章节正文
open when it should have been closed. Inside there
were evidences of curious inspection. She went hot
with an unreasoning anger when she saw the wide-open
door into the kitchen; first of all she went over and
closed that door, her lips pressed tightly together. To
her it was as though some wanton hand had forced up
the lid of a coffin where slept her dead. She stood with
her back against the door and looked around the room,
breathing quickly. She felt the woman's foolish amusement
at the old cradle with the rag doll tucked under
the patchwork quilt, and at her pitiful attempts at
adorning the tawdry walls. Without having seen more
than the prints of her shoes in the path, Jean hated the
woman who had blundered in here and had looked and
laughed. She hated the man who had come with the
woman.
She went over to her desk and stood staring at the
litter. A couple of sheets of cheap tablet paper,
whereon Jean had scribbled some verses of the range,
lay across the quirt she had forgotten on her last trip.
They had prowled among the papers, even! They had
respected nothing of hers, had considered nothing
sacred from their inquisitiveness. Jean picked up the
paper and read the verses through, and her cheeks reddened
slowly.
Then she discovered something else that turned them
white with fresh anger. Jean had an old ledger
wherein she kept a sporadic kind of a diary which she
had entitled "More or Less the Record of my Sins."
She did not write anything in it unless she felt like
doing so; when she did, she wrote just exactly what
she happened to think and feel at the time, and she had
never gone back and read what was written there.
Some one else had read, however; at least the book had
been pulled out of its place and inspected, along with
her other personal belongings. Jean had pressed the
first wind-flowers of the season between the pages where
she had done her last scribbling, and these were crumpled
and two petals broken, so she knew that the book
had been opened carelessly and perhaps read with that
same brainless laughter.
She did not say anything. She straightened the
wind-flowers as best she could, put the book back where
it belonged, and went outside, and down to a lop-sided
shack which might pass anywhere as a junk-shop. She
found some nails and a hammer, and after a good deal
of rummaging and some sneezing because of the dust
she raised whenever she moved a pile of rubbish, she
found a padlock with a key in it. More dusty search
produced a hasp and some staples, and then she went
back and nailed two planks across the door which opened
into the kitchen. After that she fastened the windows
shut with nails driven into the casing just above the
lower sashes, and cracked the outer door with twelve-
penny nails which she clinched on the inside with vicious
blows of the hammer, so that the hasp could not be taken
off without a good deal of trouble. She had pulled a
great staple off the door of a useless box-stall, and when
she had driven it in so deep that she could scarcely force
the padlock into place over the hasp, and had put the
key in her pocket, she felt in a measure protected from
future prowlers. As a final hint, however, she went
back to the shop and mixed some paint with lampblack
and oil, and lettered a thin board which she afterwards
carried up and nailed firmly across the outside kitchen
door. Hammer in hand she backed away and read
the words judicially, her head tilted sidewise:
ONLY SNEAKS GO WHERE THEY ARE NOT WANTED.
ARE YOU A SNEAK?
The hint was plain enough. She took the hammer
back to the shop and led Pard out of the stable and down
to the gate, her eyes watching suspiciously the trail for
tracks of trespassers. She closed the gate so thoroughly
with baling wire twisted about a stake that the
next comer would have troubles of his own in getting
it open again. She mounted and went away down the
trail, sitting straight in the saddle, both feet in the
stirrups, head up, and hat pulled firmly down to her
very eyebrows, glances going here and there, alert,
antagonistic. No whistling this time of rag-time tunes
with queer little variations of her own; no twirling of
the quirt; instead Pard got the feel of it in a tender
part of the flank, and went clean over a narrow washout
that could have been avoided quite easily. No
groping for rhythmic phrasings to fit the beauty of the
land she lived in; Jean was in the mood to combat
anything that came in her way.
CHAPTER V
JEAN RIDES INTO A SMALL ADVENTURE
At the mouth of the coulee, she turned to the left
instead of to the right, and so galloped directly
away from the Bar Nothing ranch, down the narrow
valley known locally as the Flat, and on to the hills that
invited her with their untroubled lights and shadows
and the deep scars she knew for canyons.
There were no ranches out this way. The land was
too broken and too barren for anything but grazing,
so that she felt fairly sure of having her solitude
unspoiled by anything human. Solitude was what she
wanted. Solitude was what she had counted upon having
in that little room at the Lazy A; robbed of it
there, she rode straight to the hills, where she was most
certain of finding it.
And then she came up out of a hollow upon a little
ridge and saw three horsemen down in the next coulee.
They were not close enough so that she could distinguish
their features, but by the horses they rode, by the
swing of their bodies in the saddles, by all those little,
indefinable marks by which we recognize acquaintances
at a distance, Jean knew them for strangers. She
pulled up and watched them, puzzled for a minute at
their presence and behavior.
When first she discovered them, they were driving
a small bunch of cattle, mostly cows and calves, down
out of a little "draw" to the level bottom of the narrow
coulee. While she watched, herself screened effectually
by a clump of bushes, she saw one rider leave
the cattle and gallop out into the open, stand there
looking toward the mouth of the coulee, and wave his
hand in a signal for the others to advance. This looked
queer to Jean, accustomed all her life to seeing men
go calmly about their business upon the range, careless
of observation because they had nothing to conceal.
She urged Pard a little nearer, keeping well behind
the bushes still, and leaned forward over the saddle
horn, watching the men closely.
Their next performance was enlightening, but
incredibly bold for the business they were engaged in.
One of the three got off his horse and started a little
fire of dry sticks under a convenient ledge. Another
untied the rope from his saddle, widened the loop,
swung it twice over his head and flipped it neatly over
the head of a calf.
Jean did not wait to see any more than that; she did
not need to see any more to know them for "rustlers."
Brazen rustlers, indeed, to go about their work in broad
daylight like that. She was not sure as to the ownership
of the calf, but down here was where the Bar Nothing
cattle, and what few were left of the Lazy A,
ranged while the feed was good in the spring, so that
the probabilities were that this theft would strike rather
close home. Whether it did or not, Jean was not one
to ride away and leave range thievescalmly at work.
She turned back behind the bushy screen, rode hastily
along the ridge to the head of the little coulee and
dismounted, leading Pard down a steep bank that was
treacherous with loose shale. The coulee was more or
less open, but it had convenient twists and windings;
and if you think that Jean failed to go down it quietly
and unseen, that merely proves how little you know
Jean.
She hurried as much as she dared. She knew that
the rustlers would be in something of a hurry themselves,
and she very much desired to ride on them unawares
and catch them at that branding, so that there
would be no shadow of a doubt of their guilt. What
she would do after she had ridden upon them, she did
not quite know.
So she came presently around the turn that revealed
them to her. They were still fussing with the calf,--
or it may have been another one,--and did not see her
until she was close upon them. When they did see her,
she had them covered with her 38-caliber six-shooter,
that she usually carried with her on the chance of getting
a shot at a coyote or a fox or something like that.
The three stood up and stared at her, their jaws
sagging a little at the suddenness of her appearance,
and their eyes upon the gun. Jean held it steady, and
she had all the look of a person who knew exactly what
she meant, and who meant business. She eyed them
curiously, noting the fact that they were strangers, and
cowboys,--though of a type that she had never seen on
the range. She glanced sharply at the beaded, buckskin
jacket of one of them, and the high, wide-brimmed
sombrero of another.
"Well," she said at length, "turn your backs, you've
had a good look at me. Turn--your--backs, I said.
Now, drop those guns on the ground. Walk straight
ahead of you till you come to that bank. You needn't
look around; I'm still here."
She leaned a little, sending Pard slowly forward
until he was close to the six-shooters lying on the
ground. She glanced down at them quickly, and again
at the men who stood, an uneasy trio, with their faces
toward the wall, except when they ventured a glance
sidewise or back at her over one shoulder. She glanced
at the cattle huddled in the narrow mouth of the
"draw" behind them, and saw that they were indeed
Bar Nothing and Lazy A stock. The horses the three
had been riding she did not remember to have seen
before.
Jean hesitated, not quite knowing what she ought to
do next. So far she had acted merely upon instincts
born of her range life and training; the rest would not
be so easy. She knew she ought to have those guns, at
any rate, so she dismounted, still keeping the three in
line with her own weapon, and went to where the
revolvers lay on the ground. With her boot toe she
kicked them close together, and stooped and picked one
up. The last man in the line turned toward her
protestingly, and Jean fired so close to his head that he
were evidences of curious inspection. She went hot
with an unreasoning anger when she saw the wide-open
door into the kitchen; first of all she went over and
closed that door, her lips pressed tightly together. To
her it was as though some wanton hand had forced up
the lid of a coffin where slept her dead. She stood with
her back against the door and looked around the room,
breathing quickly. She felt the woman's foolish amusement
at the old cradle with the rag doll tucked under
the patchwork quilt, and at her pitiful attempts at
adorning the tawdry walls. Without having seen more
than the prints of her shoes in the path, Jean hated the
woman who had blundered in here and had looked and
laughed. She hated the man who had come with the
woman.
She went over to her desk and stood staring at the
litter. A couple of sheets of cheap tablet paper,
whereon Jean had scribbled some verses of the range,
lay across the quirt she had forgotten on her last trip.
They had prowled among the papers, even! They had
respected nothing of hers, had considered nothing
sacred from their inquisitiveness. Jean picked up the
paper and read the verses through, and her cheeks reddened
slowly.
Then she discovered something else that turned them
white with fresh anger. Jean had an old ledger
wherein she kept a sporadic kind of a diary which she
had entitled "More or Less the Record of my Sins."
She did not write anything in it unless she felt like
doing so; when she did, she wrote just exactly what
she happened to think and feel at the time, and she had
never gone back and read what was written there.
Some one else had read, however; at least the book had
been pulled out of its place and inspected, along with
her other personal belongings. Jean had pressed the
first wind-flowers of the season between the pages where
she had done her last scribbling, and these were crumpled
and two petals broken, so she knew that the book
had been opened carelessly and perhaps read with that
same brainless laughter.
She did not say anything. She straightened the
wind-flowers as best she could, put the book back where
it belonged, and went outside, and down to a lop-sided
shack which might pass anywhere as a junk-shop. She
found some nails and a hammer, and after a good deal
of rummaging and some sneezing because of the dust
she raised whenever she moved a pile of rubbish, she
found a padlock with a key in it. More dusty search
produced a hasp and some staples, and then she went
back and nailed two planks across the door which opened
into the kitchen. After that she fastened the windows
shut with nails driven into the casing just above the
lower sashes, and cracked the outer door with twelve-
penny nails which she clinched on the inside with vicious
blows of the hammer, so that the hasp could not be taken
off without a good deal of trouble. She had pulled a
great staple off the door of a useless box-stall, and when
she had driven it in so deep that she could scarcely force
the padlock into place over the hasp, and had put the
key in her pocket, she felt in a measure protected from
future prowlers. As a final hint, however, she went
back to the shop and mixed some paint with lampblack
and oil, and lettered a thin board which she afterwards
carried up and nailed firmly across the outside kitchen
door. Hammer in hand she backed away and read
the words judicially, her head tilted sidewise:
ONLY SNEAKS GO WHERE THEY ARE NOT WANTED.
ARE YOU A SNEAK?
The hint was plain enough. She took the hammer
back to the shop and led Pard out of the stable and down
to the gate, her eyes watching suspiciously the trail for
tracks of trespassers. She closed the gate so thoroughly
with baling wire twisted about a stake that the
next comer would have troubles of his own in getting
it open again. She mounted and went away down the
trail, sitting straight in the saddle, both feet in the
stirrups, head up, and hat pulled firmly down to her
very eyebrows, glances going here and there, alert,
antagonistic. No whistling this time of rag-time tunes
with queer little variations of her own; no twirling of
the quirt; instead Pard got the feel of it in a tender
part of the flank, and went clean over a narrow washout
that could have been avoided quite easily. No
groping for rhythmic phrasings to fit the beauty of the
land she lived in; Jean was in the mood to combat
anything that came in her way.
CHAPTER V
JEAN RIDES INTO A SMALL ADVENTURE
At the mouth of the coulee, she turned to the left
instead of to the right, and so galloped directly
away from the Bar Nothing ranch, down the narrow
valley known locally as the Flat, and on to the hills that
invited her with their untroubled lights and shadows
and the deep scars she knew for canyons.
There were no ranches out this way. The land was
too broken and too barren for anything but grazing,
so that she felt fairly sure of having her solitude
unspoiled by anything human. Solitude was what she
wanted. Solitude was what she had counted upon having
in that little room at the Lazy A; robbed of it
there, she rode straight to the hills, where she was most
certain of finding it.
And then she came up out of a hollow upon a little
ridge and saw three horsemen down in the next coulee.
They were not close enough so that she could distinguish
their features, but by the horses they rode, by the
swing of their bodies in the saddles, by all those little,
indefinable marks by which we recognize acquaintances
at a distance, Jean knew them for strangers. She
pulled up and watched them, puzzled for a minute at
their presence and behavior.
When first she discovered them, they were driving
a small bunch of cattle, mostly cows and calves, down
out of a little "draw" to the level bottom of the narrow
coulee. While she watched, herself screened effectually
by a clump of bushes, she saw one rider leave
the cattle and gallop out into the open, stand there
looking toward the mouth of the coulee, and wave his
hand in a signal for the others to advance. This looked
queer to Jean, accustomed all her life to seeing men
go calmly about their business upon the range, careless
of observation because they had nothing to conceal.
She urged Pard a little nearer, keeping well behind
the bushes still, and leaned forward over the saddle
horn, watching the men closely.
Their next performance was enlightening, but
incredibly bold for the business they were engaged in.
One of the three got off his horse and started a little
fire of dry sticks under a convenient ledge. Another
untied the rope from his saddle, widened the loop,
swung it twice over his head and flipped it neatly over
the head of a calf.
Jean did not wait to see any more than that; she did
not need to see any more to know them for "rustlers."
Brazen rustlers, indeed, to go about their work in broad
daylight like that. She was not sure as to the ownership
of the calf, but down here was where the Bar Nothing
cattle, and what few were left of the Lazy A,
ranged while the feed was good in the spring, so that
the probabilities were that this theft would strike rather
close home. Whether it did or not, Jean was not one
to ride away and leave range thievescalmly at work.
She turned back behind the bushy screen, rode hastily
along the ridge to the head of the little coulee and
dismounted, leading Pard down a steep bank that was
treacherous with loose shale. The coulee was more or
less open, but it had convenient twists and windings;
and if you think that Jean failed to go down it quietly
and unseen, that merely proves how little you know
Jean.
She hurried as much as she dared. She knew that
the rustlers would be in something of a hurry themselves,
and she very much desired to ride on them unawares
and catch them at that branding, so that there
would be no shadow of a doubt of their guilt. What
she would do after she had ridden upon them, she did
not quite know.
So she came presently around the turn that revealed
them to her. They were still fussing with the calf,--
or it may have been another one,--and did not see her
until she was close upon them. When they did see her,
she had them covered with her 38-caliber six-shooter,
that she usually carried with her on the chance of getting
a shot at a coyote or a fox or something like that.
The three stood up and stared at her, their jaws
sagging a little at the suddenness of her appearance,
and their eyes upon the gun. Jean held it steady, and
she had all the look of a person who knew exactly what
she meant, and who meant business. She eyed them
curiously, noting the fact that they were strangers, and
cowboys,--though of a type that she had never seen on
the range. She glanced sharply at the beaded, buckskin
jacket of one of them, and the high, wide-brimmed
sombrero of another.
"Well," she said at length, "turn your backs, you've
had a good look at me. Turn--your--backs, I said.
Now, drop those guns on the ground. Walk straight
ahead of you till you come to that bank. You needn't
look around; I'm still here."
She leaned a little, sending Pard slowly forward
until he was close to the six-shooters lying on the
ground. She glanced down at them quickly, and again
at the men who stood, an uneasy trio, with their faces
toward the wall, except when they ventured a glance
sidewise or back at her over one shoulder. She glanced
at the cattle huddled in the narrow mouth of the
"draw" behind them, and saw that they were indeed
Bar Nothing and Lazy A stock. The horses the three
had been riding she did not remember to have seen
before.
Jean hesitated, not quite knowing what she ought to
do next. So far she had acted merely upon instincts
born of her range life and training; the rest would not
be so easy. She knew she ought to have those guns, at
any rate, so she dismounted, still keeping the three in
line with her own weapon, and went to where the
revolvers lay on the ground. With her boot toe she
kicked them close together, and stooped and picked one
up. The last man in the line turned toward her
protestingly, and Jean fired so close to his head that he
- cradle [´kreidl]
n.摇篮；发源地 (初中英语单词) - anywhere [´eniweə] ad.无论何处；任何地方 (初中英语单词)
- hammer [´hæmə] n.锤子 v.重击 (初中英语单词)
- whenever [wen´evə] conj.&ad.无论何时 (初中英语单词)
- driven [´driv(ə)n] drive 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- useless [´ju:sləs] a.无用的，无价值的 (初中英语单词)
- measure [´meʒə] n.量度；范围 vt.测量 (初中英语单词)
- firmly [´fə:mli] ad.坚固地，稳定地 (初中英语单词)
- stable [´steibəl] n.马棚 a.稳固的 (初中英语单词)
- saddle [´sædl] n.鞍子 v.装鞍(于) (初中英语单词)
- barren [´bærən] a.贫瘠的；不生育的 (初中英语单词)
- mostly [´məustli] ad.主要地；多半；通常 (初中英语单词)
- gallop [´gæləp] n.&v.奔驰；急速行进 (初中英语单词)
- calmly [´kɑ:mli] ad.平静地；无风浪地 (初中英语单词)
- observation [,ɔbzə´veiʃən] n.观测；注意；意义 (初中英语单词)
- performance [pə´fɔ:məns] n.履行；行为；工作 (初中英语单词)
- convenient [kən´vi:niənt] a.方便的 (初中英语单词)
- screen [skri:n] n.银幕 vt.遮蔽 (初中英语单词)
- presently [´prezəntli] ad.不久；目前 (初中英语单词)
- sharply [´ʃɑ:pli] ad.锋利地；剧烈地 (初中英语单词)
- knowing [´nəuiŋ] a.会意的，心照不宣的 (初中英语单词)
- weapon [´wepən] n.武器；斗争手段 (初中英语单词)
- inspection [in´spekʃən] n.检查；视察；参观 (高中英语单词)
- tightly [´taitli] ad.紧，紧密地 (高中英语单词)
- coffin [´kɔfin] n.棺材，柩 (高中英语单词)
- pitiful [´pitifəl] a.可怜的；慈悲的 (高中英语单词)
- tablet [´tæblit] n.碑；牌；匾额 (高中英语单词)
- carelessly [´kɛəlisli] ad.粗心地；疏忽地 (高中英语单词)
- solitude [´sɔlitju:d] n.孤独；寂寞；荒凉 (高中英语单词)
- finding [´faindiŋ] n.发现物；判断；结果 (高中英语单词)
- seeing [si:iŋ] see的现在分词 n.视觉 (高中英语单词)
- unseen [,ʌn´si:n] a.未看见的 (高中英语单词)
- hurried [´hʌrid] a.仓促的，慌忙的 (高中英语单词)
- uneasy [ʌn´i:zi] a.不安的；不自在的 (高中英语单词)
- wanton [´wɔntən, ´wɑ:n-] a.顽皮的 n.&vi.荡妇 (英语四级单词)
- belongings [bi´lɔŋiŋz] n.所有物；行李 (英语四级单词)
- rubbish [´rʌbiʃ] n.垃圾；碎屑；废话 (英语四级单词)
- staple [´steipəl] n.&vt.(用)钉书钉 (英语四级单词)
- calves [kɑ:vz] calf的复数 (英语四级单词)
- thieves [θi:vz] thief的复数 (英语四级单词)
- ridden [´ridn] ride 的过去分词 (英语四级单词)
- coyote [´kaiəut] n.小狼，丛林狼 (英语四级单词)
- cracked [krækt] a.有裂缝的；碎的；粗哑 (英语六级单词)
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