Chapter XL · BETTY DISCOVERS WHY SHE IS YOUNG
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From the house Tug had brought matches with him. He gathered pine boughs and lit a fire upon the rock slab. The warmth of it went through them and restored their diminished vitality.
“The water’s going down fast,” Betty said. “See the rock. It’s several inches lower.”
“Yes. Merrick will be here soon.”
Except for Ruth and Mandy, the girl did not care how long he was. She was young, and in love. Beside her sat the man who was to be her mate. A flash of the eye brought happiness. A touch of the hand thrilled.
Even when she did not look at him, she was acutely conscious of his presence. Without turning her head she saw the line of the razor stroke where the golden down ceased on his tanned cheek, was aware of the gallant set of the fine head on strong shoulders. Oh, it was good to be near him, to know that out of all the millions of men in the world she had found her mate. There was in her a strange, a primitive, instinct to accept his leadership, a desire to be subject to his wishes and commands.
She smiled. This was not like her. Perhaps it was a merely temporary aberration.
“Are we really all alike?” she asked herself, trying to understand this love-complex that already was changing her point of view. “We want to be free, want to express ourselves. We’re thinking of nothing else. And then—enter a man. Our house of cards comes toppling down, and we don’t care a bit. Sometimes, of course, he isn’t the right man. Then—tragedy, I suppose.”
The young philosopher, looking at her hero, was very sure he was the right man. Her certainty went beyond evidence, beyond faith.
Merrick’s raft reached them about noon. He was admirable in the rôle of rescuer. Efficiency showed in everything he did, even to the sandwiches, and coffee in a thermos bottle, which he had not forgotten to bring.
“Where’s Dad?” asked Betty, between bites.
“He and Forbes were at First View last night.”
“Does he know we’re safe?”
“Yes. He’s headed for home now.”
Within the hour they were back at the Diamond Bar K. Clint drove up a few minutes later, Forbes beside him.
The cattleman took his children in his arms and held them close. He could not talk without breaking down. He dared not put his feeling into words. They had come back to him from the dead—these two. Inside of him a river of unshed tears flowed.
Betty left him making over Ruth and slipped into the next room where some one was waiting for her. Lon Forbes was telling Hollister some news.
“... Jake’s men found ’em there dead, not three feet apart. Both guns empty. Four bullets in Jake’s body, five in Don’s—an’ most any one of ’em a fatal wound. They were that game they wouldn’t quit. It takes a heap o’ killin’ to finish an old-timer, I’ll say.”
Tremulously, Betty moved forward. “Who?” she asked.
Lon told her. “I’m sorry about Black, but Jake sure had it comin’,” he finished.
The foreman passed into the other room to tell Clint the news.
In a hushed voice Betty talked the tragedy over with Tug. The swiftness with which Nemesis had overtaken and obliterated Prowers was appalling to her. She had a momentary vision, vivid and amazingly sure, of God in the shadows passing judgment on the sins of men. It was as though they were back in the days of the old Hebrew prophets when the hand of the Lord stretched out and laid itself upon wicked men for their punishment when the measure of their time was full.
“He tried to stand above the law in this valley,” Hollister told her. “He wanted to stop progress—said there shouldn’t be any dam to reclaim the Flat Tops for settlers. Merrick will rebuild it. The land will be watered. Your ranch will be good as ever in three months. And he’ll be buried and forgotten.”
“And poor Don Black?” she whispered. “Poor Don, who never had a chance in this world, or, if he had one, muddled it so badly?”
He could only hope that Don had gone to a better-ordered world where circumstances did not dominate good intentions.
Betty’s sense of tragedy lingered just now no longer than a cinema picture. The life urge in her clamored for expression. No world could be a sad one with her and Tug in it.
“Shall I go in and tell your father now?” the young man asked.
“Soon.” She made a rustling little motion toward him and found herself in his arms. “Isn’t it splendid, boy? To-day’s the best ever, and to-morrow will be better than to-day—oh, heaps better—and after that all the years forever and ever.”
He looked into the deep lustrous eyes of his straight slim girl. What a wife she would be! How eager and provocative, this white flame of youth so simple and so complex! Her happiness now would be in his hands. The responsibility awed him, filled him with a sense of solemnity.
“Forever is a long time,” he said, smiling, and quoted a stanza of magazine verse they had lately read together.
It began, “How far will you go with me, my love?” Close-held in his arms, Betty answered without a moment of hesitation.
“She smiled at the stile with a sweet disdain; She scoffed at the bridge and the great oak tree; And looked me full in the eyes and said: ‘I will go to the end of the lane with thee.’”
The door of the inner room opened and Clint stood on the threshold. “Hello!” he said, surprised.
Betty disengaged herself, blushing. “He’s decided to take me after all, Dad,” she said demurely.
“Hmp! Has he? Kinda looks that way.” Clint gripped Hollister’s hand till it hurt. It was the best he could do just now to show the gratitude he felt for what this man had done.
“That’s not quite the way I put it, sir,” Tug said.
“Doesn’t matter how you put it, boy. It’ll be her say-so from now on. Don’t I know her? Hasn’t she bossed me scandalous since she was knee-high to a gosling?”
“Now, Dad, you’re giving me a bad name,” Betty protested, hugging her father.
“If he ain’t man enough to stand some bossing, he’d better quit right now before he says, ‘I do.’”
“He likes being bossed, Dad,” Betty announced, and the imps of deviltry were kicking up their heels in her eyes. “Don’t you, Tug?”
Hollister looked at the girl and smiled. “I’ll say I do,” he admitted.
THE END
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