That last visit to the ancestral acres is what did it.
No, its age age and prosperity. I know now what it is to have broiled steak.
Mrs. Wetherford, seizing the moment, came down to do the honors. You fellers ought to know my girl. Virginny, this is Forest Supervisor Redfield, and this is Ross Cavanagh, his forest ranger in this district. You ought to know each other. My girls just back from school, and she dont think much of the Fork. Its a little too coarse for her.
Lee flushed under this introduction, and her distress was so evident that both men came to her rescue.
The older man bowed, and said: I didnt know you had a daughter, Mrs. Wetherford, and Cavanagh, with a glance of admiration, added: Weve been wondering who you might be.
Lize went on: I thought Id got rid of her. Shes been away now for about ten years. I dont know but it was a mistake looks like shes grown a little too fine-haired for us doughies out here.
So much the worse for us, replied Redfield.
This little dialogue gave the girl time to recover herself, but as Cavanagh watched the blush fade from her face, leaving it cold and white, he sympathized with her pitied her from the bottom of his heart. He perceived that he was a chance spectator of the first scene in a painful domestic drama one that might easily become a tragedy. He wondered what the forces might be which had brought such a daughter to this sloven, this virago. To see a maid of this delicate bloom thrust into such a place as Lize Wetherfords hotel had the reputation of being roused indignation.
When did you reach town? he asked, and into his voice his admiration crept.
Only last night.
You find great changes here?
Not so great as in my mother. Its all She stopped abruptly, and he understood.
Lize being drawn back to her cash-register, Redfield turned to say: My dear young lady, I dont suppose you remember me, but I knew you when you were a tot of five or six. I knew your father very well.
Did you? Her face lighted up.
Yes, poor fellow, he went away from here rather under a cloud, you know.
I remember a little of it. I was here when the shooting took place.
So you were. Well, since then much has happened to us all, he explained to the ranger. There wasnt room for a dashing young blood such as Ed Wetherford was in those days. He turned to Lee. He was no worse than the men on the other side it was dog eat dog; but some way the people rather settled on him as a scapegoat. He was forced out, and your mother has borne the brunt of it since. Those were lawless days.
It was a painful subject, and Redfields voice grew lower and more hesitant as he went on. Looking at this charming girl through the smoke of fried ham, with obscene insects buzzing about her fair head, made him feel for the thousandth time, and more keenly than ever before, the amazing combinations in American society. How could she be the issue of Edward and Eliza Wetherford?
More and more Lee Virginias heart went out in trust toward these two men. Opposed to the malodorous, unshaven throng which filled the room, they seemed wondrously softened and sympathetic, and in the rangers gaze was something else something which made her troubles somehow less intolerable. She felt that he understood the difficult situation in which she found herself.
Redfield went on. You find us horribly uncivilized after ten years absence?
I find this uncivilised, she replied, with fierce intensity, looking around the room. Then, on the impulse, she added: I cant stand it! I came here to live with my mother, but this is too too horrible!
I understand your repulsion, replied Redfield. A thousand times I repeat, apropos of this country, Where every prospect pleases and only man is vile.
Do you suppose it was as bad ten years ago? she asked. Was everything as dirty as mean? Were the houses then as full of flies and smells?
Im afraid they were. Of course, the country isnt all like this, and there are neat homes and gentle people in Sulphur; but most cattle-men are as theyve always been a shiftless, happy-go-lucky lot at best and some of them have been worse, as you know.
I never dreamed of finding my mother in such a place, she went on. I dont know what to do or say. She isnt well. I ought to stay and help her, and yet oh, it is disheartening!
Lize tapped Redfield on the shoulder. Come over here, Reddy, if youve finished your breakfast; I want to talk with you.
Redfield rose and followed his landlady behind the counter, and there sat in earnest conversation while she made change. The tone in which her mother addressed the Supervisor, her action of touching him as one man lays hand upon another, was profoundly revealing to Lee Virginia. She revolted from it without realizing exactly what it meant; and feeling deeply but vaguely the forest rangers sympathy, she asked:
How can you endure this kind of life?
I cant, and I dont, he answered, cautiously, for they were being closely observed. I am seldom in town; my dominion is more than a mile above this level. My cabin is nine thousand feet above the sea. It is clean and quiet up there.
Are all the other restaurants in the village like this?
Worse. I come here because it is the best.
She rose. I cant stand this air and these flies any longer. Theyre too disgusting.
He followed her into the other house, conscious of the dismay and bitterness which burst forth the instant they were alone. What am I to do? She is my mother, but Ive lost all sense of relationship to her. And these people except you and Mr. Redfield are all disgusting to me. It isnt because my mother is poor, it isnt because shes keeping boarders; its something else. At this point her voice failed her.
The ranger, deeply moved, stood helplessly silent. What could he say? He knew a great deal better than she the essential depravity of her mother, and he felt keenly the cruelty of fate which had plunged a fine young spirit into this swamp of ill-smelling humanity.
Let us go out into the air, he suggested, presently. The mountain wind will do you good.
She followed him trustfully, and as she stepped from the squalor of the hotel into the splendor of the morning her head lifted. She drank the clear, crisp wind as one takes water in the desert.
The air is clean, anyway, she said.
Cavanagh, to divert her, pointed away to the mountains. There is my dominion. Up there I am sole ruler. No one can litter the earth with corruption or poison the streams.
She did not speak, but as she studied the ranger her face cleared. It is beautiful up there.
He went on. I hate all this scrap-heap quite as heartily as you do, but up there is sweetness and sanity. The streams are germless, and the forest cannot be devastated. That is why I am a ranger. I could not endure life in a town like this.
He turned up the street toward the high hill to the south, and she kept step with him. As she did not speak, he asked: What did you expect to do out here?
I hoped to teach, she replied, her voice still choked with her emotion. I expected to find the country much improved.
And so it is; but it is still a long way from an Eastern State. Perhaps you will find the people less savage than they appear at first glance.
It isnt the town or the people, it is my mother! she burst forth again. Tell me! A woman in the car yesterday accused my mother of selling whiskey unlawfully. Is this so? Tell me!
It isnt the town or the people, it is my mother! she burst forth again. Tell me! A woman in the car yesterday accused my mother of selling whiskey unlawfully. Is this so? Tell me!
She faced him resolutely, and perceiving that she could not be evaded, he made slow answer. I dont know that she does, but Ive heard it charged against her.
Who made the charge?
One of the clergymen, and then its common talk among the rough men of the town.
Is that the worst they say of her? Be honest with me I want to know the worst.
He was quite decisive as he said: Yes, that is the worst.
She looked relieved. Im glad to hear you say so. Ive been imagining all kinds of terrifying things.
Then, too, her bad health is some excuse for her housekeeping, he added, eager to lessen the daughters humiliation, and you must remember her associations are not those which breed scrupulous regard for the proprieties.
But shes my mother! wailed the girl, coming back to the central fact. She has sent me money she has been kind to me what am I to do? She needs me, and yet the thought of staying here and facing her life frightens me.
The rotten board walks, the low rookeries, the unshaven, blear-eyed men sitting on the thresholds of the saloons, the slattern squaws wandering abroad like bedraggled hens, made the girl stare with wonder and dismay. She had remembered the town street as a highway filled with splendid cavaliers, a list wherein heroic deeds were done with horse and pistol.
She recognized one of those knights of the lariat sitting in the sun, flabby, grizzled, and inert. Another was trying to mount his horse with a bottle in his hand. She recalled him perfectly. He had been her girlish ideal of manly beauty. Now here he was, old and mangy with drink at forty. In a most vivid and appealing sense he measured the change in her as well as the decay of the old-time cowboy. His incoherent salutation as his eyes fell upon her was like the final blasphemous word from the rear-guard of a savage tribe, and she watched him ride away reeling limply in his saddle as one watches a carrion-laden vulture take its flight.
She perceived in the ranger the man of the new order, and with this in her mind she said: You dont belong here? Youre not a Western man.
Not in the sense of having been born here, he replied. I am, in fact, a native of England, though Ive lived nearly twenty years of my life in the States.
She glanced at his badge. How did you come to be a ranger what does it mean? Its all new to me.
It is new to the West, he answered, smilingly, glad of a chance to turn her thought from her own personal griefs. It has all come about since you went East. Uncle Sam has at last become provident, and is now conserving his resources. I am one of his representatives with stewardship over some ninety thousand acres of territory mostly forest.
She looked at him with eyes of changing light. You dont talk like an Englishman, and yet you are not like the men out here.
I shouldnt care to be like some of them, he answered. My being here is quite logical. I went into the cattle business like many another, and I went broke. I served under Colonel Roosevelt in the Cuban War, and after my term was out, naturally drifted back. I love the wilderness and have some natural taste for forestry, and I can ride and pack a horse as well as most cowboys, hence my uniform. Im not the best forest ranger in the service, Ill admit, but I fancy Im a fair average.
And that is your badge the pine-tree?
Yes, and I am proud of it. Some of the fellows are not, but so far as I am concerned I am glad to be known as a defender of the forest. A tree means much to me. I never mark one for felling without a sense of responsibility to the future.
Her questions came slowly, like those of a child. Where do you live?
Directly up the South Fork, about twenty miles.
What do you do?
He smiled. Not much. I ride the trails, guard the game, put out fires, scale lumber, burn brush, build bridges, herd cattle, count sheep, survey land, and a few other odd chores. Its supposed to be a soft snap, but I cant see it that way.
Do you live alone?
Yes, for the larger part of the time. I have an assistant who is with me during part of the summer months. Mostly I am alone. However, I am supposed to keep open house, and I catch a visitor now and then.
They were both more at ease now, and her unaffected interest pleased him.
She went on, steadily: Dont you get very lonely?
In winter, sometimes; in summer Im too busy to get lonely. In the fire season Im in the saddle every day, and sometimes all night.
Who cooks for you?
I do. Thats part of a rangers job. We have no servant problem to contend with.
Do you expect to do this always?
He smiled again. There you touch my secret spring. I have the hope of being Chief Forester some time I mean we all have the prospect of promotion to sustain us. The service is so new that any one with even a knowledge of forestry is in demand; by and by real foresters will arise.
She returned abruptly to her own problem. I dread to go back to my mother, but I must. Oh, how I hate that hotel! I loathe the flies, the smells, the people that eat there, the waiters everything! She shuddered.
Many of the evils you mention could be reformed except, of course, some of the people who come to eat. I fear several of them have gone beyond reformation.
As they started back down the street she saw the motor-stage just leaving the door of the office. That settles one question, she said. I cant get away till to-morrow.
Where would you go if you broke camp back to the East?
No; my mother thinks there is a place for me in Sulphur City.
Your case interests me deeply. I wish I could advise you to stay, but this is a rough town for a girl like you. Why dont you talk the problem over with the Supervisor? His voice became firmer. Mrs. Redfield is the very one to help you.
Where does she live?
Their ranch lies just above Sulphur, at the mouth of the Canon. May I tell him what youve told me? Hes a good sort, is Redfield much better able to advise than I am.
Cavanagh found himself enjoying the confidence of this girl so strangely thrown into his care, and the curious comment of the people in the street did not disturb him, except as it bore upon his companions position in the town.
At the door of the hotel some half-a-dozen men were clustered. As the young couple approached they gave way, but a short, powerful man, whom Lee Virginia recognized as Gregg the sheepman, called to the ranger:
I want to see you before you leave town, Mr. Ranger.
Very well. I shall be here all the forenoon, answered Cavanagh, in the tone of a man accepting a challenge; then, turning to the girl, he said, earnestly: I want to help you. I shall be here for lunch, and meanwhile I wish you would take Redfield into your confidence. Hes a wise old boy, and everybody knows him. No one doubts his motives; besides, he has a family, and is rich and unhurried. Would you like me to talk with him?
If you will. I want to do right indeed I do.
Im sure of that, he said, with eyes upon her flushed and quivering face. Theres a way out, believe me.
They parted on the little porch of the hotel, and her eyes followed his upright figure till he entered one of the shops. He had precisely the look and bearing of a young lieutenant in the regular army, and she wondered what Greggs demand meant. In his voice was both menace and contempt.