Overland Tales. Clifford Josephine
would return to their own home after a protracted ride, leaving Hetty and Frank to find their way back to Yedral Ranch alone. Hetty thought she could see a cloud on Mrs. Sutton's brow whenever this happened; and dear as those rides were to her, she avoided them whenever she could. Unhappily (Frank did not consider it so), while out alone together one day, Hetty's saddle-girth broke, and though she sprang quickly to the ground, Frank's nerves were so unstrung, he declared, that he could not at once repair the damage, but had to convince himself, by slow degrees, that she really was not hurt or frightened. Consequently, it was later than usual when they reached home; and Mother Sutton, darting a quick look to see that the door had closed behind Frank, who had explained the cause of delay, muttered something about "cunning minxes, who had neither gratitude nor shame," and then tramped out of the room, leaving Hetty with cheeks burning and eyes strangely bright under the tears rising in them.
Next morning she made much ado over a sprained ankle, which was not so painful as to keep her at home, but just bad enough to cause her to ride slowly to school with Johnny and home again before school-hours were fairly over. I fear that she was a "designing minx," for, if she managed, by keeping her room to evade Frank's questioning glance and Mother Sutton's hostile looks, she managed no less to escape an honor which, according to this good lady's statement, corroborated by Lolita's more than usual tenderness, Julian Selden had meant to confer upon her. But she could not stay in her room forever; and Father Sutton dragged her out of it one day, challenging her to tell the truth ("and shame the devil"), by acknowledging that something had hurt her beside the sprained ankle. Had Mrs. Sutton shown no spite openly against "the gal" before, it broke out now, in little sharp speeches against women "tryin' to work on the sympathy of foolish young men. Her boys, she knew, couldn't never be ketched that way by no white-faced – "
"Will yer be still now!" thundered the old man, taking the pipe from between his lips and pointing with it to Hetty, who at this moment was really the white-faced thing the old lady had meant to call her.
"Johnny," said Hetty, next morning, on their way to school, "I think – I'll go home when vacation begins, and – "
"Why, what d'you mean?" asked the boy, startled out of all proper respect.
"Just what I say;" and she enumerated her reasons for considering it her duty to return to her lonely sister and the six pining children; and it was a matter of doubt whether Johnny's lips quivered more during the recital, or Hetty's. But when the school-house was reached, Johnny was a man again; and if he did blubber out loud when he told his elder brother of it, late in the evening, down by the big gate, nobody but Frank heard him, and his lips were rather white when next he spoke.
"You asked me for that Mexican saddle of mine some time ago, Johnny. You are welcome to it."
"I don't want no Mexican saddle," replied Johnny, in a surly tone, and without grammar; but looking into his brother's face, he said, "Thank you, Frank. I'd say you're 'bully,' only Hetty said it wasn't a nice word."
In the course of the week Father Sutton, in his character as such, and as school director, was made acquainted with Hetty's intention. In both characters he protested at first, but yielded at last. He walked out with "the gal" one evening, as though to take her over the ranch for the last time, and then artfully dodged away when Frank – by the merest accident – came to join them. Left alone with this young man, Hetty trembled, as she had learned to tremble under his mother's scowling looks and half-spoken sentences. He spoke quietly, at first, of her going away; but her very quietness seemed after a while to set him all on fire.
"Hetty," he cried, "are you then so anxious to go – so unwilling to stay, even for a day, after the school closes? Is there nothing – is there no one here you regret to leave behind you?"
Poor little Hetty! How they had praised her for her heroism once. There was no praise due her then, as she had protested again and again. Now she was the heroine, when she answered, though with averted face and smothered voice, "Nothing – no one;" adding, quickly, "you have all been so kind to me that naturally I shall feel homesick for the Yedral Ranch, and shall be so glad to see any of you when you come to the city."
Frank had heard "the tears in her voice," and though he turned from her abruptly, it was not in anger, as she fancied.
"Father," he said, a day or two later, "I don't know but I'll take a run over the mountains, now harvesting is over, and there seems nothing particular for me to do."
"Please yourself and you'll please me, Frank," was the answer. "Got any money? You kin git it when you want it."
Then there was nothing more said about the journey, and Frank, making no further preparations, seemed to have forgotten all about it.
When Hetty was lifted into the little wagon that took herself and trunk to the big gate, she repeated her hope of sooner or later greeting the members of the Sutton family in San Francisco.
"Not soon, I'm afeard, Miss Hetty; me an' father and Johnny never goes to the city, and as for Frank – I reckon he'll want to git married first, and bring Lolita 'long with him."
Martin, who was driving, probably knew the meaning of the fire in the old man's eye, for he whipped up the horse and drove off, as though "fearing to miss the stage," as he explained at the turn of the road.
Altogether, George showed neither as much surprise nor pleasure as Hetty had faintly expected him to evince. When they reached the first town he came and stood by the open coach window, after the customary halt, drawing on his gloves first, and then pointing out, with great exactitude, where the old adobe tavern had formerly stood, on the opposite side of the street.
During this interesting conversation, some tardy passengers came out of the hotel, with hasty steps, and mounted to the top of the stage with much hurried scrambling. Then George left Hetty's window, mounted his throne, and drove on.
We need not say how Hetty's heart sank with the sinking sun; and only when George came out of the station-house where they had taken supper, ready and equipped for the night's drive, did a light rise in her eyes.
"I thought you stopped at this station," she said, as he again leaned at her window, while the same hasty steps and confused scrambling on the top of the stage fell, half unconsciously, on her ear.
"Well – yes. As a general thing, I do. But me and Dick's changed off to-night, so't I can see you into the cars to-morrow morning."
"How tired you will be," she remonstrated.
"Well – mebbe so. Howsomever, Miss Hetty, you didn't stop to think whether you'd be tired when you started out to find help for me, last New-Year's eve." And Hetty blushed, as she always did, when her heroism was spoken of.
George's eyes did look heavy the next morning; but he still kept the lines, lounging up to the coach-window about the time the stage was ready to start, and always pointing out something of interest on these occasions. Once, indeed, when she fancied that her ear caught the sound of a familiar footfall on the porch of the tavern they were about to leave, he was so anxious she should see the owl just vanishing into the squirrel-hole, on the opposite side of the road, that he laid his hand on her arm to insure her quick attention, just as she was about to turn her head back in the direction of the porch. Then came the usual climbing and scrambling overhead, and directly George mounted, too, and drove on.
The shrill whistle of the locomotive seemed to cut right through Hetty's heart; and the loneliness she had never felt away down the country, now suddenly took possession of the girl's soul. No one could have been more attentive than George; the best seat in the cars was picked out for her; the daily papers laid beside her, and then – then she was left alone. George only, of all her down-country friends, had made the unconditional promise to visit her in San Francisco. She was thinking of this after he had left her, and she sat watching the cars filling with passengers for the city – travellers gathered together here from watering-place and pleasure-resort, from dairy-ranch and cattle-range. Was there another being among these all as lonely as she? And she turned her face to the window, and looked steadily over toward the hills, yellow and parched now, in the late summer – so fresh and green from the winter's rains when she had last seen them. It looked as if her life, too, were in the "sere and yellow;" the heavy, throbbing pain that was in her heart and rising to her throat