the Drift Fence (1992) (14 page)

The trail led to the clearing, to the forty acres of hideous slash in the forest that Dunn had homesteaded twenty years before. The rest of the hundred and sixty acres consisted of timber land. Dunn had never "proved up" on his claim, and therefore had no patent for it.

Arch Dunn ploughed the red field and planted the beans and corn and sorghum and potatoes. He had spells when he stayed home and worked about the farm. But the last year or two he had left the harvesting of the crop to Molly and her mother.

As Molly passed along the trail, under the cedars and pi+-ons and an occasional pine, she gazed out at the red furrows, now green-ridged with beans and corn; she saw that she would soon have to get in there with a hoe. It had never occurred to her before, but she certainly hated that beanfield. Here and there stood dead pines and cedars that had been "ringed" by an axe and left standing to become bleached and ghastly; and everywhere black stumps stuck up, surrounded by a patch of weeds. Farmers in the Cibeque let the stumps rot out.

The cabin, at the end of the clearing, fitted the scene. It consisted of two one-room log buildings, with a porch between, and one rough-shingled roof over all. The shingles were moss-green in places and the logs were bleached. In the chinks between, sections of clay had broken out. The fences were down, the sheds built of uneven clapboards.

Altogether Molly saw the homestead with gloomier eyes than ever. Yet it could boast of the finest view in all the Cibeque. To north and east the vast gray-cuffed and canyon-notched wall of the Diamond towered, a mountain face of a thousand features and never the same any two hours of the day. Southward opened up the valley of the Cibeque, all its whole length from this high prospect. But its endless promontories, and long ridges running down, its red walls and gray crags, its winding bright ribbon of water through the green valley, and in the far distance the dim blue ranges, had little charm to intrigue Molly Dunn this unhappy day.

She carried the bucket into the kitchen end of the cabin--a dark room, only in winter a place of comfort.

"You've been gone long enough to dig a well," remarked her mother, with sarcasm. Mrs. Dunn was still young and good-looking enough to be jealous of Molly. She had come from a station considerably above John Dunn's, and she was a bitter, unhappy woman. Since Molly had grown old enough to attract the attention of men, what accord that had existed between mother and daughter had gradually been broken.

"That bucket is heavy an' it's a long ways," replied Molly. "You used to fetch it in a jiffy. You met some cowboy on the trail."

"No. It's funny, but I didn't this mawnin'."

"Well, you must have fallen in the spring, then."

"Wisht I had," returned Molly flippantly. She went out and across the porch. Her father had got up and was slouching in his crippled way to the big blanketed chair where he passed his wakeful hours. Of late Molly had seemed to see him differently, with pity and tolerance. These feelings, too, applied to her mother. Dunn was not an old man in years, but he was in all else. His dark hair, shading gray, hung down over his knotted pale brow. He was a broken man, living in the past, ruined by some secret association with an infamous war between sheepmen and cattlemen, and devoured by passions that had outlived his enemies. Molly had affection for her father, despite the impatience and disgust which grew with the years. And of late, since her own trouble, she had begun to have some little understanding of her mother--of what it must have meant to be faithful to Dunn all these years. There flashed over Molly a consciousness that she could follow Jim Traft to the end of the world and slave her fingers to the bone for him. Then she laughed at her imbecility. For her to aspire to be the wife of Mr. James Traft, gentleman tenderfoot from Missouri, and the sole heir to old Jim Traft's land and stock--that was rather far-fetched and ridiculous. Besides, she did not do anything of the kind. But she could not control vagrant and perverse thoughts. Here flashed another. This same Jim Traft had importuned her to let him be her best fellow. How pale and earnest he had looked! It was impossible to repudiate his sincerity. To be his sweetheart! Molly had a stronger, sweeter, more suffocating rush of emotion. What would become of her if this thing grew? She must throw herself at Andy or Seth, or both of them, and kill this affliction. But could those louts kill it? Molly divined they could not kill anything except her self-respect. And that, strangely, had become a pronounced thing. She would now have it to contend with. Her pride--her vanity! All because she had been hugged by a handsome young fellow from Missouri!

Molly let out a peal of ringing laughter that made even her father take notice.

"Lass, you've been queer since you come back from Flag," he remarked, in his quavering voice.

"I feel queer, dad," she replied. "I waked up from my backwoods sleep."

"Backwoods! You mean this heah homestead?"

"Never mind what I meant, dad."

He could not understand, and if she confessed the truth to her mother it would only add fuel to that strange animosity which had developed between them.

Molly plunged into one of her working spells. It could never have been said of her, at any time, that she was lazy, but she took streaks in which she was busy from dawn to sundown. Small as she was, Molly had strength and endurance. Her little tanned hands were pretty to look at, on the back; her palms, however, and the insides of her fingers were hard and cut and calloused. They occasioned Molly pangs of regret, though she had never felt ashamed of the labour that had coarsened them. It was just that the vanity inborn in her rebelled. She was vain of her little feet and trim ankles; and that was why she never went barefoot and barelegged any more. She would brush her hair until it crackled and shone gold glints in its dusky splendour. But she could work like a beaver, and she did this day, preoccupied and sad most of the time, yet cheerful during intervals.

Toward sunset, while Molly was at the wood-pile--one of her many accomplishments being skill with an axe--her brother approached. This was an unprecedented action for him. Years before she and Arch had been like sister and brother, playmates, but that seemed long before he had taken to evil ways of the woods and had earned the sobriquet of Slinger Dunn.

"Molly, cain't you leave a little work around heah for me?" he complained.

She dropped the faggot she had picked up, and she stared at him. What a handsome, shiftless, backwoods beggar! He had the build of an Indian.

Horses had not warped his legs nor broken any bones. His soiled buckskin garments somehow suited him. For some amazing reason he had shaved the golden down from chin and lips, and his dark, lean face shone clean and smooth. Arch's eyes usually lost their piercing quality when they beheld Molly. Just now they were bearable.

"Arch, you shore ain't drunk," she said, thoughtfully regarding him.

"No. An' I ain't sick, nuther," he replied. "Never you mind aboot me. But cain't I be civil without you gettin' sassy?"

"Shore I hope so. An' now I know somethin' ails you, Arch."

"Set down. A fellar cain't talk in there," he said, jerking a sinewy brown hand toward the cabin. "Dad is out of his haid. An' mother--wal, poor mother raves if you so much as open your mouth."

"Poor mother? Yes, an' poor dad, too... Arch, you said a lot."

"Molly, what chanct have we ever had to help make them different?" he queried, swallowing hard. "I never had no schoolin' at all. An' you--only a couple of years. What do we know?... An' before I was sixteen I was Slinger Dunn!"

Molly was so amazed she could not keep track of flying thoughts. One held, however, and it was that if awakening consciousness of heretofore vague things could come to her it surely was possible for them to come to Arch. "Arch, is it too late?" she whispered.

"Hell! yes, for me. But for you, Molly--wal, mebbe it's not. I hope to Gawd it ain't."

"Arch, if you want to know, I'm as down in the mouth as you," said Molly.

"You have been queer lately, since you come home... Mol, did anythin' happen at Flag?"

"A whole lot."

"Your feelin's get hurt?"

Molly gave a solemn little nod.

"Wal, tell me aboot it," he went on, with that wonderful flash of eyes.

Molly laughed. "So you can shoot somebody up?--No, Arch, you cain't ever help me that way."

"Is thet so? Wal, you never know. But all the same, tell me."

"Arch, it was awful for me," she replied, unable to resist sympathy.

"Mrs. See took me, as you know. She was lovely. Bought me clothes--an' oh! such a beautiful dress. All white--what there was of it! Arch, I actually felt naked. She has fine friends in Flag. She introduced me. I was asked to help in a booth at the fair... Well it's like a dream now. A dream you cain't believe. I--I was the belle at that dance, Arch. Can you believe it? I was crazy with joy--at bein' taken for a--a lady. I must have looked one, Arch... Then somethin' happened an' my heart broke."

"They found you out, Mol?" he queried, shrewdly. "Thet you lived down in the brakes? Thet your dad was John Dunn? An' your brother Slinger Dunn of the Cibeque?"

"Yes, Arch, I was found out," she replied. "But I didn't go back on you."

"Shore you'd never do thet," he said, sombrely, "You oughtn't to have gone to Flag!"

"Must I stick here buried in the backwoods all my life?" she asked, passionately.

"Molly, thet stumps me. I reckon I'd have said yes a while back. But if you was made much of in Flag--if you was took for a lady, why, there's somethin' turrible wrong!"

"There is, Arch. That's the trouble."

"An' it's with dad an' me? An' with mother, too, cause she's stuck to him."

"Arch, I am a Dunn, too."

"Mol, I come out heah to ask you a fool question. I see thet now. But I promised Seth an' I'll keep it. He wants to know if you'll marry him?"

"Seth Haverly? Heavens!--No!" she cried, aghast.

"I reckoned you liked Seth."

"Perhaps I did, once, a little."

"Wal, marryin' Seth wouldn't help none. Now you make me think, Molly, I'd be ag'in' thet. But you needn't never tell him... Andy Stoneham is a decent fellar, though. An', Mol, he's turrible sweet on you."

"That tobacco-chewin' lout!" exclaimed Molly.

"Who you gonna marry, then--to git you out of this heah hole?"

"No one, Arch. You see that marryin' one of these Cibeque boys would only nail me heah... An' the--the kind of a boy I--I--who could save me--wouldn't have me."

"He'd be a damn poor sort, then," flashed Arch, with passion.

"If I was sich a fellar as you mean, I could swaller a lot for you, Molly. Don't fool yourself. You're good enough for any fellar."

His earnestness, his sincerity, touched Molly. She went to the woodpile and sat down beside him, meaning to thank him, to yield to this surprising sympathy in him, but all she did was to burst into tears.

"Wal, don't cry," he said, almost roughly. "Molly, I heah this Diamond cowboy, Hack Jocelyn, was seen in West Fork last Sunday."

"Yes. I saw him, myself, an' I shore ducked into the brush."

"Ahuh. Wal, thet lets you out, if you're not lyin'."

Molly dried her useless tears and presently faced him. "Arch, I used to lie to you, about the boys an' everythin'. But I wouldn't no more."

"Reckon Jocelyn hasn't rid down heah so often the last year for nothin'.

Molly, is it you?"

"Yes, Arch, it's me."

"Don't you like him?"

"I did at first. But not now. He's older. He's daid in earnest."

"Humph! You mean aboot you? In love with you? Wants to marry you, same as Seth?"

"Arch, he's in love, all right, but he never said nothin' about marryin' me. An' of course I wouldn't have him if he had."

"Wal, I should smile not!" ejaculated Arch. "Marry one of thet Diamond outfit? My Gawd!... But at thet they're some pretty decent boys compared to Jocelyn... Mol, he an' me are aboot ready to meet up."

"Arch, you can't help me by killin' any more fellars," cried Molly, shocked at the significance of his words. "That's one thing against me--your bloody record. An', Arch, if you keep on--if you should happen to kill one of that Diamond outfit--well, I'll just go to the bad!"

He took that darkly, without a protest, as if consciousness was being driven home to a man inevitably lost.

"Wal, I reckon I want to tell you suthin'," he spoke up. "All this talk aboot marryin'... I up an' asked Lil Haverly to marry me."

"Arch! You did? Lil Haverly--that-that--"

"Never mind what. Anyway, I did, an' I told her I'd turn over a new leaf an' go to ranchin' if she'd have me. An' she laughed in my face!... She'd let me be sweet on her, too, Molly, an' thet fooled me."

"She's no good!" retorted Molly, fiercely, suddenly and astoundingly conscious of her brother's pain.

"Wal, not much, mebbe. Anyway, it doesn't matter," he replied, sitting up. "Come. I'll help you pack in this wood."

Molly slaved and brooded the days away. She could make life bearable by getting so tired during the day that sleep made short shift of the long, dark, silent nights. On Sunday she accepted the calls of Andy Stoneham and other village boys. Her wild intention to flirt viciously, to play fast and loose with them, seemed an utter impossibility once they were in her presence. One Sunday afternoon, while walking the trail with Andy from the cabin to the creek, he took her hand in his, as had been his wont in the past--a preliminary to his by no means timid love-making.