anything new.”
Kelsey followed her into the kitchen and saw the table was set with linen and fine china. But there was only one place, and it was obvious that she had just finished eating. A bottle of wine was on the table with a fragile glass beside it.
“Sit down. I give you a drink of my wine, Mr. Cameron. I eat alone. Never with the hired men. I serve them, but I do not eat. It is my right to eat alone if I want.”
She got a small glass from the cupboard, filled it with wine, and handed it to him. “People talk because Ellie Lundgren, she eats alone and has a bedroom to herself. I don’t care. You think I have known only a man like Vic Lundgren? Well, I tell you something, Mr. Cameron. I was married before—handsome man who reads good books, takes me to hear the music in New York.”
She picked up her empty glass, stroked it, murmuring, “Yes, we eat out at places where there is fine dishes and glasses, like this.”
Kelsey shifted uncomfortably, wishing Vic would come in.
She looked up, and her faded eyes were sad. “Oh, he tires fast of me, this fine man in New York. It almost kills me when I have to leave him. But I’m not sorry, Mr. Cameron. He gave me so much! And what have I in this cold, lonesome country? Vic, he is clumsy and work with the cows so long he don’t know how to touch a woman—ach, it sickens me! But I give him a daughter, and she is like him exactly; they both care only for cows. It is that way with most men in this place. They forget a woman is not like the cows, not ready for love any time. They think she is like the animals.”
He was embarrassed and wanted to get away from her. Her voice grated on his nerves, for it was high and thin and sounded ready to break. He drank his wine in a quick gulp.
“I get along, I live,” Ellie went on, pushing back the graying strands of her hair. “I get all the papers from New York. I see what play is there, and the music. Maybe it is foolish that I sit here and pretend Ellie Lundgren sees the play and hears the music.”
Vic came in then, to Kelsey’s relief. “You come for the cow, eh?” Vic shoved his hat back, glanced at Ellie. “Nice, huh? Eat by yourself without me.” There was bitterness in his voice.
Ellie got up and began clearing the table.
“Come on to the corral, Kelsey,” Vic said. “I got that cow in. Figured you’d be along this week.”
The heavy feeling lifted from Kelsey’s heart when he saw the cow. She was beautiful; she was fat from summer range, and her reddish-brown hide had a richness to it, and the white on her was cleanly marked in the right places.
“Best damn cow in the country, yup, yup,” Vic said. “You like her, Scotty?”
“Like her! Man, she’s glorious!” Kelsey went forward, humming under his breath. The cow lifted her head, blew through her nose, and began swinging her tail from side to side.
“She is wild yet,” Vic explained. “She don’t want you close, not till she’s sure about you being her friend.”
“Bonnie Jean,” Kelsey said, his eyes shining. “That’s what I’ll name her. How old is she, Vic?”
“She is yust three-year-old. She is bred as two-year-old and has her calf fine. Don’t need no help. I want you to have the best to start. I spend three days pickin’ this cow. And in spring she gives you one dandy calf.”
“Bonnie Jean,” Kelsey said softly. It was the beginning of his dream, and as he looked at her he saw her multiplied by ten, by hundreds.
“The old woman,” Vic said, dropping his tone, “I don’ know what to do with her. She is worse than she used to be. Doc Bingham, he say she is in the change. Oh, I can’t tell about a woman, Scotty! You think if it is change that works on her, maybe she be better someday, huh?”
Kelsey looked into the rancher’s brown, troubled face. “It’s a thing they go through,” he said, remembering vaguely talk he had heard around the harbor. “She’ll get over it.”
“Amie—I talk to Amie about it, and Amie say with some womans it is all in their heads, this trouble with the change. Amie say too much has been made over it by old womans tellin’ tales to young womans until young womans can’t think about it without bein’ scared. Amie, she say to her it will be a blessing.” And then Vic’s face lighted and he laughed. “Amie, it is right for her, yup, yup. No more kids, huh?”
In the damp, quiet afternoon, with the smell of the earth around him, Kelsey drove Bonnie Jean toward the Red Hill Ranch. He wouldn’t put her among the other cattle, not yet. He wanted her in the corral, where he could get acquainted with her.
As they moved parallel with the meadow he looked across the brown stubble that had a shine to it after the rain, and he thought of the haying season behind him. It was the time of noisy men in the bunk-house, the poker chips clanking at night, and the time of the early beautiful mornings when a man felt good and as if he had been born all over again and no weariness or sadness in him. It was the time of the hot noons, the smell of hay dust thick to the nose and the green-headed horseflies plaguing the horses, and the stink of sweat on the men when they stopped to eat the hot noon meal Hilder brought to the field in the lumber wagon. And there were the afternoons—the cooling breeze dropping over the hogback, and the shadows long on the mountains, and the sound of the mowing machines far down the meadow like the purring of big cats. And the going home at last, riding in from the field in the evening light that took the sharpness off everything as it rounded the hills and the peaks, filling the hollows with dusk—home, and the supper waiting, and a man gulping the food and going to bed, and quiet at last with the cool night wind playing over him in a silver caressing that was like the touch of a loved one.
Now the cattle were on the land that had once been green, and the green was heaped in browning stacks for winter, and the poles of the stackyards were dark from the rain. Quiet was over everything—a waiting quiet, as though the earth were caught between summer and winter.
“It’s like myself,” he said aloud. For the earth had aged from spring to autumn, and surely he had aged. Ah, yes! Sometimes, he thought, I believed I had never been a lad, but now I know that I was. It was this morning that those days were gone forever and I was suddenly a man, with a woman and child to think of. How quickly it comes upon us, then!
Dusk was dropping over the hogback when he came to the corral. He put the cow into it and stood there, so enraptured at the sight of her that he fell into dreaming again.
The voice cut sharply through his thoughts. “Is that a Christly camel I see in this corral?”
He turned and saw Monte Maguire come through the gate, walking with the long free stride of a man. The silvery light of her pale hair stood out in the gathering dusk. She paused beside him, almost as tall as himself. “Where’d she come from?”
“Vic Lundgren’s.”
“What’s she doin’ in my corral?”
“She’s mine.”
“Oh, is that so? You figure she’s better than Two-Bar stuff?”
“No, Mrs. Maguire. But she’s almost as good.”
“Almost?”
“Well, you might have a few better—not many, though.”
There
