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

too abrupt, and they rode away, with Polycarp glancing curiously back, now and then, as though he was tempted to stay and gossip, and yet was anxious to know all that had happened at the Double Diamond.

“What did Polycarp Jenks mean—about Manley not coming to-night?” Val was standing in the doorway, staring after the group of horsemen.

“Nothing, I guess, Polycarp never does mean anything half the time; he just talks to hear his head roar. Man'll come, all right. This bunch happened to beat him out, is all.”

“Oh, do you think so? Mr. Blumenthall acted as if there was something—”

“Well, what can you expect of a man that lives on oatmeal mush and toast and hot water?” Kent demanded aggressively. “And Fred De Garmo is always grinning and winking at somebody; and that other fellow is a Swede and got about as much sense as a prairie dog—and Polycarp is an old granny gossip that nobody ever pays any attention to. Man won't stay in town—hell be too anxious.”

“It's terrible,” sighed Val, “about the hay and the stables. Manley will be so discouraged—he worked so hard to cut and stack that hay. And he was just going to gather the calves together and put them in the river field, in a couple of weeks—and now there isn't anything to feed them!”

“I guess he's coming; I hear somebody.” Kent was straining his eyes to see the top of the hill, where the dismal sight shadows lay heavily upon the dismal black earth. “Sounds to me like a rig, though. Maybe he drove out.” He left her, went to the wire gate which gave egress from the tiny, unkempt yard, and walked along the trail to meet the newcomer.

“You stay there,” he called back, when he thought he heard Val following him. “I'm just going to tell him you're all right. You'll get that white dress all smudged up in these ashes.”

In the narrow little gully where the trail crossed the half-dry channel from the spring he met the rig. The driver pulled up when he caught sight of Kent.

“Who's that? Did she git out of it?” cried Arline Hawley, in a breathless undertone, “Oh—it's you, is it, Kent? I couldn't stand it—I just had to come and see if she's alive. So I made Hank hitch right up—as soon as we knew the fire wasn't going to git into all that brush along the creek, and run down to the town—and bring me over. And the way—”

“But where's Man?” Kent laid a hand upon the wheel and shot the question into the stream of Arline's talk.

“Man! I dunno what devil gits into men sometimes. Man went and got drunk as a fool soon as he seen the fire and knew what coulda happened out here. Started right in to drownd his sorrows before he made sure whether he had any to drown! If that ain't like a man, every time! Time we all got back to town, and the fire was kiting away from us instead of coming up toward us, he was too drunk to do anything. He must of poured it down him by the quart. He—”

“Manley! Is that you, dear?” It was Val, a slim, white figure against the blackness all around her, coming down the trail to see what delayed them. “Why don't you come to the house? There is a house, you know. We aren't quite burned out. And I'm all right, so there's no need to worry any more.”

“Now, ain't that a darned shame?” muttered Arline wrathfully to Kent. “A feller that'll drink when he's got a wife like that had oughta be hung!

“It's me, Arline Hawley!” She raised her voice to its ordinary shrill level. “It ain't just the proper time to make a call, I guess, but it's better late than never. Man, he was took with one of his spells, so I told him I'd come on out and take you back to town. How are you, anyhow? Scared plumb to death, I'll bet, when that fire come over the hill. You needn't 'a' tramped clear down here—we was coming on to the house in a minute. I got to chewin' the rag with Kent. Git in; you might as well ride back to the house, now you're here.”

“Manley didn't come?” Val was standing beside the rig, near Kent. Her white-clothed figure was indistinct, and her face obscured in the dark. Her voice was quiet—lifelessly quiet. “Is he sick?”

“Well—of course has nerves was all upset—”

“Oh! Then he is sick?”

“Well—nothing dangerous, but—he wasn't feelin' well, so I thought I'd come out and take you back with me.”

“Oh!”

“Man was awful worried; you mustn't think he wasn't. He was pretty near crazy, for a while.”

“Oh, yes, certainly.”

“Get in and ride. And you mustn't worry none about Man, nor feel hurt that he didn't come. He felt so bad—”

“I'll walk, thank you; it's only a few steps. And I'm not worried at all. I quite understand.”

The team started on slowly, and Mrs. Hawley turned in the seat so that she could continue talking without interruption to the two who walked behind. But it was Kent who answered her at intervals, when she asked a direct question or appeared to be waiting for some comment. Betweenwhiles he was wondering if Val did, after all, understand. She knew so little of the West and its ways, and her faith in Manley was so firm and unquestioning, that he felt sure she was only hurt at what looked very much like an indifference to her welfare. He suspected shrewdly that she was thinking what she would have done in Manley's place, and was trying to reconcile Mrs. Hawley's assurances that Manley was not actually sick or disabled with the blunt fact that he had stayed in town and permitted others to come out to see if she were alive or dead.

And Kent had another problem to solve. Should he tell her the truth? He had never ceased to feel, in some measure, responsible for her position. And she was sure to discover the truth before long; not even her innocence and her ignorance of life could shield her from that knowledge. He let a question or two of Arline's go unanswered while he struggled for a decision, but when they reached the house, only one point was dearly settled in his mind. Instead of riding as far as he might, and then walking across the prairie to the Wishbone, he intended to go on to town with them—“to see her through with it.”