girl rose. “Yes.”
“Well, howdy!” She extended her hand, and Lee took it. “My name’s Jackson – Mrs. Orlando Jackson. I knew yore pa and you before ‘the war.’”
Lee Virginia dimly recalled such a family, and asked: “Where do you live?”
“We hole up down here on a ranch about twenty miles – stayed with yore ma last night – thought I’d jest nacherly look in and say howdy. Are ye back fer to stay?”
“No, I don’t think so. Will you sit down?”
Mrs. Jackson took a seat. “Come back to see how yore ma was, I reckon? Found her pretty porely, didn’t ye?” She lowered her voice. “I think she’s got cancer of the stummick – now that’s my guess.”
Virginia started. “What makes you think so?”
“Well, I knew a woman who went just that way. Had that same flabby, funny look – and that same distress after eatin’, I told her this mornin’ she’d better go up to Sulphur and see that new doctor. You see, yore ma has always been a reckless kind of a critter – more like a man than a woman, God knows – an’ how she ever got a girl like you I don’t fairly understand. I reckon you must be what the breedin’ men call ‘a throw-back,’ for yore pa wa‘n’t much to brag of, ‘ceptin’ for looks – he certainly was good-lookin’. He used to sober down when he got where you was; but my – good God! – weren’t they a pair to draw to? I’ve heard ’Lando tell tales of yore ma’s doin’s that would ’fright ye. Not that she fooled with men,” she hastened to say. “Lord, no! For her the sun rose and set in Ed Wetherford. She’d leave you any day, and go on the round-up with him. It nigh about broke her up in business when Ed hit the far-away trail.”
The girl perceived that in her visitor she had one of these self-oiled human talking-machines “with tongue hung in the middle,” as the old saying goes, and she was dimly conscious of having heard her many times before. “You don’t look very well yourself,” she said.
“Me? Oh, I’m like one o’ these Injun dawgs – can’t kill me. I’ve been on the range so long I’m tough as dried beef. It’s a fierce old place for a woman – or it was before ‘the war’ – since then it’s kind o’ softened down a hair.”
“What do you mean by ‘the war’?”
“Why, you remember the rustler war? We date everything out here from that year. You was here, for I saw ye – a slob of a child.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Virginia. “I understand now. Yes, I was here. I saw my father at the head of the cowboys.”
“They weren’t cowboys; they were hired killers from Texas. That’s what let yore pa out o’ the State. He were on the wrong side, and if it hadn’t ‘a’ been for the regular soldiers he’d ‘a’ been wiped out right hyer. As it was he had to skip the range, and hain’t never been back. I don’t s’pose folks will lay it up agin you – bein’ a girl – but they couldn’t no son of Ed Wetherford come back here and settle, not for a minute. Why, yore ma has had to bluff the whole county a’most – not that I lay anything up agin her. I tell folks she was that bewitched with Ed she couldn’t see things any way but his way. She fought to save his ranch and stawk and – but hell! she couldn’t do nothin’ – and then to have him go back on her the way he did – slip out ’twixt two days, and never write; that just about shot her to pieces. I never could understand that in Ed, he ’peared so mortally fond of you and of her, too. He sure was fond of you!” She shook her head. “No, can’t anybody make me believe Ed Wetherford is alive.”
Lee Virginia started. “Who says he’s alive?”
“Now don’t get excited, girl. He ain’t alive; but yet folks say we don’t know he’s dead. He jest dropped out so far as yore ma is concerned, and so far as the county is concerned; but some thought you was with him in the East.”
The girl was now aware that her visitor was hoping to gain some further information, and so curtly answered: “I’ve never seen my father since that night the soldiers came and took him away to the fort. And my mother told me he died down in Texas.”
Mrs. Jackson seemed a little disappointed, but she smoothed the dress over her sharp knees, and continued: “Right there the good old days ended for yore ma – and for us. The cattle business has been steadily on the chute – that is, the free-range business. I saw it comin’, an’ I says to Jackson, ‘Camp on some river-bottom and chuck in the alfalfy,’ I says. An’ that’s what we did. We got a little bunch o’ cattle up in the park – Uncle Sam’s man is lookin’ after ’em.” She grinned. “Jackson kicked at the fee, but I says: ‘Twenty cents a head is cheap pasture. We’re lucky to get any grass at all, now that everybody’s goin’ in for sheep. ’Pears like the sheepmen air gettin’ bolder and bolder in this free-range graft, and I’m a-bettin’ on trouble.’” She rose. “Well, I’m glad to ’ve had a word with ye; but you hear me: yore ma has got to have doctor’s help, or she’s a-goin’ to fall down some day soon.”
Every word the woman uttered, every tone of her drawling voice, put Lee Virginia back into the past. She heard again the swift gallop of hooves, saw once more the long line of armed ranchers, and felt the hush of fear that lay over the little town on that fateful day. The situation became clearer in her mind. She recalled vividly the words of astonishment and hate with which the women had greeted her mother on the morning when the news came that Edward Wetherford was among the invading cattle-barons – was, indeed, one of the leaders.
In Philadelphia the Rocky Mountain States were synonyms of picturesque lawlessness, the theatre of reckless romance, and Virginia Wetherford, loyal daughter of the West, had defended it; but in the coarse phrase of this lean rancheress was pictured a land of border warfare as ruthless as that which marked the Scotland of Rob Roy.
Commonplace as the little town looked at the moment, it had been the scene of many a desperate encounter, as the girl herself could testify, for she had seen more than one man killed therein. Some way the hideousness of these scenes had never shown itself to her – perhaps because she had been a child at the time, and had thrilled to the delicious excitement of it; but now, as she imagined it all happening again before her eyes, she shivered with horror. How monstrous, how impossible those killings now seemed!
Then her mind came back to her mother’s ailment. Eliza Wetherford had never been one to complain, and her groans meant real suffering.
Her mind resolved upon one thing. “She must see a doctor,” she decided. And with this in mind she reentered the café, where Lize was again in violent altercation with a waitress.
“Mother,” called Lee, “I want to see you.”
With a parting volley of vituperation, Mrs. Wetherford followed her daughter back into the lodging-house.
“Mother,” the girl began, facing her and speaking firmly, “you must go to Sulphur City and see a doctor. I’ll stay here and look after the business.”
Mrs. Wetherford perceived in her daughter’s attitude and voice something decisive and powerful. She sank into a chair, and regarded her with intent gaze. “Hett Jackson’s been gabblin’ to you,” she declared. “Hett knows more fool things that ain’t so than any old heffer I know. She said I was about all in, didn’t she? Prophesied I’d fall down and stay? I know her.”
Lee Virginia remained firm. “I’m not going by what she said, I’ve got eyes of my own. You need help, and if the doctor here can’t help you, you must go to Sulphur or to Kansas City. I can run the boarding-house till you get back.”
Eliza eyed her curiously. “Don’t you go to countin’ on this ‘chivalry of the West’ which story-writers put into books. These men out here will eat you up if you don’t watch out. I wouldn’t dare to leave you here alone. No, what I’ll do is sell the place, if I can, and both of us get out.”
“But you need a doctor this minute.”
“I’ll be all right in a little while; I’m always