Sheep Limit/Chapter 26
Edith bounced out of the wagon as soon she drove into Rawlins' yard and came running to him, cencern in her face, breathless in her inquiry about his wound.
"The sheriff told me about it, that was the first I'd heard of the fight you and Peck were in," she explained. "I was down at Jasper. I only got back to-day. I passed by here this morning and knocked on your door, but there wasn't anybody around."
Rawlins was not very successful in his attempt at unreserved cordiality, although he greeted Tippie warmly when he came over in his deliberate fashion, which neither mischance to other men nor good fortune to himself seemed sufficient to accelerate. The wound was troublesome, but not serious, Rawlins told them. The doctor said he would be all right in six weeks or two months. It was unlucky to happen to a man who had hay to cut, but he had to take the bad with the good.
"Wasn't that Aunt Lila lopin' off as we came up?" Edith asked.
Yes, it was Aunt Lila, and she had left a note. Rawlins produced it as he spoke, and delivered it, glad of the diversion it caused, thankful that the congratulations he felt bound to offer in keeping with conventions, although so contrary to his honest desire, could be staved off for a little while. Let them spring it, he told himself, with the feeling of a deeply injured party. He was not supposed to know anything about their business, although on the face of appearances it was plain enough for anybody to conclude.—"That's funny," said Edith, her face a puzzle of cross-running emotions as she stood looking at the brief writing Mrs. Peck had left. "That's darned funny," she amended, a little more forcefully, passing the note on to Tippie.
"Um-m-m," said Tippie, glum as glue, seeming to study the note. "Not as funny as some things I've read."
He handed it to Rawlins, who asked Edith's permission in a questioning glance. Edith flushed, laughed queerly, nodded.
Rawlins read the hastily written line or two; read again, grinned a feeble, knocked-out sort of grin, looking from one to the other. The writing ran:
Edith, I give you them sheep for a wedding present from your old aunt,
Lila Duke.
"Wedding present!" said Edith, red as a geranium. "Well, I like"
"Sure," said Tippie. "Weddin' present."
"I con" Rawlins began, to be stopped by Edith with interdictory hand.
"Sh-h-h! you might say something," she said, a laugh in her eyes.
"Sure; weddin' present," Tippie repeated. "The old lady thinks you're goin' to get married."
"No, she don't, Elmer," Edith corrected him, laughter growing in her bright, happy eyes, "she thinks we're married already!"
"You and Ned? How in the thunder could she think?"
"No, you and I."
"She don't think you're that big a fool," Tippie said, sarcastically positive.
Rawlins felt as if he had gone through some dreaded initiation. The relief of having it over, and knowing that his worst fears were unfounded, gave him such a feeling of lightness he could have flapped his wings and crowed. He saw now how impossible it was. Tippie would have been the last man to think of such a thing, good old Tippie, honest old Tippie. Rawlins felt like embracing him, for saving him, in his goodness, from such a disaster.
"That's what she thinks," Edith insisted. "And look how she signs her name: 'Lila Duke.' What do you think she means by that?" Edith appealed to them with bafiled eyes.
"Habit," said Tippie.
"She's a widow again," Rawlins explained.
"Did they kill him?" Tippie asked, eagerly hopeful.
"No; he's run off again. This time he'll make it stick."
"She'll be the feller to get the divorce, then," said Tippie. "That's what she means by signin' the old name. She considers it settled already."
Edith seemed indecisive between laughter and tears. The thought of Peck persisting in his efforts to get a free leg once more moved the deep appreciation of humor in her soul; but the reflection on her aunt's bitter humiliation and misery checked the outburst.
"Yes, it's off for good this time," she said. "Aunt Lila won't send the sheriff after him any more. Poor old soul! she deserves it, but I'm sorry for her, just the same."
"How long's he been gone?" Tippie inquired.
"I don't know just when he left—he was around here this morning," Rawlins prevaricated, determined that Edith never should know of her aunt's greedy plotting to oust him from his homestead if it depended on him to tell.
"I think I'd better go over there and keep my eye on your sheep a while then, Edith," Tippie proposed. "I'm afraid the old lady might experience a change of heart and drive 'em out of here."
Tippie took the saddled horse hitched at the tail of the wagon and rode off, Edith and Rawlins watching him go, the silence of embarrassment between them. Edith was the first to recover, as the woman always is.
"She had her nerve to think I'd marry Elmer," she said.
"Didn't she?" He thought it far better to say nothing of Mrs. Peck's first positive assertion that she had run away to meet a mail-order man.
"She knew all the time I was going to Jasper to file on a homestead in here—I told her I was going to, I asked her to tell you."
"File on a homestead! Edith! You don't tell me? Why, she never"
"I've got the papers, I can prove it," Edith laughed. "That's mine, joining you on the east."
"Well, I never thought I'd have you for a neighbor," he said, his delight dampened not a little by the thought that she never intended to be anything more. "And she never said a word."
"We had a little fuss," Edith said.
"I thought as much."
"We'd had plenty of them before. About my money, you know. She said I'd used it all up in board, and education and care, and that kind of stuff, when I've worked my way ever since I've been with her. She never was my legal guardian, you know, Ned. She wasn't under bond, or anything. Father asked her to look after me when he was dying; he turned over his insurance and all he had to her to keep for me."
"So that was the way of it. I didn't know."
"There wasn't much. We compromised on fifteen hundred dollars, she paid me, and I struck out for Jasper to file on that land while the filin' was good."
"You took a long chance, I'm afraid, Edith. Hewitt was here with the last bunch that raided us, when Peck killed one of them. He isn't the kind of man to let it drop, even though we've got the sheriff behind us now. I've been looking for them every day."
Edith heard him out with a queer look of incredulity and surprise.
"Why, is it possible you haven't heard the news, Ned? Sheep limit's off; you've won your fight."
"Nobody's been around here to tell me about it," he replied, a little sarcastically, as if to say if that was her notion of a joke he couldn't see it.
"But you've been over in town to-day, and that's all they're talking about there," she said.
"I didn't see anybody but the doctor, and he failed to mention it. What's the big news, Edith?"
"What I told you, Ned: sheep limit's off. Galloway was in town himself this morning trying to square it and explain all this shootin' up his gang's been doing to you."
"You don't tell me?"
"He was; the sheriff told us about it. The sheepmen are already hittin' the road to Jasper in droves to file on land in here—the sheriff says there'll be a hundred thousand sheep on this new range inside of a week."
"Well, I wish Galloway'd done his talkin' a little sooner," Rawlins said. "How does he explain it? What's behind his change of heart?"
"The Wool Growers' Association is behind it," Edith explained. "They're gettin' to be a power in politics in this country, and Galloway's uneasy about his job. He says his lease is just about out on this land, anyhow, and he intended to take his fence away. He's been passin' out the word that the limit's off, tellin' the sheepmen to go to it. He says the shootin' his men did tryin' to drive you out wasn't authorized by him. He side-steps all responsibility, the sheriff says."
Rawlins was not highly elated over the news that Galloway had declared sheep limit off. It seemed to him, somehow, that he had failed, that Galloway had forestalled his triumph and taken every mark of credit from his hand. It would appear to the public that his fight had been useless, untimely, ill-advised. If he had waited a little while, the general impression would be, he might have taken possession in peace, as the rest of them would do.
Still, there would be some who would understand Galloway's hand had been forced by his assertion of rights inside the fence. Those sheepmen who had been there twice as a coroner's jury knew the effort to oust him had been a viciously earnest one. It would be hard to make them believe Galloway had any intention of giving up the land until he saw this persistent homesteader was there to stay, and his staying would be the rift in the fence that would admit so many more that senatorial prerogative must give way before the rush.
Let the credit go where it might, sheep limit was off, the big white spot, like a desert in a geography map, would be blank and mysterious no more. He had won what he had put his foot inside the fence to win, and much sooner, even though at greater cost, than he had expected.
"It's all right," he said, drawing a deep inspiration, releasing all his straining and watch-weariness with it. "But I wish Galloway had begun to talk a little sooner. You've got your homestead, anyhow. You were lucky to get down ahead of the rush, and I appreciate your courage and—and yournerve, much more than I can tell you. Are you going on to the ranch?"
"No, it's all off down there for me. I've got my tent and all I need in the wagon—that's what I went on to Lost Cabin for this morning. I traded in my saddle horse to Smith Phogenphole on that team and wagon. What do you think of the outfit, Ned?"
"It looks like a good team, and I guess the wagon's all right. You know more about that sort of thing than I do, Edith. Are you going to camp on your homestead?"
"Sure. I'm here to stay. And I suppose"—seriously, face averted—"I'll have to marry somebody now, or lose the sheep. No wedding, no present. That's the way Aunt Lila'll figure it."
"I wish there wasn't a sheep in the world!" he said, with such bitterness it seemed he must have taken a's udden dislike for the woolly genus.
"That's no kind of talk for a sheepman," she corrected him gently.
"I couldn't ask you to marry me just to save a band of dirty sheep," he said, ridiculously, as he realized when he saw her put her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh. "I always intended to," he drove on, "I've planned toward it ever since I first saw you, Edith. And now—darn it, Edith, you'd think I wanted to marry you just to save the sheep!"
"Foolish!" said Edith, facing round with an encouraging grin. "It would be just the same with me if there wasn't any sheep. What do you suppose I took up that homestead for?"
"Why," pleadingly, hopefully, "you didn't take it up just because you wanted to be my neighbor always, did you, Edith?"
"I took it up because I had to do it while I was single, and I wanted that land in the family."
"Edith," earnestly, firmly, "when Elmer comes back I'll ask him to stay around here till we go over to town and—and"
"Get it over with?" she laughed. "No, there's not going to be any grand rush about this thing, Ned. I'm going to camp over on my claim, but I'm going to look after you till your arm gets well. It'll be all right—Elmer's going to be here with us. He's taken up the half-section on the west of you."
"The old rascal! not to say a word to me about it."
"Yes, he's quit Aunt Lila, he's going to stock up with a fine breed of sheep and go into it on a big scale. I expect Aunt Lila 'll sell out now; she's talked of it a good while."
Tippie was coming back from his survey of the sheep, evidently satisfied that Mrs. Peck was not hovering around them in the indecision of a changing heart.
"You're a hospitable and neighborly man, I must say," Edith pretended to accuse Rawlins, with the freedom of a lady whose claims on a man have been adjusted to her entire satisfaction. "I've seen the outside of your house from the hills a hundred times, and now when I'm up to it you don't even invite me to look inside."
"It's all kicked up and thrown around in there," he tried to justify himself. "I've been one-sided for a week, and Peck wasn't much good for housework. You must excuse appearances, Edith, and not judge my habits by what you see."
Edith laughed at the disorder, at the crude housekeeping attempts, and unwashed dishes which were spread around, some of them even on Rawlins' cot. But it was the pan of peeled onions under the table that threw her off her balance.
She rocked from heel to toe with the merriment the sight of such generous preparations of onions for one man—there was nearly half a bushel—moved in her. She pointed and pantomimed, speechless in her mirth, tears streaming from her eyes as if the vapors which had vexed Peck's orbs still lingered in the room.
She wore it out presently, and braced up, standing slim and flushed, graceful, strong and altogether lovely in a young man's eyes, sombrero in her hand, her sun-tinted hair coiled quaintly around her head.
"What on earth did you clean them all at once for, Ned?" she wanted to know. "Or did you do it? Of course not, with one hand. It must have been Peck. But why? Were you expecting company?"
Rawlins stood by grinning, feeling himself cornered for a reasonable explanation. He wished he had put the pan under the bed when he had come in for a minute after Mrs. Peck's departure to take off Peck's gun. And seeing the gun lying on the cot where he had thrown it, his lips pressed back in that foolish-looking tomcat grin, the little Scottish tune issuing faintly, very faintly and dispiritedly, indeed, between his teeth, the answer came.
"It was done on a little bet this morning between Peck and me," he said. "Peck bet me his gun he could clean all the onions without shedding a tear, and he lost."