Read Blue Kingdom for Free Online

distance he heard the lowing of cattle. Somewhere, too, on the edge of the sky, a dog or a wolf was baying loudly. He smiled to himself, as if it were a voice speaking to him from the country of Dunmore of the Blue. He liked the idea of this man. It was doubly soothing to him to know of an ancestor so important, wearing his name, and also, above all, lazy like him. For he detested every physical effort except play. He reclined dreamily beneath the fig tree, until Cousin Elizabeth came out bearing to him a huge breakfast tray with twice as much on it as on the preceding morning.
    â€œConvalescents are always mighty hungry,” she said, and stood by with an encouraging smile to see him eat.
    But a touch of shadowy thought came into the eyes of Carrick. “Tell me,” he said suddenly, “how many men you keep to run your place?”
    â€œI can’t afford hired men,” she responded.
    â€œWhat! None at all?”
    â€œThere isn’t much to do. I only run a few head of cows . . . then I have a few more for milk . . . a few chickens. I can sell milk and eggs in town for a very good price . . . and it’s only now and then that I have to get in hired help for plowing and harvesting the river bottomland.”

S IX
    Now Carrick Dunmore looked at her in bewilderment. Across his mind flashed the picture of himself, at an early time of boyhood, idling about his father’s ranch, refusing to work, drifting off into the wild fields in the morning with his horse, hunting birds, or coyotes, or deer, and returning in the evening to meet the bitter words of his tired father, and the silent, worn face of his mother. He had hated himself, at times, for the pain that he allowed them to endure without effort on his part—but always his indolence was greater than his shame.
    Now he felt a great impulse to do something for this woman. But what could he do, except physical labor spread over weary months and months of monotony? No sooner did the impulse soar in him than it faded dimly again. These were not the days when a man could pasture his cattle on the horizon blue, or hunt the fat-sided ships on the blue of the ocean. These were not the days of the first Carrick Dunmore.
    So he sighed as he looked at Elizabeth Furneaux. “Have you always carried on like this?” he asked.
    â€œOh, no,” she said. “Things were a lot easier when my nephew was here with me.”
    â€œWhat became of him?”
    She hesitated. “You’ve never heard of Rodman Furneaux?” she asked him.
    â€œNo. I guess not.”
    â€œWell, Rod had a dash of the true Dunmore blood in him, of course. He wants happiness, but he expects to get it by short cuts.”
    â€œWhat do you mean by that?”
    â€œI mean this, in short. He worked here, well enough, but work was not really what he wanted. Work brings in dollars, but I don’t suppose any true Dunmore ever cared a lot for a bank account. And . . . at last he went off into the blue.”
    â€œOn the highway, you mean?” asked Carrick bluntly.
    â€œWell, to be frank, I’m afraid that’s it. He’s joined Tankerton and his gang, they say.”
    â€œHe’s joined The Bull?” said Carrick Dunmore.
    â€œI suppose he has.”
    â€œThat sort of beats me,” he said. “You take a brute of a man like Tankerton, why, what would keep your nephew up there with him?”
    â€œThe fun of the thing, Carrick. Just the fun of it.”
    â€œIt ain’t so much fun to get your neck stretched.”
    She shivered. “Boys don’t think that far ahead,” she commented.
    He fell to musing, and, when he looked up again, she had gone back with the emptied tray.
    Carrick Dunmore stood up suddenly and rolled himself a cigarette.
I’d better drift
, he thought. He went out to the corral and found the mare there. She was now his, for had not Colonel Clisson vowed that the man who rode her should have her? She