B. M. Bower

“ A few head of cattle, more or less, don't count for much against the broken heart of an old woman."
"Oh!" Billy Louise, her hands clenched upon the gate, stared up wide-eyed into his face. And this was the real Seabeck, whom she had known impersonally all her life! This was the real man of him, whom she had never known; a flawless diamond of a soul behind those bright blue eyes and that pointed, graying beard; poet, philosopher, gentleman to the bone. "Oh! You saw that, too! And they're your cattle that were stolen! ”

“ Do you like children? In other words, are you human? Then I want you to meet Billy Louise when she was ten and had lived all her life among the rocks and the sage and the stunted cedars and huge, gray hills of Idaho. Meet her with her pink sunbonnet hanging down the back of her neck and her big eyes taking in the squalidness of Marthy's crude kitchen in the Cove, and her terrible directness of speech hitting squarely the things she saw that were different from her own immaculate home. ”

“ The hill trail steadied him a little, though he went up the steepest pitch with rabbit-jumps and teetered on his toes the rest of the way.
Billy Louise laughed a little, leaned, and grabbed a handful of slatey mane. "Oh, you Blue-dog!" she said, for that was his full name. "Life is livable, after all, as long as a fellow has got you and can ride. You good-for-nothing old ten-dollar hoss! I—wonder would it be wicked to sing? What do you think, Blue? You'd sing, I know, at the top of your voice, if you could. Say, Blue! ”

“ Billy Louise laughed understandingly.
"It's this or nothing, Blue. Looks pretty fierce, all right, doesn't it? Of course, if you're going to make a perfect lady get off and walk—"
Blue snuffed at the ledge with his neck craned. The rim-rock had crumbled and sunk low into the bluff, like a too rich pie-crust when the oven is not quite hot enough. From a ten- or fifteen-foot wall it shrunk here to a three-foot ledge. And below the rocks and bowlders were not actually piled on top of one another; there were clear spaces where a wary, wise, old cow-horse might possibly pick his way. ”

“ So lonesome that there were times when life looked absolutely worthless; when the blue devils made him their plaything, and he saw Billy Louise looking scornfully upon him and loving some other man better; when he saw his name blackened by the suspicion that he was a rustler—preying upon his neighbors' cattle; when he saw Buck Olney laughing in derision of his mercy and fixing fresh evidence against him to confound him utterly. ”

“ She told herself so, many times. "You've got to go back!" she repeated, as if to a second person. "You can't be such a fool; you've got to go back. And you've got to go inside. You've got to do it."
So Billy Louise went back to the cabin, slowly, with shaking legs and a heart that fluttered and stopped, fluttered and jumped and stopped, and made her stagger as she walked. She reached the doorstep and stood there with her palms pressing hard against her cheeks again. "You've got to do it. You've got to!" she whispered to herself commandingly.
She never doubted that Ward was inside. ”

“ Billy Louise spoke with a suppressed fury. "With that honest look in his eyes—oh, I could kill him!"
"Hmm-mm—it does seem a pity that one can't. But if she can cry—"
"I see. You believe too that tears are a necessary kind of weakness for a woman, like smoking tobacco is for a man—or swearing. Well, I can just tell you, Mr. Seabeck, that some tears pull the very soul out of a person; they're the red-hot pinchers of the torture-chamber of life, Mr. Seabeck. Every single, slow tear that Marthy sheds right now is taking that much away from her life. Why, she—she idolized that—that devil. ”

“ They weaned Billy Louise's thoughts from her own ranch worries and nagged at her with the persistence of a swarm of buffalo gnats.
"Well, if he doesn't use poison, for goodness' sake, what does he use?" she asked indignantly aloud, after a period of deep thought. "I don't see why he wants to be so terribly secretive. He might be human enough to tell a person what he means. I'm sure I'd tell him, all right. I don't believe it's wolves at all. I don't see how—and still—I don't believe Ward would really lie to me." ”

“ Honest to goodness, I'd rather hear a coyote howl than any music on earth—unless maybe it was you singing a ten-dollar hoss an' a forty-dollar saddle. I'd like to hear that old trail song once more. I sure would, Ward. I'd like to hear it, coming down old Wolverine canyon. Oh, I just can't stand it much longer. I'm liable to wrap mommie in a blanket and crawl out the window, some night, and hit the trail for home. I believe I could cure her quicker right on the ranch. I wish I'd never brought her here; I believe it's just a scheme of the doctors to get money out of us. ”

“ Billy Louise was lifting the nuggets one after the other and letting them drop to her lap—"happiness is like gold, Ward. We've got to pan it out of life ourselves. If we try to steal it from someone else, we pay the penalty, don't you think? And so many go looking and looking for great big chunks of it all—all—whatever they do to it." She laughed a little at her ignorance of the technical process. "You see what I mean, don't you? We get a streak of gravel; that's life. And we can pan out happiness if we try—little nuggets and sometimes just colors—but it keeps us hoping and working." ”

“ Billy Louise fought for him; fought with her stern, youthful judgment which was so uncompromising. It takes years of close contact with life to give one a sure understanding of human weakness and human endeavor.
At the ford, when Blue would have crossed and taken the trail home, Billy Louise reined him impulsively the other way. Until that instant she had not intended to seek Ward, but once her fingers had twitched the reins against Blue's neck, she did not hesitate; she did not even argue with herself. ”

“ Perhaps, sitting that evening in the deepening dusk, with the firelight lighting swiftly the brooding face of the girl and afterward veiling it softly with shadows, perhaps even then there were desolate places in his life which his words did not touch. But so much as a man may put into words, Ward told her; more, a great deal more, than he would ever tell to any other woman as long as he lived. More perhaps than he would ever tell to any man. ”

“ They never heard of Charlie Fox again, or of Buck Olney—and they never wanted to.
If you should some time ride through a certain portion of Idaho, you may find the tiny valley of the Wolverine and the decaying cabins which prove how impossible it is for a couple to live in three places at once. If you should be so fortunate as to meet Billy Louise, she might take you through the canyon and point out to you her cave and Minervy's. It is possible that she might also show you the washout which always made her and Ward laugh when they passed it. ”

“ Billy Louise was certainly in a villainous mood.
"You are," Ward affirmed quite calmly. "Only for you, I'd be hustling like the mischief right this minute along the get-rich trail. Say, Bill, I don't believe it's the dog!" He looked at her with the smile hiding just behind his lips and his eyes. And behind the smile, if one's insight were keen enough to see it, was a troubled anxiety. He shifted the pail of currants to the other arm and spoke again:
"What is it, Wilhemina? Something's bothering you. Can't you tell a fellow what it is?" ”

“ Billy Louise had a wise little brain, for all she idealized life and her surroundings out of all proportion to reality. She told herself that if she married Ward with her doubts alive, her misery would be far greater than if she gave him up, except as a friend. Of course, her ideals stepped in there with an impracticable compromise. She brought back the Ward Warren of her "pretend" life. She dreamed of him as a mutely adoring friend who stood and worshiped her from afar, and because of his sins could not cross the line of friendship. ”

“ Then there was a pile of magazines and beyond them a stack of books whose subjects varied from Balzac to strange, scientific-sounding names. At the other end of the shelf, within easy reach from one lying upon the bunk, was a cigar-box full of smoking tobacco, a half-dozen books of cigarette papers, and several blocks of the small, evil-smelling matches which men of the outdoors carry for their compact form and slow, steady blaze.
At the head of the bed hung a flour-sack half full of some hard, lumpy stuff which Billy Louise had not noticed before. ”

“ With all the hay he had put up, Ward might at least keep his horses in better shape, Billy Louise censured, as she passed them by. A few head of cows and calves wandered aimlessly among the thinnest fringe of willows along the creek; they showed more ribs than did the mares. Billy Louise pulled her lips tight. They did not look as though they had been fed a forkful of hay all winter; your true range man or woman gets to know these things instinctively. ”

“ I don't suppose Jase kissed her once in twenty years; I couldn't imagine him getting up steam enough to kiss anybody! And Charlie petted her and did little things for her that nobody had ever done in her life. It meant a whole lot to Marthy to have a man take the water bucket away from her and give her a little hug and tell her she mustn't think of carrying water; oh, you're a man, and I don't suppose you can realize; I didn't myself, till lately—" Billy Louise blushed and then twisted her lips, wondering if love had taught her all this. ”

“ It was not every young man who would come out into the wilderness and roughen his hands on an irrigating shovel and live a cramped, lonely life, for the sake of a harsh, illiterate old woman like Marthy Meilke. She did not believe Ward would do that. He would have to feel some tie stronger than the one between Marthy and her nephew before he would change his life and his own plans for anyone.
It was not until Charlie was leaving that he gave Billy Louise a hint that his errand was not yet accomplished. ”

“ She rode up and down the canyons and over the higher, grassier ridges, to watch the cattle on their summer range and keep them from straying. She went with John Pringle after posts and helped him fence certain fertile slopes and hollows for winter grazing. She drove the rickety old mower through the waving grass along the creek bottom and hummed little, contented tunes while she watched the grass sway and fall evenly when the sickle shuttled through. ”

“ He hired a man for a month—one of those migratory individuals who works for a week or a month in one place and then wanders on till his money is spent—and he drove that man as relentlessly as he drove himself. Together they accomplished much, while the goldpan lay hidden under a buck brush and Ward's waking moments were filled with an uneasy sense of wasted time. ”

“ Seabeck, I'd be willing to bet all I've got that Marthy would have forgiven his stealing cattle, if he had just stayed. She'd have done anything on earth for him; and the bigger the sacrifice she made for him, the more she would have loved him; women are like that. But to have him go off—and—leave her—and not bother his head about what happened to her, just so he got out of it—Mr. Seabeck, that's going to kill Marthy. It's going to kill her by inches."
"I—see," he assented, looking thoughtfully at the flushed face and big, shining eyes of Billy Louise. ”

“ It was long since Billy Louise had turned his head down the rocky trail, and Blue liked little the gloom of the gorge and the sudden change to soft, black soil that stopped just short of being boggy in the wet places. Where the trail led into a marshy crossing of the big, irrigating ditch that brought the stream from far up the gorge to water meadow and orchard, Blue halted and cast a look of disapproval back at his rider. Billy Louise stopped singing and laughed at him.
"I guess you can go where a cow can go, you silly thing. Mud's a heap easier than lava rock, if you only knew it, Blue. ”

“ A person's got to like something that's alive and human, or—" Marthy was clumsy with words, and she was always coming to the barrier between her powers of expression and the thoughts that were prisoned and dumb. "Here's your bread 'n' honey."
"What makes you sound that way, Marthy? You sound like you had tears inside, and they couldn't get out your eyes. Are you sad? Did you ever have a little girl, Marthy?"
"What makes you ask that?" Marthy sat heavily down upon a box beside the rough kitchen table and looked at Billy Louise queerly, as if she were half afraid of her. ”

“ She was in that condition of nervous depression where she saw her finest cows dead of bloat in the alfalfa meadows—and how would she pay that machinery note, then? She saw John Pringle calling unexpectedly and insistently for his "time"—and where would she find another man whom she could trust out of her sight? John Pringle was slow, and he was stupid and growled at poor Phoebe till Billy Louise wanted to shake him, but he was "steady," and that one virtue covers many a man's faults and keeps him drawing wages regularly. ”