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Judith of the Plains. Marie Manning
Читать онлайн.Название Judith of the Plains
Год выпуска 0
isbn 4064066498993
Автор произведения Marie Manning
Жанр Языкознание
Издательство Bookwire
“Dax, I must have that gray mare of yours right away.” He went in the direction of the stable, without a second glance at the postmistress, and presently they saw him galloping off in the opposite direction from which he had come. Mrs. Dax came in with a tray on which were a pot of coffee and sundry substantial delicacies.
“Where’s he gone?” she demanded, putting the tray down so hard that the coffee slopped.
“I dunno,” said Leander. “He said he’d got to have the gray mare, saddled her hisself, and rode off like hell.”
Mrs. Dax looked at them all savagely for the explanation that they could not give. In sending her out to make coffee she felt that Peter, whom she regarded in the light of a weakness, had taken advantage of her affections to dupe her in regard to his plans.
“Take them things back to the kitchen,” she commanded Leander.
Mary Carmichael involuntarily glanced at Judith; the fall of the leaf was in her cheek.
Peter Hamilton, bowed in his saddle and flogging forward inhumanely, bred rife speculation as to his destination among the group that watched him from the Daxes’ front door. Mrs. Dax, who entertained so profound a respect for her own omniscience that she disdained to arrive at a conclusion by a logical process of deduction, was “plumb certain that he had gone after ‘rustlers!’” Leander, who had held no opinions since his marriage except that first and all-comprehensive tenet of his creed—that his wife was a person to be loved, honored, and obeyed instantly—agreed with his lady by a process of reflex action. The fat lady, who had a commonplace for every occasion, didn’t “know what we were all coming to.” Miss Carmichael, who was beginning to find her capacity for amazement overstrained, alone accepted this last incident with apathy. Mr. Hamilton might have gone in swift pursuit of cattle thieves or he might be riding the mare to death for pure whimsy. Only Judith Rodney, who said nothing, felt that he was spurring across the wilderness at breakneck speed to see a girl at Wetmore’s. But her lack of comment caused no ripple of surprise in the flow of loose-lipped speculation that served, for the time being, to inject a casual interest into the talk of these folk, bored to the verge of demoralization by long waiting for Chugg.
Judith preferred to confirm her apprehensions regarding Hamilton’s ride, alone. She knew—had not all her woman’s intuitions risen in clamorous warning—and yet she hoped, hoped despairingly, even though the dread alternative to the girl at the Wetmore ranch threatened lynch law for her brother. Her very gait changed as she withdrew from the group about the door, covertly gaining her vantage-ground inch by inch. The heels of her riding-boots made no sound as she stole across the kitchen floor, toeing in like an Indian tracking an enemy through the forest. The small window at the back of the kitchen commanded a view of the road in all its sprawling circumlocution. Seen from this prospect, it had no more design than the idle scrawlings of a child on a bit of paper; but the choice of roads to Good and Evil was not fraught with more momentous consequences than was each prong of that fork towards which Hamilton was galloping.
The right arm swung towards the Wetmore ranch, where at certain times during the course of the year a hundred cow-punchers reported on the stock that grazed in four States. At certain seasons, likewise, despite the fact that the ranch was well into the foot-hill country, there might be found a New York family playing at life primeval with the co-operation of porcelain bath-tubs, a French chef, and electric light.
The left fork of the road had a meaner destiny. It dipped straight into desolation, penetrating a naked wilderness where bad men skulked till the evil they had done was forgotten in deeds that called afresh to Heaven for vengeance. It was well away on this west fork of the road that they lynched Kate Watson—“Cattle Kate”—for the crime of loyalty. It was she, intrepid and reckless, who threatened the horde of masked scoundrels when they came to lynch her man for the iniquity of raising a few vegetables on a strip of ground that cut into their grazing country. And when she, recognizing them, masked though they were, threatened them with the vengeance of the law, they hanged her with her man high as Haman.
Judith watched Hamilton with narrowing eyes. And now she was all Indian, the white woman in her dead. Only the Sioux watched, and, in the patient, Indian style, bided its time. “Cattle thieves,” “the girl at Wetmore’s”—the words sang themselves in her head like an incantation. “Cattle thieves” meant her brother, their recognized leader—her brother, who was dearer to her than the heart in her breast, the eye in her head, the right hand that held together the shambling, uncertain destiny of her people. Would he turn to the left, Justice, on a pale horse, hunting her brother gallowsward? Would he turn towards the right, the impetuous lover spurring his steed that he might come swiftly to the woman. A pulse in her bosom rose slowly until her breath was suspended, then fell again; she was still watching, without an outward quiver, long after he had turned to the right—and the woman.
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