Lonesome Land by B. M. Bower (reading strategies book .TXT) đź“–
- Author: B. M. Bower
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The cow turned and regarded her, wild-eyed. It backed a step or two, evidently uncertain of its next move.
“Go on away!” Val was just on the point of throwing the rock, when she dropped it unheeded to the ground and stared. “Why, you—you—why—the idea!” She turned slowly white. Certain things must filter to the understanding through amazement and disbelief; it took Val a minute or two to grasp the significance of what she saw. By the time she did grasp it, her knees were beading weakly beneath the weight of her body. She put out a groping hand and caught at the corner of the corral to keep herself from falling. And she stared and stared.
“It—oh, surely not!” she whispered, protesting against her understanding. She gave a little sob that had no immediate relation to tears. “Surely—surely—not!” It was of no use; understanding came, and came clearly, pitilessly. Many things—trifles, all of them—to which she had given no thought at the time, or which she had forgotten immediately, came back to her of their own accord; things she tried not to remember.
The cow stared at her for a minute, and, when she made no hostile move, turned its attention back to its bereavement. Once again it thrust its moist muzzle between two rails, gave a preliminary, vibrant mmm—mmmmm—m, and then, with a spasmodic heaving of ribs and of flank, burst into a long-drawn baww—aw—aw—aw, which rose rapidly in a tremulous crescendo and died to a throaty rumbling.
Val started nervously, though her eyes were fixed upon the cow and she knew the sound was coming. It served, however, to release her from the spell of horror which had gripped her. She was still white, and when she moved she felt intolerably heavy, so that her feet dragged; but she was no longer dazed. She went slowly around to the gate, reached up wearily and undid the chain fastening, opened the gate slightly, and went in.
Four of the calves were huddled together for mutual comfort in a corner. They were blatting indefatigably. Val went over to where the fifth one still stood beside the fence, as near the cow as it could get, and threw a small stone, that bounced off the calf's rump. The calf jumped and ran aimlessly before her until it reached the half-open gate, when it dodged out, as if it could scarcely believe its own good fortune. Before Val could follow it outside, it was nuzzling rapturously its mother, and the cow was contorting her body so that she could caress her offspring with her tongue, while she rumbled her satisfaction.
Val closed and fastened the gate carefully, and went back to where the cow still lingered. With her lips drawn to a thin, colorless line, she drove her across the coulee and up the hill, the calf gamboling close alongside. When they had gone out of sight, up on the level, Val turned back and went slowly to the house. She stood for a minute staring stupidly at it and at the coulee, went in and gazed around her with that blankness which follows a great mental shock. After a minute she shivered, threw up her hands before her face, and dropped, a pitiful, sorrowing heap of quivering rebellion, upon the couch.
CHAPTER XIX. KENT'S CONFESSION
Polycarp Jenks came ambling into the coulee, rapped perfunctorily upon the door-casing, and entered the kitchen as one who feels perfectly at home, and sure of his welcome; as was not unfitting, considering the fact that he had “chored around” for Val during the last year, and longer.
“Anybody to home?” he called, seeing the front door shut tight.
There was a stir within, and Val, still pale, and with an almost furtive expression in her eyes, opened the door and looked out.
“Oh, it's you, Polycarp,” she said lifelessly. “Is there anything—”
“What's the matter? Sick? You look kinda peaked and frazzled out. I met Man las' night, and he told me you needed wood; I thought I'd ride over and see. By granny, you do look bad.”
“Just a headache,” Val evaded, shrinking back guiltily. “Just do whatever there is to do, Polycarp. I think—I don't believe the chickens have had anything to eat to-day—”
“Them headaches are sure a fright; they're might' nigh as bad as rheumatiz, when they hit you hard. You jest go back and lay down, and I'll look around and see what they is to do. Any idee when Man's comin' back?”
“No.” Val brought the word out with an involuntary sharpness.
“No, I reckon not. I hear him and Fred De Garmo come might' near havin' a fight las' night. Blumenthall was tellin' me this mornin'. Fred's quit the Double Diamond, I hear. He's got himself appointed dep'ty stock inspector—and how he managed to git the job is more 'n I can figure out. They say he's all swelled up over it—got his headquarters in town, you know, and seems he got to lordin' it over Man las' night, and I guess if somebody hadn't stopped 'em they'd of been a mix-up, all right. Man wasn't in no shape to fight—he'd been drinkin' pretty—”
“Yes—well, just do whatever there is to do, Polycarp. The horses are in the upper pasture, I think—if you want to haul wood.” She closed the door—gently, but with exceeding firmness, and, Polycarp took the hint.
“Women is queer,” he muttered, as he left the house. “Now, she knows Man drinks like a fish—and she knows everybody else knows it—but if you so much as mention sech a thing, why—” He waggled his head disapprovingly and proceeded, in his habitually laborious manner, to take a chew of tobacco. “No matter how much they may know a thing is so, if it don't suit 'em you can't never git 'em to stand right up and face it out—seems like, by granny, it comes natural to 'em to make believe things is different. Now, she knows might' well she can't fool me. I've hearn Man swear at her like—”
He reached the corral, and his insatiable curiosity turned his thoughts into a different channel. He inspected the four calves gravely, wondered audibly where Man had found them, and how the round-up came to miss them, and criticized his application of the brand; in the opinion of Polycarp, Manley either burned too deep or not deep enough.
“Time that line-backed heifer scabs off, you can't tell what's on her,” he asserted, expectorating solemnly before he turned away to his work.
Prom a window, Val watched him with cold terror. Would he suspect? Or was there anything to suspect? “It's silly—it's perfectly idiotic,” she told herself impatiently; “but if he hangs around that corral another minute, I shall scream!” She watched until she saw him mount his horse and ride off toward the upper pasture. Then she went out and began apathetically picking seed pods off her sweet-peas, which the early frosts had spared.
“Head better?” called Polycarp, half an hour later, when he went rattling past the house with the wagon, bound for the river bottom where they got their supply of wood.
“A little,” Val answered inattentively, without looking at him.
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