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

A house, it would seem, is almost the least important part of a ranch; one can camp, with frying pan and blankets, in the shade of a bush or the shelter of canvas. But to do anything upon a ranch, one must have many things—burnable things, for the most part, as Manley was to learn by experience when he left Val at the hotel and rode out, the next day, to Cold Spring Coulee.

To ride over twenty miles of blackness is depressing enough in itself, but to find, at the end of the journey, that one's work has all gone for nothing, and one's money and one's plans and hopes, is worse than depressing. Manley sat upon his horse and gazed rather blankly at the heap of black cinders that had been his haystacks, and at the cold embers where had stood his stables, and at the warped bits of iron that had been his buckboard, his wagon, his rake and mower—all the things he had gathered around him in the three years he had spent upon the place.

The house merely emphasized his loss. He got down, picked up the cat, which was mewing plaintively beside his horse, snuggled it into his arm, and remounted. Val had told him to be sure and find the cat, and bring it back with him. His horses and his cattle—not many, to be sure, in that land of large holdings—were scattered, and it would take the round-up to gather them together again. So the cat, and the horse he rode, the bleak coulee, and the unattractive little house with its three rooms and its meager porch, were all that he could visualize as his worldly possessions. And when he thought of his bank account he winced mentally. Before snow fell he would be debt-ridden, the best he could do. For he must have a stable, and corral, and hay, and a wagon, and—he refused to remind himself of all the things he must have if he would stay on the ranch.

His was not a strong nature at best, and now he shrank from facing his misfortune and wanted only to get away from the place. He loped his horse half-way up the hill, which was not merciful riding. The half-starved cat yowled in his arms, and struck her claws through his coat till he felt the prick of them, and he swore; at the cat, nominally, but really at the trick fate had played upon him.

For a week he dallied in town, without heart or courage though Val urged him to buy lumber and build, and cheered him as best she could. He did make a half-hearted attempt to get lumber to the place, but there seemed to be no team in town which he could hire. Every one was busy, and put him off. He tried to buy hay of Blumenthall, of the Wishbone, of every man he met who had hay. No one had any hay to sell, however. Blumenthall complained that he was short, himself, and would buy if he could, rather than sell. The Wishbone foreman declared profanely—that hay was going to be worth a dollar a pound to them, before spring. They were all sorry for Manley, and told him he was “sure playing tough luck,” but they couldn't sell any hay, that was certain.

“But we must manage somehow to fix the place so we can live on it this winter,” Val would insist, when he told her how every move seemed blocked. “You're very brave, dear, and I'm proud of the way you are holding out—but Hope is not a good place for you. It would be foolish to stay in town. Can't you buy enough hay here in town—baled hay from the store—to keep our horses through the winter?”

“Well, I tried,” Manley responded gloomily. “But Brinberg is nearly out. He's expecting a carload in, but it hasn't come yet. He said he'd let me know when it gets here.”

Meanwhile the days slipped away, and imperceptibly the heat and haze of the fires gave place to bright sunlight and chill winds, and then to the chill winds without the sunshine. One morning the ground was frozen hard, and all the roofs gleamed white with the heavy frost. Arline bestirred herself, and had a heating stove set up in the parlor, and Val went down to the dry heat and the peculiar odor of a rusted stove in the flush of its first fire since spring.

The next day, as she sat by her window up-stairs, she looked out at the first nip of winter. A few great snowflakes drifted down from the slaty sky; a puff of wind sent them dancing down the street, shook more down, and whirled them giddily. Then the storm came and swept through the little street and whined lonesomely around the hotel.

Over at the saloon—“Pop's Place,” it proclaimed itself in washed-out lettering—three tied horses circled uneasily until they were standing back to the storm, their bodies hunched together with the chill of it, their tails whipping between their legs. They accentuated the blank dreariness of