Eugene Rhodes - Bransford of Rainbow Range

“And you’ll tell me about it?”

“After I smoke. Got to study up some plausible excuses, you know.”

She studied him as she packed. It was a good face – lined, strong, expressive, vivid; gay, resolute, confident, alert – reckless, perhaps. There were lines of it disused, fallen to abeyance. What was well with the man had prospered; what was ill with him had faded and dimmed. He was not a young man – thirty-seven, thirty-eight – (she was twenty-four) – but there was an unquenchable boyishness about him, despite the few frosty hairs at his temples. He bore his hard years jauntily: youth danced in his eyes. The explorer nodded to herself, well pleased. He was interesting – different.

The tale suffered from Bransford’s telling, as any tale will suffer when marred by the inevitable, barbarous modesty of its hero. It was a long story, cozily confidential; and there were interruptions. The sun was low ere it was done.

“Now the song,” said Jeff, “and then – ” He did not complete the sentence; his face clouded.

“What shall I sing?”

“How can I tell? What you will. What can I know about good songs – or anything else?” responded Bransford in sudden moodiness and dejection – for, after the song, the end of everything! He flinched at the premonition of irrevocable loss.

The girl made no answer. This is what she sang. No; you shall not be told of her voice. Perhaps there is a voice that you remember, that echoes to you through the dusty years. How would you like to describe that?

Jeff’s back was to a tree, his hat over his eyes. He pushed it up.

“Thank you,” he said; and then, quite directly: “Are you rich?”

“Not – very,” said Ellinor, a little breathless at the blunt query.

“I’m going to be rich,” said Jeff steadily.

“‘I’m going to be a horse,’ quoth the little eohippus.” The girl retorted saucily, though secretly alarmed at the import of this examination.

“Ex-actly. So that’s settled. What is your name?”

“Hoffman.”

“Where do you live, Hoffman?”

“Ellinor,” supplemented the girl.

“Ellinor, then. Where do you live, Ellinor?”

“In New York – just now. Not in town. Upstate. On a farm. You see, grandfather’s growing old – and he wanted father to come back.”

“New York’s not far,” said Jeff.

A sudden panic seized the girl. What next? In swift, instinctive self-defense she rose and tripped to the tree where lay her neglected sketch-book, bent over – and started back with a little cry of alarm. With a spring and a rush, Jeff was at her side, caught her up and glared watchfully at bush and shrub and tufted grass.

“Mr. Bransford! Put me down!”

“What was it? A rattlesnake?”

“A snake? What an idea! I just noticed how late it was. I must go.”

Crestfallen, sheepishly, Mr. Bransford put her down, thrust his hands into his pockets, tilted his chin and whistled an aggravating little trill from the Rye twostep.

“Mr. Bransford!” said Ellinor haughtily.

Mr. Bransford’s face expressed patient attention.

“Are you lame?”

Mr. Bransford’s eye estimated the distance covered during the recent snake episode, and then gave to Miss Hoffman a look of profound respect. His shoulders humped up slightly; his head bowed to the stroke: he stood upon one foot and traced the Rainbow brand in the dust with the other.

“I told you all along I wasn’t hurt,” he said aggrieved. “Didn’t I, now?”

“Are you lame?” she repeated severely, ignoring his truthful saying.

“‘Not – very.’” The quotation marks were clearly audible.

“Are you lame at all?”

“No, ma’am – not what you might call really lame. Uh – no, ma’am.”

“And you deceived me like that!” Indignation checked her. “Oh, I am so disappointed in you! That was a fine, manly thing for you to do!”

“It was such a lovely time,” observed the culprit doggedly. “And such a chance might never happen again. And it isn’t my fault I wasn’t hurt, you know. I’m sure I wish I was.”

She gave him an icy glare.

“Now see what you’ve done! Your men haven’t come and you won’t stay with Mr. Lake. How are you going to get home? Oh, I forgot – you can walk, as you should have done at first.”

The guilty wretch wilted yet further. He shuffled his feet; he writhed; he positively squirmed. He ventured a timid upward glance. It seemed to give him courage. Prompted, doubtless, by the same feeling which drives one to dive headlong into dreaded cold water, he said, in a burst of candor:

“Well, you see, ma’am, that little horse now – he really ain’t got far. He got tangled up over there a ways – ”

The girl wheeled and shot a swift, startled glance at the little eohippus on the hillside, who had long since given over his futile struggles and was now nibbling grass with becoming resignation. She turned back to Bransford. Slowly, scathingly, she looked him over from head to foot and slowly back again. Her expression ran the gamut – wonder, anger, scorn, withering contempt.

“I think I hate you!” she flamed at him.

Amazement triumphed over the other emotions then – a real amazement: the detected impostor had resumed his former debonair bearing and met her scornful eye with a slow and provoking smile.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said reassuringly. “On the contrary, you don’t hate me at all!”

“I’m going home, anyhow,” she retorted bitterly. “You may draw your own conclusions.”

Still, she did not go, which possibly had a confusing effect upon his inferences.

“Just one minute, ma’am, if you please. How did you know so pat where the little black horse was? I didn’t tell you.”

Little waves of scarlet followed each other to her burning face.

“I’m not going to stay another moment. You’re detestable! And it’s nearly sundown.”

“Oh, you needn’t hurry. It’s not far.”

She followed his gesture. To her intense mortification she saw the blue smoke of her home campfire flaunting up from a gully not half a mile away. It was her turn to droop now. She drooped.

There was a painful silence. Then, in a far-off, hard, judicial tone:

“How long, ma’am, if I may ask, have you known that the little black horse was tangled up?”

Miss Ellinor’s eyes shifted wildly. She broke a twig from a mahogany bush and examined the swelling buds with minutest care.

“Well?” said her ruthless inquisitor sternly.

“Since – since I went for your hat,” she confessed in a half whisper.

“To deceive me so!” Pain, grief, surprise, reproach, were in his words. “Have you anything to say?” he added sadly.

A slender shoe peeped out beneath her denim skirt and tapped on a buried boulder. Ellinor regarded the toetip with interest and curiosity. Then, half-audibly: