FullReads

It was on this first ride of inspection that Teddy was seized by the inspiration that suggested the name of Mother Goose’s heroine, and he at once bestowed it upon Octavia. The idea, supported by both a similarity of names and identity of occupations, seemed to strike him as a peculiarly happy one, and he never tired of using it. The Mexicans on the ranch also took up the name, adding another syllable to accommodate their lingual incapacity for the final “p,” gravely referring to her as “La Madama Bo-Peepy.” Eventually it spread, and “Madame Bo-Peep’s ranch” was as often mentioned as the “Rancho de las Sombras.”

Came the long, hot season from May to September, when work is scarce on the ranches. Octavia passed the days in a kind of lotus-eater’s dream. Books, hammocks, correspondence with a few intimate friends, a renewed interest in her old water-colour box and easel–these disposed of the sultry hours of daylight. The evenings were always sure to bring enjoyment. Best of all were the rapturous horseback rides with Teddy, when the moon gave light over the wind-swept leagues, chaperoned by the wheeling night-hawk and the startled owl. Often the Mexicans would come up from their shacks with their guitars and sing the weirdest of heart-breaking songs. There were long, cosy chats on the breezy gallery, and an interminable warfare of wits between Teddy and Mrs. MacIntyre, whose abundant Scotch shrewdness often more than overmatched the lighter humour in which she was lacking.

And the nights came, one after another, and were filed away by weeks and months–nights soft and languorous and fragrant, that should have driven Strephon to Chloe over wires however barbed, that might have drawn Cupid himself to hunt, lasso in hand, among those amorous pastures–but Teddy kept his fences up.

One July night Madame Bo-Peep and her ranch manager were sitting on the east gallery. Teddy had been exhausting the science of prognostication as to the probabilities of a price of twenty-four cents for the autumn clip, and had then subsided into an anesthetic cloud of Havana smoke. Only as incompetent a judge as a woman would have failed to note long ago that at least a third of his salary must have gone up in the fumes of those imported Regalias.

“Teddy,” said Octavia, suddenly, and rather sharply, “what are you working down here on a ranch for?”

“One hundred per,” said Teddy, glibly, “and found.”

“I’ve a good mind to discharge you.”

“Can’t do it,” said Teddy, with a grin.

“Why not?” demanded Octavia, with argumentative heat.

“Under contract. Terms of sale respect all unexpired contracts. Mine runs until 12 P. M., December thirty-first. You might get up at midnight on that date and fire me. If you try it sooner I’ll be in a position to bring legal proceedings.”

Octavia seemed to be considering the prospects of litigation.

“But,” continued Teddy cheerfully, “I’ve been thinking of resigning anyway.”

Octavia’s rocking-chair ceased its motion. There were centipedes in this country, she felt sure; and Indians, and vast, lonely, desolate, empty wastes; all within strong barbed-wire fence. There was a Van Dresser pride, but there was also a Van Dresser heart. She must know for certain whether or not he had forgotten.

“Ah, well, Teddy,” she said, with a fine assumption of polite interest, “it’s lonely down here; you’re longing to get back to the old life–to polo and lobsters and theatres and balls.”

“Never cared much for balls,” said Teddy virtuously.

“You’re getting old, Teddy. Your memory is failing. Nobody ever knew you to miss a dance, unless it occurred on the same night with another one which you attended. And you showed such shocking bad taste, too, in dancing too often with the same partner. Let me see, what was that Forbes girl’s name–the one with wall eyes–Mabel, wasn’t it?”

“No; Adele. Mabel was the one with the bony elbows. That wasn’t wall in Adele’s eyes. It was soul. We used to talk sonnets together, and Verlaine. Just then I was trying to run a pipe from the Pierian spring.”