The Forbidden Trail, Honoré Willsie [digital e reader TXT] 📗

I were out looking for our pet cow and we ran on Wolf about five miles north of here, heading west and going strong. He had picked up a wagon trail I made last week going for adobe."

"Where is he now?" asked Roger.

"Oh, we left him herding the cow. We'll pick him up on the way back. Let's get started. Lord, but you've grown, Felicia! Come here and let me look at you."

Big brother and little sister looked at each other attentively in the firelight. Dick Preble was still red headed and freckled, with only a vague resemblance to his sisters.

"Four years since we left you, little Felicia. Charley, she looks just as you did at her age, only not so tall. I don't see how Aunt Mary could have been such a fool as to have sent her a week ahead of time."

"Aunt Mary never managed anything correctly in her life, bless her heart," replied the older sister. "Help hitch up, Dicky. We're only five miles from home, Mr. Moore."

They were ready for the trail in a few minutes. Felicia delayed the start by refusing to be separated from Charley and finally Charley's horse was hitched to the tailboard of the wagon and Charley mounted the high wagon seat. Felicia, established between Roger and her sister, was in a state of great excitement and at first monopolized the conversation. But after a time, she quieted down and by the time they overtook Ernest, she was asleep, her head against Roger's arm, her hand clasping one of Charley's. Nor did the greetings waken her.

"Well, Ern, old chap, how's the North Pole?" called Roger.

"You go to thunder!" replied Ernest with a laugh. He tied the cow in the place of Charley's pony and mounting the pony rode ahead with Preble.

Roger wanted a number of questions answered. Where had the Prebles gone after leaving Eagle's Wing and what had they done in the interim, were his opening queries.

"We went to a little town, near St. Louis," answered Charley, "and Father did well. Dick and I both went to college. What in the world are you doing out here, Mr. Moore?"

"For heaven's sake don't 'mister' me, old friends and neighbors as we are. Why, we lived on your old farm till Father and Mother died!"

"Did you indeed? And what brought you out here? Mining?"

"No, some experimenting in irrigating for the government."

"Heaven send that you're successful!" exclaimed the girl. "Dick is going to get some alfalfa in this winter, and I know that our well won't take care of it. But he will go ahead."

"Felicia is startlingly like you, as a child. I have just one picture of you in my mind—standing on the edge of the pool, ready to dive, but looking around at me and laughing. Felicia laughs just that way."

"Poor baby, coming all this way alone! But there seemed nothing else to be done. We couldn't afford to go back for her nor could Aunt Mary come on with her."

"She got along famously and made friends with every one," said Roger. "Jove, isn't it wonderful, running on you people out here!"

"It's going to be wonderful for us, I know," returned Charley.

The wagon rumbled and bumped, and then Charley asked:

"Where is your camp to be?"

"We don't know, except we're to take up some government land adjacent to yours. But your name isn't on our survey map."

"No, we have the old Ames claim," replied Charlotte. "You must plan to stay with us until your camp is set up."

"You're very kind," said Roger.

"It's a God-send to have neighbors coming to us," the girl went on.

Roger made no reply and the road becoming unbelievably rough, Charley gave her attention to holding Felicia on the seat and nothing more was said until Preble called back,

"Careful through this gate, Moore! Wait till I get a light."

"We're home," said Charley. "Wake up, Felicia dear."

Dick appeared in a moment with a lighted candle stuck within and on the side of an empty can. It threw a long finger of light on the gate posts of a corral.

"We call those candle-lanterns, 'lightning bugs,' down here," explained Charley. "'Bugs,' for short."

"I want one for myself," exclaimed Felicia, suddenly. "Only very small, so's my doll can use it."

"You shall have a dozen if you want them, baby!" cried Dick, lifting her down carefully over the wagon wheel.

The men unhitched and attended to the horses, then followed a short, winding trail up to the lighted doorway. They entered a long, low room, with adobe walls a muddy yellowish color. The floor was of rough plank with a single Navajo blanket of gray and black before a little adobe fireplace. There were half a dozen camp chairs in the room, a couch in a corner, covered with a blue Indian rug, a homemade table in the middle, several pelts and shelves of books in the walls and more books and an alarm clock on the mantel shelf. It was a crude room, but one felt its harmony of tone and homelike quality at once.

"Put your suit cases in here," said Dick, leading the way through an open door into a candle-lighted room. It was a barren little place, but there was a comfortable cot on either side of the room and a packing box between that was half washstand, half bureau. Charley appeared in the door:

"Supper'll be ready as soon as the kettle boils," she announced. "Little Felicia is in bed and fast asleep. Dick, you'd better go milk that poor cow."

Dick started off obediently and Ernest sat down on his cot.

"I'll wait till the kettle boils. Gee, I walked a thousand miles. Roger, go out and help with the supper, you lazy brute."

Charley laughed. "There's nothing to do unless you want to start a fire in the fireplace."

Roger followed her to the kitchen, where she pointed to a brimming wood-box. He looked with interest at the immaculate kitchen. The walls were whitewashed, the floor scoured to a silvery purity, the stove was shining.

"What a bully camp you have!" he exclaimed, pausing with his arm full of kindling to look at Charley. For the first time, as she stood watching the teakettle with the lamplight full upon her, he got a clear view of his hostess.

She was slender but not thin. Her shoulders were broad and square and her chest was deep and she was slim-hipped like an athletic boy. She gave Roger a curious impression of strength, very unusual to connect with a girl. Yet for all her height and vigor, she was very lovely. Her hair was darker than Felicia's, a wiry, burnished bronze, in a braided mass about her head. Her face was long, with a well-cut short nose and an oval chin. There were lovely curves in her scarlet, drooping lips. Her eyes were large, a melting brown that was almost black. It was the child Felicia's face, but with a depth of sweetness, a patience and pride in lips and eyes, acquired by what difficulties of living, Roger could not have told, even had he had sufficient understanding of women to have noted the existence of those qualities. He did, however, see her wonderful resemblance to Felicia.

"You are like Felicia, grown up, all of a sudden," he said. "It's hard to rid myself of that illusion. Ernest and I have had a bully time with that small girl."

"I'm so glad to have her here that—well, when you have been in the desert longer, you'll realize what human beings can mean to each other," said Charley. "There! The kettle's boiling. Fly with your wood."

Roger flew. Dick came in with the milk and the four sat down to a supper of baked beans, tea and canned apples. It was a pleasant meal, but Roger and Ernest, weary beyond words, were delighted when it was finished and they could tumble into bed.

Roger was wakened the next morning by the alarm clock in the dining room. Ernest jumped up at once and Roger lighted the candle.

"Six o'clock," he said. "Well, our new job has begun, Ern."

There was a great rattling of the stove lids in the kitchen, above Dick's whistle, then through the windows a light dawning toward the corral. By the time that Roger and Ernest had shaved and were hurrying down the little trail, the red glow in the east had made the "Bug" unnecessary. All the horses were munching alfalfa and Dick was whistling in the cow-shed.

The two men stood a moment at the corral gate and looked about them.

The house faced the west. It had been carefully placed on a broad ledge of the mountain, a few feet above the desert level, yet the few feet were enough to give a complete view of the valley that swept forty miles to the west into the range that held the Colorado within bounds. The sandy levels of the desert swept to the very foot of the mountain, and Dick had fenced in about twenty-five acres. It was not yet under cultivation, but a scraper half-filled with sand near the corral fence testified to Dick's intentions. There were practically no farm buildings: just the cow-shed, with a sheet-iron roof and a canvas covered shelter in a corner of the corral. Shed and corral were on the desert level and a good two hundred feet from the house. As they stood in silence, Dick came up with his pail of milk.

"Great view, isn't it? I'm going to have twenty-five acres of alfalfa here by June."

"I thought you were mining," said Ernest.

"I came to the desert to dry-farm but I got sidetracked with turquoise mining up the mountain yonder. Nothing in that, but alfalfa is thirty dollars a ton and we get five crops a year."

"Which way does the government land lie?" asked Roger.

Dick grinned. "Look in any direction! You'll have no trouble locating yourselves. Let's go in to breakfast."

Charley and Felicia were sitting at the breakfast table and the meal was quickly eaten.

"What do you two do first?" asked Charley as Ernest finished his second cup of coffee.

"Locate the camp site and set up housekeeping, so as not to intrude on you any longer," replied Ernest.

"Shucks! You wouldn't talk that way if you'd lived here a few years," exclaimed Dick.

"You're the first human beings," remarked Charley, "except Dick and a few Indians and old Von Minden that I've seen in six months."

"But don't you ever go to town?" asked Roger.

"Not often. It's a hard trip and some one has to stay with the stock."

Dick looked at Charley with quick reproach. "You know it's always something urgent that takes me in, Charley. And you nearly always refuse to go."

"Nearly always, yes, Dick," replied Charley.

Dick shrugged his shoulders and there was a moment's silence which Ernest broke.

"When are you coming to see us, Felicia?"

"Every day, Ernest," replied the child.

"Mr. Ernest," corrected Charley.

"No! No! We're old friends," protested Ernest.

"And Roger's a friend too," added Felicia. "A dearest friend."

Ernest grinned. "Felicia! How can you forsake me so! Here's Roger, a notorious woman-hater, and you wasting your young affections on him, when you might have me with a turn of your finger."

"You shut up, Ernest!" exclaimed Roger. "Don't pay any attention to him, Felicia."

"I won't," replied the child. "But I'll keep right on liking him, next to you."

"I see some work ahead for me!" ejaculated Dick.

Charley refilled Dick's coffee cup and smiled at him.

"I'll bet on you, Dicky," she said. "We'll have supper at six, Roger. I've put up a lunch for you two men."

"By Jove," said Ernest, "we'll have to supply water to this ranch for nothing, Rog."

"Right!" answered Roger, rising. "Come ahead, old man."

It was not yet eight when they drove out of the corral, along the line of fence that edged Dick's prospective alfalfa field. There was a monument, Dick said, at the southwest corner of the field that would