Susy, A Story of the Plains - Bret Harte (ebook reader for pc and android txt) 📗

style. But it’s stupid, it’s awful, Clarence! With mamma snooping over you and around you all day, with her ‘dear child,’ ‘mamma’s pet,’ and ‘What is it, dear?’ and ‘Tell it all to your own mamma,’ as if I would! And ‘my own mamma,’ indeed! As if I didn’t know, Clarence, that she ISN’T. And papa, caring for nothing but this hideous, dreary rancho, and the huge, empty plains. It’s worse than school, for there, at least, when you went out, you could see something besides cattle and horses and yellow-faced half-breeds! But here—Lord! it’s only a wonder I haven’t run away before!”

Startled and shocked as Clarence was at this revelation, accompanied as it was by a hardness of manner that was new to him, the influence of the young girl was still so strong upon him that he tried to evade it as only an extravagance, and said with a faint smile, “But where would you run to?”

She looked at him cunningly, with her head on one side, and then said:—

“I have friends, and”—

She hesitated, pursing up her pretty lips.

“And what?”

“Relations.”

“Relations?”

“Yes,—an aunt by marriage. She lives in Sacramento. She’d be overjoyed to have me come to her. Her second husband has a theatre there.”

“But, Susy, what does Mrs. Peyton know of this?”

“Nothing. Do you think I’d tell her, and have her buy them up as she has my other relations? Do you suppose I don’t know that I’ve been bought up like a nigger?”

She looked indignant, compressing her delicate little nostrils, and yet, somehow, Clarence had the same singular impression that she was only acting.

The calling of a far-off voice came faintly through the wood.

“That’s Mary, looking for me,” said Susy composedly. “You must go, now, Clarence. Quick! Remember what I said,—and don’t breathe a word of this. Good-by.”

But Clarence was standing still, breathless, hopelessly disturbed, and irresolute. Then he turned away mechanically towards the trail.

“Well, Clarence?”

She was looking at him half reproachfully, half coquettishly, with smiling, parted lips. He hastened to forget himself and his troubles upon them twice and thrice. Then she quickly disengaged herself, whispered, “Go, now,” and, as Mary’s call was repeated, Clarence heard her voice, high and clear, answering, “Here, dear,” as he was plunging into the thicket.

He had scarcely reached the madrono tree again and remounted his horse, before he heard the sound of hoofs approaching from the road. In his present uneasiness he did not care to be discovered so near the rendezvous, and drew back into the shadow until the horseman should pass. It was Peyton, with a somewhat disturbed face, riding rapidly. Still less was he inclined to join or immediately follow him, but he was relieved when his host, instead of taking the direct road to the rancho, through the wild oats, turned off in the direction of the corral.

A moment later Clarence wheeled into the direct road, and presently found himself in the long afternoon shadows through the thickest of the grain. He was riding slowly, immersed in thought, when he was suddenly startled by a hissing noise at his ear, and what seemed to be the uncoiling stroke of a leaping serpent at his side. Instinctively he threw himself forward on his horse’s neck, and as the animal shied into the grain, felt the crawling scrape and jerk of a horsehair lariat across his back and down his horse’s flanks. He reined in indignantly and stood up in his stirrups. Nothing was to be seen above the level of the grain. Beneath him the trailing riata had as noiselessly vanished as if it had been indeed a gliding snake. Had he been the victim of a practical joke, or of the blunder of some stupid vacquero? For he made no doubt that it was the lasso of one of the performers he had watched that afternoon. But his preoccupied mind did not dwell long upon it, and by the time he had reached the wall of the old garden, the incident was forgotten.

 

CHAPTER VI.

 

Relieved of Clarence Brant’s embarrassing presence, Jim Hooker did not, however, refuse to avail himself of that opportunity to expound to the farmer and his family the immense wealth, influence, and importance of the friend who had just left him. Although Clarence’s plan had suggested reticence, Hooker could not forego the pleasure of informing them that “Clar” Brant had just offered to let him into an extensive land speculation. He had previously declined a large share or original location in a mine of Clarence’s, now worth a million, because it was not “his style.” But the land speculation in a country of unsettled titles and lawless men, he need not remind them, required some experience of border warfare. He would not say positively, although he left them to draw their own conclusions with gloomy significance, that this was why Clarence had sought him. With this dark suggestion, he took leave of Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins and their daughter Phoebe the next day, not without some natural human emotion, and peacefully drove his team and wagon into the settlement of Fair Plains.

He was not prepared, however, for a sudden realization of his imaginative prospects. A few days after his arrival in Fair Plains, he received a letter from Clarence, explaining that he had not time to return to Hooker to consult him, but had, nevertheless, fulfilled his promise, by taking advantage of an opportunity of purchasing the Spanish “Sisters’” title to certain unoccupied lands near the settlement. As these lands in part joined the section already preempted and occupied by Hopkins, Clarence thought that Jim Hooker would choose that part for the sake of his neighbor’s company. He inclosed a draft on San Francisco, for a sum sufficient to enable Jim to put up a cabin and “stock” the property, which he begged he would consider in the light of a loan, to be paid back in installments, only when the property could afford it. At the same time, if Jim was in difficulty, he was to inform him. The letter closed with a characteristic Clarence-like mingling of enthusiasm and older wisdom. “I wish you luck, Jim, but I see no reason why you should trust to it. I don’t know of anything that could keep you from making yourself independent of any one, if you go to work with a LONG AIM and don’t fritter away your chances on short ones. If I were you, old fellow, I’d drop the Plains and the Indians out of my thoughts, or at least out of my TALK, for a while; they won’t help you in the long run. The people who believe you will be jealous of you; those who don’t, will look down upon you, and if they get to questioning your little Indian romances, Jim, they’ll be apt to question your civilized facts. That won’t help you in the ranching business and that’s your only real grip now.” For the space of two or three hours after this, Jim was reasonably grateful and even subdued,—so much so that his employer, to whom he confided his good fortune, frankly confessed that he believed him from that unusual fact alone. Unfortunately, neither the practical lesson conveyed in this grim admission, nor the sentiment of gratitude, remained long with Jim. Another idea had taken possession of his fancy. Although the land nominated in his bill of sale had been, except on the occasion of his own temporary halt there, always unoccupied, unsought, and unclaimed, and although he was amply protected by legal certificates, he gravely collected a posse of three or four idlers from Fair Plains, armed them at his own expense, and in the dead of night took belligerent and forcible possession of the peaceful domain which the weak generosity and unheroic dollars of Clarence had purchased for him! A martial camp-fire tempered the chill night winds to the pulses of the invaders, and enabled them to sleep on their arms in the field they had won. The morning sun revealed to the astonished Hopkins family the embattled plain beyond, with its armed sentries. Only then did Jim hooker condescend to explain the reason of his warlike occupation, with dark hints of the outlying “squatters” and “jumpers,” whose incursions their boldness alone had repulsed. The effect of this romantic situation upon the two women, with the slight fascination of danger imported into their quiet lives, may well be imagined. Possibly owing to some incautious questioning by Mr. Hopkins, and some doubts of the discipline and sincerity of his posse, Jim discharged them the next day; but during the erection of his cabin by some peaceful carpenters from the settlement, he returned to his gloomy preoccupation and the ostentatious wearing of his revolvers. As an opulent and powerful neighbor, he took his meals with the family while his house was being built, and generally impressed them with a sense of security they had never missed.

Meantime, Clarence, duly informed of the installation of Jim as his tenant, underwent a severe trial. It was necessary for his plans that this should be kept a secret at present, and this was no easy thing for his habitually frank and open nature. He had once mentioned that he had met Jim at the settlement, but the information was received with such indifference by Susy, and such marked disfavor by Mrs. Peyton, that he said no more. He accompanied Peyton in his rides around the rancho, fully possessed himself of the details of its boundaries, the debatable lands held by the enemy, and listened with beating pulses, but a hushed tongue, to his host’s ill-concealed misgivings.

“You see, Clarence, that lower terrace?” he said, pointing to a far-reaching longitudinal plain beyond the corral; “it extends from my corral to Fair Plains. That is claimed by the sisters’ title, and, as things appear to be going, if a division of the land is made it will be theirs. It’s bad enough to have this best grazing land lying just on the flanks of the corral held by these rascals at an absurd prohibitory price, but I am afraid that it may be made to mean something even worse. According to the old surveys, these terraces on different levels were the natural divisions of the property,—one heir or his tenant taking one, and another taking another,—an easy distinction that saved the necessity of boundary fencing or monuments, and gave no trouble to people who were either kinsmen or lived in lazy patriarchal concord. That is the form of division they are trying to reestablish now. Well,” he continued, suddenly lifting his eyes to the young man’s flushed face, in some unconscious, sympathetic response to his earnest breathlessness, “although my boundary line extends half a mile into that field, my house and garden and corral ARE ACTUALLY UPON THAT TERRACE OR LEVEL.” They certainly appeared to Clarence to be on the same line as the long field beyond. “If,” went on Peyton, “such a decision is made, these men will push on and claim the house and everything on the terrace.”

“But,” said Clarence quickly, “you said their title was only valuable where they have got or can give POSSESSION. You already have yours. They can’t take it from you except by force.”

“No,” said Peyton grimly, “nor will they dare to do it as long as I live to fight them.”

“But,” persisted Clarence, with the same singular hesitancy of manner, “why didn’t you purchase possession of at least that part of the land which lies so dangerously near your own house?”

“Because it was held by squatters, who naturally preferred buying what might prove a legal title to their land from these impostors than to sell out their possession to ME at a fair price.”

“But couldn’t you have bought from them both?” continued Clarence.

“My dear Clarence, I