a chestnut braid down her back, a white pearly skin that even the summer sun could not tan, and dark eyes of velvet softness. Then the heart-numbing pictures faded for the stalwart figure of his father, iron of muscle and of mind, the gray clear eye like sunlight on ice, and the weathered wrinkled face, a record of labor and strife.
* * * *
A second and more thoughtful perusal of Hettie’s letter fixed Ben’s mind upon the most poignant and unavoidable fact of it—that pertaining to his mother. She was failing. What a terrible sickening shock ran through him! Then he was gripped in the cruel clutches of remorse. It was a bitter moment, but short because his decision to go was almost instantaneous. Folding Hettie’s letter, Ben went into the cabin.
“Modoc, saddle the gray,” he said, shortly.
The Indian laid down pan and dishcloth and abruptly glided out. Nevada looked up quickly from his task, with swift curious gleam of eyes searching Ben’s face.
“Bad news, pard?” he queried.
“Yes. Hettie says mother is—is failing, and I must come in to see her,” returned Ben, getting down his spurs and chaps. “It’d hurt like hell, Nevada, in any case, but to realize I’ve broken mother’s heart—it’s—it’s—”
With bowed head he slouched to the bed, dragging his chaps and dropping the clinking spurs, and sat down heavily.
“Ben, it’s tough news, but don’t look on the dark side,” said Nevada, with swift hand going to Ben’s shoulder. “Your mother’s not old. Seein’ you will cheer her. She’ll get well. Don’t be downcast, Ben. That’s been your disease as drink was mine. Let’s make an end to both of them. . . . Shake on it, pard!”
“By Heaven! Nevada, you’ve got something in your mind that you must drive into mine,” replied Ben, rising with violence, and jerking up his head he wrung Nevada’s hand. “I’ve got to get over not caring. Oh, it’s not that. It was that I cared too much.”
“Ben, you can’t care too much,” went on Nevada. “When you don’t care you’re no good. I never cared—till I rode into your camp on Forlorn River. . . . Let’s brace up an’ fool the whole country.”
“If I only had in—in me what Hettie believes—what you believe—” muttered Ben, thickly, struggling for self-control. He flung his chaps on and buckled them with shaking hands. There seemed to be a tight painful knot in his breast that must burst before he could feel relief.
“Ben, I felt this comin’ to us six months back,” said Nevada, soft-voiced, hovering around Ben like a woman. “Reckon I didn’t know what it was. But Hettie gave me the hunch. I tell you our luck has changed. . . . Mebbe I’ll have to kill Less Setter, but that’s neither here nor there. . . . You ride in to see your mother an’ sister. Make them happy for havin’ faith in you. While you’re gone I’ll do a heap of thinkin’. But come back to-morrow night.”
“What’ll you think so hard about?” asked Ben, curiously.
“Wal, most about California Red,” replied Nevada, with utmost seriousness. “Ben, that red-skinned mustang has wintered over here at Mule Deer Lake.”
“Nevada!” expostulated Ben, suddenly transfixed.
“It’s a fact, unless all them cowmen was lyin’. An’ I don’t see why they should lie. Red is pretty darn smart. We thought he was rangin’ round the lava beds an’ Modoc caves, where there was so many wild hosses, or else over in that big country east of Wild Goose Lake. But the son-of-a-gun wasn’t ten miles from here all winter. Nobody chased him. Reckon those who knew didn’t think there was any chance. But I say winter’s the best time to ketch wild hosses. I’ll prove it to you yet.”
“Too late now. Here’s spring and summer coming fast. You and Modoc ride over to Mule Deer Lake to-morrow.”
“Shore will. I hate to tell you, Ben, there’ll likely be more’n one outfit after California Red from now on.”
“Why now, more than last winter or summer?” queried Ben, sharply.
“Wal, I heard a lot of talk in the saloons,” replied Nevada. “One of them new-rich lake ranchers, Blaine it was, has offered three thousand dollars for California Red, sound an’ well broke.”
“Blaine!” ejaculated Ben, in amaze. “That’s Hart Blaine. There’s only one. He’s a neighbor of my father’s. . . . Three thousand dollars! Why, that’s a fortune! He used to be so stingy he wouldn’t give a boy an apple out of his orchard. All that money!”
“You ought to be tickled to death,” declared Nevada. “For no one else but you will ever ketch Red.”
“I didn’t think of the money. But what could Blaine want that wild horse for? Sound and well broke!”
“Say, any rancher in northern California would go broke for Red,” rejoined Nevada. “Some cowboy said Less Setter offers more than three thousand. If he pays it I’m goin’ to think money’s comin’ easy, an’ you can bet I’ll look around on the ranges. . . . Yes, I mean just that, Ben Ide. But the fellows at Hammell reckon Blaine wants California Red for his daughter.”
The idea struck Ben so strangely that he uttered a loud laugh. California Red, that wild fleet sorrel mustang for sweet little Ina Blaine! It seemed so ridiculous. Yet Ina Blaine was the only person Ben could have allowed to possess the great stallion, even in thought. California Red was his, by right of discovery—for Ben had been the first to see the red-flashing colt on the sage—and by the years of watching and striving.
Chapter Two
HONK! honk! honk! The coarse wild notes pierced Ina Blaine’s slumbers. She opened her eyes, and in the dim room with cool gray dawn at the window she did not recognize where she was. Honk! honk! honk!
“Oh, wild geese!” she cried out suddenly, with rapturous recognition. “Oh, I’m home—home!”
All the time Ina had been away at school she had never heard the melodious cry of a wild goose. She had forgotten, perhaps, the most significant feature of the wild life about Tule Lake. But once the loved honk penetrated her mind, what hosts of sweet memories, stretching back to childhood! It was a welcome home. The sound offered some little compensation for the loss of the lake. Ina had been astounded and dismayed to see vast green and yellow and brown fields, crisscrossed by irrigation ditches, where once Tule Lake had rippled and smiled, a great shining oval of water lying between the gray sage hills and the black lava beds. Tule Lake was gone. It seemed to change even the towering white glory of Mount Shasta.
Ina lay there watching the dawn brighten through the casement. This large luxurious room was not the one in which she had spent her childhood and girlhood. That had been a tiny one, whitewashed, with a low slanted ceiling and one small window. “The days that are no more,” she whispered. That dear room, sacred to her dreams, was gone as Tule Lake was gone. The childhood days, so sweet and stinging now in memory, had passed away forever. Her old home was not the same. Father, mother, sisters, and brothers had changed. She realized all this with sadness. While she had been away at school, growing up, nothing at home had stood still.
The sun rose red over the sage hills and streamed in at her window, gilding the new furniture. A cool breath of morning, with a hint of frost, made her snuggle down under the warm blankets. She had awakened happily, but there had come with memory and thought a
