30,000 On the Hoof (25 page)

Lucinda saw amaze, incredulity, sudden joy, and then a shame of realization flash across his pale, mobile face. He realized that in losing a sister he had not gained a sweetheart.

Barbara raised her head. "I'll always call you mother... You've been so--so good to me... Oh, I must have been a--a child nobody wanted."

Logan spoke up huskily: "My dear, don't think that again. It's only torture. Maybe such a thought is all wrong. My idea from the first night was that your parents were dead... But we wanted you. I remember that night, when you lay in the corner there, asleep, your curly head close to Abe's, how I had a feeling you had come to us--to bless us with the daughter we wanted. I told Lucinda so... We wanted you, Barbara. And we've always wanted you... What you've missed we can never tell. Perhaps riches, fine parents--all that go with them. But never love, Barbara. You have not missed that."

"Oh, Dad, I'd gladly have missed all them to have what you've given me.

It's not that--that... I'm shocked... Never to know who I am!"

"But you are Barbara Huett," added Logan, with loving finality.

Then Grant came out of his spell. "Bab, I think it's just great... Suppose you'd been found by that Jack Campbell, or some hombre like him! Think how much worse off you'd been. You sure had luck to fall in with Maw.

Where'd you or any kid have found as grand a mother?... It was swell to have you for a sister, Barbara. But this--this is just wonderful... For now you can marry us!"

That naive remark broke the tragic strain, at least, and brought a faint blush to Barbara's cheek.

"My son, wonderful as that might be, it's impossible for Barbara to marry you all," interposed Lucinda, with a smile that rivalled Logan's. What a burden seemed lifted from her conscience! After all, now that the secret was out, it was not so terrible, so devastating. The absolute certainty of her place in that family had sustained Barbara. In time the grief would pass, and perhaps even the memory of it.

"That'd be Mormonism on the woman's side," declared Grant, gaily. "I'd stand for that, Bab. Sure you can take your pick. But I'm beating Abe and George to it."

"Grant, you're a very wonderful boy, not yet grown up--and I'll always be a sister to you," replied Barbara, in a demure voice not quite compatible with her wet eyes.

"Ow--ow!" wailed Grant. "All right, Bab. You're a poor picker. But I'll always love you just the same."

"Barbara, we will never let you get away from us." spoke up George, gallantly, but his pale, tense face betrayed emotion he tried to hide. A fugitive hope was fading before realization. "If I'd only known you were not my sister--then all that fool gallivanting of mine would never have been. But I always----"

"Let her be, you sudden hombres," interrupted Abe, his voice strong and vibrant. "Here she's just learned a sad fact about her life--and you hound her to bestow herself upon one of you. Let her be... Some day, sure, she'll take the one of us she loves best. But give her a long time. She's been a sister too many years to become a sweetheart pronto... Barbara, it'll all come right. Don't let Grant or George rile you. We've all got a long hard job to raise that thirty thousand head of cattle Dad's heart is set on. I know I can work harder, and become a better man, in the hope I may win you sometime... I found you that day so far back. But I remember, Barbara, honest I remember your skinned knees, your dusty dress, your tear-wet cheeks, and, sorrowful eyes. And I was only three... Dear, don't feel unhappy. This must have been meant to be. Maybe you came to save the Huetts."

Lucinda's heart welled painfully in her breast. How she thrilled as the silent Abe, for once so eloquent, expressed his manliness, his fairness, his deep loyalty to Barbara and to all of them! He made it so easy for Lucinda to bless her intuition. Always she had known that Abe was the one for Barbara; always that had been her most secret cherished dream. And she read in Barbara's fascinated eyes, in the quickening and dilating changes in a marvellously soft and lovely glow, that the girl realized now how and why she had worshipped Abe all her life.

The only difference in Barbara that was manifest to Lucinda seemed to be a brooding pathos at times and a conscious realization that her status with the boys had vastly changed and heightened. The former gradually wore away and a deeper, less girlish happiness prevailed.

Abe changed the least under this new order of life at Sycamore Canyon. It was evident that Barbara's possible attainment simply added bewilderingly to his affection. He showed no sign of having an advantage over his brothers with Barbara because he had found her and no doubt had saved her from wild animals or starvation. Lucinda particularly noted that if Abe was more kind, he was less demonstrative. He never teased nor playfully fought with her, as had been his wont. He had realized her sex, her desirability, and they were sacred. This seemed the more complete to Lucinda because Barbara was the only girl Abe had ever really known. What little leisure he had enjoyed he spent in the woods.

But this new relation of Barbara's changed the lives of the other brothers.

All at once, it seemed to Lucinda, Grant developed into a man. He had, fortunately, no serious faults nor weaknesses nor vices to correct. He lost nothing of his sunny temperament, his love of banter, his propensity to tease, his habit of sharing whatever he had with Barbara. But he openly and persistently courted her.

George exhibited more serious and profound evidence of a dividing line in his life. That winter he was confined to the cabin a good deal owing to danger of pneumonia that the wound in his breast occasioned. He read and studied, and discussed the cattle problem for hours 'with Huett. When spring came again and he regained his old strength he plunged into work as never before. He did not ride to Pine or Payson. He gave up drinking.

A dance at Holbert's, failed to tempt him, though Barbara went with Grant. Even a rodeo at Flagg on the Fourth of July failed to drag him back to the competitions and thrills of cowboy life.

Once George said to his mother: "I reckon I've no chance to win Bab now.

Not with this handsome Indian Abe around and that lovable guy Grant! But I love her, and I'll never stop trying to prove she's made a man of me... And it won't make any difference if she picks Abe or Grant."

Early in the fall George prevailed upon his father to round up another bunch of cattle and drive them to the railroad.

"But, Dad, it's the thing to do now," he persuaded patiently. "If we cut out and sell the old stock, buy young stock with the money, or part of it, our herd will grow faster. You hang on too long. Besides, we need repairs, new tools, supplies. And, Dad, we must get a car. Some of these other ranchers are getting the jump on us. A few of them have cars, and some of them have trucks. Times are changing. We've gone to seed down here in our lonely canyon. We're old-fashioned. If we had a truck this fall we could haul five hundred sacks of potatoes to Flagg in a couple of trips."

The idea did not appeal to Huett. He hated the stinking, dangerous, horseless vehicles that had begun to make unbelievable changes in the country. George argued that their use made the territory provide better roads and that the time saved more than the expense. Huett agreed to a limited sale of cattle, but vetoed the car idea.

"All right. I'll buy one with my own money," declared George stubbornly.

"And I'll bet you see."

Wherefore George did not return home from Flagg with his father and Grant. When he did come back, however, his advent was proclaimed by rattling, cracking noises long before he got down the hill. Lucinda heard Logan guffaw loudly, and Grant yell a wild "Whoopee!" Then Barbara screamed in glee, which brought Lucinda out with an exclamation: "For the land's sake!"

She stared, first in wonder, then in fright. George was driving down the hill in a black automobile that sounded rickety, if it did not look so.

The Huetts were nothing if not spellbound. But George made the grade without running off the road, and came whirling across the flat, to come to a halt before the cabin with a bang.

"Howdy, folks," he drawled, as he surveyed them all, with fire in his eyes and a smile on his lips.

"George Huett!--Where'd you get that contraption?" demanded his father.

"Bought it. Second-hand. Never mind how much... And have I had a hell of a time getting here? Well, I guess!"

"When'd you leave Flagg?"

"Before noon."

"Not to-day?"

"Sure to-day. Say, this car of mine isn't Buck--though by gosh! it bucked on me some... Hop in, Dad. Let me give you a little spin."

"Not much," declared Huett.

"Take me, George," begged Barbara, her face eager and daring.

"Well, I guess. Pile in here."

George drove her around the bench and down across the brook, sending up great sheets of muddy water, out on the flat, and back again, in a cloud of dust. Barbara leaped out radiant and breathless.

"Oh--grand!" she cried. "You go so fast... But I was--scared."

"Doggone these young people nowadays," complained Huett to Lucinda. "Our old way--too slow, too slow!... Reckon I'll come to it if these cars ever get safe."

George did not succeed in convincing his father that automobiles were to be trusted, but before winter came he proved they were marvellous to cover distance, to save time, to add wonderfully to the comfort and efficiency of a housewife, to bring mail and supplies quickly to the ranches. "You've been a pioneer for twenty-five years. From now on you're a rancher."

The driving of this new stock, the repairing of fences, the toil early and late in the fields, and the other manifold tasks of the growing ranch made days and seasons fly by on wings. The boys stacked a hundred tons of alfalfa and sold as many bushels of potatoes before the frosts hurried them to the game trails with their guns. Lucinda and Barbara were rushed with their labours--putting up endless jars of pears and peaches, of pickles and tomatoes, of apple-butter and mincemeat. Logan stored away in the cellar a load of the finest cabbages he had ever seen.

"Ha, Luce!" he exclaimed, heartily. "Remember when I used to say we'll not starve, anyhow?... Things are pretty good... Well, well, it's been long coming."

While the seasons sped by, Huett's bead of cattle had doubled, trebled, quadrupled. How amazingly they multiplied now! The calves came as if by magic. Widow Steadman died without any kin to whom to leave her cattle and her several thousand head gravitated to Huett.

George hit upon a plan to cut a track beyond Three Springs Wash to the canyon below and enclose that. It resembled Sycamore somewhat, but was larger and revealed more gaps to fence. George demonstrated, against his father's remonstrances, how two canyons rich in acorns and oak browse would raise a larger herd of stock more quickly than one; and Huett finally succumbed to facts and figures.

"But rustlers can steal from us down there very much easier than they have been able to in Sycamore," replied Huett, still the over-cautious and long-suffering cattleman.

"We'll risk that. Besides, we'll let what's left of our wild horses drift down there. Those broom-tails eat a lot, Dad."

Lucinda divined anew how Logan had so inspired them all with his great idea, his driving passion, that long habit of work, of sacrifice had left them unable to slow down, to begin to see the prosperity that had really come. But what were ten thousand head of stock to Huett? He limited the sale to less than a thousand a year. He kept out of debt and bought more cattle.

But Lucinda did not fail to see their happiness. They were as busy as honey-storing bees. They were sufficient unto themselves. Several times a year Lucinda and Barbara went to town, finding more pleasure in these trips for their infrequency.

Seldom did Lucinda broach the subject of marriage to Barbara, and she finally stopped altogether after Barbara said:

"Oh, Mother, I am afraid Abe will ask me some day, and if he does I--I can't beg him to wait longer--I love him so... But George loves me too--and Grant. I think Abe hates to hurt them... We're all so happy. Why can't we go on this way longer?"

Chapter
THIRTEEN
.

Logan Huett lived to learn that he did not yet know the West.

Like wildfire in a wide-swept prairie the dramatic killing of Tim Mooney travelled over the range. Before the shock of his neighbours and fellow-ranchers had passed, the Mooney family left the locality and Dwight Collier sold out to Holbert to ride away. He was not backward in telling that of late he had suspected Mooney of deals in which he had not part. The range did not believe this, but they were quick to accept the rumour that Mooney's son drew a large amount from the bank at Flagg.

Then little by little, as cowboys compared notes and cattlemen found time and freedom to talk, the guilt of Tim Mooney stood out indisputably. None of them patted Logan Huett on the back for his service in ridding the range of this crooked cattleman, but they exonerated him from any suspicion whatever. They called the fight an even break in which the better and the honest man came out on top. The good it did manifestly served to scare off any other lone and butchering rustler who might have followed in Mooney's footsteps. However, the harm it created was the tendency to focus attention of the predatory cattle interests--the rustlers and their queer ramifications--upon the fact that there were rich pickings in the Mogollons and from the Little Colorado to the Tonto Rim.