The Claim Jumpers - Stewart Edward White
Bennington observed with approval the corpulency of the bundle and the
skilful manner with which it was tied on. He noted, with perhaps more
approval, her lithe figure in its old-fashioned painter's blouse and
rough skirt, and the rosiness of her cheeks under a cloth cap caught on
awry. As the ponies sought a path at a snail's pace through the sharp
flints, she showed in a thousand ways how high the gaiety of her
animal spirits had mounted. She sang airy little pieces of songs. She
uttered single clear notes. She mocked, with a ludicrously feminine
croak, the hoarse voice of a crow sailing over them. She rallied
Bennington mercilessly on his corduroys, his yellow flapped pistol
holster, his laced boots. She went over in ridiculous pantomime the
scene of the mock lynching, until Bennington rolled in his saddle with
light-hearted laughter, and wondered how it was possible he had ever
taken the affair seriously. When he returned with the axe she was
hugely alarmed lest he harm himself by his awkward way of carrying it,
and gave him much wholesome advice in her most maternal manner. After
all of which she would catch his eye, and they would both laugh to
startle the birds.
Blue Lead proved to be some distance away, for which fact Bennington
was not sorry. At length they surmounted a little ridge. Over its
summit there started into being a long cool "draw," broad and shallow
near the top, but deepening by insensible degrees into a canon filled
already with broad-leaved shrubs, and thickly grown with saplings of
beech and ash. Through the screen of slender trunks could be seen
miniature open parks carpeted with a soft tiny fern, not high enough to
conceal the ears of a rabbit, or to quench the flame of the tiger lily
that grew there. Soon a little brook sprang from nowhere, and crept
timidly through and under thick mosses. After a time it increased in
size, and when it had become large enough to bubble over clear gravel,
Mary called a halt.
"We'll have our picnic here," she decided.
The ravine at this point received another little gulch into itself, and
where the two came together the bottom widened out into almost parklike
proportions. On one side was a grass-plot encroached upon by numerous
raspberry vines. On the other was the brook, flowing noisily in the
shade of saplings and of ferns.
Bennington unsaddled the horses and led them over to the grass-plot,
where he picketed them securely in such a manner that they could not
become entangled. When he returned to the brookside he found that Mary
had undone her bundle and spread out its contents. There were various
utensils, some corn meal, coffee, two slices of ham, raw potatoes, a
small bottle of milk, some eggs wonderfully preserved by moss inside
the pail, and some bread and cake. Bennington eyed all this in dismay.
She caught his look and laughed.
"Can't you cook? Well, I can; you just obey orders."
"We won't get anything to eat before night," objected Bennington
dolefully as he looked over the decidedly raw material.
"And he's _so_ hungry!" she teased. "Never mind, you build a fire."
Bennington brightened. He had one outdoor knack--that of lighting
matches in a wind and inducing refractory wood to burn. His skill had
often been called into requisition in the igniting of beach fires, and
the so-called "camp fires" of girls. He collected dry twigs from the
sunny places, cut slivers with his knife, built over the whole a
wigwam-shaped pyramid of heavier twigs, against which he leaned his
firewood. Then he touched off the combination. The slivers ignited the
twigs, the twigs set fire to the wigwam, the wigwam started the
firewood. Bennington's honour was vindicated. He felt proud.
Mary, who had been filling the coffee pot at the creek, approached and
viewed the triumph. She cast upon it the glance of scorn.
"That's no cooking fire," said she.
So Bennington, under her directions, placed together the two parallel
logs with the hewn sides and built the small bright fire between them.
"Now you see," she explained, "I can put my frying pan, and coffee pot,
and kettle across the two logs. I can get at them easy, and don't burn
my fingers. Now you may peel the potatoes."
The Easterner peeled potatoes under constant laughing amendment as to
method. Then the small cook collected her materials about her, in grand
preparation for the final rites. She turned back the loose sleeves of
her blouse to the elbow.
This drew an exclamation from Bennington.
"Why, Mary, how white your arms are!" he cried, astonished.
She surveyed her forearm with a little blush, turning it back and
forth.
"I _am_ pretty tanned," she agreed.
The coffee pot was filled and placed across the logs at one end, and
left to its own devices a little removed from the hottest of the fire.
The kettle stood next, half filled with salted water, in which nestled
the potatoes like so many nested eggs. Mary mixed a mysterious
concoction of corn meal, eggs, butter, and some white powder, mushing
the whole up with milk and water. The mixture she spread evenly in the
bottom of the frying pan, which she set in a warm place.
"It isn't much of a baking tin," she commented, eyeing it critically,
"but it'll do."
Under her direction Bennington impaled the two slices of ham on long
green switches, and stuck these upright in the ground in such a
position that the warmth from the flames could just reach them.
"They'll never cook there," he objected.
"Didn't expect they would," she retorted briefly. Then relenting,
"They finish better if they're warmed through first," she explained.
By this time the potatoes were bubbling energetically and the coffee
was sending out a fragrant steam. Mary stabbed experimentally at the
vegetables with a sharpened sliver. Apparently satisfied, she drew back
with a happy sigh. She shook her hair from her eyes and smiled across
at Bennington.
"Ready! Go!" cried she.
The frying pan was covered with a tin plate on which were heaped live
coals. More coals were poked from between the logs on to a flat place,
were spread out thin, and were crowned by the frying pan and its
glowing freight. Bennington held over the fire a switch of ham in each
hand, taking care, according to directions, not to approach the actual
blaze. Mary borrowed his hunting knife and disappeared into the
thicket. In a moment she returned with a kettle-lifter, improvised very
simply from a forked branch of a sapling. One of the forks was left
long for the hand, the other was cut short. The result was like an
Esquimaux fishhook. She then relieved Bennington of his task, while
that young man lifted the kettle from the fire and carefully drained
away the water.
"Dinner!" she called gaily.
Bennington looked up surprised. He had been so absorbed in the spells
wrought by this dainty woods fairy that he had forgotten the flight of
time. It was enough for him to watch the turn of her wrist, the swift
certainty of her movements, to catch the glow lit in her face by the
fire over which she bent. Then he suddenly remembered that her
movements had all along tended toward dinner, and were not got up
simply and merely that he might discover new charms in the small
housekeeper.
He found himself seated on a rock with a tin plate in his lap, a tin
cup at his side, and an eager little lady in front of him, anxious that
he should taste all her dishes and deliver an opinion forthwith.
The coffee he pronounced nectar; the ham and mealy potatoes, delicious;
the "johnny-cake" of a yellow golden crispness which the originator of
johnny-cake might envy; and the bread and cake and butter and sugar
only the less meritorious that they had not been prepared by her own
hands and on the spot.
"And see!" she cried, clapping her hands, "the sun is still directly
over us. It is not night yet, silly boy!"
CHAPTER XI
AND HE DID EAT
After the meal he wanted to lie down in the grasses and watch the
clouds sail by, but she would have none of it. She haled him away to
the brookside. There she showed him how to wash dishes by filling them
half full of water in which fine gravel has been mixed, and then
whirling the whole rapidly until the tin is rubbed quite clean. Never
was prosaic task more delightful. They knelt side by side on the bank,
under the dense leaves, and dabbled in the water happily. The ferns
were fresh and cool. Once a redbird shot confidently down from above on
half-closed wing, caught sight of these intruders, brought up with a
swish of feathers, and eyed them gravely for some time from a
neighbouring treelet. Apparently he was satisfied with his inspection,
for after a few minutes he paid no further attention to them, but went
about his business quietly. When the dishes had been washed, Mary
stood over Bennington while he packed them in the bundle and strapped
them on the saddle.
"Now," said she at last, "we have nothing more to think of until we go
home."
She was like a child, playing with exhaustless spirits at the most
trivial games. Not for a moment would she listen to anything of a
serious nature. Bennington, with the heavier pertinacity of men when
they have struck a congenial vein, tried to repeat to some extent the
experience of the last afternoon at the rock. Mary laughed his
sentiment to ridicule and his poetics to scorn. Everything he said she
twisted into something funny or ridiculous. He wanted to sit down and
enjoy the calm peace of the little ravine in which they had pitched
their temporary camp, but she made a quiet life miserable to him. At
last in sheer desperation he arose to pursue, whereupon she vanished
lightly into the underbrush. A moment later he heard her clear laugh
mocking him from some elder thickets a hundred yards away. Bennington
pursued with ardour. It was as though a slow-turning ocean liner were
to try to run down a lively little yacht.
Bennington had always considered girls as weak creatures, incapable of
swift motion, and needing assistance whenever the country departed from
the artificial level of macadam. He had also thought himself fairly
active. He revised these ideas. This girl could travel through the thin
brush of the creek bottom two feet to his one, because she ran more
lightly and surely, and her endurance was not a matter for discussion.
The question of second wind did not concern her any more than it does a
child, whose ordinary mode of progression is heartbreaking. Bennington
found that he was engaged in the most delightful play of his life. He
shouted aloud with the fun of it. He had the feeling that he was
grasping at a sunbeam, or a mist-shape that always eluded him.
He would lose her utterly, and would stand quite motionless, listening,
for a long time. Suddenly, without warning, an exaggerated leaf crown
would fall about his neck, and he would be overwhelmed with ridicule at
the outrageous figure he presented. Then for a time she seemed
everywhere at once. The mottled sunlight under the trees danced and
quivered after her, smiling and darkening as she dimpled or was grave.
The little whirlwinds of the gulches seized the leaves and danced with
her too, the birches and aspens tossed their hands, and rising ever
higher and wilder and more elf-like came the mocking cadences of her
laughter.
After a time she disappeared again. Bennington stood still, waiting for
some new prank, but he waited in vain. He instituted a search, but the
search was fruitless. He called, but received no reply. At last he made
his way again to the dell in which they had lunched, and there he found
her, flat on her back, looking at the little summer clouds through
wide-open eyes.
Her mood appeared to have changed. Indeed that seemed to be
characteristic of her; that her lightness was not so much the lightness
of thistle down, which is ever airy, the sport of every wind, but
rather that of the rose vine, mobile and swaying in every breeze, yet
at the same time rooted well in the wholesome garden earth. She cared
now to be silent. In a little while Bennington saw that she had fallen
asleep. For the first time he looked upon her face in absolute repose.
Feature by feature, line by line, he went over it, and into his heart
crept that peculiar yearning which seems, on analysis, half pity for
what has past and half fear for what may come. It is bestowed on little
children, and on those whose natures, in spite of their years, are
essentially childlike. For this girl's face was so pathetically young.
Its sensitive lips pouted with a child's pout, its pointed chin was
delicate with the delicacy that is lost when the teeth have had often
to be clenched in resolve; its cheek was curved so softly, its long
eyelashes shaded that cheek so purely. Yet somewhere, like an
intangible spirit which dwelt in it, unseen except through its littlest
effects, Bennington seemed to trace that subtle sadness, or still more
subtle mystery, which at times showed so strongly in her eyes. He
caught himself puzzling over it, trying to seize it. It was most like a
sorrow, and yet like a sorrow which had been outlived. Or, if a
mystery, it was as a mystery which was such only to others, no longer
to herself. The whole line of thought was too fine-drawn for
Bennington's untrained perceptions. Yet again, all at once, he realized
that this very fact was one of the girl's charms to him; that her mere
presence stirred in him perceptions, intuitions, thoughts--yes, even
powers--which he had never known before. He felt that she developed
him. He found that instead of being weak he was merely latent; that now
the latent perceptions were unfolding. Since he had known her he had
felt himself more of a man, more ready to grapple with facts and
conditions on his own behalf, more inclined to take his own view of the
world and to act on it. She had given him independence, for she had
made him believe in himself, and belief in one's self is the first
principle of independence. Bennington de Laney looked back on his old
New York self as on a being infinitely remote.
She awoke and opened her eyes slowly, and looked at him without
blinking. The sun had gone nearly to the ridge top, and a Wilson's
thrush was celebrating with his hollow notes the artificial twilight
of its shadow.
She smiled at him a little vaguely, the mists of sleep clouding her
eyes. It is the unguarded moment, the instant of awakening. At such an
instant the mask falls from before the features of the soul. I do not
know what Bennington saw.
"Mary, Mary!" he cried uncontrolledly, "I love you! I love you, girl."
He had never before seen any one so vexed. She sat up at once.
"Oh, _why_ did you have to say that!" she cried angrily. "Why did you
have to spoil things! Why couldn't you have let it go along as it was
without bringing _that_ into it!"
She arose and began to walk angrily up and down, kicking aside the
sticks and stones as she encountered them.
"I was just beginning to like you, and now you do this. _Oh_, I am so
angry!" She stamped her little foot. "I thought I had found a man for
once who could be a good friend to me, whom I could meet unguardedly,
and behold! the third day he tells me this!"
"I am sorry," stammered Bennington, his new tenderness fleeing,
frightened, into the inner recesses of his being. "I beg your pardon, I
didn't know--_Don't_! I won't say it again. Please!"
The declaration had been manly. This was ridiculously boyish. The girl
frowned at him in two minds as to what to do.
"Really, truly," he assured her.
She laughed a little, scornfully. "Very well, I'll give you one more
chance. I like you too well to drop you entirely." (What an air of
autocracy she took, to be sure!) "You mustn't speak of that again. And
you must forget it entirely." She lowered at him, a delicious picture
of wrath.
They saddled the horses and took their way homeward in silence. The
tenderness put out its flower head from the inner sanctuary. Apparently
the coast was clear. It ventured a little further. The evening was very
shadowy and sweet and musical with birds. The tenderness boldly invaded
Bennington's eyes, and spoke, oh, so timidly, from his lips.
"I will do just as you say," it hesitated, "and I'll be very, very
good indeed. But am I to have no hope at all?"
"Why can't you keep off that standpoint entirely?"
"Just that one question; then I will."
"Well," grudgingly, "I suppose nothing on earth could keep the average
mortal from hoping; but I can't answer that there is any ground for
it."
"When can I speak of it again?"
"I don't know--after the Pioneer's Picnic."
"That is when you cease to be a mystery, isn't it?"
She sighed. "That is when I become a greater mystery--even to myself, I
fear," she added in a murmur too low for him to catch.
They rode on in silence for a little space more. The night shadows were
flowing down between the trees like vapour. The girl of her own accord
returned to the subject.
"You are greatly to be envied," she said a little sadly, "for you are
really young. I am old, oh, very, very old! You have trust and
confidence. I have not. I can sympathize; I can understand. But that
is all. There is something within me that binds all my emotions so fast
that I can not give way to them. I want to. I wish I could. But it is
getting harder and harder for me to think of absolutely trusting, in
the sense of giving out the self that is my own. Ah, but you are to be
envied! You have saved up and accumulated the beautiful in your nature.
I have wasted mine, and now I sit by the roadside and cry for it. My
only hope and prayer is that a higher and better something will be
given me in place of the wasted, and yet I have no right to expect it.
Silly, isn't it?" she concluded bitterly.
Bennington made no reply.
They drew near the gulch, and could hear the mellow sound of bells as
the town herd defiled slowly down it toward town.
"We part here," the young man broke the long silence. "When do I see
you again?"
"I do not know."
"To-morrow?"
"No."
"Day after?"
The girl shook herself from a reverie. "If you want me to believe you,
come every afternoon to the Rock, and wait. Some day I will meet you
there."
She was gone.
CHAPTER XII
OLD MIZZOU RESIGNS
Bennington went faithfully to the Rock for four days. During whole
afternoons he sat there looking out over the Bad Lands. At sunset he
returned to camp. _Aliris: A Romance of all Time_ gathered dust.
Letters home remained unwritten. Prospecting was left to the capable
hands of Old Mizzou until, much to Bennington's surprise, that
individual resigned his position.
The samples lay in neatly tied coffee sacks just outside the door. The
tabulations and statistics only needed copying to prepare them for the
capitalist's eye. The information necessary to the understanding of
them reposed in a grimy notebook, requiring merely throwing into shape
as a letter to make them valuable to the Eastern owner of the property.
Anybody could do that.
Old Mizzou explained these things to Bennington.
"You-all does this jes's well's I," he said. "You expresses them
samples East, so as they kin assay 'em; an' you sends them notes and
statistics. Then all they is to do is to pay th' rest of the boys when
th' money rolls in. That ain't none of my funeral."
"But there's the assessment work," Bennington objected.
"That comes along all right. I aims to live yere in the camp jest th'
same as usual; and I'll help yo' git started when you-all aims to do
th' work."
"What do you want to quit for, then? If you live here, you may as well
draw your pay."
"No, sonny, that ain't my way. I has some prospectin' of my own to do,
an' as long as I is a employay of Bishop, I don't like to take his time
fer my work."
Bennington thought this very high-minded on the part of Old Mizzou.
"Very well," he agreed, "I'll write Bishop."
"Oh, no," put in the miner hastily, "no need to trouble. I resigns in
writin', of course; an' I sees to it myself."
"Well, then, if you'll help me with the assessment work, when shall we
begin?"
"C'yant jest now," reflected Old Mizzou, "'cause, as I tells you, I
wants to do some work of my own. A'ter th' Pioneer's Picnic, I
reckons."
The Pioneer's Picnic seemed to limit many things.
Bennington shipped the ore East, tabulated the statistics, and wrote
his report. About two weeks later he received a letter from Bishop
saying that the assay of the samples had been very poor--not at all up
to expectations--and asking some further information. As to the latter,
Bennington consulted Old Mizzou. The miner said, "I told you so," and
helped on the answer. After this the young man heard nothing further
from his employer. As no more checks came from the East, he found
himself with nothing to do.
For four afternoons, as has been said, he fruitlessly haunted the Rock.
On the fifth morning he met the girl on horseback. She was quite the
same as at first, and they resumed their old relations as if the fatal
picnic had never taken place. In a very few days they were as intimate
as though they had known each other for years.
Bennington read to her certain rewritten parts of _Aliris: A Romance of
all Time,_ which would have been ridiculous to any but these two. They
saw it through the glamour of youth; for, in spite of her assertions of
great age, the girl, too, felt the whirl of that elixir in her veins. You
see, he was twenty-one and she was twenty: magic years, more venerable
than threescore and ten. She gave him sympathy, which was just what he
needed for the sake of his self-confidence and development, just the
right thing for him in that effervescent period which is so necessary a
concomitant of growth. The young business man indulges in a hundred wild
schemes, to be corrected by older heads. The young artist paints strange
impressionism, stranger symbolism, and perhaps a strangest other-ism,
before at last he reaches the medium of his individual genius. The young
writer thinks deep and philosophical thoughts which he expresses in
measured polysyllabic language; he dreams wild dreams of ideal motive,
which he sets forth in beautiful allegorical tales full of imagery; and
he delights in Rhetoric--flower-crowned, flashing-eyed, deep-voiced
Rhetoric, whom he clasps to his heart and believes to be true, although
the whole world declares her to be false; and then, after a time, he
decides not to introduce a new system of metaphysics, but to tell a plain
story plainly. Ah, it is a beautiful time to those who dwell in it, and
such a funny time to those who do not!
They came to possess an influence over each other. She decided how they
should meet; he, how they should act. She had only to be gay, and he
was gay; to be sad, and he was sad; to show her preference for serious
discourse, and he talked quietly of serious things; to sigh for dreams,
and he would rhapsodize. It sometimes terrified her almost when she saw
how much his mood depended on hers. But once the mood was established,
her dominance ceased and his began. If they were sad or gay or
thoughtful or poetic, it was in his way and not in hers. He took the
lead masterfully, and perhaps the more effectually in that it was done
unconsciously. And in a way which every reader will understand, but
which genius alone could put into words, this mutual psychical
dependence made them feel the need of each other more strongly than any
merely physical dependence ever could.
There is much to do in a new and romantic country, where the imminence
of a sordid, dreary future, when the soil will raise its own people and
the crop will be poor, is mercifully veiled. The future then counts
little in the face of the Past--the Past with its bearded strong men of
other lands, bringing their power and vigour here to be moulded and
directed by the influences of the frontier. Its shadow still lies over
the land.
They did it all. The Rock was still the favourite place to read or
talk--crossbars nailed on firmly made "shinning" unnecessary now--but
it was often deserted for days while they explored. Bennington had
bought the little bronco, and together they extended their
investigations of the country in all directions. They rode to Spring
Creek Valley. They passed the Range over into Custer Valley. Once they
climbed Harney by way of Grizzly Gulch.
Thus they grew to know the Hills intimately. From the summit of the
Rock they would often look abroad over the tangle of valleys and
ridges, selecting the objective points for their next expedition. Many
surprises awaited them, for they found that here, as everywhere, a
seemingly uniform exterior covered an almost infinite variety.
Or again, the horses were given a rest. The sarvis-berries ripened, and
they picked hatfuls. Then followed the raspberries on the stony hills.
They walked four unnecessary miles to see a forest fire, and six to buy
buckskin work from a band of Sioux who had come up into the timber for
their annual supply of tepee poles. They taught their ponies tricks.
They even went wading together, like two small children, in a pool of
Battle Creek.