Stories of the Foot-hills. Graham Margaret Collier

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СКАЧАТЬ having chosen the adjective after some hesitation, Lysander lingered over it approvingly, – "and bein' as she was dead set on fightin' the Colonel, she mortgaged the ranch to raise the money for the lawsuit."

      Lysander stopped again. Memories of that stormy time appeared to crowd upon him bewilderingly. He shook his head in slow but emphatic denial of his ability to do them dramatic justice in recital.

      There was another long silence. The noonday air seemed to pulsate, as if the mountain were sleeping in the sun and breathing regularly. The weeds, which the weight of the sled had crushed, gave out a fragrance of honey and tar. A pair of humming-birds darted into the stillness in a little tempest of shrill-voiced contention, and the mule, aroused from dejected abstraction by the intruders, shook his tassel-like tail and yawned humanly.

      Melissa got up and wandered toward the edge of the cañon, and Lysander, aroused from the plentitude of his recollections by her absence, completed his load and drove the dun-colored mule leisurely after her.

      The stones fell over the precipice, breaking into the quiet of the depths below with a long, resounding crash that finally rippled off into silence, and the two sat down on the side of the empty sled and rode back to the stone-pile.

      "I've always thought," said Lysander, resuming his work and his narrative with equal deliberation, "that there was a good deal missed by yer maw bein' took down with inflammatory rheumatiz jest about the time o' the trial o' that lawsuit. I dunno as it would 'a' made much difference in the end, but it would 'a' made consider'ble as it went along, and I think she'd 'a' rested easier if she'd 'a' had her say. Of course they come up an' took down her testimony in writin'; but it was shorthand, an' yer maw don't speak shorthand fer common. Well, of course, the old Colonel got away with the jury, and then yer maw found out that he'd bought the mortgage; an' about the time it was due he come up here, as smooth as butter, an' offered to give her this little patch o' boulders an' let her move the house onto it, an' give her share 'nough in the cañon to irrigate it, if she'd deed him the rest o' the land, an' save him the trouble o' foreclosin'. So she done it. But I don't think he enj'yed his visit, all the same. She wasn't sparin' o' her remarks to 'im, an' I think some o' 'em must 'a' hurt his feelin's, fer he hain't been here sence." Lysander chuckled with reminiscent relish.

      Melissa had walked around the sled, and stood facing him, with her hands behind her. Her slight figure in its limp blue cotton drapery had the scarred mountain-side for a background.

      "I don't see yet as he done anything so awful mean," she protested leniently.

      "Ner do I, M'lissy," acquiesced her brother-in-law. "But after the hull thing was signed, sealed, and delivered," – Lysander rested from his labors again on the strength of these highly legal expressions, – "after it was closed up, so to speak, it came to yer maw's ears, in some way, that there was a mistake in the drawin' of that mortgage, an' this land was left out of it, an' would 'a' been hern anyway; and somehow that thing has stuck in her craw all these years, and sort o' soured her."

      Melissa mused on the problem, wide-eyed and grave. The mule seemed to await her verdict with humble resignation. Lysander sat on the side of the sled and looked across the valley seaward, to where Catalina was outlined against the horizon in soft, cloud-like gray.

      "An' it was a mistake? she meant to put it in the mortgage?" queried the girl.

      "Yes, she meant to, so far as a person can be said to mean anything when they're a-mortgagin' their homestead; usually they're out o' their heads. But the law don't take no 'count o' that kind o' craziness. You can do the foolest things, M'lissy, without the court seein' a crack in your brain; but if you happen to get mad an' put a bullet through some good-fer-nothin' loafer, then immedjitly yer insane. That's the law, M'lissy."

      Melissa received this exposition of her country's code with wondering, luminous eyes. It had a wild, unreasonable sound which was a sufficient guarantee of its correctness. The doings of authorities were liable to be misty by reason of elevation. The fault lay in her limited vision.

      "I s'pose the law's right. An' the law said the cañon didn't belong to mother. I think that ought to 'a' settled it. I don't see any good in it all, – this talkin' so loud, an' scoldin', an' callin' people names. Do you, Sandy?"

      "I hain't seen much good come of it," confessed the man reluctantly; "but it's human to talk, – it's human, M'lissy. Some folks find it relievin', an' it don't do any harm."

      The young girl did not assent. Deep down in her placid, peace-loving nature was the obstinate conviction that it did a great deal of harm. She sat down in the velvety burr-clover, clasping her hands about her knees.

      "Is Flutterwheel Spring more 'n mother's share o' the cañon?" she inquired.

      "Yes, I think it is. Of course I never measured the water, an' I didn't admit it when Forrester said so; but I'd 'a' resked sayin' it was, if anybody else'd asked me."

      "Why wouldn't you say so to him?"

      Lysander laughed, and flipped a pebble toward a gray squirrel, who gave a little rasping, insulted bark, and whisked into his hole in high dudgeon.

      "Well, because he ain't a-lackin' for information, an' I hain't got none to spare, M'lissy."

      The young girl rocked herself gently in the clover.

      "I don't understand it," she said hopelessly. "It looks as if he was tryin' to be fair, an' mother wouldn't let him. I should think she'd be glad, even if he did used to be mean, – an' I can't see as he was any meaner than the law 'lowed him to be. I s'pose the law's right. You went to the war for the law, didn't you, Sandy?"

      Her companion winced. There was one thing dearer to him than his neutrality in the family feud.

      "Mebbe I did, M'lissy, – mebbe I did," he answered, with a trifling accession of dignity: "fer the law as I understood it. The law's all right, but it ain't every judge nor every jury that knows what it is; they think they do, but they're liable to be mistaken. Seems to me they're derned liable to be mistaken!" he added, with some asperity.

      And so the paths that to Melissa's straightforward consciousness seemed so simple and direct ended, one and all, in hopeless confusion. Even Lysander had failed her. The foundations of human knowledge were certainly giving way when Lysander indulged in the mysterious.

      Melissa turned and left him, walking absently up the little path that led to the cañon. She had not noticed a speck crawling like an overburdened insect along the winding road in the valley. Visible and invisible by turns, as the sage-brush was sparse or high, and emerging at last into permanent view where the wild growth came to an end and Mrs. Withrow's "patch" began, it resolved itself, to Lysander's intent and curious gaze, into a diminutive gray donkey, bearing a confused burden of blankets and cooking utensils, and followed by a figure more dejected, if possible, than the donkey himself.

      "I'll be hanged if the old man hain't showed up!" said Lysander, dropping down on the sled, and throwing back into the pile two boulders he held, as if to indicate a general cessation of all logical sequence and a consequent embargo on industry.

      Evidently the old man was conscious that he "showed up" to poor advantage, for he began prodding the donkey with a conscientious absorption that filled that small brute with amazement, and made him amble from one side of the road to the other, in a vain endeavor to look around his pack and discover the reason for this unexpected turn in the administration of affairs.

      Lysander watched their approach with an expression of amused contempt. The traveler started, in a clumsy attempt at surprise, when he was opposite his son-in-law, and, giving the donkey a parting whack that sent him and his hardware onward at a literally rattling СКАЧАТЬ