Hamlin Garland - Cavanagh, Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West

Lize went on: “I thought I’d got rid of her. She’s been away now for about ten years. I don’t know but it was a mistake – look’s like she’s grown a little too fine-haired for us doughies out here.”

“So much the worse for us,” replied Redfield.

This little dialogue gave the girl time to recover herself, but as Cavanagh watched the blush fade from her face, leaving it cold and white, he sympathized with her – pitied her from the bottom of his heart. He perceived that he was a chance spectator of the first scene in a painful domestic drama – one that might easily become a tragedy. He wondered what the forces might be which had brought such a daughter to this sloven, this virago. To see a maid of this delicate bloom thrust into such a place as Lize Wetherford’s “hotel” had the reputation of being roused indignation.

“When did you reach town?” he asked, and into his voice his admiration crept.

“Only last night.”

“You find great changes here?”

“Not so great as in my mother. It’s all – ” She stopped abruptly, and he understood.

Lize being drawn back to her cash-register, Redfield turned to say: “My dear young lady, I don’t suppose you remember me, but I knew you when you were a tot of five or six. I knew your father very well.”

“Did you?” Her face lighted up.

“Yes, poor fellow, he went away from here rather under a cloud, you know.”

“I remember a little of it. I was here when the shooting took place.”

“So you were. Well, since then much has happened to us all,” he explained to the ranger. “There wasn’t room for a dashing young blood such as Ed Wetherford was in those days.” He turned to Lee. “He was no worse than the men on the other side – it was dog eat dog; but some way the people rather settled on him as a scapegoat. He was forced out, and your mother has borne the brunt of it since. Those were lawless days.”

It was a painful subject, and Redfield’s voice grew lower and more hesitant as he went on. Looking at this charming girl through the smoke of fried ham, with obscene insects buzzing about her fair head, made him feel for the thousandth time, and more keenly than ever before, the amazing combinations in American society. How could she be the issue of Edward and Eliza Wetherford?

More and more Lee Virginia’s heart went out in trust toward these two men. Opposed to the malodorous, unshaven throng which filled the room, they seemed wondrously softened and sympathetic, and in the ranger’s gaze was something else – something which made her troubles somehow less intolerable. She felt that he understood the difficult situation in which she found herself.

Redfield went on. “You find us horribly uncivilized after ten years’ absence?”

“I find this uncivilised,” she replied, with fierce intensity, looking around the room. Then, on the impulse, she added: “I can’t stand it! I came here to live with my mother, but this is too – too horrible!”

“I understand your repulsion,” replied Redfield. “A thousand times I repeat, apropos of this country, ‘Where every prospect pleases and only man is vile.’”

“Do you suppose it was as bad ten years ago?” she asked. “Was everything as dirty – as mean? Were the houses then as full of flies and smells?”

“I’m afraid they were. Of course, the country isn’t all like this, and there are neat homes and gentle people in Sulphur; but most cattle-men are – as they’ve always been – a shiftless, happy-go-lucky lot at best – and some of them have been worse, as you know.”

“I never dreamed of finding my mother in such a place,” she went on. “I don’t know what to do or say. She isn’t well. I ought to stay and help her, and yet – oh, it is disheartening!”

Lize tapped Redfield on the shoulder. “Come over here, Reddy, if you’ve finished your breakfast; I want to talk with you.”

Redfield rose and followed his landlady behind the counter, and there sat in earnest conversation while she made change. The tone in which her mother addressed the Supervisor, her action of touching him as one man lays hand upon another, was profoundly revealing to Lee Virginia. She revolted from it without realizing exactly what it meant; and feeling deeply but vaguely the forest ranger’s sympathy, she asked:

“How can you endure this kind of life?”

“I can’t, and I don’t,” he answered, cautiously, for they were being closely observed. “I am seldom in town; my dominion is more than a mile above this level. My cabin is nine thousand feet above the sea. It is clean and quiet up there.”

“Are all the other restaurants in the village like this?”

“Worse. I come here because it is the best.”

She rose. “I can’t stand this air and these flies any longer. They’re too disgusting.”

He followed her into the other house, conscious of the dismay and bitterness which burst forth the instant they were alone. “What am I to do? She is my mother, but I’ve lost all sense of relationship to her. And these people – except you and Mr. Redfield – are all disgusting to me. It isn’t because my mother is poor, it isn’t because she’s keeping boarders; it’s something else.” At this point her voice failed her.

The ranger, deeply moved, stood helplessly silent. What could he say? He knew a great deal better than she the essential depravity of her mother, and he felt keenly the cruelty of fate which had plunged a fine young spirit into this swamp of ill-smelling humanity.

“Let us go out into the air,” he suggested, presently. “The mountain wind will do you good.”

She followed him trustfully, and as she stepped from the squalor of the hotel into the splendor of the morning her head lifted. She drank the clear, crisp wind as one takes water in the desert.

“The air is clean, anyway,” she said.

Cavanagh, to divert her, pointed away to the mountains. “There is my dominion. Up there I am sole ruler. No one can litter the earth with corruption or poison the streams.”

She did not speak, but as she studied the ranger her face cleared. “It is beautiful up there.”

He went on. “I hate all this scrap-heap quite as heartily as you do, but up there is sweetness and sanity. The streams are germless, and the forest cannot be devastated. That is why I am a ranger. I could not endure life in a town like this.”

He turned up the street toward the high hill to the south, and she kept step with him. As she did not speak, he asked: “What did you expect to do out here?”

“I hoped to teach,” she replied, her voice still choked with her emotion. “I expected to find the country much improved.”

“And so it is; but it is still a long way from an Eastern State. Perhaps you will find the people less savage than they appear at first glance.”

“It isn’t the town or the people, it is my mother!” she burst forth again. “Tell me! A woman in the car yesterday accused my mother of selling whiskey unlawfully. Is this so? Tell me!”

She faced him resolutely, and perceiving that she could not be evaded, he made slow answer. “I don’t know that she does, but I’ve heard it charged against her.”

“Who made the charge?”

“One of the clergymen, and then it’s common talk among the rough men of the town.”

“Is that the worst they say of her? Be honest with me – I want to know the worst.”

He was quite decisive as he said: “Yes, that is the worst.”

She looked relieved. “I’m glad to hear you say so. I’ve been imagining all kinds of terrifying things.”

“Then, too, her bad health is some excuse for her housekeeping,” he added, eager to lessen the daughter’s humiliation, “and you must remember her associations are not those which breed scrupulous regard for the proprieties.”