A Silver Girdle
By Claire W. Noall
Chapter 5
Synopsis: Tom Reynolds, having lost his fortune, takes his family from their New York home to a dude ranch in Utah bordering the Uinta Mountains, which he had deeded to his daughter, Eileen, just before his financial crash. The title is threatened by an accusation of intent to defraud. To save the ranch, Tom must establish the fact that the deed was made in good faith. Eileen sees Brent Baring, Uinta forest ranger, in the office of the forest supervisor, Dave Morley, but Baring is not interested. They meet again in a lonely spot on her ranch. This time she thinks she is not interested. The Reynolds family establish a summer camp at the end of the motor road at Mirror Lake in the Uintas to supply pack trains and guide fishermen into the interior of the high Uintas. Eileen wonders why she has not heard from Wayne, her sweetheart in New York, as she rides through the forest toward Mt. Agassiz. Intending to take a bird’s-eye view of the region in order to be of more help to her father, she disobeys the law of the forest and climbs alone to a high point on this steep peak. Being overtaken by a terrific rain and snow storm, she slips on the wet rocks as she is making her way down the mountain and faints just as night closes in. But Brent has seen someone climbing Agassiz as he scans the forest and mountains through his binoculars. He does not know who it is, but realizing that a storm is about to break and the danger of the situation, he takes the trail from Rainbow to Agassiz. He finds Eileen unconscious on the mountain in the last light of day. The snow is still falling. He rescues her and helps her back to camp, and Eileen’s disinterest is replaced by a feeling of deep gratitude. Then comes a letter from Wayne.
EILEEN was sitting on a blanket on the ground, leaning against the trunk of a tree with her sprained ankle resting on a pillow of pine needles, devouring Wayne’s letter. “Here’s news!” she chuckled as she read of the gay times her friends were having in that far-away world she had left behind. But, as she sensed the meaning of Wayne’s closing paragraphs she turned cold and as green as a cricket:
“I’m afraid the migration to the wild and woolly is off. I may be flapping down to Janeiro in July. Gov is representing the Corporation on the Van Insulin bond case. Yours truly is going to give (or take) his first whack in a legal skirmish. Gov says the pin feathers have got to sprout, and if he gets me away from the bright lights of Broadway he may discover a shining beam in my own little nob. He’s probably thinking of darkest Africa in planning that test, but I’m picturing the glow of the midnight parade in Rio. Honey, I’ll pledge a toast to you in some garden by the sea, and with whomever I’m dancing, I’ll imagine it’s you in my arms, not she.
“But after all, my exotic little whiff of star-dust has turned horsewoman — here’s to the brave! By the way, Eileen, I understand it’s going to take courage to call that spot in the mountains your own. I hear there’s a question attached to the title. What brave gesture will be your next if the experiment in the wilderness fails?
“Oh — and how’s your father?
“Here’s to you, my dear, and a breath of the strato over Rio. You’re not the only one to seek the ozone rare. “Goodbye, my love,
“Wayne.”
“Well! How very coy!” She suddenly found herself burning up instead of ice cold. “What a perfectly innocuous way of telling me that square pegs don’t fit into round holes.”
With characteristic honesty, she was willing to admit that between the lines of Wayne’s letter she saw a faint image of the girl she might have been — just too, too, divinely perfect; gold-leafed, gilt-edged, quality de luxe, with froth for all and care for none. “And now,” thought she, “he’s telling me the froth has blown away and the dregs are bitter. What a horrible way to say it! Can’t be cut clean? Have I been nothing but a play-girl to that boy? Has he never seen anything in me but a laugh? And to think how much I cared! But what hurts most is the way he’s missed Dad’s measure. Does he think my father could be so petty as to scrummage a bit of land from the catastrophe he went through? Oh no! He doesn’t know Dad either. Believe me, I’ll show him that I love my ranch and that this is no game.”
Burning humiliation held her in its matrix, coloring the essence of her spirit like white light broken down in a prism. Delusion attacked her faith in friendship. It was the first real shock of Eileen’s life. Loss of wealth hadn’t hurt like this; physical pain was insignificant in comparison. Faintness alternated between a dizzy sensation in her head like the whirling motion of a dancing dervish. “He was my friend,” she kept saying to herself. Heretofore the slap-jamming experiences of life had all been around the corner from her triumphant world, but she now saw herself as the nucleus of a revolting situation — the object of derision and scorn from one she had held dear. “Dropped! For deadly!” the words pierced her quiet lips. “That ghastly camouflage — it’s too disgusting!
There is more than the land at stake in that deed — my father’s honor, and my ambition. Both must be saved.”
EILEEN did all her weeping within herself; the tears oozed from her heart. Then the injury came up against something hard, like the resistance of flint to an onslaught of gunpowder. “It takes more than a heartache to put me down; I can go on,” she resolved. “I know I haven’t been a good mountaineer — -the first thing I did was to get caught in a jam and get myself all bunged up; I couldn’t have won Brent’s respect; I don’t know an earthly thing about raising cattle, but I’m going to learn. With that single small herd grazing on my acres, my acres, I’ll start a line of blooded stock that will sell all over this country. You may fly down to Rio, Wayne, but some day I’ll fly a calf from here to you and make you a present of it whether you want it or not. I’ll go to an agricultural college — maybe I can win a scholarship. There’s money in a good ranch. I’ll make mine pay.”
Her thoughts raced on at white heat, compensating for her wounded feelings, exaggerating her own importance, and then they slowly receded into the aisles of memory where she saw herself and Wayne in the midst of a gay circle, laughing the hours away. It was no wonder that Wayne couldn’t understand the vast change that had come over her in the experiences of the last two months. She was simply sorry that he couldn’t know her now at close range. They had been very congenial, but now she saw herself living close to the earth, wresting her existence from its bounty and as single in her purpose as the blue gentian of the Uintas, opening its cup to the sky in the grass, there by her side.
“There is beauty in life — and I shall find it; these mountains are drenched with it. The rugged people I have met out here are as true as the enduring stone of these high peaks, and as solid as their turreted grandeur. I will live as truly as I can,” she made a promise to herself.
“Jimmie, oh Jimmie — ” she called.
“Huh,” he grunted from the underground he was digging.
“Bring me a notebook and my fountain pen, will you?” And she started a letter to Wayne as direct and basic as his had been light and silly.
“You may be on the crest of the wave, now, dear Wayne, while I am in the trough, but without the trough for the crest to tumble over there would be no ocean. I’m willing to take my place, but its depth is to serve as the foundation for the building of a new life, such as you and I never dreamed of when I was skimming the foam with you. You must know that I have nothing in common with the shrinking violet; I adore a challenge! I have certainly found one in your letter — you may find my answer in a milk-bottle some day.
“I now see the meaning of those lines from Edward Arlington Robison that Miss Hargraves used to rave about. They didn’t register when I was in school. Do you remember how you and I laughed when I quoted them to you? We were so merry and gay, lying on the beach after a swim: ‘I grant you friendship is a royal thing, But none shall ever know that royalty For what it is till he has realized His best friend in himself.’
“You see one is not fit for real friendship until he has proved himself worthy; and until he is staunch enough to stand alone.
“Goodbye, Wayne,
“Eileen.”
Her father came upon her as she sat, white-faced and shaken, her mouth set in a determined line, a little hard, for Eileen. “Why, daughter, what is it?”
She said simply, “Daddy, I have just torn something precious out of my life by the roots, and it hurts.”
Her father looked at Wayne’s letter in her lap, but he said nothing. And then — ‘”Say, where’s your mother’s pup — that cute little annoyance, Pim?”
“Daddy, you’re a trifler. Why don’t you say, puppy love, and be done with it! The worst of it is you so often trifle at just the right moment.”
A few more days of hobbling around and Eileen was ready to call herself quite whole physically. Emotionally she hurt all over every time she thought of Wayne’s attitude. But, she reasoned with herself, “After all, I’m over a couple of thousand miles away in spirit as well as distance. How childish of me to have expected my friendship with him to continue as it was. A black line on the social register is of no consequence whatever — to the register; I can’t let it matter much to me! I won’t.”
The Lodge at the Lake was open. People came early to be among the first anglers of the season. Nature-lovers come later.
Tom’s decoy was more alluring than he had anticipated; Dadai found no more time for loneliness. She was too busy helping her men to organize parties, packing food and lunches, and keeping the soup kettle simmering for their return.
It fascinated her to see Slim and Squint secure the saddle-bags with the diamond hitch. She watched in amazement as they stowed everything from mattresses to folding tables and chairs on the backs of two or three little pack animals. She was astonished at the bunch of hay they always carried for those who intended to keep the horses at the lake basin while they fished. But that was not everybody’s privilege. Tom would not take chances with anyone who had not been in the forest before, or who was not well acquainted with horses. It was too easy for anyone, not familiar with the mountains, to get lost, and there was too much probability that the horses might break loose from their hobbles or ropes and wander back to the home camp, leaving the fisherman stranded: not such a predicament as being on a sinking ship of course, but in this case there would be no means of sending out an S. O. S.
At least two people from the guide camp always took a party in, in order to lead the saddle and pack horses home. After a few days, or possibly a week or more, the guides returned to the lakes to bring the anglers back. Both Jimmie and Eileen were ready to go along as assistants to Tom or one of the men whenever they were needed. Eileen felt able to take a group in by herself if necessary.
Tom had to keep a very close watch on the horses at camp to keep them from straying, in which case they might be lost forever.
Every animal in the band had a personality of his own. Dadai found the horses almost as interesting as people. One little bronco was decidedly tricky; he liked nothing better than to start a riot among the other horses by prancing up and down and rattling the pots and pans in his saddle bags if he could get away at just the right moment. He often pretended to falter on some dizzy pass, but in reality he never stumbled or fell. The roan was just as steady as old Bronc was tricky; she assumed an air of wisdom. One mischievous buff-colored little beast with a black mane and tail was a great pretender. At the first sign of being led to the fence where the packing went on the pony would start to hang his head and droop his eyes as if even his soul were burdened. Slim would give his rump a resounding whack and say, “Straighten yo’self out here, Kennie, don’ you know what’s fit’n ‘n proper in an animal? Disport yo’eslf, you miserable little hunk o’ hoss flesh, disport yo’self!” Old Kennie would look around at him out of the corner of his eye and grunt as if to say, “That’s all you know about it.” And sure enough, the minute he got one straw too much on his back, down on his knees he’d go and roll over on his pack. “Come on lazy bones, you son-of-a-gun!” Slim would say, and call Chance, who was always standing close by with his tail wagging and his tongue lolling, waiting for the signal. As Chance leapt forward to nip old Kennie’s hocks, up he’d get as blithe as any critter, ready for the trek. But there were times when he just couldn’t get going without that protest.
One day Tom saw a party off to the lakes at the head of Henry’s Fork, a two-day’s jaunt there and back from Camp Reynolds. Tom would have liked to lead this group himself. It was the greatest distance anyone had gone, but he was expecting friends to arrive at camp that afternoon, and he would not disappoint them by being absent.
Cars pulled in or out of Camp at any hour of the day or night. Dadai’s social charm was anything but lost in this mountain retreat. She was gracious and hospitable to all who came, and she found the sport-lovers as varied as a cross-section of society from her own metropolis. Women who had never held a rod came from long distances, thinking that all they had to do was to cast and pull out. Some of them didn’t know the difference between a night-crawler and a Black Coachman, or when to use which. And some who hadn’t ridden much would tumble off their horses on their return, so stiff and shaky they thought they’d never walk again.
Though many of her duties were distasteful to her, Dadai worked with power plus, energy she had not even suspected she possessed. She found herself comparing this summer’s experience with others without surpassing regret. “In fact,” she told Tom, “working for other people’s pleasure is anything but tedious; anything but that, my dear. I’m not likely to die of ennui this summer. But — whether lack of boredom makes up for callouses is still a question: just look at my hands!” Tom took them in his own and said, “A kiss for every callous.” Dadai sighed.
As Tom heard the last tinkling of the horses’ bells as they went on their way to Henry’s Fork, he heard a frightful sputter behind him. Turning around, he saw a battered car boiling down the road towards camp. It looked its part all right,
which Tom found out was for service over rough mountain roads, and then for more service over more rough roads, for who should step out of the car but the sheriff of Summit County? Tom saw his star as he flipped his coat with a significant jerk.
“Hello, pardner. I’m looking for Mr. Thomas Reynolds. Ye ain’t him, air ye?”
“Yes, I am. What can I do for you?”
“Relieve me of this yar notice what I’ve ben give to give to you.”
“Thanks. Won’t you come over to the cabin and sit down, or we might go over to my car where we can talk by ourselves.”
“No, thank ee, I gotta be on my way. The paper’ll explain all ye gotta know. Good day, pardner. I’m off.” And away he went.
The explanation was as clear as crystal, being no less than a summons to appear in the county court in twenty days’ time. Adams had led a proceeding in equity to have the deed which gave the property, “Timber Toes,” to Eileen, canceled and set aside on the ground that it had been executed and delivered with the intent to defraud.
“Well,” said Tom to Dadai, as she came over for an explanation, “it really doesn’t surprise me. True to his caliber, Adams has hit below the belt. I actually turned over my best securities in his behalf. He had me on the hip from that last deal I made in Texas oil. It looked like a cinch but when the government shut down on production, the prospect didn’t mature. I was involved with Adams because he had backed me in that last bank expansion. But he knows I didn’t cache a thing for myself. If you hadn’t had something of your own, where would we be while we’re getting started out here?”
“In the soup, Tommy, instead of on top of the world!”
“Well, I don’t intend to give up my exalted position. Hallam . . .” “Your lawyer?”
“Yeah . . . told me my record and the character I can produce from my friends out here and in the East should be vindication enough in case Adams carried out his threat and took this to court. Gosh, honey, I even paid my income tax in ’31 and ’32. But I can’t save a ranch on the strength of that. My one hope rests on Ming Low. Hallam told me to bring the Chinaman in from the Reservation if I had to. He’s the only witness on the face of the earth that I know of, and I’m going after him.”
“Darling!” she protested, “what about the camp?” Dadai was panicky.
“It’s up to you. I’m going out for big game; you take care of the fry until I get back!”
“How long will it take you?”
“It’s uncertain. I may be back in a couple of days, but don’t count on me, and don’t worry.”
BEFORE dawn the next morning, Tom was on Onesta following the trail that led past Rainbow Lake to the Granddaddy basin, and down the canyon to the settlement of Hanna.
As he galloped up to the Ranger Station at Rainbow, Brent hailed him with a hearty “How — partner!”
“How — Ranger!”
“How’s that daring daughter of yours?” ventured Brent, a bit of a blush creeping into his cheeks.
“Standing on two feet, thanks. Adventuresome as ever, but scouting enough by now to know she shouldn’t go climbing alone.”
“The laws of the woods and the mountains will be obeyed. But I say, Mr. Reynolds,” Brent smiled, “you might tell her I’ve taken to spinach as my chief article of diet.”
“You’ll need it to keep up with her, ‘Pop Eye’,” Brent heard above Tom’s guffaw and the rapid thud of Onesta’s hoofs.
At Hanna, Tom stabled Onesta, leaving his horse in charge of an old settler that understood horseflesh and who was thoroughly trustworthy. He intended to travel by automobile from Hanna to Fort Duchesne, government headquarters for the Indians of the Uinta Reservation. It was here that Ming Low ran his trading post, which was neither a shanty, nor a picturesque hogan after the style of the Indian, but a neat frame building, painted white, and surrounded with green grass.
The Indians had a respect for Ming Low that they felt for very few white men. There was a kindred feeling that had sprung from mutual trust and respect. Ming Low’s store included dry goods, hardware, meats, and groceries. But order and a sense of good business prevailed. The Indians would rather trade with him than any one on the Reservation. He understood their language and spoke it even though he hadn’t mastered English.
Tom felt his word as a witness was as reliable as any in the countryside — provided he could get an interpreter, and that the Court would take Ming Low’s word that he had understood Tom on that memorable day of the summer before his defeat in the panic.
It took a bit of dickering, but finally Tom managed to rent a small car from the manager of the filling station at Hanna, and he was off to the Fort, an orderly place just south of Highway 40, between Roosevelt and Vernal, Utah.
It was mid-afternoon when the white buildings and the green lawns of Uncle Sam’s well-kept Fort came into view. As Tom drove up to Ming Low’s store and entered the door, his vision was obliterated by the sudden gloom of the interior after the glaring light of outdoor. Strangely enough, there was no “Okye!” (welcome) from within.
Neither was there a Chinaman in sight, but a white man in his place. “Where’s Ming Low, the trader?” “Might be dead for all I know. Last I saw of him, was his dust as he rumbled down the road in his old Ford toward Current Creek.”
(To be continued)