The Fighting Shepherdess
by Caroline Lockhart · English · Gutenberg #23296 · 600,148 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Fighting Shepherdess
Author: Caroline Lockhart
Illustrator: M. Leone Bracker
Release date: November 3, 2007 [eBook #23296]
Most recently updated: January 3, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23296
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THE FIGHTING SHEPHERDESS
by
CAROLINE LOCKHART
With Frontispiece by M. Leone Bracker
[Illustration: Kate was sitting on a rock--a dark picturesque silhouette
against the sky. See page 235.]
A. L. Burt Company
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with Small, Maynard & Company
Copyright, 1919,
By Small, Maynard & Company
(Incorporated)
Second Printing, February, 1919
Third Printing, March, 1919
Fourth Printing, March, 1919
Fifth Printing, May, 1919
Sixth Printing, June, 1919
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Sand Coulee Roadhouse 1
II An Historic Occasion 13
III Prouty 28
IV Disillusionment 40
V For Always 52
VI The Wolf Scratches 58
VII The Blood of Jezebel 75
VIII The Man of Mystery 85
IX The Summons 98
X The Bank Puts on the Screws 109
XI Kate Keeps Her Promise 120
XII The Dude Wrangler 131
XIII Mrs. Toomey's Friendship Is Tested 139
XIV Like Any Other Herder 156
XV One More Whirl 165
XVI Straws 175
XVII Extremes Meet 189
XVIII A Warning 207
XIX An Old, Old Friend 212
XX The Fork of the Road 228
XXI "Heart and Hand" 253
XXII Mullendore Wins 263
XXIII When the Black Spot Hit 274
XXIV Toomey Goes into Something 283
XXV The Chinook 298
XXVI Taking Her Medicine 309
XXVII The Sheep Queen 322
XXVIII The Surprise of Mr. Wentz's Life 333
XXIX Toomey Distinguishes Himself 344
XXX Her Day 353
THE FIGHTING SHEPHERDESS
CHAPTER I
THE SAND COULEE ROADHOUSE
A heavily laden freight wagon, piled high with ranch supplies, stood in
the dooryard before a long loghouse. The yard was fenced with crooked
cottonwood poles so that it served also as a corral, around which the
leaders of the freight team wandered, stripped of their harness, looking
for a place to roll.
A woman stood on tip-toe gritting her teeth in exasperation as she
tugged at the check-rein on the big wheelhorse, which stuck obstinately
in the ring. When she loosened it finally, she stooped and looked under
the horse's neck at the girl of fourteen or thereabouts, who was
unharnessing the horse on the other side. "Good God, Kate," exclaimed
the woman irritably; "how many times must I tell you to unhook the
traces before you do up the lines? One of these days you'll have the
damnedest runaway in seven states."
The girl, whose thoughts obviously were not on what she was doing,
obeyed immediately, and without replying looped up the heavy traces,
throwing and tying the lines over the hames with experienced hands.
The resemblance between mother and daughter was so slight that it might
be said not to exist at all. It was clear that Kate's wide, thoughtful
eyes, generous mouth and softly curving but firm chin came from the
other side, as did her height. Already she was half a head taller than
the short, wiry, tough-fibered woman with the small hard features who
was known throughout the southern half of Wyoming as "Jezebel of the
Sand Coulee."
A long flat braid of fair hair swung below the girl's waist and on her
cheeks a warm red showed through the golden tan. Her slim straight
figure was eloquent of suppleness and strength and her movements, quick,
purposeful, showed decision and activity of mind. They were as
characteristic as her directness of speech.
The Sand Coulee Roadhouse was a notorious place. The woman who kept it
called herself Isabel Bain--Bain having been the name of one of the
numerous husbands from whom she had separated to remarry in another
state, without the formality of a divorce. She was noted not only for
her remarkable horsemanship, but for her exceptional handiness with a
rope and branding iron, and her inability to distinguish her neighbors'
livestock from her own.
"Pete Mullendore's gettin' in." There was a frown on Kate's face as she
spoke and uneasiness in the glance she sent toward the string of
pack-horses filing along the fence.
The woman said warningly, "Don't you pull off any of your tantrums--you
treat him right."
"I'll treat him right," hotly, "as long as he behaves himself. Mother,"
with entreaty in her voice, "won't _you_ settle him if he gets fresh?"
Jezebel only laughed and as the gate of the corral scraped when
Mullendore pulled it open to herd a saddle horse and pack ponies
through, she called out in her harsh croak:
"Hello, Pete!"
"Hello yourself," he answered, but he looked at her daughter.
As soon as they were through the gate the pack ponies stopped and stood
with spreading legs and drooping heads while Mullendore sauntered over
to Kate and laid a hand familiarly on her shoulder.
"Ain't you got a howdy for me, kid?"
She moved aside and began stripping the harness from the horse for the
quite evident purpose of avoiding his touch.
"You'd better get them packs off," she replied, curtly. "Looks like
you'd got on three hundred pounds."
"Wouldn't be surprised. Them bear traps weigh twenty poun' each, and
green hides don't feel like feathers, come to pack 'em over the trail
I've come."
Kate looked at him for the first time.
"I wisht I was a man! I bet I'd work you over for the way you abuse your
stock!"
Mullendore laughed.
"Glad you ain't, Katie--but not because I'd be afraid of gettin' beat
up."
He looked her up and down with mocking significance, "Say, but you'll
make a great squaw for some feller. Been thinkin' I'd make a deal with
your mother to take you back to the mountings with me when I go. I'll
learn you how to tan hides, and a lot of things you don't know."
The girl's lip curled.
"Yes, I'd _like_ to tan hides for _you_, Pete Mullendore! When I get
frost bit in August I'll go, but not before."
He replied easily:
"You ain't of age yet, Katie, and you have to mind your maw. I've got an
idee that she'll tell you to go if I say so."
"A whole lot my mother would mind what you say!" Yet in spite of her
defiance a look of fear crossed the girl's face.
She slipped her arm through the harness and started towards the shed,
Mullendore following with his slouching walk, an unprepossessing figure
in his faded overalls, black and white mackinaw coat and woolen cap.
The trapper was tall and lank, with a pair of curious, unforgettable
eyes looking out from a swarthy face that told of Indian blood. They
were round rather than the oblong shape to be expected in his type, and
the iris a muddy blue-gray. The effect was indescribably queer, and was
accentuated by the coal-black lashes and straight black brows which met
above a rather thick nose. He had a low forehead, and when he grinned
his teeth gleamed like ivory in his dark face. He boasted of
Apache-Mexican blood "with a streak of white."
While Kate hung the harness on its peg, Mullendore, waited for her
outside. "My! My! Katie," he leered at her as she came back, "but you're
gettin' to be a big girl! Them legs looked like a couple of pitchfork
handles when I went away, and now the shape they've got!"
He laughed in malicious enjoyment as he saw the color rise to the roots
of her hair; and when she would have passed, reached out and grasped her
arm.
"Let me be, Pete Mullendore!" She tried to pull loose.
"When you've give me a kiss." There was a flame in the muddy eyes.
With a twist she freed herself and cried with fury vibrating in her
voice, "I hate you--I hate you! You--" she sought for a sufficiently
opprobrious word--"nigger!"
Mullendore's face took on a peculiar ashiness. Then with an oath and a
choking snarl of rage he jumped for her. Kate's long braid just escaped
his finger tips.
"Mother! Mother! Make him quit!" There was terror in the shrill cry as
the girl ran towards the freight wagon. The response to the appeal came
in a hard voice:
"You needn't expect me to take up your fights. You finish what you
start."
Kate gave her mother a despairing look and ran towards the pack ponies,
with Mullendore now close at her heels. Spurred by fear, she dodged in
and out, doubling and redoubling, endeavoring to keep a pony between
herself and her pursuer. Once or twice a fold of her skirt slipped
through his grasp, but she was young and fleet of foot, and after the
game of hare and hounds had kept up for a few minutes her pursuer's
breath was coming short and labored. Finally, he stopped:
"You little----!" He panted the epithet. "I'll get you yet!"
She glared at him across a pony's neck and ran out her tongue. Then,
defiantly:
"I ain't scart of you!"
A drawling voice made them both turn quickly. "As an entirely impartial
and unbiased spectator, friend, I should say that you are outclassed."
The man addressed himself to Mullendore. The stranger unobserved had
entered by the corral gate. He was a typical sheepherder in looks if not
in speech, even to the collie that stood by his side. He wore a dusty,
high-crowned black hat, overalls, mackinaw coat, with a small woolen
scarf twisted about his neck, and in his hand he carried a gnarled
staff. His eyes had a humorously cynical light lurking in their brown
depths.
Mullendore did not reply, but with another oath began to untie the lash
rope from the nearest pack.
"Wonder if I could get a drink of water?" The stranger turned to Kate as
he spoke, lifting his hat to disclose a high white forehead--a forehead
as fine as it was unexpected in a man trailing a bunch of sheep. The men
who raised their hats to the women of the Sand Coulee were not numerous,
and Kate's eyes widened perceptibly before she replied heartily, "Sure
you can."
Jezebel, who had come up leading the big wheel horse, said
significantly, "Somethin' stronger, if you like."
The fierce eagerness which leaped into the stranger's eyes screamed his
weakness, yet he did not jump at the offer she held out. The struggle in
his mind was obvious as he stood looking uncertainly into the face that
was stamped with the impress of wide and sordid experiences. Kate's
voice broke the short silence, "He said 'water,' Mother." She spoke
sharply, and with a curt inclination of her head to the sheepherder
added, "The water barrel's at the back door, Mister. Come with me."
Apparently this made his decision for him, for he followed the girl at
once, while Jezebel with a shrug walked on with the horse.
Kate handed the stranger the long-handled tin dipper and watched him
gravely while he drank the water in gulps, draining it to the last drop.
"Guess you're a booze-fighter, Mister," she observed, casually, much as
she might have commented that his unkempt beard was brown. Amusement
twinkled in his eyes at the personal remark and her utter
unconsciousness of having said anything at which by any chance he could
take offense, but he replied noncommittally:
"I've put away my share, Miss."
"I can always pick 'em out. Nearly all the freighters and cow punchers
that stop here get drunk."
He looked at her quizzically.
"The trapper you were playing tag with when I came looks as if he might
be ugly when he'd had too much."
He was startled by the intensity of the expression which came over her
face as she said, between her clenched teeth:
"I hate that 'breed'!"
"He isn't just the pardner," dryly, "that I'd select for a long camping
trip."
Her pupils dilated and she lowered her voice:
"He's ornery--Pete Mullendore."
As though in response to his name, that person came around the corner
with his bent-kneed slouch, giving to the girl as he passed a look so
malignant, and holding so unmistakable a threat, that it chilled and
sobered the stranger who stood leaning against the water barrel. The
girl returned it with a stare of brave defiance, but her hand trembled
as she returned the dipper to its nail. She looked at him wistfully, and
with a note of entreaty in her voice asked:
"Why don't you camp here to-night, Mister?"
The sheepherder shook his head.
"I've got to get on to the next water hole. I have five hundred head of
ewes in the road and they haven't had a drink for two days. They're
getting hard to hold."
Kate volunteered:
"You've about a mile and a half to go."
"Yes, I know. Well--s'long, and good luck!" He reached for his
sheepherder's staff and once more raised his hat with a manner which
spoke of another environment. Before he turned the corner of the house
an impulse prompted him to look back. Involuntarily he all but stopped.
Her eyes had in them a despairing look that seemed a direct appeal for
help. But he smiled at her, touched his hat brim and went on. The girl's
look haunted him as he trudged along the road in the thick white dust
kicked up by the tiny hoofs of the moving sheep.
"She's afraid of that 'breed,'" he thought, and tried to find comfort in
telling himself that there was no occasion for alarm, with her mother,
hard-visaged as she was, within call. Yet as unconsciously he kept
glancing back at the lonely roadhouse, sprawling squat and ugly on the
desolate sweep of sand and sagebrush, the only sign of human habitation
within the circle of the wide horizon, he had the same sinking feeling
at the heart which came to him when he had to stand helpless watching a
coyote pull down a lamb. It was in vain he argued that there was nothing
to do but what he had done--go on and mind his own business--for the
child's despairing, reproachful eyes followed him and his uneasiness
remained with him after he had reached the water hole. While the sheep
grazed after drinking he pulled the pack from the burro that carried his
belongings. From among the folds of a little tepee tent he took out a
marred violin case and laid it carefully on the ground, apart. A couple
of cowhide paniers contained his meager food supply and blackened
cooking utensils. These, with two army blankets, some extra clothing and
a bell for the burro, completed his outfit.
The sheep dog lay with his head on his paws, following every movement
with loving eyes.
The sheepherder scraped a smooth place with the side of his foot, set up
his tepee and spread the blankets inside. Then he built a tiny sagebrush
fire, filled his battered coffee pot at the spring in the "draw," threw
in a small handful of coffee, and, when the sagebrush was burned to
coals, set it to boil. He warmed over a few cooked beans in a lard can,
sliced bacon and laid it with great exactness in a long-handled frying
pan and placed it on the coals. Then unwrapping a half dozen cold
baking-powder biscuits from a dish towel he put them on a tin cover on
the ground near a tin cup and plate and a knife and fork.
The man moved lightly, with the deftness of experience, stopping every
now and then to cast a look at the sheep that were slowly feeding back
preparatory to bedding down. And each time he did so, his eyes
unconsciously sought the road in the direction from which he had come,
and as often his face clouded with a troubled frown.
When the bacon was brown and the coffee bubbled in the pot, he sat down
crosslegged with his plate in his lap and the tin cup beside him on the
ground. He ate hungrily, yet with an abstracted expression, which showed
that his thoughts were not on his food.
After he had finished he broke open the biscuits which remained, soaked
them in the bacon grease and tossed them to the dog, which caught them
in the air and swallowed them at a gulp. Then he got to his feet and
filled his pipe. He looked contemplatively at a few sheep feeding away
from the main band and said as he waved his arm in an encircling
gesture:
"Way 'round 'em, Shep! Better bring 'em in."
The dog responded instantly, his handsome tail waving like a plume as he
bounded over the sagebrush and gathered in the stragglers.
By the time the herder had washed his dishes and finished his pipe the
sun was well below the horizon and the sky in the west a riot of pink
and amber and red. The well-trained sheep fed back and dropped down in
twos and threes on a spot not far from the tepee where it pleased their
fancy to bed. Save for the distant tinkle of the bell on the burro, and
the stirring of the sheep, the herder might have been alone in the
universe. When he had set his dishes and food back in the paniers and
covered them with a piece of "tarp," in housewifely orderliness, he
opened the black case and took out the violin with a care that amounted
to tenderness. The first stroke of the bow bespoke the trained hand. He
did not sit, but knelt in the sand with his face to the west as he
played like some pagan sun-worshiper, his expression rapt, intent.
Strains from the world's best music rose and fell in throbbing sweetness
on the desert stillness, music which told beyond peradventure that some
cataclysm in the player's life had shaken him from his rightful niche.
It proclaimed this travel-stained sheepherder in his faded overalls and
peak-crowned limp-brimmed hat another of the incongruities of the far
west. The sagebrush plains and mountains have held the secrets of many
Mysteries locked in their silent breasts, for, since the coming of the
White Man, they have been a haven for civilization's Mistakes, Failures
and Misfits.
While he poured out his soul with only the sheep and the tired collie
sleeping on its paws for audience, the gorgeous sunset died and a chill
wind came up, scattering the gray ashes of the camp fire and swaying the
tepee tent. Suddenly he stopped and shivered a little in spite of his
woolen shirt. "Dog-gone!" he said abruptly, aloud, as he put the violin
away, "I can't get that kid out of my thoughts!" Though he could not
have told why he did so, or what he might, even remotely, expect to
hear, he stood and listened intently before he stooped and disappeared
for the night between the flaps of the tent.
He turned often between the blankets of his hard bed, disturbed by
uneasy dreams quite unlike the deep oblivion of his usual sleep.
"Oh, Mister, where are you?"
The sheepherder stirred uneasily.
"Please--please, Mister, won't you speak?"
The plaintive pleading cry was tremulous and faint like the voice of a
disembodied spirit floating somewhere in the air. This time he sat up
with a start.
"It's only me--Katie Prentice, from the Roadhouse. Don't be scart."
The wail was closer. There was no mistake. Then the dog barked. The man
threw back the blanket and sprang to his feet. It took only a moment to
get into his clothes and step out into a night that had turned pitch
dark.
"Where are you?" he called.
"Oh, Mister!?" The shrill cry held gladness and relief.
Then she came out of the blackness, the ends of a white nubia and a
little shoulder cape snapping in the wind, her breath coming short in a
sound that was a mixture of exhaustion and sobs.
"I was afraid I couldn't find you till daylight. I heard a bell, but I
didn't know where to go, it's such a dark night. I ran all the way,
nearly, till I played out."
"What's the row?" he asked gently.
She slipped both arms through one of his and hugged it convulsively,
while in a kind of hysteria she begged:
"Don't send me back, Mister! I won't go! I'll kill myself first. Take me
with you--please, please let me go with you!"
"Tell me what it's all about."
She did not answer, and he urged:
"Go on. Don't be afraid. You can tell me anything."
She replied in a strained voice:
"Pete Mullendore, he--"
A gust of wind blew the shoulder cape back and he saw her bare arm with
the sleeve of her dress hanging by a shred.
"--he did this?"
"Yes. He--insulted--me--I--can't--tell--you--what--he--said."
"And then?"
"I scratched him and bit him. I fought him all over the place. He was
chokin' me. I got to a quirt and struck him on the head--with the
handle. It was loaded. He dropped like he was dead. I ran to my room and
clum out the window--"
"Your mother--"
"She--laughed."
"God!" He stooped and picked up the little bundle she had dropped at her
feet. "Come along, Partner. You are going into the sheep business with
'Mormon Joe.'"
CHAPTER II
AN HISTORIC OCCASION
The experienced ear of Major Stephen Douglas Prouty told him that he was
getting a hot axle. The hard dry squeak from the rear wheel of the
"democrat" had but one meaning--he had forgotten to grease it. This
would seem an inexcusable oversight in a man who expected to make forty
miles before sunset, but in this instance there was an extenuating
circumstance. Immediately after breakfast there had been a certain look
in his hostess's eye which had warned him that if he lingered he would
be asked to assist with the churning. Upon observing it he had started
for the barn to harness with a celerity that approached a trot.
Long years of riding the grub-line had developed in the Major a gift for
recognizing the exact psychological moment when he had worn out his
welcome as company and was about to be treated as one of the family and
sicced on the woodpile, that was like a sixth sense. It seldom failed
him, but in the rare instances when it had, he had bought his freedom
with a couple of boxes of White Badger Salve--unfailing for cuts, burns,
scalds and all irritations of the skin--good also, as it proved, for dry
axles, since he had neglected to replenish his box of axle grease from
that of his host at the last stopping place.
He leaned from under the edge of the large cotton umbrella which shaded
him amply, and squinted at the sun. He judged that it was noon exactly.
His intention seemed to be communicated to his horses by telepathy, for
they both stopped with a suddenness which made him lurch forward.
"It's time to eat, anyhow," he said aloud as he recovered his balance
with the aid of the dashboard, disentangled his feet from the long
skirts of his linen duster and sprang over the wheel with the alacrity
of a man who took a keen interest in food.
Unhooking the traces, he led the team to one side of the road, slipped
off the bridles and replaced them with nose bags containing each horse's
allotment of oats--extracted from the bin of his most recent host. Then
he searched in the bottom of the wagon until he found a monkey-wrench
which he applied to the nut and twirled dextrously. Canting the wheel,
he moistened his finger tip and touched the exposed axle.
"Red hot!"
He left it to cool and reached under the seat for a pasteboard shoe-box
and bore it to the side of the road, where he saw a convenient rock.
Both the eagerness of hunger and curiosity was depicted on his face as
he untied the twine which secured it. He was wondering if she had put in
any cheese. The Major especially liked cheese and had not failed to
mention the fact when his hostess had let drop the information that a
whole one had come in with the last freight wagon from town. He removed
the cover and his smile of anticipation gave place to a look of
astonishment and incredulity. It was difficult to believe his eyes! Not
only was there no cheese, but that chicken wing and back which had been
left on the platter last night, and which he had been as sure of as
though he had put them in himself, were not in the box. He felt under
the paper as though hoping against hope that the box contained a false
bottom where the chicken might be concealed. There was no deception. He
saw all there was.
"Sinkers!" His voice expressed infinite disappointment and disgust. He
prodded one of the cold soda biscuits with his finger, took it out and
set the box on the ground beside him. He was hungry, therefore, insulted
as he felt, he had to eat, but he looked over his shoulder in the
direction from which he had come, and said aloud, "Them Scissor-bills'll
know it when I stop there again!" The declaration was in the nature of a
threat. While he munched the dry biscuit, which contained but a trace of
butter between the two halves, he gazed off at the vista of nothing in
particular that stretched out before him.
On his left the sand and sagebrush, cacti and sparse bunch-grass was
bounded by the horizon; behind him, in front of him, it was the same;
only on the right was the monotony broken by foothills and beyond, a
range of purple snow-covered peaks. From the slight elevation or "bench"
upon which he sat he looked down upon a greasewood flat where patches of
alkali gleamed dazzling white under the noon-day sun. The flat was
quarter-circled by a waterless creek upon whose banks grew a few
misshapen and splintered cottonwoods.
The countless millions of nearly invisible gnats that breed in alkali
bogs sighted the Major and promptly rose in swarms to settle upon his
ears and in the edges of his hair. He fanned them away automatically and
without audible comment. Perhaps they served as a counter-irritant; at
any rate, the sting of the indignity put upon him by what he termed a
"hobo lunch" was finally forgotten in more agreeable thoughts.
In the distance there was an interesting cloud of dust. Was it cattle,
loose horses, or some one coming that way? The Major's eyesight was not
all it had been and he could not make out. Since they were coming from
the opposite direction he was sure to have his curiosity gratified. His
roving eyes came back to the greasewood flat and rested there
speculatively. Suddenly his jaw dropped and a crumb rolled out. He
looked as though an apparition had risen before his bulging eyes.
Involuntarily he sprang to his feet and cried, "My Gawd--what a great
place to start a town!"
The idea came with such startling force that it seemed to the Major as
if something broke in his brain. Other ideas followed. They came
tumbling over each other in their struggle to get out all at once. A
panorama of pictures passed so swiftly before his eyes that it made him
dizzy. His eyes gleamed, the color rose in his weather-beaten cheeks,
the hand with which he pointed to the greasewood flat below trembled as
he exclaimed in an excitement that made his breath come short:
"The main street'll run up the creek and about there I'll put the Op'ry
House. The hotel'll stand on the corner and we'll git a Carnegie Libery
for the other end of town. The High School can be over yonder and we'll
keep the saloons to one side of the street. There'll be a park where
folks can set, and if I ain't got pull enough to git a fifty thousand
dollar Federal Buildin'--"
Then came the inspiration which made the Major stagger back:
"I'll git the post office, and name it Prouty!"
He felt so tremulous that he had to sit down.
It seemed incredible that he had not thought of this before, for deep
within him was a longing to have his name figure in the pages of the
history of the big new state. Tombstones blew over, dust storms
obliterated graves, photographs faded, but with a town named after him
and safely on the map, nobody could forget him if he wanted to.
The Major's assertion concerning his "pull" was no idle boast. There
were few men in the state with a wider acquaintance, and he was a
conspicuous figure around election time. The experience he had acquired
in his younger days selling Indian Herb Cough Syrup from the tailboard
of a wagon, between two sputtering flambeaux, served him in good stead
when, later, he was called upon to make a few patriotic remarks at a
Fourth of July Celebration. His rise was rapid from that time, until now
his services as an orator were so greatly in demand for cornerstone
layings and barbecues that, owing to distance between towns, it kept him
almost constantly on the road.
The Major sold an occasional box of salve, and in an emergency pulled
teeth, in addition to the compensation which he received for what was
designated privately as his "gift of gab." But the Major, nevertheless,
had his dark moments, in which he contemplated the day when age should
force him to retire to private life. Since the wagon containing his
patent leather valise was his home, the Major had no private life to
retire to, and his anxiety concerning the future would seem not without
cause. Now in a flash all his worries smoothed out. He would capitalize
his wide acquaintance and his influence, gain independence and
perpetuate his name in the same stroke. At the moment he actually
suffered because there was no one present to whom he could communicate
his thoughts.
The cloud of dust was closer, but not near enough yet to distinguish the
moving objects that caused it, so he set himself energetically to
applying White Badger Salve to the axle, replacing the wheel and
tightening the nut. When he straightened a horseman who had ridden out
of the creek bed was scrambling up the side of the "bench." He was
dressed like a top cowpuncher--silver-mounted saddle, split-ear bridle
and hand-forged bit. The Major was familiar with the type, though this
particular individual was unknown to him.
"Howdy!" The cowboy let the reins slip through his fingers so his horse
could feed, and sagged sidewise in the saddle.
"How are you, sir?" There was nothing in the dignified restraint of the
Major's response to indicate that his vocal cords ached for exercise and
he was fairly quivering in his eagerness for an ear to talk into. There
was a silence in which he removed a nose bag, bridled and shoved a horse
against the tongue.
"Back, can't ye!"
"Nooned here, I reckon?"
The Major thought of his chickenless handout and his face clouded.
"I et a bite."
"Thought maybe you was in trouble when I first see you."
"Had a hot box, but I don't call that trouble." He added humorously:
"I can chop my wagon to pieces and be on the road again in twenty
minutes, if I got plenty of balin' wire."
The cowboy laughed so appreciatively that the Major inquired
ingratiatingly:
"I bleeve your face is a stranger to me, ain't it?"
"I don't mind meetin' up with you before. I've just come to the country,
as you might say."
The Major waited for further information, but since it was not
forthcoming he ventured:
"What might I call your name, sir?"
The cowboy shifted his weight uneasily and hesitated. He said finally
while the red of his shiny sun-blistered face deepened perceptibly: "My
name is supposed to be Teeters--Clarence Teeters."
As a matter of fact he _knew_ that his name was Teeters, but injecting
an element of doubt into it in this fashion seemed somehow to make the
telling easier. Teeters was bad enough, but combined with Clarence! Only
Mr. Teeters knew the effort it cost him to tell his name to strangers.
He added with the air of a man determined to make a clean breast of it:
"I'm from Missoury."
The Major's hand shot out unexpectedly.
"Shake!" he cried warmly. "I was drug up myself at the foot of the
Ozarks."
"I pulled out when I was a kid and wrangled 'round considerible."
Teeters made the statement as an extenuating circumstance.
"I took out naturalization papers myself," replied the Major
good-humoredly. "My name is Prouty--Stephen Douglas Prouty. You'll
prob'ly hear of me if you stay in the country. The fact is, I'm thinkin'
of startin' a town and namin' it Prouty."
"Shoo--you don't say so!" In polite inquiry, "Whur?"
"Thur!"
Mr. Teeters looked a little blank as he stared at the town site
indicated.
"It seems turrible fur from water," he commented finally.
"Sink--drill--artesian well--maybe we'll strike a regular subterranean
river. Anyway, 'twould be no trick at all to run a ditch from Dead Horse
Canyon and get all the water we want." He waved his arm at the distant
mountains and settled that objection.
"Wouldn't them alkali bogs breedin' a billion 'no-see-'ems' a second be
kind of a drawback?" inquired Teeters tentatively.
"That'll all be drained, covered with sile and seeded down in lawns,"
replied the Major quickly. "In two year that spot'll be bloomin' like
the Garden of Eden.
"I've got to be movin'," the Major continued. "I'm on my way from a
cornerstone layin' at Buffalo Waller to a barbecue at No Wood Crick. I'm
kind of an orator," he added modestly.
"And I got about three hundred head of calves to drag to the fire, if I
kin git my rope on 'em," said Teeters, straightening in the saddle.
The Major asked in instant interest:
"Oh, you're workin' for that wealthy eastern outfit?"
"Don't know how wealthy they be, but they're plenty eastern," Teeters
replied dryly.
"I was thinkin' I might stop over night with 'em and git acquainted. The
Scissors Outfit can't be more'n fifteen mile out of my way, and it'll be
a kind of a change from the Widder Taylor's, whur I stop generally."
The cowboy combed the horse's mane with his fingers in silence. After
waiting a reasonable time for the invitation which should have been
forthcoming, the Major inquired:
"They're--sociable, ain't they?"
"They ain't never yit run out in the road and drug anybody off his
horse," replied Teeters grimly. "They charge four bits a meal to
strangers."
"What?" Surely his ears had deceived him.
Inspired by the Major's dumbfounded expression, the cowboy continued:
"They have their big meal at night and call it dinner, and they wash
their hands at the table when they git done eatin', and Big Liz has to
lope in from the kitchen when she hears the bell tinkle and pass 'em
somethin' either one of 'em could git by reachin'." He lowered his voice
confidentially, "Most any meal I look fur her to hit one of 'em between
the horns."
The Major stared round-eyed, breathless, like a child listening to a
fairy tale which he feared would end if he interrupted.
"In the evenin' the boss puts on a kind of eatin' jacket, a sawed-off
coat that makes a growed man look plumb foolish, and she comes out in
silk and satin that shows considerable hide. Have you met this here
Toomey?"
"Not yet; that's a pleasure still in store for me."
"Pleasure!" exclaimed Teeters, who took the polite phrase literally.
"More like you'll want to knock his head off. Old Timer," he leaned over
the saddle horn, "seein' as you're from Missoury, I'll tell you private
that you'd better keep on travelin'. Company ain't wanted at the Scissor
Outfit, and they'd high-tone it over you so 'twouldn't be noways
enjoyable."
"There is plenty of ranches where I am welcome," replied the Major with
dignity. "I kin make the Widder Taylor's by sundown."
"Miss Maggie plays good on the pianner," Teeters commented,
expectorating violently to conceal a certain embarrassment.
"And the doughnuts the old lady keeps in that crock on the kitchen table
is worth a day's ride to git to." The Major closed an eye and with the
other looked quizzically at Teeters, adding, "If it wa'nt for
Starlight--"
"Starlight is shore some Injun," replied the cowboy, grinning
understandingly.
"Now what for an outfit's that?"
The moving cloud of dust which the Major had forgotten in his keen
interest in the conversation was almost upon them. "A band of woolies, a
pack burro, one feller walkin', and another ridin'."
The cowboy's eyes were unfriendly, though he made no comment as they
waited.
"Howdy!" called the Major genially as, with a nod, the herder would have
passed without speaking.
The stranger responded briefly, but stopped.
"Come fur?" inquired the Major sociably.
"Utah."
"Goin' fur?"
"Until I find a location. I rather like the looks of this section."
"Sheep spells 'trouble' in this country," said the cowboy,
significantly.
"Think so?" indifferently.
Seeing Teeters was about to say something further, the Major
interrupted:
"What might I call your name, sir?"
"Just say 'Joe,' and I'll answer."
The Major looked a trifle disconcerted, but in his role of Master of
Ceremonies continued:
"I'll make you acquainted with Mr. Teeters."
The two men nodded coldly.
To break the strained silence the Major observed:
"Got a boy helpin' you, I notice."
"Girl," replied the sheepherder briefly.
"Girl? Oh, I see! Them overalls deceived me. Daughter, I presume."
"Pardner," laconically.
The Major looked incredulous but said nothing, and while he sought for
something further to say in order to prolong the conversation they all
turned abruptly at the rattle of rocks.
"The boss," said Teeters sardonically from the corner of his mouth, and
added, "That's a young dude that's visitin'."
Toomey was perfectly equipped for a ride in Central Park. He looked an
incongruous and alien figure in the setting in his English riding
clothes and boots. The lad who accompanied him was dressed in
exaggerated cowboy regalia.
Toomey used a double bit and now brought his foaming horse to a short
stop with the curb. He vouchsafed the unimportant "natives" in the road
only a brief glance, but addressed himself to Teeters.
"Where have you been?" he demanded in a sharp tone.
"I ain't been lost," replied Teeters calmly. "Where would I be 'cept
huntin' stock?"
"Why didn't you follow me?"
"I think too much of my horse to jam him over rocks when there ain't no
special call for it. I kin ride on a run 'thout fallin' off, when they's
need to."
Toomey's brilliant black eyes flashed. Swallowing the impudence of these
western hirelings was one of the hardest things he had to endure in his
present life. But even he could see that Teeters thoroughly understood
cattle, else he would have long since discharged him.
"I've ridden about ten extra miles trying to keep you in sight."
"If you'd let them sturrups out like I told you and quit tryin' to set
down standin' up, ridin' wouldn't tire you so much." Teeters looked at
the English pigskin saddle in frank disgust.
Toomey ignored the criticism and said arrogantly:
"I want you to follow me from now on."
An ominous glint came in the cowboy's eye, but he still grinned.
"I wa'nt broke to foller. Never was handled right when I was a colt.
Don't you wait fer me, feller, you jest sift along in and I'll come when
I git done."
Judging from the expression on Toomey's face, it seemed to the Major an
opportune time to interrupt.
"Since nobody aims to introduce us--" he began good-naturedly, extending
a hand. "My name is Prouty--Stephen Douglas Prouty. You've heard of me,
like as not."
"Can't say I have," replied Toomey in a tone that made the Major flush
as he shook the extended hand without warmth.
To cover his confusion, the Major turned to the sheepherder whose soft
brown eyes held an amused look.
"Er--Joe--I'll make you acquainted with Mr. Jasper Toomey, one of our
leadin' stockmen in these parts."
The introduction received from Toomey the barest acknowledgment as he
directed his gaze to the grazing sheep.
"Where you taking them?" he asked in a curt tone.
"I really couldn't tell you yet."
Toomey glanced at him sharply, attracted by the cultivated tone.
"I wouldn't advise you to locate here; this is my range."
"Own it?" inquired the herder mildly.
"N-no."
"Lease it?"
"N-no."
"No good reason then is there to keep me out?"
"Except," darkly, "this climate isn't healthy for sheep."
"Perhaps," gently, "I'm the best judge of that."
"You'll keep on going, if you follow my advice." The tone was a threat.
"I hardly ever take advice that's given unasked."
"Well--you'd better take this."
The sheepherder looked at him speculatively, with no trace of resentment
in his mild eyes.
"Let me see," reflectively. "It generally takes an easterner who comes
west to show us how to raise stock from three to five years to go broke.
I believe I'll stick around a while; I may be able to pick up something
cheap a little later."
A burst of ringing laughter interrupted this unexpected clash between
the strangers. It was clear that the lack of harmony did not extend to
their young companions, for the lad and the girl seemed deeply
interested in each other as their ponies grazed with heads together. The
immediate cause of their laughter was the boy's declaration that when he
came to see the girl he intended to wear petticoats.
When their merriment had subsided, she demanded:
"Don't you like my overalls?"
He looked her over critically--at her face with the frank gray eyes and
the vivid red of health glowing through the tan; at the long flat braid
of fair hair, which hung below the cantle of the saddle; at her slender
bare feet thrust through the stirrups.
"You'd look pretty in anything," he responded gallantly.
She detected the evasion and persisted:
"But you think I'd look nicer in dresses, don't you?"
Embarrassed, he responded hesitatingly:
"You see--down South where I come from the girls all wear white and lace
and ribbon sashes and carry parasols and think a lot about their
complexions. You're just--different."
The herder waved his arm. "Way 'round 'em, Shep," and the sheep began
moving.
"Good-bye," the girl gathered up the reins reluctantly.
"You didn't tell me your name."
"Katie Prentice."
"Mine's Hughie Disston," he added, his black eyes shining with
friendliness. "Maybe I'll see you again sometime."
She answered shyly:
"Maybe."
Toomey started away at a gallop, calling sharply:
"Come on, Hughie!"
The boy followed with obvious reluctance, sending a smile over his
shoulder when he found that the girl was looking after him.
"Hope you make out all right with your town," said Teeters politely as,
ignoring his employer's instructions, he turned his horse's head in a
direction of his own choosing.
"No doubt about it," replied the Major, briskly, gathering up the lines
and bringing the stub of a whip down with a thwack upon each back
impartially. "S'long!" He waved it at the girl and sheepherder. "I trust
you'll find a location to suit you."
"Pardner," said Mormon Joe suddenly, when the Major was a blur in a
cloud of dust and the horsemen were specks in the distance, "this looks
like home to me somehow. There ought to be great sheep feed over there
in the foothills and summer range in the mountains. What do you think of
it?"
"Oh--goody!" the girl cried eagerly. "Isn't it funny, I was hoping you'd
say that."
He looked at her quizzically.
"Tired of trailing sheep, Katie, or do you think you might have
company?"
She flushed in confusion, but admitted honestly:
"Both, maybe."
CHAPTER III
PROUTY
Major Prouty hung over the hitching post in front of the post office
listening with a beatific smile to the sound of the saw and the hammer
that came from the Opera House going up at the corner of Prouty Avenue
and Wildwood Street. The Major's eyes held the brooding tenderness of a
patron saint, as he looked the length of the wide street of the town
which bore his name.
"Sunnin' yourself, Major?" inquired Hiram Butefish jocularly as he
passed; then paused to add, "I'm lookin' for a big turn-out at the
Boosters Club to-night."
"I trust so, Hiram."
Aside from himself, no one person had contributed more to Prouty's
growth than the editor of the _Grit_.
Mr. Butefish had arrived among the first with the intention of opening a
plumbing shop, but since the water supply was furnished by a windmill
the demand for his services was not apt to be pressing for some time to
come.
Therefore, with true western resourcefulness he bought the handpress of
a defunct sheet and turned to journalism instead. Though less lucrative,
moulding public opinion and editing a paper that was to be a recognized
power in the state seemed to Mr. Butefish a step ahead.
The Middle West had responded nobly to his editorial appeals to come out
and help found an Empire. The majority of the optimistic citizens who
walked with their heads in the clouds and their eyes on the roseate
future were there through his efforts. Appreciative of this fact, the
Major's eyes were kindly as they gazed upon the editor's retreating
back.
His expression was benignity itself as his glance turned lovingly to the
Prouty House and the White Hand Laundry--the latter in particular being
a milestone on the road of Progress since it heralded the fact that the
day was not far distant when a man could wear a boiled shirt without
embarrassing comment. Three saloons, the General Merchandise Emporium,
and "Doc" Fussel's drug store completed the list of business enterprises
as yet, but others were in contemplation and a bottling works was
underway. Oh, yes, Prouty was indelibly on the map.
The Major's complacent smile changed to a slight frown as a man in a
black tall crowned hat stopped to rest his back against the post of the
Laundry sign.
It had reached the Major's ears that Mormon Joe had said that Prouty had
no more future than a prairie dog town. He had been in his cups at the
time but that did not palliate the offense.
Now, there--there was the kind of a man that helped a town! The Major's
brow cleared as Jasper Toomey swung round the corner by the Prouty House
and clattered down the main street sitting high-headed and arrogant in a
Brewster cart. Spent money like a prince--he did. A few more people like
the Toomeys and the future of the country was assured.
In the meantime Toomey had brought the velvet-mouthed horse to its
haunches in front of the laundry where he tossed a bundle into the
sheepman's arms, saying casually;
"Take that inside, my man."
Without a change of expression, Mormon Joe caught it, rolled it
compactly and kicked it over the horse's back into the street.
"There's no brass buttons sewed on my coat--take it yourself!" Mormon
Joe shrugged a shoulder as he walked off.
Walter Scales of the Emporium dashed into the street and recovered the
laundry with an apologetic air as though he were somehow responsible for
the act.
"You have to make allowances for the rough characters that swarm into a
new country," he said, as he delivered the bundle himself.
"I'll break that pauper sheepherder before I quit!" A vein under
Toomey's right eye and another on his temple stood out swollen and
purple.
"People like him that send away for their grub and never spend a cent
they can help in their home town don't benefit a country none." Mr.
Scales did not attempt to conceal his pleasure at the foot-long list
Toomey handed him. He added urgently, "Wisht you'd try and stay in for
the Boosters Club to-night, Mr. Toomey. We'd like your advice."
Toomey refused curtly.
"Get that order out at once," he said peremptorily, as he drove off.
* * * * *
No invitation cordial or otherwise was extended to Mormon Joe, so it was
upon his own initiative that he stumbled into the room where the
Boosters Club was in session that evening. Unmistakably drunk, Joe sat
down noisily beside Clarence Teeters who was the only one who made room
for him.
The purpose of the meeting was to consider ways and means to build a
ditch that should bring water from the mountains in sufficient quantity
not only to supply the town but to irrigate the agricultural land
surrounding it.
Mr. Abram Pantin, a man of affairs from Keokuk, Iowa, in the vicinity
with a view to locating, had been called upon for a few remarks and was
just closing with the safe and conservative statement that an ample
water supply was an asset to any community.
He was followed by the chairman, Mr. Butefish, who pleaded eloquently
for the construction of the ditch by local capital, and having aroused
the meeting to a high pitch of enthusiasm ended with a peroration that
brought forth a loud demonstration of approbation.
"Gentlemen," declared Mr. Butefish, "back there in the mountains is a
noble stream waitin' to irrigate a thirsty land. For the trifling sum of
twenty thousand dollars we can turn this hull country into a garden
spot! The time is comin' when we'll see nothin' but alfalfa field in
purple bloom as fur as the eye can reach! We're as rich in natural
resources as any section on God's green earth. We're lousy with 'em,
gentlemen, and all we gotta do is to put our shoulders to the wheel and
scratch!"
Mr. Butefish sat down and dried the inside of his collar with his
handkerchief midst tumultuous applause.
The evening had been a veritable love-feast without a jarring note and
everybody glowed with a feeling of neighborliness and confidence in a
future that was to bring them affluence.
"Mr. Chairman, may I have a word?"
There was a general turning of heads as Mormon Joe, thick of tongue,
lurched over the back of the seat in front.
"Kindly make it brief," replied Mr. Butefish reluctantly. "We still have
important business to transact."
"I only want to say that this country hasn't any more natural resources
than a tin roof and when Prouty got any bigger than a saloon and a
blacksmith shop it overreached itself." There was a tightening of lips
as the members exchanged looks, but Mormon Joe went on, "One third of
the work that you dry farmers put in trying to make ranches out of arid
land," he addressed a row of tousled gentlemen on the front seat, "would
bring you independence in a state where climatic conditions are
favorable to raising crops.
"As for your ditch, there never was an irrigation project yet that did
not cost double and treble the original estimate. If you try to put it
through without outside help, you'll all go broke. In other words," he
jeered, "you haven't one damned asset but your climate, and you're
wasting your time and energy until you figure out a way to realize on
that."
Shabby, undersized, distinctly drunk, Mormon Joe made an unheroic figure
as he stood swaying on his feet looking mockingly into the frowning
faces of the Boosters Club, and yet, somehow, his words cast a momentary
depression over the room.
He stood an instant, then staggered out, indifferent to the fact that he
had committed the supreme offense in a western town--he had
"knocked"--and that henceforth and forever he was a marked man--a
detriment to the community--to be discredited, shunned, and, if
possible, driven out.
The invitation composed and printed by Mr. Butefish after much mental
travail, requesting the pleasure of the Toomeys' company at a reception
and dance in the Prouty House to celebrate the third year of the town's
prosperity and progress was one of the results of this meeting of the
Boosters Club.
Toomey's thin lips curled superciliously as he glanced at it and tossed
it across the breakfast table:
"Here, Hughie, why don't you take this in?"
"You'll go, won't you?" the lad asked eagerly after reading it.
"We never mingle socially with the natives." As Mrs. Toomey shook her
head her smile and tone expressed ineffable exclusiveness. Seeing that
the boy's face fell in disappointment she urged, "But you go, Hughie."
"If I knew some one to ask--"
"There's Maggie Taylor," Mrs. Toomey suggested.
"And Mormon Joe's Kate," Toomey added, laughing.
"Who's she?" the boy asked curiously.
"Do you remember the day when you were here before that we met those
people driving a band of sheep--a man and a barefooted girl in
overalls?"
Hughie's eyes sparkled:
"They stopped here, then?"
Toomey scowled.
"Yes, confound 'em! I've had more than one 'run in' with 'em since over
range and water. But," he urged, "don't let that hinder you. They live
with their sheep back there in the foothills like a couple of white
savages, and she's some greener than alfalfa. Go and ask her. You'll get
some fun out of it. I dare you! I'll bet you a saddle blanket against
anything you like that you haven't got the sand to take her."
"Done!" Hughie Disston's eyes were dancing. "If my nerve fails me when I
see her, you are in a new Navajo."
It was a great lark to Disston, now a tall boy of nineteen, handsome,
attractive, with the soft drawl of his southern speech and the easy
manners of those who have associated much with women-folk. He was in
high spirits as, one morning early, he and Teeters turned off from the
main road and took the faint trail which led up Bitter Creek.
They rode until they saw two tepees showing white through the willows.
"We're in luck to catch them home at this hour," said Teeters, as they
heard a faint tinkle from the corrals on the other side of the creek.
"They've got the sheep inside--must be cuttin' out. Yes," as they forded
and drew closer, "there's Kate at the dodge gate."
The corral was a crude affair, built at the minimum of expense, of
crooked cottonwood poles, willow sticks and brush interlaced. It was
divided into three sections, with a chute running from the larger
division into two smaller ones.
Kate was standing at the "dodge gate" at the end of the chute separating
the sheep as they came through by throwing the gate to and fro, thus
sending each into the division in which it belonged. It was work which
required intense concentration, a trained eye and quick brain, and even
Disston and Teeters, who knew nothing of sheep, could appreciate the
remarkable skill with which the girl performed the task.
"Let 'em come, Uncle Joe!" she called in her clear confident voice.
Mormon Joe flapped a grain sack over the backs of the sheep and having
started a leader the rest went through the chute on the run.
When the last one was through Kate's aching arm dropped limply to her
side and she called in a tired but jubilant voice:
"I don't believe I've made a single mistake this time."
Mormon Joe's expression was not too friendly when he saw strangers but
it changed upon recognizing Teeters.
"Maybe you don't remember this here gent," said that person, indicating
Disston with his thumb after he and Mormon Joe had shaken hands. "He's
growed about four feet since you saw him."
"I remember him very well." Mormon Joe's tone and manner had the suavity
and polish which was so at variance with his general appearance.
Hughie, leaving Teeters and Mormon Joe to a conversation which did not
interest him, rode up to see Kate at closer range.
Busy in one of the pens, the girl was still unaware of visitors, so he
had had ample opportunity to observe her before she saw him.
She, too, had grown since their meeting, being now as tall and straight
and slim as an Olympian runner. Her hair swung in a thick fair braid far
below her waist as she darted hither and thither in pursuit of a lamb.
The man's blue flannel shirt she wore was faded and the ragged sleeves
had been cut off at the elbow for convenience. Her short skirt was of
stiff blue denim and a pair of coarse brown and white cotton stockings
showed between the hem and the tops of boys' shoes which disguised the
slenderness of her feet. Yet, withal, she was graceful as she ran and
somehow managed to look picturesque.
The boy's face was an odd mixture of expressions as he watched
her--amusement, astonishment, disapproval, and grudging admiration all
in one.
Finally, catching the lamb by the hind leg she threw it by a twist
acquired through much practice and buckled a bell around its neck.
As she turned it loose and straightened up, she saw Disston. When he
smiled she knew him instantly and the color rose in her face as she
walked towards him, suddenly conscious of her clothes and grimy hands.
She was soon at her ease, however, and when he told her his errand the
radiance that leaped into her face startled him.
"Would I like to go?" she cried joyously. "There's nothing I can think
of that I would like better. I've never been to a dance in all my life.
I've never been anywhere. It's so good of you to ask me!"
"It's good of you to go with me," he said awkwardly, shamed by her
gratitude, remembering the wager.
"But I don't know how to dance," she said almost tearfully.
"You don't?" incredulously. He had thought every girl in the world knew
how to dance. "Never mind," he assured her, "I can teach you in a few
lessons."
So it was settled, and they talked of other things, laughing merrily,
frequently, while Mormon Joe and Teeters discussed with some gravity the
fact that it had been several months since the latter had been able to
get his wages from Toomey.
"I think he's workin' on borried capital and they're shuttin' down on
him," Teeters conjectured. "His 'Old Man,'" he nodded toward Hughie,
"has got consider'ble tied up in the Outfit, I've an idea. Anyhow, if I
git beat out of my money after the way Toomey's high-toned it over me--"
He cast a significant look at a fist with particularly prominent
knuckles.
"You hang on a while," Mormon Joe cautioned. "You may be boss of the
Scissor Outfit yet--stranger things have been waiting around the
corner."
Teeters shifted his weight in the saddle.
"Say," he confessed in some embarrassment, "a sperrit told me somethin'
like that only day 'fore yisterday. I was settin' in a circle over to
Mis' Taylor's and an Injun chief named 'Starlight' spelled out on the
table that all kinds of honor and worldly power was comin' to me. It
makes me feel cur'ous, hearin' you say it--like they was somethin' in
it."
Mormon Joe smiled quizzically but made no comment; perhaps he suspected
that the privilege of touching fingers with Miss Maggie Taylor while
waiting for the spirits to "take holt" had as much to do with Teeters'
interest in the unseen world as the messages he received from it. He
asked:
"You remember what I said at the Boosters' Club the other night?"
"I ain't apt to fergit it anyways soon," replied Teeters, dryly, "seein'
as 'Tinhorn' riz and put it to a vote as to whether they should tar and
feather you or jest naturally freeze you out."
"The truth is acid," he laughed. "It's a fact though, Teeters, that this
country's chief asset is its climate, and," with his quizzical smile,
"this Scissor Outfit would make a fine dude-ranch."
Kate did not tell Mormon Joe of her invitation until the sheep were
bedded for the night, the supper dishes out of the way and they were
sitting, as was their custom, on two boxes watching the stars and
talking while Mormon Joe smoked his pipe.
"Our company this morning made me forget to tell you how well you
handled the gate; it was a clean cut." Mormon Joe added in obvious
pride, "You're the best sheepman in the country, Katie, bar none."
"Then I wish you'd listen to me and buy some of those Rambouillets and
grade up our herd."
"We're doing all right," he returned, indifferently.
"Anybody would know you didn't like sheep."
"They're a means to an end; they keep me in the hills out of mischief
and furnish a living for us both."
"I wonder that you haven't more ambition, Uncle Joe."
"That died and was buried long ago. The little that I have left is for
you. I want you to have the benefit of what I have learned from books
and life; I want you to be happy--I can't say that I'm interested in
anything beyond that."
She threw him a kiss.
"You're too good to be true almost." Then, with a quite inexplicable
diffidence she faltered, "Uncle Joe, that--that boy asked me to go to a
dance."
He turned his head quickly and asked with a sharp note in his voice:
"Where?"
"In Prouty."
"Do you want to go?"
"I can't tell you how much!" she cried eagerly. "I can hardly believe it
is me--I--invited to a dance. I've never been out in the evening in all
my life. I don't know a single woman and may be I'll never have such a
chance again to get acquainted and make friends."
"I didn't know that you had been lonely, Katie," he said after a
silence.
"Just sometimes," she admitted.
"You said you didn't want to go to Prouty again because the children
bleated at you the last time you were in."
"But that was long ago--a year--they wouldn't do that now--they're
older, and, besides, there are others who have sheep. We're not the only
ones any more. But," with a quaver in her voice, "don't you want me to
go, Uncle Joe?"
"I don't want you to put yourself in a position to get hurt."
"What--what would anybody hurt me for?" she asked, wide-eyed.
His answer to the question was a shrug. Then, as though to himself,
"They may be bigger than I give them credit for."
He had not refused to let her go, but he had chilled her enthusiasm
somewhat so they were silent for a time, each occupied with his own
thoughts.
As Mormon Joe, with his hands clasped about his knee, his pipe dead in
his mouth, sat motionless in the starlight, he ceased to be conscious of
the beauty of the night, of the air that touched his face, soft and cool
as the caress of a gentle woman, of the moist sweet odors of bursting
buds and tender shoots--he was thinking only that the child who had run
into his arms for safety had come to be the center of the universe to
him. He could not imagine life without her. He had mended her manners,
corrected her speech, bought her books of study to which she had
diligently applied herself in the long hours while she herded sheep, and
nothing else in life had given him so much pleasure as to watch her mind
develop and her taste improve.
Anybody that would hurt her! Instinctively his hands clenched. Aloud he
said:
"Go to your party, Katie, and I hope with all my heart it will be
everything you anticipate."
CHAPTER IV
DISILLUSIONMENT
It was the most ambitious affair that had been attempted in Prouty--this
function at the Prouty House. The printed invitations had made a deep
impression; besides, wild rumors were flying about as to the elaborate
costumes that were to be worn by the socially prominent.
It was whispered that Mrs. Abram Pantin, wife of the wealthy capitalist
from Keokuk, now "settled in their midst," was to be seen in electric
blue silk with real lace collar and cuffs; while Mrs. Sudds, wife of a
near-governor, who had moved to Prouty from another part of the state,
was to appear in her lansdowne wedding dress. Mrs. Myron Neifkins, too,
if report could be believed, was to be gowned in peach-blow satin worked
in French knots.
He was a dull clod indeed who could not feel the tremors in the air that
momentous Saturday and by night there was not tying space at any
hitching rack.
If the ball loomed so large to the townfolks, it may be assumed that
Kate's anticipation was no less. As a matter of fact, she could scarcely
sleep for thinking of it. She did not know much about God--Mormon Joe
was not religious--but she felt vaguely that she must have Him to thank
for this wonderful happiness. It was the most important happening since
she had run, terrified, from home that black night three years ago.
There had not been a night since Hughie had given her the invitation
that she had not lain awake for hours staring at the stars with a smile
on her lips as she visualized situations. She saw herself dividing
dances as belles did in books, taking her part in lively conversations,
the center of merry groups. Oh, no, life would never be the same again;
she was certain of it.
Hughie had kept his word and ridden over several times to teach her the
steps, and they had practised them on the hard-trodden ground in front
of the cook tent, where the dust could be kept down by frequent
sprinkling. If the waltz and the polka and schottische sent her blood
racing under such adverse conditions, what must it be like on a real
floor with real music, she asked herself ecstatically. These dancing
lessons were provocative of much merriment and teasing from the Toomeys.
While Hugh did not resent it or defend Kate, he did not join in their
ridicule of her. She was "green," he could not deny that, yet not in the
sense the Toomeys meant. Naive, ingenuous, he felt were better words.
She knew nothing of social usages, and she was without a suspicion of
the coquetry that he looked for in girls before they had begun to do up
their hair. She spoke with startling frankness upon subjects which he
had been taught were taboo. He admired and was accustomed to soft,
helpless, clinging femininity, and it grated upon him to see Kate at the
woodpile swinging an axe in a matter-of-fact way.
"It's because there's no one else around," he told himself, to explain
the eagerness with which he rode over while he was teaching Kate to
dance.
The boy was intelligent enough to recognize the fact that, however
unschooled Kate might be in the things that counted in the outside
world, she was not ignorant when it came to those within her ken. She
knew the habits and peculiarities of wild animals and insects, every
characteristic of sheep, and she was a nearly unfailing weather prophet
through her interpretation of the meaning of wind and sky and clouds.
Her knowledge of botany was a constant surprise to him, for she seemed
to know the name and use of the tiniest plant that grew upon the range.
But, after all, he demanded of himself, what did a girl want to know
such things for? He would have liked better to see her in the shade with
an embroidery hoop.
* * * * *
Restraining their trembling haste, yet fearing that they might miss
something, the initiated townfolks managed to stay away from the Prouty
House until the fashionably late hour of eight, but the simpler rural
guests having eaten at six were ready and holding down the chairs in the
office before "the music" had arrived. There was a flutter of puzzled
inquiry among the Early Birds when Mrs. Abram Pantin, Mrs. Sudds and
Mrs. Myron Neifkins with an air of conscious importance stationed
themselves in a row at the door opening into the dining room, which was
now being noisily cleared of tables and chairs.
Mrs. Pantin, as gossip had surmised, wore electric blue with collar and
cuffs of lace that presumably was real, while angular Mrs. Sudds looked
chaste, if somewhat like a windmill in repose, in her bridal gown. Mrs.
Neifkins, too, came up to expectations in her peach-blow satin.
For a while the ladies of the receiving line found their position
somewhat of a sinecure, for nobody knew what they were standing there
for until Mrs. Rufus Webb, the wife of Prouty's new haberdasher,
arrived. Mrs. Webb had been called home to her dying mother's bedside,
but fortunately had been able to return from her sad errand in time for
the function at the Prouty House. When she laid aside her wrap it was
observed that she had gone into red.
Kate was an unconscionable time in dressing, Hugh thought, as he waited
in the office, considering that the flour sack tied behind her saddle
had seemed to contain her wardrobe easily enough.
His attention was focused upon Mrs. Neifkins, whom he had last seen in a
wrapper and slat sunbonnet, when a lull in the hubbub that became a hush
caused him to look up. His eyes followed the gaze of every other pair of
eyes to the head of the stairs that came down from the floor above into
the office. He saw Kate--dreadful as to clothes as a caricature or a
comic valentine! She had a wreath of red paper roses in her hair and a
chain of them reached from one shoulder nearly to the hem of her skirt
on the other side. The dress itself was made without regard to the
prevailing mode and of the three-cent-a-yard bunting bought by sheepmen
by the bolt to be used for flags to scare off coyotes in lambing time.
The body of the dress was blue, trimmed with the same material in red.
The sleeves were elbow length, and she wore black mitts. But the
crowning horror, unless it was the wreath, was the string of red
wild-rose seed pods around her neck.
Kate had cut out her gown without a pattern and with no mirror to guide
her, the skirt was several inches shorter behind than in front, and a
miscalculation put the gathers chiefly in one spot.
She was not recognized at first, for her visits to Prouty had been made
at too long intervals for her to be known save by a few. Then,
quickly--"Mormon Joe's Kate!" was whispered behind hands and passed from
mouth to mouth.
The girl's eager glowing face was the one redeeming thing of her
appearance. Half way down the stairs she stopped involuntarily and
looked with an expression of wondering inquiry into the many staring
eyes focused upon herself. Then a titter, nearly inaudible at first,
grew into a general snicker throughout the room.
They were laughing at her! There was no mistake about that. Kate shrank
back as though she had been struck; while the radiance faded from her
face, and it turned as white as the wall at her back.
What was the matter? What had she done? Wasn't she all right? she asked
herself, while her heart gave a great throb of fear. She gripped the
bannister while her panic-stricken eyes sought Hughie in the crowded
office. Where was he? Did he mean to leave her alone? It seemed minutes
that she stood there, though it was only one at most.
In spite of his worldly air and social ease, Disston was only a boy
after all, with a boy's keen sensitiveness to ridicule, and this ordeal
was something outside the experience of his nineteen years. The worst he
had expected was that she would be frumpish, or old-fashioned, or
commonplace like these other women standing about, but it had not
occurred to him that she might be conspicuously grotesque.
There was a moment of uncertainty which seemed as long to the boy as it
did to Kate, and then the chivalry of his good southern blood responded
gallantly to the appeal in her eyes. His dark face was dyed with the
blood that rushed to the roots of his hair, and his forehead was damp
with the moisture of embarrassment, but he rose from his seat and went
to meet her with a welcoming smile.
"Oh, Hughie!" she gasped tremulously in gratitude and relief as she ran
rather than walked down the remaining stairs.
The grinning crowd parted to let them pass as, self-conscious and
stiffly erect, they walked the length of the office towards the dining
room. Figuratively speaking, Prouty stood on tip-toe to see what sort of
reception they would meet from the receiving line. It was tacitly
understood that lesser social lights would take their cue from them.
Of its kind, it was as thrilling a moment as Prouty had experienced.
Mrs. Myron Neifkins had recognized Kate immediately and passed the word
along to Mrs. Pantin who, although a comparative stranger, had been
properly supplied with information as to the community's undesirables.
"Mormon Joe's Kate," the daughter of the notorious Jezebel of the Sand
Coulee Roadhouse, naturally was included in the list.
Hugh, who had met these ladies previously and found them as amiable as
any one could wish--particularly Mrs. Pantin, who had regarded him as
somebody to cultivate because of his connection with the exclusive
Toomeys of the Scissor Ranch--now had something of the sensation of a
person who had stepped into the frigid atmosphere of a cold storage
plant.
Mrs. Pantin's eyes had all the warm friendliness of two blue china knobs
and her thin lips were closed until her mouth looked merely a vivid
scratch. Yet, somehow, the boy managed to say with his manner of
deferential courtesy:
"Mrs. Pantin, do you know Miss Prentice?"
Ordinarily, a part of Mrs. Pantin's society manner was a vivacious
chirp, but now she said coldly between her teeth:
"I haven't that pleasure." She gave Kate her extreme finger tips with
such obvious reluctance that the action was an affront.
Disston glanced at Mrs. Sudds in the hope of finding friendliness. That
lady had drawn herself up like an outraged tragedy queen. No one would
have dreamed, seeing Mrs. Sudds at the moment with her air of royal
hauteur, that in bygone days she had had her own troubles making twelve
dollars a week as a stenographer.
His glance passed on to Mrs. Neifkins, who was picking at a French knot
in a spasm of nervousness lest Kate betray the fact that they had met.
Disston was aware that Mrs. Neifkins knew Kate and his lip curled at her
cowardice. He raised his head haughtily; he would not subject his
partner to further rebuffs.
"Come on, Katie," he said, curtly, and they passed into the dining room.
The girl's cheeks were flaming as they sat down on the chairs ranged
against the wall.
"Hughie," her fingers were like ice as she clasped them together in her
lap. "What's the matter? Do I look--queer?"
He answered shortly:
"You're all right."
They sat watching the crowd file in. Suddenly Hughie exclaimed in
obvious relief:
"There's Teeters, and Maggie Taylor and her mother! Wait here--I'll
bring them over."
He went up to them with assurance, for their friendliness and
hospitality had been marked upon the several occasions that he had
accompanied Teeters, who always had some transparent excuse for stopping
at their ranch.
Mrs. Taylor, with her backwoods' conceit and large patronizing manner,
had been especially amusing to Hughie, but now in this uncomfortable
situation she looked like a haven in a storm as he saw her towering by
nearly half a head above the tallest in the crowd.
It was Mrs. Taylor's proud boast that she came of a race of giants. Even
upon ordinary occasions she bore a rather remarkable resemblance to a
mountain sheep, but to-night the likeness was further increased by a
grizzled bunch of frizzled hair that stood out on either temple like
embryo horns. Mrs. Taylor looked, as it were, "in the velvet." She wore
a brown sateen basque secured at the throat by a brooch consisting of a
lock of hair under glass. It was observed, also, that for the evening
she had removed the string which she commonly wore around her two large
and widely separated front teeth, and which were being drawn together by
this means at about the rate the earth is cooling off.
Mrs. Taylor dated events from the time "Mr. Taylor was taken," though
there was always room for doubt as to whether Mr. Taylor was "taken" or
quite deliberately went.
Miss Maggie was tall and sallow and was anticipating matrimony with an
ardor that had made the maiden one of the country's stock jokes, since
the sharer of it seemed to be of secondary importance to the fact. All
her spare change and waking hours were spent buying and embroidering
linen for the "hope chest" that spoke of her determined confidence in
the realization of her ambition.
The three greeted Hughie warmly. Miss Maggie flashed her dazzling teeth;
Teeters reached out and smote him with his fist between the shoulder
blades; Mrs. Taylor laid her hand upon his arm with her large smug air
of patronizing friendliness, and, stooping, beamed into his face.
"We were not looking for you here. Did Mr. and Mrs. Toomey come? Are you
alone?"
"I brought Katie Prentice--she's sitting over there."
"Oh!" Mrs. Taylor's expression changed.
The boy looked at her pleadingly as he added:
"She has so few pleasures, and she would so like to have
acquaintances--to make friends."
"I dare say," dryly.
"She--she doesn't know any one. Won't you--all come and join us?" There
was entreaty in the boy's voice.
Mrs. Taylor rose out of her hips until she looked all of seven feet tall
to Hughie.
"You must excuse me, Mr. Disston." She hesitated, then added in
explanation: "When we came West I told myself that I must not allow
myself to deteriorate in rough surroundings, and I have made it a rule
never to mingle with any but the best, Mr. Disston. My father,"
impressively, "was a prominent undertaker in Philadelphia, and as
organist in a large Methodist church in that city I came in contact with
the best people, so you understand," blandly, "don't you, why I
cannot--"
The boy was red to the rim of his ears as he bowed formally to mother
and daughter.
"I don't in the least," he replied, coldly.
The pain in Kate's eyes hurt him when he returned to his seat and she
asked.
"They wouldn't come?"
He hesitated, then answered bluntly:
"No."
"H-had we better stay?"
"Yes," he replied, doggedly, "we'll stay."
Their efforts at conversation were not a success, and it was a relief to
them both when Hiram Butefish, as Floor Manager, commanded everybody to
take partners for a waltz.
Hughie arose and held out his hands to Kate.
"Hughie, I can't," she protested, shrinking back. "I'm--afraid."
"Yes, you can," determinedly. "Don't let these people think they can
frighten you."
"I'll try because you want me to," she answered, "but it's all gone out
of my head, and I know I can't."
"You'll get it directly," as he took her hand. "Just remember and count.
One, two, three--now!"
The bystanders tittered as she stumbled. The sound stung the boy like a
whip, his black eyes flashed, but he said calmly enough:
"You make too much of it, Katie. Put your mind on the time and count."
She tried once more with no better result. She merely hopped, regardless
of the music.
"I tell you I can't, Hughie," she said, despairingly. "Let's sit down."
"Never mind," soothingly as he acquiesced, "we'll try it again after a
while. The next will very likely be a square dance and I can pilot you
through that."
"You're so good!"
He looked away to avoid her grateful eyes. What would she say if she
knew the reason he had brought her there? On a bet! He had seen only
what appeared to be the humorous side. Hughie's own pride enabled him to
realize how deep were the hurts she was trying so pluckily to hide. But
why did they treat her so? Even her dreadful get-up seemed scarcely to
account for it.
The next number, as he surmised, was a square dance.
"Take your pardners fer a quadrille!"
There was a scrambling and a sliding over the floor, accompanied by much
laughter, to the quickly formed "sets."
"There's a place, Kate--on the side, too, so you have only to watch what
the others do."
She hesitated, but he could see the longing in her eyes.
He taunted boyishly, "Don't be a 'fraidy cat,'" at which for the first
time they both laughed with something of naturalness.
Mr. Scales of the Emporium and his plump bookkeeper were there, and the
willowy barber with the stylish operator of the new telephone exchange,
while Mr. and Mrs. Neifkins made the third couple, and Hugh and Kate
completed the set.
There was an exchange of looks as the pair came up. The stylish operator
lifted an eyebrow and drew down the corners of her mouth. The bookkeeper
said, "Well!" with much significance,--but it remained for Mrs. Neifkins
to give the real offense. The expression on her vapid face implied that
she was aghast at their impudence. Gathering the fullness of her skirt
as though to withdraw it from contamination she laid the other hand on
her husband's arm:
"There's a place over there, Myron, where we can get in."
"It's nearer the music," said Neifkins with an apologetic grin to the
others.
Those who stayed had something of the air of brazening it out. In vain
Mr. Butefish called sternly for, "One more couple this way!"
It was Scales of the Emporium who said, finally:
"Looks like we don't dance--might as well sit down."
Every one acted on the suggestion with alacrity save Kate and Hughie.
When he turned to her, he saw that she was swallowing hard at the lump
that was choking her.
"It's on account of me that they act so, Hughie! You stay if you want
to; I'm going."
"Stay here?" he cried in boyish passion. "You're the only lady in the
room so far as I can see! What would I stay for?"
The citizens of Prouty were still deeply impressed by each other's
pretensions, as the reputations the majority had left in their "home
towns" had not yet caught up with them. Therefore, being greatly
concerned about what his neighbor thought of him, no one would have
dared be friendly to the ostracized couple even if he had the
disposition.
Kate and Hughie walked out, very erect and looking straight ahead,
followed by a feeling of satisfaction that this opportunity had
presented itself for the new order to show where it stood in the matter
of accepting doubtful characters on an equal social footing. It had
properly vindicated itself of the charge that western society was lax in
such matters. That they had hurt--terribly hurt--another, was of small
importance.
CHAPTER V
FOR ALWAYS
In the little room upstairs, where less than an hour before she had
dressed in happy excitement, Kate tore off the paper flowers and wild
rose pods. She threw them in a heap on the floor--the cherished mitts,
the bunting dress--while she sobbed in a child's abandonment, with the
tears running unchecked down her cheeks. The music floating up the
stairway and through the transom, the scuffling sound of sliding feet,
added to her grief. She had wanted, oh, how she had wanted to dance!
The thought that Hughie had suffered humiliation because of her was
little short of torture. But he had not deserted her--he had stuck--even
in her misery she gloried in that--and how handsome he had looked! Why,
there was not a man in the room that could compare with him! His
clothes, the way he had borne himself, the something different about him
which she could not analyze. It was a woman's pride that shone in her
swollen red-lidded eyes as she told herself this, while she pinned on
her shabby Stetson in trembling haste, buckled the spurs on her boots
and snatched up her ugly mackinaw.
Hugh was waiting for her in the office below.
The horses were tied to the hitching rack. Kate gulped down the lump
that rose in her throat as she swung into the saddle. The orchestra was
playing the "Blue Danube," and she especially loved that waltz. The
strains followed them up the street, and tears she could not keep back
fell on the horse's mane as she drooped a little over the saddlehorn.
She looked down through dimmed eyes upon the lights streaming from the
windows of the Prouty House, as they climbed the steep pitch to the
bench above town, and the alluring brightness increased the aching
heaviness of her heart, for she felt that she was leaving all they
represented behind her forever. She knew she never could find the
courage to risk going through such an ordeal again.
A childhood without playmates had created a longing for companionship
that was pathetic in its eagerness, and the yearning had not been
modified by the isolation and monotony of her present life. To dance, to
be merry, to have the opportunity to please, seemed the most important
thing in the world to the girl and now she seemed to realize, in
mutinous despair, that through no fault of her own she was going to be
cheated of that which was her right--of that which was every girl's
right--to have the pleasures which belonged to her years.
Kate's standards were the standards of the old west and of the mountains
and plains, which take only personal worth into account, so she did not
yet comprehend clearly what it was all about. She herself had done
nothing to merit such treatment from people whose names she did not even
know. She rode for a long time without speaking, trying, in her tragic
bewilderment, to puzzle it out.
The silence was in painful contrast to the high spirits in which they
had ridden into town. Then, they had found so much to talk about, so
much to anticipate--and it had all turned out to be so different, so far
removed from anything they had dreamed. Each shrank from being the first
to broach the subject of their humiliating retreat.
The moon came up after a while, full and mellow, and the night air
cooled Kate's flaming cheeks. The familiar stars, too, soothed her like
the presence of old friends, but, more than anything, the accustomed
motion of her horse, as it took its running walk, helped to restore her
mental poise.
At the top of a hill both drew rein automatically. Walking down steep
descents to save their horses and themselves was an understood thing
between them. At the bottom they still trudged on, leading their horses
and exchanging only an occasional word upon some subject far removed
from their real thoughts. It was Kate who finally said with seeming
irrelevance:
"Uncle Joe brought home two collie puppies once--fat, roly-poly little
things that didn't do anything but play and eat, and they were--oh, so
innocent! They were into everything, and always under foot, afraid of
nothing or nobody, because they never had been hurt.
"One night a storm came up--a cold rain that was almost snow. They ran
into my tent and settled themselves on my pillow all shivering and wet.
In squirming around to make a nest for themselves they pulled my hair.
It made me cross. I was half asleep and I slapped them.
"They paid no attention to it at first--they couldn't believe I meant
it, so they kept on trying to cuddle up to me to get warm. I slapped
them harder. They whimpered, but still they couldn't realize that I
meant to hurt them. Finally, I struck them--hard--again and again--until
they howled with pain. They understood finally that they were not
wanted--and they went crying and whimpering out into the rain.
"It awakened me, thinking what I had done, how they had come to me so
innocent--taking kindness as a matter of course because they never had
known anything else, and I had been the first to hurt them. I was the
first to spoil their confidence in others--and themselves. I couldn't
sleep for thinking of it, and finally I got up, and, to punish myself,
went out barefooted into the storm and brought them back. They forgave
me and soon settled down, but they never were quite the same, for they
had learned what pain was and what it meant to be afraid.
"When I went there to-night I was like those puppies, just as green and
confident--just as sure of everybody's kindness."
"Oh, I'm so sorry, Katie," he replied in a low tone.
"I don't mean to whine," she went on, "but you see I wasn't expecting
it, and, like the puppies, it took me a long time to understand. I
thought at first it was my dress--that I looked--funny, somehow; but you
said it wasn't that, so I thought maybe it was because we were 'in
sheep,' but so is Neifkins, and nobody treated them as they did me."
"The upstarts!" savagely. "I'll never forgive myself for taking you
there!"
She protested quickly:
"You're not to blame. How could you know? You meant to do something nice
for me, Hughie."
He winced at that. It would have required more courage than he had to
have told her at the moment the exact truth.
He held the horses back and stopped suddenly.
"Katie," turning to her, "I'd do anything in the world to make amends
for what happened to-night. Isn't there some way--something I can do for
you? Anything at all," he pleaded. "Just tell me--no matter what it
is--you've only to let me know."
She looked at him with grateful eyes, but shook her head.
"No, Hughie, there's nothing you can do for me." She caught her breath
sharply and added, "Ex--except to go on liking me. It would break my
heart if you went back on me, too."
"Kate!"
"If you didn't like me any more--" She choked and the swift tears filled
her eyes.
"Like you!" impetuously. "I'd do more than like you if I never had seen
you before to-night!" He dropped the bridle reins and laid a hand on
either shoulder, holding her at arms' length. "Your eyes are like stars!
And your mouth looks so--sweet! And your hair is so soft and pretty when
the wind blows it across your forehead and face like that! I wish you
could see yourself. You're beautiful in the moonlight, Kate!"
"Beautiful?" incredulously. Then she laughed happily, "Why, I'm not even
pretty, Hughie."
"And what's more," he declared, "you're a wonderful girl--different--a
fellow never gets tired of being with you."
"You are making up to me for what happened to-night! I nearly forget it
when you tell me things like that."
"I didn't know how much I did care until they hurt you. I could have
killed somebody if it wouldn't have made things worse for you."
"As much as that?" She looked at him wistfully. "You care as much as
that? You see," she added slowly, "nobody's ever taken my part except
Uncle Joe--not even my mother; and it seems--queer to think that anybody
else likes me well enough to fight for me."
The unconscious pathos went straight to the boy's chivalrous heart.
"Oh, Honey!" he cried impulsively, and taking her hand in both of his he
held it tight against his breast.
Her eyes grew luminous at the word and the caress.
"Honey!" she repeated in a wondering whisper. "I like that."
Her lids lowered before the new and strange expression in his face.
"You've always seemed so independent and self-reliant, like another
fellow, somehow. I didn't know you were so sweet. I'm just finding you
out."
She looked at him before replying, but he trembled before the soft light
shining in her eyes.
He stood for a moment uncertainly, fighting for his self-control, then,
casting off restraint, he threw his arms about her, crying passionately:
"I love you! I love you, Katie! There's nobody like you in the whole
world. Kiss me--Sweet!"
She drew back startled, looking into his eyes. Her own seemed to melt
under what she saw there, and she slowly lifted her lips. When she could
speak--
"You'll love me for always, Hughie?"
"For always," huskily. "For ever and ever, Katie."
CHAPTER VI
THE WOLF SCRATCHES
Mormon Joe had underestimated Jasper Toomey's capacity for extravagance
and mismanagement when he had given him five years to "go broke" in, as
he had accomplished it in four most effectively--so completely, in fact,
that they had moved into town with only enough furniture to furnish a
small house, which they spoke of as having "rented," though as yet the
owner had had nothing but promises to compensate him for their
occupancy.
It was close to a year after their advent in Prouty that Mrs. Toomey
awakened in the small hours, listened a moment, then prodded her husband
sharply:
"The wind's coming up, Jap, and I left out my washing."
"Never mind--I'll borrow a saddle horse in the morning and go after it."
"Everything will be whipped to ribbons," she declared plaintively.
"I'm not going out this time of night to collect laundry; besides, the
exercise would make me hungrier."
"Are you hungry, Jap?"
"Hungry! I've been lying here thinking of everything I ever left on my
plate since I was a baby!"
Mrs. Toomey sighed deeply.
"Wouldn't a fat club sandwich with chicken, lettuce, thin bacon and
mayonnaise dressing--"
"Hush!" Toomey exploded savagely. "If you say that again I'll dress and
go out and rob a hen roost!"
Mrs. Toomey suggested hopefully:
"Perhaps if you light the lamp, and smoke, it will take your mind off
your stomach."
"I surmise that's all there is on it." Toomey lighted the lamp on the
table beside the bed and looked at the clock on the bureau.
"Hours yet, my love, before I can gorge myself on a shredded wheat
biscuit."
Mrs. Toomey braided a wisp of hair to an infinitesimal end and said
firmly:
"Jap, we've simply _got_ to do something! Can't you borrow?"
"Borrow! I couldn't throw a rock inside the city limits without hitting
some one to whom I owe money. Come again, Old Dear," mockingly.
"Wouldn't Mormon Joe--"
"I'd starve before I'd ask that sheepherder!" His face darkened to
ugliness. "I'm surprised at you--that you haven't more pride. You know
he broke me, shutting me off from water with his leases. I've explained
all that to you."
She was silent; she didn't have the heart to hit him when he was down,
though she had her own opinion as to the cause of his failure.
Since she did not reply, he went on vindictively:
"I've come to hate the sight of him--his damned insolence. Every time I
see him going into his shack over there," he nodded towards the diagonal
corner, "I could burn it."
"It's funny--his building it."
"To save hotel bills when he comes to town. Yes," ironically, "I can see
_him_ lending _me_ money." Mrs. Toomey sat up and cried excitedly:
"Jap, let's sell something! There's that silver punch bowl that your
Uncle Jasper gave us for a wedding present, and Aunt Sarah Page's silver
teapot--Mrs. Sudds admires it tremendously."
Toomey's brow cleared instantly.
"We can do that--I'll raffle it--the punch bowl--and get a hundred and
fifty out of it easily." He discussed the details enthusiastically,
finally blowing out the light and going to sleep as contentedly as
though it already had been accomplished.
But in the darkness Mrs. Toomey cried quietly. Selling tickets for a
raffle which was for their personal benefit seemed a kind of genteel
begging. She wondered that Jap did not feel as she did about it. And
what would Mrs. Pantin think? What Mrs. Abram Pantin thought had come to
mean a great deal to Mrs. Toomey.
The wind had risen to a gale and she thought nervously of fringed
napkins and pillow slips--the wind always gave her the "blues" anyway,
and now it reminded her of winter, which was close, with its bitter
cold--of snow driven across trackless wastes, of gaunt predatory
animals, of cattle and horses starving in draws and gulches, and all the
other things which winter meant in that barren country. She slept after
a time, to find the next morning that the wind still howled and the
fringe on her laundry was all she had pictured.
Toomey set forth gaily immediately after breakfast with the punch bowl
wrapped in a newspaper, and Mrs. Toomey nerved herself to negotiate for
the sale of the teapot to Mrs. Sudds, in the event of his being
unsuccessful.
She watched for his return eagerly, but it was two o'clock before she
saw him coming, leaning against the wind and clasping the punch bowl to
his bosom. Her heart sank, for his face told her the result without
asking.
Toomey set Uncle Jasper's wedding gift upon the dining room table with
disrespectful violence.
"You must be crazy to think I could sell that in Prouty! You should have
known better!"
"Didn't anybody want it, Jap?" Mrs. Toomey asked timidly.
"Want it?" angrily. "'Tinhorn' thought it was some kind of a tony
cuspidor, and a round-up cook offered me a dollar and a half for it to
set bread sponge in."
"Never mind," soothingly, "I'm sure Mrs. Sudds will take the teapot."
"We can't live all winter on a teapot," he answered gloomily.
"But you're sure to get into something pretty quick now."
"When I land, I'll land big--I'll land with both feet," he responded
more cheerfully.
"Of course, you will--I never doubt it." Mrs. Toomey endeavored to make
her tone convincing. "Let's have tea in the heirloom before we part with
it," she suggested brightly. "It's never been used that I can remember."
"It's ugly enough to be valuable," Toomey observed, eyeing the teapot as
she took it from the top of the bookcase.
"Solid, nearly, and came over in the _Mayflower_," Mrs. Toomey replied
proudly. "We'll have tea and toast and codfish."
"The information is superfluous." Toomey sniffed the air and made a wry
face. "I'd as soon eat billposter's paste as codfish."
"To-night we'll have steak--thick, like that--" Mrs. Toomey measured
with her thumb and finger as she went into the kitchen.
Toomey eyed the codfish darkly when his wife placed it on the table.
"Sit down, Jap," she urged. "The tea will be steeped in just a second.
Don't wait--" A scream completed the sentence.
Toomey overturned his chair as he rushed to the kitchen. He arrived in
time to see the lid of the priceless heirloom disappearing in a puddle
of pewter. It seemed to the Toomeys that the Fates had singled them out
as special objects for their malevolence.
The wind continued to blow as though it meant never to stop. It was a
wind of which the people of the East who speak awesomely of their own
"gales" and "tempest" wot not.
This wind which had kept Prouty indoors for close to a week came out of
a cloudless sky, save for a few innocent looking streaks on the western
horizon. It had blown away everything that would move. All the loose
papers had sailed through the air to an unknown destination--Nebraska,
perhaps--while an endless procession of tumble weed had rolled in the
same direction from an apparently inexhaustible supply in the west.
Housewives who had watched their pile of tin cans move on to the next
lot found their satisfaction short-lived, for as quickly they acquired
the rubbish that belonged to their neighbor on the other side. Shingles
flew off and chimney bricks, and ends of corrugated iron roofing slapped
and banged as though frantic to be loose. Houses shivered on their
foundations, and lesser buildings lay on their sides. Clouds of dust
obscured the sun at intervals, and the sharp-edged gravel driven before
the gale cut like tiny knives.
Any daring chicken that ventured from its coop slid away as if it were
on skates. Pitchforks were useless, and those who had horses to feed
carried the hay in sacks. The caged inhabitants stood at their windows
and made caustic comments upon the legs and general contour of such
unfortunates as necessity took out, while those pedestrians who would
converse, upon catching sight of each other made a dive for the nearest
telephone pole. There, clinging by an arm like a shipwrecked sailor to a
mast, they ventured to opine that it must be "getting ready for
something." It seemed as though the earth would soon be denuded of its
soil, leaving the rocks exposed like a skeleton stripped of its flesh.
Yet, day after day, it blew without respite, and the effect of it upon
different temperaments was as varied as that of drink.
No one could seem to remember that the wind had not always blown, or
realize that it would sometime stop. No character was strong enough to
maintain a perfect equilibrium after three days of it. Logic or
philosophy made no more impression upon the mental state than water
slipping over a rock. It set the nerves on edge. Irritation,
restlessness and discontent were as uncontrollable as great fear. Two
wildcats tied together were not more incompatible than husbands and
wives, who under normal conditions lived together happily. Doting
mothers became shrews; fond fathers, brutes, lambasting their offspring
on the smallest pretext; while seven was too conservative an estimate to
place upon the devils of which the children who turned the house into
Bedlam seemed to be possessed.
Optimists grew green with melancholia, pessimists considered suicide as
an escape from the futility of life, neighbors resurrected buried
hatchets. Friends found fault with friends. Enemies vowed to kill each
other as soon as the wind let up.
If the combination of wind and altitude had this effect upon phlegmatic
temperaments, something of Mrs. Toomey's state may be surmised. With
nerves already overwrought this prolonged windstorm put her in a
condition in which, as she declared hysterically to her husband, she was
"ready to fly."
Lying on his back on the one-time handsome sofa, where he spent many of
his waking hours, Toomey responded, grimly:
"I'm getting so light on that breakfast-food diet that we'll both fly if
I don't make a 'touch' pretty quick. I'm 'most afraid to go out in a
high wind without running a little shot in the bottoms of my trousers."
Mrs. Toomey, who was standing at the dining room table laying a section
of a newspaper pattern upon a piece of serge, felt an uncontrollable
desire to weep. Furthermore, the conviction seized her that, turn and
twist the pattern as she might, she was not going to have material
enough unless she pieced.
Her lids turned pink and her eyes filled up.
"Isn't it awful, Jap, to think of us being like this?"
"You make me think of a rabbit when you sniffle like that. Can't you cry
without wiggling your nose?"
Mrs. Toomey's quavering voice rose to the upper register:
"Do you suppose I care how I look when I feel like this?"
"How do you think I feel," ferociously, "with my stomach slumping in so
I can hardly straighten up?" He raised a long arm and shook a fist as
though in defiance of the Fate that had brought him to this. "I'd sell
my soul for a ham! I'm going to Scales and put up a talk."
Toomey found his hat and coat. "Don't cut your throat with the scissors
while I'm gone, Little Sunbeam, and I'll be back with food pretty
quick--unless I blow off."
He spoke with such confidence that Mrs. Toomey looked at him hopefully.
When he opened the door the furious gust that shook the house and
darkened the room with a cloud of dust seemed to suck him into a vortex.
Mrs. Toomey watched him round the corner with a sense of relief. Now
that she was alone she could cry comfortably and look as ugly as she
liked, so the tears flowed copiously as she stood at the table puzzling
over the pattern and cloth. They flowed afresh when she proved beyond
the question of a doubt that she would have to piece the under-arm
sleeve. Simultaneously she wondered if she could do it so skilfully that
Mrs. Abram Pantin would not see the piece. Then she frowned in vexation
at the realization that it was becoming second nature to wonder what
Prissy Pantin would think. Was it possible that there had been a time
when she had debated as to whether she wanted to know Mrs. Abram Pantin
at all?
When she had married Jap she had thought she was done forever with the
miserable poverty and hateful economies that are the lot of the family
of a small-town minister; that after years of suppression of opinions
and tastes in order not to evoke criticism or give offense, she at last
was in a position to assert herself.
And now after a taste of freedom, of power and opulence, here she was
back in practically the same position and rapidly developing the same
mental attitude towards those more affluent and, therefore, more
socially important than herself. Mrs. Toomey's thoughts were much the
color of the serge into which she slashed.
Finally, after a glance at the clock, she walked to the window to look
for her husband. He was not in sight. As she lingered her glance fell on
Mormon Joe's tar-paper shack that set in the middle of the lot on the
diagonal corner from their house, and she told herself bitterly that
even that drunken renegade, that social pariah, had enough to eat.
Her face brightened as Toomey turned the corner and promptly lengthened
when she saw that he was empty-handed and walking with the exaggerated
swagger which she was coming to recognize as a sign of failure.
A glimpse of his face as he came in, banged the door, and flung off his
hat and coat made her hesitate to speak.
"Well?" he glared at her. "Why don't you say something?"
"What is there to say, Jap?" meekly. "I see he refused you."
"Refused me? He insulted me!"
Mrs. Toomey looked hurt.
"What did he say, Jap?"
"He offered me fifteen dollars a week to _clerk_."
Toomey resented fiercely the pleased and hopeful expression on his
wife's face, and added:
"I suppose you'd like to see me cutting calico and fishing salt pork out
of the brine?"
She ventured timidly:
"I thought you might take it until something worth while turned up."
"Maybe," he sneered, "I could get a job swamping in 'Tinhorn's'
place--washing fly specks off the windows and sweeping out."
"Of course, you're right, Jap," conciliatingly, but she sighed
unconsciously as she went back to her work.
Toomey paced the floor for a time, then sank into his usual place on the
sofa. Mrs. Toomey permitted herself to observe sarcastically:
"It's a wonder to me you don't get bed sores--the amount of time you
spend on the flat of your back."
"What do you mean by that?" suspiciously. "Do you mean I'm lazy because
I didn't take that job?"
Since she made no denial, conversation ceased, and the silence was
broken only by the sound of her scissors upon the table and the howling
of the gale.
He smoked cigarette after cigarette in gloomy thought, finally getting
up and going to a closet off the kitchen.
"What are you looking for, Jap?" she called as she heard him rummaging.
He did not reply, but evidently found what he sought for he came out
presently carrying a shotgun.
"Are you going to try and raffle that?"
Still he did not deign to answer, but preserved his injured air, and
getting once more into his hat and coat started off with the martyred
manner of a man who has been driven from home.
Mrs. Toomey finally threw down her scissors with a gesture of despair.
She was too nervous to do any more. The wind, her anxious thoughts, the
exacting task of cutting a suit from an inadequate amount of cloth, was
a combination that proved to be too much. She glanced at the clock on
the bookcase--only three o'clock! Actually there seemed forty-eight
hours in days like this. She stood uncertainly for a moment, then
determination settled on her tense worried face. Why put it off any
longer? It must be done sooner or later--she was sure of that. Besides,
nothing ever was as hard as one anticipates. This was a cheering
thought, and the lines in Mrs. Toomey's forehead smoothed out as she
stood before the mirror buttoning her coat and tying a veil over her
head.
It took no small amount of physical courage for a person of Mrs.
Toomey's frailty to face such a gale. But with her thin lips in a
determined line and her gaze straight ahead, she managed, by tacking
judiciously and stopping at intervals to clasp a telephone pole while
she recovered her breath, to reach the iron fence imported from Omaha
which gave such a look of exclusiveness to the Pantins' residence.
Mr. Pantin thought he heard the gate slam and peered out through the
dead wild-cucumber vines which framed the bow window to see Mrs. Toomey
coming up the only cement walk in Prouty. He immediately thrust his
stockinged feet back in his comfortable Romeos preparatory to opening
the door, but before he got up he stooped and looked again, searchingly.
Mr. Pantin was endowed with a gift that was like a sixth sense, which
enabled him to detect a borrower as far as his excellent eyesight could
see one. This intuition, combined with experience, had been developed to
the point of uncanniness. No borrower, however adroit, could hope to
conceal from Mr. Pantin for a single instant the real purpose of his
call by irrelevant talk and solicitous inquiries about his health. In
the present instance it did not require great acumen to guess that
something urgent had brought Mrs. Toomey out on a day like this, nor any
particular keenness to detect the signs of agitation which Mr. Pantin
noted in his swift glance. She was coming to borrow--he was as sure of
that as though she already had asked, and if any further confirmation
were needed, her unnatural gayety when he admitted her and the
shortness of her breath finished that.
It availed Mrs. Toomey nothing to tell herself that Mrs. Pantin was her
best friend, and that what she was asking was merely a matter of
business--the sort of thing that Mr. Pantin was doing every day. Her
heart beat ridiculously and she was rather shocked to hear herself
laughing shrilly at Mr. Pantin's banal inquiry as to whether she had not
"nearly blown off." He added in some haste:
"Priscilla's in the kitchen."
Mrs. Pantin looked up in surprise at her caller's entrance.
"How perfectly sweet of you to come out a day like this!" she chirped.
"You'll excuse me if I go on getting dinner? We only have two meals a
day when we don't exercise. This wind--isn't it dreadful? I haven't been
out of the house for a week."
She placed two rolls in the warming oven and broke three eggs into a
bowl.
"Abram and I are so fond of omelette," she said, as the egg-beater
whirred. "Tell me," she beamed brightly upon Mrs. Toomey, "what have you
been doing with yourself?"
"Priscilla--Prissy--" Mrs. Toomey caught her breath--"I've been
miserable--and that's the truth!"
"Why, my dear!" The egg-beater stopped. "Aren't you well? No wonder--I'm
as nervous as a witch myself." The egg-beater whirred again
encouragingly. "You must use your will power--you mustn't allow yourself
to be affected by these external things."
"It's not the wind." Mrs. Toomey's eyes were swimming now. "I'm worried
half to death."
Mrs. Pantin had not lived twelve years with Abram in vain. A look of
suspicion crossed her face, and there was a little less solicitude in
her voice as she inquired:
"Is it anything in particular? Bad news from home?"
"It's money!" Mrs. Toomey blurted out. "We're dreadfully hard up. I came
to see if we could get a loan."
The egg-beater went on, but the milk of human kindness which,
presumably, flowed in Mrs. Pantin's breast stopped--congealed--froze up
tight. Her blue eyes, whose vividness was accentuated as usual by the
robin's egg blue dress she wore, had the warm genial glow radiating from
a polar berg. It was, however, only a moment before she recovered
herself and was able to say with sweet earnestness:
"I haven't anything to do with that, my dear. You'll have to see Mr.
Pantin."
Mrs. Toomey clasped her fingers tightly together and stammered:
"If--if you would speak to him first--I--I thought perhaps--"
Mrs. Pantin's set society smile was on her small mouth, but the finality
of the laws of the Medes and the Persians was in her tone as she
replied:
"I never think of interfering with my husband's business or making
suggestions. As fond as I am of you, Delia, you'll have to ask him
yourself."
Mrs. Toomey had the feeling that they never would be quite on the same
footing again. She knew it from the way in which Mrs. Pantin's eyes
travelled from the unbecoming brown veil on her head to her warm but
antiquated coat, stopping at her shabby shoes which, instinctively, she
drew beneath the hem of her skirt.
To be shabby from carelessness was one thing--to be so from necessity
was another, clearly was in Mrs. Pantin's mind. She had known, of
course, of the collapse of their cattle-raising enterprise, but she had
not dreamed they were in such a bad way as this. She hoped she was not
the sort of person who would let it make any difference in her warm
friendship for Delia Toomey; nevertheless, Mrs. Toomey detected the
subtle note of patronage in her voice when she said:
"Abram is alone in the living room--you might speak to him."
"I think I will." Mrs. Toomey endeavored to repair the mistake she felt
she had made by speaking in a tone which implied that a loan was of no
great moment after all, but she walked out with the feeling that she
used to have in the presence of the more opulent members of her father's
congregation when the flour barrel was low.
Mrs. Toomey was not too agitated to note how immaculate and dainty the
dining room table looked with its fine linen and cut glass. There were
six dices of apple with a nut on top on the handsome salad plates, and
the crystal dessert dishes each held three prunes swimming in their rich
juice.
The living-room, too, reflected Mrs. Pantin's taste. A framed motto
extolling the virtues of friendship hung over the mantel and the "Blind
Girl of Pompeii" groped her way down the staircase on the neutral-tinted
wall. A bookcase filled with sets of the world's best literature
occupied a corner of the room, while ooze leather copies of Henry Van
Dyke gave an unmistakable look of culture to the mission table in the
center of the room. A handsome leather davenport with a neat row of sofa
pillows along the back, which were of Mrs. Pantin's own handiwork,
suggested luxurious ease. But the chief attraction of the room was the
brick fireplace with its spotless tiled hearth. One of Mr. Pantin's
diversions was sitting before the glowing coals, whisk and shovel in
hand, waiting for an ash to drop.
Seeing Mrs. Toomey, Mr. Pantin again hastily thrust his toes into his
slippers--partly because he was cognizant of the fact that no real
gentleman will receive a lady in his stocking feet, and partly to
conceal the neat but large darn on the toe of one sock. He was courteous
amiability itself, and Mrs. Toomey's hopes shot up.
"I came to have a little talk."
"Yes?"
Mr. Pantin's smile deceived her and she plunged on with confidence:
"I--we would like to arrange for a loan, Mr. Pantin."
"To what amount, Mrs. Toomey?"
Mrs. Toomey considered.
"As much as you could conveniently spare."
The smile which Mr. Pantin endeavored to conceal was genuine.
"For what length of time?"
Mrs. Toomey had not thought of that.
"I could not say exactly--not off-hand like this--but I presume only
until my husband gets into something."
"Has he--er--anything definite in view?"
"I wouldn't say definite, not definite, but he has several irons in the
fire and we expect to hear soon."
"I see." Mr. Pantin's manner was urbane but, observing him closely, Mrs.
Toomey noted that his eyes suddenly presented the curious illusion of
two slate-gray pools covered with skim ice. It was not an encouraging
sign and her heart sank in spite of the superlative suavity of the tone
in which he inquired:
"What security would you be able to give, Mrs. Toomey?"
Security? Between friends? She had not expected this.
"I--I'm afraid I--we haven't any, Mr. Pantin. You know we lost
everything when we lost the ranch. But you're perfectly safe--you
needn't have a moment's anxiety about that."
Immediately it seemed as though invisible hands shot out to push her
away, yet Mr. Pantin's tone was bland as he replied:
"I should be delighted to be able to accommodate you, but just at the
present time--"
"You can't? Oh, I wish you would reconsider--as a matter of friendship.
We need it--desperately, Mr. Pantin!" Her voice shook.
Again she had the sensation of invisible hands fighting her off.
"I regret very much--"
The hopelessness of any further plea swept over her. She arose with a
gesture of despair, and Mr. Pantin, smiling, suave, urbane, bowed her
out and closed the door. He watched her go down the walk and through the
gate, noting her momentary hesitation and wondering where she might be
going in such a wind. When she started in the opposite direction from
home and walked rapidly down the road that led out of town it flashed
through his mind that she might be bent on suicide--she had looked
desperate, no mistake, but, since there was no water in which to drown
herself, and no tree from which to hang herself, and the country was so
flat that there was nothing high enough for her to jump off of and break
her neck, he concluded there was no real cause for uneasiness.
It was Mr. Pantin's proud boast that he never yet had "held the sack,"
and now he thought complacently as he turned from the window, grabbed
the shovel and whisk and leaped for an ash that had dropped, that this
was an instance where he had again shown excellent judgment in not
allowing his warm heart and impulses to control his head.
CHAPTER VII
THE BLOOD OF JEZEBEL
The prognostication made by the citizens of Prouty that it was "gettin'
ready for somethin'" seemed about to be verified out on the sheep range
twenty miles distant, for at five o'clock one afternoon the wind stopped
as suddenly as it had arisen and heavy snow clouds came out of the
northeast with incredible swiftness.
Mormon Joe walked to the door of the cook tent and swept the darkening
hills with anxious eyes. Kate should have been back long before this. He
always had a dread of her horse falling on her and hurting her too badly
to get back. That was about all there was to fear in summer time, but
to-night there was the coming storm.
Kate's sense of direction was remarkable, but the most experienced
plainsman would be apt to lose himself in these foothills, with the snow
falling thick and the night so black he could not see his hand before
his face.
Mormon Joe shook his head and turned back to his task of peeling
potatoes. While he worked he reproached himself that he had not hunted
those horses himself; but she had been so insistent upon going. She did
not mind the wind, she had said, but then she did not "mind" anything,
when it came to that. What would have been hardships for another were
merely adventures to her.
At any rate, Kate was more comfortable now than she had been the year
before. He smiled a little as he recalled her delight in the sheep
wagon which he had given her to be her own quarters. He had had to
borrow the money at the bank in addition to what he already had borrowed
for running expenses, but his circumstances justified it. He was getting
ahead, not with phenomenal rapidity, but satisfactorily. With the
leases, and the land he owned, he was building the future upon a
substantial foundation. A few years more of economy and attention to
business and he could give Kate the advantages he wished. He listened,
got up from the condensed-milk box upon which he sat and walked to the
entrance of the tent once more. He strained his ears, but death itself
was not more still than the opaque night.
Kate had left immediately after breakfast, and since the horses had only
a few hours' start and would probably feed as they went, she had
expected to be back by noon.
Kate was exceedingly resourceful--she knew what to do if caught out, he
assured himself, unless she had been hurt. It was this thought that gave
him a curious stillness at his heart. What would life be without her
now? With the knife in his hand he stopped as he turned inside and
stared at the potatoes on the box. He never had thought of that
before--it left him aghast.
The girl had twined herself into every fiber of his nature from the time
she had come to him as a child. She was identified with every hope.
Humph! He knew well enough what the answer would be if anything happened
to Kate. He would shoot the chutes, again--quick. It was she who had
awakened his ambition and kept him tolerably straight. Without her?
Humph!
He stoked the sheet-iron camp stove, put the potatoes to boil, cut chops
enough for two and laid the table with the steel knives and forks and
tin plates. Then he set out a tin of molasses and the sour-dough bread,
after which there was nothing to do but wait for the potatoes to boil,
and for Kate.
He was trying the potatoes with a fork when he raised his head sharply.
He was sure he heard the rattle of rocks. A faint whoop followed.
"Thank God!" He breathed the ejaculation fervently, yet he said merely
as he stood in the entrance puffing his pipe as she rode up, "Got 'em, I
see, Katie!"
"Sure. Don't I always get what I go after?" Then, with a tired laugh,
"I'm disappointed; I thought you would be worried about me."
He smiled quizzically.
"I don't know why you'd think that."
"I'll know better next time," she replied good-humoredly, as she swung
down with obvious weariness.
"There won't be any next time," he replied abruptly, "at least not at
this season of the year."
"Oh, but I'm glad I went," she interposed hastily.
As Mormon Joe unwrapped the lead-rope from the saddle horn and took the
horses away to picket, he wondered what wonderful adventure she would
have to relate, for she seemed able to extract entertainment from nearly
anything. By the time he returned she had removed her hat, gloves and
spurs, washed her dust-streaked face, smoothed her hair, slipped on an
enveloping apron over her riding clothes and had the chops frying.
The sight warmed his heart as he paused for a moment outside the circle
of light which came through the entrance.
He had seen the same thing often before, but it never had impressed him
particularly. Her presence in the canvas tent made the difference
between home and a mere shelter. The small crumbs of bread he had cast
upon the water were indeed coming back to him.
"I've ridden over forty miles since morning," she chattered, while he
flung the snow flakes from his hat brim and brushed them from his
shoulders. "The wind blew the horses' tracks out so I couldn't follow
them. I never caught sight of them until just this side of Prouty. You
can sit down, Uncle Joe--everything's ready."
They talked of the coming snowstorm, and the advisability of holding the
sheep on the bed-ground if it should be a bad one; of the trip to town
that he was contemplating; of the coyote that was bothering and the
possibility of trapping him. There was no dearth of topics of mutual
interest. Nevertheless, Mormon Joe knew that she was holding something
in reserve and wondered at this reticence. It came finally when they had
finished and still lingered at the table.
"Who do you suppose I met to-day when I was hunting horses?"
"Teeters?" Mormon Joe was tearing a leaf from his book of cigarette
papers.
"Guess again."
He shook his head.
"Can't imagine."
She announced impressively:
"Mrs. Toomey!"
He was distributing tobacco from the sack upon the crease in the paper
with exactitude. He made no comment, so Kate said with increased
emphasis:
"She was crying!"
Still he was silent, and she demanded:
"Aren't you surprised?"
She looked crestfallen, so he asked obligingly:
"Where did all of this happen?"
"In a draw a couple of miles this side of Prouty, where I found the
horses. They had gone there to get out of the wind and it was by only a
chance that I rode down into it.
"She was in the bottom, huddled against a rock, and didn't see me until
I was nearly on her. I thought she was sick--she looked terrible."
"And was she?"
"No--she was worried."
"Naturally. Any woman would be who married Toomey."
"About money."
"Indeed." His tone and smile were ironic.
Kate, a trifle disconcerted, continued:
"He's had bad luck."
"He's had the best opportunities of any man who's come into the
country."
"Anyway," she faltered, "they haven't a penny except when they sell
something."
He shrugged a shoulder, then asked teasingly:
"Well--what were you thinking of doing about it?"
"I said--I promised," she blurted it out bluntly, "that we'd loan them
money."
"What!" incredulously.
"I did, Uncle Joe."
He answered with a frown of annoyance:
"You exceeded your authority, Katie."
"But you will, won't you?" she pleaded. "You've never refused me
anything that I really wanted badly, and I've never asked much, have I?"
"No, girl, you haven't," he replied gently. "And there's hardly anything
you could ask, within reason, that wouldn't be granted."
"But they only need five hundred until he gets into something. You could
let them have that, couldn't you?"
His face and eyes hardened.
"I could, but I won't," he replied curtly.
When Prouty was in its infancy, certain citizens had been misled by
Mormon Joe's mild eyes, low voice and quiet manner. His easy-going
exterior concealed an incredible hardness upon occasions, but this was
Kate's first knowledge of it. He never had displayed the slightest
authority. In any difference, when he had not yielded to her
good-naturedly, they had argued it out as though they were in reality
partners. At another time she would have been wounded by his brusque
refusal, but to-night it angered her. Because of her intense eagerness
and confidence that she had only to ask him, it came as the keenest of
disappointments. This together with her fatigue combined to produce a
display of temper as unusual in her as Mormon Joe's own attitude.
"But I promised!" she cried, impatiently. "And you've told me I must
always keep my promise, 'if it takes the hide'!"
"You exceeded your authority," he reiterated. "You've no right to
promise what doesn't belong to you."
"Then it's all 'talk' about our being partners," she said, sneeringly.
"You don't mean a word of it."
"You shan't make a fool of yourself, Katie, if I can help it," he
retorted.
"Because you don't care for friends, you don't want me to have any!" she
flung at him hotly.
He was silent a long time, thinking, while she waited angrily, then he
responded quietly and with obvious effort:
"That's where you're mistaken, Katie. If I have one regret it is that in
the past I have not more deliberately cultivated the friendship of true
men and gentle women when I have had the opportunity. It doesn't make
much difference whether they are brilliant or rich or successful, if
only they are true-hearted. Loyalty is the great attribute--but," and he
shrugged a shoulder, "it is my judgment that you will not find it in
that quarter."
"You're prejudiced."
"It is my privilege to have an opinion," he replied coldly.
"We were going to be friends--Mrs. Toomey and I--we shook hands on it!"
Tears of angry disappointment were close to the surface.
He replied, doggedly:
"If you have to buy your friendships, Katie, you'd better keep your
money."
The speech stung her. She glared at him across the narrow table, and, in
the moment, each had a sense of unreality. The quarrel was like a bolt
from the blue, as startling and unexpected--as most quarrels are--the
bitterest and most lasting. Then she sprang to her feet and hurled a
taunt at him some Imp of Darkness must have suggested:
"You're jealous!" She stamped a foot at him. "That's the real reason.
You're jealous of everybody that would be friends with me! You're
jealous of Hughie. You didn't like his coming here and you don't like
his writing to me! I _hate_ you--I won't stay any longer!" It was the
blood of Jezebel of the Sand Coulee talking, and there was the look of
her mother on the girl's face, in her reckless, uncontrolled fury.
Mormon Joe winced, exactly as though she had struck him. He sat quite
still while the color faded, leaving his face bloodless. Kate never had
known anything like the white rage it depicted. Persons at the Sand
Coulee who lost their temper cursed volubly and loudly, and threatened
or made bodily attacks upon the cause of it. In spite of herself she
shrank a little as he, too, got up slowly and faced her. She didn't know
him at all--this man who first threw his cigarette away carefully, as
though he were in a drawing room and must regard the ashes--he was a
personality from an environment with which she was unfamiliar. Then, as
though she were his equal in years, experience and intelligence, he
spoke to her in a tone that was cool and impersonal, yet which went
slash! slash! slash! like the fine, deep, quick cut of a razor.
"I had no notion that you entertained any such feeling towards me. It is
something in the nature of a--er--revelation. You are quite right about
leaving. Upon second thought, you are quite right about
everything--right to keep your promise to Mrs. Toomey, since you gave
it, right in your assertion that I am jealous. I am--but not in the
sense in which you mean it.
"I have been jealous of your dignity--of the respect that is due you. I
have resented keenly any attempt to belittle you. That is why Disston
was not welcome when he came to see you. It is the reason why I have not
shown a pleasure I did not feel in his writing you!"
"What do you mean?" she demanded.
"I mean that he took you to that dance on a wager--a bet--to prove that
he had the courage. To make a spectacle of you--for a story with which
to regale his friends and laugh over."
She groped for the edge of the table.
"Who told you?"
"Toomey."
"I don't believe it!"
"Teeters verified it."
She sat down on the box from which she had risen.
Unmoved by the blow he had dealt her, he continued:
"You went to that dance against my wishes. What I expected to happen
did happen, though you did not choose to tell me.
"In my descent through various strata of society I have learned
something of types and of human nature. In protesting, my only thought
was to save you pain and disappointment--as in this instance--but
experience, it seems, is the only teacher.
"To-morrow I am going to Prouty, hire a herder to do your work and
mortgage the outfit for half its value. It will be yours to use as it
pleases you. You have earned it. Then," with a gesture of finality, "the
door is open to you. I want you to go where you will be happy."
With his usual deliberation of movement he put on his hat and went out
to change the horses on picket, while Kate, stunned by the incredible
crisis and the revelation concerning Hugh Disston, sat where she had
dropped, staring at the agate-ware platter upon which the mutton grease
was hardening.
It was Mormon Joe's invariable custom to help her with the dishes, but
he did not return, so she arose, finally, and set the food away
automatically, with the unseeing look of a hypnotic subject. She washed
the dishes and dried them, trying to realize that she would be leaving
this shortly--that there would be a last time in the immediate future.
Her anger was lost in grief and amazement. There was something so
implacable, so steel-like in Mormon Joe's hardness that it did not occur
to her to plead with him for forgiveness. And Hughie! She told herself
that she could not turn to a traitor for help or sympathy. She blew out
the lantern, tied the tent flap behind her, and ran through the fast
falling snow to her wagon.
Kate dozed towards morning after a sleepless night of wretchedness and
was awakened by a horse's whinny. Listening a moment, she sprang out
and looked through the upper half of the door which opened on hinges. It
was a white world that she saw, with some four inches of snow on the
level, though the fall had ceased and it was colder. Mormon Joe, dressed
warmly in leather "chaps" and sheep-lined coat, was riding away on one
of the work horses.
Never since they had been together had he gone to Prouty without some
word of farewell--careless and casual, but unfailing. Nor could she
remember when he had not turned in the saddle and waved at her before
they lost sight of each other altogether. This time she waited vainly.
He went without looking behind him, while she stood in the cold watching
his peaked high-crowned hat bobbing through the giant sagebrush until it
vanished. She had thrust out a hand to detain him--to call after
him--and had withdrawn it. Her pride would not yet permit her to act as
her heart prompted.
CHAPTER VIII
THE MAN OF MYSTERY
The cold that dried the new-fallen snow to powder sent the mercury down
until it broke all records.
While the improvident did, indeed, wonder what they had done with their
summer wages, the thrifty contemplated their piles of wood and their
winter vegetables with a strong feeling of satisfaction.
Speaking colloquially, the Toomeys were "ga'nted considerably," and in
their usual state of semistarvation, but were in no immediate danger of
freezing, owing to the fact that Toomey had succeeded in exchanging a
mounted deer head for four tons of local coal mined from a "surface
blossom," which was being exploited by the _Grit_ as one of the
country's resources.
Vastly delighted with his bargain, until he discovered that he no sooner
had arrived from the coalhouse with a bucket of coal than it was
necessary for him to make a return trip with a bucket of ashes, Toomey
now hurled anathemas upon the embryo coal baron. It was not empty
verbiage when he asserted that, by spring, at the rate he was wearing a
trench to the ash can, nothing but the top of his head would be visible.
Mrs. Toomey, however, was grateful, for she felt that if there was one
thing worse than being hungry it was being cold, so she stoked the
kitchen range with a free hand and luxuriated in the warmth though it
necessitated frequent trips outside in Toomey's absence.
Mrs. Toomey was returning from the ash can when she saw Mormon Joe
going into his shack on the diagonal corner. She slackened her trot to a
walk and watched while he unlocked the door, as though to read from his
back something of his intentions in regard to the loan Kate had promised
so confidently.
It had seemed too good to be realized, so she had not told Jap of their
meeting. She must not count on it, however--she had been disappointed so
often that she dreaded the feeling. Ugh! What frightful cold! Mrs.
Toomey ran into the house and forgot the incident.
Later in the afternoon Toomey came home in high spirits.
"They got in!" he announced. "I hardly thought they'd start, such
weather. It's twenty-five below now and getting colder."
"Who?" inquired Mrs. Toomey, absently.
"The show people."
"Oh, did they?"
"Might as well take it in, mightn't we?" in feigned indifference.
"How can we? It's a dollar a ticket, isn't it?"
For answer he produced two strips of pink pasteboard from his waistcoat
pocket.
"Jap?" wonderingly.
"Yes'm."
"Where did you get the money?"
"I raised it."
"But how?"
He hesitated, looking sheepish.
"On the range."
Mrs. Toomey sat down weakly.
"The cook stove! You mortgaged it?"
"I had to give some security, hadn't I?" he demanded with asperity.
"Who to?"
"Teeters. I got five dollars."
Mrs. Toomey found it convenient to go into the pantry until she had
regained control of her feelings.
It was twenty-eight degrees below zero when the doors of the Opera House
were opened to permit the citizens of Prouty to hear the World Renowned
Swiss Bell Ringers and Yodlers.
The weather proved to be no deterrent to a community hungry for
entertainment, and they swarmed from all directions, bundled to
shapelessness, like Esquimaux headed for a central igloo. Infants in
arms and the bedridden in wheel chairs, helped to fill the Opera House
to its capacity, emptying the streets and houses for a time as
completely as an exodus.
While the best people, among whom were the Toomeys, occupied the several
rows of reserved chairs and smiled tolerantly upon the efforts of the
performers, and the proletariat stamped and whistled through its teeth
and cracked peanuts, a man muffled to the ears by the high collar of a
mackinaw coat, his face further concealed by the visor of a cap and
ear-laps, rode to the top of the bench, drew rein and looked down upon
the lights of Prouty.
It was not a night one would select for traveling on horseback, unless
his business was urgent. However, the man's seemed to be of this nature,
for he rode behind a large signboard which advertised the wares of the
Prouty Emporium, dismounted, tied his horse to the prop that held the
signboard upright, and with a show of haste took a coil of rope from his
saddlehorn, an axe--the head of which was wrapped in gunny sacking--and
a gun that swung in loops of saddle thongs at an angle to fit
comfortably in the bend of the rider's knee.
He did not follow the road, but took a shorter cut straight down the
steep side of the bench to the nearest alley, through which he ran as
noiselessly as a coyote. He ran until he came to Main Street, which the
alley bisected. In the shade of the Security State Bank he peered around
the corner and listened. The street was deserted, not even a dog or
prowling cat was visible the entire length of it.
The man crossed it hurriedly, looking up and down and over his shoulder
furtively, like some cautious animal which fears itself followed. In the
protection of the alley he ran again until he came to Mormon Joe's
tar-paper shack setting square and ugly in the middle of the lot--an
eyesore to the neighbors.
The door was locked, but it was the work of a second to tear off the
axe-head's covering and pry it open. He stepped inside and closed the
door quietly. Lighting the candle he took from his pocket, with his hand
he shielded the flame from the one window, and looked about with a
glance that took in every detail of the shack's arrangement.
A single iron bedstead extended into the room and a soogan and two
blankets, thin and ragged from service, were heaped in the middle. There
was no pillow, and a hard cotton pad constituted the mattress. An empty
whiskey bottle stood by the head of the bed.
A small pine table that at most might have cost a couple of dollars set
against the wall by the window. The starch box that served as a chair
was shoved under the table, and another box in the corner did duty as a
washstand. There was a cake of soap and a tin basin upon the latter and
a grimy hand towel hung close by from a spike driven into the unplaned
boards. Facing the door was a sheet-iron camp stove, rusty and
overflowing with ashes. The rickety, ill-fitting pipe was secured with
the inevitable baling wire.
After his swift survey, the man stepped to the washstand and let a few
drops of melted candle grease drip upon one corner. In this he held the
candle until it hardened in place. Then he went to work with the
businesslike swiftness of skill and experience.
He laid the shotgun on the stove and untwisted the baling wire which
held the stovepipe, giving a grunt of satisfaction when he found the
wire was longer than he had anticipated. He stooped and gathered some
kindling that was under the stove, singled out two or three sticks that
suited him, and then he laid them across the top of the stove and rested
the barrel of the shotgun upon them. After all was complete, he stepped
back against the door and squinted, gauging the elevation. It was to his
satisfaction. With supple wrist and quick movements he uncoiled the
small cotton rope he had brought with him and took two turns around the
trigger of the shotgun. The rest of the rope he passed around a rod in
the foot of the bed, which gave a direct back pull on the trigger, and
thence he carried it over the upper hinge of the door, which opened
inward, and finally down to the knob and back again to the foot of the
bed, where he secured it.
All was executed without a superfluous movement, and a panther could not
have been more noiseless. But the man was breathing heavily when he had
finished, as hard as though he had been exercising violently. He stepped
to the washstand to blow out the candle, but before he did so he gave a
final rapid survey of his work. His eyes glittered with sinister
satisfaction. Evidently it suited him. He held his numbed fingers over
the flame of the candle to warm them before he extinguished it.
Reaching for the axe, he pried the window from its casing and set it
quietly against the wall. He leaned the axe beside it and cursed under
his breath when he tore a button from his mackinaw as he squeezed
through the narrow opening. He dropped lightly to the ground and,
crouching, ran for the alley. Where it crossed Main Street he stopped
and listened, then peered around the corner of the White Hand Laundry.
The street was still empty.
While he stood, the sound of laughter came faintly from the Opera House.
His heart was pounding under his mackinaw. On the other side of the
street red and violet lights were shining through the frosted windows of
"Doc" Fussel's drug store. They looked warm and alluring, and he
hesitated.
A whinny pierced the stillness. It was his horse pawing with cold and
impatience behind the signboard. He looked up at the indistinct black
object on the bench, then back wistfully at the red and violet lights of
the drug store. He had an intense desire to be near some one--some one
who was going carelessly about his usual occupation.
He crossed over and went into the little apothecary. The clerk was
sitting on the back of his neck with his feet to a counter listening to
the phonograph. "Has anybody here seen Kelly?" the machine screeched as
the stranger entered. The clerk got up and went to the tobacco counter.
"Hell of a night," he observed, languidly.
"Some chilly," replied the stranger, indicating the brand he wanted.
"It'll be close to forty below before morning," passing out the tobacco.
"Everybody's gone to the show but me," plaintively.
"A drug clerk might as well be a dog chained up in a kennel." He stopped
the phonograph and changed the needle.
The stranger sat down beside the stove and placed his feet on the nickel
railing. He left the collar of his mackinaw turned up, but untied his
ear-laps. They looked rather foolish, dangling. His eyes were shadowed
by the visor of his cap, so that really only his nose and cheek bones
were visible. He glanced at the big clock on the wall frequently, and at
intervals wiped the palms of his hands on the knees of his corduroy
trousers as though to remove the moisture.
The clerk was putting on "When the Springtime Comes, Gentle Annie" when
the opening door let in a breath from the Arctic and a tall person
wearing new overalls, a coat of fleece-lined canvas and a peak-crowned
Stetson. He had a scarf wound about his neck after the fashion of
sheepherders.
"Hello, Bowers! Sober?" inquired the clerk, casually.
"Kinda. What you playin'?"
The clerk told him.
"Got a piece called 'The Yella Rose o' Texas Beats the Belles o'
Tennessee'?"
"Never heard of it."
"Got--'Whur the Silver Colorady Wends its Way'?"
The clerk replied in the negative.
"Why don't you git some good music?"
"Why aren't you at the show?"
"Too contrary, I reckon. When I'm out in the hills I'm a hankerin' to
see somebody. When I git in town I want to git away from everybody. I'm
goin' out to-morrow."
"Where you going?"
"Hired out to Mormon Joe this evenin'."
The stranger stirred slightly.
"I'll look around a little--I don't want nothin'," said Bowers.
"Help yourself," replied the clerk, amiably, so the sheepherder stared
at the baubles of cut glass on the shelf with a pleased expression and
hung over the counter where the rings, watches and bracelets glittered.
Then he examined a string of sponges carefully--sponges always
interested him--they suggested picturesque scenery and adventures. He
lingered over the toilet articles, sniffing the soaps and smelling at
the bottles of perfume, trying those whose names he especially fancied
on the end of his nose by rubbing it with the glass stopper. Then he sat
down on the other side of the stove from the stranger and spelled out
the queer names on the jars of drugs, speculating as to their contents
and uses. He never yet had exhausted the possibilities of a drug store
as a means of entertainment.
A few minutes after ten the advance guard came from the Opera
House--laughing. The World's Greatest Prestidigitator had dropped the
egg which he intended taking from the ear of Governor Sudds where it had
broken into the ample lap of Mrs. Vernon Wentz of the White Hand
Laundry. The cold, however, promptly put a quietus upon their merriment
and they scuttled past, bent on getting out of it as quickly as
possible.
There were two customers for cigars, and the Toomeys. Toomey bought
chocolates while Mrs. Toomey held her hands to the stove and shivered.
"Come on, Dell." Toomey's glance as he took the candy included the
stranger.
"How're you?" he nodded carelessly.
They were to be the last, apparently, for when their footsteps died away
the street again grew silent.
The clerk planted his feet on the nickel railing and stared at the stove
gloomily.
"I'd have to keep this store open till half-past 'leven if I was dyin',"
he grumbled.
"But you ain't," said Bowers, cheerfully.
Bowers smelled strongly of sheep, once the heat warmed his clothing. On
the other side of the clerk the odor of smoke and bear grease emanated
from the stranger. The clerk moved his chair back from the stove and
advised the latter:
"Your soles is fryin'."
He seemed not to hear him, for his eyes were upon the clock creeping
close to eleven, and he watched the swaying pendulum as though it
fascinated him. There was no conversation, and each sat thinking his own
thoughts until the stranger suddenly pulled down the side of his collar
and listened. The clerk eyed him with disfavor. The squeaking of
footsteps in the dry snow was heard distinctly. The stranger got up
leisurely and went out with a grunt that was intended for "good
evening."
"Sociable cuss," Bowers commented ironically.
"Smelt like an Injun tepee," said the clerk, sourly.
"It's a wonder to me fellers don't notice theirselves," Bowers observed.
"But they never seem to."
A weaving figure was making its way down the middle of Main Street. A
thick-coated collie followed closely. The swaying figure looked like a
drunken gnome in its clumsy coat and peak-crowned hat in the cold
steel-blue starlight. It stopped uncertainly at the alley, then went on
to the end of the block and turned the corner.
The Toomeys had lost no time in retiring after the entertainment, for
the house, upon their return, was like a refrigerator. Almost instantly
Toomey was slumbering tranquilly, but Mrs. Toomey had symptoms which she
recognized as presaging hours of wakefulness. The unwonted excitement of
being out in the evening had much to do with her restlessness, but
chiefly it came from thinking of the cook stove. Of course she could see
the force of Jap's argument as to the necessity of keeping up
appearances by being seen in public places and spending money as though
there was more where that came from, yet she wondered if it really
deceived anybody.
And supposing Teeters foreclosed the mortgage! It seemed as though they
were slipping week by week, day by day, deeper into the black depths at
the bottom of which was actual beggary. Her nervousness increased as her
imagination painted darker and darker pictures until she longed to
scream for the relief it would have afforded her. The single hope was
Mormon Joe's Kate and her promise, and that was too fantastic and
farfetched to dare count on. It was not logical to suppose that a man
whom Jap had quarreled with and insulted would come to their rescue even
if he could afford to do so, which she doubted.
How still it was--the eloquent stillness of terrible cold! The town was
soundless. Chickens humped in their feathers were freezing on their
roosts, horses and cows tied in their stalls were suffering, and, as
always, she visualized the desolate white stretches where hungry
coyotes, gaunt and vigilant, padded along the ridges, and horses and
cattle, turned out to shift for themselves, huddled shivering in the
gulches and under the willows.
She knew from the snapping and cracking of lumber and metal about the
house that it was growing colder, and she drew the covers closer. Oh,
what a country to live in! Whatever was to become of them! Her teeth
chattered.
She thought she heard footsteps and raised her head slightly to listen.
Faint at first, they were coming nearer. Whoever was out a night like
this, she could not imagine. The person was walking in the middle of the
road and his progress was uneven, stopping sometimes altogether, then
going forward. Abreast the house the sound of heels grinding in the snow
that was dry as powder was like the scrunching and squealing of the
steel tire of a wagon in bitter weather.
They passed, grew fainter, finally stopped altogether. Mrs. Toomey moved
closer to her husband. There was comfort in the nearness of a human
being.
A shot! Her heart jumped--her nerves twanged with the shock of it. "That
hit something!" The thought was almost simultaneous. The sound was more
like an explosion--deadened, muffled somewhat--as of a charge fired into
a bale of hay or cotton. For the space of a dozen heartbeats she lay
with her mouth open, breathless in the deathly silence of the frozen
night.
A scream! It must have reached the sky. Piercing, agonized--the agony of
a man screaming with his mouth wide open--screaming without restraint,
in animal-like unconsciousness of what he was doing.
"Jap!" She clutched his arm and shook him.
The screams kept coming, blood curdling, as if they would split the
throat, tear it, and horrible with suffering.
"Jap!" She sat up and shook his shoulder violently.
"Wha's the matter?" he asked, sleepily.
"Did you hear that shot? Listen!"
"Some drunk," he mumbled.
"He's hurt, I tell you! Hear him!"
"Drug store's open."
"Oughtn't you to go to him?"
"Lemme be--can't you?" He again breathed heavily.
The screams kept coming, but each a little fainter. Either the man was
moving on or the pain was lessening. Mrs. Toomey's heart continued to
thump as she lay rigid, listening. She wanted to get up and look through
the window, but the floor was cold and she could not remember exactly
where she had left her slippers. Anyway, somebody else would go to him.
It was a relief, though, when he stopped screaming.
Others whom the cries of agony awakened applied the same reasoning to
the situation, with minor variations. "Tinhorn" in particular was
disturbed because of their nearness. He raised his head from under a
mound of blankets and frowned into the darkness as he wondered if, as
Prouty's newly elected mayor, he would be criticized should he fail to
go out and investigate. He was so warm and comfortable!
"Guess I'd better get up, Mamma."
His wife gripped him as if he was struggling violently, although his
Honor was lying motionless as an alligator.
"You shan't--you'll get pneumonia and leave me and the children without
any insurance! You've no right to take chances. Let somebody else go
that hasn't any future."
There was that side to it.
"Some hobo most like." The future statesman turned over. "Tuck my back
in, Mamma."
Mr. Sudds was awakened, and his first impulse was to rush to the man's
assistance, but he was not sure where to find matches, and it took him
such an unconscionable time to dress that by the time he got there--
Scales was restrained by the arms of his fragile wife who threatened
hysterics if he left her. Between love and duty Mr. Scales did not
hesitate with the thermometer at forty below zero, and the knowledge
that loss of sleep unfitted him for business.
So Mormon Joe, screaming in his agony, staggered up the alley, leaving a
crimson trail behind him, the sheep dog following like a shadow. He had
nearly reached Main Street when he lurched, groped for a support, then
fell to his knees. The hot drops turned to red globules in the snow as
he kept crawling, gasping, "Oh, God! Won't somebody come to me?" The dog
walked beside him as he dragged himself along, perplexed and wondering
at this whim of his master's.
Mormon Joe was leaning against the side of the White Hand Laundry, his
head fallen forward, when Bowers and the drug clerk got to him. The
collie was licking his face for attention, but the warm caressing
hand--now red and sticky--was lying in the snow, limp and unresponsive.
Mormon Joe had "gone over"--dying as he had lived--a man of mystery.
CHAPTER IX
THE SUMMONS
Bowers had offered to take Lingle, the Deputy Sheriff, to the sheep
camp, which he was sure he could find easily from the directions Mormon
Joe had given him when he hired him, but, as it proved, the herder had
been over-sanguine.
They were hungry and tired from long hours in the saddle, and the breath
frozen on their upturned collars testified to the continued extremity of
the weather when for the hundredth time they checked their horses and
tried to get their bearings.
"I'm certain sure that Mormon Joe said to ride abreast that peak and
about a half mile to the left of it turn in to a 'draw' runnin'
northeast by southwest, and ride until I come acrost the wagon."
"Don't see how a child could miss the way from that description,"
replied Lingle, sarcastically.
"I think I see a woolie movin'." Bowers squinted across the white
expanse and the deputy endeavored to follow his gaze, but could see
nothing but dancing specks due to a mild case of snow blindness.
"Yep--that's a woolie. I'm so used to 'em I kin tell what a sheep is
thinkin' from here to them mountains."
Reining their horses at the top of a "draw" a quarter of an hour later
they looked down upon the sheep wagon in a clearing in the sagebrush,
together with the tepee and cook tent. Urging their horses down the
steep side they dismounted and went inside the latter, where soiled
breakfast dishes sat on the unplaned boards which served as a table. In
the way of food there was only a can of molasses and a half dozen
biscuits frozen solid.
"Real cozy and homelike," Lingle commented, as he tried to pour himself
some cold coffee and found it frozen. "I'll look around a bit and then
go up and tell her."
"I'd ruther it ud be you than me," Bowers observed grimly. "Can't abide
hearin' a female take on and beller. I don't like the sect, noway. You
kin bet I don't aim to stay no longer than she kin git another herder,
neither."
But Lingle was already out of hearing of the querulous voice of the
misogynist, and peering into the tepee which was as Mormon Joe had left
it he noted that it contained an unmade bed, and extra pair of shoes,
and a few articles of wearing apparel--that was all.
The door of the sheep wagon was unlocked, yet he hesitated a moment
before opening it. Its examination was in line with his duty, however,
so he opened it and looked about with a certain amount of curiosity. The
bare, cold stillness of it went to his marrow.
There was something pathetic to him in the pitiful attempts at home
making shown in the few crude decorations. A feminine instinct for
domesticity evidenced itself in the imitation of the scalloped border of
a lace curtain made in soap on the glass of the small window in the back
of the wagon, in a pin cushion of coarse muslin worked in blue worsted
yarn, in the bouquet of dried goldenrod in a bottle, in the highly
colored picture of an ammunition company's advertisement pinned to the
canvas wall. A snag of a comb and a brush were thrust in a wooden strip
near the small cheap mirror.
Above the bunk two loops of wire were suspended from an oak bow of the
wagon top, which obviously was where the occupant kept her rifle. There
was a tiny stove by the door and a cupboard beside it, the shelves of
which were crowded with books whose titles made the sheriff's eyes open.
A Latin grammar, a Roman history, the "Story of the French Revolution,"
mythology, and many others that might as well have been Greek for all
the meaning their titles conveyed to the deputy.
"Whew!" he whistled softly. He had no idea that Mormon Joe's Kate had
any education. He had the impression that she was, in his own
phraseology, "a tough customer." Mormon Joe must have taught her, he
reflected. There never was any doubt about his learning when it suited
him to display it. The discovery increased the sheriff's curiosity to
see the girl.
Continuing his investigations, he opened one of the drawers that pulled
out from beneath the bunk, and closed it hastily--but not too soon to
see that the undergarments it contained were made of flour sacks which
had been ripped, laundered and fashioned clumsily by a hand unused to
sewing. In the drawer on the other side there were clippings giving
recipes for improving the complexion, hair treatments, care of the teeth
and nails, and other aids to beauty.
Lingle smiled as he glanced at them. Evidently she had traits that were
distinctly feminine. In addition, there were writing materials and a
packet of letters addressed in a masculine hand that looked unformed and
youthful. They were tied with a pink ribbon, and had the appearance of
having been read frequently. Lingle fingered the packet uncertainly and
then threw it back in the drawer impatiently.
"Thunder!" he muttered, "I ain't paid to snoop through a woman's
letters."
On the southern slope of a foothill where the snow lay less deep than on
the northern and eastern exposures, Kate stood on the sunny side of a
brown boulder leaning her shoulder against it as she watched the sheep
below her nibbling at the spears of dried bunch grass which thrust
themselves above the surface. Her rifle stood against a rock where she
could reach it easily, and her horse fed near her, pawing through the
snow, like an experienced "rustler."
She was dressed to meet the weather in boys' boots and arctics, woolen
mittens, riding skirt of heavy blue denim, the fleece-lined canvas coat
of the sheepherder, and a coonskin cap with ear-laps. Her face wore an
expression that was both sad and troubled as she mechanically watched
such sheep as showed a disposition to stray, and kept an eye out for
coyotes.
Save in her sleep, her quarrel with Mormon Joe had not been out of her
mind since, three days before, she had stood shivering at the door and
watched him vanish through the sagebrush. Now, in addition, she was
worried over his absence. She had kept supper waiting until long after
her usual bedtime and to-day she had worn a trail to the top of the
hill, watching, and still had seen no sign of him. Poignant regret for
what she had said and shame for her ingratitude overwhelmed her. Along
with the feelings was a fear lest he refuse to forgive her and insist
upon her leaving. Then, too, there was her promise to Mrs. Toomey.
Kate was confronted with her first problem. She had threshed it out,
turned it over and over, finally arriving at the conclusion that she
must keep her promise at any cost to herself. A promise was a promise,
and she had given her hand on it. Her regard for her word was a dominant
trait in Kate. Mormon Joe had fostered this ideal by words and his own
example. So she had slowly made up her mind that having given her word
she would not recall it, though it would be a high price to pay for a
principle if it cost her his friendship and protection.
Kate intended to plead with him; to beg his forgiveness upon her knees,
if necessary; to put her arms about his neck and make him understand how
much she loved him. She had taken everything for granted heretofore, as
her right because he had given it so readily, but all would be different
if only he would forget what she had said and give her another
opportunity, and if he would let her keep her promise to Mrs. Toomey she
would herd sheep until she had saved the amount in a herder's wages.
This was her plan after sleepless hours and three days of thinking.
Until their quarrel Kate never would have doubted that she could have
her way without much difficulty, but then she had not met the cool
polite stranger with the adamant beneath his polished exterior. The girl
wondered if the whimsical unselfish friend and comrade ever would come
back to her. The doubt of it set her chin quivering.
Kate trudged through the snow to turn back the sheep that Bowers had
seen, and at the top of the hill stopped and gave a cry of relief and
gladness. A thin blue thread of smoke was rising from the "draw" and she
wondered how anyone could have come without her seeing them. She looked
at the sun and calculated that she could shortly be starting the sheep
back to the bed-ground, and her spirits rose immeasurably as she sent
the strays scampering back to the others and returned to the small
warmth which the sunny side of the rock afforded.
Kate was leaning against the boulder conjecturing as to whether it was
Mormon Joe or the herder who had arrived, when Lingle rode around the
side of the hill and came upon her suddenly.
Immediately the deputy's face set in lines of sternness. He had been
rehearsing his part in the dialogue which was to follow and believed he
had it sufficiently well in hand to play the act admirably. This murder
was the first big case he had had since being appointed deputy. It was a
great opportunity and he meant to make the most of it, for if handled
creditably it might prove a stepping-stone to the sheriff's office. The
element of surprise he knew was most effective and he was counting upon
it to obtain valuable admissions. In the scene, as he visualized it
while riding, he was to advance gimlet-eyed, throw open his coat and
confront her with the badge which made the guilty tremble.
"Guess you know what I'm here for, Madam," he was to say significantly
and harshly.
But like most prearranged things in life it all went differently. When
he was close enough to see well his jaw dropped automatically. There was
no more resemblance between the girl who straightened up and smiled upon
him and the hard-featured woman he had pictured as "Mormon Joe's Kate,"
than there was between himself and the horse he was riding.
Younger by years than he had anticipated, she radiated wholesomeness,
simple friendliness and candor. A strand of soft hair had slipped from
beneath her cap and lay upon a cheek that was a vivid pink in the cold
atmosphere; she had the clear skin of perfect health and her lips were
red with the blood that was close to the surface, while the gray eyes
with which she regarded him were frank and steady as she gazed at him
inquiringly.
Lingle tugged at his hat brim instinctively.
"I thought you were a coyote when the sheep began running," she said,
good-naturedly. "They've been bothering a lot this cold weather."
Lingle mumbled that he "presumed so."
"I suppose you are the new herder?"
"I came out with him," the deputy replied evasively.
"Didn't Uncle Joe come?" Kate's face fell in disappointment.
Lingle shifted his weight and looked elsewhere.
"He's in town yet," he answered.
Lingle knew instinctively that she thought Mormon Joe was drinking
heavily.
Then, fixing her troubled eyes upon him she asked hesitatingly:
"Did he--say when I could expect him?"
The merciless hound of the law, who had dismounted, shuffled his feet
uneasily and looked down to see if his badge was showing.
"Er--he didn't mention it." In the panic which seized him he could not
frame the words in which to tell her, and he felt an illogical wrath at
Bowers--the coward--for not coming with him. For a moment he considered
resigning, then walked over to where her horse was feeding to collect
himself while her wondering gaze followed him.
Lingle ran his hand along the horse's neck, the hair of which was stiff
with dried sweat, lifted the saddle blanket and looked at its legs,
where streaks of lather had hardened. He regarded her keenly as he
turned to her.
"You been smokin' up your horse, I notice."
"I ran a coyote for two miles this morning--emptied my magazine at him
and then didn't get him." The truth shining in her clear eyes was
unmistakable.
Lingle broke off a handful of sagebrush and used it as a makeshift
currycomb, while Kate, a little surprised at the action, picked up the
bridle reins when he had finished the gratuitous grooming and started
the sheep moving.
"I'll feed back to camp slowly. Don't wait for me--you and the herder
eat supper."
"Anything I can do, ma'am?"
"Oh, no, thank you."
Bowers met the deputy at the door of the cook tent, his eyes gleaming
with curiosity.
"Did she beller?"
Lingle sat down morosely and removed his spurs before answering.
"I didn't tell her."
"What!" Bowers fairly jumped at him. "What's the matter?"
"She might as well eat her supper, mightn't she?" defiantly.
"Do you know what I think?" Bowers pointed a spoon at him accusingly. "I
think your nerve failed you. All I got to say is--you're a devil of an
officer."
"Maybe you'd like to tell her," sneeringly.
"I shore ain't afraid to!" bristling. "I don't like to listen to a
female's snifflin', and I say so, but when it comes to bein' _afraid_ of
one of 'em--" Bowers banged the pan of biscuits on the table to
emphasize the small esteem in which he held women. "What fer a looker is
she?" he demanded.
"You'd better eat your supper before she gets here."
"Bad as that?"
"Worse," grimly. "I ain't got educated words enough to describe her."
They had eaten by the light of the lantern, when they heard Kate coming.
She lifted the flap of the tent and smiled her friendly smile upon
them.
"Goodness, but I'm glad I don't have to cook supper! I haven't had
anything warm since morning."
Bowers stood with the broom in his hand, staring, while Kate removed her
cap and jacket. Then he cast an evil look upon the deputy, a look which
said, "You liar!"
As she made to get the food from the stove he interposed hastily:
"You set down, Ma'am."
Lingle gave him a look which was equally significant, a jeering look
which said ironically, "Woman hater!"
Bowers colored with pleasure when she lauded his "cowpuncher potatoes"
and exclaimed over the biscuits.
When Kate had finished she looked from one to the other and beamed upon
them impartially.
"It's nice to see people. I haven't seen any one for six weeks except
Uncle Joe," wistfully. "I wish he had come back with you--it's so
lonesome."
There was an immediate silence and then Bowers cleared his throat
noisily.
"Night 'fore last was tol'able chilly in your wagon, I reckon?"
Her face sobered.
"It was--terrible! I couldn't sleep for the cold, and thinking about and
pitying the stock on the range, and anybody that had to be out in it. I
was glad Uncle Joe was safe in Prouty--there was no need for us both to
be out here suffering."
Again there was silence, and once more Bowers came to the rescue with a
feeble witticism, at which he himself laughed hollowly:
"I hearn that a feller eatin' supper with a steel knife got his tongue
froze to it, and they had a time thawin' him over the tea kettle."
Kate rose to clear away and wash the dishes, but Bowers motioned her to
remain seated.
"You rest yourself, Ma'am. I was a pearl diver in a restauraw fer three
months onct so I am, you might say, a professional."
"Uncle Joe and I take turns," Kate laughed, "for neither of us likes
it."
"That's the best way," Bowers agreed, breaking the constrained silence
which fell each time Mormon Joe's name was mentioned. "More pardners has
fell out over dish-washin' and the throwin' of diamond hitches than any
other causes."
When, to Kate's horror, Bowers had wiped off the top of the stove with
the dishcloth and removed some lingering moisture from the inside of a
frying pan with his elbow, she said, rising:
"I'm up at four, so I go to bed early. You can sleep in Uncle Joe's
tepee," to Lingle, "and you needn't get up for breakfast when we do. I
suppose," to Bowers, "you'll want to start in to-morrow, so I'll go with
you and show you the range we're feeding over." With a friendly good
night she turned towards the entrance.
Lingle rose with a look of desperation on his countenance.
"Just a minute." There was that in his voice which made her turn quickly
and look from one to the other in wonder.
Lingle had a feeling that his vocal cords had turned to wire, they moved
so stiffly, when he heard himself saying:
"Guess I'll have to ask you to take a ride with me to-morrow."
"Me?" Her eyes widened. "What for?"
The yellow flame flickered in the smudged chimney of the lantern on the
table, a bit of burning wood fell out from the front of the stove and
lay smoking on the dirt floor in front of it. Bowers stood rigid by the
basin where he had been washing his hands, with the water dripping from
his fingers.
In a frenzy to have it over the deputy blurted out harshly:
"Mormon Joe's been murdered!"
The girl gave a cry--sharp, anguished, as one might scream out with a
crushed finger.
Bowers advanced a step and demanded fiercely of Lingle:
"Don't you know nothin'--not no damned nothin'?"
Kate's face was marble.
"You mean--he's dead--he won't come back here--ever?"
"You've said it," the deputy replied, huskily.
Kate walked back unsteadily to the seat she had just vacated and her
head sank upon her folded arms on the table. She did not cry like a
woman, but with deep tearless sobs that lifted her shoulders.
The two men stood with their hands hanging awkwardly, looking at each
other. Then Bowers made a grimace and jerked his head towards the tent
entrance. The deputy obeyed the signal and went out on tip-toe with the
sheepherder following.
"She's got guts," said Bowers briefly.
"She'll need 'em," was the laconic answer.
CHAPTER X
THE BANK PUTS ON THE SCREWS
In the initial excitement it had seemed a simple matter to apprehend the
murderer of Mormon Joe with such clues as were furnished by the axe, the
rope, the shotgun and the button, which were found in the snow beneath
the window. But investigation showed that the axe and rope were no
different from scores of other axes and ropes in Prouty, and it was soon
recognized that the solution of the case hinged upon the ownership of
the gun and the finding of a motive for this peculiarly cowardly and
ingenious murder.
But no one could be found to identify the gun, nor could any amount of
inquiry unearth an enemy with a grudge sufficiently deep to inspire
murder.
Although the room was packed to the doors, nothing startling was
anticipated from the coroner's inquest; and while Kate had been summoned
as a witness it was not expected that much would be learned from her
testimony. The crowd was concerned chiefly in seeing "how she was taking
it."
But curiosity became suspicion and suspicion conviction, when Kate, as
white as the alabastine wall behind her, admitted that she and Mormon
Joe had quarreled the night before the murder, and over money; that she
knew how to set a trap-gun and had set them frequently for mountain
lions; that she could ride forty miles in a few hours if necessary. The
sensation came, however, when the coroner revealed the fact that under
the dead man's will she was the sole beneficiary. Her denial of any
knowledge of this was received incredulously, and her emphatic
declaration that she had never before seen the shotgun carried no
conviction.
The coroner and jury, after deliberation, decided that there was not
sufficient evidence to hold her, but the real argument which freed her
was the cost to the taxpayers of convening a Grand Jury, and the
subsequent proceedings, if the jury decided to try her.
Kate would as well have been proven guilty and convicted, for all the
difference the verdict of the coroner's jury made in the staring crowd
that parted to let her pass as she came from the inquest. She had untied
her horse with the unseeing eyes of a sleep-walker and was about to put
her foot in the stirrup when Lingle came up to her.
"I'm goin' to do all I can to clear you," he said, earnestly, "and I got
the mayor behind me. He said he'd use every resource of his office to
get this murderer. I believe in you--and don't you forget it!"
She had not been able to speak, but the look in her eyes had thanked
him.
Two days later, Kate was disinfecting the wound of a sheep that an
untrained dog had injured when a note from the Security State Bank was
handed her by one of Neifkins' herders. It was signed by its President,
Mr. Vernon Wentz, late of the White Hand Laundry, and there was
something which filled her with forebodings in the curt request for an
immediate interview.
It was too late to start for Prouty that day, but she would leave early
in the morning, so she went on applying a solution of permanganate of
potassium to the wound and sprinkling it with a healing powder while she
conjectured as to what Wentz might want of her.
In her usual work Kate found an outlet for the nervous tension under
which she was still laboring. It helped a little, though it seemed
impossible to believe that she ever again would be serene of mind and
able to think clearly. Her thoughts were a jumble; as yet she could only
feel and suffer terribly. Remorse took precedence over all other
emotions, over the sense of loneliness and loss, over the appalling
accusation. Her writhing conscience was never quiet. She would gladly
have exchanged every hope of the future she dared harbor for five
minutes of the dead man's life in which to beg forgiveness.
In the short interval since the coroner's inquest public opinion had
crystallized in Prouty, and Kate's guilt was now a certainty in the
minds of its citizens.
"She done it, all right, only they can't prove it on her." Hiram
Butefish merely echoed the opinion of the community when he made the
assertion, upon seeing Kate turn the corner by the Prouty House and ride
down the main street the day following the delivery of Mr. Wentz's
summons.
Suffering had made Kate acutely sensitive and she was quick to feel the
atmosphere of hostility. She read it in the countenances of the
passersby on the sidewalk, in the cold eyes staring at her from the
windows, in the bank president's uncompromising attitude, even in the
cashier's supercilious inventory as he looked her over.
Kate had entered the wide swinging doors of the bank simultaneously with
Mr. Abram Pantin, at whom Mr. Wentz had waved a long white hand and
requested him languidly to be seated. Since he already had motioned Kate
to the only chair beside the one he himself occupied in his enclosure,
it was clear there was no way for Mr. Pantin to accept the invitation
unless he sat on the floor. It chafed Pantin exceedingly to be
patronized by one who so recently had done his laundry, but since his
business at the bank was of an imperative nature he concealed his
annoyance with the best grace possible and waited.
Temporarily, at least, Mr. Wentz had lost his equilibrium. From washing
the town's soiled linen to loaning it money was a change so sudden and
radical that the rise made him dizzy; he was apt, therefore, to be a
little erratic, his manner varying during a single conversation from the
cold austerity of a bloodless capitalist to the free and easy democracy
of the days when he had stood in the doorway of his laundry in his
undershirt and "joshed" the passersby.
Mr. Wentz had a notion, fostered by his wife, that he was rather a
handsome fellow. True, years of steaming had given to his complexion a
look not unlike that of an evaporated apple, but this small defect was
more than offset by a luxuriant brown mustache which he had trained
carefully. His hair was sleek and neatly trimmed, and he used his brown
eyes effectively upon occasions. His long hands with their supple
fingers were markedly white, also from the steaming process. Being tall
and of approximately correct proportions, his ready-made clothes fitted
him excellently--as a matter of fact, Vernon Wentz would have passed for
a "gent" anywhere.
Not unmindful of the presence of Mr. Pantin, of whom he secretly stood
in awe, although he knew of his own knowledge that Pantin sheared his
collars, Wentz swung about in his office chair and said abruptly:
"Didn't expect I'd have to send for you."
Kate's troubled eyes were fixed upon him.
"I had nothing to come for."
It pleased Mr. Wentz to regard her with a smile of tolerant amusement.
"Don't know anything about finance, do you?"
"I've never had any business to attend to. I will learn, though."
Wentz smiled enigmatically. Then, brusquely:
"We might as well come to the point and have it over--do you know them
sheep's mortgaged?"
"I knew," hesitatingly, "that Uncle Joe had borrowed for our expenses,
but I didn't know how he did it."
"That's how he did it," curtly. "And the mortgage includes the leases
and the whole bloomin' outfit."
"But he only borrowed a few hundred," she ventured.
"We require ample security," importantly.
"What is it you want of me?" Kate's voice trembled slightly. The import
of the interview was beginning to dawn upon her.
Wentz cleared his throat and announced impressively:
"There was a meeting of the directors called yesterday and it was
decided that the bank must have its money."
She cried aghast:
"I haven't it, Mr. Wentz!"
"Then there's only one alternative."
"You mean ship the sheep?"
Wentz stroked his mustache.
"That's about the size of it."
"But sheep are way down," she protested. "It would take almost the two
bands at present to pay off the debt and shipping expenses."
"That's not our funeral."
"And the leases are of no value without stock for them."
Mr. Wentz lowered his silken lashes and suggested smoothly as he
continued to caress the treasured growth gently:
"Neifkins might be induced to take the leases off your hands at a
nominal figure."
Mr. Pantin cooling his heels at the outer portals smiled. He knew what
Kate did not--that Neifkins was one of the directors.
"But the notes are not due until early next summer--after shearing.
Uncle Joe told me so."
"True," he assented. Then with a large air of erudition: "The law,
however, provides for such cases as this. When the security of the
mortgager is in jeopardy through incompetence or other causes he can
foreclose immediately."
Kate paled as she listened.
"But there's no danger, Mr. Wentz," she protested breathlessly. "Your
money's as safe as when Uncle Joe was living. I understand sheep--he
said I was a better sheepman than he was because I had more patience and
like them. I'll watch them closer than ever--day or night I'll never
leave them. I'll promise you! I've got a good herder now and between us
we can handle them."
Mr. Wentz shrugged a skeptical shoulder.
"You couldn't convince the directors of that. There's none of 'em wants
to risk the bank's money with a woman in that kind of business."
"But can't you see," she pleaded, "that it's ruin to ship now? It will
wipe me out completely. Put some one out there of your own choosing, if
you can't trust me, but don't make me sell with the bottom out of the
market!"
"You've got the bank's decision," he responded, coldly.
"Please--please reconsider! Just give me a chance--you won't be sorry! I
only know sheep--I've never had the opportunity to learn anything else,
and I've no place to go but that little homestead back in the hills.
I've no one in the world to turn to. Won't you give me a trial, and then
if you see I can't handle it--"
"It's no use arguin'." Wentz brought both hands down on the arms of the
chair in impatient finality. "We're goin' to ship as soon as we can get
cars and drive to the railroad, so you might as well turn them sheep
over and stop hollerin'."
Kate rose and took a step forward, her hands outstretched in entreaty:
"Once more I ask you--give me a little time--I'll try and raise the
money somewhere--ten days--give me ten days--I beg of you!"
"Ten years or ten days or ten minutes--'twould be all the same," his
voice was raucous as he, too, stood up. He looked at her contemptuously.
"No; it's settled. The bank's goin' to take over them sheep, and if
there's anything left after the mortgage is satisfied you'll get it." He
indicated that the interview was over. "Step in, Pantin."
For the second time within the week Kate went out in the street stunned
by the blow which had been dealt her: She stood uncertainly for a moment
on the edge of the sidewalk and then began slowly to untie the bridle
reins.
"Here's a message that came for you yesterday; we had no way of getting
it to you." The girl from the telephone office was regarding her
curiously.
Kate turned at the sound of a voice beside her, and took the message
which had been telephoned from the nearest telegraph office.
Have just learned of your trouble. Is there anything I can do for
you? All sympathy.
HUGH
She read it twice, carefully, while her eyes filled with tears of
longing, then she accompanied the girl to the telephone office where she
wrote her answer.
I need nothing. Thank you.
KATE PRENTICE
In the meantime Mrs. Toomey was becoming acquainted with a new phase of
her husband's character. She had thought she was familiar with all sides
of it, those for which she loved him and those which taxed her patience
and loyalty; but this moroseness, this brooding ugliness, was different.
He smoked continuously, ate little, drank more coffee than ever she had
known him to, and at night twisted and turned restlessly. She could not
account for it, since, so far as she knew, there was no more to trouble
him than the usual worry as to where their next meals were coming from.
She surreptitiously studied his face wearing this new expression, and
asked herself what would become of him with his violent temper,
illogical reasoning and lack of balance, if it were not for the
restraint of their association? Daily he became a stronger convert to
the doctrine that the world owed every one--himself in particular--a
living. It was one Mrs. Toomey did not hold with.
She was thankful now that she had not told him of Kate and her promise
and aroused hopes that would only have meant further disappointment, in
view of developments. She knew, of course, the current gossip to the
effect that the Security State Bank was about to foreclose and "set Kate
afoot," as the phrase was.
Mrs. Toomey was truly sorry. Her liking for Kate was more genuine than
any feeling of the kind she had had for another woman in a longer time
than she could remember. Because, perhaps, the girl was so strikingly
her opposite in every particular, she admired Kate exceedingly. The
freshness of her candid friendly face, her general wholesomeness
attracted her. She felt also the latent strength of character beneath
the ingenuous surface, and the girl's courage and self-reliance drew her
in her own trembling uncertainty at this period, like a magnet.
Mrs. Toomey's impulses were more often kind than otherwise, and she
would have liked nothing better than to have gone to Kate in this
crisis, for she believed thoroughly in Kate's innocence and guessed how
much she needed a woman's friendship. Mrs. Toomey had a rather active
conscience and it troubled her.
Naturally, she had not forgotten the "handshake agreement" which was to
cement their friendship, but she argued that as Kate had not been able
to fulfill her share of it she could not be expected to live up to her
end, since it would mean opposition from Jap and no benefit to offset
it. But in her heart Mrs. Toomey knew that it was not Jap she feared so
much as the disapproval of Mrs. Abram Pantin.
Toomey was brooding as usual, when footsteps were heard on the wooden
sidewalk and a sharp rap followed.
Mrs. Toomey was kneading bread on the kitchen table. Toomey had sold a
pair of silver sugar tongs to a cowpuncher who opined that they were the
very thing he had been looking for with which to eat oysters. The
slipperiness of a raw oyster annoyed and embarrassed him, so he
purchased the tongs gladly, and the sack of flour which resulted gave
Mrs. Toomey a feeling of comparative security while it lasted.
She called through the doorway:
"You go, Jap. I'm busy."
He arose mechanically, opened the door, started back, then stepped out
and closed it after him. At the kitchen table Mrs. Toomey saw the
pantomime and was curious.
The sound of voices raised in altercation followed. She recognized that
of Teeters.
"I tell you it is, Toomey! I'll swear to it! I'd know it anywhere
because of that peculiarity!"
She could not catch the words of a second speaker, but the tone was
equally aggressive and unfriendly.
"Then prove it!" Toomey's voice was shrill with excitement and defiant.
They all lowered their voices abruptly as though they had been
admonished, but the tones reached her, alternately threatening,
argumentative, even pleading.
What in the world was it all about, she wondered as she kneaded.
For twenty minutes or more it lasted, and then Teeters' voice came
clearly, vibrating with contempt as well as purpose:
"You got a yellow streak a yard wide and if it takes the rest of our
natural life Lingle and me between us are goin' to prove it!"
Toomey's answer was a jeering laugh of defiance, but when he came in and
slammed the door behind him, she saw that his face was a sickly yellow
and his shaking hand spilled the tobacco which he tried to pour upon a
cigarette paper.
She waited a moment for an explanation but, since it was not
forthcoming, asked anxiously:
"What's the matter, Jap?"
He did not hear her.
She persisted:
"Who was it?"
"Teeters and Lingle."
"The deputy sheriff?"
He nodded.
She came a little further into the room with her flour-covered hands.
"What did they want, Jap, that's so upset you?"
"I'm not upset!" He glared at her. His trembling hand could not touch
the match to the cigarette paper.
"It's only right that you should tell me," she said firmly.
His eyes wavered.
"It's about the cook stove; Teeters wants to foreclose the mortgage."
She regarded him fixedly, turned, and started for the kitchen. She knew
that he was lying.
CHAPTER XI
KATE KEEPS HER PROMISE
One of the things which Mrs. Abram Pantin's worst enemy would have had
to admit in her favor was that, strictly speaking, she was not a gossip,
though this virtue was due as much to policy as to principle. It was her
custom, however, to retain in her memory such morsels of common
knowledge news as she accumulated during the day with which to entertain
Mr. Pantin at evening dinner, for she observed that if his thoughts
could be diverted from business it aided his digestion and he slept
better, so she strove always to have some bright topic to introduce at
the table.
Having said a silent grace, Mr. Pantin inquired mechanically:
"Will you have a chop, Prissy?" Since there were only two he did not use
the plural.
Mrs. Pantin looked across the fern centerpiece and made a mouth as she
regarded the chop doubtfully.
"I'm afraid I am eating too much meat lately."
Impaled on a tine of the fork, the chop was of a thinness to have
enabled one to read through it without much difficulty.
Mr. Pantin placed the chop on his own plate with some little alacrity.
As his wife took one of the two dainty rolls concealed in a fringed
napkin on the handsome silver bread tray, she endeavored to recall what
it was in particular that she had saved to tell him. Oh, yes!
"What do you think I heard to-day, Abram?"
Abram was figuring interest and murmured absently:
"I have no idea."
"They say," in her sprightliest manner, "that that girl who killed her
lover was refused credit at every store in Prouty. No one would trust
her for even five dollars' worth of groceries. Rather pathetic, isn't
it?"
Mr. Pantin looked up quickly.
"Who told you that?"
"Everyone seems to know it."
Mr. Pantin frowned slightly.
"If you mean Miss Prentice, I wouldn't speak of her in that fashion,
Priscilla."
"Mormon Joe's Kate, then, if you like that better," replied Mrs. Pantin,
nettled.
"Or 'Mormon Joe's Kate,' either," curtly.
"So sorry; I didn't know you knew her. Do you?"
Mr. Pantin, who at his own table was given the privilege of taking bones
in his fingers, pointed the chop at her.
"Let me tell you something, Priscilla," impressively. "Someone who is
cleverer than I am has said that it is never safe to snub a pretty girl,
because there is always the possibility that she'll marry well and be
able to retaliate. The same thing applies to one who has brains and is
in earnest. I've made it a rule never to disparage the efforts of a
person who had a definite purpose and works to attain it. It's about a
fifty-to-one shot that he'll land--sometime."
Mrs. Pantin looked at her husband suspiciously. There were times when
she had a notion that she had not explored the furthermost recesses of
his nature--when she wondered if it had not ramifications and passages
unknown to her. It had. It was Mr. Pantin's dearest wish to come home
boiling drunk with his hat smashed and his necktie hanging. He longed to
kick the front door in and see his wife cower before him. The mental
orgies in which he indulged while sitting placidly in the bow window
automatically snapping his Romeo against the heel of his foot by a
muscular contraction of the toes--would have curdled the blood of
Priscilla Pantin.
It was an interesting case of atavism. There was little doubt but that
Mr. Pantin was a throwback to a sportive ancestor who had kept a pacer
that could do a little better than 2.13 when conditions were favorable,
but had rendered the family homeless by betting one hundred and sixty
acres of black walnut timber against a horse that left him so far behind
that the spectators urged him to throw something overboard to see if he
was moving. All this was family history. Mr. Pantin fought against his
predilection to gamble on anything or anybody as he would have fought an
impulse to take human life.
It did not escape Mrs. Pantin's attention now that her husband had not
answered her question as to whether he knew this notorious character.
She repeated it.
Mr. Pantin returned her searching look with one in which she could
discern no guile, but his words irritated her still further.
"I happened to be in the bank the other day when the girl was begging
Wentz for time on the loan which Mormon Joe had contracted for running
expenses," Mr. Pantin explained with somewhat elaborate carelessness.
"It wasn't due, but they were putting the screws on her to serve their
own purpose--or Neifkins' purpose, rather. He wants her leases. It was a
mistake of judgment, for she would have been a good borrower. Bankers
are born, not made, anyway," complacently, "and Vernon isn't one of
them."
"It seems to me his judgment in this instance is excellent," Mrs. Pantin
contradicted tartly. "It's quite evident the business men of Prouty
agree with him, since none of them will trust her."
"That doesn't alter my opinion." Mr. Pantin's reply was calm. "It's the
person behind a loan that counts, anyway--not the security. If I had
been in Wentz's place when she said she could handle those sheep and
meet the obligation when due, I should have believed her." Again Mr.
Pantin waved the chop for emphasis as he added with something very like
enthusiasm: "She has honesty, strength of character, intelligence,
personal magnetism--"
"It appears to me that you made rather a close study, considering your
limited opportunity," Mrs. Pantin interrupted acidly.
"She interested me."
"Evidently. But why this sudden change of opinion? I've heard you say a
hundred times that all women are pinheads in business."
"Because she's no ordinary woman," Mr. Pantin defended. "The girl hasn't
struck her gait yet; her mind is immature, her character undeveloped;
but if she doesn't make good--" he paused while he fumbled for a
convincing figure--"I'll eat my panama!"
Mrs. Pantin stared, both at the intemperate language and the rare
display of animation. From a state of indifference, she felt distinct
hostility toward Mormon Joe's Kate stirring in her bosom. Mr. Pantin
should have known better--he did know better--but he had felt reckless,
somehow. To make amends he said ingratiatingly:
"This mince pie is excellent, Prissy! Did you tell me there was no meat
in it?"
"Tomatoes," frigidly. "It's mock mincemeat." A triumph in economy--an
achievement! But Mr. Pantin's flattery and conciliating smile were alike
futile. Like many another overzealous partisan, he had made for Kate one
more enemy.
* * * * *
It seemed aeons ago to Mrs. Toomey that Jap had appeared to her in the
light of a handsome conquering daredevil, whose dash and confident
personality made all things possible.
The real test of Toomey's character had come with his misfortunes. So
long as he had money to spend and could ride, arrogant and high-handed,
over the obsequious shopkeepers who benefited by his prodigality, and
the poor ranchers who had not the means, or often the spirit, to oppose
him, he continued to appear to her in the light in which she had first
seen him. She adored his imperious temper, his erratic lavish
generosity, his Quixotic standards, but with the reversal of their
fortunes she was slowly brought to realize that money had provided most
of the glamor which surrounded him. To be imperious with no one to obey
makes for absurdity, and this trait, in his poverty, made him
ridiculous, as did the extravagances in which he indulged at the expense
of necessities.
It was not often Mrs. Toomey would admit to herself the real cause of
the heartsickness which filled her as she watched her husband
deteriorate, but with every excuse known to a woman who loves she tried
to bolster up her waning faith in the man and his ability. With an
obstinacy which was pathetic, she endeavored to keep him on the
pedestal where she had placed him. She listened with a fixed smile of
interest to the extraordinary schemes he outlined to her, sometimes
hypnotizing herself into believing in them, until he returned with the
exaggerated swagger which proclaimed another failure. Then she would
join him in his denunciation of those who could not see the value of his
plan and refused to aid him.
But the conviction that Jap had not the qualities to win material
success did not hurt as did the knowledge that he was not too brave to
lie, too proud to borrow from those he considered his social inferiors
and with no notion of repaying the obligation, nor too honest to obtain
money by any subterfuge that occurred to him.
When she had attempted to borrow money from Abram Pantin, the light
esteem in which that astute person held her husband had been as painful
as her disappointment, for it was her first definite knowledge of
others' estimate of him. Since then, with her eyes opened, she had come
to see that Jap was regarded in Prouty as something between a joke and a
pest.
Mrs. Toomey was thinking of Mormon Joe's murder one morning while she
dusted, and of Kate--conjecturing as to what would become of the girl
when the bank foreclosed and she lost everything. She sighed as, with
the corner of her apron, she removed a smudge from her nose before the
mirror. Wasn't there anything in the world any more but trouble for
people who had no money?
She glanced casually out of the window and stiffened in something very
like horror.
Kate was in front, tying her horse to a transplanted cottonwood sapling.
What if Prissy Pantin should see her! She was visibly agitated, when she
opened the door for Kate--stammering a welcome that had a doubtful
ring, but Kate did not appear to notice. She looked older, Mrs. Toomey
thought, in swift scrutiny. Yes, she had suffered terribly. Her heart
went out to the girl, even while she glanced furtively through the
windows to see who of the neighbors might be looking.
While Mrs. Toomey wondered what excuse she could make for Kate's
presence, if anyone called, she indicated a chair and said nervously:
"I've been hoping to see you and tell you how sorry I am for all that's
happened."
"I've been disappointed that you haven't," Kate replied, simply, "for
your friendship has loomed like a mountain to me in my trouble."
She was still counting on it! Mrs. Toomey got out a frightened:
"Really?"
"When we shook hands on it up there in the draw," Kate went on, sadly,
"I didn't dream how soon or how much I should need you. And women do
need each other in trouble, don't they?" earnestly.
Mrs. Toomey nervously tucked in her "scolding locks."
"Er--of course," constrainedly. Her mind was rambling from Jap to Mrs.
Pantin and the vigilant neighbors.
Kate rose suddenly, and crossing the room stooped to lay her gloved hand
upon Mrs. Toomey's thin shoulders. Looking into her eyes she demanded:
"You don't believe I did it, do you?"
This was a question Mrs. Toomey could answer truthfully and she did,
with convincing sincerity:
"No, I don't!"
"I knew it!" There was a joyous note in Kate's voice, and gratitude. "I
was sure you were true-blue, and I know I'm going to love you!"
Lifting the woman to her feet, with an arm about her shoulders, Kate
kissed her impulsively. She was so slight, so crushable, that Kate
experienced a sense of shock as one does when he feels the bones of a
little bird through its feathers. Her frailty appealed to something
within the girl that was like masculine chivalry, awakening a desire
that was keener than ever to protect and help her, while, as before,
Mrs. Toomey felt the magnetism of the younger woman's health and
strength and courage. Nevertheless, she was panic-stricken at what Kate
was taking for granted and her quick little mind was darting about like
some frightened rodent from corner to corner, thinking how she was going
to disentangle herself from the situation with the minimum of hurt to
the girl's feelings.
There was a suggestion of her former buoyancy in Kate's manner. Her eyes
had something of their old-time sparkle as she reached inside the
blousing front of her flannel shirt and laid in Mrs. Toomey's hand a
packet of crisp banknotes secured by bands of elastic.
"You see--I've kept my promise."
Mrs. Toomey stood motionless, staring.
"Why! Where did you get it?" when speech came back to her.
"That's my secret," Kate replied, gently. "But it's yours to use as long
as you need it."
Without warning, Mrs. Toomey burst into tears.
"I c-can't help it!" she sobbed on Kate's shoulder. "It's
so--unexpected."
Relief was paramount to all other emotions, but she vowed as she wept
that she would show her gratitude, and would be Kate's friend as she had
promised, and she would--the feeling of the money in her hand gave her
courage--defy Prissy Pantin, if necessary.
Kate and Mrs. Toomey separated with the warm handclasp of friendship.
Mrs. Toomey waited in a tremulous state of eagerness for her husband's
return. It was months since she had known such a feeling of relief; it
was as though years suddenly had dropped from her. She went about the
house humming, trying to decide upon the most effective way of
surprising him, and planning how she would spend the money to derive the
most good from it. At intervals she opened the top drawer of the bureau
and looked at the banknotes to be sure she was not dreaming. They would
pay a little on their most urgent bills, to show their good intentions,
and then buy supplies enough to render impossible any such experiences
as those they had undergone recently. A goodly portion would be kept for
emergencies until Jap got into something.
Mrs. Toomey glowed with gratitude to Kate and the delightful sensation
of relaxed nerves after a tension. She felt as peaceful as though she
had taken an opiate, therefore, when Toomey came in swaggering and with
the black brow which told her of disappointment, she smiled at him
tranquilly.
The smile irritated him.
"I wish you'd stop grinning."
Too happy to be perturbed, she replied in mock severity:
"If I cry, you resent it; if I smile, you stop me. Really, you know,
you're rather difficult."
"You'd be difficult, too, if you had to try to do business with a bunch
of tightwads. We've nothing to grin about, let me tell you."
"Haven't we?" archly.
He eyed her radiant face and ejaculated:
"Lord, but you look simple! What ails you?"
"Nothing fatal," she laughed gaily. "But tell me, Jap, what went wrong
this morning?"
The question recalled him to his grievances.
"You know that scheme I told you about last night?"
"Which one?" Mrs. Toomey searched her memory.
"Don't you ever listen when I talk to you?"
"I was so sleepy," apologetically.
"That one to 'glom' all the land between Willow Creek and the mountain."
"Oh, yes," vaguely. "Couldn't you interest anybody?"
"How can you interest clods who have no imagination?"
"What did they say about it?"
"Scales told me to go out and hold my head under the spout and he'd pump
on it. If ever I get a dollar ahead to pay my fine, I'm going to work
that son-of-a-gun over."
Mrs. Toomey sobered. The flippancy of the grocer was additional evidence
that her husband was considered a light-weight, even in Prouty. It hurt
her inexpressibly. The desire to work her surprise to a dramatic climax
suddenly left her. She said quietly:
"Our worries are over for the present, Jap." She walked to the bureau
and took out the money. "There is five hundred dollars."
He stared at it, at her, and back again incredulously.
"Is this a joke?" finally.
She shook her head.
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