Read Ebook: Nameless River by Roe Vingie E Vingie Eve

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Ebook has 1969 lines and 59708 words, and 40 pages

"It's never a good day when I meet you," she said evenly, "it's a bad one."

The Sheriff smiled.

"That's good," he answered, "but some day I'll make it better."

McKane, his own face flushed with sudden anger, stepped close.

"Price," he said thinly, "you and I've been pretty fair friends, but when you talk to Miss Cathrew like that, you've got me to settle with. That sounded like a threat."

"Did it?" said Selwood. "It was."

The trader was as good as his word.

In the midst of the whirlwind fight that followed, Kate Cathrew, having pulled on her gloves and coolly tied her sack in place on her saddle, mounted Bluefire and rode away without a backward look.

Twenty minutes later the Sheriff picked up the trader and rolled him up on the porch. He stood panting himself, one hand on the worn planking, the other wiping the blood and dirt from his face.

"Get some water, boys," he said quietly, "and when he comes around tell him I'll be back tomorrow for my coffee and tobacco--five pounds of each--and anything more he wants to give me."

He picked up his wide hat, brushed it with his torn sleeve, set it back on his head precisely, walked to his own horse, which was tied some distance away, mounted and rode south toward the more open country where his own ranch lay.

"I'm damned!" said the bearded man softly, "it didn't take her long to stir up somethin' on a peaceful day! If it'd been over Bluefire, now--there's somethin' to fight for--but a woman; Hell!"

"But--Glory--Glory!" whispered the lean boy who had watched Kate hungrily, "ain't she worth it! Oh, just ain't she! Wisht I was McKane this minute!"

"Druther be th' Sheriff," said the other enigmatically.

THE HOMESTEAD ON NAMELESS

When the sun dropped over the western ridge, the girl in the deep sunbonnet unhitched her horses from the plow. She looped her lines on the hames, rubbed each sweated bay head a moment, carefully cleaned her share with a small wooden paddle which she took from a pocket in her calico skirt, and tipped the implement over, share-face down.

Then she untied the slatted bonnet and took it off, carrying it in her hand as she swung away with her team at her heels, and the change was marvelous. Where had been a somewhat masculine figure, plodding at man's work a few moments before, was now a young goddess striding the virgin earth.

The rose glow of coming twilight in the mountains bathed the stern slants with magic, fell on her bronze head like ethereal dust of gems. All in a moment she had become beautiful. The golden shade of her smooth skin was put a tint above that of her hair and brows and lashes, a blend to delight an artist, so rare was it--though her mother said they were "all off the same piece." There was red in her makeup, too, faint, thinned, beneath the light tan of her cheeks, flaming forth brightly in the even line of her full lips.

Out of this flare of noon-day color her blue eyes shone like calm waters under summer skies. Some of the men of the country had seen John Allison's daughter, but not one of them would have told you she was handsome--for not one of them had seen her without the disfiguring shelter of the bonnet. She went with the weary horses to the edge of the river, flat here in the broad meadows, and stood between them as they drank.

She raised her head and looked across the swift water-stream to the high shoulder of the distant ridge, but there was no fear in the calm depths of her eyes. She stood so, quiet, tired, at ease, until the horses had drunk their fill and with windy breaths of satisfaction were ready to go on across the flat to the stable and corral.

Here she left them in the hands of a boy of seventeen, very much after her own type, but who walked with a hopeless halt, and went on to the cabin.

"Hello, Mammy," she said, smiling--and if she had been beautiful before she was exquisite when she smiled, for the red lips curled up at the corners and the blue eyes narrowed to drowsy slits of sweetness.

But there was no answering smile on the gaunt face of the big woman who met her at the door with work-hardened hands laid anxiously on her young shoulders.

"Nance, girl," she said straightly, "I heard a shot this afternoon--I reckon it whistled some out there in th' field?"

"It did," said Nance honestly, "so close it made Dan squat."

In spite of her courage the woman paled a bit.

"My Lord A'mighty!" she said distressedly, "I do wish your Pappy had stayed in Missouri! I make no doubt he'd been livin' today--and I'd not be eating my heart out with longin' for him, sorrow over Bud, an' fear for you every time you're out of my sight. And th' land ain't worth it."

But Nance Allison laid her hand over her mother's and turned in the doorway to look once again at the red and purple veils of dusk-haze falling down the mountain's face, to listen to the song of Nameless River, hurrying down from the mysterious ca?ons of the Deep Heart hills, and a sort of adoring awe irradiated her features.

"Worth it?" she repeated slowly. "No--not Papp's death--not Bud's lameness--but worth every lick of work I ever can do, worth every glorious hour I spend on it, worth every bluff I call, every sneak-thief enemy I defy--and some day it will be worth a mint of gold when the cattle grow to herds. And in the meantime it's--why, Mammy, it's the anteroom of Heaven, the fringes of paradise, right here in Nameless Valley."

The mother sighed.

"You love it a lot, don't you?" she asked plaintively.

"I think it's more than love," said the big girl slowly as she rolled her faded sleeves higher along her golden arms preparatory to washing at the well in the yard, "I think it's principle--a proving of myself--I think it's a front line in the battle of life--and I believe I'm a mighty fighter."

But her daughter interrupted.

"There'll be a fight, at any rate," she said as she plunged her face, man fashion, into the basin filled with water from the bucket which she had lifted, hand over hand--"there'll be a fight to the finish when I start--and some day I'm afraid I'll start."

She looked at her mother with a shade of trouble on her frank face.

"For two years," she added, "I've been turning the other cheek to my enemies. I haven't passed that stage, yet. I'm still patient--but I feel stirrings."

"God forbid!" said the older woman solemnly, "it sounds like feud!"

"Will be," returned the girl shortly, "though I pray against it night and day."

The boy Bud came up from the stable along the path, and Nance stood watching him. There was but one thing in Nameless Valley that could harden her sweet mouth, could break up the habitual calm of her eyes. This was her brother, Bud.

When she regarded him, as she did now, there was always a flash of flame in her face, a wimple of anguish passing on her features, an explosion, as it were, of some deep and surging passion, covered in; hidden, like molten lava in some half-dead crater, its dull surface cracking here and there with seams of awful light which drew together swiftly. Now for the moment the little play went on in her face.

Then she smiled, for he was near.

"Hello, Kid," she said, "how's all?"

The boy smiled back and he was like her as two peas are like each other--the same golden skin, the same mouth, the same blue eyes crinkling at the corners.

But there the likeness ended, for where Nance was a delight to the eye in her physical perfection, the boy hung lopsided, his left shoulder drooping, his left leg grotesquely bandied.

But the joy of life was in him as it was in Nance, despite his misfortune.

"Whew!" he said, "it's gettin' warm a-ready. Pretty near melted working in th' garden today. Got three beds ready. Earth works up fine as sand."

"So it does in the field," said Nance as she followed the mother into the cabin, "it's like mould and ashes and all the good things of the land worked in together. It smells as fresh as they say the sea winds smell. Each time I work it, it seems wilder and sweeter--old lady earth sending out her alluring promise."

"Land sakes, girl," said Mrs. Allison, "where do you get such fancies!"

"Where do you suppose?" said Nance, "out of the earth herself. She tells me a-many things here on Nameless--such as the value of patience, an' how to be strong in adversity. I've never had the schools, not since those long-back days in Missouri, but I've got my Bible and I've got the land. And I've got the sky and the hills and the river, too. If a body can't learn from them he's poor stuff inside. Mighty poor."

She tidied her hair before the tiny mirror that hung on the kitchen wall, a small matter of passing her hands over the shining mass, for the braids were smooth, almost as they had been when she pinned them there before sun-up, and rolling down her sleeves, sat down to the table where a simple meal was steaming. She bowed her head and Mrs. Allison, her lean face gaunt with shadows of fear and apprehension, folded her hard hands and asked the customary blessing of that humble house.

Humble it was in every particular--of its scant furnishings, of its bare cleanliness which was its only adornment, of the plain food on the scoured, clothless table.

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