“Ploughin’ ain’t nothin’ to her! An I’ve saw her rope and tie a steer quick as any man.”

THE MAN FROM OREGON

By Mary Arbuckle

Illustrated by Frank Hoffman

Far beyond the rim of cities these things happen, for in the midst of loneliness realities often lie just over the edge of dreams.

The Brownlie woman and her children were at supper, eating in their usual depressing silence. Kendall left the table and plunged into the sunset glamor of the out-of-doors. The small yard gate, weighted with a wired stone, slammed behind him. He paused and looked out over the canyon, drawing a deep breath at its beauty.

“A landscape in a dream,” thought Kendall. But from infinite distance to the dream’s very edge, encroached the dun, incredibly level plains. And that forlorn and hideous little house from which he was fleeing! It squatted there, a toad on the brink of this wonder.

He straightened his shoulders, thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his new riding breeches and swung off on the road leading out of the horse pasture. A spare, graying man, wearing eyeglasses and an expression of worry. He had the nervous and kindly face of a schoolmaster, which, in fact, he was. He must, he decided, get away from this place for a few days. He had been tempted to clear out entirely, but he had paid a month’s board in advance and couldn’t afford to lose the remaining three weeks.

His convalescent, city-worn nerves had craved the open. The remnants of his savings and of his vacation, which illness had not consumed, he had come to spend on this ranch in the Southwest. He had hoped, when planning the trip, that the region possessed at least some tinge of that charm so lavishly depicted in western novels and moving pictures. Of course, he admitted to himself, he had known it wouldn’t really be like that. But to have it turn out so humdrum, so devoid of color ... It was all like a grim, practical joke at his expense; coming to this forlorn place run by a hag of a woman.

Kendall came to a pause at the big gate that opened into the pasture and stood with his arms on the top rail. He felt himself prey to piercing melancholy, and started walking quickly back to the house. He would see the woman and arrange to go on the thirty mile drive to Tulia in the morning. He would stay in the town a day or two, get his mail, buy a stock of papers and magazines and, thus fortified, return, and try to live out the rest of his month. With an inward sigh, he relinquished the last vestige of his dream of cowboys, roundups and romance.

The ever-changing beauty of the canyon had more than offset coarse food and a hard bed; the pure air admirably fitted the doctor’s prescription; yet it was no antidote to this atmosphere of human hopelessness. He had wished to be among the plains people of romance; and instead he was daily confronted with their tragedy as epitomized in Mrs. Brownlie and her children. Her strident voice assailed him before he had reached the yard: “Here you, Andy! Run out them hogs—they’re rooten’ in the garden! Ain’t I told you to keep watchin’ out?”

Andy, the youngest of the three boys, leaped into action: a scrawny, small figure in blue overalls.

With the help of two dogs there followed a commotion of shouting, barking and squealing; and the invasion was put to rout.

The incident was typical, thought Kendall, of the harassing inefficiency of the place: the fences had been unrepaired for so long that an endless driving out of the hogs had come to be the accepted means of restricting them. The cattle and a cultivated field east of the house, known as “the feed patch” were the dominant points of interest in the lives of these people; and so completely did the care of these drain their strength that they appeared hardly conscious that there could be other demands in life.

As Kendall opened the gate, the little girl, Lily, was sitting on the porch steps nibbling half-heartedly at the last bit of her supper—a biscuit soaked in molasses. The brown molasses streaked her small, delicately pretty face, and she brushed back yellow curls with sticky fingers. Lily was the only member of the family on whom the curse of toil had not fallen; her problem was a superfluity of leisure and a dearth of playmates. The mother’s consistent, fierce refusals to allow the child to help about the house, even when she cried to do so, were to Kendall a much-pondered anomaly. It must be that in the shrunken woman—with whom it was difficult to connect even a tradition of beauty—some memory, some realization had kept alive and created this complex which made her exclude Lily from even the lightest of manual work.

“No, you cain’t peel them potatoes,” the mother would say; “it’ll spoil your hands.” And: “Don’t let me ketch you weedin’ in that garden again—you’re tanned enough a’ready!”

But Lily was not tanned. The few freckles across her snub nose only served to accentuate the transparency of her delicate little face.

She was kept perpetually “dressed up.” Kendall noted the daintiness of her blue linen frock, white socks and kid slippers; incongruous in this environment. She responded dimly to the friendly smile he gave her.

He walked to the back of the house and stood in the doorway of the hot kitchen which was filled with the hum of swarming flies and the clatter of dish washing. “I’d like to go to Tulia tomorrow, Mrs. Brownlie. Could you let me have the team?”

She looked up from her dishpan vaguely. “I reckon.” Her voice was flat and lifeless.

“Could you spare it for two days?”

“I reckon so,” she said as before, going on with her work.

She hung the dishpan on a nail behind the stove and dragged from the closet a barrel churn. The thing was heavy, unwieldy; and Kendall stepped forward to take it. “Wouldn’t you like it outside where it’s cooler?” he asked.

“Well, yes,” she said indifferently. He set it on the ground and placed a chair for her. When she had poured in the cream and was swinging the churn by its handle, Kendall seated himself on the doorstep and watched her.

His mind reviewed the half-heeded gossip he had heard from the man who had brought him out from town: “Worthless cuss, Emmet Brownlie was,” Hastings had said. “’Bout as good dead as livin’, I reckon. Helluva time the woman’s had a-raisin’ them four younguns an’ runnin’ the ranch. She done nigh all the work about the place till the boys got old enough to he’p her. Ploughin’ ain’t nothin’ to her! Why, I’ve saw her rope an’ tie a steer quick as any man—an’ her not bigger’n a minute neither. She cain’t quite make it when it comes to bulldoggin’ ’em, though.”

Small wonder such feats had left her body warped and spent of resiliency! Yet it was not the woman’s physical aspect alone that made her charmless; she was soddenly unresponsive, with a queer blank look, as of something dead, in her eyes. She directed the activities of her sons with a passionless harshness; even her scolding was mechanical. Only in her adamantine determination that Lily should not work, did she show feeling; a fierceness entirely disproportionate to the decision she clung to. Yet Kendall had never seen her caress the child or even glance at her tenderly.

Emmet came toward them from the sheds carrying the full milk pails. He was sixteen, with a loose-hung body and dull, accepting eyes.

“Takes after his father,” Hastings had told Kendall.

The boy went into the kitchen and when he came out, his mother spoke without glancing at him: “Keep up the roans tonight. Mr. Kendall’s goin’ to Tulia to-morrer.”

“All right,” said Emmet, and slouched back to the barn.

The butter had “come”; and the woman ladled it out and put it away with despatch. Then, emerging from the kitchen, she made for the wire fence with her loping stride, and began to take down the wash she had that morning strung there to dry. The coarser garments, overalls, shirts and aprons, bordered two sides of the yard, while Lily’s dainty little dresses had a space to themselves near the front gate. As the woman’s bent figure moved along the fence in the fading light, stacking the garments in her arms, she looked like a gnome fantastically overshadowed by a huge burden.

Kendall rose and, to escape the sight of her, walked to the windmill. The stars had come out in a deepening sky. He could see the dark figures of the boys moving about the sheds; they were throwing bundles of hay over the fence to the horses in a lot. One of them was whistling—Oscar, of course. The small figure of Andy, the eight-year-old, approached Kendall on his way to the house.

“Hello, there,” called Kendall, with forced cheeriness. The child turned his head slightly, made an indistinguishable murmur, and padded by in the dusk. It was uncanny for even children to be so queer and unapproachable. They never played like real children; perhaps they didn’t know how. They were all too busy to play, except Lily. Poor Lily! Her lonely, time-swamped childhood was as tragic as the overwork of her growing brothers. And the mother’s attitude toward her lent that mother a tinge of mystery.

“Naw,” drawled “Old Man” Givens, Proprietor of the Tulia House; “ain’t nothin’ in this here dry farmin’—Maw an’ me has tried it out. Looks like the woman’s bound to get a raw deal in this country any way you fix it. There’s that Miz Brownlie where you’re stoppin’. I reckon she’s had it worse’n any. What with Emmet always ailin’ an’ the work of two men, besides raisin’ them children—looks like it would a killed her.”

“It has,” said Kendall.

“How’s that?” Mr. Givens cupped his hand behind his ear.

“How long has Mrs. Brownlie’s husband been dead?” asked Kendall, in a louder tone.

“Goin’ on three months now,” the old man answered, with the calm satisfaction he always displayed when dispensing news. “Lung trouble he had. Was in pore health for years. Used to work for the Bar V’s till they fired him. But she stuck by him. They got that place they’re at now by her managin’. Mebbe you wouldn’t believe it, but Miz Brownlie used to be a good-lookin’ woman. Yessir, about the purtiest in these parts. They don’t stay that way long out here. It’s a hard old country—‘hard on women an’ horses’, as the sayin’ goes.”

Mr. Givens let his chair tilt back; his feet on the railing, spare old body humped into a bow, he gazed from under beetling brows. The nondescript small-town street, which held his keen gaze, became, at a point not far away, a gleaming prairie road. He was reviewing, Kendall fancied, the perfidies of this land which lured men into settling on its plains, only to make sport of them.

Suddenly he realized that it rested him, body and soul—the sun-soaked monotony of this baffling treeless earth; the desultory noises of the tiny town; the bare directness of this high land, that lifted itself strangely in pictures against this sky. Too bad nothing ever happened here! Givens had told him that nothing ever happened, except the vicissitudes of those who wrestled with nature. Color in the lives of its people was what it lacked: They had no enthusiasm, no imagination—

Then Kendall realized he was judging them all by that one pathetic creature—the Brownlie woman. No, not pathetic; pathos was usually associated with passionate suffering, and she was devoid of feeling.

The slamming of the screen door startled him. Looking up, he caught the round-eyed gaze of Miss Irene, one of the few steady boarders at the Tulia house. She sauntered by him and sank heavily into a rocker at the other end of the porch. To the masculine population of Tulia, she was an arresting figure. The thin purple sweater which she wore was cut low and showed a thick, white neck. Her short, white skirt revealed thick, silk-stockinged legs as she rocked slowly. A be-spurred young man with pulled-down hat brim and an air of moroseness appeared, almost instantly, from around the corner of the house, and sat near her on the porch.

“Old Man” Givens rose and gave Kendall an elaborate wink. “Most train time,” he said, stretching himself stiffly. “Better be gettin’ the old bus out, I reckon.”

He went down the steps and across the street to the combination garage and livery stable. Presently, from a rattling flivver, he waved his hand to Kendall. And the long whistle of the Santa Fe East-bound stirred the town from its afternoon slumbers.

When Mr. Givens returned and stopped his car before his hostelry, he lifted out several heavy “grips,” but no passenger followed.

“Feller ’lowed he’d walk,” he announced to Kendall and Miss Irene. “Lookin’ ’round at things int’rested like. He’s come a fur piece—tag on this here grip says South Fork, Oregon. Name’s Andrew Rogers ... Here he comes now.”

A tall man wearing a long, and tenderly cared for, moustache, crossed the dusty glare of the street. He looked a ranchman, with his big felt hat and the negligent hang of his best clothes; but his cheeks had a mountain-air clearness instead of the brickish tan of the men of that calling. He was, too, without their dry gauntness, and his walk was quicker than that of the plainsman. Taking off his hat he mopped a damp brow and gave a general, stiff bow to the group on the porch.

“Come right in,” said Mr. Givens.

Through the door, Kendall saw him remove his coat before hunching his tall figure to the laborious business of registering. Half an hour later he saw him again as he descended the stairs, bathed and shining, wearing a fresh, soft-collared shirt. His eyes were very blue and keen, for all their ingenuousness.

The guests of the Tulia House conformed, for the most part, to the etiquette of the plains, which rules that a serious businesslike eating should be accomplished with little conversation. The stranger disposed of his supper at the general table in a state of bland abstraction.

Miss Irene’s overtures, such as, “You’re from Oregon, ain’t you, Mr. Rogers?” Or—“Did you come through Kansas City?”—were finally discouraged by his polite but absent and repeated: “Yes ma’m.”

Kendall saw that with the mysterious clairvoyance of her kind, Miss Irene had picked the newcomer as worth while.

After the meal the two men went out on the porch and sat near each other. “By the way, who is she, anyway?” Rogers asked with the casual free-masonry of one plainsman to another, jerking his thumb toward the door.

Kendall laughed, feeling himself an old and well-informed inhabitant. “Why, she’s a manicurist. Didn’t you know Tulia House had one?”

“A manicurist? Well, I swear! What does she do here? Ain’t no one in Tulia has their nails filed, is there?”

“No,” laughed Kendall. “Mr. Givens tells me it was the joke of the town two months ago. She said a cattleman she had met in Kansas City told her there was a fine opening here for a first-class manicurist; cowboys being very particular about their nails.”

“And she believed him?” chuckled the man from Oregon. “Shame!”

“I guess she didn’t exactly,” said Kendall. “She gets on pretty well, a fellow named Hastings told me.”

“Oh! So she’s that kind, is she? I never like to judge a lady by appearances.”

A phonograph in the parlor began screaming and gritting a last season’s fox trot. Kendall’s companion settled into pleased relaxation. “I sure do love music,” he said.

After the fox trot, a tinny soprano frankly proclaimed:

“Darling, I am growing o-old,
Silver threads among the gold
Shine upon my brow toda-ay,
Life is fading fast away....

And received from a muffled bass the ever-touching reassurance:

“Yet, my darling, you will be-ee
Always young and fair to me....”

The eyes of the man from Oregon, gazing into Tulia’s gathering dusk, became glassy and rapt. “That’s sure a good song,” he muttered at its close. Then he surprised Kendall by rising abruptly.

“Reckon I’ll go for a little walk.” And he bolted down the steps.

Kendall smiled as he watched his big figure merge into the evening shadows. He interested him strangely. His freshness and vigor set him apart from these slow, tired people. He was simpler than they were; and in his eyes was a spark of something they had lost, or never had—a child’s belief in romance. That was it: To him all sorts of impossible things existed—the extravagant constancy set forth in that song, for example. Kendall felt refreshed in his presence and waited with a kind of excitement for him to appear out of the quiet night. He waited an hour. Mr. Givens was the only other occupant of the porch.

Rogers came and sat between the two men, but his manner was without repose.

“Do you reckon,” he said, “I can get a car early tomorrow to go out in the country a piece?”

“Well, about a car now, I don’t know,” said the landlord. “You see the fair’s on at Amariller, an’ most of the automobiles is taken. But I could let you have a buggy an’ team. Where was you aimin’ to go?”

“About thirty mile west—Brownlie’s, I believe the name is.”

“Oh, the Widder Brownlie’s! Well, in that case, this feller here, Mr. Kendall’s, got the Widder’s team in town now.”

“He has!” Rogers seemed startled.

“Why, yes,” said Kendall, “I’m going back tomorrow. I can take you out if you’d like.”

“He boards out thar,” explained Givens as Rogers did not answer.

“Oh, I see.” Rogers spoke abruptly. “Yeah, sure I’d like to go with you.”

“Glad of that!” Kendall’s voice was boyishly eager.

“Reckon it’s cattle you’re interested in out there,” said Mr. Givens.

“Yes,” the man answered absently.

“Well, you don’t want to overlook the Hastings steers while you’re out that way. The Widder Brownlie’s is a runty lot, I hear.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure!” Rogers grew silent; a motionless, dark bulk, staring into the spangled night.

Givens yawned and went off to bed. Kendall, about to go too, heard the man beside him softly humming a tune—it was “Silver Threads among the Gold.”

“And so this feller aims to come back to the Panhandle some day to get his girl.” Rogers, driving, clucked to the horses. “It’s quite a while back since that chap lived in these parts.”

Ten miles of the journey were accomplished. The two men were alone in a sun-swamped world. A light wind flapped the curtains of Mrs. Brownlie’s rattling hack.

“It must be an interesting story,” said Kendall. “The little you’ve told me shows that romance once lived might go on living—even here.”

“Yeah,” said Rogers, a bit hazily. “Them was great days.” He lapsed into a silent reverie; then, suddenly, went on: “Sort of a decent fellow he is, a neighbor of mine now, in Oregon. Nothing out of the ordinary, you understand, though he was good at his job in the old days when we both lived out here. We done broncho breaking mostly. Was with the Bar V’s. Reckon you’ve heard of the Bar V’s. The fellow worked for that outfit ten years; from the time he was seventeen and ran away from home in South Texas when his Maw died. He might be workin’ for them yet if all this I’m tellin’ you hadn’t happened. You see, he fell in love with a woman out here—a married woman; and she made him go clear away when she found out how things was. It seems she cared for him.

“She and her man had come up from Wichita. None of the boys ever could figure out how the Bar V’s come to hire this husband of hers for the job at Turkey Creek—he was no cowman. Reckon he claimed to be, though. Well, he wasn’t much good on the job from the start; and didn’t take long to lie down on it flat and say he had to have another man to help him at the camp. Not but two pastures to ride, mind you!

“Them Bar V’s was a white bunch—never fired him till they had to and that was five year later—and they sent this friend of mine to Turkey Creek that summer. That’s when he first saw her.

“He’d heard she was a looker—not a man in the outfit but would a rode ten miles any day for a sight of her—but he hadn’t no idy she was like she was—sorter delicate and different. Big gray eyes with long, black lashes, and shy. Not a woman for this country.

“And looks wasn’t all with her, like they are with a heap that’s uncommon pretty—she had sense and a kind heart. Was always mighty nice to the boys when they come round, cookin’ ’em fancy dishes an’ mendin’ up their clothes. She liked this country fine, bein’ new to it. Turkey Creek’s in the canyon, you know, where there’s right pretty scenery about—she always made a heap of that. Used to say she wisht she lived on the caprock where she could see it all spread out. But she wasn’t the sort to moon ’round when there was work to do—had hustle enough for him and her both.

“This fellow—the one I’m tellin’ you about—soon got on to the fact that her husband was a lunger. He never seemed to care for nothin’ but smokin’ an’ readin’ paper-backs. Didn’t have no git-up—could a got well if he had. She used to try everything, even to he’pin’ this friend of mine with the broncs; and oncet scared him most to death ridin’ a bad smoke-horse. Husband didn’t give a darn what she done—never took no proper care of her.

“Well, the fellow knowed how he felt about her from the first day he seen her, but wouldn’t a let on if he’d died for it—aimed to hang around and sorter make things easy for her. Then one day after he’d been there two months, he got throwed by Lightnin’ Bolt.... When he come to, his head was in her lap an’ she was cryin’ like her heart would break. They was off from the house a ways—she’d gone along on her little Indian pony to herd his bronc from the wire. He begged her to leave her husband, but she wouldn’t do it—she’d been brought up old-fashioned and strict. Said as long as he wasn’t mean to her, and bein’ he was sort of sick she’d have to stan’ by him. She promised him if ever she was free she’d marry him. So that’s why he aims to come back here for her.

“You’d ought to see his place in Oregon, a neat little ranch at the foot of a mountain. They’d laugh at you if you called it a ranch down here, but up there a fellow doesn’t need all outdoors to make a livin’ on. Up there it’s nothin’ like these parched plains that never will be plumb saddle-broke for civilization. Mountains and trees—plenty of green. Everything grows—crops and flowers—you ought to see the flowers!”

“A charming story,” Kendall exclaimed. “Unswerving devotion to one woman!”

Rogers was as sentimental over it, Kendall saw, as he had been over that song last night; as sentimental as if it were his own story. His voice had been husky as he ended the story. His face was turned away and Kendall suspected that his eyes were moist.

“He’s been hearing from her all these years, I suppose,” said Kendall.

His companion started. “Not a line. That was how she wanted it—she was a married woman. But he’s took the county paper an’ kep’ up some that way. He seen when they left Turkey Creek, and when—when her other children come.”

“Was it really tuberculosis her husband had? How does he know she’ll ever be free?”

“Yeah, it was t.b. all right. And he knows, don’t you forget it; he knows!”

Kendall could have sworn there was exultation in the tone. Strange for Rogers to feel his friend’s story so intensely—it must be his own story, of course! The disguise was extremely thin. Just such a man as Rogers would be capable of holding to his dream like that. Here was real drama. Kendall felt thrilled at his discovery. He wanted to make sure this idyll of the plains was really his.

“This friend of yours, didn’t he get homesick? Of course he liked it out there where everything was so much better, but didn’t the very fact of its being so different from the plains make him blue at first?”

“It sure did!”

He must, Kendall mused, have read in that county paper of the death of the woman’s husband. He had said: “He knows, don’t you forget it—he knows.”

Mrs. Brownlie’s husband had died of tuberculosis, “lung trouble,” Old man Givens had called it. And he, too, had worked for the Bar V’s, “till they fired him.” What a coincidence! “Mebby you wouldn’t believe it.” Givens had said, “but Miz Brownlie used to be a good-lookin’ woman....”

Kendall’s heart stood still with this shock. Everything in the story fitted hideously. “His name’s Andrew Rogers—” Kendall suddenly remembered, and almost cried it aloud. Mrs. Brownlie’s youngest boy was Andy....

“Does your friend realize that by the time he comes back to get his sweetheart, she may have changed, so that he’ll hardly recognize her?”

“Sure! He knows she’ll be changed—some. He expects that.”

Kendall thought of the phonograph wailing—“Darling, I am growing o-old”; and it was all he could do to restrain a mirthless, hysterical laugh. Of course it would be by some such esthetic alteration that Rogers would picture her as changing in the years since he had left. Never would it occur to him, the romantic, that the cruel life of the country that was “hard on women and horses” could destroy her utterly; and leave in her place that melancholy travesty of womanhood. He passed his hand across his eyes as he tried to brush away a vision of this man when he should come face to face with reality.

And the woman! He understood her now; understood her mania for shielding Lily. The child was a symbol to her mother of her own lost beauty. No merciful stolidity had protected the woman; she had been aware of what was happening to her. With what unspeakable bitterness she must have watched that gradual, terrible change in her beauty!

They could see the house, still a good two miles away, and a narrow strip of the Paloduro. Rogers asked with elaborate casualness, “Isn’t that the Brownlie place?” Then began to whistle a swinging, cowboy lay about being “home, home, home on the plains, where the deer and the buffalo roam.”

“This old plains air sure feels good to me,” he said, turning to Kendall with warm eyes. “I feel like gettin’ out an’ runnin’ a spell ’stead of settin’ in this buggy. Wisht I was a-horseback!” Kendall knew he would be galloping if he were, galloping and waving his hat and shouting.

Something like a physical nausea gripped Kendall. There was nothing he could do for this man. It would be the sheerest impertinence to tell him that he had pierced the flimsy screen of his story, and then to warn him of its climax.

He thought hopefully that the woman might not recognize Rogers; he was probably clean-shaven when he left. There would be that possible chance for him to keep his identity secret if he wanted to. And, naturally he would want to when he saw her. He could go back then to Tulia, where Miss Irene thrived placidly. Yes, certainly Miss Irene! Kendall felt a weary cynicism. Her kind were the age-old solace for lost illusions; the sordid priestesses of Reality. And life always stood ready to punish those who set up other gods than Reality. It was about to punish Rogers mercilessly for his faithfulness to an ideal. Even more mercilessly had it punished Mrs. Brownlie for her sacrifice to duty; for not seizing and holding love while she had it. For love faded with the color and contours of human flesh—so little spiritual and enduring was this best thing that man had.

Lily, in a little pink sunbonnet, was clinging to the gate at the horse pasture when they drove up. Her face was a rose-shaded flower. She turned away shyly from Rogers’ devouring stare.

“Hello, sister,” he said, his lips twitching in a smile; “want to open the gate for us?”

The child climbed down and swung it open—the big chain rattling as she let it drop.

“Now you get in and ride to the house with us.” She came to the side of the buggy and Kendall lifted her to his lap. He tried not to see how the reins shook in Rogers’ hands.

“So your name’s Lily, is it?” Again that transparent effort at casualness. “Named after your maw, hey?”

“Yes, how’d you know?”

“Oh, just guessed. Who’s that man down there in the field?” Rogers bent his head, trying to see the child’s face beneath her sunbonnet.

She gave the smallest laugh. “That ain’t a man—it’s my brother. His name’s Emmet.”

“Emmet!” Kendall saw the first shock in Rogers’ face. He felt a quick impatience with this man who seemed oblivious to what twelve years could do to the child, Emmet, he had known. He must, he felt, nurse this impatience; it was all that stood between him and some outbreak before the unbearable poignancy of what he knew was to follow.

“Where’s your other brothers?”

“They’s gone for the cows.”

They drew up at the hitching post by the front gate and Kendall got down from the buggy. “Is your mother in the house, Lily?” he asked, knowing that Rogers could not voice the question.

“Yes. She’s a-ironin’.”

“Well, you tell her I’ve come back. I’m going for a little walk.” He opened the gate without looking at Rogers. His only thought was to get away while this horrible thing was happening.

He walked rapidly toward the windmill. He wanted water; his mouth was very dry. He saw the woman coming toward him, carrying a bucket. She wore a blue-checked apron over her brown denim dress. She was bent with the weight of her burden, and as she came nearer she raised her arm in that familiar gesture of brushing the straying hair from her face. “So you’re back,” she said colorlessly.

“Yes,” said Kendall, “and—”

Within four feet of the back steps she stood, still as a stone, staring past him. He turned and saw Rogers coming around the corner of the house. He came slowly, uncertainly, looking fixedly at the woman. In her masklike face, only the eyes were alive; alive with recognition and despair.

The creaking of the windmill sounded to Kendall like cracked, sardonic laughter. The man, too, was standing motionless.

“I’ve brought this gentleman, he wants to see you about your cattle.” A detached part of Kendall’s mind marvelled at his own glibness. Then all of him was suspended in amazement at Mrs. Brownlie.

“Howdy,” she said, nodding casually to the stranger as she turned toward the kitchen door. “Reckon we can talk business after supper. Make yourself at home. Mr. Kendall’ll show you where to wash up.” She stumbled a little as she climbed the steps to the porch, and some of the water from the bucket slopped her skirt.

“Lily!” cried a hoarse voice; and she set down the bucket and turned. Her hand fumbled with the screen door; her knees trembled.

Kendall felt her action at that moment to have been the noblest he had ever seen. She had given the man his chance to get away.

And he was coming toward her falteringly, one hand holding his hat, the other shading his eyes from the sun which shone straight in his face.

“It’s you, Lily! Don’t you know me, Lily?—It’s Andrew.”

“Yes, I know you—I knowed you right away.” The words were emotionless.

“I’ve come back.” He was quite near her, his eyes level with her own as she stood on the steps. “I’ve come for you, Lily—don’t you remember?” The man’s eyes lifted to hers.

But she answered him with the same passionless harshness with which she addressed her sons: “Yes, I remember all right, but that don’t go now. You couldn’t want me—like I am.”

At that moment the little girl came slowly toward them. She pushed back her sunbonnet and stood regarding the motionless group with a child’s intent absorption. The mother looked at her. “Go put on a clean dress,” she said with the old guarding fierceness, “and brush your hair.”

As the child turned to obey, a terrifying change came over the woman’s face. She threw her apron over her head and sank on the steps, torn with sobbing.

Rogers was beside her, his arms around her small, bowed figure, his lips pressed to that straggling knot of hair. “Don’t, Lily, don’t! Your hard times is over. I’m goin’ to take you and little Lily and the boys—I’ve made a home for you. Don’t cry, Lily, don’t!”

Out on the edge of the canyon where he had fled from the two who were as unconscious of his going as they had been of his presence, Kendall stood wiping his eyes and swallowing at the lump in his throat. The evening haze was on the Paloduro: The vast, cedar-scragged expanse of red cliffs and hills lay remote, alluring. But from infinite distance, to the dream’s very edge, encroached the dun, level plains—as vast, as strong and beautiful in their simplicity as the measureless strength and beauty of the human heart.

Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the March 1930 issue of McCall’s Magazine.

About This Book

This work is believed to be in the public domain in the United States. Copyright status in other countries may vary; readers outside the US should verify the status in their own jurisdiction.

Originally published by The McCall Company in McCall’s Magazine, March 1930

Prepared by volunteers at BookCove (bookcove.net).