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

“Can’t I take your place?” asked Lee Virginia, pity deepening in her heart as she caught the look of suffering on her mother’s face.

“No; you better keep out o’ the caffy. It ain’t a fit place for you. Fact is, I weren’t expecting anything so fine as you are. I laid awake till three o’clock last night figurin’ on what to do. I reckon you’d better go back and give this outfit up as a bad job. I used to tell Ed you didn’t belong to neither of us, and you don’t. I can’t see where you did come from – anyhow, I don’t want the responsibility of havin’ you here. Why, you’ll have half the men in the county hitchin’ to my corral – and the males out here are a fierce lot o’ brutes.” She studied the girl again, finding her so dainty, so far above herself, that she added: “It would be a cruel shame for me to keep you here, with all these he-wolves roamin’ around. You’re too good to be meat for any of them. You just plan to pack up and pull out to-morrow.”

She went out with a dragging step that softened the girl’s heart. It was true there was little of real affection between them. Her memories of Eliza up to this moment had been rather mixed. As a child she had seldom been in her arms, and she had always been a little afraid of the bold, bright, handsome creature who rode horses and shot pistols like a man. It was hard to relate the Eliza Wetherford of those days with this flabby, limping old woman, and yet her daughter came nearer to loving her at this moment than at any time since her fifth year.

In truth, Lize had risen that morning intending “to whirl in and clean up the house,” being suddenly conscious to some degree of the dirt and disorder around her, but she found herself physically unequal to the task. Her brain seemed misted, and her food had been a source of keen pain to her. Hence, after a few half-hearted orders, she had settled into her broad chair behind the counter and there remained, brooding over her maternal responsibilities.

She gave sharp answers to all the men who came up to ask after her daughter, and to one who remarked on the girl’s good looks, and demanded an introduction, she said: “Get along! I’d as soon introduce her to a goat. Now you fellers want to understand I’ll kill the man that sets out to fool with my girl, I tell you that!”

While yet Lee Virginia was wondering how to begin the day’s work, some one knocked on her door, and in answer to her invitation a woman stepped in – a thin blond hag with a weak smile and watery blue eyes. “Is this little Lee Virginy?” she asked.

The girl rose. “Yes.”

“Well, howdy!” She extended her hand, and Lee took it. “My name’s Jackson – Mrs. Orlando Jackson. I knew yore pa and you before ‘the war.’”

Lee Virginia dimly recalled such a family, and asked: “Where do you live?”

“We hole up down here on a ranch about twenty miles – stayed with yore ma last night – thought I’d jest nacherly look in and say howdy. Are ye back fer to stay?”

“No, I don’t think so. Will you sit down?”

Mrs. Jackson took a seat. “Come back to see how yore ma was, I reckon? Found her pretty porely, didn’t ye?” She lowered her voice. “I think she’s got cancer of the stummick – now that’s my guess.”

Virginia started. “What makes you think so?”

“Well, I knew a woman who went just that way. Had that same flabby, funny look – and that same distress after eatin’, I told her this mornin’ she’d better go up to Sulphur and see that new doctor. You see, yore ma has always been a reckless kind of a critter – more like a man than a woman, God knows – an’ how she ever got a girl like you I don’t fairly understand. I reckon you must be what the breedin’ men call ‘a throw-back,’ for yore pa wa‘n’t much to brag of, ‘ceptin’ for looks – he certainly was good-lookin’. He used to sober down when he got where you was; but my – good God! – weren’t they a pair to draw to? I’ve heard ’Lando tell tales of yore ma’s doin’s that would ’fright ye. Not that she fooled with men,” she hastened to say. “Lord, no! For her the sun rose and set in Ed Wetherford. She’d leave you any day, and go on the round-up with him. It nigh about broke her up in business when Ed hit the far-away trail.”

The girl perceived that in her visitor she had one of these self-oiled human talking-machines “with tongue hung in the middle,” as the old saying goes, and she was dimly conscious of having heard her many times before. “You don’t look very well yourself,” she said.

“Me? Oh, I’m like one o’ these Injun dawgs – can’t kill me. I’ve been on the range so long I’m tough as dried beef. It’s a fierce old place for a woman – or it was before ‘the war’ – since then it’s kind o’ softened down a hair.”

“What do you mean by ‘the war’?”

“Why, you remember the rustler war? We date everything out here from that year. You was here, for I saw ye – a slob of a child.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Virginia. “I understand now. Yes, I was here. I saw my father at the head of the cowboys.”

“They weren’t cowboys; they were hired killers from Texas. That’s what let yore pa out o’ the State. He were on the wrong side, and if it hadn’t ‘a’ been for the regular soldiers he’d ‘a’ been wiped out right hyer. As it was he had to skip the range, and hain’t never been back. I don’t s’pose folks will lay it up agin you – bein’ a girl – but they couldn’t no son of Ed Wetherford come back here and settle, not for a minute. Why, yore ma has had to bluff the whole county a’most – not that I lay anything up agin her. I tell folks she was that bewitched with Ed she couldn’t see things any way but his way. She fought to save his ranch and stawk and – but hell! she couldn’t do nothin’ – and then to have him go back on her the way he did – slip out ’twixt two days, and never write; that just about shot her to pieces. I never could understand that in Ed, he ’peared so mortally fond of you and of her, too. He sure was fond of you!” She shook her head. “No, can’t anybody make me believe Ed Wetherford is alive.”

Lee Virginia started. “Who says he’s alive?”

“Now don’t get excited, girl. He ain’t alive; but yet folks say we don’t know he’s dead. He jest dropped out so far as yore ma is concerned, and so far as the county is concerned; but some thought you was with him in the East.”

The girl was now aware that her visitor was hoping to gain some further information, and so curtly answered: “I’ve never seen my father since that night the soldiers came and took him away to the fort. And my mother told me he died down in Texas.”

Mrs. Jackson seemed a little disappointed, but she smoothed the dress over her sharp knees, and continued: “Right there the good old days ended for yore ma – and for us. The cattle business has been steadily on the chute – that is, the free-range business. I saw it comin’, an’ I says to Jackson, ‘Camp on some river-bottom and chuck in the alfalfy,’ I says. An’ that’s what we did. We got a little bunch o’ cattle up in the park – Uncle Sam’s man is lookin’ after ’em.” She grinned. “Jackson kicked at the fee, but I says: ‘Twenty cents a head is cheap pasture. We’re lucky to get any grass at all, now that everybody’s goin’ in for sheep. ’Pears like the sheepmen air gettin’ bolder and bolder in this free-range graft, and I’m a-bettin’ on trouble.’” She rose. “Well, I’m glad to ’ve had a word with ye; but you hear me: yore ma has got to have doctor’s help, or she’s a-goin’ to fall down some day soon.”