The Full of the Moon/Chapter 20
CHAPTER XX
Nan's "Affinity"
The Hon. "Hank" T. Spiser, who had been absent from Hopedale since the trial, drove into town in time to see a figure that strongly resembled his cook emerging from the general merchandise store with his arms piled high with packages, while the greater portion of the leisure class of Hopedale followed in his wake.
Two L.X. pack-horses and a saddle-horse stood at the hitching-post in front of the store.
Spiser stopped his team and demanded sharply:
"What you doin' in town, Clarence!"
"Shoppin'," replied that person easily.
"Shoppin'! What you got in that pack?"
"Socks."
"What you got in that pack?"
"Socks."
Spiser felt in his pocket for his time-book.
"I'll write you a check and you just stay in town and wear them socks out."
"Thanks—much obliged—but I promised the boys I'd git back; and while I think of it, Spiser, I wish you wouldn't smoke them horses up like that. I hate to see a good team abused."
Mr. Spiser frankly stared.
Was his cook as locoed as a sheep-herder, or was he merely looking for trouble? As a precaution, Spiser took the whip from its socket and held the butt of it in one hand, while, with an indelible pencil, he filled out a check with the other.
"Thanks—much obliged." Clarence read the check carefully. "Now, while you're writin', jest look up what's comin' to you from the company, and make out one to yourself."
Again Spiser stared.
"What ails you?" he replied with a tolerant air. "Been sleepin' in the moonlight?"
The cook shook his head.
"I'm an heiress—me man."
"You're what?"
"M'uncle's dead."
"Oh, crazy with grief."
"Joy," corrected Clarence. "And, Spiser, when you speak to me in public like this, I wish you wouldn't be so familiar. Just take the time and call me Mister—Mister Strunk."
The highly entertained listeners saw Spiser's jaw drop.
"Not—the Los Angeles Strunk?"
Clarence nodded.
"The same. Named for my lovin' Uncle Clarence who showed his affection by kickin' me out so's I'd learn what a dollar is worth. I own seventy-five per cent. of the stock in the L.X. Cattle Company and I don't mind sayin' that it's worth all I'm gettin' to go through life tagged 'Clarence.' However, me man, they could 'a' added on 'Percy' and 'Claude' if it'd give me the privilege of tyin' a tin-can onto you when I come into my rights. Spiser, you're bounced. Git out o' that buggy and gimme the whip! Ridin' horseback is too fatiguin'."
It was true enough, and Clarence Strunk had the necessary papers to prove it, which same he produced with alacrity for Spiser's inspection.
"They're air-tight and water-proof!" declared Mr. Strunk. "And furthermore," he went on, "while I'm no hand to toot my own horn it looks to me like you ought to have seen that I was somebody out of the ordinary. I got a easy, careless way about me that shows pedigree and then these long, taperin' fingers and p'inted ears Say, git down out that buggy, it makes me mad to look at you!"
So it came about that Clarence Strunk, leading a saddle-horse and two pack-horses behind a four-wheeled vehicle, attempted to drive through the cañon after the cloudburst had passed, just a little bit sooner than would a person who had not been in Hopedale drinking heartily to his own health.
The water, though falling rapidly, was still running swift and nearly belly-deep when Mr. Clarence Strunk urged his horses into the stream.
In spite of the fact that the water was swishing around his ankles, and he had several narrow escapes from upset, he was half-way through the cañon and congratulating himself upon overcoming the cowardly impulse to wait until the creek subsided a little more, when he heard a faint hail.
He looked ahead of him, behind him, and straight up. No one was in sight.
He smacked his ears smartly in case something had gone amiss inside his head.
"Hello!"
Mr. Strunk felt suddenly lonesome in the gloom of the cañon and shivered. The thought came that perhaps his uncle was going to haunt him to see how he spent his money.
"Hello!"
The voice was louder and sounded less as though it came from the grave.
Then something ahead moved on the apparently perpendicular cañon wall.
"Gee-e-e whiz!" Clarence Strunk's eyes bulged.
The horses splashed a little faster toward a clinging figure.
"My grip's nearly gone!" Bob smiled faintly, but his face was white with the strain as he spread like a star-fish on the cañon wall, the ball of one foot resting on a slight projection, the fingers of one hand thrust in a crevice, and the other hand gripping a tiny shrub that somehow had spread its roots in a bit of shallow, uncertain soil.
"I can't find the foothold below and I dare not let go to look."
Clarence Strunk was quite sober now, but even with his wits about him it was no safe or easy task to reach the place to which Bob had climbed in the one desperate chance he had seen to save his life.
"The swiftness of it made me dizzy," said Bob, when he was down and seated in the buckboard. "The sprawling limbs of a tree nearly raked me off once, and the noise"—he shuddered—"the roar, the grinding together of boulders rolling like pebbles; and I saw the saddle-horse go by with his legs up! It made me nervous."
"It musta," agreed Clarence. He added reminiscently: "I mind how I felt when a Swede chased me with a knife because he said I hadn't put no lemon in the lemon pie. To be cut off in the flower of your youth thataway, with a jackknife or a cloudburst or a chunk of lead—it's hidj'ous. Do you think the rest of them made it?"
"I think so. Listen!"
"That's them!"
They heard the splashing of horses, and then Nan and Edith and Ben came around a jutting point. The riders stopped as though they doubted their own eyes, for they, too, had seen Edith's cow-pony tumbling in the flood.
Nan, who had been leaning over the saddle-horn, straightened herself.
"Bob!" she cried, but he was too far away to hear, nor did he see her white, grief-stricken face before the color returned.
They were still all but speechless with astonishment when they met, but Mr. Strunk said breezily: "Lemme make you acquainted with the human fly."
They laughed, all of them, a little hysterically.
"I didn't think you had a chance on earth," said Ben.
"I hadn't but one," Bob replied. "And now if I can hire Spiser's horse here"—he looked at the saddle-horse behind the buckboard.
"Spiser's horse? Clarence Strunk's Horse—Clarence Strunk's buggy—Clarence Strunk's pack-horse loaded with thirty dozen pairs of socks and fourteen cooked shirts! Clarence Strunk, boss of the L.X. outfit."
Mr. Strunk's starched bosom crackled as he smote his chest. "That's me! M'uncle's dead."
They separated in the cañon, Ben and Edith to go on their way, and Nan and Bob to return to Hopedale.
"Good-by, Ben." Bob heard the catch in Nan's voice, and he turned his horse from their leave-taking, but not too soon to see Ben take her hand in both of his and raise it to his lips.
They rode in silence the greater part of the way to Hopedale, Bob absorbed in thought and Nan tongue-tied with a new feeling of shyness. Below the town they stopped to let their horses drink, and to walk a bit themselves.
"Our last ride together. Nan," said Bob, staring absently at the stream which had not yet cleared itself.
Nan felt her heart jump, and her voice was startled when she repeated:
"Our last?"
"I am going into the hills with French Pete to-morrow," he said quietly. "I know that yon have decided as to your future, and I have no place in your plans. At last I have come to see that I have no chance of winning your love, and I mean never to bother you with it again.
"You will forgive me, Nan, won't you, if I have annoyed you with my persistence? But it was hard—so very hard to give you up. I could not help it; I loved you so! I wanted you so! And as long as I thought there was no one else the hope would persist that some day you might come to care for me in the way that I wanted you to care. There is some one else now and you do not need me any more, so I will go. God bless you. Nan, and I hope you will be happy!"
"Bob!" She laid her hand upon his arm.
"Don't pity me. Nan. This disappointment has come to many a better man than I am. You've been frank and fair with me. I bear you no resentment. There is no bitterness toward you in my heart—nothing but love."
"Don't go!"
"But can't you see, Nan, it—hurts me so to be near you now loving you as I do?"
"But you're wrong!" she cried passionately. "I was wrong! I've loved you all the time, and I didn't know it until I felt you drawing away from me. If I hadn't been sure before, I was sure when I thought you had gone forever. Ben knows, too. I was dreadful—I was beside myself almost because he dared be alive, so brutally safe and sound when you were dead!"
"Oh, Nan!" he cried, bewildered. "You are not mistaken?"
She shook her head, crying vehemently:
"No, no, no! I'm not mistaken. You play a mighty part in my happiness. You are all of it!"
"But, Ben! I don't understand"
"Can't you see? It is through Ben that I really have found you. If it had not been for him, perhaps I should not have appreciated your loyalty, your genuine unselfishness, until it was too late. Ben is fine in many ways, and I thought I was in love with him because I am in love with the life which he typifies. I was to have given Ben my answer to-day, and I could not make up my mind. I told him back there in the cañon when we said good-by, but he already knew.
"'It's all right, Nan,' he said. 'I think a heap of you, and I reckon I always will, but I might 'a' knowed' that a range cayuse and a blooded horse don't make any kind of a team. I don't blame you,' he said, 'and you mustn't blame yourself, for you've been on the square with me right along. I'm better for having known you. It's made me see a whole lot of things different, and maybe some day I can send you word that the cowpuncher you used to know is somebody out here in the cactus and sage-brush!'"
"Nan!" Bob gathered her in his arms. "I can't believe my good luck yet!"
"You won't," said Nan, "until you kiss me."
They were married in the whitewashed church in Hopedale. Nan insisted.
"The family will expect something of me," she declared, "for the moon is full, and it's the last really good chance I'll ever have to shock them."
Mrs. Gallagher, Fritz Poth, Mr. McCaffrey, were conspicuous among the witnesses. And Clarence Strunk was there, having come to town to complete arrangements for the sale and transfer of his stock in the L.X. Cattle Company to Bob.
"The house," said Bob to Ben, who was offered the management, "is much more comfortable than the house in the Longhorn bosque, and Edie, you know"—with his quiet smile—"is a good girl."
The telegram which Nan wrote gleefully, aged the family by years. It read:
"Will be home a week from to-day with my affinity. Nan."
THE END