The Free Range. Sullivan Francis William

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СКАЧАТЬ this knowledge was not vouchsafed to him, and Julie certainly would never make it plain.

      The evening after Bud’s departure, that same evening, in fact, when he was fighting toward water with his flocks, the cattleman and his daughter sat outside on the little veranda that ran across the front of the ranch house.

      “That feller Larkin,” remarked Bissell, terminating a long pause. “Kind of a dude or something back East, wasn’t he?”

      “That’s what the punchers would call him, father,” returned the girl gravely. “But he was never anything but a gentleman in his treatment of me.”

      “I don’t know what you mean exactly by that word ’gentleman,’ Julie, but I allow that no real man ever went into raisin’ sheep.”

      “Perhaps not, dear,” she said, taking his rough, ungainly hand in both of hers, “but I think there is bound to be money in it. Mr. Larkin himself says that in the end the cattle will have to give way before the sheep.”

      “An’ he thought he was tellin’ you something new when he said it, too, didn’t he? Well, I’ve knowed that fact for the last five years. That’s the main reason I won’t let his animals through my range. Once they get a foothold, there’s no stoppin’ ’em. Judas! I’m tired of fightin’ for things!”

      “Poor father,” and the girl’s voice was full of tenderness. “You’re not discouraged, are you, dear?”

      “No, Prairie Bell, but I reckon I’m gettin’ old, an’ I can’t get up the fight I used to. I thought I had my hands full with the rustlers, but now with the sheep comin’ – well, between you and me, little girl, I wish I had somebody to stand up and take the licks.”

      “There’s Mike; he certainly can give and take a few.”

      “Yes, of course I’ve got Mike, but, when you’re all done, he’s only a foreman, an’ his interest don’t go much beyond his seventy-five a month an’ grub. Yet – by George!” He sat suddenly erect and slapped his thigh with his disengaged hand.

      “What is it?”

      “Oh, nothin’.” They talked on in the affectionate, intimate way that had always characterized their relations since Julie had been a girl just big enough to listen to involved harangues about cattle without actually going to sleep. In the course of an hour Bissell suddenly asked:

      “Did you ever think of marryin’, Prairie Bell?”

      “If thinking ever helped any, I would have been a Mormon by this time.”

      “Well, you are growed up, ain’t you?” and Bissell spoke in the wondering tone of a man who has just realized a self-evident fact “Fancy my little girl old enough to marry! How old are you, anyhow? ’Bout eighteen?”

      “Twenty-five, you dear, old goose. Eighteen! The idea.”

      “Well, twenty-five, then. Of course, Julie, when I die I will leave this place to you, and that’s what made me think about your marryin’. I want a good, sharp man to fight fer my cows an’ my range, a man that knows it and could make a success of it, an’ yet wouldn’t care because it was in your name.”

      “Would you mind if I loved him a little bit, too?” asked the girl, with elaborately playful sarcasm.

      “Bless you, no. Love him all you want to, but I ’low you couldn’t love a man very long who didn’t have all them qualifications I mentioned. I figger love out somethin’ like this. First there’s a rockbed of ability, then a top soil of decency, an’ out o’ these two, admiration kind o’ grows like corn. Of course you always grind up the corn and soak it with sentiment; then you’ve got mush. An’ the trouble with most people is they only think of the mush an’ forget the rock an’ the top soil.”

      “Why, you old philosopher!” cried the girl, laughing and squeezing his big shoulders. “You’re awfully clever, really.” Which remark brought a confused but pleased blush to Bissell’s hard face that had become wonderfully soft and tender during this hour with his daughter.

      “Now, see here,” went on the girl severely, “I think there’s something back of all this talk about marriage. What is it?”

      Bissell looked at her, startled, not having expected to encounter feminine intuition.

      “Nothin’, only I wish you could marry somebody that’d look out fer you the way I mentioned. Then I could die happy, though I don’t expect to be on that list fer a long while.”

      “Anybody in mind?” asked Julie banteringly.

      “Well, not exactly,” hesitated her father, with another sharp glance. “But I allow I could dig up one if I tried very hard.”

      “Go ahead and try.”

      “Well, now there’s Billy Speaker over on the Circle Arrow, as gentle a man for a blond as I ever see.”

      “I’ve only met him twice in my life,” remarked the girl. “Try again.”

      “There’s Red Tarken, foreman on the M Square. He’d be good to yuh, I know, and he’s a hum-dinger about cows.”

      “I am glad he has one qualification aside from his red hair,” put in Julie seriously. “However, I am afraid that as a husband Red would be about as steady as a bronco saddled for the first time after the winter feeding. He’d better have free range as long as he lives. Once more, father.”

      “Well, see here, Julie, it seems to me you could do a lot worse than take our own Mike Stelton. I’ve never thought of it much before, but to-night it sort of occurred to me an’ – ”

      Juliet Bissell broke into an uncontrollable fit of laughter, at which her father fixed her with a regard as wondering as it was hurt. His cherished inspiration so tactfully approached had burst like a soap-bubble under the gale of Juliet’s merriment.

      “Bud was right, after all,” said the girl, after her nervous outbreak. “He told me Mike had some silly hope or other, and I believe Stelton has given you absent treatment until you have made this suggestion. Father, he’s just as preposterous as the others.”

      “I don’t agree with you,” contended Bissell stubbornly. “Mike is faithful, and has been for years. He knows the ins and outs of the business, and is willing to take the hard knocks that I’m getting tired of. Then there’s another thing. I could be half-blind an’ still see what Mike has been wanting these last five years.”

      Juliet suddenly rose to her feet, all the laughter gone from her eyes and her heart. With a feeling of frightened helplessness she realized that her father was serious.

      “Are you taking Mike’s part against me?” she asked calmly.

      “Well, I still don’t see why you couldn’t marry him.”

      “You’ve forgotten the mush, father, but that isn’t all. There’s something different about Mike lately, something I have never noticed before. His eye seems shifty; he avoids all the family. If I didn’t know him so well, I should think he was a criminal. Leaving out the fact that I don’t love him, and that the very thought of his ever touching me makes me shudder, this distrust of him would be enough to block any such arrangements. Why” – and her lip curled scornfully – “I would marry Bud Larkin a hundred times rather than СКАЧАТЬ