The Dry Bottom Trilogy: The Two-Gun Man, The Coming of the Law & Firebrand Trevison. Charles Alden Seltzer

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      Chapter XI. A Touch of Local Color

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      A few months before her first meeting with Ferguson, Mary Radford had come West with the avowed purpose of "absorbing enough local color for a Western novel." Friends in the East had encouraged her; an uncle (her only remaining relative, beside her brother) had assisted her. So she had come.

      The uncle (under whose care she had been since the death of her mother, ten years before) had sent her to a medical college, determined to make her a finished physician. But Destiny had stepped in. Quite by accident Miss Radford had discovered that she could write, and the uncle's hope that she might one day grace the medical profession had gone glimmering—completely buried under a mass of experimental manuscript.

      He professed to have still a ray of hope until after several of the magazines had accepted Mary's work. Then hope died and was succeeded by silent acquiescence and patient resignation. Having a knowledge of human nature far beyond that possessed by the average person, the uncle had realized that if Mary's inclination led to literature it was worse than useless to attempt to interest her in any other profession. Therefore, when she had announced her intention of going West he had interposed no objection; on the contrary had urged her to the venture. What might have been his attitude had not Ben Radford been already in the West is problematical. Very seldom do we decide a thing until it confronts us.

      Mary Radford had been surprised at the West. From Ben's cabin in the flat she had made her first communion with this new world that she had worshipped at first sight. It was as though she had stepped out of an old world into one that was just experiencing the dawn of creation's first morning. At least so it had seemed to her on the morning she had first stepped outside her brother's cabin to view her first sunrise.

      She had breathed the sweet, moisture-laden breezes that had seemed to almost steal over the flat where she had stood watching the shadows yield to the coming sun. The somber hills had become slowly outlined; the snow caps of the distant mountain peaks glinted with the brilliant shafts that struck them and reflected into the dark recesses below. Nature was king here and showed its power in a mysterious, though convincing manner.

      In the evening there would come a change. Through rifts in the mountains descended the sun, spreading an effulgent expanse of yellow light—like burnished gold. In the shadows were reflected numerous colors, all quietly blended, making contrasts of perfect harmony. There were the sinuous buttes that bordered the opposite shore of the river—solemn sentinels guarding the beauty and purity of this virgin land. Near her were sloping hills, dotted with thorny cactus and other prickly plants, and now rose a bald rock spire with its suggestion of grim lonesomeness. In the southern and eastern distances were the plains, silent, vast, unending. It seemed she had come to dwell in a land deserted by some cyclopean race. Its magnificent, unchanging beauty had enthralled her.

      She had not lacked company. She found that the Two Diamond punchers were eager to gain her friendship. Marvelous excuses were invented for their appearance at the cabin in the flat. She thought that Ben's friendship was valued above that of all other persons in the surrounding country.

      But she found the punchers gentlemen. Though their conversation was unique and their idioms picturesque, they compared favorably with the men she had known in the East. Did they lack the subtleties, they made up for this by their unfailing deference. And they were never rude; their very bashfulness prevented that.

      Through them she came to know much of many things. They contrived to acquaint her with the secretive peculiarities of the prairie dog, and—when she would listen with more than ordinary attention—they would loose their wonderful imaginations in the hope of continuing the conversation. Then it was that the subject under discussion would receive exhaustive, and altogether unnecessary, elucidation. The habits of the prairie-dog were not alone betrayed to the ears of the young lady. The sage-fowl's inherent weaknesses were paraded before her; the hoot of the owl was imitated with ludicrous solemnity; other fowl were described with wonderful attention to detail; and the inevitable rattlesnake was pointed out to her as a serpent whose chief occupation in life was that СКАЧАТЬ