Dennison Grant Part 8

"He did not. He cantered off back, courteous as he came. And this morning we went out on the job, and have cut all day, and nothing has happened."

"I guess he found you were not to be bluffed," said Zen, and Transley could not prevent a flush of pleasure at her compliment. "Of course Landson has no real claim to the hay, has he, Dad?"

"Of course not. I reckon them'll be his stacks we saw down the valley.

Well, I'm not wantin' to rob him of the fruit of his labor, an' if he keeps calm perhaps we'll let him have what he has cut, but if he don't--" Y.D.'s face hardened with the set of a man accustomed to fight, and win, his own battles. "I think we'll just stick around a day or two in case he tries to start anythin'," he continued.

"Well, five o'clock comes early," said Transley, "and you folks must be tired with your long drive. We've had your tent pitched down by the water, Zen, so that its murmurs may sing you to sleep. You see, I have some of the poetic in me, too. Mr. Linder will show you down, and I will see that your father is made comfortable. And remember--five o'clock does not apply to visitors."

The camp now lay in complete darkness, save where a lantern threw its light from a tent by the river. Zen walked by Linder's side. Presently she reached out and took his arm.

"I beg your pardon," said Linder. "I should have offered--"

"Of course you should. Mr. Transley would not have waited to be told.

Dad thinks that anything that's worth having in this world is worth going after, and going after hard. I guess I'm Dad's daughter in more ways than one."

"I suppose he's right," Linder confessed, "but I've always been shy. I get along all right with men."

"The truth is, Mr Linder, you're not shy--you're frightened. Now I can well believe that no man could frighten you. Consequently you get along all right with men. Do I need to tell you the rest?"

"I never thought of myself as being afraid of women," he replied. "It has always seemed that they were, well, just out of my line."

They had reached the tent but the girl made no sign of going in. In the silence the sibilant lisp of the stream rose loud about them.

"Mr. Linder," she said at length, "do you know why Mr. Transley sent you down here with me?"

"I'm sure I don't, except to show you to your tent."

"That was the least of his purposes. He wanted to show you that he wasn't afraid of you; and he wanted to show me that he wasn't afraid of you. Mr. Transley is a very self-confident individual. There is such a thing as being too self-confident, Mr. Linder, just as there is such a thing as being too shy. Do you get me? Good night!" And with a little rush she was in her tent.

Linder walked slowly down to the water's edge, and stood there, thinking, until her light went out. His brain was in a whirl with a sensation entirely strange to it. A light wind, laden with snow-smell from the mountains, pressed gently against his features, and presently Linder took deeper breaths than he had ever known before.

"By Jove!" he said. "Who'd have thought it possible?"

CHAPTER V

When Zen awoke next morning the mowing machines of Transley's outfit were already singing their symphony in the meadows; she could hear the metallic rhythm as it came borne on the early breeze. She lay awake on her camp cot for a few minutes, stretching her fingers to the canvas ceiling and feeling that it was good to be alive. And it was. The ripple of water came from almost underneath the walls of her tent; the smell of spruce trees and balm-o'-Gilead and new-mown hay was in the air. She could feel the warmth of the suns.h.i.+ne already pouring upon her white roof; she could trace the gentle sway of the trees by the leafy patterns gliding forward and back. A cheeky gopher, exploring about the door of her tent, ventured in, and, sitting bolt upright, sent his shrill whistle boldly forth. She watched his fine bravery for a minute, then clapped her hands together, and laughed as he fled.

"Therein we have the figures of both Transley and Linder," she mused to herself. "Upright, Transley; horizontal, Linder. I doubt if the poor fellow slept last night after the fright I gave him." Slowly and calmly she turned the incident over in her mind. She wondered a little if she had been quite fair with Linder. Her words and conduct were capable of very broad interpretations. She was not at all in love with Linder; of that Zen was very sure. She was equally sure that she was not at all in love with Transley. She admitted that she admired Transley for his calm a.s.sumptions, but they nettled her a little nevertheless. If this should develop into a love affair--IF it should--she had no intention that it was to be a pleasant afternoon's canter. It was to be a race--a race, mind you--and may the best man win! She had a feeling, amounting almost to a conviction, that Transley underrated his foreman's possibilities in such a contest. She had seen many a dark horse, less promising than Linder, gallop home with the stakes.

Then Zen smiled her own quiet, self-confident smile, the smile which had come down to her from Y.D. and from the Wilsons--the only family that had ever mastered him. The idea of either Transley or Linder thinking he could gallop home with HER! For the moment she forgot to do Linder the justice of remembering that nothing was further from his thoughts. She would show them. She would make a race of it--ALMOST to the wire. In the home stretch she would make the leap, out and over the fence. She was in it for the race, not for the finish.

Zen contemplated for some minutes the possibilities of that race; then, as the imagination threatened to become involved, she sprang from her cot and thrust a cautious head through the door of her tent. The gang had long since gone to the fields, and friendly bushes sheltered her from view from the cook-car. She drew on her boots, shook out her hair, threw a towel across her shoulders, and, soap in hand, walked boldly the few steps to the stream rippling over its s.h.i.+ny gravel bed. She stopped and tested the water with her fingers; then brought it in fresh, cool handfuls about her face and neck.

"Mornin', Zen!" said a familiar voice. "'Scuse me for happenin' to be here. I was jus' waterin' that Pete-horse after a hard ride."

"Now look here, Mr. Drazk!" said the girl, whipping her scanty clothing about her, "if I had a gun that Pete-horse would be scheduled for his fastest travel in the next twenty seconds, and he'd end it without a rider, too. I won't have you spying about!"

"Aw, don' be cross," Drazk protested. He was sitting on his horse in the ford a dozen yards away. "I jus' happened along. I guess the outside belongs to all of us. Say, Zen, if I was to get properly interduced, what's the chances?"

"Not one in a million, and if that isn't odds enough I'll double it."

"You're not goin' to hitch up with Linder, are you?"

"Linder? Who said anything about Linder?"

"Gee, but ain't she innercent?" Drazk stepped his horse up a few feet to facilitate conversation. "I alus take an interest in innercent gals away from home, so I kinda kep' my angel eye on you las' night. An' I see Linder stalkin' aroun' here an' sighin' out over the water when he should 'ave been in bed. But, of course, he's been interduced."

"George Drazk, if you speak to me again I'll horse-whip you out of the camp at noon before all the men. Now, beat it!"

"Jus' as you say, Ma'am," he returned, with mock courtesy. "But I could tell a strange story if I would. But you don't need to be scared. That's one thing I never do--I never squeal on a friend."

She was burning with his insults, and if she had had a gun at hand she undoubtedly would have made good her threat. But she had none. Drazk very deliberately turned his horse and rode away toward the meadows.

"Oh, won't I fix him!" she said, as she continued her toilet in a fury.

She had not the faintest idea what revenge she would take, but she promised herself that it would leave nothing to be desired. Then, because she was young and healthy and an optimist, and did not know what it meant to be afraid, she dismissed the incident from her mind to consider the more urgent matter of breakfast.

Tompkins, the cook, had not needed Transley's suggestion to put his best foot forward when catering to Y.D. and his daughter. Tompkins' soul yearned for a cooking berth that could be occupied the year round.

Work in the railway camps had always left him high and dry at the freeze-up--dry, particularly, and a few nights in Calgary or Edmonton saw the end of his season's earnings. Then came a precarious existence for Tompkins until the sc.r.a.pers were back on the dump the following spring. A steady job, cooking on a ranch like the Y.D.; if Tompkins had written the Apocalypse that would have been his picture of heaven. So he had left nothing undone, even to despatching a courier over night to a railway station thirty miles away for fresh fruit and other delicacies.

Another of the gang had been impressed into a trip up the river to a squatter who was suspected of keeping one or two milch cows and sundry hens.

"This way, Ma'am," Tompkins was waving as Zen emerged from the grove.

"Another of our usual mornings. Hope you slep' well, Ma'am." He stood deferentially aside while she ascended the three steps that led into the covered wagon.

Zen gave a little shriek of delight, and Tompkins felt that all his efforts had been well repaid. One end of the table--it was with a sore heart Tompkins had realized that he could not cut down the big table--one end of the table was set with a clean linen cloth and granite dishware scoured until it shone. Beside Zen's plate were grape fruit and sliced oranges and real cream.

"However did you manage it?" she gasped.

"Nothing's too good for Y.D.'s daughter," was the only explanation Tompkins would offer, but, as Zen afterwards said, the smile on his face was as good as another breakfast. After the fruit came porridge, and more cream; then fresh boiled eggs with toast; then fresh ripe strawberries with more cream.

"Mr.--Mr.--"

"Tompkins, Ma'am; Cyrus Tompkins," he supplied.

"Well, Mr. Tompkins, you're a wonder, and when there's a new cook to be engaged for the Y.D. I shall think of you."

"Indeed I wish you would, Ma'am," he said, earnestly. "This road work's all right, and n.o.body ever cooked for a better boss than Mr.

Transley--savin' it would be your father, Ma'am--but I'm a man of family, an' it's pretty hard--"

"Family, did you say, Mr. Tompkins? How many of a family have you?"

"Well, it's seven years since I heard from them--I haven't corresponded very reg'lar of late, but they WAS six--"

The story of Tompkins' family was cut short by the arrival of a team and mowing machine.

"What's up, Fred?" called Tompkins through a window of his dining car to the driver. "Breakfust is just over, an' dinner ain't begun."