Lonesome Land by B. M. Bower (reading strategies book .TXT) 📖

and stables, which had kept the fire from spreading toward the house, and the wind had borne the sparks and embers back toward the spring, so that the house stood in a brown oasis of unburned grass and weeds, scanty enough, it is true, but yet a relief from the dead black surroundings.

The woodpile had not suffered. A chopping block, a decrepit sawhorse, an axe, and a rusty bucksaw marked the spot; also three ties, hacked eloquently in places, and just five sticks of wood, evidently chopped from a tie by a man in haste. Kent looked at that woodpile, and swore. He had always known that Manley had an aversion to laboring with his hands, but he was unprepared for such an exhibition of shiftlessness.

He savagely attacked the three ties, chopped them into firewood, and piled them neatly, and then, walking upon his toes, he made a fire in the kitchen stove, filled the woodbox, the teakettle, and the water pail, sat out in the shade until he heard the kettle boiling over on the stove, took another peep in at Val, and then, moving as quietly as he could, proceeded to cook supper for them both.

He had been perfectly familiar with the kitchen arrangements in the days when Manley was a bachelor, and it interested him and filled him with a respectful admiration for woman in the abstract and for Val in particular, to see how changed everything was, and how daintily clean and orderly. Val's smooth, white hands, with their two sparkly rings and the broad wedding band, did not suggest a familiarity with actual work about a house, but the effect of her labor and thought confronted him at every turn.

“You can see your face in everything you pick up that was made to shine,” he commented, standing for a moment while he surveyed the bottom of a stewpan. “She don't look it, but that yellow-eyed little dame sure knows how to keep house.” Then he heard her cough, and set down the stewpan hurriedly and went to see if she wanted anything.

Val was sitting upon the couch, her two hands pushing back her hair, gazing stupidly around her.

“Everything's all ready but the tea,” Kent announced, in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone. “I was just waiting to see how strong you want it.”

Val turned her yellow-brown eyes upon him in bewilderment. “Why, Mr. Burnett—maybe I wasn't dreaming, then. I thought there was a fire. Was there?”

Kent grinned. “Kinda. You worked like a son of a gun, too—till there wasn't any more to do, and then you laid 'em down for fair. You were all in, so I packed you in and put you there where you could be comfortable. And supper's ready—but how strong do you want your tea? I kinda had an idea,” he added lamely, “that women drink tea, mostly. I made coffee for myself.”

Val let herself drop back among the pretty pillows. “I don't want any. If there was a fire,” she said dully, “then it's true. Everything's all burned up. I don't want any tea. I want to die!”

Kent studied her for a moment. “Well, in that case—shall I get the axe?”

Val had closed her eyes, but she opened them again. “I don't care what you do,” she said.

“Well, I aim to please,” he told her calmly. “What I'd do, in your place, would be to go and put on something that ain't all smoked and scorched like a—a ham, and then I'd sit up and drink some tea, and be nice about it. But, of course, if you want to cash in—”

Val gave a sob. “I can't help it—I'd just as soon be dead as alive. It was bad enough before—and now everything's burned up—and all Manley's nice—ha-ay—”

“Well,” Kent interrupted mercilessly, “I've heard of women doing all kinds of fool things—but this is the first time I ever knew one to commit suicide over a couple of measly haystacks!” He went out and slammed the door so that the house shook, and tramped three times across the kitchen floor. “That'll make her so mad at me she won't think about anything else for a while,” he reasoned shrewdly. But all the while his eyes were shiny, and when he winked, his lashes became unaccountably moist. He stopped and looked out at the blackened coulee. “Shut into this hole, week after week, without a woman to speak to—it must be—damned tough!” he muttered.

He tiptoed up and laid his ear against the inner door, and heard a smothered sobbing inside. That did not sound as if she were “mad,” and he promptly cursed himself for a fool and a brute. With his own judgment to guide him, he brewed some very creditable tea, sugared and creamed it lavishly, browned a slice of bread on top of the stove—blowing off the dust beforehand—after Arline's recipe for making toast, buttered it until it dripped oil, and carried it in to her with the air of a man who will have peace even though he must fight for it. The forlorn picture she made, lying there with her face buried in a pink-and-blue cushion, and with her shoulders shaking with sobs, almost made him retreat, quite unnerved. As it was, he merely spilled a third of the tea and just missed letting the toast slide from the plate to the floor; when he had righted his burden he had recovered his composure to a degree.

“Here, this won't do at all,” he reproved, pulling a chair to the couch by the simple method of hooking his toe under a round and dragging it toward him. “You don't want Man to come and catch you acting like this. He's liable to feel pretty blue himself, and he'll need some cheering up—don't you think? I don't know for sure—but I've always been kinda under the impression that's what a man gets a wife for. Ain't it? You don't want to throw down your cards now. You sit up and drink this tea, and eat this toast, and I'll gamble you'll feel about two hundred per cent better.

“Come,” he urged gently, after a minute. “I never thought a nervy little woman like you would give up so easy. I was plumb ashamed of myself, the way you worked on that back fire. You had me going, for a while. You're just tired out, is all ails you. You want to hurry up and drink this, before it gets cold. Come on. I'm liable to feel, insulted if you pass up my cooking this way.”

Val choked back the tears, and, without taking her face from the pillow, put out the burned hand gropingly until it touched his knee.

“Oh, you—you're good,” she said brokenly. “I used to think you were—horrid, and I'm a—ashamed. You're good, and I—”

“Well, I ain't going to be good much longer, if you don't get your head outa that pillow and drink this tea!” His tone was amused and half impatient. But his face—more particularly his eyes—told another story, which perhaps it was as well she did not read. “I'll be dropping the blamed stuff in another minute. My elbow's plumb getting a cramp in it,” he added complainingly.

Val made a sound half-way between a sob and a laugh, and sat up. With more haste than the occasion warranted, Kent put the tea and toast on the chair and started for the kitchen.

“I was bound you'd eat before I did,” he explained, “and I could stand a cup of coffee myself.