CHAPTER XI
The glow of success at having gained the victory over Joyce in such an unexpected way, the realization of being herself a homesteader, with all the responsibilities and opportunities which that title conferred gave Harry a new interest in the hard work of the succeeding months. Winter came early and stayed late up there in the foothills and before the snow began to fall in November a great deal must be done.
Most important of all was the building of the house. Within six months after filing on land each homesteader must, in the language of the law, "establish a residence." Fortunately the section line between Harry's hundred and sixty and Rob's ran just east of the stream and so, by placing the two fourteen-foot cabins together with this line between them, a very fair-sized house would result.
Rob had figured that, with Harry's help, he could get the house up in a month. He had planned to build it during October between harvesting and threshing. He had already engaged to work for the ranchers down on the flat with their hay and grain, and furthermore he had taken a job feeding stock for the winter at Stone Bridge, a new settlement up the river.
But now Harry must be included in the winter's plans. A few months earlier this would have been a serious consideration, as the only thing she could do by which she could earn her living sufficiently well was teaching, and, as has been said, she had had to give up that work because of eyestrain. But six months of desert life had, in addition to broadening her ideas, restored the natural vigor of her eyesight. The complete rest from school work, the change from living in close rooms, from narrow, close-built streets, and moving crowds, to working out of doors with the wide horizon and silent spaces of the hills around her had, in fact, given her more vigor than she had ever had and she felt more fit than ever to teach.
Here, of course, another difficulty arose. Teachers would have been engaged for all district schools by the time Rob and Harry should be ready to leave the ranch. They talked the situation over and decided that an advertisement in the Prairie Despatch would reach the most remote hamlets; those where lay the probable chances of finding a vacancy. If this failed, Harry could go out with Rob to cook for the threshing crews and, when that work ended, board in Stone Bridge through the winter.
Having settled this, Rob went down to help Robinson put up his second cutting of alfalfa and Harry spent the week irrigating their alfalfa and the garden. They had put in a quarter of an acre of potatoes with the intention of having enough both for their own use the following spring and summer and for selling to the ranchers down on the flat where late frosts usually nipped the garden patches.
Harry's advertisement was to appear in that Saturday's Despatch, so naturally there was no report from it when Rob came up to spend Sunday. But the following week he brought a letter from the trustees of a mountain hamlet and, more important, word from Mrs. Robinson that her husband's sister living up at Stone Bridge, had written that their teacher was going to be married and they were wondering where to find another.
Harry, of course, rode out with Rob on Monday, taking her diploma and a letter of recommendation from the principal of the school in the East where she had taught. She was obliged to pass an examination before being allowed to teach in Idaho, but she did that satisfactorily and it was not difficult for the school board to believe in her general fitness for the work—if "work" it could be called—she reflected after seeing the textbooks and the fifteen children who were to be her pupils.
The winter's work being thus happily settled for them, Harry and Rob gave their attention to the new house. He hauled the lumber at odd times between haying and harvesting and on the first of October came home with a last load of nails, shingles, windows and building paper, ready to begin work.
The building of that "prove-up shack," as Rob would call it, was, next to Harry's coming into Idaho, the most significant event in her life. All her traditions had built the conviction that a home must be something more than a weatherproof box containing the number of cubic feet required by the homestead law and lighted by one window two and a half feet square.
"I can't, I won't live in a—a shack like some I've seen," she protested; "board walls so full of splinters you could curry a horse against them and nothing but a row of nails for a closet. Why isn't it just as cheap to make a pretty cottage of the same amount of wood?"
"Why, isn't it just as cheap to make a lace veil as a flour sack? They're both made of cotton thread. I've figured on spending one month's time and about two hundred dollars cash on this dwelling. Now if you can show me where any style can be worked in for that sum of money and labor—don't forget the labor—go ahead and make your plan."
This somewhat discouraging permission was quite enough for Harry. A flood of sketches including dormer windows, pergolas, verandas and colonial chimneys was the result offered for Rob's consideration.
"Now if I were an architect and you had a million dollars to spend we'd show these old timers, wouldn't we?" he laughed. But nevertheless, he did try to adapt his material to the spirit of Harry's wishes.
The eaves of the steep, gabled roof hung low; there were windows wherever a free wall space allowed—big windows that gave the plain rooms a set of ever-changing pictures of prairie and mountains. There was even a little porch before the door—that door built of planks, studded with nail-heads and twice the width of the ordinary mill-work door, "so that when we get our piano, it will be easy to bring it inside," explained Harry.
"You must be figuring on making money, real money," Rob teased.
Harry could not tell him how the slow raising of that house had lifted her to the sight of still wider horizons. But every board she helped to lay in place, every nail she drove fastened her more firmly to this new land, strengthened her will to succeed. As she and Rob worked they talked, planning endless improvements to be made as they should prosper. The desire for those things stirred them to toil happier than many pleasures.
Rob did not finish the house, there was too much else to be done; a horse shed to be run up, firewood to be cut and hauled in readiness for the following spring, the channel of the stream that ran close to the house to be deepened and widened with the slip, so that when the snow water came down in the spring break-up it would not overflow into their new cellar, or swirl a pile of stones from the hillside into the garden.
They left the gathering of the stove wood to the last; freezing ground would not make sagebrush any harder to cut and haul. They were getting the wood in a coulee about a mile east of Harry's hundred and sixty where there were plenty of willows and the sagebrush grew big and thick.
It was a cold November afternoon when, as they were loading the last wagonful, they saw coming in along the trail a team hauling lumber and a mountain wagon.
"Well! What do you know about that," Rob exclaimed; "looks like some one's filed here. I'd better go over and see."
Harry watched in a stir of eager curiosity. Homesteaders! That would mean neighbors. A procession of possibilities swept through her mind.
The three men talked for five minutes or so, then Rob came back.
"Homesteaders all right," he announced, "an old man named Eldredge and his wife. The young fellow is a real estate man from Shoshone who's locating them. Eldredge is only going to put up his shack this fall and then go back east—he's from Missouri—and came out in the spring with his wife."
"How jolly to have neighbors," Harry beamed. "I hope they've some children?"
"Nary one. Just Darby and Joan. But she'll be another woman for you to exchange flower seeds with and have a tryout as to which can make the best cake. Isn't that what you've been wanting?"
"You seem to be pleased yourself. It'll give you fresh material to tease me with."
"Fine! I didn't expect you'd see that so quickly. Too bad we'll have to wait until next spring to start the fun."
"Oh, I don't know. By the time you've helped feed a hundred head of cattle and cleaned the corral for a month you'll forget there is such a thing as a joke or me to be tormented."
Harry's prediction hit the mark.
All through the winter she and Rob did not talk together once a week. He was at work in the morning before she left for school and in the evening after nodding a few moments over the paper he rolled off to bed.
Harry, herself, gave little thought to anything beyond her work. As soon as she began teaching, all the interest and pleasure which she had taken in it before revived with an ardor to kindle the most indifferent child. She had been cut off so abruptly from her companionship with girls that her heart was still a little bit sore from the tearing loose of old bonds. Also, she had been in her new environment just long enough to feel, beneath the material interests and excitement of new work and prospects, the ache of loneliness for friends. In her six months of wilderness life she had made the acquaintance of enough people to realize with startling emphasis how frankly dishonest and also what crudely and unassumingly good pioneers men and women are. With senses alert for such things she saw what school life—all too short for these sturdy workers—might be made to mean.
That flow of warm good will helped to carry her far over the difficult beginning, for it was hard at the start. Her pupils were of all ages from six to fifteen and of as many dispositions. All, of course, were suspicious of the new teacher who had supplanted the one they knew.
"They look at me," Harry reflected, inwardly amused, "as I might view a boa constrictor coiled in a college professor's chair. If they only knew how much that is interesting a boa constrictor could tell them! Well, I'll show them how I'm not like one—Attention, please!"
She smiled at them as they turned, surprised, on their way to the door. (It was Friday afternoon and they were in a hurry to be off.) "You are all invited to meet me here to-morrow evening at seven o'clock," she went on, "girls please wear aprons as we are going to make candy. That'll show them I'm half human," she added to herself, watching the faint start of surprise that went through them, followed by smiles and murmured thanks.
That was a good beginning even though between beginning and finishing may be a hilly road. But it was Harry's belief that every one loved adventure, every one dreamed of romantic deeds with himself the hero. From this she had decided that every one would work and study with gusto if the task were skillfully presented to the imagination as a living, pulsing part of the great romance—life. But the theories which she had evolved while teaching carefully reared girls from well-to-do families was not certain to fit all cases. The first month at Stone Bridge district school was destructive to all theories and nearly baffled her.
Such unexpected work she had: to make children wash their faces and hands; to make and enforce the rule that handkerchiefs were to be universally carried; to watch those who came in thin shoes through the snow and rain and make them dry their feet; to see that certain big boys did not filch the lunches from certain small, timid ones; and to watch that pencils, erasers, colored crayons and other small belongings were not carried off by those to whom they did not belong. Also, she bought mittens and scarfs for two small children of a hard-drinking sawyer at the lumber mill, and acquired the habit of carrying something extra with her lunch every day for the little girl who never had enough.
"And all the time I'm learning a lot from them," she realized when she saw them settle things for themselves. When red-headed Katie Riordan jumped out and slapped "Portagee Joe" Biane, the worst boy in school, for sticking his foot out and tripping little Lon Fisher, it took Harry's breath away. She hadn't been intended to see it because she was working at the board. Not knowing what to do, she waited to think it over. In the meanwhile, Joe let Lon alone and Katie was as sweet as new milk to every one.
Every day she saw things which made her bubble with laughter, ache with pity and burn with indignation: the blacksmith's three children who came to school on one horse, their feet tied up in sacks full of straw to keep them from freezing; Knute Sundstron, who wore neither socks nor undershirt and swallowed a spoonful of sand to cure indigestion, asking to sit by the door where his feet might not get warm and make his chilblains itch; Charlie Martin, an only child who loved books with a ruling passion but was not allowed to carry them home from the school library because they "littered up the house," slipping them inside the lining of his overcoat in order to smuggle them into his room; and Isita Biane, the sister of "Portagee Joe," pretending that she didn't want to go out to play at noontime, when the reason was that she had no jacket and couldn't run or play in the man's overcoat in which she rode to school.
Of all these, amongst all the children in school Isita most appealed to Harry. She was a puzzle, too. She said she was fourteen but looked small for her age and was far behind the class she should have been in. She stumbled hopelessly over her arithmetic, could scarcely write her name legibly and yet spoke good English and could read remarkably well.
She studied earnestly, but at times Harry would look up and find the girl's gentle, black eyes on her with a timid steadfastness that stayed with her after school. "I wonder if she isn't badly treated at home," she pondered. "I'm sure I've seen bruises on her face and she seems to be utterly submissive to that hulking brother of hers. I must try to make friends with her."
But oddly enough this was something which she could not quite bring about. She knew Isita liked her; the faint flush which brightened her face when Harry spoke to her, the shy answering smile, were not to be mistaken. But there was a reserve which met Harry's attempts at active friendliness and which she was too well bred to force. "I'm a stranger and she isn't quite sure of me," she decided. "If I wait she'll come round." And then, the very next day she yielded to a kindly impulse which had strange consequences.
It was one of those cloudless days in January when the sun, so hot at midday in that altitude, shone with a terrible brilliance over the snow-draped mountains and the white valley. But a freezing wind contested the sun's warmth and Harry was walking up and down during the noon recess in the shelter of the building while the schoolroom aired.
Most of the children were playing shadow-tag, shouting and laughing, their faces scarlet with their exertions and the bite of the air. Harry paused, smiling at them, and suddenly noticed Isita, standing alone in her clumsy sheepskin coat, watching the others.
As at a hand on her wrist Harry stiffened. "Isita," she called lightly. "Oh, Isita. Come here a minute."
The girl had started at the sound of her name, and seeing Harry's eyes on her, a little flush passed over her thin olive cheeks. She came toward her teacher, moving awkwardly in the heavy coat.
"Don't you want to do something for me," Harry began in her quick, easy-going way. "There's a book, a new book just come from New York that I want to read to you this afternoon. It's up in my room over at Mrs. McCullon's. I want you to go over and get it for me. Will you, dear? I can't leave these children and go myself. You'll find the book on the table beside the bed. It's blue with gold letters. Tell Mrs. 'Mac' I sent you. Here! Put on my sweater. You don't need that heavy jacket to run up the street."
While she talked Harry had unbuttoned her sweater, slipped it off, then, still smiling into Isita's wondering eyes, she unfastened with quick, sure hands the sheepskin coat and drew it easily from the girl's shoulders. Isita had made a weak effort of resistance, drawing back a little, an odd look of fear in her face; but Harry was so quick, so sure of herself, that the change was made before there was time to remonstrate. She had the thick, warm sweater on and buttoned round Isita's chin and was walking with her to the road. "You've plenty of time," she encouraged. "Don't run."
With the girl's coat on her arm she stood a moment watching Isita hurry away, skip a few steps, then abruptly break into running.
"Of course!" Harry said. "She likes to run as much as anybody. No wonder she can't play with this thing on." She looked disapprovingly at the heavy, much-worn canvas "sourdough" coat on her arm. "She's going to keep my sweater! No reason on earth why I shouldn't wear my new one every day. What queer people the Bianes must be to let their child wear such clothes. It's not because they're poor, either. Biane's a sheep shearer and makes good wages. I must get up the creek to see Mrs. Biane. Teaching children satisfactorily without knowing their parents is like trying to furnish a house by guessing at it from the outside."
It was getting near one o'clock and she went in, shut the windows, stirred up the fire and came out to look up the road for Isita before ringing the hell. Isita was almost at the gate, the book under her arm and a real rose-color in her cheeks. Harry watched her, not noticing that Joe Biane was coming from the opposite direction. He had been with the other boys to skate on the river and he, too, had seen his sister coming. He reached the gate before her and stood waiting.
Harry, standing in the porch, saw him speak to his sister, saw the girl draw back, warding him off—"Why what is he doing!" Harry exclaimed, and ran sharply down the steps just as he snatched the book from Isita, threw it on the ground and began pulling off the jacket she was wearing.
"Stop! Joe Biane—" Quick as thought the remembrance of what Katie Riordan had done to this bully flashed back to Harry. She caught him by the shoulder, gave him a shake and pushed him back. Her face was white, her eyes sparkled. Taken utterly by surprise Joe made no attempt to resist. "Pick up that book," Harry ordered, her eyes steadily on his.
His scowl deepened. "My sister ain't here to work for you, nor nobody," he growled. "She ain't wearing nobody's rags, neither. You take that off, 'Sita, d'you hear?"
"Pick up that book or stay after school for an hour every day this month," Harry interrupted. "Isita, leave that sweater on. I am in charge here, Joe Biane. If your sister goes on an errand for me, that is my affair and hers. Go inside and take your seat and don't say another word. Thank you, Isita, for going after this. That little run did you good. I'll have to think up excuses to get you out every day." She smiled as she said it, gave a little pat to the girl's shoulder and went back to the door to order the children who had all been watching and listening to this interlude, back to work.
In no way did she refer again to what had happened. She kept them all smartly at work during the afternoon session and read them the first chapter of Robin Hood and His Merry Men from the blue book with gold letters. When she dismissed school at three o'clock she asked Isita and Joe to stay.
"Now," she said when they were alone, she, in a chair before the stove, the brother and sister facing her from the nearest bench. "Now, Joe, I want first to know whether you are acting on the authority of your parents to control Isita during school hours?"
Joe, his hands in his pockets, his feet stuck out in front of him, slid a narrow half-glance at Harry and down again. "What's that to you?" he demanded in a barely articulate grumble. "You're here to teach."
"Exactly. And one of my first duties is to see that you children learn the lessons and advance in your classes. To do this you must obey the rules—"
"Who's breaking your rules," Joe interrupted. "What rules give you the claim on any of us to go your errands?"
"—Must obey the rules," Harry continued mildly, "and one of the rules is that you must go out every fair day and exercise. If you don't get the fresh air you can't study. You know as well as I do that Isita can't play, or even walk well in that big heavy coat. And she is too thinly dressed to go out without it. I sent her for that book just for an excuse to make her run, and gave her my sweater so she could run. It's a very nice jacket; fits her and is pretty and warm. It is my privilege to give it to her if she will accept it, if her mother has no objections. You don't think she would object, do you, Isita?"
With all the encouragement and kindness she could put into voice and look Harry turned to the girl. To her surprise Isita, very pale, looked down at her hands and said: "I guess I'd better not take it, Miss Holliday. Thank you, just the same."
Harry felt her blood quicken indignantly at this, to her, unreasoning suspicion of a friendly deed. "Just as you think best," she acquiesced; "but you must wear something suitable to go out in during recess."
Joe laughed. "You needn't worry about her," he said. "She's used to a whole lot you couldn't stand."
In thinking over the affair that night Harry wondered whether she had not made a big mistake. Ought she not to have ignored everything outside of Isita's actual school work? "Anyhow," she reminded herself, "she knows that I want to help her. It may be that something will come up later that will send her to me."
But such a hoped-for occasion was not to happen for a long time. Before the spring term ended Isita and Joe both stopped coming to school, and when the truant officer hunted for them the family had moved away. Harry could get no news of them from the other pupils and went back to the ranch for the summer without a prospect of seeing Isita again.
In the rush of summer work, concern for her school naturally waned. Moreover, she soon began to look forward with interest to the arrival of the Eldredges. Several times she went up to the little shack to see if they had come. But there were no signs of any one having been there and the summer passed without bringing them—Rob inquired at the land office whether their filing had been withdrawn, but nothing of that kind had happened.
"Too bad," said the clerk, "for somebody else'll sure file over them if they let the time go over. Good land's getting mighty scarce around here."
"I shouldn't wonder but what we'd better file on additional homesteads," Rob said, as he was telling Harry what he had heard; "I could take that long strip to the west and you could file on that swale on top of the hills; you know that long meadow just back of those buttes? With a fence around that we shouldn't be bothered so much with cattle coming in to water here when it gets dry. As soon as I can get time I believe I'll go over that land and look for section-line corners."
"Are we going to have money enough for all that," Harry asked: "take up more land before we've got this planted?"
"I shouldn't plant all of this anyway; haven't water enough to irrigate it all. But I'll need more grazing some day for my stock. If nothing happens we'll have money enough from this next winter's work to fence it."
Rob had made several hundred dollars by his winter's work at Stone Bridge and he had also gained valuable experience in handling and feeding cattle. Harry, too, had saved more than half her salary and was able to invest in a good cow, pony and saddle. It seemed to both of them that they could not do better than go back to Stone Bridge for the next two winters. They could do a lot of work on the place in the six months of the dry season and the money they made working out would help them to get ahead much faster than two or three extra months on the ranch.
Stone Bridge had, of course, grown during the summer absences. It was good wheat land and settlers were flowing in. The school naturally grew as well, and the third winter there were thirty pupils instead of fifteen, and a second teacher.
As Harry sat listening to a class recite, as she watched the children studying, she studied them: the white-headed Swedes, the olive-skinned Indians, the Austrians, Swiss, Scotch, Americans, all so different, all so worth while if one knew how to reach them. Teaching of this sort was a bigger thing than ever it had seemed. The mere copiousness of the so-called practical jokes that they played on each other was evidence of the locked-up energy within them—energy so soon to be harnessed to the plow, the mill, the mine, to follow the trail from ranch to forest reserve, to go wherever the market called for workers. She had the feeling of wanting to shut the doors and say: "Stay here! You haven't begun to learn. Think of the books you ought to read—" She stopped herself. "Literature! Why they're the stuff it's made of, aren't they? and history, too. They've already had hold of life as they'd grab a half-broken cayuse and no more afraid of it.
"There's just one child I would like to see go on studying, though: that little Isita Biane. I could tell by the look in her eyes that she wanted to learn. She loved it. I wish I knew where she is. If I could find her father and mother I wouldn't rest until I'd made them understand that Isita isn't the sort to do things with her muscles. She could do more with her brains, if it's money they want her to earn."
This was to be her last winter teaching, at least for a time, as she and Rob had decided to stay the next winter on the ranch and feed their own cattle there. So she quite gave up hope of seeing Isita again. But before school closed she asked the other teacher who was coming back in the fall to look out for the girl, if she did turn up, and make an effort to keep her in school through the grades at least.
And then, almost the first person she saw when they went back to the ranch was Joe Biane. They met him coming across their land as they drove in. He had a gun over his shoulder and was carrying several grouse.
"Who's that?" Rob asked, as Harry nodded and Joe touched his hat and grunted as he passed.
"That boy I told you gave me so much trouble in school. I wonder what he's doing up here. Shooting on our land, too."
They looked after him as he went over the hill, the sunset light a dusky red glow on his gun barrel.
"Nobody living out that way," Rob said. "He must be with some outfit camping at those east springs for the night."
"I wonder where the family is—following the old man on his rounds to the shearing pens. I suppose."
"More likely shacked up in these hills somewhere, so Biane can come home easy when he gets through at the nearest shearing corral."
"I believe I'll ride up east in the morning and see if they're around here," Harry decided.
There they were. As Harry rounded the rocky butte she saw smoke coming from the Eldredge's abandoned cabin and a woman, gathering an armful of sagebrush, retreated hastily into the house at sight of the stranger.
"Mrs. Eldredge!" Harry thought instantly. "But why haven't they let us know they were here?" The smile of expectancy was on her face as she got down from her saddle and knocked at the door. The smile stiffened with surprise as the door opened narrowly and Joe Biane looked out at her.
"Why, Joe! How—I thought—Don't the Eldredges live here?"
"Never heard of 'em." Joe was older, heavier, as lounging and covertly impertinent as ever.
"Why, they are the people who filed on this land, built this house."
"Never been here, anyhow."
"How long have you been here, if I may ask? Is Isita here?" involuntarily, she glanced behind him into the house.
"She ain't in now," Joe slowly began to close the door. "Her'n the old lady's went off hunting greens."
"I see." Harry thought of the woman gathering wood. "Well, I wish you'd tell Isita to come over and see me."
"Sure." There was an odd gleam in Joe's eye as he closed the door.
"I wonder what it is that makes them so unfriendly," Harry thought as she rode home. "But if they think I'm going to give up Isita just for the snubs of a surly creature like Joe they're mistaken."
CHAPTER XII
That more than Joe's surliness stood between Isita and Harry, the latter was not long in discovering. She was not easily discouraged from attempting anything she had set her heart on, and at first she made all sorts of pretexts for going up to the Biane's. Sometimes it was to carry eggs or new pieplant or lettuce; "We have so much," she explained to the silent, haggard-faced woman who came to the door; or it was a bundle of illustrated papers that had been sent her from home, and she thought Isita might be interested in them. Once or twice she asked boldly if Isita might not come down and stay with her for a few days to help with the chores, while she was working outside with Rob. But Biane himself made it plain that Isita was expected to work for her own family, and Mrs. Biane avoided seeing or talking to their neighbor. To be sure, Isita came down to the Holliday's, but it was to "borrow" soap, salt, tools and various other small necessities of which the shiftless Biane family stood in need, and she was always in a nervous hurry to get back home and never accepted Harry's friendliest urging to stay awhile. Harry felt sure that the younger girl wanted to be friends, that in this lonely land of vast distances each of them needed the other. But she saw that Isita was very much afraid of her quiet, smiling tyrannical father and, in spite of her unmistakable attachment to Harry, she was too shy to talk of home troubles.
As the spring days lengthened there was, too, less time for visiting. To the sagebrush homesteader the sixty days of May and June are the heart of the year's labor and a man must keep things moving from dawn to dark, if he means to get ahead. No sooner is the frost out of the ground, no sooner have the break-up floods of snow water run off, the quaking morass of meadow-lands grown solid earth once more, than the plow must be started.
Harry had learned to handle the four-horse disk plow and the harrow as well, so, while Rob worked one team she handled the other. They now had four heavy work horses, besides three colts that could be used off and on, and quite a bunch of half-broke and young stuff belonging to Owens, which they worked as payment for their feed; thus there were few idle hours while the spring drive lasted.
To Harry each new morning was a fresh adventure and whenever Rob did not need her for an hour or so, she explored the steep sides of the rocky buttes, the narrow cañons separating them, and the tree-filled "draw" behind the house. Nor was it altogether careless amusement which led her to this. She had discovered that a good many other people went to and fro through the cañons and across the foothills near by: surveyors, sheepherders, looking for strayed stock, and men who were just "going through." Often these various wayfarers carried "guns" that were sometimes rifles but oftener, especially late in summer, shotguns. And it had not taken Harry long to discover that the men with shot guns were after grouse and sage hen.
From the time of her arrival on the ranch she had been interested in the wild birds and had soon begun trying to protect them. Rob had hung "no shooting" signs along all the fences and already the birds seemed to know that they were protected in that spot and came fearlessly to feed in the alfalfa and close to the house.
But even signs and outspoken orders would not keep a certain class of game butchers away. They came even before the season opened, shooting early in the morning and trusting to the lack of settlers to escape arrest. Harry had several times driven off these poachers, but there was one who persisted in defying her. That was Joe Biane. He was so sly, so sharp, so indifferent to all remonstrance or warning that Harry realized it was useless to threaten with words only; if he would shoot on her land he should be punished.
She came to this decision one morning in May when she had run out to try and get a snapshot of a grouse cock strutting on the edge of the alfalfa. She had moved cautiously along behind the currant bushes until just within the right distance to get a good picture and was adjusting the camera when a shotgun cracked in the draw above her.
"After my birds again!" Harry exclaimed indignantly. "If it's Joe I declare I'll go straight to town and fetch the game warden up here to arrest him. Of course he's spoiled my picture, too!" For the grouse had folded his wings and scuttled out of sight into the willows.
"I'll just go right along and see who that was," Harry decided, closing her camera and starting up the cow path through the glen.
At this time of the year the steep sides of the ravine were masked in the leafage of quaking asp, thorn apple, willow and choke cherry, and it was next to impossible to see whether the person shooting was there or not.
Harry did not stop to explore. She knew by experience that it was farther up in the high meadow, a favorite nesting place of grouse and sage hen that she was most likely to find the poachers. Now, in her excitement she had started running (Joe should not evade her!) but the path was steep, the sun ardent, and before she could reach the meadow she was out of breath, hot, and not any calmer. In a final, desperate effort to cut across Joe's path toward home she swerved through the trees and almost ran over Joe himself.
He was moving stealthily through the willows, but startled by Harry's unexpected appearance, he stopped short.
"Joe!" she exclaimed; "I thought so."
"You did!" He laughed mischievously. "I ain't the only fella that takes a short cut through here, am I?"
"You take it oftenest. Outsiders don't get here quite so early in the morning, as a rule. I see I'm too late to save my birds, though."
She pointed indignantly to the grouse hen that hung from Joe's left hand.
Joe looked at it too. "Pretty nice one, ain't it," he observed. "Want I should get you one?"
"I should say not!" she exclaimed angrily. "And what's more, you may put that one down. I've told you not to shoot on my land, and I don't intend to have you carry off the birds under my nose, even though they are dead. Give that to me, please."
She reached out her hand, but Joe stepped alertly back. "This ain't yours," he said. He was no longer smiling; instead he eyed her sullenly, a cruel expression on his handsome face. Harry remembered that he had looked at her just so the day he had tried to pull her sweater from Isita. "Everybody's got a right to the wild critters," he added. "Besides," glancing covertly at Harry, "I was gettin' this because Isita likes 'em."
For a second Harry faltered. The picture of the younger girl, thin, tired-looking, unmistakably underfed came before her. But even as she started to yield, her indignation flamed again. "Oh, well, if it's for Isita," she answered with affected surprise, "give it to me. I'll take it home and cook it, and you tell your sister I've invited her down to dinner."
"Not much," Joe answered shortly. "We don't beg a meal off'n any one."
"An invitation isn't begging; but never mind. If you're as anxious as you say to please your sister, go put your time into plowing and planting; then you won't have to depend on a tough grouse hen for dinner."
Her eyes went again to the limp, feathered form, the bloodstained breast.
"Such stupid cruelty!" she exclaimed. "To shoot the hens at this season when it means a nestful of young ones left to starve."
"Aw!" Joe growled contemptuously and began to walk away. "What's that to you? You ain't running this country, so far's I know, and you ain't a goin' to stop me gettin' a sage hen. I'll shoot when I like."
"Not on my land," she warned him. "Remember, Joe, I've told you to keep out. Next time I'll bring the game warden up here and have you arrested."
He laughed mockingly, his face darkening. "You'll do a whole lot," he sneered; "just like you tried down at the school. But Isita didn't run any more of your errands and she didn't wear your sweater. Did she?"
"Because your father took her out of school and moved out of that district is no proof that what I did was wrong."
"What do I care for your 'methods'? I'll get even with you if you try any of your bossing on me. Better watch out, Miss Schoolmarm."
Harry looked after him as he disappeared in the willows. "Such people!" she exclaimed with sparkling eyes and clenched hands. "They are a menace to the country."
She broke off with a start and turned. While she had been talking with Joe a man on horseback had come over the ridge and crossed the meadow. As she turned, the rider, who had drawn rein and was looking down at her with interest, touched his hat. Harry's cheeks reddened as she explained what had happened.
"Get the law on him, like you threatened," the stranger advised. "That'll learn him. It ain't good business not to stick up for your rights."
"It's not only my rights, it's the birds' rights I'm fighting for, and unfortunately Joe is not the only one who needs teaching. In spite of signs all round our fence the hunters come right inside and shoot. I did think Westerners were more honorable."
At her warmth the man laughed quietly. It was a sort of laughter that fitted his comfortable appearance; middle-aged, bearded, with the mildly decisive manner of a person used to giving orders. His fine saddle horse and saddle, yet plain dress, showed him to be a man familiar with the ways of that country. He made an instant impression upon the girl. She was too frank and guileless to recognize that under the smoothness of his manner were hard purpose and a hidden threat for any one who crossed him.
"You're from the East, then?" he asked.
"From Connecticut. I came out three years ago to stay with my brother, Robert Holliday."
"Yes. Of course. Joyce told me that Holliday had a ranch up this way. Ludlum's my name. I live down in the lower country at the siding."
Harry knew who Ludlum was—the stockman who shipped twice as many cattle as any other man living on the railway line. A new town had grown up around the station that had been put in to accommodate him.
"Don't you get lonesome up in these hills, young lady?" Ludlum inquired.
"Not very. There's too much to do. All summer there's work on the place and every winter I've taught school down on the flat."
"Saving up to get you an auto?" asked the stockman with a laugh.
"Saving up for cattle," Harry replied.
"So! You're going into stock, are you? I thought all the ranchers up here on the prairie were grain crazy."
"Most of them are; but my brother says the money is in feeding what you raise. 'Ship it on the hoof, not in the sack' is his motto."
"And a mighty good one, too. Those your cows down yonder?"
He was leaning on his saddle horn, pointing down the draw. From where they stood they could look between the steep, rocky walls of the buttes upon a wonderful picture of the ranch, narrow, but immensely long. Beginning with the garden on the upper end of the slope below the glen, it widened as it descended, taking in the green-blinded white cottage with its porch and young shade trees, the corral with its long stock sheds, the deep-green alfalfa, the emerald of winter wheat, the shaded browns of fall-plowed earth and, across the creek, the tossing sea of scab land, the flat of Camas Prairie and the mountains. To complete it, strung out along the creek, was Rob's bunch of cattle. Harry felt very proud of them. On the very day of her arrival in Idaho Rob had bargained for a little bunch of heifers. They were now cows with their calves beside them, and in her mind's eye Harry always saw them multiplied a hundred-fold, into the herd they were working for.
"That ain't all you've got, is it?" asked Ludlum.
"That's all," admitted Harry, and felt suddenly how small a herd of forty head must look to the stockman. In a country where everything ran in big numbers, from the miles that you lived from the post office to the feet of snow and degrees below zero, it sounded "small farmerish" to have so few heads of stock.
"You've got the right sort of place for a stock ranch," Ludlum told her. "Have you proved up yet?"
"We have on the original hundred and sixties; but we've filed on additional homesteads. We'll prove up on those next spring. That will give us six hundred and forty acres; about half of it seeded—pasture and hay. We plan to stay in here this winter. We've both saved up some money, and it looks as if we were going to have plenty of hay."
"You've thought it all out ahead, I see," Ludlum said, with a sort of surprised admiration. For "tenderfoot" Easterners Holliday and his sister seemed very practical and businesslike.
An idea swung slowly round into his thoughts. He was silent for a moment as he gazed down at the ranch.
"Why don't you get a bigger herd to start with?" he asked presently. "There's lots of money in cattle nowadays, but it's slow making it when you start so small."
"Of course; but we haven't the capital to start a big herd, and my brother doesn't believe in mortgaging."
"That's a good principle, generally; but taking cattle on time is different. Your herd increases so fast that you're making fifteen or twenty per cent, instead of four or five. Supposing, say, you were to borrow off a stockman like me. Say I make over a hundred head of stock—white-face, good beef critters, you understand—and you have hay to feed up into the spring. Then you could figure like this."
Fascinated, convinced in spite of herself, Harry listened while Ludlum rapidly sketched the problem, the profit and loss, the complete working, so it seemed to the girl, of a stock ranch. He made Rob's little bunch of cows appear almost contemptibly unimportant. After all, it appeared to be just as she had believed: if you had energy, confidence and common sense, you were virtually sure of succeeding. Rob's idea of poking along for years, collecting a heifer here and there on the way, was hopelessly wrong and unnecessary.
An impulse moved her to speak. "Won't you come down to the house now and talk to Rob?" she begged. "He's off plowing, but he'll be in for dinner. I'm sure you could convince him that your plan is a sound one for us."
"I'd be glad to," Ludlum answered, gathering up his reins, "but I'm on my way to the reserve to look at the pasture. If it'll be agreeable, I'll stop a few days later on my way back."
"We'll always be glad to see you," Harry responded cordially. "Meanwhile I'll tell my brother what you've told me about making money with cattle."
"So that's Holliday's," Ludlum said to himself as he rode on. "Joyce told me it was the best location round here. Funny how these-here suckers think they can come along any time they like and shut us old-timers out of every good water hole in the country! H'm! Well," he remarked presently as if finishing a silent argument, "the way it stands suits me first-rate. A year from July, say, I'd be able to feed a big bunch of stock in there."
CHAPTER XIII
After her talk with Ludlum, Harry went back to the house exulting. At last some one who could speak with authority had come to advise them; yes, and to help them, too. In her happy optimism she regarded Ludlum's brief array of facts and figures as the formula for turning their labor into a stream of gold.
She spent the forenoon in bursts of energetic housework and in watching for Rob. She was wild with impatience to tell him of Ludlum's plan for them. Even the little house where they had heretofore lived so contentedly seemed suddenly cramped and outgrown. Yet it was a far better house than many wealthier ranchers owned, a better one than Rob himself had expected to build.
Absorbed in her plans for the future, Harry forgot to watch the clock and was surprised to hear feet thumping up the steps and to hear Rob's voice saying:
"Come ahead in, Garnett."
"Garnett! You don't mean it!" With an exclamation of delight Harry turned.
"Looks like I never did get the chance to send and ask you would it be agreeable to have me call in." Garnett, tall, sandy-haired with freckles across his nose, looked at Harry with a twinkle in his blue eyes that laughed even when his face was serious.
"I'll forgive you this time," said Harry, smiling back at him. "It's months since we've seen you. We'd begun to wonder what we'd done."
"You've done a heap," said Garnett, with an admiring glance at the sink and pump, which Rob had added when he piped the water from the spring. "You don't charge for drinks now, account of the new fixings, do you?" he asked, picking up a cup.
"Yessir. Forty cents the demitasse," said Rob, returning from his refreshing splash at the wash bench. "Freight rates are high west of the Rockies, remember."
"Can't you hang me up this time? I'm so dry I can't tell you the news."
"Depends on what it is," said Rob. "We got the mail two weeks ago, so you can't fool us with anything stale."
"I reckon I might's well move on, then. Like I told you, I'm due up in the timber right now. Prob'ly scrappin' up there already 'long of those cattle."
Harry turned quickly from the stove where she was "dishing up." "What cattle?"
"Why, the stranger cattle that have been shipped in. I thought you knew about them. What's the use of Rob's goin' for the mail so often if he don't pick up the home-brewed news that's layin' out in the street over to Soldier?"
"Garnett, stop teasing, do!" Harry pleaded, as they drew up to the table. "Whose cattle are they?"
"I don't know," Garnett said. "Everybody's got it different. To hear Rudy Batts talk you'd think a thousand devils had been turned loose on his land; but then, they cleaned up Rudy's winter wheat, just about, so it's natural he's feelin' disturbed."
"But Rudy Batts' ranch is up Soldier Creek," Harry interrupted, "and I thought you said these cattle were in the forest."
"They are by now, but the varmints were shipped in by rail to Soldier, to the 'Idaho Cattle Company,' whoever that is; and their riders drove 'em up through the creek cañon on the way to the forest. Bein' what they are, scrubs mostly, starved to death all winter and breachy from the start, they didn't stop to ask for the wire nippers when they came to fenced grain; just went right through or over and cleaned up inside. That's how I got to hear about it. Everybody in Soldier's askin' who owns the critters. Some think it's a bunch of bankers down round Shoshone that saw beef was goin' up and wanted to get in on the profit. And say! I wish I had a little bunch of beef critters to be eatin' the pasture off these hills. Wouldn't I make all kinds of money?"
Harry's heart leaped. Now was her chance. "Do you really think there would be money in it?" she asked eagerly. "For Rob and me for instance?"
"Do I! There's so much in it that I know I'm a fool not to give up my job in the service and get me a herd. I would, too, if I hadn't rented my eighty down on the South Side on shares to Pablo Carriero, a Portagee. He's got it up to November, and you bet I'm not going to lease again."
"But you could buy a few head, couldn't you?" Harry asked quickly. "You'll have one third of your hay."
"Not this year. I told Carriero to sell it if he could, and he's given an option on it to that fellow Biane. But for you two! Why, it's as easy as counting your fingers to coin money this year."
"It is!" said Rob skeptically. "With steers selling at thirty and calves at fifteen, and me with only three hundred cash in the bank? Guess again, Christopher Garnett."
"He isn't guessing at all," Harry said quickly. "I heard—some one told me the very same thing this morning. If we bought only a hundred head now, part cash, part time——"
"Oh, time!" Rob echoed. "None of that for me, thank you."
"Wait, please. You haven't heard it all," Harry broke in, and then hurried on to give him the gist of what Ludlum had said. "With the eight hundred cash we have between us," she ended, "there's no reason why we should not borrow the rest, buy cattle and succeed, just as thousands of men have done before us."
"Yes, and other men who didn't know any more about it than we do have gone into cattle and been ruined."
"Say, Rob," Garnett drawled, "ain't you ever heard of a man with one pet cow havin' her die on him?"
"Oh, sure! But the chances are ninety per cent in his favor, and if he does lose he loses less."
"Loses less when he loses all he's got! That's the first time I ever heard that argyment. A man can drudge along and be safe while he never owns more than he can carry to bed in his two hands; but that ain't the way to figure in this country. Round up all you can and make 'em rustle for their livin' while you busy yourself seein' that some other feller's critters ain't swipin' the feed. That's the way to get rich. It beats the pet cow all hollow."
"Of course," Harry added earnestly. "And as for not borrowing, every one knows that big business is done on credit."
"Credit!" Rob fairly groaned. "I shouldn't care for any, as they say. It sounds good as a topic for conversation, but I'll bet that's just the kind of argument the old-timers got happy drunk on before the winter of '89. Ever hear the Robinsons tell about that winter, you two?"
The silence answered him. Yes, they had heard and also remembered. Who that had heard could forget? First had come the June freeze and then a dry summer with a shortage of grazing. But no one had worried; probably, after such a cold summer there would be an open winter. When all the grazing was gone they would drive the stock out to Shoshone and buy hay. So they planned. Alas! Before the grazing was quite gone the snow came—and stayed. And while they waited for a break in the bad weather in which to move out, the "big snow" came and shut them in—shut their cattle in to slow starvation.
As Mrs. Robinson related it twenty-five years afterward the tears streamed down her cheeks. "It like to broke pa's heart," she said; "him havin' to set inside and watch them pore dumb critters waitin' to be fed and finally layin' down to die. Time and again we tried to drive 'em across the foothills into the hay country, but 'twa'n't no use. Out of two hundred head all we saved was one cow. Every stockman on the prairie lost his herd, and some was ruined for good and all. We never went into another winter without hay, I tell ye."
It was a cruel experience, but Harry was not a person to let another's misfortune shake her faith in her own enterprise. As she looked toward her brother a characteristic expression came across her face: the expression that meant obstinate, good-natured determination. She was saying to herself: "We're not going to fail. We're not. I think we can make cattle pay on borrowed money, and I'm going to borrow it."
But she said no more to Rob, for she felt that it was best to let him think the matter over by himself. That he was doing so during the next few days was evident from the tension in the air whenever cattle were mentioned.
She hoped that Ludlum would come before the effect of Garnett's advice had worn off, and, as the days passed, she grew uneasy. It was a relief from the constant suspense when one morning Rob asked her to help him round up his cows. Half a dozen starved-looking steers had come down the draw during the night, and when he dogged them off his own herd had followed them.
Harry needed no urging. With Rob and Garnett to teach her she had learned to ride well, and could even, with the help of 'Thello, round up their own cattle very creditably. There was nothing that she enjoyed more than to be out on a June morning, with a lively horse beneath her, the sage-scented breeze sweeping past, the meadow larks calling across the sky, the miles of blue swale and the cloud shadows racing ahead of her. At such moments the horizon was hers; hers, too, the splendor and greatness of life.
To-day the work was all play. They had only to follow the fresh traces of the herd going south across the hills, and half an hour of sharp riding brought them up with the bunch. It took another half hour to cut out their animals and turn them toward home, but that was what Harry enjoyed. To wheel to and fro, spur after a creature that was dodging to one side, dash ahead and turn the leaders, and finally send the whole string galloping away with the thunder of hoofs and the chorus of bellowings—that was the best sport yet.
As Harry and Rob rode slowly home they discussed the coming of strange cattle into their hills, and wondered whether they could be some of those that Garnett had spoken of.
"If they are," Rob said, "the riders will be along in a few days to drive them back."
When they were halfway down the draw 'Thello growled warningly, and they saw a saddle horse standing at the corral gate.
"Ludlum!" flashed into Harry's mind, and she was silent when Rob said he would ride ahead and see who their visitor was.
"I'll leave them alone for a while," she said to herself, "and give Ludlum a chance to talk."
She drove the cows inside the pasture, then rode slowly to the corral and, putting up her pony, came to the house. Ludlum was talking in a tone of calm assurance, of conviction won by thorough knowledge of the subject. Rob, sitting on the porch step, smoothed the back of his head and listened in silence. Harry wondered whether that silence meant that he was yielding or merely resisting.
Stocky, big-muscled, tanned to a smooth, healthy brown, Robert Holliday was at first glance merely one of the many young fellows who have gone out to the Far West to have a try at fortune. But three years of hard wrestling with a sagebrush ranch had cleared and solidified his boyish visions and made them a working force. Harry knew that Rob's opinions carried weight in the community.
At her approach Ludlum rose and held out his hand. "Wherever I see folks as willing to work as you and your brother, Miss Holliday, I'm willing to bet they'll succeed against any odds. Yes, ma'am."
"How about the fellow that is working against us?" asked Rob quietly. "Does he win, too?"
"O Bobby! You do think up such objections!" Harry said, with a laugh.
But Ludlum nodded approvingly. "Quite right, Holliday. A man's got to be cautious, especially in the cattle business. You'd ought to be thankful, young lady, that you've got such a level-headed partner to work with."
Ludlum commended impartially the opinions of both Rob and Harry. "Come down to the ranch and look things over," he said as he rose to go, "and get acquainted with the missus and our girls and boys. Pick out a bunch of critters, and make your own terms. You'll make twenty per cent on your money, all right."
"Hard work to come down to earth again after sailing round in Ludlum's airship," Rob commented as they watched their visitor ride away. "He'd make a fellow think that merely driving his critters on our land would start providence coining money to pay for them and making hay to feed them."
"I don't see that we need trust especially in providence for hay and cash!" Harry exclaimed. "We're sure of fifty tons of alfalfa of our own this year, besides the wheat straw from fifty acres for roughage; and as for the cash payment on a hundred head, haven't I five hundred in the bank and you have almost three hundred? And we can always buy extra hay on the flat."
"We're not sure we can buy hay; we're not sure we'll put up fifty tons of our own. It's a dry year, and the grazing may go early; and we're not past the chance of a late frost. It's pure gambling to take on a hundred head of cattle now."
"No more than taking the dozen you bought that first year was. We'll simply never make a real cleanup, Rob, if we never take a chance. I'd rather do it and maybe lose something—lose my five hundred dollars—than mosey along forever on the safe side."
"Go ahead. If you think you can clear the moon in one jump, I won't put the hobbles on you. But be satisfied with the moon; don't try to take in the Dipper and the Milky Way, too. Take thirty head if you like, from Ludlum, but no more. We agreed to run the ranch together; and if you want to invest your earnings in cattle, all right. I'll ride after the critters when I'm not working the land, and if you put in half your money you can take thirty head at a thousand dollars, paying down a quarter cash and giving a mortgage on your land. That'll leave you two hundred and fifty dollars and me three hundred to get through the season with."
"Five hundred and fifty dollars!" Harry exclaimed. "Why, Bobby, we could take more than thirty easy!"
"Well, we're not going to. We'll risk something, but we'll not risk everything. The first of December there'll be interest to pay—ten per cent on seven hundred and fifty for six months; that's thirty-seven and a half dollars. And we'll have to pay something on the principal, or Ludlum won't be likely to renew the note, but I figure that the sale from beef critters we already have and from this new bunch should pay off another two hundred and fifty on the mortgage. That is, if we have good luck."
A flash of resentment passed over Harry. Thirty head were so few! Could he not take even that small number without saying "if"? Her feeling of annoyance, however, was soon swept away in the discussion of details that Rob, with his usual foresight, insisted upon before they should start the following morning to settle the business with Ludlum.
They had finished talking and were sitting at the table, silent, each thinking what this big change might mean to them. Harry turned the lamp wick slowly up and down; her eyes were very deep and shining in the flare of light. Rob stared absently at the paper on which he had been figuring. Out in the falling night a whippoorwill called plaintively, then stopped, and in the silence they heard timid steps on the porch.
"Who's that?" Rob exclaimed, going to the door.
Harry followed him with the lamp. Its light fell upon the frightened face of a young girl.
"Why, it's Isita!" Harry said, in surprise. "Come in."
But Isita shook her head. Small-boned and slender for her age, clutching a boy's jacket over her chest and glancing timidly from brother to sister, she looked like a little lost child.
"What's happened, Isita?" Harry asked. "Anything we can do? Come in, dear."
"Oh, I can't!" The words came in a faint, frightened gasp. "Mother sent me to ask you—have you got something for a—a cut? Joe—that is, he was cutting up a chicken, and the knife slipped—" She stopped abruptly.
"That's bad; but we've got something for it. Come in and rest a minute while I get the things, and I'll go back with you," Rob began; but the girl raised her hands entreatingly.
"Please don't!" she besought. "That is, I mean, thank you; but you couldn't do nothing. It ain't so dangerous. All we need is something to put on it."
Rob went across the room to where Harry was busily putting together lint, disinfectant and sticking plaster.
"I think I ought to go over, don't you?" he said. "He may have cut an artery."
"No, no!" Isita's voice called out desperately. "It ain't so bad. Ma said for you not to come. It—it would make dad so mad. He'd 'a' killed me if he'd knowed I was coming over here. Never mind, Miss Holliday. I reckon I'd better be getting back."
"Wait! Here's your bandaging!" Harry called cheerily, coming out at the same moment with the package and with her sweater on. "I'm only going to the gate with you," she said soothingly, and, slipping her arm through Isita's, led her down the steps.
Harry was back in ten minutes. "I thought I might calm her," she explained to Rob. "The poor child was either scared to death at sight of a bad cut, or else frightened by that brute of a father. What a shame she has to live with such a family."
"I wonder how Joe did cut his hand," Rob said thoughtfully. "I shouldn't wonder if there had been a family scrap and the old man gave him one."
"Rob Holliday! The idea! Go on to bed, or we'll never get started in the morning."