Ironheart

Don Black had not himself built the cabin where he lived. While he was still a boy jingling his first spurs, two young Englishmen had hewn its logs out of the untouched forest on the western slope of Pegleg Pass. They were remittance men, exiled from their country for the peace of mind of their families. In the casual fashion of their class they had drifted to the Rockies to hunt for big game and, less industriously, for elusive fortune. Long since they had returned to the estates which Britishers of this type seem always to be inheriting from convenient relatives.

By the simple process of moving in, Black had become owner of the cabin. He hung his pinched-in cowboy hat on a peg in the wall and thereby took possession. His title was perfectly good in the eyes of the range riders who dropped in occasionally and made themselves at home. Whether Don was or was not on the place, they were welcome to what they found. The only obligation on them was to cut a fresh supply of firewood in place of that they used.

One room was enough for Black’s needs. The other served as a place in which to store old saddles, mountain-lion pelts, worn-out boots, blankets, unused furniture, and a hundred odds and ends. With the help of the owner, Lon Forbes set to work housecleaning. Useless litter went flying out of doors. A vigorous broom in the hands of Lon raised clouds of dust. In the fireplace old papers and boxes blazed cheerfully. A Navajo rug, resurrected from the bottom of a hingeless trunk, covered the floor in front of a walnut bed imported by one of the Englishmen from Denver.

It took hours to make the transformation, but the foreman was quite pleased with himself when he ushered Betty into the bedroom he had prepared for her.

She clapped her hands softly. “My, Lon! What a fine wife some Suffragette’s lost in you. Maybe it isn’t too late yet. You can keep house while she—”

“Help! Help!” expostulated Forbes.

“Oh, if you’ve got your eye on one of these little flapper girls, of course, there’s no use my saying a word,” she teased. “I know how stubborn you are when you get ‘sot.’”

She was in a mood of happy reaction from the fears that had oppressed her all day. Dr. Rayburn had told her—with some reservations, to be sure—that, barring unexpected complications, Hollister ought to get well. It would take time and nursing and good food, but all of these the patient would get.

“You’re right I’ve got my eye on one of them li’l’ flapper girls—this very minute,” he rapped back promptly. “An’ she’s a sure-enough warnin’ to a fellow to play his hand out alone unless he wants to be bossed somethin’ scandalous.”

“It would do you good to be bossed,” she told him, eyes dancing. “The refining influence of a young woman—say about forty-five or maybe fifty—”

“You’re pickin’ her for me, are you?” he snorted.

“She’ll do the picking when the time comes. I suppose you’ll have to give up smoking—and you’ll have to shave every day—and probably be a deacon in the church at Wild Horse—”

“Yes, I will not. All I got to do is look at Clint an’ see how a half-grown kid has got a check rein on him. That scares me a plenty.” He shook his head in mock despair, but his eyes gave him away. “Gallivantin’ into the hills, through ’steen million tons of snow, to nurse a scalawag who—”

“He’s no scalawag, Lon Forbes.”

“Like to know why he ain’t. Nothin’ but a hobo when you first met up with him.”

“Now, Lon, you know very well you told me you thought he was a man from the ground up. Those were the very words you used.”

“Well, a hobo may be a man,” he defended. “Anyways, that don’t mean you’d ought to bust up yore happy home to hike over the hills for him.”

“Justin’s been talking to you,” she charged.

“Maybeso, an’ maybe not. That ain’t the point. While Clint’s away, it’s up to me to run the Diamond Bar K.”

“With Justin’s help,” she cut in.

Betty thought, though she did not express it in words, that Lon would have his hands full if he intended to take charge of her activities as a part of the ranch. She knew that this would never have occurred to him as included in his duties if it had not been suggested by Merrick.

“I’m not askin’ any one’s help. I reckon I’m as grown-up as I’ll ever be. Anyways, Clint put me in charge, figurin’ I was man-size an’ competent. Question is, Would yore father want you up here?”

Betty decided to carry the war indignantly into the territory of the enemy. “Of course, he would. After knowing Dad all these years I should think you’d be ashamed to doubt him. Dad pays his debts. He’s a good friend. This boy—this young fellow Hollister—tried to do us a good turn after we had behaved pretty bad to him. You know Dad has been looking for a chance to help him. Well, it’s come. What are we going to do about it? Go through—or quit on the job?”

“Go through. I ain’t proposin’ anything else. But you don’t have to stay here. I can look after him, an’ Merrick’ll see you home.”

“What do you know about nursing?” she scoffed. “Or cooking? You know what the doctor said. He’s got to have nice things to eat after he gets a little better. And good nursing. Dr. Rayburn told you—I heard him say it—that he was glad I’d come because Mr. Hollister needs a woman’s nursing.”

Lon scratched his head to help him think. It was sometimes a laborious process. He knew cattle and crops, but chaperoning a young woman was untried territory.

“Times has changed, Betty,” he explained. “You kinda growed up helter-skelter an’ run wild. But you’re a young lady now, an’ you can’t be too careful. You gotta think about what folks’ll say.”

“Fiddlesticks! What’ll they say? What can they say if you stay up here with me? It’ll be only a day or two till Dad gets home. It’s just that you’ve been getting notions from Justin. He’s a city man and doesn’t know our ways. But you’ve always lived here, Lon. I’m surprised at you.”

“O’ course there ain’t any real harm in yore stayin,” he conceded hesitantly. “I’ll be here to look after you an’ see Prowers don’t trouble you. An’ it won’t be long.”

“I’m staying because I really can help, Lon. Justin thinks it’s only foolishness, but you know it isn’t. In Denver, where he lives, there are plenty of trained nurses, but it’s different here. If Bridget could get in, I wouldn’t say a word about staying. But she can’t. If I went away and left this poor boy, you’d never respect me again.”

“I would, too. But there. You’re gonna stay. I see that.”

“Yes, I am.” She caught the lapels of the big foreman’s coat and coaxed him with the smile that always had proved effective with him. “And you know I’m right. Don’t you, Lon?”

“Nothin’ of the kind,” he blustered. “An’ you needn’t try to come it over me. I know you too blamed well, miss. You’re bound an’ determined to have yore own way—always were since you were a li’l’ trick knee-high to a duck. Trouble is, you’ve been spoiled.”

“Yes,” she admitted, “and you did it.”

“No such a thing. I always did tell Clint he’d find out some day what’d come of lettin’ you boss the whole works.” To save his face he finished with a peremptory order. “Don’s fixin’ up some supper. Soon as you’ve had yours, why, you’ll go right straight to bed. Doc an’ me are aimin’ to look after Hollister to-night.”

“Yes, Lon,” Betty replied meekly. She had got what she wanted, and she was willing to propitiate him by a demure obedience calculated to remove the sting of her victory.

Don opened the door and announced that supper was ready.

Betty saw Merrick’s eye flash a question at Forbes as they came into the larger room. She went directly to him. Betty was a woman; therefore complex. But she usually expressed herself simply.

“It’s all settled, Justin. Lon is going to stay with me.”

He made no answer in words, but his salient jaw set grimly. Like many masterful men, he did not relish defeat.

They drank coffee from tin cups and ate bacon, tomatoes, and beans served in tin plates. Don’s biscuits were appetizing, and four or five pans of them disappeared before his guests were fed.

Betty lived up to the promise she had made Lon. She whispered with Dr. Rayburn for a minute, then said “Good-night” to the company generally, and vanished into her bedroom.

The day had been a full one. To come in over the snow had taxed the strength of her muscles. She was tired, and, as she sat before the glowing coals taking the pins out of her hair, she yawned luxuriously.

Just now her mind was on Merrick. The vague disappointment in their relationship had crystallized to-day into definite dissatisfaction. To use one of her father’s expressions, Justin and she had not come out of the same pasture. They thought in different languages.

That he had not sympathized with the urge in her to spend herself in service for the wounded man was important beyond the immediate question. And, even if he did not agree with her, he should have understood her obligation to do as she thought best. It involved their whole future. The trouble was that he did not recognize her right to follow the guidance of her own judgment. She must defer to him, must accept his decision as final.

Betty knew she could not do that. In essence she was a twentieth-century woman.