LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER I

      Kelsey Cameron stood alone on the prairie in the pale noon sunlight. It was late April in 1898. He set his cheap straw suitcase in the sagebrush and straightened to face the wind that came at him out of the west, blowing off the snowcapped mountains. It was a vicious wind that pasted his trousers to his long legs, sent his suitcoat flapping behind him, and tugged vainly at the coarse, forward-growing hair that jutted down the center of his forehead in a rough red V.

      So this was North Park, Colorado, the place his cousin Tommy had written about; this was the wonderful country where a man could go into the cattle business, get rich, and live as he pleased. “God,” Kelsey muttered, staring at the monotonous gray landscape.

      The vast loneliness of the earth crowded into his mind and formed a cold knot. There was desolation here he could never have pictured in his wildest imagining. All around the big valley were mountains, white and cold and aloof, like the jagged waves of some giant winter sea that had hurled itself savagely against the sky and been frozen there forever.

      Between the mountains was the prairie, a rolling, drab earth, covered with the gray sagebrush. Southward a lone butte lifted like a strange island out of the lower land. And to the north, close to him, was an ugly, rounded mountain that faced him like an enemy, the lower slopes barren and gray, and a dark stubble of trees on the summit. And there was nothing anywhere—no gull to sweep the clean blue arch of sky, no house standing firmly on the earth, no human being walking toward him on the dusty road. Only the wind kept him company, battering him, nagging him, thrusting through his clothing to his shivering bones.

      He tried to tell himself that all of North Park wasn’t like this part where he walked; he knew there was a town away there to the southeast where a haze of blue smoke lay in the air, and there were ranches and rivers hidden from view by the rolling plains. But he could not rid himself of the sharp disappointment that had been with him ever since he got off the train at Laramie, Wyoming. Vividly now he remembered the jolting ride across the Laramie Plains in the spring wagon with the crude canvas covering to shut out the weather, and the slower ride over the mountaintop on the sled, for snow still lay deep in the high timber. And today, in another wagon, he had come down out of the foothills and into this valley—the Park, his companions on the stage had called it.

      What a wrong and foolish notion he had carried in his mind of North Park. When his cousin had written of it, Kelsey had pictured many trees and little towns with cattle ranches between them. Once, crossing the mountain from Laramie, he’d tried to explain to one of his companions what he thought about North Park. The man had grunted, looked at him pityingly, and said nothing. And when he’d gotten off the stage, two hours ago, the same man had leaned out to say, “Better change your mind and ride on into town with us. It’s a long walk to the Red Hill Ranch—maybe sixteen miles.” When Kelsey hadn’t answered, he’d added, “Well, fella, take it easy. You’ll get used to it.”

      How could any man get used to anything so big and empty and lonely? And it was more than the way the land looked; it was the way it felt—overwhelming and forbidding. Here he was nothing, nothing at all—a speck in distance, a stranger. For a moment Kelsey felt so bewildered and alone that panic came over him, sending him running up the narrow road, stumbling over the sagebrush that grew in the center of it. Then panic left him as quickly as it had come, and he slowed to a walk, panting, feeling sweat under his arms although the cold wind rushed against him and hammered at him like a thousand padded clubs.

      “Damn the wind!” he said to the empty blue sky and the gray earth. “It’s worse than the winter gales in the old country.” And the familiar Scottish landscape rose in his mind, green and beautiful and so far away. He halted and dropped the straw suitcase as terrible homesickness washed over him, leaving him shaken and desperate. If I could see my mother, Taraleean, and her garden, yellow now with daffodils . . . What madness had possessed him that he’d left his home, his mother, and the lass he loved?

      A look of bitterness settled over his rugged young face with its bold, thick nose and wide mouth. Anything was better than staying in Scotland, even this bleak, unfriendly land so far from spring. He stooped and picked up his bag and walked on, the stiff new shoes rubbing his heels raw, his stomach cramping with hunger, his mouth hanging open as he gulped the shallow air of the high mountain valley.

      As he trudged on he tried to forget that he was disappointed, tired, and broke. Somewhere ahead, maybe over the next rise of ground, lay his cousin Tommy’s ranch. He called to mind exciting lines from Tommy’s letters—“Acres of land for the taking . . . hundreds of Hereford cattle . . . country fit for a king . . .”

      A king. Yes, anybody could be like a king in America; a common man could become president. And was such a thing possible in Scotland? Never! Again the bitterness was in him, bringing to his mind the thing that had begun when he was a small boy at school, for there he had punched a playmate in the nose for saying the Camerons were only common folk and could never own land like the lairds. And that night he had gone to his father and said, “Is this ground our house sits on not yours, Father?”

      “The land belongs to the laird’s estate, as does all the village. But the house is mine, and the things in it.”

      “And why is that?”

      “It is the way in Scotland, lad. Some are born of the nobility and some are not. I pay no taxes on the ground where this house sits, but I must pay rent to the laird’s factor. That’s how the laird lives—on the rent from his land.”

      “And is there no ground that isn’t the laird’s?”

      His father thought for a while and then replied, “Well, there is the high-water mark along the shore, the place where the sea has washed up on the earth. That is part of the sea and belongs to no man. Why do you get such a frown on your face, lad? What is it that troubles you?”

      “I’ll build me a house on the shore someday; I’ll make it from old boards—pieces of broken boats—and I’ll take no orders from the laird or his factor, and I’ll pay him no rent.”

      “What daftness is this in a lad not yet old enough to know his own mind?”

      Then Kelsey’s mother, Taraleean, put her hand on the boy’s head and said, “Leave the lad be, John. It’s no daftness in him, but only the wild dreaming such as is in myself. Many a time—before I knew you, John—I asked myself why I was born to be an Irish tattie howker and pick potatoes while others rode in fine carriages.” And she pressed Kelsey close, hiding his face in her skirt, saying, “Be careful, lad, for the wild dreaming leads to hurting.”

      The wild dreaming. Kelsey paused and shifted the suitcase to his other hand. What a dreaming they had done, he and his lassie! The things he’d promised her—how he’d own his father’s shop someday and they’d go once a year to London, where she’d buy herself all manner of fine things to wear! And what had come of all his hopes and plans?

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