When she came across the fields late in the afternoon, the strange youth’s horse was picketed where the bunch-grass grew high, and the young man himself talked with her father by the corral bars. She had never realised how old her father was, how weak, and small, and bent, until she saw him beside this erect young fellow. Her heart went out to the older man with a new sympathy as she saw his feebleness so sharply in relief against the well-blooded, hard-muscled vigour of the younger. When she would have passed them, her father called to her.
“Prudence, this is Mr. Ruel Follett. He will stay with us to-night.”
The sombrero was off again and she felt the blue eyes seeking hers, though she could not look up from the ground when she had given her little bow. She heard him say:
“I already met your daughter, sir, at the mouth of the cañon.”
She went on toward the house, hearing them resume their talk, the stranger saying, “That horse can sure carry all the weight you want to put on him and step away good; he’ll do it right at both ends, too—Dandy will—and he’s got a mighty tasty lope.”
Later she brought him a towel when he had washed himself in the tin basin on the bench outside the house. He had doffed the “chapps” and hung them on a peg, the scarlet kerchief was also off, his shirt was open at the neck, and soap and water had played freely over his head. He took the towel from her with a sputtering, “Thank you,” and with a pair of muscular, brown hands proceeded to scour himself dry until the yellow hair stood about him as a halo—without, however, in the least suggesting the angelic or even saintly: for his face, from the friction inflamed to a high degree, was now a mass of red with two inquiring spots of blue near the upper edge. But then the clean mouth opened in its frank smile, and her own dark lashes had to fall upon her cheeks until she turned away.
At supper and afterwards Mr. Follett talked freely of himself, or seemed to. He was from the high plains and the short-grass country, wherever that might be—to the east and south she gathered. He had grown up in that country, working for his father, who had been an overland freighter, until the day the railroad tracks were joined at Promontory. He, himself, had watched the gold and silver spikes driven into the tie of California mahogany two years before; and then, though they still kept a few wagon trains moving to the mining camps north and south of the railroad, they had looked for other occupations.
Now their attention was chiefly devoted to mines and cattle. There were great times ahead in the cattle business. His father remembered when they had killed cattle for their hides and tallow, leaving the meat to the coyotes. But now, each spring, a dozen men, like himself, under a herd boss, would drive five thousand head to Leavenworth, putting them through ten or twelve miles a day over the Abiline trail, keeping them fat and getting good prices for them. There was plenty of room for the business. “Over yonder across the hills,” as Mr. Follett put it. There was a herding ground four hundred miles wide, east and west, and a thousand miles north and south, covered with buffalo grass, especially toward the north, that made good stock feed the year around. He himself had, in winter, followed a herd that drifted from Montana to Texas; and in summer he had twice ranged from Corpus Christi to Deadwood.
Down in the Panhandle they were getting control of a ranch that would cover five thousand square miles. Some day they would have every one of its three million acres enclosed with a stout wire fence. It would be a big ranch, bigger than the whole state of Connecticut—bigger than Delaware and Rhode Island “lumped together”, he had been told. Here they would have the “C lazy C” brand on probably a hundred and fifty thousand head of cattle. He thought the business would settle down to this conservative basis with the loose ends of it pulled together; with closer attention paid to branding, for one thing; branding the calves, so they would no longer have to rope a full-grown steer, and tie it with a scarf such as he wore about his waist.
But they were also working some placer claims up around Helena, and developing a quartz prospect over at Carson City. And the freighting was by no means “played out.” He, himself, had driven a six-mule team with one line over the Santa Fé trail, and might have to do it again. The resources of the West were not exhausted, whatever they might say. A man with a head on him would be able to make a good living there for some years to come.
Both father and daughter found him an agreeable young man in spite of his being an alien from the Commonwealth of Israel. He remained with them three days looking over the country about Amalon, talking with its people and making himself at least not an object of suspicion and aversion, as the casual Gentile was apt to be. Prudence found herself usually at ease with him; he was so wholly likable and unassuming. Yet at times he seemed strangely mature and reserved to her, so that she was just a little awed.
He told her in their evenings many wonder-tales of that outside world where the wicked Gentiles lived; of populous cities on the western edge of it, and of vast throngs that crowded the interior clear over to the Atlantic Ocean. She had never realised before what a small handful of people the Lord had set His hand to save, and what vast numbers He had made with hearts that should be hardened to the glorious articles of the new covenant.
The wastefulness of it rather appalled her. Out of the world with its myriad millions, only the few thousand in this valley of the mountains had proved worthy of exaltation. And this young man was doubtless a fair sample of them,—happy, unthinking, earning perdition by mere carelessness. If only there were a way to save them—if only there were a way to save even this one—but she hardly dared speak to him of her religion.
When he left he told them he was making a little trip through the settlements to the north, possibly as far as Cedar City. He did not know how long he would be gone, but if nothing prevented he might be back that way. He shook hands with them both at parting, and though he spoke so vaguely about a return, his eyes seemed to tell Prudence that he would like very much to come. He had talked freely about everything but the precise nature of his errand in the valley.
In her walks to the cañon she thought much of him when he had gone. She could not put his face into the dream because he was too real and immanent. He and the dream would not blend, even though she had decided that his fresh-cheeked, clear-eyed face, with its clean smile and the yellow hair above it was almost better to look at than the face of the youth in the play. It was not so impalpable; it satisfied. So she mused about them alternately, the dream and the Gentile,—taking perhaps a warmer interest in the latter for his aliveness, for the grasp of his hand at parting, which she, with astonishment, had felt her own hand cordially returning.
Her father talked much of the young man. In his prophetic eye this fearless, vigorous young stranger was the incarnate spirit of that Gentile invasion to which the Lord had condemned them for their sins. He had come, resourceful, determined, talking of mighty enterprises, of cattle, and gold, and wheat, of wagon-trains, and railroad,—an eloquent forerunner of the Gentile hordes that should come west upon the shoulders of Israel, and surround, assimilate, and reduce them, until they should lose all their powers and gifts and become a mere sect among sects, their name, perhaps, a hissing and a scorn. He foresaw the invasion of which this self-poised, vital youth of three or four and twenty was a sapper; and he knew it was a just punishment from on high for the innocent blood they had shed. Yet now he viewed it rather impersonally, for he felt curiously disconnected from the affairs of the Church and the world.
He no longer preached on the Sabbath, giving his ill-health as an excuse. In truth he felt it would not be honest since, in his secret heart, he was now an apostate. But with his works of healing he busied himself more than ever, and in this he seemed to have gained new power. Weak as he was physically, gray-haired, bloodless, fragile, with what seemed to be all of his remaining life burning in his deep-set eyes, he yet laid his hands upon the sick with a success so marked that his fame spread and he was sent for to rebuke plagues and fevers from as far away as Beaver.
For two weeks they heard nothing of the wandering Gentile, and Prudence had begun to wonder if she would ever see him again; also to wonder why an uncertainty in the matter should seem to be of importance.
But one evening early in June they saw him walking up in the dusk, the light sombrero, the scarlet kerchief against the blue woollen shirt, the holster with its heavy Colt’s revolver at either hip, the easy moving figure, and the strong, yet boyish face.
He greeted them pleasantly, though, the girl thought, with some restraint. She could not hear it in his words, but she felt it in his manner, something suppressed and deeply hidden. They asked where his horse was and he replied with a curious air of embarrassment:—
“Well, you see, I may be obliged to stop around here a quite some while, so I put up with this man Wardle—not wanting to impose upon you all—and thanking you very kindly, and not wishing to intrude—so I just came to say ‘howdy’ to you.”
They expressed regret that he had not returned to them, Joel Rae urging him to reconsider; but he declined politely, showing a desire to talk of other things.
They sat outside in the warm early evening, the young man and Prudence near each other at one side of the door, while Joel Rae resumed his chair a dozen feet the other side and lapsed into silence. The two young people fell easily into talk as on the other evenings they had spent there. Yet presently she was again aware, as in the moment of his greeting, that he laboured under some constraint. He was uneasy and shifted his chair several times until at length it was so placed that he could look beyond her to where her father had tilted his own chair against the house and sat huddled with his chin on his breast. He talked absently, too, at first, of many things and without sequence; and when he looked at her, there was something back of his eyes, plain even in the dusk, that she had not seen there before. He was no longer the ingenuous youth who had come to them from off the Kanab trail.
In a little while, however, this uneasiness seemed to vanish and he was speaking naturally again, telling of his life on the plains with a boyish enthusiasm; first of the cattle drives, of the stampede of a herd by night, when the Indians would ride rapidly by in the dark, dragging a buffalo-robe over the ground at the end of a lariat, sending the frightened steers off in a mad gallop that made the earth tremble. They would have to ride out at full speed in the black night, over ground treacherous with prairie-dog holes, to head and turn the herd of frenzied cattle, and by riding around and around them many times get them at last into a circle and so hold them until they became quiet again. Often this was not until sunrise, even with the lullabys they sang “to put them to sleep.”
Then he spoke of adventures with the Indians while freighting over the Santa Fé trail, and of what a fine man his father, Ezra Calkins, was. It was the first time he had mentioned the name and her ear caught it at once.
“Your father’s name is Calkins?”
“Yes—I’m only an adopted son.”
Unconsciously she had been letting her voice fall low, making their chat more confidential. She awoke to this now and to the fact that he had done the same, by noting that he raised his voice at this time with a casual glance past her to where her father sat.
“Yes—you see my own father and mother were killed when I was eight years old, and the people that murdered them tried to kill me too, but I was a spry little tike and give them the slip. It was a bad country, and I like to have died, only there was a band of Navajos out trading ponies, and one morning, after I’d been alone all night, they picked me up and took care of me. I was pretty near gone, what with being scared and everything, but they nursed me careful. They took me away off to the south and kept me about a year, and then one time they took me with them when they worked up north on a buffalo hunt. It was at Walnut Creek on the big bend of the Arkansas that they met Ezra Calkins coming along with one of his trains and he bought me of those Navajos. I remember he gave fifty silver dollars for me to the chief. Well, when I told him all that I could remember about myself—of course the people that did the killing scared a good deal of it out of me—he took me to Kansas City where he lived, and went to law and made me his son, because he’d lost a boy about my age. And so that’s how we have different names, he telling me I’d ought to keep mine instead of taking his.”
She was excited by the tale, which he had told almost in one breath, and now she was eager to question, looking over to see if her father would not also be interested; but the latter gave no sign.
“You poor little boy, among those wretched Indians! But why were your father and mother killed? Did the Indians do it?”
“No, not Indians that did it—and I never did know why they killed them—they that did do it.”
“But how queer! Don’t you know who it was?”
Before answering, he paused to take one of the long revolvers from its holster, laying it across his lap, his right hand still grasping it.
“It was tiring my leg where it was,” he explained. “I’ll just rest myself by holding it here. I’ve practised a good smart bit with these pistols against the time when I’d meet some of them that did it—that killed my father and mother and lots of others, and little children, too.”
“How terrible! And it wasn’t Indians?”
“No—I told you that already—it wasn’t Indians.”
“Don’t you know who it was?”
“Oh, yes, I know all of them I want to know. The fact is, up there at Cedar City I met some people that got confidential with me one day, and told me a lot of their names. There was Mr. Barney Carter and Mr. Sam Woods, and they talked right freely about some folks. I found out what I was wanting to know, being that they were drinking men.”
He had moved slightly as he spoke and she glanced at the revolver still held along his knee.
“Isn’t that dangerous—seems to me it’s pointed almost toward father.”
“Oh, not a bit dangerous, and it rests me to hold it there. You see it was hereabouts this thing happened. In fact, I came down here looking for a big man, and a little girl that I remembered, whose father and mother were killed at the same time mine was. This little girl was about three or four, I reckon, and she was taken by one of the murderers. He seemed like an awful big man to me. By the way, that’s mean whiskey your Bishop sells on the sly up at Cedar City. Why, it’s worse than Taos lightning. Well, this Barney Carter and Mr. Sam Woods, they would drink it all right, but they said one drink made a man ugly and two made him so downright bad that he’d just as lief tear his wife’s best bonnet to pieces as not. But they seemed to like me pretty well, and they drank a lot of this whiskey that the Bishop sold me, and then they got talking pretty freely about old times. I gathered that this man that took the little girl is a pretty big man around here. Of course I wasn’t expecting anything like that; I thought naturally he’d be a low-down sort to have been mixed up in a thing like that.”
He spoke his next words very slowly, with little pauses.
“But I found out what his name was—it was—”
He stopped, for there had been an indistinct sound from where her father sat, now in the gloom of the evening. She called to him:
“Did you speak, father?”
There was no reply or movement from the figure in the chair, and Follett resumed:
“I guess he was just asleep and dreaming about something. Well, anyway—I—I found out afterwards by telling it before him, that Mr. Barney Carter and his drunken friend had given me his name right, though I could hardly believe it before.”
“What an awful, awful thing! What wickedness there is in the world!”
“Oh, a tolerable lot,” he assented.
He had been all animation and eagerness in the telling of the story, but had now become curiously silent and listless; so that, although she was eager with many questions about what he had said, she did not ask them, waiting to see if he would not talk again. But instead of talking, he stayed silent and presently began to fidget in his chair. At last he said, “If you’ll excuse us, Miss Prudence, your pa and I have got a little business matter to talk over—to-night. I guess we can go down here by the corral and do it.”
But she arose quickly and bade him good night. “I hope I shall see you to-morrow,” she said.
She bent over to kiss her father as she went in, and when she had done so, warned him that he must not sit in the night air.
“Why your face is actually wet with a cold sweat. You ought to come in at once.”
“After a very little, dear. Go to bed now—and always be a good girl!”
“And you’ve grown so hoarse sitting here.”
“In a little while,—always be a good girl!”
She went in with a parting admonition: “Remember your cough—good night!”
When she had gone neither man stirred for the space of a minute. The little man, huddled in his seat, had not changed his position; he still sat with his chair tilted back against the house, his chin on his breast.
The other had remained standing where the girl left him, the revolver in his hand. After the minute of silence he crossed over and stood in front of the seated man.
“Come,” he said, gruffly, “where do you want to go?”