John Whitson - Justin Wingate, Ranchman

She crumpled a cottonwood leaf in her fingers. With a boldness that gripped his throat he slipped his hand along the back of the arbor seat.

“And if—if I had never met you?”

“Then you wouldn’t have known me!”

“No, I suppose not; but, as you said, I might have; it seems to me that something would have drawn me to you, wherever you were.”

The hot color dyed her fair cheeks. Her brown eyes dropped and were veiled by their dark lashes. A strand of the brown hair blown in a tangle across the oval of her face, the delicate curve of the white throat, the yielding touch of her body as he pressed his extended arm close up against it, intoxicated his youthful senses.

“I don’t want to think how it would have been if I had never known you,” he declared earnestly. “We have been good friends a long time, Lucy.”

“We’re good friends now, aren’t we?”

“Yes, but I want it to be something more than just friends.”

He pressed his arm closer about her and bent toward her.

“I hope you won’t mind my saying it; but I do love you, and have from—from the very first. I didn’t understand so well what it meant then, but now I know—I know that I love you, and love you, and love you!” The arm tightened still more. “And—and if you would only say that you love me, too, and that—”

She lifted her face to his. A dash of tears shone in the brown eyes.

“I—I have—hurt your feelings!”

“No, Justin.”

The sight of those tears, and her tremulous lips, so moved him that, with an impulsive motion, and a courage he would not have thought possible, he stooped and kissed her.

“If you would only say that you do love me,” he urged.

“I do love you, Justin,” she said, with girlish earnestness, “and you ought to know that I do.”

“I have always dreamed of this,” he declared, putting both arms about her and drawing her close against his heart. “I have always dreamed of this; that we might love each other, and be always together. I think that has been in my heart since the day I first saw you.”

He held her tightly now, as if thus he would keep her near him forever.

“Have you truly loved me always?” she asked, after a long silence.

“Always; ever since I knew you!”

“But you—you did care for Mary, before I came?”

“I always liked Mary.”

“And you like her now?”

“Yes, but I love you; and that is very different.”

She sat quite still, but picked at the leaf of the cotton wood. He seemed so strong and so masterful that the touch of his hands and the pressure of his arms gave her a delightful sense of weakness and dependence, a hitherto unknown feeling.

“You never cared for Mary as—as you do me?”

“I truly never loved Mary at all; I liked her, and we used to have great fun together. But we were only children then, you know!”

She saw one of the hands that enfolded her; the sleeve of his coat was drawn up slightly, disclosing the clear white of the skin and the deep line of tan at the wrist. She ventured to look at his face—the side of it turned toward her; it was as tanned as his hand. Something more than admiration shone in her brown eyes.

“And now you think you are a big man!”

“I am older,” he said, simply.

“And was that—that the reason why you tamed my mustang that day, so that he wouldn’t be killed? Because you loved me? I’ve wondered about that.”

“That was the reason; but I was anxious, too, to save him.”

She was silent again, as if pondering this.

“I’ve thought that might be the reason; and, you won’t laugh at me if I tell you, that’s why I’ve ridden him so much since. Uncle Philip didn’t want me to go near him after that. But I would; and I’ve ridden him ever since; though Pearl has told me a dozen times that he would throw me and kill me. But I was going to ride him if I could, because—because you conquered him—for me.”

He kissed her again, softly.

“You musn’t take too many risks with the mustang; for—for some time, you know, you are going to marry me, I hope?”

She did not answer.

“It’s a long way off, that some time, but—”

She did not look at him.

“Yes, some time, if I can,” she said timidly.

“If you can?”

“If Uncle Philip will let me.”

“He’s only your guardian, and you’ll be of age by and by.”

“It seems a good while yet.”

“But it will come.”

“Yes, it will come.”

“I’ll wait until that some time,” he promised in a low voice.

Time sped swiftly beneath the cottonwoods. To the boy and girl in the morning glow of love hours are minutes. They did not know they had so many things to talk over. Every subject was colored with a new light and had a new relationship. But love itself was uppermost, on their lips and in their hearts.

Justin bore away from that arbor seat a conflicting sense of exaltation and unworthiness. The warm inner light that illumined him flowed out upon the world and brightened it. He walked with a sense of buoyancy. There was a tang in the air and a glow in the sky before unknown.

Meeting Ben Davison he had a new sense of comradeship with him; and though Ben talked of the young English setter he had recently purchased, and sought to show off the good points of the dog, Justin was thinking of Ben himself, who was a cousin to Lucy, and now shared in some degree her superior merits.

Also, when Philip Davison came out of the ranch house and walked toward the horse corrals, the glance of his blue eyes seemed brighter and kindlier, his manner more urbane and noble, and the simple order he gave to Ben concerning work to be done fell in kindlier tone. Though Davison’s words bit like acid sometimes, Justin was resolved now to remember always that he was Lucy’s uncle and guardian.

Walking homeward, Justin looked now and then at the ranch house. He had seen Lucy flutter into it like a bird; she was in that house now, he reflected, brightening it with her presence. The house, the grounds, and more than all the cottonwood grove, became sacred.

The feeling which hallowed the mere local surroundings of love held its place tenaciously in Justin’s heart and seemed not likely to pass away. It was no sickly sentimentality, but had the power to strengthen his inner life and add to his growing manliness.

Justin was employed on the ranch now, and though there were many distasteful things connected with the work, he desired to remain, because it gave him so many opportunities to be near Lucy Davison. The necessary cruelties connected with the rearing and handling of cattle on a great range sickened him at times; for a love that was almost a worship of all life, the lower forms equally with the higher, had been instilled by Clayton into every fibre of his being. To Justin now even the elements seemed to stir with consciousness. Did not certain chemicals exhibited by Clayton rush together into precipitates and crystals, as if they loved and longed to be united, and did not so common a thing as fire throw out tentacles of flame, and grapple with the wood as if hungry? And who was to say that the precipitates and crystals and the fire did not know? Certainly not ignorant man.

With this love of every form of life there grew a manly gentleness, broken strangely at times by outbursts of temper, so that often it seemed whimsical.

Riding forth one day, in cowboy attire, along the line fence that held in the cattle from the cultivated valley lands, he came upon Philip Davison engaged in angry controversy with a young man of somewhat shabby appearance. The shrewd little eyes of this man observed Justin closely. Beside the fence was a dirty prairie schooner, from which the man had descended, and to it two big raw-boned farm horses were hitched. Eyeing Justin the man pushed back his hat, then awkwardly extended his hand.