From the Improvement Era, 1935-36 –

A Silver Girdle

By Claire W. Noall

Chapter 1

A HUGE old blue-bottle fly buzzed out of his winter sleep and zig-zagged across Tom Reynolds’ chromium-finished inner office. The room had been so still that Reynolds could almost hear the swish of his thoughts.

“Hello,” said he, surprised from his reverie, as the fly found the window and began to bob noisily up and down in a hint of spring sunshine. “Huh, what ragged wings! Don’t you know you’re almost through, old fellow, if you have survived the winter? I haven’t . . . but I’m not through.” His gaze was steady, but his face was worn and drawn.

His suite of a dozen rooms had been as silent as a shadow. The ticker was still. The directors’ board vacant. Suddenly the telephone rang. Reynolds winced although he had been waiting for just this.

“Yes.”

“Marlborough on the Hudson calling Mr. Thomas Reynolds.”

“Reynolds speaking.”

“One moment, please.”

“Hello, Dad? This is Eileen. I got your message to call. What do you want Daddy?”

“I want you Eileen. I want you to come home. Tonight.”

“Oh I can’t Dad; not this weekend. Have you forgotten? Didn’t Mother tell you? I’m hop mistress for the Spring Formal — it’s tonight! And tomorrow Zeta’s going out to crew — I’m stroke ! And Sunday is my big moment — I’m going over to West Point with Wayne. Isn’t that a thrill?”

“A thrill! It sounds like a fast flight to me, but I think you’d better pull the joy stick. I’m afraid you’re going to have to come down, daughter. Can you land on both feet?”

“That’s the last thing I was planning to do. I don’t have to come home, do I Dad?”

‘Yes. There’s something you must know. It’s dreadful. I want to be the first to tell you.”

“Dad! What is it?”

“You’ll have to wait until I see you. But there’s something else, too, not so bad.”

“What, Dad?”

“An idea, an idea, Eileen, but it needs a crutch, and you’re it. You’ve got to help me put it over. How soon can you get home?”

“Well, if that’s that, I suppose it’s that. I guess I can get there about as soon as you can, but it’s like throwing diamonds in the river to give up that date with Wayne. Is Mother home?”

“Yes.”

“And Jim?”

“Yeah. Good-bye, dear. Ask your director to have your things sent on, will you?”

“Dad! Is it for good? A closeout?”

“I’m ‘fraid so — you dear girl. But never mind; chin up. And just wait until you hear what I’ve got in mind. There won’t be a tear in a bucket, you’ll see.”

TOM looked at his watch. He had a few moments to wait before his chauffeur would be calling.

He slumped and again began to torture himself with “ifs.” Step by step he rehearsed his crash, saying, “If I had not done this,” or, “if I had done that.” But he saw no loophole through which a man of honor might have escaped. But, although nearly everything he owned had been engulfed, he had not lost his values nor his perspective of life. Reynolds’ spirit was unquenchable.

As a lad he had herded his father’s sheep from one range to another in the far West. He knew the lush meadows in the hidden canyons of the .Southwest where his flocks had wintered. And the ferns and brake of high uplands where they had summered. Long ago, when he had lain in the shadow of the mountains, wiggling his toes in the moist grass, something elemental had been nurtured deep within his nature, a still source which gave meaning to the depth of life and abundance to his spirit. This spiritual essence had been overlaid with day dreams that had passed before his childish vision like a column of scudding clouds. “To shoot through space and land on Mars; gee, for swell! To be rich and live in a hundred-room house when he grew up . . . and have a pretty wife. To be a big shot.” Many of his dreams were lost on his way to manhood, but some of them became living, rushing realities as the past was left far behind. One became an expensive bit of human addenda, that pretty wife of his, but Tom adored her.

The pyramid of his fortune had risen naturally. An appointment to the federal grazing commission. More land, more sheep, thousands upon thousands of head, blooded cattle, then oil, and eventually the stock market, a brokerage firm — and finally residence in the East. When the market folded up like a broken bellows, his holdings in the West collapsed; one thing went to save another, but practically everything was lost.

Of all his property there was nothing left but one ranch which he had recently deeded to Eileen, with some fine horses, and one herd of blooded cattle. There was a bunch of range horses, some Indian ponies, and a thoroughbred saddle mount for both of the children and their father. There was also a pair of well trained English Setters that Tom took with him when he went duck hunting on the Bear River. Tom had planned other holdings for Jimmie, but now it looked as if Eileen’s ranch would have to be the family stand-by for the time being.

The ranch was a dude, and one they used for not much more than vacationing. It was in Utah, close to the Weber River head, and at the very foot of the Uinta Mountains, that curious range which shoots off at right angles from the Colorado Rockies and extends into Utah for about twenty-five miles just below the northeastern cutout of that state.

A half dozen bare, rocky peaks accent the western end and the northern line of the range at intervals as they thrust their fantastic, naked summits high above their forested slopes far below. One is a bald mound, some are sharply triangular, and another, far to the east, is a narrowing blunt square with a Mayan top. But each is a singularly isolated landmark which reflects the saffron afterglow of the setting sun when a fair evening closes in. Then the beveled edges of countless layers of apricot and rose quartzite and sandstone strata are sharply etched as they mount in diminishing steps thirteen thousand feet or more into the evening sky. On cloudy evenings the peaks are cold and gray, and then the strata recede into the mountains. A lesser and more level rim bounds the range on the south. Between the two rims stretch thousands of miles of magnificently forested wilderness; spruce, fir, and pine.

Long grass and moss carpet the ground in green. Small rivulets quickly increase to fair-sized streams which cut deep ravines in their escape from the mountains. They are born and fed by hundreds of lakes which open their eyes to a sky that changes from ever-deepening blue to threatening gray with no more warning than a single thunder clap. But the storms of these mountains simply enhance the sunshine, so heavenly and peaceful are their balmy days.

The region has been set aside by the government as a primitive area, a fisherman’s paradise. Blazed trails mark the way from one lake basin to another. It is planned that no auto road shall ever cut those deep, still forests. For a stranger to leave the trail is to be almost hopelessly lost so complex, transverse, and multiple are the minor upthrusts which abound everywhere, and so changeless and vast are the stretches of towering evergreens.

EILEEN and young Jimmie had gone into these mountains with their father when they had been visiting in the West. They had responded to their feeling as wholeheartedly as had their fond parent. Tom knew every shadowed glen and shimmering lake. One day, when Eileen was especially exuberant over the mountains, her father had promised her the Utah ranch which they bordered.

But as Tom thought of the ranch and the Uintas now, the lines in his haggard face deepened. “The ranch . . . the mountains . . . it’s possible, but . . .” he was almost afraid to admit what he had in mind. Looking at his watch, he shrugged and said, “Well, it’s time to go.”

Standing for a moment in the doorway, he glanced about before going quietly out. Leaving his keys with the foreman, he left the building for the last time.

“How can I tell Dadai,” he mused bitterly as he rolled along in his luxurious car behind his uniformed chauffeur towards Tarrytown and what had been his own magnificent estate but a few days ago. This was one problem he hadn’t solved. It was hard for him to face the result of his losses. How could she? He wondered if his wife could bear to make the change he had in mind. In war times women bore anything — devastation, death. But there wasn’t any cause in a crisis like this; no flags flying, no trumpets blaring, nor marching troops to carry one’s spirits high. You simply stepped out of everything you were used to and into something you’d never dreamed of, helpless and floundering. Unless, unless . . . you could snatch at the tag ends of things and build a new way of life.

“Could Dadai do what he had planned?” he asked himself. “Could he ask her to? The adorable little lady! It had been the great pleasure of his life to indulge his wife’s every wish. There was just no reason between her delicacies and exquisite foibles and his plan for a way out of their difficulties. He shuddered as he thought of the incongruity.

It was different with Eileen. He’d have wagered any day that finishing school was nothing more than the dimple of life to his pretty eighteen-year-old daughter. Underneath that polished surface of hers, he had seen a layer of grit as hard as blue diamonds. And Jimmie, there was a youngster any man could be proud of, the little Indian!

The first lights of evening splashed their yellow challenge from the avenue lamps and high-arched windows as he rounded the last bend towards his driveway.

Perce stood at attention as he opened the heavy door of Mr. Reynold’s car. “Will you need me this evening, Sir?”

“No, nor tomorrow morning, Perce. I’m sorry old man, but you and I are quite through. The garage is going to be cleared tomorrow except for one of the ladies’ cars. Stimson will give you a month in advance.

“Good old Perce; he took it on the chin. Can I, if Dadai lets me down?” He called his wife by her real name Adoree, only in mocking, playful moments, although she fancied it. Sometimes he had laughed and teased her by calling himself her ticket to the dance of life when she had been unusually frivolous. But he realized he could no more get along without her than she could without him and his indigencies. “Poor little girl,” he said softly as he mounted the stairs to her boudoir.

“Dadai? Hello darling!” he exclaimed as he opened her door after his first brief tap.

THERE she was like a waft of the setting sun in the midst of cool green. A little red-head curled in the gold and green of her chaise lounge, playing with Pim, her toy Peke! As Tom crossed her pale green Chinese rug, every detail of this exquisite room touched a highlight of pleasant, intimate memory enfolding the two of them. Her gold toilet set on her green taffetaed dressing table; the long mirror, gilt-framed, hanging just above; the talisman roses in their jade bowl on the gilded table at her side glowing in the soft light of the lamp!

Tom knew that without all this there would have been no memories for him and Adoree. He supplied what her esthetic nature had been denied in girlhood, revelry in the beautiful. For the sake of such revelry she smiled into his homely, ruddy face, and tolerated his brusqueness as a carry-over from the tang of the nurturing earth. What would she say when she knew that both of them must taste that earth now? And that for a time, at least, her only contact with beauty was to be from nature’s free offering?

“Dadai!” he crushed her hungrily in his arms as she rose to meet him. He hadn’t seen her since he started to wind up his involved affairs. The folds of her green chiffon gown suffused a delicate perfume to their nearness.

As they sat down on the lounge, she pouted, “Tommy, you’re an evasion.”

“I only wish I might be, darling. I’ve something to tell you I can’t evade.”

“Well, at any rate I’ll know the truth. I had no sooner returned from the cherry-blossom festival in South Carolina, than Stimson called me from your office and gave me your message that I was to cancel all my engagements and sit tight until I heard from you. Thank heaven you’ve come.”

“Is Eileen home?”

“Of course not. She’s just returned to school after the Easter holidays.”

“I’ve sent for her. Thought she might have arrived. Where’s Jimmie?

“Just gone down to the stables to see that Pat gave Star her rubdown.”

“Pat will not be here to rub Star down after tomorrow.”

“Tom, I’m frightened. What’s up?”

“Nothing’s up sweet. Everything’s down. And I’m at the bottom of the pile.”

“Oh for goodness’ sake tell me. I’ve been panicky for days.”

“Please, darling,” said Tom, trying to keep cool, himself. “I’ve absorbed the shock for both of us. And it was terrific. It’s hard to realize the truth, and what it will mean as time goes on, but we’re certainly headed for a change, dear.”

‘Tell me about it, Tom. What’s wrong?”

Suddenly the shadow of a smile broke the gloom of Tom’s expression. “Why Dadai, there’s a bit of harmony in this thing I hadn’t seen before.” The half smile broadened ever so slightly at the whimsy of his notion. “Wait a moment, I’ll explain. You loath the smell of sheep, don’t your

“I’ve told you I do enough times when you’ve suggested I go out to the range,” she said pathetically.

“I know, I know. You’ve vacationed at White Sulphur Springs, Monte Carlo, The Thousand Islands, anywhere but out West with me.

“Out West. Ugh! Cockleburs!”

“Well Dadai, I haven’t an ounce of wool left, nor the sheep that will raise enough to make a baby’s blanket. They’re all gone, every one of them, and the ranges, too. So we can be happy on that score, can’t we?” There was a somber note in Tom’s tone in spite of his lightness.

Adoree looked puzzled; she wasn’t so sure of that kind of happiness.

Tom smiled again, although a little grimly, “You can’t endure the thought of oil, can you dear? The gooey sludge!”

“Well, I haven’t craved living in the shadow of the derricks.”

“Dadai, I’ll never ask you to again. I’m afraid no well will ever pump another barrel of crude for me.

Adoree looked still more dubious. “Can’t you talk English! What are you getting at?”

“Wait— wait a moment dear, there’s another point we’ll not argue any more. I’m through speculating; I’m through with the market —.”

“Oh Tom, for heaven’s sake — .”

“And this house, this room, Dadai.” Tom was losing his bantering tone entirely now and becoming very earnest, “we’ve both loved it, but it isn’t ours any more. The house is gone, too. But sweetheart, there’s something I can love even more than this, if you’ll share it with me. It’s God’s great outdoors. I’ve lost everything. But I’m not ruined. And there’s still Eileen’s ranch. Thank heaven, I had put that in her name. If you’ll go out to the ranch we can at least survive until I can make another start.”

‘The ranch! Cockleburs!” “Cockleburs, perhaps. But forests, mountains, streams, lakes, fishing! It is rough, but it’s beautiful, dear.”

“But I don’t love God’s great outdoors! And I won’t go West. Have you lost your reason, too?” Adoree broke into hysterical sobs and sank back among her pillows.

“But you see, everything I had planned for you has gone into the smashup, too; you’ll — .”

“Mother! Dad! I’m home,” called a clear, musical voice. Eileen bounded upstairs and burst into her mother’s sitting room. She was dressed in a white tweed coat over a tailored navy blue dress; on her head a jaunty hat matched her blue eyes, but contrasted lusciously with her golden hair. Her whole being was tense with anxiety. “What is it Dad? Mother, what’s happened? I must know!”

“Ask your father, ask him; it would take me the rest of my life to tell you.”

“Eileen, everything’s gone to pieces. I’ve smashed up. I’m as flat as a dried toad. Except for Timber Toes we haven’t a place to call our own. And that would be lost, too, if I hadn’t turned it over to you. But listen, Eileen,” his eyes burned like hot spokes as he looked straight into his daughter’s, “with the ranch as a base and so close to the Uinta Mountains, we can take the horses over the ridge, around the foot of Baldy, and establish a camp at Mirror Lake.

“That’s the Utah property, Dadai, at the foot of Uintas.”

“I don’t care where it is,” sobbed Adoree.

“Oh, Mother!”

“That’s all right, Eileen. Wait, both of you, until you hear what I have to say. There isn’t a ranch in the region that hasn’t been pestered to death by tourists wanting horses and guides to take them over to the Granddaddies. People come from all over the country to fish in those lakes. I think I can get a Government permit to establish a camp at Mirror Lake and act as an official guide. My record on the grazing commission is good. The thing’s sewed up, but I can’t do it alone. You’ll have to help me, Eileen; you can take parties in, too. And of course, we’ll have to have two or three hands to help with the horses.”

“Darling,” he pleaded, turning to his wife, “won’t you come?”

“How can you expect me to? I never heard of such a thing!”

(To be continued)