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

are growing pretty bad—between Manley and me. I hope it isn't my fault. I have tried every way I know to keep my faith in him, and to—to help him. But he's not the same as he was. You know that. And I have a good deal of pride. I can't—oh, it's intolerable having to ask a man for money! Especially when he doesn't want to give you any,” she added naively. “At first it wasn't necessary; I had a little of my own, and all my things were new. But one must eventually buy things—for the house, you know, and for one's personal needs—and he seems to resent it dreadfully. I never would have believed that Manley could be stingy—actually stingy; but he is, unfortunately. I hate to speak of his faults, even to you. But I've got to be honest with you. It isn't nice to say that I'm writing, not for any particularly burning desire to express my thoughts, nor for the sentiment of it, but to earn money. It's terribly sordid, isn't it?” She smiled wistfully up at him. “But there seems to be money in it, for those who succeed, and it's work that I can do here. I have oceans of time, and I'm not disturbed!” Her lips curved into bitter lines. “I do so much thinking, I might as well put my brain to some use.” With one of her sudden changes of mood, she turned to Kent and clasped both hands upon his arm.

“Now you see, pal, how much our friendship means to me,” she said softly. “I couldn't have told this to another living soul! It seems awfully treacherous, saying it even to you—I mean about him. But you're so good—you always understand, don't you, pal?”

“I guess so.” Kent forced the words out naturally, and kept his breath even, and his arms from clasping her. He considered that he performed quite a feat of endurance.

“You're modest!” She gave his arm a little shake. “Of course you do. You know I'm not treacherous, really. You know I'd do anything I could for him. But this is something that doesn't concern him at all. He doesn't know it, but that is because he would only sneer. When I have really sold something, and received the money for it, then it won't matter to me who knows. But now it's a solemn secret, just between me and my pal.” Her yellow-brown eyes dwelt upon his face.

Kent, stealing a glance at her from under his drooped lids, wondered if she had ever given any time to analyzing herself. He would have given much to know if, down deep in her heart, she really believed in this pal business; if she was really a friend, and no more. She puzzled him a good deal, sometimes.

“Well—if anybody can make good at that business, you sure ought to; you've got brains enough to write a dictionary.” He permitted himself the indulgence of saying that much, and he was perfectly sincere. He honestly considered Val the cleverest woman in the world.

She laughed with gratification. “Your sublime confidence, while it is undoubtedly mistaken, is nevertheless appreciated,” she told him primly, moving away with her hands full of flowers. “If you've got the nerve, come inside and read some of my stuff; I want to know if it's any good at all.”

Presently he was seated upon the couch in the little, pathetically bright front room, and he was knitting his eyebrows over Val's beautifully regular handwriting,—pages and pages of it, so that there seemed no end to the task,—and was trying to give his mind to what he was reading instead of to the author, sitting near him with her hands folded demurely in her lap and her eyes fixed expectantly upon his face, trying to read his decision even as it was forming.

Some verses she had tried on him first. Kent, by using all his determination of character, read them all, every word of them.

“That's sure all right,” he said, though, beyond a telling phrase or two,—one line in particular which would stick in his memory:

“Men live and love and die in that lonely land,”—

he had no very clear idea of what it was all about. Certain lines seemed to go bumping along, and one had to mispronounce some of the final words to make them rhyme with others gone before, but it was all right—Val wrote it.

“I think I do better at stories,” she ventured modestly. “I wrote one—a little story about university life—and sent it to a magazine. They wrote a lovely letter about it, but it seems that field is overdone, or something. The editor asked me why, living out here in the very heart of the West, I don't try Western stories. I think I shall—and that's why I said I should need your help. I thought we might work together, you know. You've lived here so long, and ought to have some splendid ideas—things that have happened, or that you've heard—and you could tell me, and I'd write them up. Wouldn't you like to collaborate—'go in cahoots' on it?”

“Sure.” Kent regarded her thoughtfully. She really was looking brighter and happier, and her enthusiasm was not to be mistaken. Her world had changed. “Anything I can do to help, you know—”

“Of course I know, I think it's perfectly splendid, don't you? We'll divide the money—when there is any, and—”

“Will we?” His tone was noncommittal in the extreme.

“Of course. Now, don't let's quarrel about that till we come to it. I have a good idea of my own, I think, for the first story. A man comes out here and disappears, you know, and after a while his sister comes to find him. She gets into all kinds of trouble—is kidnapped by a gang of robbers, and kept in a cave. When the leader of the gang comes back—he has been away on some depredation—you see, I have only the bare outline of the story yet—and, well, it's her brother! He kills the one who kidnapped her, and she reforms him. Of course, there ought to be some love interest. I think, perhaps, one member of the gang ought to fall in love with her, don't you know? And after a while he wins her—”

“She'll reform him, too, I reckon.”

“Oh, yes. She couldn't love a man she couldn't respect—no woman could.”

“Oh!” Kent took a minute to apply that personally. It was of value to him, because it was an indication of Val's own code. “Maybe,” he suggested tentatively, “she'd get busy and reform the whole bunch.”

“Oh, say—that would be great! She's an awfully sweet little thing—perfectly lovely, you know—and they'd all be in love with her, so it wouldn't be improbable. Don't you remember, Kent, you told me once that a man would do anything for a woman, if he cared enough for her?”

“Sure. He would, too.” Kent fought back a momentary temptation to prove the truth of it by his own acquiescence in this pal business. He was saved from disaster by a suspicion that Val would not be able to see it from his point of view, and by the fact that he would much rather be pals than nothing.

She would have gone on, talking and planning and discussing, indefinitely. But the sun slid lower and lower, and Kent was not his own master. The time came when he had to go, regardless of his own wishes, or hers.

When he came again, the story was finished, and Val