The Freebooters of the Wilderness | Page 3

emotions; but there was a difference. There was no pretence. There was none of the fire-proof self-complacency--Self-sufficiency, she had, but not self-righteousness. Then, most striking contra-distinction of all to the old-land culture, there was unconsciousness of self--face to sunlight, radiant of the joy of life, not anaemic and putrid of its own egoism. She didn't talk in phrases thread-bare from use. She had all the naked unashamed directness of the West that thinks in terms of life and speaks without gloze. She never side-stepped the facts of life that she might not wish to know. Yet her intrusion on such facts gave the impression of the touch that heals.
The Forest Ranger had heard the Valley talk of MacDonald, the Canadian sheep rancher, belonging to some famous fur-trade clans that had intermarried with the Indians generations before; and Wayland used to wonder if it could be that strain of life from the outdoors that never pretends nor lies that had given her Eastern culture the red-blooded directness of the West. To be sure, such a character study was not less interesting because he read it through eyes glossy as an Indian's, under lashes with the curve of the Celt, with black hair that blew changing curls to every wind. Indian and Celt--was that it, he wondered?--reserve and passion, self-control and yet the abandonment of force that bursts its own barriers?
She had not wormed under the surface for some indirect answer that would betray what he intended to do. She had asked exactly what she wanted to know, with a slight accent on the--you.
"Are you going to straddle or fight?"
Wayland flicked pine needles from his mountaineering boots. He answered his own thoughts more than her question.
"All very well to say--fight; fight for all the fellows in the Land and Forest Service when they see a steal being sneaked and jobbed! But suppose you do fight, and get licked, and get yourself chucked out of the job? Suppose the follow who takes your place sells out to the enemy--well, then; where are you? Lost everything; gained nothing!" She laid her panama sunshade on the timbered seat that spanned between two stumps.
"Men must decide that sort of thing every day I suppose."
"You bet they must," agreed the Ranger with a burst of boyishness through his old-man air, "and the Lord pity the chap who has wife and kiddies in the balance--"
"Do you think women tip the scale wrong?"
"Of course not! They'd advise right--right--right; fight--fight--fight, just as you do; but the point is--can a fellow do right by them if he chucks his job in a losing fight?"
The old-mannish air had returned. She followed the Ranger's glance over the edge of the Ridge into the Valley where the smoke-stacks of the distant Smelter City belched inky clouds against an evening sky.
"Smelters need timber," Wayland waved his hand towards the pall of smoke over the River. "Smelters need coal. These men plan to take theirs free. Yet the law arrests a man for stealing a scuttle of coal or a cord of wood. One law for the rich, another for the poor; and who makes the law?"
They could see the Valley below encircled by the Rim-Rocks round as a half-hoop, terra-cotta red in the sunset. Where the river leaped down a white fume, stood the ranch houses--the Missionary's and her Father's on the near side, the Senator's across the stream. Sounds of mouth organs and concertinas and a wheezing gramaphone came from the Valley where the Senator's cow-boys camped with drovers come up from Arizona.
"Dick," she asked, "exactly what is the Senator's brand?"
"Circle X."
"A circle with an X in it?"
The Ranger stubbornly permitted the suspicion of a smile.
"So if the cattle from Arizona have only a circle, all a new owner has to do is put an X inside?"
"And pay for the cattle," amplified Wayland.
"Or a circle with a line, put another line across?"
"And hand over the cash," added the Ranger.
"Or a circle dot, just put an X on top of the dot?"
"And fix the sheriff," explained the irrelevant [Transcriber's note: irreverent?] Ranger.
"And the Senator has all the appointments to the Service out here?"
"No--disappointments," corrected Wayland.
They were both watching the grotesque antics of a squirrel negotiating the fresh tips of a young spruce. The squirrel sat up on his hind legs and chittered, whether at the Senator's brands or their heresy it would be hard to tell; but they both laughed.
"Have you room on the Grazing Range for so many cattle?"
"Not without crowding--"
"You mean crowding the sheepmen, off," she said.
"What is the use of talking?" demanded Wayland petulantly. "Neither you nor I dare open our mouths about it! Tell the sheriff; your ranch houses will be burnt over your ears some night! Everybody knows what has happened when a sheep herder has been killed in an