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The Branding Iron

Katharine Newlin Burt




  Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Teamat https://www.pgdp.net

  THE BRANDING IRON

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  THE BRANDING IRON

  BYKATHARINE NEWLIN BURT

  GROSSET & DUNLAPPUBLISHERS NEW YORK

  BY ARRANGEMENT WITH HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

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  COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY THE RIDGWAY COMPANYCOPYRIGHT, 1919, BY KATHARINE N. BURTALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  CLPRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

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  CONTENTS

  Book OneTHE TWO-BAR BRAND

  I. Joan Reads by Firelight 3 II. Pierre Lays his Hand on a Heart 12 III. Two Pictures in the Fire 21 IV. The Sin-Buster 25 V. Pierre Becomes Alarmed about his Property 32 VI. Pierre Takes Steps to Preserve his Property 42 VII. The Judgment of God 51VIII. Delirium 56 IX. Dried Rose-Leaves 61 X. Prosper Comes to a Decision 72 XI. The Whole Duty of Woman 80 XII. A Matter of Taste 91XIII. The Training of a Leopardess 100 XIV. Joan Runs Away 105 XV. Nerves and Intuition 116 XVI. The Tall Child 124XVII. Concerning Marriage 133

  Book TwoTHE ESTRAY

  I. A Wild Cat 151 II. Morena's Wife 161 III. Jane 170 IV. Flight 182 V. Luck's Play 191 VI. Joan and Prosper 205 VII. Aftermath 215VIII. Against the Bars 227 IX. Gray Envelopes 236 X. The Spider 255 XI. The Clean Wild Thing 266 XII. The Leopardess 284XIII. The End of the Trail 300

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  THE BRANDING IRON

  Book OneTHE TWO-BAR BRAND

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  CHAPTER I

  JOAN READS BY FIRELIGHT

  There is no silence so fearful, so breathless, so searching as thenight silence of a wild country buried five feet deep in snow. Forthirty miles or so, north, south, east, and west of the small,half-smothered speck of gold in Pierre Landis's cabin window, therelay, on a certain December night, this silence, bathed in moonlight.The cold was intense: below the bench where Pierre's homestead lay,there rose from the twisted, rapid river, a cloud of steam, abovewhich the hoar-frosted tops of cottonwood trees were perfectlydistinct, trunk, branch, and twig, against a sky the color of irispetals. The stars flared brilliantly, hardly dimmed by the full moon,and over the vast surface of the snow minute crystals kept up a steadyshining of their own. The range of sharp, wind-scraped mountains,uplifted fourteen thousand feet, rode across the country, northeast,southwest, dazzling in white armor, spears up to the sky, a sight,seen suddenly, to take the breath, like the crashing march ofarchangels militant.

  In the center of this ring of silent crystal, Pierre Landis's logsshut in a little square of warm and ruddy human darkness. Joan, hiswife, made the heart of this defiant space--Joan, the one mind livingin this ghostly area of night. She had put out the lamp, for Pierre,starting townward two days before, had warned her with a certainthreatening sharpness not to waste oil, and she lay on the hearth, herrough head almost in the ashes, reading a book by the unsteady lightof the flames. She followed the printed lines with a strong, darkforefinger and her lips framed the words with slow, whisperingmotions. It was a long, strong woman's body stretched there across thefloor, heavily if not sluggishly built, dressed rudely in warm stuffsand clumsy boots, and it was a heavy face, too, unlit from within, butbuilt on lines of perfect animal beauty. The head and throat had themassive look of a marble fragment stained to one even tone and dug upfrom Attic earth. And she was reading thus heavily and slowly, byfirelight in the midst of this tremendous Northern night, Keats'sversion of Boccaccio's "Tale of Isabella and the Pot of Basil."

  The story for some reason interested her. She felt that she couldunderstand the love of young Lorenzo and of Isabella, the hatred ofthose two brothers and Isabella's horrible tenderness for that youngmurdered head. There were even things in her own life that shecompared with these; in fact, at every phrase, she stopped, and,staring ahead, crudely and ignorantly visualized, after her ownexperience, what she had just read; and, in doing so, she pictured herown life.

  Her love and Pierre's--her life before Pierre came--to put herself inIsabella's place, she felt back to the days before her love, when shehad lived in a desolation of bleak poverty, up and away along LoneRiver in her father's shack. This log house of Pierre's was a castleby contrast. John Carver and his daughter had shared one room betweenthem; Joan's bed curtained off with gunny-sacking in a corner. Sheslept on hides and rolled herself up in old dingy patchwork quilts andworn blankets. On winter mornings she would wake covered with the snowthat had sifted in between the ill-matched logs. There had been astove, one leg gone and substituted for by a huge cobblestone; therehad been two chairs, a long box, a table, shelves--all rudely made byJohn; there had been guns and traps and snowshoes, hides, skins, thewings of birds, a couple of fishing-rods--John made his living bylegal and illegal trapping and killing. He had looked like a trappedor hunted creature himself, small, furtive, very dark, with longfingers always working over his mouth, a great crooked nose--a hideousman, surely a hideous father. He hardly ever spoke, but sometimes,coming home from the town which he visited several times a year, butto which he had never taken Joan, he would sit down over the stove andgo over heavily, for Joan's benefit, the story of his crime and hisescape.

  Joan always told herself that she would not listen, whatever he saidshe would stop her ears, but always the story fascinated her, heldher, eyes widened on the figure by the stove. He had sat huddled inhis chair, gnomelike, his face contorting with the emotions of thestory, his own brilliant eyes fixed on the round, red mouth of thestove. The reflection of this scarlet circle was hideously noticeablein his pupils.

  "A man's a right to kill his woman if she ain't honest with him," sothe story began; "if he finds out she's ben trickin' of him, playin'him off fer another man. That was yer mother, gel; she was a badwoman." There followed a coarse and vivid description of her badnessand the manner of it. "That kinder thing no man can let pass by in hiswife. I found her"--again the rude details of his discovery--"an' Ifound him, an' I let him go fer the white-livered coward he was, buther I killed. I shot her dead after she'd said her prayers an' askedGod's mercy on her soul. Then I walked off, but they kotched me an' Iwas tried. They didn't swing me. Out in them parts they knowed I wasin my rights; so the boys held, but 'twas a life sentence. They tuk meby rail down to Dawson an' I give 'em the slip, handcuffs an' all.Perhaps 'twas only a half-hearted chase they made fer me. Some of themfellers mebbe had wives of their own." He always stopped to laugh atthis point. "An' I cut off up country till I come to a smithy at theedge of a town. I hung round fer a spell till the smith hed gone offan' I got into his place an' rid me of the handcuffs. 'Twas a job, butI wasn't kotched at it an' I made myself free." Followed the story ofhis wanderings and his hardships and his coming to Lone River andsetting out his
traps. "In them days there weren't no law ag'in'trappin' beaver. A man could make a honest livin'. Now they've tuk an'made laws ag'in' a man's bread an' butter. I ask ye, if 't ain't wrongon a Tuesday to trap yer beaver, why, 't ain't wrong the follerin'Tuesday. I don't see it, jes becos some fellers back there has made alaw ag'in' it to suit theirselves. Anyway, the market fer beaver hidesis still prime. Mebbe I'll leave you a fortin, gel. I've saved youfrom badness, anyhow. I risked a lot to go back an' git you, but Idone it. You was playin' out in front of yer aunt's house an' I comefer you. You was a three-year-old an' a big youngster. Says I, 'What'syer name?' Says you, 'Joan Carver'; an' I knowed you by yer likenessto _her_. By God! I swore I'd save ye. I tuk you off with me, thoughyou put up a fight an' I hed to use you rough to silence you. 'Thereain't a-goin' to be no man in yer life, Joan Carver,' says I; 'you an'yer big eyes is a-goin' to be fer me, to do my work an' to look aftermy comforts. No pretty boys fer you an' no husbands either to goa-shootin' of you down fer yer sins.'" He shivered and shook his head."No, here you stays with yer father an' grows up a good gel. Thereain't a-goin' to be no man in _yer_ life, Joan."

  But youth was stronger than the man's half-crazy will, and when shewas seventeen, Joan ran away.

  She found her way easily enough to the town, for she was wise in thetracks of a wild country, and John's trail townwards, though so rarelyused, was to her eyes plain enough; and very coolly she walked intothe hotel, past the group of loungers around the stove, and asked atthe desk, where Mrs. Upper sat, if she could get a job. Mrs. Upper andthe loungers stared, for there were few women in this frontier countryand those few were well known. This great, strong girl, heavilygraceful in her heavily awkward clothes, bareheaded, shod like a man,her face and throat purely classic, her eyes gray and wide and assecret in expression as an untamed beast's--no one had ever seen thelike of her before.

  "What's yer name?" asked Mrs. Upper suspiciously. It was Mormon Day inthe town; there were celebrations and her house was full; she neededextra hands, but where this wild creature was concerned she wasdoubtful.

  "Joan. I'm John Carver's daughter," answered the girl.

  At once comprehension dawned; heads were nodded, then craned for abetter look. Yes, the town, the whole country even, had heard of JohnCarver's imprisoned daughter. Sober and drunk, he had boasted of herand of how there was to be "no man" in her life. It was like danglingripe fruit above the mouths of hungry boys to make such a boast in sucha land. But they were lazy. It was a country of lazy, slow-thinking,slow-moving, and slow-talking adventurers--you will notice thisponderous, inevitable quality of rolling stones--and though men talkedwith humor not too fine of "travelin' up Lone River for John's gel,"not a man had got there. Perhaps the men knew John Carver for a coward,that most dangerous animal to meet in his own lair.

  Now here stood the "gel," the mysterious secret goal of desire, asplendid creature, virginal, savage, as certainly designed for man asEve. The men's eyes fastened upon her, moved and dropped.

  "Your father sent you down here fer a job?" asked Mrs. Upperincredulously.

  "No. I come." Joan's grave gaze was unchanging. "I'm tired of it upthere. I ain't a-goin' back. I'm most eighteen now an' I kinder want achange."

  She had not meant to be funny, but a gust of laughter rattled theroom. She shrank back. It was more terrifying to her than any crueltyshe had fancied meeting her in the town. These were the men her fatherhad forbidden, these loud-laughing, crinkled faces. She had turned tobrave them, a great surge of color in her brows.

  "Don't mind the boys, dear," spoke Mrs. Upper. "They will laff, jokeor none. We ain't none of us blamin' you. It's a wonder you ain't runoff long afore now. I can give you a job an' welcome, but you'll begreen an' unhandy. Well, sir, we kin learn ye. You kin turn yer handto chamber-work an' mebbe help at the table. Maud will show you. But,Joan, what will dad do to you? He'll be takin' after you hot-foot, Ireckon, an' be fer gettin' you back home as soon as he can."

  Joan did not change her look.

  "I'll not be goin' back with him," she said.

  Her slow, deep voice, chest notes of a musical vibration, stirred theroom. The men were hers and gruffly said so. A sudden warmth envelopedher from heart to foot. She followed Mrs. Upper to the initiation inher service, clothed for the first time in human sympathies.