THE HOUSE ON THE MESA
Even more bleak than from a distance
the house on the mesa appeared as the riders approached
it up the winding road. It stood solitary on its
desert promontory, the bright sky behind it, not a
shrub to ease its lines, not a barn or shed to make
a rude background for its amazing proportions.
Native grass grew sparsely on the great table where
it stood; rains had guttered the soil near its door.
There was about it the air of an abandoned place,
its long, gaunt porches open to wind and storm.
As they drew nearer the house the
scene opened in a more domestic appearance. Beyond
it in a little cup of the mesa the stable, cattle
sheds, and quarters for the men were located, so hidden
in their shelter that they could not be seen from
any point in the valley below. To the world that
never scaled these crumbling heights, Philbrook’s
mansion appeared as if it endured independent of those
vulgar appendages indeed.
“Looks like they’ve got
the barn where the house ought to be,” said
Taterleg. “I’ll bet the wind takes
the hide off of a feller up here in the wintertime.”
“It’s about as bleak a
place for a house as a man could pick,” Lambert
agreed. He checked his horse a moment to look
round on the vast sweep of country presented to view
from the height, the river lying as bright as quicksilver
in the dun land.
“Not even a wire fence to break
it!” Taterleg drew his shoulders up and shivered
in the hot morning sun as he contemplated the untrammeled
roadway of the northern winds. “Well, sir,
it looks to me like a cyclone carried that house from
somewheres and slammed it down. No man in his
right senses ever built it there.”
“People take queer freaks sometimes,
even in their senses. I guess we can ride right
around to the door.”
But for the wide, weathered porch
they could have ridden up to it and knocked on its
panels from the saddle. Taterleg was for going
to the kitchen door, a suggestion which the Duke scorned.
He didn’t want to meet that girl at a kitchen
door, even her own kitchen door. For that he
was about to meet her, there was no doubt in him that
moment.
He was not in a state of trembling
eagerness, but of calm expectation, as a man might
be justified in who had made his preparations and felt
the outcome sure. He even smiled as he pictured
her surprise, like a man returning home unexpectedly,
but to a welcome of which he held no doubt.
Taterleg remained mounted while Lambert
went to the door. It was a rather inhospitable
appearing door of solid oak, heavy and dark. There
was a narrow pane of beveled glass set into it near
the top, beneath it a knocker that must have been
hammered by a hand in some far land centuries before
the house on the mesa was planned.
A negro woman, rheumatic, old, came
to the door. Miss Philbrook was at the barn,
she said. What did they want of her? Were
they looking for work? To these questions Lambert
made no reply. As he turned back to his horse
the old serving woman came to the porch, leaving the
door swinging wide, giving a view into the hall, which
was furnished with a profusion and luxuriance that
Taterleg never had seen before.
The old woman watched the Duke keenly
as he swung into the saddle in the suppleness of his
youthful grace. She shaded her eyes against the
sun, looking after him still as he rode with his companion
toward the barn.
Chickens were making the barnyard
lots comfortable with their noise, some dairy cows
of a breed alien to that range waited in a lot to be
turned out to the day’s grazing; a burro put
its big-eared head round the corner of a shed, eying
the strangers with the alert curiosity of a niño
of his native land. But the lady of the ranch
was not in sight nor sound.
Lambert drew up at the gate cutting
the employees’ quarters from the barnyard, and
sat looking things over. Here was a peace and
security, an atmosphere of contentment and comfort,
entirely lacking in the surroundings of the house.
The buildings were all of far better class than were
to be found on the ranches of that country; even the
bunkhouse a house, in fact, and not a shed-roofed
shack.
“I wonder where she’s
at?” said Taterleg, leaning and peering.
“I don’t see her around here nowheres.”
“I’ll go down to the bunkhouse
and see if there’s anybody around,” Lambert
said, for he had a notion, somehow, that he ought to
meet her on foot.
Taterleg remained at the gate, because
he looked better on a horse than off, and he was not
wanting in that vain streak which any man with a backbone
and marrow in him possesses. He wanted to appear
at his best when the boss of that high-class outfit
laid her eyes on him for the first time; and if he
had hopes that she might succumb to his charms, they
were no more extravagant than most men’s are
under similar conditions.
Off to one side of a long barn Lambert
saw her as he opened the gate. She was trying
to coax a young calf to drink out of a bucket that
an old negro held under its nose. Perhaps his
heart climbed a little, and his eyes grew hot with
a sudden surge of blood, after the way of youth, as
he went forward.
He could not see her face fully, for
she was bending over the calf, and the broad brim
of her hat interposed. She looked up at the sound
of his approach, a startled expression in her frank,
gray eyes. Handsome, in truth, she was, in her
riding habit of brown duck, her heavy sombrero, her
strong, high boots. Her hair was the color of
old honeycomb, her face browned by sun and wind.
She was a maid to gladden a man’s
heart, with the morning sun upon her, the strength
of her great courage in her clear eyes; a girl of breeding,
as one could see by her proud carriage.
But she was not the girl whose
handkerchief he had won in his reckless race with
the train!