Ruth Comfort Mitchell

“ Beyond question, he told himself, deeply content, the boy had learned to ride. When they finished the twisting climb and came out on a level shoulder of the mountain he saw Dean Wolcott lean suddenly forward in the saddle, and Snort shot ahead in a plunging lope; horse and rider, a splendid, pulsing unit, flashed over the open space in the warm glow of the sunset, wheeled sharply at the foot of the next rise, and came back, Snort curveting, prancing, flinging up his handsome head, his flanks lathered with excitement rather than heat. ”

“ They worked, the young man and the thin Boy Scout, until it seemed certain that they could not work any longer, and then they worked on. They dug frantically into the sun-baked earth; they chopped frantically with their hatchets into the singeing chaparral; they slapped frantically at the flames with their dry sacks; and sometimes the sacks caught on fire. Then the witch-wind went away as suddenly as it had come, and up from the ocean—as if impelled by the Ranger’s rain-prayer—rose a dense gray fog, blessédly cool, blessédly wet, blessédly enveloping. ”

“ The young steers were timid, suspicious, quarrelsome; stupid, [82] quick to get into a blind and unreasoning panic—brown streaks of speed when they broke away from the bunch. Ginger was here, there, everywhere, swallow-swift on Diablo, darting after a fugitive—up a sheer bank, down a steep cañon, hanging low out of her saddle, Indian-fashion, to dodge a dangerous branch. Estrada had had to give up his duties as guide; he was in the thick of the job. Dean rode alone, and Snort, who, by some miracle of mercy, had been mild and tractable earlier in the day, now developed temper and temperament. ”

“ It was a fresh-washed world; the hills, the roads, the trails, the chaparral were a clean and shining [26] bronze; the distant alfalfa fields were emerald counterpanes and the toyon berries, freed from the last stubborn summer dust, were little shouts of color.
He passed a hand across his troubled eyes. “There is so much to tell you.... Every day, every hour, things grow clearer; I remember more and more. But I will write to you. I will write you everything.”
“I don’t know, I can’t explain—” Ginger was whispering again—“but it almost seems as if you’d brought Aleck back to me. ”

“ A heartening person, Margaret Golinda; across a continent and an ocean, down the long corridor of the years, her house would always be “King’s X!” to Dean Wolcott.
They rode on together, the Ranger and the Scout on Snort and the Mabel horse with the Airedale plodding sturdily behind, and soon there was tangible evidence of the red demon in the distance. The boy was stout-heartedly ready for action and the young man considered him with warm and possessive pride. Air and exercise and good food had nourished his meager little body and comradely appreciation had fed his starved soul. ”

“ And Dean Wolcott perceived that there was before him a task of extreme delicacy which must wait for a less crowded hour. It was going to [243] be a difficult thing to save his Scout’s self-esteem alive for him, and to make his joy in the new world opening up before him outweigh his bleak sense of uselessness; the Ranger’s rage rose in him at the thought of Aunt Lizzie and Edna ... crossing the continent smugly in a tourist sleeper with food in a greasy shoebox and complacency in their hearts. ”

“ Thus, in a word, you are now the only known human being to whom my measliest Scout can turn, and I earnestly urge that you continue to be as human as is Bostonly possible!
Dean Wolcott had made up his mind to leave Elmer Bunty in the best California outdoor school he could find—somewhere near Santa Barbara, perhaps, or in the Santa Cruz mountains—whichever climate was best for him, and at holiday time—but his mind refused to function coolly on plans for the future. That instant’s yielding of Ginger to his insistent arms—who could say where he would be himself at holiday time? ”

“ He shook his head. “I couldn’t think of it, Ginger. Miss Fanny would never forgive me; I expect she never will, as it is! No, you must go back to camp.”
Ginger swung into the saddle. She flushed, but her gaze was very steady. “Doctor, how is Dean doing? Are you satisfied?”
The taut lines of his face loosened and his tired eyes warmed. “Ginger, that boy’s doing splendidly—remarkably! I’m no end pleased with him. Fighting like an old campaigner, but he’s trying to swing too much alone. He’s handling all the Marble Peak slope by himself—just the youngster with him. ”

“ Ginger was out of the saddle, down beside him, her arms about the madly struggling body. It had been more than she could bear, Dean Wolcott had calculated surely. “I’ll hold him. Get your rope off. And boy, Scout”—she looked at him earnestly across the head of the fawn, just as he slipped the hair rope clumsily off—“never keep anything—tied or in a cage! Never keep anything—that—that doesn’t want to stay!” ”

“ It surprised Ginger a great deal and at first annoyed her considerably to find how much country there seemed to be outside of California. She had known, of course, that New York would [107] be larger and more impressive than San Francisco or Los Angeles, but she had felt that most of the desirable out-of-doors was contained in her own state. The great city itself startled and saddened her; she had not realized that there were as many people as that in the world, and most of them tired-looking and pale and in a hectic hurry to get somewhere else. ”

“ When she tried, gropingly, to tell Mary Wiley what she felt, she quoted to her a line of Huneker’s; it ought, she thought, to be graven over the door of every concert hall: “Other arts give us defined pleasures, but music is the only art that restores us to ourselves.”
It restored Ginger not only to herself but to her lover. Whether they ever came together again, whether she ever saw him again, sitting perched in her high balcony seat in Carnegie Hall, all the pride and criticism and bitterness were cleansed away; she went to him once more as she had gone to him on Aleck’s bridge ”

“ Dean Wolcott said he did not believe he was the lonesome kind. He was enjoying the five-hour drive enormously. The scenery was oddly satisfying to him—now along a rocky and precipitous coast, now on a bleakly barren hillside, and [127] the sea shone with the colors of an abalone shell; it made him think a little of Italy. And—just as he had adjusted his mind to rigor and stern plainness—the road turned inland to lush and lavish beauty—redwood trees mounting nobly, deep carpeting of ferns, streams, wild flowers, enchanting sudden vistas of the distant sea. ”

“ Doctor Mayfield’s opportunities for studying them together were limited; when they were together—save at meal-times—they took excellent care to be alone together. They motored all over the surrounding landscape by day and by night—it was, by a special dispensation of Providence, a time of white and silver moonlight—and tramped high into the hills. This in itself was an amazing spectacle—Ginger McVeagh afoot; from her tiny [56] childhood she had never walked except on her way to a horse. Dean Wolcott loved walking, however, and she loved Dean Wolcott and the thing was accomplished. ”

“ Aleck, her only brother, killed on the last day of fighting in the Great War, had been her pal and play-fellow, as were, in lesser and varying degrees, the young ranchers of the miles-wide neighborhood, while the vaqueros and old Estrada, mayordomo of her cattle ranch, were her henchmen, loyal, admiring, unquestioning. Always she had been able to divide the men of her world unhesitatingly into two classes—her equals, her inferiors. ”

“ Jim Featherstone was a tall, thin, middle-aged man with a rather melancholy expression and much skill in assembling a meal. He and Aunt Fan were unfeignedly glad to see each other, and Ginger was content to have them talk together and leave her to herself. They left her to herself a great deal in the days and evenings which followed—not that they ever forgot her or neglected her, but she had a sense of being with [108] them but not of them, and she felt that it always would be so. Her aunt, languid as a wilted lily at Dos Pozos, developed an amazing energy in New York ”

“ No! Protective resemblance! That was what it was, and that was what Ginger’s inevitable corduroy was; it was the color of the dust, the blinding, stifling dust of this parched land of summer; protective resemblance; dust; corduroy.
“Señor, we are here! We are arrive’ at home, Señor! Do you not weesh to get down?” It was Estrada, dismounted, standing beside him, and they were just below the veranda of the old adobe at Dos Pozos. ”