The Little Lady of the Big House / Маленькая хозяйка большого дома. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Forrest’s hair was light brown to chestnut, while Graham’s carried a whispering advertisement that it would have been almost golden in its silk had it not been burned almost to sandiness by the sun. The cheeks of both were high-boned, although the hollows under Forrest’s cheekbones were more pronounced. Both noses were large-nostriled and sensitive. And both mouths, while generously proportioned, carried the impression of girlish sweetness and chastity along with the muscles that could draw the lips to the firmness and harshness that would not give the lie to the square, uncleft chins beneath.

But the inch more in height and the inch less in chest-girth gave Evan Graham a grace of body and carriage that Dick Forrest did not possess. In this particular of build, each served well as a foil to the other. Graham was all light and delight, with a hint – but the slightest of hints – of Prince Charming[156]. Forrest’s seemed a more efficient and formidable organism, more dangerous to other life, stouter-gripped on its own life.

Forrest threw a glance at his wrist watch as he talked, but in that glance, without pause or fumble of focus, with swift certainty of correlation, he read the dial.

“Eleven-thirty,” he said. “Come along at once, Graham. We don’t eat till twelve-thirty. I am sending out a shipment of bulls, three hundred of them, and I’m downright proud of them. You simply must see them. Never mind your riding togs.[157] Oh Ho – fetch a pair of my leggings. You, Oh Joy, order Altadena saddled. – What saddle do you prefer, Graham?”

“Oh, anything, old man.”

“English? – Australian? – McClellan? – Mexican?” Dick insisted.

“McClellan, if it’s no trouble,” Graham surrendered.

They sat their horses by the side of the road and watched the last of the herd beginning its long journey to Chili disappear around the bend.

“I see what you’re doing – it’s great,” Graham said with sparkling eyes. “I’ve fooled some myself with the critters, when I was a youngster, down in the Argentine. If I’d had beef-blood like that to build on, I mightn’t have taken the cropper I did[158].”

“But that was before alfalfa and artesian wells,” Dick smoothed for him. “The time wasn’t ripe for the Shorthorn. Only scrubs could survive the droughts. They were strong in staying powers but light on the scales. And refrigerator steamships hadn’t been invented. That’s what revolutionized the game down there.”

“Besides, I was a mere youngster,” Graham added. “Though that meant nothing much. There was a young German tackled it at the same time I did, with a tenth of my capital. He hung it out, lean years, dry years, and all. He’s rated in seven figures now.”

They turned their horses back for the Big House. Dick flirted his wrist to see his watch.

“Lots of time,” he assured his guest. “I’m glad you saw those yearlings. There was one reason why that young German stuck it out. He had to. You had your father’s money to fall back on, and, I imagine not only that your feet itched, but that your chief weakness lay in that you could afford to solace the itching.

“Over there are the fish ponds,” Dick said, indicating with a nod of his head to the right an invisible area beyond the lilacs. “You’ll have plenty of opportunity to catch a mess of trout, or bass, or even catfish. You see, I’m a miser. I love to make things work. There may be a justification for the eight-hour labor day, but I make the work-day of water just twenty-four hours’ long. The ponds are in series, according to the nature of the fish. But the water starts working up in the mountains. It irrigates a score of mountain meadows before it makes the plunge and is clarified to crystal clearness in the next few rugged miles; and at the plunge from the highlands it generates half the power and all the lighting used on the ranch. Then it sub-irrigates lower levels, flows in here to the fish ponds, and runs out and irrigates miles of alfalfa farther on. And, believe me, if by that time it hadn’t reached the flat of the Sacramento, I’d be pumping out the drainage for more irrigation.”

“Man, man,” Graham laughed, “you could make a poem on the wonder of water. I’ve met fire-worshipers, but you’re the first real water-worshiper I’ve ever encountered. And you’re no desert-dweller, either. You live in a land of water – pardon the bull – but, as I was saying…”

Graham never completed his thought. From the right, not far away, came the unmistakable ring of shod hoofs on concrete, followed by a mighty splash and an outburst of women’s cries and laughter. Quickly the cries turned to alarm, accompanied by the sounds of a prodigious splashing and floundering as of some huge, drowning beast. Dick bent his head and leaped his horse through the lilacs, Graham, on Altadena, followed at his heels[159]. They emerged in a blaze of sunshine, on an open space among the trees, and Graham came upon as unexpected a picture as he had ever chanced upon in his life.