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THE DESERT AND THE SOWN


By Mary Hallock Foote




CONTENTS


I. A COUNCIL OF THE ELDERS

II. INTRODUCING A SON-IN-LAW

III. THE INITIAL LOVE

IV. "A MAN THAT HAD A WELL IN HIS OWN COURT"

V. DISINHERITED

VI. AN APPEAL TO NATURE

VII. MARKING TIME

VIII. A HUNTER'S DIARY

IX. THE POWER OF WEAKNESS

X. THE WHITE PERIL

XI. A SEARCHING OF HEARTS

XII. THE BLOOD-WITE

XIII. CURTAIN

XIV. KIND INQUIRIES

XV. A BRIDEGROOM OF SNOW

XVI. THE NATURE OF AN OATH

XVII. THE HIDDEN TRAIL

XVIII.THE STAR IN THE EAST

XIX. PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS

XX. A STATION IN THE DESERT

XXI. INJURIOUS REPORTS CONCERNING AN OLD HOUSE

XXII. THE CASE STRIKES IN

XXIII.RESTIVENESS

XXIV. INDIAN SUMMER

XXV. THE FELL FROST

XXVI. PEACE TO THIS HOUSE




I


A COUNCIL OF THE ELDERS

It was an evening of sudden mildness following a dry October gale.
The colonel had miscalculated the temperature by one log--only one, he
declared, but that had proved a pitchy one, and the chimney bellowed
with flame. From end to end the room was alight with it, as if the
stored-up energies of a whole pine-tree had been sacrificed in the
consumption of that four-foot stick.

The young persons of the house had escaped, laughing, into the fresh
night air, but the colonel was hemmed in on every side; deserted by
his daughter, mocked by the work of his own hands, and torn between the
duties of a host and the host's helpless craving for his after-dinner
cigar.

Across the hearth, filling with her silks all the visible room in his
own favorite settle corner, sat the one woman on earth it most behooved
him to be civil to,--the future mother-in-law of his only child. That
Moya was a willing, nay, a reckless hostage, did not lessen her father's
awe of the situation.

Mrs. Bogardus, according to her wont at this hour, was composedly doing
nothing. The colonel could not make his retreat under cover of her real
or feigned absorption in any of the small scattering pursuits which
distract the female mind. When she read she read--she never "looked at
books." When she sewed she sewed--presumably, but no one ever saw her
do it. Her mind was economic and practical, and she saved it whole, like
many men of force, for whatever she deemed her best paying sphere of
action.

It was a silence that crackled with heat! The colonel, wrathfully
perspiring in the glow of that impenitent stick, frowned at it like
an inquisitor. Presently Mrs. Bogardus looked up, and her expression
softened as she saw the energetic despair upon his face.

"Colonel, don't you always smoke after dinner?"

"That is my bad habit, madam. I belong to the generation that
smokes--after dinner and most other times--more than is good for us."
Colonel Middleton belonged also to the generation that can carry a
sentence through to the finish in handsome style, and he did it with a
suave Virginian accent as easy as his seat in the saddle. Mrs. Bogardus
always gave him her respectful attention during his best performances,
though she was a woman of short sentences herself.

"Don't you smoke in this room sometimes?" she asked, with a barely
perceptible sniff the merest contraction of her housewifely nostrils.

"Ah--h! Those rascally curtains and cushions! You ladies--women,
I should say--Moya won't let me say ladies--you bolster us up with
comforts on purpose to betray us!"

"You can say 'ladies' to me," smiled the very handsome one before him.
"That's the generation _I_ belong to."

The colonel bowed playfully. "Well, you know, I don't detect myself, but
there's no doubt I have infected the premises."

"Open fires are good ventilators. I wish you would smoke now. If you
don't, I shall have to go away, and I'm exceedingly comfortable."

"You are exceedingly charming to say so--on top of that last stick,
too!" The colonel had Irish as well as Virginian progenitors. "Well," he
sighed, proceeding to make himself conditionally happy, "Moya will never
forgive me! We spoil each other shamefully when we're alone, but of
course we try to jack each other up when company comes. It's a great
comfort to have some one to spoil, isn't it, now? I needn't ask which it
is in your family!"

"The spoiled one?" Mrs. Bogardus smiled rather coldly. "A woman we had
for governess, when Christine was a little thing, used to say: 'That
child is the stuff that tyrants are made of!' Tyrants are made by the
will of their subjects, don't you think, generally speaking?"

"Well, you couldn't have made a tyrant of your son, Mrs. Bogardus. He's
the Universal Spoiler! He'll ruin my striker, Jephson. I shall have to
send the fellow back to the ranks. I don't know how you keep a servant
good for anything with Paul around."

"Paul thinks he doesn't like to be waited on," Paul's mother observed
shrewdly. "He says that only invalids, old people, and children have any
claim on the personal service of others."

"By George! I found him blacking his own boots!"

Mrs. Bogardus laughed.

"But I'm paying a man to do it for him. It upsets my contract with that
other fellow for Paul to do his work. We have a claim on what we pay for
in this world."

"I suppose we have. But Paul thinks that nothing can pay the price of
those artificial relations between man and man. I think that's the way
he puts it."

"Good Heavens! Has the boy read history? It's a relation that began when
the world was made, and will last while men are in it."

"I am not defending Paul's ideas, Colonel. I have a great sympathy with
tyrants myself. You must talk to him. He will amuse you."

"My word! It's a ticklish kind of amusement when _we_ get talking. Why,
the boy wants to turn the poor old world upside down--make us all stand
on our heads to give our feet a rest. Now, I respect my feet,"--the
colonel drew them in a little as the lady's eyes involuntarily took the
direction of his allusion,--"I take the best care I can of them; but
I propose to keep my head, such as it is, on top, till I go under
altogether. These young philanthropists! They assume that the Hands and
the Feet of the world, the class that serves in that capacity, have got
the same nerves as the Brain."

"There's a sort of connection," said Mrs. Bogardus carelessly. "Some
of our Heads have come from the class that you call the Hands and Feet,
haven't they?"

The colonel admitted the fact, but the fact was the exception. "Why,
that's just the matter with us now! We've got no class of legislators.
I don't wish to plume myself, but, upon my word, the two services are
about all we have left to show what selection and training can do. And
we're only just getting the army into shape, after the raw material that
was dumped into it by the civil war."

"Weren't you in the civil war yourself?"

"I was--a West Pointer, madam; and I was true to my salt and false to my
blood. But, the flag over all!--at the cost of everything I held dear
on earth." After this speech the colonel looked hotter than ever and a
trifle ashamed of himself.

Mrs. Bogardus's face wore its most unobservant expression. "I don't
agree with Paul," she said. "I wish in some ways he were more like other
young men--exercise, for instance. It's a pity for young men not to love
activity and leadership. Besides, it's the fashion. A young man might
as well be out of the world as out of the fashion. Blood is a strange
thing," she mused.

The colonel looked at her curiously. In a woman so unfrank, her
occasional bursts of frankness were surprising and, as he thought, not
altogether complimentary. It was as if she felt herself so far removed
from his conception of her that she might say anything she pleased, sure
of his miscomprehension.

"He is not lazy intellectually," said the colonel, aiming to comfort
her.

"I did not say he was lazy--only he won't do things except to what he
calls some 'purpose.' At his age amusement ought to be purpose enough.
He ought to take his pleasures seriously--this hunting-trip, for
instance. I believe, on the very least encouragement, he would give it
all up!"

"You mustn't let him do that," said the colonel, warming. "All that
country above Yankee Fork, for a hundred miles, after you've gone fifty
north from Bonanza, is practically virgin forest. Wonderful flora
and fauna! It's late for the weeds and things, but if Paul wants game
trophies for your country-house, he can load a pack-train."

Mrs. Bogardus continued to be amused, in a quiet way. "He calls them
relics of barbarism! He would as soon festoon his walls with scalps, as
decorate them with the heads of beautiful animals,--nearer the Creator's
design than most men, he would say."

"He's right there! But that doesn't change the distinction between men
and animals. He is your son, madam--and he's going to be mine. But, fine
boy as he is, I call him a crank of the first water."

"You'll find him quite good to Moya," Mrs. Bogardus remarked
dispassionately. "And he's not quite twenty-four."

"Very true. Well, _I_ should send him into the woods for the sake of
getting a little sense into him, of an every-day sort. He 'll take in
sanity with every breath."

"And you don't think it's too late in the season for them to go out?"

There was no change in Mrs. Bogardus's voice, unconcerned as it was; yet
the colonel felt at once that this simple question lay at the root of
all her previous skirmishing.

"The guide will decide as to that," he said definitely. "If it is, he
won't go out with them. They have got a good man, you say?"

"They are waiting for a good man; they have waited too long, I think.
He is expected in with another party on Monday, perhaps, Paul is to meet
the Bowens at Challis, where they buy their outfit. I do believe"--she
laughed constrainedly--"that he is going up there more to head them off
than for any other reason."

"How do you mean?"

"Oh, it's very stupid of them! They seem to think an army post is part
of the public domain. They have been threatening, if Paul gives up the
trip, to come down here on a gratuitous visit."

"Why, let them come by all means! The more the merrier! We will quarter
them on the garrison at large."

"Wherever they were quartered, they would be here all the time. They are
not intimate friends of Paul's. _Mrs._ Bowen is--a very great friend.
He is her right-hand in all that Hartley House work. The boys are just
fashionable young men."

"Can't they go hunting without Paul?"

"Wheels within wheels!" Mrs. Bogardus sighed impatiently. "Hunting trips
are expensive, and--when young men are living on their fathers, it
is convenient sometimes to have a third. However, Paul goes, I half
believe, to prevent their making a descent upon us here."

"Well; I should ask them to come, or make it plain they were not
expected."

"Oh, would you?--if their mother was one of the nicest women, and your
friend? Besides, the reservation does not cover the whole valley. Banks
Bowen talks of a mine he wants to look at--I don't think it will make
much difference to the mine! This is simply to say that I wish Paul
cared more about the trip for its own sake."

"Well, frankly, I think he's better out of the way for the next
fortnight. The girls ought to go to bed early, and keep the roses in
their cheeks for the wedding. Moya's head is full of her frocks and
fripperies. She is trying to run a brace of sewing women; and all those
boxes are coming from the East to be 'inspected, and condemned' mostly.
The child seems to make a great many mistakes, doesn't she? About every
other day I see a box as big as a coffin in the hall, addressed to some
dry-goods house,'returned by ----'"

"Moya should have sent to me for her things," said Mrs. Bogardus. "I am
the one who makes her return them. She can do much better when she is
in town herself. It doesn't matter, for the few weeks they will be
away, what she wears. I shall take her measures home with me and set the
people to work. She has never been _fitted_ in her life."

The colonel looked rather aghast. He had seldom heard Mrs. Bogardus
speak with so much animation. He wondered if really his household was so
very far behind the times.

"It's very kind of you, I'm sure, if Moya will let you. Most girls think
they can manage these matters for themselves."

"It's impossible to shop by mail," Mrs. Bogardus said decidedly. "They
always keep a certain style of things for the Western and Southern
trade."

The colonel was crushed. Mrs. Bogardus rose, and he picked up her
handkerchief, breathing a little hard after the exertion. She passed
out, thanking him with a smile as he opened the door. In the hall she
stopped to choose a wrap from a collection of unconventional garments
hanging on a rack of moose horns.

"I think I shall go out," she said. "The air is quite soft to-night. Do
you know which way the children went?" By the "children," as the colonel
had noted, Mrs. Bogardus usually meant her daughter, the budding tyrant,
Christine.

"Fine woman!" he mused, alone with himself in his study. "Splendid
character head. Regular Dutch beauty. But hard--eh?--a trifle hard in
the grain. Eyes that tell you nothing. Mouth set like a stone. Never
rambles in her talk. Never speculates or exaggerates for fun. Never runs
into hyperbole--the more fool some other folks! Speaks to the point or
keeps still."




II


INTRODUCING A SON-IN-LAW

The colonel's papers failed to hold him somehow. He rose and paced the
room with his short, stiff-kneed tread. He stopped and stared into the
fire; his face began to get red.

"So! Moya's clothes are not good enough. Going to set the people to
work, is she? Wants an outfit worthy of her son. And who's to pay for
it, by gad? Post-nuptial bills for wedding finery are going to hurt poor
little Moya like the deuce. Confound the woman! Dressing my daughter
for me, right in my own house. Takes it in her hands as if it were
her right, by----!" The colonel let slip another expletive. "Well,"
he sighed, half amused at his own violence, "I'll write to Annie. I
promised Moya, and it's high time I did."

Annie was the colonel's sister, the wife of an infantry captain,
stationed at Fort Sherman. She was a very understanding woman; at least
she understood her brother. But she was not solely dependent upon his
laggard letters for information concerning his private affairs. The
approaching wedding at Bisuka Barracks was the topic of most of the
military families in the Department of the Columbia. Moya herself had
written some time before, in the self-conscious manner of the newly
engaged. Her aunt knew of course that Moya and Christine Bogardus had
been room-mates at Miss Howard's, that the girls had fallen in love with
each other first, and with visits at holidays and vacations, when the
army girl could not go to her father, it was easily seen how the
rest had followed. And well for Moya that it had, was Mrs. Creve's
indorsement. As a family they were quite sufficiently represented in
the army; and if one should ever get an Eastern detail it would be very
pleasant to have a young niece charmingly settled in New York.

The colonel drew a match across the top bar of the grate and set it
to his pipe. His big nostrils whitened as he took a deep in-breath. He
reseated himself and began his duty letter in the tone of a judicious
parent; but, warming as he wrote, under the influence of Annie's
imagined sympathy, he presently broke forth with his usual arrogant
colloquialism.

"She might have had her pick of the junior officers in both branches.
And there was a captain of engineers at the Presidio, a widower, but an
awfully good fellow. And she has chosen a boy, full of transcendental
moonshine, who climbs upon a horse as if it were a stone fence, and has
mixed ideas which side of himself to hang a pistol on.

"I have no particular quarrel with the lad, barring his great burly
mouthful of a name, Bo--gardus! To call