anxious to please. At dance and round-up he always had a smile or a laugh ready.
He caught a glimpse of the weathered roof of the ranch house where the rambling road dipped into a draw. Well, it would wait there for him. There were twenty-four hours in every day and seven days in each week. Time was one thing Larry had plenty of. Why not climb the fence and steal a long luxurious nap in the orchard of the Elkhorn Lodge? He looked at his watch—and ten seconds later was trespassing with long strides through the grass.
Larry was Irish by descent. He was five-and-twenty. He had the digestion of an ostrich. For which good reasons and several others he whistled as his quirt whipped the alfalfa tops from the stems. For the young range rider was in love with life, the mere living. Take last night, now. He had flirted outrageously at the Circle O T Ranch dance with Jack Cole’s girl, though he had known she was expecting to be married before winter. Jack was his friend, and he had annoyed him and made him jealous. Larry had excited Kate with the flattery of a new conquest, and he had made the ranchers and their wives smile tolerantly at the way he had “rushed” her. All of this was grist to his mill. He liked to be envied, to be admired, to be thought irresistible. His vanity accepted it as tribute to his attractiveness. Besides, what harm did it do? Kate and Jack would quarrel and make up. This would be a variation to the monotony of their courtship. He had really done them a kindness, though probably Jack would not recognize it as one.
Flinging himself down beneath a tree, he drew a deep breath of content. Roving eyes swept the open pasture adjoining, the blue sky with its westering sun ready to sink behind a crotch of the hills. His blinking lids closed sleepily, and opened again while he nestled closer to the ground and pillowed a dusky head on an arm. He had slept only two hours the night before.
From the foliage above came a faint rustle followed by what might pass as a discreet little cough. The range rider sat up as though he were hinged at the hips, rose to his feet, and lifted the pinched-in felt hat to a glimpse of blue in the shower of blossoms.
“Where did you come from?” he demanded, face lifted to the foliage.
“From Keokuk, Iowa,” came the prompt answer.
He laughed at this literal response. “I’ll never believe it, ma’am. You’re one of these banshees my mother used to talk about, or else you’re a fairy or one of these here nymphs that dwell in trees.”
Through the blossoms he made out a slim figure of grace, vaguely outlined in the mass of efflorescence.
Her laughter rippled down to him. “Sorry to disappoint you, sir. But I’m a mere woman.”
“I ain’t so sure you won’t open up yore wings an’ fly away,” he protested. “But if you’re givin’ me the straight of it, all I’ve got to say is that I like women. I been waitin’ for one twenty-odd years. Last night I dreamed I was gonna find her before sunset to-day. That’s straight.”
She was seated on a branch, chin tilted in a little cupped fist, one heel caught on the bough below to steady her. With an instinct wholly feminine she dexterously arranged the skirt without being able to conceal some inches of slender limb rising from a well-turned ankle.
“You’ll have to hasten on your way, then. The sun sets in half an hour,” she told him.
His grin was genial, insinuating, an unfriendly critic might have said impudent. “Room for argument, ma’am,” he demurred. “Funny, ain’t it, that of all the millions of apple trees in the world I sat down under this one—an’ while you were in it? Here we are, the man, the tree, an’ the girl, as you might say.”
“Are you listing the items in the order of their importance?” she asked. “And anyhow we won’t be here long, since I am leaving now.”
“Why are you going?” he wanted to know.
“A little matter, a mere trifle. You seem to have forgotten it, but—we haven’t been introduced.”
“Now looky here, ma’am. What’s in a name? Some guys says, ‘Meet Mr. Jones,’ an’ you claim you know me. Not a thing to that. It’s a heap more fun to do our own introducin’. Now ain’t it? Honest Injun! I’m anything you want to call me, an’ you’re Miss-Lady-in-the-Apple-Blossoms. An’ now that’s been fixed, I reckon I’ll take the elevator up.”
The girl’s eyes sparkled. There was something attractive about this young fellow’s impudence that robbed it of offence. Womanlike, her mind ran to evasions. “You can’t come up. You’d shake down all the blossoms.”
“If I shook ’em all down but one I’ll bet the tree would bloom to beat any other in the orchard.”
“If that is meant for a compliment——”
“No, Lady, for the truth.”
He caught the lowest limb and was about to swing himself up. Her sharp “No!” held him an instant while their eyes met. A smile crept into his and gave the face a roguish look, a touch of Pan.
“Will you come down then?”
“At my convenience, sir.”
An upward swing brought him to the fork of the tree. Yet a moment, and he was beside her among the blossoms. Her eyes swept him in one swift glance, curiously, a little shyly.
“With not even a by-your-leave. You are a claim jumper,” she said.
“No, ma’am. I’m locatin’ the one adjoinin’ yores.”
“You may have mine, since I’m vacating it.”
“Now don’t you,” he protested. “Let yoreself go once an’ be natural. Like a human being. Hear that meadow-lark calling to his mate. He’s tellin’ his lady friend how strong he is for her. Why even the irrigation ditch is singin’ a right nice song about what a peach of a day it is.”
The girl’s eyes appraised him without seeming to do so. So far the cow-punchers she had met had been shy and awkward, red-faced and perspiring. But this youth was none of these. The sun and the wind of the Rockies had painted the tan on face and neck and hands, had chiselled tiny humorous wrinkles that radiated from the corners of his eyes. Every inch of the broad-rimmed felt hat, of the fancy silk kerchief, of the decorated chaps, certified him a rider of the range. But where had he picked up that spirited look of gay energy, that whimsical smile which combined deference and audacity?
“He travels fast,” the girl announced to the world at large. “Which reminds me that so must I.”
Larry too made a confidant of his environment. “I wonder how she’ll get past me—unless she really has wings.”
“I’ve heard that all Westerners are gentlemen at heart,” she mused aloud. “Of course he’ll let me past.”
“Now she’s tryin’ to flatter me. Nothin’ doing. We’ll give it out right now that I’m no gentleman,” he replied, impersonally. Then, abandoning his communion with the apple blossoms, he put a question to the young woman who shared the tenancy of the tree with him: “Mind if I smoke?”
“Why should you ask me, since you confess—or do you boast?—that you are no gentleman?”
From the pocket of his shirt he drew tobacco and paper, then rolled a cigarette. “I’m one off an’ on,” he explained. “Whenever it don’t cramp my style, you understand.”
She took advantage of his preoccupation with the “makings,” stepped lightly to a neighbouring branch, swung to a lower one, and dropped easily to earth.
The eyes that looked up at him sparkled triumph. “I wish you luck in your search for that paragon you’re to meet before sunset,” she said.
“I’ll be lucky. Don’t you worry about that,” he boasted coolly. “Only I don’t have to find her now. I’ve found her.”
Then, unexpectedly, they went down into the alfalfa together amid a shower of apple blossoms. For he, swinging from the branch upon which he sat, had dropped, turned his ankle on an outcropping root, and clutched at her as he fell.
The girl merely sat down abruptly, but he plunged cheek first into the soft loam of the plowed orchard. His nose and the side of his face were decorated with débris. Mopping his face with a handkerchief, he succeeded in scattering more widely the soil he had accumulated.
She looked at him, gave a little giggle, suppressed it decorously, then went off into a gale of laughter. He joined her mirth.
“Not that there’s anything really to laugh at,” he presently assured her with dignity.
The young woman made an honest attempt at gravity, but one look at his embellished face set her off again.
“We just sat down,” he explained.
“Yes. On your bubble of romance. It’s gone—punctured——”
“No, no, Miss Lady-in-the-Apple-Blossoms. I’m stickin’ to my story.”
“But it won’t stick to you, as for instance the dirt does that you grubbed into.”
“Sho!” He mopped his face again. “You know blame’ well we’re gonna be friends. Startin’ from right now.”
She started to rise, but he was before her. With both hands he drew her to her feet. She looked at him, warily, with a little alarm, for he had not released her hands.
“If you please,” she suggested, a warning in her voice.
He laughed, triumphantly, and swiftly drew her to him. His lips brushed her hot cheek before she could push him away.
She snatched her hands from him, glared indignantly for an instant at him, then turned on her heel in contemptuous silence.
Smilingly he watched her disappear.
Slowly, jubilation still dancing in his eyes, he waded through the alfalfa to the fence, crept between two strands, and mounted the patient cow pony.
As he rode by the ranch house the girl he had kissed heard an unabashed voice lifted gaily in song. The words drifted to her down the wind.
“Foot in the stirrup and hand on the horn,
Best damned cowboy that ever was born.”
It came to her as a boast, almost as a challenge. She recognized the voice, the jaunty impudence of its owner. There was no need to go to the window of her room to make sure of who the singer was. The blood burned in her cheeks. Fire sparked in her eyes. If he ever gave her a chance she would put him in his place, she vowed.
