The Golden Woman. Cullum Ridgwell
fuel.
The radiant colors of sunset held the quiet eyes of a solitary horseman riding amidst the broken lands of the lesser foot-hills. He was a big man, of powerful shoulders and stout limbs. He was a man of fifty or thereabouts, yet his hair was snow white, a perfect mane that reached low upon his neck, touching the soft collar of his cotton shirt. His face was calm with something of the peace of the world through which he was riding, something of the peace which comes to those who have abandoned forever the strife of the busy life beyond. It only needed the garb of the priest, and his appearance would have matched perfectly his sobriquet, “the Padre.”
But Moreton Kenyon was clad in the rough moleskin, the riding boots and general make-up of the western life to which he belonged. Even he carried the protecting firearms by which to administer the personal laws of the wilderness. His whole appearance, the very horse under him, a prairie-bred broncho of excellent blood, suggested a man who knew the life amidst which he lived, and was more than capable of surviving it.
Whatever his appearance, whatever his capacity for the rougher corners of earth, Moreton Kenyon was a man of great kindliness, of great sympathy, as the mission from which he was now returning might well have testified. Those who knew him best held him in deep affection. Those who knew him less withheld their judgment, but never failed to treat him with a courtesy not usual amongst the derelicts of an out-world camp.
Just now something of the smallness of human life, of human aims and efforts, of human emotions, was occupying the busy brain behind his reflective eyes. The scene before him, upon which he had so often looked, never failed to remind him of the greatness of that which lay beyond the ken of man. Somehow it exalted his thoughts to planes to which no association with his kind could ever have exalted them. It never failed to inspire him with a reverence for the infinity of power which crowned the glory of creation, and reduced self to a humble realization of its atomic place in the great scheme of the Creator.
His horse ambled easily over the ribbon-like trail, which seemed to rise out of the eastern horizon from nowhere, and lose itself somewhere ahead, amidst the dark masses of forest-crowned hills. The journey was nearly over. Somewhere ahead lay the stable, which could be reached at leisure in the cool of the evening, and neither master nor beast seemed to feel the need for undue haste.
As the light slowly faded out and left the snow-white hill-crests drab with the gray of twilight, the man’s mind reverted to those things which had sent him on his journey. Many doubts had assailed him by the way, doubts which set him debating with himself, but which rarely made him turn from a purpose his mind was once set upon. He knew that his action involved more than his own personal welfare, and herein had lain the source of his doubt. But he had clearly argued every point with himself, and through it all had felt the rightness of his purpose.
Then, too, he had had the support of that other with whom he was concerned. And he smiled as he thought of the night when his decision had been taken. Even now the picture remained in his mind of the eager face of his youthful protégé as they discussed the matter. The younger man had urged vehemently, protesting at every objection, that they two had no right to live in comparative comfort with women and children starving about them.
He remembered young Buck’s eager eyes, large dark-brown eyes that could light with sudden, almost volcanic heat, or smile their soft, lazy smile of amusement at the quaintnesses of life about him. The Padre understood the largeness of heart, the courage which urged him, the singleness of purpose which was always his. Then, when their decision had been taken, he remembered the abrupt falling back of the man into the quiet, almost monosyllabic manner which usually belonged to him.
Yes, Buck was a good lad.
The thought carried him back to days long gone by, to a time when a lad of something less than eight years, clad in the stained and worn garb of a prairie juvenile, his feet torn and bleeding, his large brown eyes staring out of gaunt, hungry sockets, his thin, pinched, sunburnt face drawn by the ravages of starvation, had cheerfully hailed him from beneath the shelter of a trail-side bush.
That was nearly twenty years ago, but every detail of the meeting was still fresh in his memory. His horse had shied at the sudden challenge. He remembered he had thrashed the creature with his spurs. And promptly had come the youthful protest.
“Say, you needn’t to lick him, mister,” the boy piped in his thin treble. “Guess he’ll stand if you talk to him.”
Strangely enough the man had almost unconsciously obeyed the mandate. And the memory of it made him smile now. Then had followed a dialogue, which even now had power to stir every sympathy of his heart. He started by casually questioning the starving apparition.
“Where you from, sonny?” he asked.
And with that unequivocal directness, which, after twenty years, still remained with him, the boy flung out a thin arm in the direction of the eastern horizon.
“Back ther’, mister.”
The natural sequence was to ask him whither he was bound, and his answer came with a similar gesture with his other hand westward.
“Yonder.”
“But—but who’re your folks? Where are they?” the Padre had next hazarded. And a world of desolation was contained in the lad’s half-tearful reply—
“Guess I ain’t got none. Pop an’ ma’s dead. Our farm was burnt right out. Y’ see there was a prairie fire. It was at night, an’ we was abed. Pop got me out, an’ went back for ma. I never see him agin. I never see ma. An’ ther’ wa’an’t no farm left. Guess they’re sure dead.”
He fought the tears back manfully, in a way that set the Padre marveling at his courage.
After a moment he continued his interrogation.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Buck,” came the frank response.
“Buck—what?”
“Buck—jest plain, mister.”
“But your father’s name—what was that?”
“Pop.”
“Yes, yes. That’s what you called him. What did the folks call him?”
“Ther’ wa’an’t no folks. Jest pop, an’ ma, an’ me.”
A great lump had risen in the man’s throat as he looked down into those honest, hungry eyes. And for a moment he was at a loss. But the boy solved his dilemma in a way that proved the man in after-life.
“Say, you ain’t a farmer?” he inquired, with a speculative glance over his general outfit.
“Well, I am—in a small way,” the Padre had replied, with a half-smile.
The boy brightened at once.
“Then mebbe you can give me a job—I’m lookin’ for a job.”
The wonder of it all brought a great smile of sympathy to the man’s eyes now, as he thought of that little starving lad of eight years old, homeless, wandering amidst the vastness of all that world—looking for a “job.” It was stupendous, and he had sat marveling until the lad brought him back to the business in hand.
“Y’ see I kin milk—an’—an’ do chores around. Guess I can’t plough yet. Pop allus said I was too little. But mebbe I kin grow—later. I—I don’t want no wages—on’y food. Guess I’m kind o’ hungry, mister.”
Nor, for a moment, could the man make any reply. The pathos of it all held him in its grip. He leant over and groped in his saddle-bag for the “hardtack” biscuits he always carried, and passed the lad a handful.
He remembered how the boy snatched the rough food from his hands. There was something almost animal in the way he crammed his mouth full, and nearly choked himself in his efforts to appease the craving of his small, empty stomach. In those moments the man’s mind was made up. He watched in