They of the High Trails. Garland Hamlin

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СКАЧАТЬ to make each meal a little less like a pig's swilling. She knew how things ought to be done, a little, for at "The Gold Fish Ranch" and at Starr Baker's everything was spick and span (Mrs. Baker especially was a careful and energetic housekeeper), but to keep to this higher level every day was too great an effort even for a girl in love. She dropped back, now and again, weary and disheartened.

      It was her mating-time. She leaned to Lester from the first glance. The strangeness of his accent, his reference to things afar off, to London and Paris, appealed to her in the same way in which poetry moved her – dimly, vaguely – but his hands, his eyes, his tender, low-toned voice won her heart. She hovered about him when he was at home, careless of the comments of the other men, ignoring the caustic "slatting" of her mother. She had determined to win him, no matter what the father might say – for to her all men were of the same social level and she as good as the best. Indeed, she knew no other world than the plains of Colorado, for she was born in the little dugout which still remained a part of the kitchen. The conventions of cities did not count with her.

      She was already aware of her power, too, and walked among the rough men of her acquaintance with the step of an Amazonian queen, unafraid, unabashed. She was not in awe of Lester; on the contrary, her love for him was curiously mingled with a certain sisterly, almost maternal pity; he was so easily "flustered." He was, in a certain sense, on her hands like an invalid.

      She soon learned that he was wax beneath her palm – that the touch of a finger on his arm made him uneasy of eye and trembling of limb. It amused her to experiment with him – to command him, to demand speech of him when he was most angry and disgusted with the life he was living. That he despised her father and mother she did not know, but that he was sick of the cowboys and their "clack" she did know, and she understood quite as well as if he had already told her that she alone kept him from returning at once to Denver to try some other manner of earning a living. This realization gave her pride and joy.

      She had but one jealousy – he admired and trusted Mrs. Baker and occasionally rode over there to talk with her, and Fan could not understand that he sought intellectual refuge from the mental squalor of the Blondells, but she perceived a difference in his glance on his return. Mrs. Baker, being a keen-sighted, practical little woman, soon fell upon the plainest kind of speech with the young Englishman.

      "This is no place for you," she defiantly said. "The rest of us are all more or less born to the plains and farm-life, but you're not; you're just 'sagging,' that's all. You're getting deeper into the slough all the time."

      "Quite right," he answered, "but I don't know what else I can do. I have no trade – I know nothing of any art or profession, and my brother is quite content to pay my way so long as he thinks I'm on a ranch, and in the way of learning the business."

      She, with her clear eyes searching his soul, replied: "The longer you stay the more difficult it will be to break away. Don't you see that? You're in danger of being fastened here forever."

      He knew what she meant, and his thin face flushed. "I know it and I am going to ask Starr to give me a place here with you, and I'm about to write my brother stating full reasons for the change. He might advance me enough to buy into Starr's herd."

      She considered this. "I'll take the matter up with Starr," she replied, after a pause. "Meanwhile, you can come over and stay as a visitor as long as you please – but don't bring Fan," she added, sharply. "I can't stand slatterns, and you must cut loose from her once for all."

      Again he flushed. "I understand – but it isn't easy. Fan has been mighty good to me; life would have been intolerable over there but for her."

      "I should think life would have been intolerable with her," Mrs. Baker answered, with darkening brow, and then they talked of other things till he rose to ride away.

      He headed his horse homeward, fully resolved to give notice of removal, but he did not. On the contrary, he lost himself to Fan. The girl, glowing with love and anger and at the very climax of her animal beauty, developed that night a subtlety of approach, a method of attack, which baffled and in the end overpowered him. She was adroit enough to make no mention of her rivals; she merely set herself to cause his committal, to bend him to her side. As the romping girl she played round him, indifferent to the warning glances of her mother, her eyes shining, her cheeks glowing, till the man he was, the life he had lived, the wishes of his brother, were fused and lost in the blind passion of the present. "This glorious, glowing creature can be mine. What does all the rest matter?" was his final word of renunciation.

      In this mood he took her to his arms, in this madness he told her of his love (committing himself into her hands, declining into her life), and in the end requested of her parents the honor of their daughter's hand.

      Mrs. Blondell wept a tear or two and weakly gave her consent, but the old ranchman thundered and lightened. "What can you do for my girl?" he demanded. "As I understand it, you haven't a cent – the very clothes you've got on your back are paid for by somebody else! What right have you to come to me with such a proposal?"

      To all this Lester, surprised and disconcerted, could but meekly answer that he hoped soon to buy a ranch of his own – that his brother had promised to "set him up" as soon as he had mastered the business.

      Blondell opened his jaws to roar again when Fan interposed and, taking a clutch in his shaggy beard, said, calmly: "Now, dad, you hush! George Adelbert and I have made it all up and you better fall in gracefully. It won't do you any good to paw the dirt and beller."

      Lester grew sick for a moment as he realized the temper of the family into which he was about to marry, but when Fan, turning with a gay laugh, put her round, smooth arm about his neck, the rosy cloud closed over his head again.

II

      Blondell was silenced, but not convinced. A penniless son-in-law was not to his liking. Fan was his only child, and the big ranch over which he presided was worth sixty thousand dollars. What right had this lazy Englishman to come in and marry its heiress? The more he thought about it the angrier he grew, and when he came in the following night he broke forth.

      "See here, mister, I reckon you better get ready and pull out. I'm not going to have you for a son-in-law, not this season. The man that marries my Fan has got to have sabe enough to round up a flock of goats – and wit enough to get up in the morning. So you better vamoose to-morrow."

      Lester received his sentence in silence. At the moment he was glad of it. He turned on his heel and went to packing with more haste, with greater skill, than he had ever displayed in any enterprise hitherto. His hurry arose from a species of desperation. "If I can only get out of the house!" was his inward cry.

      "Why pack up?" he suddenly asked himself. "What do they matter – these boots and shirts and books?" He caught a few pictures from the wall and stuffed them into his pockets, and was about to plunge out into the dusk when Fan entered the room and stood looking at him with ominous intentness.

      She was no longer the laughing, romping girl, but the woman with alert eye and tightly closed lips. "What are you doing, Dell?"

      "Your father has ordered me to leave the ranch," he answered, "and so I'm going."

      "No, you're not! I don't care what he has ordered! You're not going" – she came up and put her arms about his neck – "not without me." And, feeling her claim to pity, he took her in his arms and tenderly pressed her cheek upon his bosom. Then she began to weep. "I can't live without you, Dell," she moaned.

      He drew her closer, a wave of tenderness rising in his heart. "I'll be lonely without you, Fan – but your father is right. I am too poor – we have no home – "

      "What does that matter?" she asked. "I wouldn't marry you for any amount of money! And I know СКАЧАТЬ