OCR Text |
Show I The Branding Iron I :: qqq t ' :: By Katharine Kewlin Burt I ' ' ' -, Copyright by Katharine N. Burt ' ' "mm4ttfttttM ...-..: FOREWORD when tired, the most elemental w to possess something; to ao- ir p!peny- w't PosesMon comes the thought of protecting nd o msrklng the property a. to dlstlnguUh It from that be-onging be-onging to others. The branding iron ii only an Improvement upon crude methods of marking In vogue sines the beginnings of tns human race. This is a romance of the cattle country. Primarily, It is a love story In which the passions of virile, strong-willed, danger - defying people are realistically and powerfully revealed. Katharine Newlln Burt, the authoress, has had much experience of the West and finds great Inspiration for her work in the life and characters char-acters of that region. There are few writers who equal her in ability to make readers feel the emotions of htr characters and the effects of life spent in close conjunction with wild nature. nose a hideous man, surely a hideous father. He hardly ever spoke, but sometimes, coming home from the town which he visited several times a, year, but to which he had never taken Joan, he would sit down over the stove and go over heavily, for Joan's benefit the story of his crime and his escape. Joan always told herself that she would not listen, whatever he said she would stop her ears, but always the story fascinated her, held her, eyes widened on the figure by the stove. He had sat huddled In his chair, gnomelike, his face contorting with the emotions of the story, bis own brilliant eyes fixed on the round red mouth of the stove. The reflection of this scarlet circle was hideously noticeable no-ticeable in Ms pupils. "A man's a right to kill his woman If she ain't honest with him," so the story began; "if he finds out she's ben trlckln' of him, playin' him off fer another man. That was yer mother, gel; she was a bad woman." There followed a coarse and vivid and very coolly she walked Into tho I hotel, past the group of loungers around the stove, and asked at the desk, where Mrs, Upper sat If she could get a Job. Mrs. Upper and the loungers stared, for there were few women In this frontier country and those few were well known. This great strong girl, heavily graceful In her heavily awkward clothes, bareheaded, bare-headed, shod like a man, her face and throat purely classic, her eyes gray and wide and as secret in expression as an untamed beast's no one had ever seen the like of her before. "What's yer name?" asked Mrs. Upper Up-per suspiciously. It was Mormon day In the town ; there were celebrations and her house was full; she needed extra hands, but where this wild creature was concerned she was doubtful. "Joan. I'm John Carver's daughter," daugh-ter," answered the girl. At once comprehension dawnedi heads were nodded, then craned for s better look. Yes, the town, the whole country even, had heard of John Car I Book One: The Two-Bar Brand CHAPTER I Joan Reads by Firelight There Is no silence so fearful, so breathless, so searching as the night silence of a wild country burled five feet deep In snow. For thirty miles or so, north, south, east and west of the small, half-smothered speck of gold In Pierre Landls' cabin window, there lay, on a certain December night, this silence, bathed in moonlight. moon-light. The cold was Intense: below the bench where Pierre's homestead lay there rose from the twisted, rapid river a cloud of steam above which description of her badness and the manner of It. "That kinder thing no man can let pass by In his wife. I , found her" again the rude details of his discovery "an' I found him, an' ! I let him go for the white-livered cow- , ard he was. but her I killed. I shot ( her dead after she'd said her prayers , an' asked God's mercy on her soul. Then I walked off, but they kotched me an' I was tried. They didn't swing me. Out In them parts they knowed I was In my rights; so the boys held, but twas a life sentence. They tuk me by rail down to Dawson an' I give em the slip, handcuffs an' all. Perhaps Per-haps 'twas only a half-hearted chase they made fer me. Some of them fellers fel-lers mebbe had wives of their own." He always stopped to laugh at this point. "An' I cut oft np country till ver's Imprisoned daughter. . Sober and drunk, he had boasted of her and of how there was to be "no man" In her life. It was like dangling ripe fruit above the mouths of hungry boys to make such a boast In such a land. "Tour father sent you down here fer a Job?" asked Mrs. Upper Incredulously. Incred-ulously. "No. I come." Joan's grave gaze was unchanging. "I'm tired of It up there. I ain't a-goln' back. I'm most eighteen now an' I kinder want a chance." She had not meant to be funny, but a gust of laughter rattled the room. She shrank back. It was more terrifying terri-fying to her than any cruelty she had fancied meeting her In the town. These were the men her father bad forbidden, these loud-laughing, crln- the hoar-frosted tops of Cottonwood trees were perfectly distinct, trunk, branch and twig, against a sky the color of Iris petals. The stars flared brilliantly, hardly dimmed by the full moon, and over the vast surface of the snow minute crystals kept up a steady shining of their own. The range of sharp, wind-scraped mountains, uplifted up-lifted fourteen thousand feet, rode across the country, northeast, southwest, south-west, dazzling In white armor, spears, up' to the sky, a sight, seen suddenly, to take the breath, like the crashing inarch of archangels militant. In the center of this ring of silent crystal I'ierre Landls' logs shut in a little square of warm and ruddy human hu-man darkness. Joun, his wife, made the heart of this defiant space Joan, 1 the one mind living In this ghostly area of night She had put out the ; lamp, for I'ierre, starting townward two days before, had warned her with a certain ttireutt-nlng sharpness not to waste oil, and she lay on the hearth, her rough head almost in the ashes, readlnit a book by the unsteady light of the flames. She followed the printed lines wiih a strong, dark forefinger fore-finger and her Hps framed the words with slow, whispering motions. It was a long, strong woman's body stretched there across the floor, heavily heav-ily If not sluggishly built, dressed ai i ..... ,t arterTa arA iMilfnHV kled faces. She had turned to brave them, a great surge of color In ber brows. "Don't mind the boys, dear,- spoke Mrs. Upper. "They will laff, Joke or none. We ain't none of us blamln' you. It's a wonder you ain't run off long afore now. I can give you a Job an' welcome, but you'll be green an' unhandy. Well, sir, we kin, learn ye. You kin turn yer hand to chamber-.work chamber-.work an', mebbe help - at the tuhle, Maud will show you. But, Joan, what will dad do to you? Ile'll he takln' after you hot-foot, I ' reckon, an' be fer get tin' you back home as soon as he can." Joan did not change her look. "I'll not be goin' back with him," she said. Her slow, doop voir, chest notes of a musical vibration, stirred the room. The mon were hers and gruffly said so. A sudden warmth enveloped her from heart to foot. She followed Mrs. Upper Up-per to the Initiation In her service, clothed for the first time In human sympathies. CHAPTER II Pierre Lays Hit Hand on a Heart Maud Upper was the first girl of her own age that Joan had ever seen. Joan went In terror of her and Maud 1' t-iitie trila ctnl aninrraA o o-sr4 boots, and It was a heavy face, too, unlit from within, but built on lines of perfect animal beauty. The head and throat had the massive look of a marble fragment stained to one even tone and dug up from Attic earth. And she was reading thus heavily and Blowly, by firelight In the midst of this tremendous northern night Keats version of Boccaccio's "Tale of Isabella Isa-bella and the Pot of Basil." The story for some reason Interested Interest-ed her. She felt that she could understand un-derstand the love of young Lorenzo and of Isabella, the hatred of those two brothers and Isabella's horrible tenderness for that young murdered head. There were even things In her own life that she compared with these; In fact, at every phrase she stopped, and, staring ahead, crudely and fgnorantly visualized, after her own experience, what she had Just read; and. In doing so. she pictured her own life. She Followed the Printed Lines With a Strong, Dark Finger. I come to a smithy at the edge of a town. I hung round for a spell till the smith bed gone off an' I got Into his place an' rid me of the handcufft. 'Twas a Job, but I wasn't kotched at It an I made myself free." Followed the story of his wanderings and his hardships and his coming to Lone river and setting out his traps. "In them days there weren't no law ag'Iu trappln' beaver. A man could make a honest llvln'. Now they've tuk an' made laws ag'ln' a man's bread an' butter. I ask ye, If 'taln't wrong on a Tuesday to trap yer beaver, why. 'taln't wrong the follerln' Tuesday. I don't see It, Jes becos some fellers back there has made a law ag'ln' it to suit themselves. Anyway, the mar-kct mar-kct fer beaver hides Is still prime. Mebbe I'll leave you a fortln, get. I've saved you from badness, anyhow. I risked a lot to go back an' git you. ancy over an untamed creature twice ber size. There was the crack of a lion-tamer's whip In the tone of ber Instructions. That was after a day or two. At first Maud had been horribly hor-ribly afraid of Joan. "A wild thing like her, llvln' off there In the hills with that man ; why, ma, there's no tellln what she might be doln' to me." "She won't hurt ye," laughed Mrs. Upper, who had lived In the wilds herself, having been a frontlerman's wife before the days even of this frontier fron-tier town and having married the hotel-keeper as a second venture. She knew that civilization this rude place being civilization to Joan would cow the girl, and she knew that Maud's self-assertive buoyancy would frighten the soul of her. Maud was targe-hipped, targe-hipped, hlgh-bosomed, with a small, round waist much compressed. She taught Joan Impatiently and laughed loudly but not unkindly at her ways. "Gee, she's awkward, ain't she?" she would say to the men; "trail like a bull moose r The men grinned, but their eyes followed fol-lowed Joan's movements. As a matter mat-ter of fact, she wns not awkward. Through her clumsy clothes, the heavl-nes heavl-nes of her early youth, In spite of all the fetters of her limornnce. her wonderful long bones and her wonderful wonder-ful strength asserted themselves. And she never hurried. At first this apparent ap-parent sluggishness Infuriated Maud. "Get a gnlt on ye.' Joan Carver!" she would scream above the din of the rotiph meals, hut soon slip found that Joan's slow movement neconipllKhert n tremendous amount of work In an amazingly short time. Tl ere was no pause In the girl's activity. She poured out her strength as n python pours ills, noiselessly, evenly, steadily, no haste, no wnMe. And the men's eves brooded upon her. (TO BC CONTINUED.) Her love and Pierre's her life Before Be-fore Pierre came to put herself In Isabella's place, she felt back to the days before her love, when she bad lived In a desolation of bleak poverty, up and awav alone Lone river In her father's shack. This log house of Pierre's was a castle by contrast. John Carver and his daughter had shared one room between them; Joan's bed curtained off with gunny-sacklne In a corner. She slept on hides and rolled herself up In old dingy patchwork patch-work quilts and worn blankets. On winter mornings she would wake covered cov-ered with the snow that had sifted In hetween the Ill-matched log. There had been a stove, one lee gone and substituted for by a huge cobblestone; cobble-stone; there bad been two chairs, a long .box, a table, shelves all rudely made by John; there bad been g'ins snd traps and snowshoes. hides. skln., the wlnirs of birds, a couple of flsh'nir-rnds flsh'nir-rnds John made bis llvinc hy legal nd Illegal trapping and kllllm.'. He hsd looked like a trapped or bunted creature blmelf. small, furtive, very rlsrk, With tone fln-jers always working work-ing ovei b's rmiilh, a creat crooked but I done It. You was playin- out in front of yer aunt's house an' I come fer you. You was a three-year-old an' a big youngster. Says I, 'What's yer nameT Says you. 'Joan Carver'; an' I knowed yon by yer likeness to her. p,y q , i wore I'd save ye. I tuk you off with me, though you put up a fight an' I bed to use you rough to silence you. 'There ain't n-goln' to be no man In yer life, Joan Carver,' says I; 'you an' yer big eyes Is a-goln to be fer me, to do my work an' fo look after my comforts. No pretty boys fer you fin' no husbands either to go a-shitotln' of you down fer yer sins.'" He shivered and shook his head. "No. here you stays with yer father an' crows' up a good gel. There ain't n cln' to be no man In yer life, Joan." Ilitt youth was stronger than the man's iiaf-rrazy will, and when she was seventeen Joan ran away. She found her way easily enough to the town, for she wna wise In the tracks of the wild country, anil John's trail townwards. though so rarely used, was to her eyes plain enough |