章节正文
little southwest room where hung the shiny Colt's forty-five in
its worn leather "Texas-style" holster. She murmured incoherent
thanks and sank again to sleep, overcome by the fatigue of
unaccustomed travelling, by the potency of the desert air, by the
excitement of anticipation to which her nerves had long been
strung.
Senor Johnson did not sleep. He was tough, and used to it. He
lit a cigar and rambled about, now reading the newspapers he had
brought with him, now prowling softly about the building, now
visiting the corrals and outbuildings, once even the
thousand-acre pasture where his saddle-horse knew him and came to
him to have its forehead rubbed. The dawn broke in good earnest,
throwing aside its gauzy draperies of mauve. Sang, the Chinese
cook, built his fire. Senor Johnson forbade him to clang the
rising bell, and himself roused the cow-punchers. The girl slept
on. Senor Johnson tip-toed a dozen times to the bedroom door.
Once he ventured to push it open. He looked long within, then
shut it softly and tiptoed out into the open, his eyes shining.
"Jed," he said to his foreman, "you don't know how it made me
feel. To see her lying there so pink and soft and pretty, with
her yaller hair all tumbled about and a little smile on her--
there in my old bed, with my old gun hanging over her that
way--By Heaven, Jed, it made me feel almost HOLY!"
CHAPTER SIX
THE WAGON TIRE
About noon she emerged from the room, fully refreshed and wide
awake. She and Susie O'Toole had unpacked at least one of the
trunks, and now she stood arrayed in shirtwaist and blue skirt.
At once she stepped into the open air and looked about her with
considerable curiosity.
"So this is a real cattle ranch," was her comment.
Senor Johnson was at her side pressing on her with boyish
eagerness the sights of the place. She patted the stag hounds
and inspected the garden. Then, confessing herself hungry, she
obeyed with alacrity Sang's call to an early meal. At the table
she ate coquettishly, throwing her birdlike side glances at the
man opposite.
"I want to see a real cowboy," she announced, as she pushed her
chair back.
"Why, sure!" cried Senor Johnson joyously. "Sang! hi, Sang!
Tell Brent Palmer to step in here a minute."
After an interval the cowboy appeared, mincing in on his
high-heeled boots, his silver spurs jingling, the fringe of his
chaps impacting softly on the leather. He stood at ease, his
broad hat in both hands, his dark, level brows fixed on his
chief.
"Shake hands with Mrs. Johnson, Brent. I called you in because
she said she wanted to see a real cow-puncher."
"Oh, BUCK!" cried the woman.
For an instant the cow-puncher's level brows drew together. Then
he caught the woman's glance fair. He smiled.
"Well, I ain't much to look at," he proffered.
"That's not for you to say, sir," said Estrella, recovering.
"Brent, here, gentled your pony for you," exclaimed Senor
Johnson.
"Oh," cried Estrella, "have I a pony? How nice. And it was so
good of you, Mr. Brent. Can't I see him? I want to see him. I
want to give him a piece of sugar." She fumbled in the bowl.
"Sure you can see him. I don't know as he'll eat sugar. He
ain't that educated. Think you could teach him to eat sugar,
Brent?"
"I reckon," replied the cowboy.
They went out toward the corral, the cowboy joining them as a
matter of course. Estrella demanded explanations as she went
along. Their progress was leisurely. The blindfolded pump mule
interested her.
"And he goes round and round that way all day without stopping,
thinking he's really getting somewhere!" she marvelled. "I think
that's a shame! Poor old fellow, to get fooled that way!"
"It is some foolish," said Brent Palmer, "but he ain't any worse
off than a cow-pony that hikes out twenty mile and then twenty
back."
"No, I suppose not," admitted Estrella.
"And we got to have water, you know," added Senor Johnson.
Brent rode up the sorrel bareback. The pretty animal, gentle as
a kitten, nevertheless planted his forefeet strongly and snorted
at Estrella.
"I reckon he ain't used to the sight of a woman," proffered the
Senor, disappointed. "He'll get used to you. Go up to him
soft-like and rub him between the eyes."'
Estrella approached, but the pony jerked back his head with every
symptom of distrust. She forgot the sugar she had intended to
offer him.
"He's a perfect beauty," she said at last, "but, my! I'd never
dare ride him. I'm awful scairt of horses."
"Oh, he'll come around all right," assured Brent easily. "I'll
fix him."
"Oh, Mr. Brent," she exclaimed, "don't think I don't appreciate
what you've done. I'm sure he's really just as gentle as he can
be. It's only that I'm foolish."
"I'll fix him," repeated Brent.
The two men conducted her here and there, showing her the various
institutions of the place. A man bent near the shed nailing a
shoe to a horse's hoof.
"So you even have a blacksmith!" said Estrella. Her guides
laughed amusedly.
"Tommy, come here!" called the Senor.
The horseshoer straightened up and approached. He was a lithe,
curly-haired young boy, with a reckless, humorous eye and a
smooth face, now red from bending over.
"Tommy, shake hands with Mrs. Johnson," said the Senor. "Mrs.
Johnson wants to know if you're the blacksmith." He exploded in
laughter.
"Oh, BUCK!" cried Estrella again.
"No, ma'am," answered the boy directly; "I'm just tacking a shoe
on Danger, here. We all does our own blacksmithing."
His roving eye examined her countenancerespectfully, but with
admiration. She caught the admiration and returned it, covertly
but unmistakably, pleased that her charms were appreciated.
They continued their rounds. The sun was very hot and the dust
deep. A woman would have known that these things distressed
Estrella. She picked her way through the debris; she dropped her
head from the burning; she felt her delicate garments moistening
with perspiration, her hair dampening; the dust sifted up through
the air. Over in the large corral a bronco buster, assisted by
two of the cowboys, was engaged in roping and throwing some wild
mustangs. The sight was wonderful, but here the dust billowed in
clouds.
"I'm getting a little hot and tired," she confessed at last. "I
think I'll go to the house."
But near the shed she stopped again, interested in spite of
herself by a bit of repairing Tommy had under way. The tire of a
wagon wheel had been destroyed. Tommy was mending it. On the
ground lay a fresh cowhide. From this Tommy was cutting a wide
strip. As she watched lie measured the strip around the
circumference of the wheel.
"He isn't going to make a tire of that!" she exclaimed,
incredulously.
"Sure," replied Senor Johnson.
"Will it wear?"
"It'll wear for a month or so, till we can get another from
town."
Estrella advanced and felt curiously of the rawhide. Tommy was
fastening it to the wheel at the ends only.
"But how can it stay on that way?" she objected. "It'll come
right off as soon as you use it."
"It'll harden on tight enough."
"Why?" she persisted. "Does it shrink much when it dries?"
Senor Johnson stared to see if she might be joking. "Does it
shrink?" he repeated slowly. "There ain't nothing shrinks more,
nor harder. It'll mighty nigh break that wood."
Estrella, incredulous, interested, she could not have told why,
stooped again to feel the soft, yielding hide. She shook her
head.
"You're joking me because I'm a tenderfoot," she accused
brightly. "I know it dries hard, and I'll believe it shrinks a
lot, but to break wood--that's piling it on a little thick."
"No, that's right, ma'am," broke in Brent Palmer. "It's awful
strong. It pulls like a horse when the desert sun gets on it.
You wrap anything up in a piece of that hide and see what
happens. Some time you take and wrap a piece around a potato and
put her out in the sun and see how it'll squeeze the water out of
her."
"Is that so?" she appealed to Tommy. "I can't tell when they are
making fun of me."
"Yes, ma'am, that's right," he assured her.
Estrella passed a strip of the flexible hide playfully about her
wrists.
"And if I let that dry that way I'd be handcuffed hard and fast,"
she said.
"It would cut you down to the bone," supplemented Brent Palmer.
She untwisted the strip, and stood looking at it, her eyes wide.
"I--I don't know why--" she faltered. "The thought makes me a
little sick. Why, isn't it queer? Ugh! it's like a snake!" She
flung it from her energetically and turned toward the ranch
house.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ESTRELLA
The honeymoon developed and the necessary adjustments took place.
The latter Senor Johnson had not foreseen; and yet, when the
necessity for them arose, he acknowledged them right and proper.
"Course she don't want to ride over to Circle I with us," he
informed his confidant, Jed Parker. "It's a long ride, and she
ain't used to riding yet. Trouble is I've been thinking of doing
things with her just as if she was a man. Women are different.
They likes different things."
This second idea gradually overlaid the first in Senor Johnson's
mind. Estrella showed little aptitude or interest in the rougher
side of life. Her husband's statement as to her being still
unused to riding was distinctly a euphemism. Estrella never
arrived at the point of feeling safe on a horse. In time she
gave up trying, and the sorrel drifted back to cow-punching. The
range work she never understood.
As a spectacle it imposed itself on her interest for a week; but
since she could discover no real and vital concern in the welfare
of cows, soon the mere outward show became an old story.
Estrella's sleek nature avoided instinctively all that interfered
with bodilywell-being. When she was cool and well-fed and not
thirsty, and surrounded by a proper degree of feminine
daintiness, then she was ready to amuse herself. But she could
not understand the desirability of those pleasures for which a
certain price in discomfort must be paid. As for firearms, she
confessed herself frankly afraid of them. That was the point at
which her intimacy with them stopped.
The natural level to which these waters fell is easily seen.
Quite simply, the Senor found that a wife does not enter fully
into her husband's workaday life. The dreams he had dreamed did
not come true.
This was at first a disappointment to him, of course, but the
disappointment did not last. Senor Johnson was a man of sense,
and he easily modified his first scheme of married life.
its worn leather "Texas-style" holster. She murmured incoherent
thanks and sank again to sleep, overcome by the fatigue of
unaccustomed travelling, by the potency of the desert air, by the
excitement of anticipation to which her nerves had long been
strung.
Senor Johnson did not sleep. He was tough, and used to it. He
lit a cigar and rambled about, now reading the newspapers he had
brought with him, now prowling softly about the building, now
visiting the corrals and outbuildings, once even the
thousand-acre pasture where his saddle-horse knew him and came to
him to have its forehead rubbed. The dawn broke in good earnest,
throwing aside its gauzy draperies of mauve. Sang, the Chinese
cook, built his fire. Senor Johnson forbade him to clang the
rising bell, and himself roused the cow-punchers. The girl slept
on. Senor Johnson tip-toed a dozen times to the bedroom door.
Once he ventured to push it open. He looked long within, then
shut it softly and tiptoed out into the open, his eyes shining.
"Jed," he said to his foreman, "you don't know how it made me
feel. To see her lying there so pink and soft and pretty, with
her yaller hair all tumbled about and a little smile on her--
there in my old bed, with my old gun hanging over her that
way--By Heaven, Jed, it made me feel almost HOLY!"
CHAPTER SIX
THE WAGON TIRE
About noon she emerged from the room, fully refreshed and wide
awake. She and Susie O'Toole had unpacked at least one of the
trunks, and now she stood arrayed in shirtwaist and blue skirt.
At once she stepped into the open air and looked about her with
considerable curiosity.
"So this is a real cattle ranch," was her comment.
Senor Johnson was at her side pressing on her with boyish
eagerness the sights of the place. She patted the stag hounds
and inspected the garden. Then, confessing herself hungry, she
obeyed with alacrity Sang's call to an early meal. At the table
she ate coquettishly, throwing her birdlike side glances at the
man opposite.
"I want to see a real cowboy," she announced, as she pushed her
chair back.
"Why, sure!" cried Senor Johnson joyously. "Sang! hi, Sang!
Tell Brent Palmer to step in here a minute."
After an interval the cowboy appeared, mincing in on his
high-heeled boots, his silver spurs jingling, the fringe of his
chaps impacting softly on the leather. He stood at ease, his
broad hat in both hands, his dark, level brows fixed on his
chief.
"Shake hands with Mrs. Johnson, Brent. I called you in because
she said she wanted to see a real cow-puncher."
"Oh, BUCK!" cried the woman.
For an instant the cow-puncher's level brows drew together. Then
he caught the woman's glance fair. He smiled.
"Well, I ain't much to look at," he proffered.
"That's not for you to say, sir," said Estrella, recovering.
"Brent, here, gentled your pony for you," exclaimed Senor
Johnson.
"Oh," cried Estrella, "have I a pony? How nice. And it was so
good of you, Mr. Brent. Can't I see him? I want to see him. I
want to give him a piece of sugar." She fumbled in the bowl.
"Sure you can see him. I don't know as he'll eat sugar. He
ain't that educated. Think you could teach him to eat sugar,
Brent?"
"I reckon," replied the cowboy.
They went out toward the corral, the cowboy joining them as a
matter of course. Estrella demanded explanations as she went
along. Their progress was leisurely. The blindfolded pump mule
interested her.
"And he goes round and round that way all day without stopping,
thinking he's really getting somewhere!" she marvelled. "I think
that's a shame! Poor old fellow, to get fooled that way!"
"It is some foolish," said Brent Palmer, "but he ain't any worse
off than a cow-pony that hikes out twenty mile and then twenty
back."
"No, I suppose not," admitted Estrella.
"And we got to have water, you know," added Senor Johnson.
Brent rode up the sorrel bareback. The pretty animal, gentle as
a kitten, nevertheless planted his forefeet strongly and snorted
at Estrella.
"I reckon he ain't used to the sight of a woman," proffered the
Senor, disappointed. "He'll get used to you. Go up to him
soft-like and rub him between the eyes."'
Estrella approached, but the pony jerked back his head with every
symptom of distrust. She forgot the sugar she had intended to
offer him.
"He's a perfect beauty," she said at last, "but, my! I'd never
dare ride him. I'm awful scairt of horses."
"Oh, he'll come around all right," assured Brent easily. "I'll
fix him."
"Oh, Mr. Brent," she exclaimed, "don't think I don't appreciate
what you've done. I'm sure he's really just as gentle as he can
be. It's only that I'm foolish."
"I'll fix him," repeated Brent.
The two men conducted her here and there, showing her the various
institutions of the place. A man bent near the shed nailing a
shoe to a horse's hoof.
"So you even have a blacksmith!" said Estrella. Her guides
laughed amusedly.
"Tommy, come here!" called the Senor.
The horseshoer straightened up and approached. He was a lithe,
curly-haired young boy, with a reckless, humorous eye and a
smooth face, now red from bending over.
"Tommy, shake hands with Mrs. Johnson," said the Senor. "Mrs.
Johnson wants to know if you're the blacksmith." He exploded in
laughter.
"Oh, BUCK!" cried Estrella again.
"No, ma'am," answered the boy directly; "I'm just tacking a shoe
on Danger, here. We all does our own blacksmithing."
His roving eye examined her countenancerespectfully, but with
admiration. She caught the admiration and returned it, covertly
but unmistakably, pleased that her charms were appreciated.
They continued their rounds. The sun was very hot and the dust
deep. A woman would have known that these things distressed
Estrella. She picked her way through the debris; she dropped her
head from the burning; she felt her delicate garments moistening
with perspiration, her hair dampening; the dust sifted up through
the air. Over in the large corral a bronco buster, assisted by
two of the cowboys, was engaged in roping and throwing some wild
mustangs. The sight was wonderful, but here the dust billowed in
clouds.
"I'm getting a little hot and tired," she confessed at last. "I
think I'll go to the house."
But near the shed she stopped again, interested in spite of
herself by a bit of repairing Tommy had under way. The tire of a
wagon wheel had been destroyed. Tommy was mending it. On the
ground lay a fresh cowhide. From this Tommy was cutting a wide
strip. As she watched lie measured the strip around the
circumference of the wheel.
"He isn't going to make a tire of that!" she exclaimed,
incredulously.
"Sure," replied Senor Johnson.
"Will it wear?"
"It'll wear for a month or so, till we can get another from
town."
Estrella advanced and felt curiously of the rawhide. Tommy was
fastening it to the wheel at the ends only.
"But how can it stay on that way?" she objected. "It'll come
right off as soon as you use it."
"It'll harden on tight enough."
"Why?" she persisted. "Does it shrink much when it dries?"
Senor Johnson stared to see if she might be joking. "Does it
shrink?" he repeated slowly. "There ain't nothing shrinks more,
nor harder. It'll mighty nigh break that wood."
Estrella, incredulous, interested, she could not have told why,
stooped again to feel the soft, yielding hide. She shook her
head.
"You're joking me because I'm a tenderfoot," she accused
brightly. "I know it dries hard, and I'll believe it shrinks a
lot, but to break wood--that's piling it on a little thick."
"No, that's right, ma'am," broke in Brent Palmer. "It's awful
strong. It pulls like a horse when the desert sun gets on it.
You wrap anything up in a piece of that hide and see what
happens. Some time you take and wrap a piece around a potato and
put her out in the sun and see how it'll squeeze the water out of
her."
"Is that so?" she appealed to Tommy. "I can't tell when they are
making fun of me."
"Yes, ma'am, that's right," he assured her.
Estrella passed a strip of the flexible hide playfully about her
wrists.
"And if I let that dry that way I'd be handcuffed hard and fast,"
she said.
"It would cut you down to the bone," supplemented Brent Palmer.
She untwisted the strip, and stood looking at it, her eyes wide.
"I--I don't know why--" she faltered. "The thought makes me a
little sick. Why, isn't it queer? Ugh! it's like a snake!" She
flung it from her energetically and turned toward the ranch
house.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ESTRELLA
The honeymoon developed and the necessary adjustments took place.
The latter Senor Johnson had not foreseen; and yet, when the
necessity for them arose, he acknowledged them right and proper.
"Course she don't want to ride over to Circle I with us," he
informed his confidant, Jed Parker. "It's a long ride, and she
ain't used to riding yet. Trouble is I've been thinking of doing
things with her just as if she was a man. Women are different.
They likes different things."
This second idea gradually overlaid the first in Senor Johnson's
mind. Estrella showed little aptitude or interest in the rougher
side of life. Her husband's statement as to her being still
unused to riding was distinctly a euphemism. Estrella never
arrived at the point of feeling safe on a horse. In time she
gave up trying, and the sorrel drifted back to cow-punching. The
range work she never understood.
As a spectacle it imposed itself on her interest for a week; but
since she could discover no real and vital concern in the welfare
of cows, soon the mere outward show became an old story.
Estrella's sleek nature avoided instinctively all that interfered
with bodilywell-being. When she was cool and well-fed and not
thirsty, and surrounded by a proper degree of feminine
daintiness, then she was ready to amuse herself. But she could
not understand the desirability of those pleasures for which a
certain price in discomfort must be paid. As for firearms, she
confessed herself frankly afraid of them. That was the point at
which her intimacy with them stopped.
The natural level to which these waters fell is easily seen.
Quite simply, the Senor found that a wife does not enter fully
into her husband's workaday life. The dreams he had dreamed did
not come true.
This was at first a disappointment to him, of course, but the
disappointment did not last. Senor Johnson was a man of sense,
and he easily modified his first scheme of married life.
- overcome [,əuvə´kʌm]
vt.战胜，克服 (初中英语单词) - reading [´ri:diŋ] n.(阅)读；朗读；读物 (初中英语单词)
- softly [´sɔftli] ad.软化地；柔和地 (初中英语单词)
- pasture [´pɑ:stʃə] n.牧场；放牧 v.吃(草) (初中英语单词)
- forehead [´fɔrid] n.额，前部 (初中英语单词)
- interval [´intəvəl] n.间隙；(工间)休息 (初中英语单词)
- instant [´instənt] a.立即的 n.紧迫；瞬间 (初中英语单词)
- kitten [´kitn] n.小猫 (初中英语单词)
- nevertheless [,nevəðə´les] conj.&ad.然而；不过 (初中英语单词)
- strongly [´strɔŋli] ad.强烈地；强有力地 (初中英语单词)
- reckon [´rekən] v.计算；认为；估计 (初中英语单词)
- countenance [´kauntinəns] n.面部表情；脸色；面容 (初中英语单词)
- admiration [,ædmə´reiʃən] n.赞赏，钦佩 (初中英语单词)
- delicate [´delikət] a.精美的；微妙的 (初中英语单词)
- advanced [əd´vɑ:nst] a.先进的；高级的 (初中英语单词)
- curiously [´kjuəriəsli] ad.好奇地；稀奇古怪地 (初中英语单词)
- circle [´sə:kəl] n.圆圈 v.环绕；盘旋 (初中英语单词)
- distinctly [di´stiŋktli] ad.清楚地，明晰地 (初中英语单词)
- spectacle [´spektəkəl] n.展览；表演；景象 (初中英语单词)
- frankly [´fræŋkli] ad.直率地；慷慨地 (初中英语单词)
- disappointment [,disə´pɔintmənt] n.失望；挫折 (初中英语单词)
- scheme [ski:m] n.计划；阴谋，诡计 (初中英语单词)
- southwest [,sauθ´west] n.&a.西南(方)(的) (高中英语单词)
- fatigue [fə´ti:g] n.&vt.(使)疲劳(劳累) (高中英语单词)
- hanging [´hæŋiŋ] n.绞刑 a.悬挂着的 (高中英语单词)
- fringe [´frindʒ] n.穗；边缘；刘海 (高中英语单词)
- distrust [dis´trʌst] n.&vt.不信任，怀疑 (高中英语单词)
- repeated [ri´pi:tid] a.反复的；重复的 (高中英语单词)
- reckless [´rekləs] a.不注意的；鲁莽的 (高中英语单词)
- harden [´hɑ:dn] v.变硬；变得冷酷 (高中英语单词)
- shrink [ʃriŋk] v.收缩；退缩；畏缩 (高中英语单词)
- mighty [´maiti] a.强有力的 ad.很 (高中英语单词)
- squeeze [skwi:z] v.&n.压榨，榨取 (高中英语单词)
- outward [´autwəd] a.外面的 ad.向外 (高中英语单词)
- desirability [di,zaiərə´biliti] n.称心如意的人(东西) (高中英语单词)
- anticipation [æn,tisi´peiʃən] n.预期；预料；期望 (英语四级单词)
- forbade [fə´beid] forbid的过去式 (英语四级单词)
- foreman [´fɔ:mən] n.领班；陪审团主席 (英语四级单词)
- leisurely [´leʒəli] a.从容地，慢慢地 (英语四级单词)
- humorous [´hju:mərəs] a.富于幽默的，诙谐的 (英语四级单词)
- respectfully [ris´pektfuli] ad.恭敬地 (英语四级单词)
- flexible [´fleksəbəl] a.灵活的，柔韧的 (英语四级单词)
- honeymoon [´hʌnimu:n] n.蜜月 (英语四级单词)
- trying [´traiiŋ] a.难堪的；费劲的 (英语四级单词)
- instinctively [in´stiŋktivli] ad.本能地 (英语四级单词)
- bodily [´bɔdili] a.身体的 ad.亲自 (英语四级单词)
- intimacy [´intiməsi] n.亲密；熟悉；秘密 (英语四级单词)
- joyously [´dʒɔiəsli] ad.快乐地，高兴地 (英语六级单词)
- palmer [´pɑ:mə] n.朝圣者；变戏法的人 (英语六级单词)
- cowboy [´kaubɔi] n.牧童；牛仔 (英语六级单词)
- assured [ə´ʃuəd] a.确实的 n.被保险人 (英语六级单词)
- incredulous [in´kredjuləs] a.不(轻易)相信的 (英语六级单词)
- foreseen [fɔ:´si:n] foresee的过去分词 (英语六级单词)
- well-being [´wel´bi:iŋ] n.幸福；健康；福利 (英语六级单词)
- discomfort [dis´kʌmfət] n.不适；不安；困难 (英语六级单词)
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