Jessica Trent: Her Life on a Ranch

“But this was your place, Joe Dean. I saw you get up from it.”

“It’s yours now, Lady Jess. You do me proud. What’s the good word? How’s old Pedro?”

“Well just plain, every day well. Never been sick a minute. Had all that climb for nothing; or, maybe, not quite for nothing, because I met a stranger up there and liked him; and saw John Benton as I came down, and–found this! Isn’t that a plume to be proud of? Raised right here on our little Sobrante.”

“Whew! It’s a beauty, sure enough. A dozen like that would be worth a tidy sum. How found it?”

“Has anybody seen King Zu? Though, of course, I know it can’t be his. He was plucked such a little while ago, nor could he have gotten across the gulch without losing more. Besides, Antonio said ‘stole.’”

Then she gave a hasty account of her morning’s adventures, during which meaning glances were exchanged between the trio of workmen who, by the time she had finished, had grown as glum as they had before been cheerful.

“Now, what do you think? Is there anybody who’d be mean enough to cut off my mother’s irrigation, on purpose, or steal her feathers? Even poor Ferd; I’m sure she’s always been good to him and pitied him.”

“Ferd has hands. Others have heads,” said Joe, as spokesman for the rest.

They nodded swift assent.

“Except yourself, Lady Jess, nobody ever sees the ‘senor’ handle the feathers, and you not often. Only he and his shadow, foolish Ferd, can manage the birds, he claims. I’ve been smoking that in my pipe along back.”

“Oh! Joe, you shouldn’t be suspicious of evil.”

“No, I shouldn’t be anything you don’t want me to be, but I am.”

“Even if I don’t like him very well, because he’s a little cross, Antonio Bernal is a good man. He must be. Else my father and now mother wouldn’t trust him so. She lets him get all the money for everything first and she has what’s left–after you’re all paid, I mean.”

“Poor little woman!”

“Not poor, exactly, Samson. And it isn’t Antonio’s fault that there isn’t so much as there used to be when father was here. If there were, mother would carry out all father’s plans. She’d irrigate that tract beyond the arroyo, toward the sand hills, and test it with strawberries, as he meant. There shouldn’t be an inch of untilled land on all the ranch, if the crops we have paid out just a little better. But, no matter. As long as you boys get your due wages, we can wait for the rest.”

There was another exchange of glances which Jessica did not see. Neither did she see herder Samson, lying at length on the ground, lift his great boot and significantly point to a hole in its toe. Nor would she have surmised his meaning had she done so. Indeed, she suddenly remembered her errand at the packinghouse and ran to its open door, but failed.

“How queer! Why should this be locked? I didn’t know it ever was. Where can the key be?”

“In Antonio Bernal’s pocket,” said Joe quietly.

“Then even before I found this feather he must have suspected somebody and taken care of the others. But it’s dreadful if we have come to turning keys on one another, here, at dear Sobrante. Well, I’m off to mother, now; and, Joe, Antonio said you should go to help John. Will you?”

“For you, fast enough, Lady Jess, though I’m about quit of Top-Lofty’s orders.”

“Grumbler!” laughed the girl, hurrying away, with her gayety quite restored by this few minutes’ chat with the beloved “boys” who had petted her all her life.

They did not laugh, however, as they watched her going, and Joe, rising to do her bidding, slapped his thigh emphatically and remarked:

“I call it the time has come. The longer we put it off the worse it is. Poor little missy! Getting our wages due! That little angel ’d cry the blue out of her pretty eyes if she knew how long ’twas since we’d seen the color of our money. Pass the word along, boys, and let’s confab, to-night, and settle it. Time, about moon-up, in John’s shop. How’s that?”

“Count me a mutineer,” said the ex-sailor, Samson, as he strolled toward his cattle sheds.

“I’m with you,” echoed Marty, departing for his orange grove. “Mutiny’s an ugly word aboard ship, I’m told, but when psalm-singing Samson takes to using it right here on dry land I reckon the case differs. Anyhow, if it’s a bid ’twixt the little one and Top-Lofty, I’m for the little one every time.”

Scruff knew the road home as well as another, and doubtless reasoned in his burro mind that the sooner he reached there the sooner he would be rid of his awkward rider. So he made all speed over the steep descent, though Mr. Hale used his own feet, now and then, as human brakes to check the creature’s pace; and, whimsically, remonstrated when the jolts became too frequent.

“Here, you beast! Hold on! If ever I ride a donkey again just let me know about it, will you? Keep that front end of yours up, please. I’ve a notion of sliding over your head, just to accommodate. Steady, there, steady. I flatter myself I can stick if I can’t ride. And we’re getting along. We’re getting along.”

Indeed, much earlier than he had hoped for, they were on level ground and had struck out upon that road where Jessica had met the manager, and which for some distance followed the tree-bordered arroyo–just then a river of sand only–leading straight toward a group of buildings and an oasis of greenery most welcome to the stranger’s sun-blinded eyes.

“Sobrante ranch, that must be, and the home of my little ostrich rider. I hope she’ll be there to greet me, for a tempting spot it looks.”

The nearer he approached the more charming it appeared, with its one modern, vine-covered cottage, and its long stretches of low adobe structures–enough to form a village in themselves–and as dingily ancient as the other was freshly modern.

In reality, these old adobes were remnants of a long-abandoned mission, but still in such excellent repair that they were utilized for the ranchman’s quarters and for the business of the great estate. Antonio Bernal was the only one of all the employees who had his own rooms at “the house,” as the cottage was called where the Trents themselves lived.

From the kitchen of this attractive “house” now floated a delectable odor of well-cooked food, and with the reflection that he was always hungry nowadays, the visitor crossed to its open window; there came, also, a girlish voice, exclaiming:

“Yes, mother, I’m sure he was a gentleman, though he didn’t look well. I told him you weren’t fond of strangers and had little time to give them, but that I thought you’d make him welcome. Indeed, there’s nowhere else for him to go, since his horse is lame and we so far from everybody. He lost his trail, he said. Was I right?”

Then his shadow fell across the sun-lighted floor and Jessica faced about. With a whisk of the saucepan, in which she was scrambling eggs, she added: “Well, right or wrong, here he is!” But she was talking to empty air, for her mother had disappeared.

CHAPTER IV

AN INTERRUPTED SUPPER

The young ranchwoman placed her pan in safety and ran out upon that north porch, where the table was already spread, to meet the visitor.

“Oh! I’m glad you’ve gotten here all safe. How did you do it? It’s a long walk for those who aren’t used to it. Even for those who are, too. Did you ride your horse? Was he better?”

She rattled off her questions without waiting for replies and to give him time to recover his breath, which he seemed to have lost. Then she poured him a glass of milk and urged him to drink it, with the remark:

“That’s Blandina’s own. She’s the house-cow. You’ll find it delicious. Don’t you?”

“It’s fine milk,” answered the other, cautiously; “but, if it isn’t too much trouble, a bit of ice would improve it.”

“Ice? Why, where could I get ice? Sometimes, in the winter, a little forms along the arroyo, but now–I’m very sorry, indeed. I’d be so glad to get it if I could.”

Mr. Hale swallowed the sickeningly warm liquid with a gulp and hastened to apologize.

“It wouldn’t be good for me if you could. My compliments to your house-cow, and I’m very grateful for my refreshment. You have a beautiful home.”

“Haven’t we? The prettiest in the world, I guess. My father thought so and my mother loves it. So do we all, but to her it is dearest. Because, you see, father and she have made it all it is. Please, just let me move your chair nearer the edge of the porch. So. Now, look away off to the east. Father said there could be no view more uplifting. He wished everybody who had to live in cities could see it. He knew it would make them better men.”

Magnificent though it was, Mr. Hale found his small hostess more interesting than the view.

“Your father–” he began, questioningly.

“Isn’t here, now. He passed heavenward a year ago. Since then nothing seems just the same, and dear mother is often sad and troubled. You know she wants to carry on all father’s experiments, she doesn’t want his ‘life work to be wasted,’ she says, and Antonio isn’t able to get as much money as he used to be. She tries so bravely not to let it fret her, and I don’t see where she is. She was in the kitchen with me. We were getting dinner because Wun Lung, the cook, cut his hand, and Pasqual isn’t to be trusted. Of course, he’s a good enough boy, can make beds and such things, but–cook! One must be very dainty to do that. My mother can cook deliciously! She taught herself everything and the why of it. When she and father came here they lived in that tiny adobe away at the end of the second row. Do you see it? By the old corridor. Their table was a packing box and they had just a little camping outfit. Now there’s all this.”

Jessica Trent’s sweet face glowed with loving pride in her fair home, but this was as nothing of the tenderness which filled her eyes as they now caught sight of a tall woman in black coming over the garden path.

“There she is, my mother!”