The Desert of Wheat Part 39

"Then be nice, sweet, good to him.... make him love you.... Don't tease him about my other beaux. Think how you can make him like 'Many Waters.'"

"Will you promise--_everything_?" whispered Kathleen, solemnly.

Evidently Lenore's promises were rare and reliable.

"Yes. Cross my heart. There! And you must not tell."

Kathleen was a precocious child, with all the potentialities of youth.

She could not divine Lenore's motive, but she sensed a new and fascinating mode of conduct for herself. She seemed puzzled a little at Lenore's earnestness.

"It's a bargain," she said, soberly, as if she had accepted no slight gauge.

"Now, Kathleen, take him all over the gardens, the orchards, the corrals and barns," directed Lenore. "Be sure to show him the horses--my horses, especially. Take him round the reservoir--and everywhere except the wheat-fields. I want to take him there myself. Besides, father does not want you girls to go out to the harvest."

Kathleen nodded and ran back to the sitting-room. Lenore heard them all go out together. Before she finished breakfast her mother came in again.

"Lenore, I like Mr. Dorn," she said, meditatively. "He has an old-fas.h.i.+oned manner that reminds me of my boy friends when I was a girl. I mean he's more courteous and dignified than boys are nowadays. A splendid-looking boy, too. Only his face is so sad. When he smiles he seems another person."

"No wonder he's sad," replied Lenore, and briefly told Kurt Dorn's story.

"Ah!" sighed Mrs. Anderson. "We have fallen upon evil days.... Poor boy!... Your father seems much interested in him. And you are too, my daughter?"

"Yes, I am," replied Lenore, softly.

Two hours later she heard Kathleen's gay laughter and pattering feet.

Lenore took her wide-brimmed hat and went out on the porch. Dorn was indeed not the same somber young man he had been.

"Good morning, Kurt," said Lenore, extending her hand.

The instant he greeted her she saw the stiffness, the aloofness had gone from him. Kathleen had made him feel at home. He looked younger. There was color in his face.

"Kathleen, I'll take charge of Mr. Dorn now, if you will allow me that pleasure."

"Lenorry, I sure hate to give him up. We sure had a fine time."

"Did he like 'Many Waters'?"

"Well, if he didn't he's a grand fibber," replied Kathleen. "But he did.

You can't fool me. I thought I'd never get him back to the house." Then, as she tripped up the porch steps, she shook a finger at Dorn.

"Remember!"

"I'll never forget," said Dorn, and he was as earnest as he was amiable.

Then, as she disappeared, he exclaimed to Lenore, "What an adorable little girl!"

"Do you like Kathleen?"

"Like her!" Dorn laughed in a way to make light of such words. "My life has been empty. I see that."

"Come, we'll go out to the wheat-fields," said Lenore. "What do you think of 'Many Waters'? This is harvest-time. You see 'Many Waters' at its very best."

"I can hardly tell you," he replied. "All my life I've lived on my barren hills. I seem to have come to another world. 'Many Waters' is such a ranch as I never dreamed of. The orchards, the fruit, the gardens--and everywhere running water! It all smells so fresh and sweet.

And then the green and red and purple against that background of blazing gold!... 'Many Waters' is verdant and fruitful. The Bend is desert."

"Now that you've been here, do you like it better than your barren hills?" asked Lenore.

Kurt hesitated. "I don't know," he answered, slowly. "But maybe that desert I've lived in accounts for much I lack."

"Would you like to stay at 'Many Waters'--if you weren't going to war?"

"I might prefer 'Many Waters' to any place on earth. It's a paradise.

But I would not chose to stay here."

"Why? When you return--you know--my father will need you here. And if anything should happen to him I will have to run the ranch. Then _I_ would need you."

Dorn stopped in his tracks and gazed at her as if there were slight misgivings in his mind.

"Lenore, if you owned this ranch would you want me--_me_ for your manager?" he asked, bluntly.

"Yes," she replied.

"You would? Knowing I was in love with you?"

"Well, I had forgotten that," she replied, with a little laugh. "It would be rather embarra.s.sing--and funny, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, it would," he said, grimly, and walked on again. He made a gesture of keen discomfiture. "I knew you hadn't taken me seriously."

"I believed you, but I could not take you _very_ seriously," she murmured.

"Why not?" he demanded, as if stung, and his eyes flashed on her.

"Because your declaration was not accompanied by the usual--question--that a girl naturally expects under such circ.u.mstances."

"Good Heaven! You say that?... Lenore Anderson, you think me insincere because I did not ask you to marry me," he a.s.serted, with bitter pathos.

"No. I merely said you were not--_very_ serious," she replied. It was fascination to torment him this way, yet it hurt her, too. She was playing on the verge of a precipice, not afraid of a misstep, but glorying in the prospect of a leap into the abyss. Something deep and strange in her bade her make him show her how much he loved her. If she drove him to desperation she would reward him.

"I am going to war," he began, pa.s.sionately, "to fight for you and your sisters.... I am ruined.... The only n.o.ble and holy feeling left to me--that I can have with me in the dark hours--is my love for you. If you do not believe that, I am indeed the most miserable of beggars! Most boys going to the front leave many behind whom they love. I have no one but you.... don't make me a coward."

"I believe you. Forgive me," she said.

"If I had asked you to marry me--_me_--why, I'd have been a selfish, egotistical fool. You are far above me. And I want you to know I know it.... But even if I had not--had the blood I have--even if I had been prosperous instead of ruined, I'd never have asked you, unless I came back whole from the war."

They had been walking out the lane during this conversation and had come close to the wheat-field. The day was hot, but pleasant, the dry wind being laden with harvest odors. The hum of the machines was like the roar in a flour-mill.

"If you go to war--and come back whole--?" began Lenore, tantalizingly.

She meant to have no mercy upon him. It was incredible how blind he was.

Yet how glad that made her. He resembled his desert hills, barren of many little things, but rich in hidden strength, heroic of mold.

"Then just to add one more to the conquests girls love I'll--I'll propose to you," he declared, banteringly.