Read Ebook: The Branding Iron by Burt Katharine Newlin

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Ebook has 1087 lines and 59748 words, and 22 pages

y low and very amusedly.

Joan looked him over and slowly smiled. "You look like you could bust anything you'd a mind to," she said, and led the way toward the house, her rake across her shoulder.

"Pierre," she told him when they were in the shining, clean log house, "is off in the hills after his elk, but I can make you up a bed in the settin'-room an' serve you a supper an' welcome."

"Oh, thanks," he rather doubtfully accepted.

"What do you do when Landis is away?"

She told him.

"But, in the evenings, I mean, after work. Have you books?"

"No," said Joan; "it's right hard labor, readin'. Pa learned me my letters an' I can spell out bits from papers an' advertisements an' what not, but I ain't never read a book straight out. I dunno," she added presently, "but as I'd like to. Pierre can read," she told him proudly.

"I'm sure you'd like to." He considered her through the smoke of his pipe. He was sitting by the hearth now, and she, just through with clearing up, stood by the corner of the mantel shelf, arranging the logs. The firelight danced over her face, so beautiful, so unlighted from within.

"How old are you, Joan Landis?" he asked suddenly, using her name without title for the first time.

"Eighteen."

"Is that all? You must read books, you know. There's so much empty space there back of your brows."

She looked up smiling a little, her wide gray eyes puzzled.

"Yes, Joan. You must read. Will you--if I lend you some books?"

She considered. "Yes," she said. "I'd read them if you'd be lendin' me some. In the evenings when Pierre's away, I'm right lonesome. I never was lonesome before, not to know it. It'll take me a long time to read one book, though," she added with an engaging mournfulness.

"What do you like--stories, poetry, magazines?"

"I'd like real books in stiff covers," said Joan, "an' I don't like pictures."

This surprised the clergyman. "Why not?" said he.

"I like to notion how the folks look myself. I like pictures of real places, that has got to be like they are"--Joan was talking a great deal and having trouble with her few simple words--"but I like folks in stories to look like I want 'em to look."

"Not the way the writer describes them?"

"Yes, sir. But you can make up a whole lot on what the writer describes. If he says 'her eyes is blue'; you can see 'em dark blue or light blue or jest blue. An' you can see 'em shaped round or what not, the way you think about folks that you've heard of an' have never met."

It was extraordinary how this effort at self-expression excited Joan. She was rarely self-conscious, but she was usually passive or stolid; now there was a brilliant flush in her face and her large eyes deepened and glowed. "I heerd tell of you, Mr. Holliwell. Fellers come up here to see Pierre once in a while an' one or two of 'em spoke your name. An' I kinder figured out you was a weedy feller, awful solemn-like, an' of course you ain't, but it's real hard for me to notion that there ain't two Mr. Holliwells, you an' the weedy sin-buster I've ben picturin'. Like as not I'll get to thinkin' of you like two fellers." Joan sighed. "Seems like when I onct get a notion in my head it jest sticks there some way."

"I ain't never read but one pome," said Joan.

"And that was?"

She had sat down on the floor by the hearth, her head thrown back to lean against the cobbles of the chimney-piece, her knees locked in her hands. That magnificent long throat of hers ran up to the black coils of hair which had slipped heavily down over her ears. The light edged her round chin and her strongly modeled, regular features; the full, firm mouth so savagely pure and sensuous and self-contained. The eyes were mysterious under their thick lashes and dark, long brows. This throat and face and these strong hands were picked out in their full value of line and texture from the dark cotton dress she was wearing.

"It's a pome on a card what father had, stuck ag'in' the wall." She began to recite, her eyes fixed upon him with childlike gravity. "'He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters.... Yea, though I walk through the valley of shadows, thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.'"

Holliwell had taken the pipe from between his teeth, had straightened up. Her deep voice, the slight swinging of her body to the rhythm she had unconsciously given to her lines, the strange glow in her eyes ... Holliwell wondered why these things, this brief, sing-song recitation, had given a light thrill to the surface of his skin, had sent a tingling to his fingertips. He was the first person to wonder at that effect of Joan's cadenced music. "The valley of the shadow--" she had missed a familiar phrase and added value to a too often repeated line.

"Joan! Joan!" said the "sin-buster," an exclamation drawn from him on a deep breath, "what an extraordinary girl you are! What a marvelous woman you are going to be!"

Joan looked at him in a silence of pure astonishment and that was the end of their real talk.

PIERRE BECOMES ALARMED ABOUT HIS PROPERTY

The next time Holliwell came, he brought the books, and, finding Pierre at home, he sat with his host after supper and talked men's talk of the country; of game, of ranching, a little gossip, stories of travel, humorous experiences, and Joan sat in her place, the books in her lap, looking and listening.

John Carver had used a phrase, "When you see her eyes lookin' and lookin' at another man--" and this phrase had stuck in Pierre's sensitive and jealous memory. What Joan felt for Holliwell was a sort of ignorant and respectful tenderness, the excitement of an intelligent child first moved to a knowledge of its own intelligence; the gratitude of savage loneliness toward the beautiful feet of exploration. A consciousness of her clean mind, a consciousness of her young, untamed spirit, had come slowly to life in her since her talk with Holliwell. Joan was peculiarly a woman--that is, the passive and receptive being. Pierre had laid his hand on her heart and she had followed him; now this young parson had put a curious finger on her brain, it followed him. Her husband saw the admiration, the gratitude, the tender excitement in her frank eyes, and the poison seed sown by John Carver's hand shot out roots and tiny, deadly branches.

But Joan and Holliwell were unaware. Pierre smoked rapidly, rolling cigarette after cigarette; he listened with a courteous air, he told stories in his soft, slow voice; once he went out to bring in a fresh log and, coming back on noiseless feet, saw Joan and her instructor bent over one of the books and Joan's face was almost that of a stranger, so eager, so flushed, with sparkles in the usually still, gray eyes.

It was not till a week or two after this second visit from the clergyman that Pierre's smouldering jealousy broke into flame. After clearing away the supper things with an absent air of eager expectation, Joan would dry her hands on her apron, and, taking down one of her books from their place in a shelf corner, she would draw her chair close to the lamp and begin to read, forgetful of Pierre. These had been the happiest hours for him; he would tell Joan about his day's work, about his plans, about his past life; wonderful it was to him, after his loneliness, that she should be sitting there drinking in every word and loving him with her dumb, wild eyes. Now, there was no talk and no listening. Joan's absorbed face was turned from him and bent over her book, her lips moved, she would stop and stare before her. After a long while, he would get up and go to bed, but she would stay with her books till a restless movement from him would make her aware of the lamplight shining wakefulness upon him through the chinks in the partition wall. Then she would get up reluctantly, sighing, and come to bed.

For ten evenings this went on, Pierre's heart slowly heating itself, until, all at once, the flame leaped.

Joan had untied her apron and reached up for her book. Pierre had been waiting, hoping that of her free will she might prefer his company to the "parson feller's"--for in his ignorance those books were jealously personified--but, without a glance in his direction, she had turned as usual to the shelf.

"You goin' to read?" asked Pierre hoarsely. It was a painful effort to speak.

She turned with a childish look of astonishment. "Yes, Pierre."

"You set down an' give heed to me fer a change, Joan Carver," he said, his smoke-colored eyes smouldering. "I didn't fetch you up here to read parsons' books an' waste oil. I fetched you up here--to--" He stopped, choked with a sudden, enormous hurt tenderness and sat down and fell to smoking and staring, hot-eyed, into the fire.

And Joan sat silent in her place, puzzled, wistful, wounded, her idle hands folded, looking at him for a while, then absently before her, and he knew that her mind was busy again with the preacher feller's books. If he had known better how to explain his heart, if she had known how to show him the impersonal eagerness of her awakening mind--! But, savage and silent, they sat there, loving each other, hurt, but locked each into his own impenetrable life.

After that, Joan changed the hours of her study and neglected housework and sagebrush-grubbing, but, nonetheless, were Pierre's evenings spoiled. Perfection of intercourse is the most perishable of all life's commodities. Now, when he talked, he could not escape the consciousness of having constrained his audience; she could not escape her knowledge of his jealousy, the remembrance of his mysterious outbreak, the irrepressible tug of the story she was reading. So it went on till snow came and they were shut in, man and wife, with only each other to watch, a tremendous test of good-fellowship. This searching intimacy came at a bad time, just after Holliwell's third visit when he had brought a fresh supply of books.

"There's poetry this time," he said. "Get Pierre to read it aloud to you."

The suggestion was met by a rude laugh from Pierre.

"I wouldn't be wastin' my time," he jeered.

It was the first rift in his courtesy. Holliwell looked up in sharp surprise. He saw a flash of the truth, a little wriggle of the green serpent in Pierre's eyes before they fell. He flushed and glanced at Joan. She stood by the table in the circle of lamplight, looking over the new books, but in her eagerness there was less simplicity. She wore an almost timorous air, accepted his remarks in silence, shot doubtful looks at Pierre before she answered questions, was an entirely different Joan. Now Holliwell was angry and he stiffened toward his host and hostess, dropped all his talk about the books and smoked haughtily. He was young and over-sensitive, no more master of himself in this instance than Pierre and Joan. But before he left after supper, refusing a bed, though Pierre conquered his dislike sufficiently to urge it, Holliwell had a moment with Joan. It was very touching. He would tell about it afterwards, but, for a long time, he could not bear to remember it.

She tried to return his books, coming with her arms full of them and lifting up eyes that were almost tragic with renunciation.

"I can't be takin' the time to read them, Mr. Holliwell," she said, that extraordinary, over-expressive voice of hers running an octave of regret; "an' someway Pierre don't like that I should spend my evenin's on them. Seems like he thinks I was settin' myself up to be knowin' more than him." She laughed ruefully. "Me--knowin' more'n Pierre! It's laughable. But anyways I don't want him to be thinkin' that. So take the books, please. I like them." She paused. "I love them," she said hungrily and, blinking, thrust them into his hands.

He put them down on the table. "You're wrong, Joan," he said quickly. "You mustn't give in to such a foolish idea. You have rights of your own, a life of your own. Pierre mustn't stand in the way of your learning. You mustn't let him. I'll speak to him."

"Oh, no!" Some intuition warned her of the danger in his doing this.

"Well, then, keep your books and talk to Pierre about them. Try to persuade him to read aloud to you. I shan't be back now till spring, but I want you to read this winter, read all the stuff that's there. Come, Joan, to please me," and he smiled coaxingly.

"I ain't afeared of Pierre," said Joan slowly. Her pride was stung by the suggestion. "I'll keep the books." She sighed. "Good-bye. When I see you in the spring, I'll be a right learned school-marm."

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