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kerosene up there, though. Want some? Bacon and ham
do?"
Matt got out to stretch his legs, went over to the door
of the cottage-cum-store and spoke to someone inside.
Lucie heard a woman's "Get on with you" kind of laugh,
and she knew that only the best in that woman's stock
would do for Matt Leverson. One couldn't explain that
charm of his; one could only marvel resignedly at its
potency.
A carton full of supplies was pushed into the back seat
and they got going again. The shacks became fewer and
nearly petered out. And then Matt turned the car off the
road and on to a rutted path, and after a short, hair-
raising climb brought them to a stop outside a log hut
of generous proportions.
The house sat on a wide shelf, with forest below and
above it and a stream wandering among the loose stones a
little way away to the right. The view was unbelievable.
Hills clad in pine and spruce, a few craggy peaks, and
down below, far below, the beginning of the red walls of
the Waskee Canyon, through which ran the river which'
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 eventually found the village of Waskee and meandered on
into a lake. In the deepening dusk the grandeur of the
scene was breathtaking.
Lucie drew a sigh. "Matt it's beyond everything! I'm
so glad you brought me up here."
"Pretty good, isn't it?" he said. "Dyson's a friend of mine
from college days. He got married a couple of years ago
to a girl who's not too strong. She comes up here with her
mother for three months in the summer and he comes
out every other weekend for three or four days. It's only a
cottage for two, so the mother moves in with a friend at
those times. Come inside and see what you think of it."
The living-room was panelled with cedar and the furni-
ture was plain and made comfortable with gay cushions.
The front window was long and wide, and the back one
was in the kitchen section, which one entered through a
doorway which had no door. There was a door into a
bedroom of fair size, where the two beds were shorn of
everything, even mattresses.
"When Dyson's here I generally come up for a meal,"
Matt said, closing the bedroom door. "Except during the
three months when it's occupied I can borrow the place
at any time, but I don't care for this kind of solitude for
days together. Besides, I'd be wondering what the hell they
were doing at the ranch."
"I bet you would," said Lucie. "I can't see you apart
from that ranch, somehow."
"Oh, I go travelling, occasionally. Three winters ago I
went to Bermuda."
By now he had put the carton on the table and she was
unloading it.'"Isn't that the place where the playboys
hang out?" she asked.
"The playgirl's too," he said with a smile in his voice.
"I never saw so many good lookers at one time in my life
before."
"Didn't you want to marry one of them?"
He got down on his haunches in front of the stone fire-
place, shook a little kerosene over the logs and kindling.
"There wasn't a pin to choose between them, and certainly
none among them who would have made a rancher's
wife."
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 "So you looked them over from that angle," she com-
mented. 
He stood up, threw a lighted match among the logs and
watched the sudden blaze. "I may act a bit rough-hewn,"
he said carelessly, "but I'm not exactly made of granite. I
think I'll come nearer home when I want a wife,
though."
"You mean you don't yet feel the urge?"
"Marriage, my little coppernob," he said paternally,
"is difficult to discuss in this idle fashion when one is
hungry. Let's postpone it, shall we?"
Disappointed, yet somehow glad, Lucie opened the
packet of bacon, the box of eggs. "Where do we cook?"
"Right here. The stove in the back takes a lot of heat-
ing. I'll get a skillet and the coffee pot, and you might
find a tablecloth and dishes  in that chest over there.
Are the rolls new?"
"Yes they smell grand. Matt, let me do the cook-
ing  please!"
"No, you'll find it much too hot close to the fire. I've
done this before."
"But I haven't  and I want to!"
He lifted one dark eyebrow, half winked. "Little woman
" tactics? Okay, pile in. Those eggs and bacon had better be
good!"
It'was the most delicious meal of Lucie's life. They sat
facing each other across the table with two candles glow-
ing between them and ate the ham and eggs, the rolls,
some of the fruit. They drank coffee sweetened with con-
densed milk and smoked a cigarette which had a peculiarly
wonderful flavor  to Lucie at least.
They piled the dishes in the sink  Matt wouldn't
hear of heating water to wash them. "Jake^s" wife will
clear up; I asked her," he said. "Come and sit near the
fire for a, bit. We'll have to start back about nine, but
that gives us nearly an hour. Have the stool here; then your
face won't get burned up."
He sat in a fireside chair and arranged the stool at his
side so that she could lean back against a cushion and ihe
wooden arm and only half face the fire. Unless she turned
and looked upwards she couldn't see his face at all, but he
- got the view of her profile, the cloud of red-brown hair,
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 ihe slim shoulders in powder blue, her crossed ankles and
the dove grey suede flatties which made the ankle bones
look absurdly fine.
Lucie's heart was aching as a heart does ache when
it knows that present sweetness cannot last. It was a sad
and lovely emotion that she had hardly known could
exist.
In order to forget it, she said, "it feels like a world^ of
one's own, doesn't it? Candlelight and fireglow are a little"
, bit fey. I suppose you have a generator at the ranch?"
"Yes. Years ago we had only a lighting plant like the one
at Denman's farm, but to mechanize the dairy we had to
have plenty of power. There are still people around who
do everything by hand, but it doesn't pay, these days. A
run the whole ranch with only a dozen men and a few
seasonal helpers."
^ She picked idly at the hem of her skirt. "Do your cow-
boys yip and play guitars and drink hooch?"
He laughed. "Sometimes. Did you get that off tele-
vision?"
"Joe told me. Do you have a brand for your cattle?"
"Sure.- It's three circles interlinked."
"So you're the Three Circle. There was a. bill on the
cafe wall about square-dancing at the Three Circle Ranch.
Where do you have it?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]