[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.A few more years of work and exposure and she would be grim-featured and hopelessly weather-beaten.No wonder that girl had looked at her as though she were some curious alien creature with whom she had nothing at all in common! And Hughie had said he was disappointed in her.This was Katie Prentice, she said to herself—Katie Prentice for whom the future, to which she had looked forward eagerly, had been another word for happiness—the Katie Prentice who had tripped in and out of that air castle of her building, looking like this girl that Hugh had brought with him.Now this image was the realization!Just for the fraction of a second the corners of her mouth twitched, her chin quivered—then she raised it defiantly:“To do what you set out to do—that’s the great thing.Nothing else matters.”She slammed the door behind her and untied her horse from the wagon wheel.“Come on, Cherokee, we’ll go and see what that Nebraskan’s doing.”The Nebraskan was standing on a hilltop when she first saw him, facing the east and as motionless as the monument of stones beside him.His sheep were nowhere visible.As Kate rode closer the same glance that disclosed the band of sheep showed her a coyote creeping down the side of a draw in which they were feeding.She reached instantly for her carbine and drew it from its scabbard, but she was not quick enough to shoot it before it had jumped for the lamb it had been stalking.The coyote missed his prey, but the lamb, which had been feeding a little apart from the others, ran into the herd with a terrified bleat and the whole band fled on a common impulse.The coyote followed the lamb it had singled out, through all its twistings and turnings, but manœvering to work it to the outside where it could cut the lamb away from the rest and pull it down at its leisure.Kate dared not shoot into the herd, and after a second’s consideration as to whether or not to follow, she thrust the rifle back in its scabbard and turned her horse up the hill.Even the sound of hoofs did not rouse the herder from his deep absorption.His hands were hanging at his sides, and his mouth was partially open.He was staring towards the east with unblinking eyes, and with as little evidence of life as though he had died standing.“What are you looking at, Davis?”He whirled about, startled.“I was calc'latin’ that Nebrasky must lay 'bout in that direction.” He pointed to a pass in the mountains.“A little homesick, aren’t you?” Her voice was ominously quiet.“Don’t know whether I’m homesick or bilious; when I gits one I generally gits the other.”“You were wondering just then what your wife was doing that minute, weren’t you?”Her suavity deceived him and he grinned sheepishly.“Somethin’ like that, maybe.”“You are married, then?”The herder began to see where he was drifting.“Er—practically,” he replied ambiguously.“So you lied when you joined the Outfit and I asked you?”The herder whined plaintively.“I heerd you wouldn’t hire no fambly man if you knew it.”“When I make a rule there’s a reason for it.'Family men' are unreliable—they’ll quit in lambing time because the baby’s teething; they’ll leave at a moment’s notice when a letter comes that their wife wants to see them; their mind isn’t on their work and they’re restless and discontented.I knew you were married the first time I found you with your sheep behind instead of ahead of you.”“You can’t understand the feelin’s of a fambly man away from home.” He rolled his eyes sentimentally.The subject was one which was dear to the uxorious herder.He pulled out the tremolo stop in his voice and quavered: “You feel like you’re goin’ ’round with nothin’ inside of you—a empty shell—or a puff-ball with the puff out of it.You got a feelin’ all the time like somethin’s pullin’ you.” He looked so hard towards Nebraska that he all but toppled.“Somethin’ here,” he laid a hand on his heart, approximately, “like a plaster drawin’.Love,” eloquently, “changes your hull nature.It makes lambs out o’ roughnecks and puts drunks on the wagon.It turns you kind and forgivin’ and takes the fight out o’ you.It makes you—”“Maudlin! And weak! And inefficient!” Kate interrupted savagely.“It distracts your thoughts and dissipates your energy.It impairs your judgment, lessens your will power.It’s for persons who have no ambition or who have achieved it
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]