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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/10978-0.txt b/10978-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8b10845 --- /dev/null +++ b/10978-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8145 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10978 *** + +HIDDEN CREEK + +BY KATHARINE NEWLIN BURT + +AUTHOR OF "THE BRANDING IRON" AND "THE RED LADY" + +1920 + + + + + + +TO MAXWELL STRUTHERS BURT WHO BLAZED THE TRAIL + + + + +CONTENTS + + +PART ONE: THE GOOD OLD WORLD + + I. SHEILA'S LEGACY + II. SYLVESTER HUDSON COMES FOR HIS PICTURE + III. THE FINEST CITY IN THE WORLD + IV. MOONSHINE + V. INTERCESSION + VI. THE BAWLING-OUT + VII. DISH-WASHING +VIII. ARTISTS + IX. A SINGEING OF WINGS + X. THE BEACON LIGHT + XI. IN THE PUBLIC EYE + XII. HUDSON'S QUEEN +XIII. SYLVESTER CELEBRATES + XIV. THE LIGHT OF DAWN + XV. FLAMES + +PART TWO: THE STARS + + I. THE HILL + II. ADVENTURE + III. JOURNEY'S END + IV. BEASTS + V. NEIGHBOR NEIGHBOR + VI. A HISTORY AND A LETTER + VII. SANCTUARY +VIII. DESERTION + IX. WORK AND A SONG + X. WINTER + XI. THE PACK + XII. THE GOOD OLD WORLD AGAIN +XIII. LONELINESS + XIV. SHEILA AND THE STARS + + + + +HIDDEN CREEK + + + + +PART ONE + +THE GOOD OLD WORLD + + + + +CHAPTER I + +SHEILA'S LEGACY + + +Just before his death, Marcus Arundel, artist and father of Sheila, +bore witness to his faith in God and man. He had been lying apparently +unconscious, his slow, difficult breath drawn at longer and longer +intervals. Sheila was huddled on the floor beside his bed, her hand +pressing his urgently in the pitiful attempt, common to human love, to +hold back the resolute soul from the next step in its adventure. The +nurse, who came in by the day, had left a paper of instructions on the +table. Here a candle burned under a yellow shade, throwing a circle of +warm, unsteady light on the head of the girl, on the two hands, on the +rumpled coverlet, on the dying face. This circle of light seemed to +collect these things, to choose them, as though for the expression of +some meaning. It felt for them as an artist feels for his composition +and gave to them a symbolic value. The two hands were in the center of +the glow--the long, pale, slack one, the small, desperate, clinging +one. The conscious and the unconscious, life and death, humanity and +God--all that is mysterious and tragic seemed to find expression there +in the two hands. + +So they had been for six hours, and it would soon be morning. The large, +bare room, however, was still possessed by night, and the city outside +was at its lowest ebb of life, almost soundless. Against the skylight the +winter stars seemed to be pressing; the sky was laid across the panes of +glass like a purple cloth in which sparks burned. + +Suddenly and with strength Arundel sat up. Sheila rose with him, drawing +up his hand in hers to her heart. + +"Keep looking at the stars, Sheila," he said with thrilling emphasis, and +widened his eyes at the visible host of them. Then he looked down at her; +his eyes shone as though they had caught a reflection from the myriad +lights. "It is a good old world," he said heartily in a warm and human +voice, and he smiled his smile of everyday good-fellowship. + +Sheila thanked God for his return, and on the very instant he was gone. +He dropped back, and there were no more difficult breaths. + +Sheila, alone there in the garret studio above the city, cried to her +father and shook him, till, in very terror of her own frenzy in the face +of his stillness, she grew calm and laid herself down beside him, put his +dead arm around her, nestled her head against his shoulder. She was +seventeen years old, left alone and penniless in the old world that he +had just pronounced so good. She lay there staring at the stars till they +faded, and the cold, clear eye of day looked down into the room. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +SYLVESTER HUDSON COMES FOR HIS PICTURE + + +Back of his sallow, lantern-jawed face, Sylvester Hudson hid +successfully, though without intention, all that was in him whether of +good or ill. Certainly he did not look his history. He was +stoop-shouldered, pensive-eyed, with long hands on which he was always +turning and twisting a big emerald. He dressed quietly, almost correctly, +but there was always something a little wrong in the color or pattern of +his tie, and he was too fond of brown and green mixtures which did not +become his sallowness. He smiled very rarely, and when he did smile, his +long upper lip unfastened itself with an effort and showed a horizontal +wrinkle halfway between the pointed end of his nose and the irregular, +nicked row of his teeth. + +Altogether, he was a gentle, bilious-looking sort of man, who might have +been anything from a country gentleman to a moderately prosperous clerk. +As a matter of fact, he was the owner of a dozen small, not too +respectable, hotels through the West, and had an income of nearly half a +million dollars. He lived in Millings, a town in a certain Far-Western +State, where flourished the most pretentious and respectable of his +hotels. It had a famous bar, to which rode the sheep-herders, the +cowboys, the ranchers, the dry-farmers of the surrounding country--yes, +and sometimes, thirstiest of all, the workmen from more distant +oil-fields, a dangerous crew. Millings at that time had not yielded to +the generally increasing "dryness" of the West. It was "wet," +notwithstanding its choking alkali dust; and the deep pool of its +wetness lay in Hudson's bar, The Aura. It was named for a woman who had +become his wife. + +When Hudson came to New York he looked up his Eastern patrons, and it was +one of these who, knowing Arundel's need, encouraged the hotel-keeper in +his desire to secure a "jim-dandy picture" for the lobby of The Aura and +took him for the purpose to Marcus's studio. On that morning, hardly a +fortnight before the artist's death, Sheila was not at home. + +Marcus, in spite of himself, was managed into a sale. It was of an +enormous canvas, covered weakly enough by a thin reproduction of a range +of the Rockies and a sagebrush flat. Mr. Hudson in his hollow voice +pronounced it "classy." "Say," he said, "put a little life into the +foreground and that would please _me_. It's what I'm seekin'. Put in an +automobile meetin' one of these old-time prairie schooners--the old West +sayin' howdy to the noo. That will tickle the trade." Mark, who was +feeling weak and ill, consented wearily. He sketched in the proposed +amendment and Hudson approved with one of his wrinkled smiles. He offered +a small price, at which Arundel leapt like a famished hound. + +When his visitors had gone, the painter went feverishly to work. The day +before his death, Sheila, under his whispered directions, put the last +touches to the body of the "auto_m_obile." + +"It's ghastly," sighed the sick man, "but it will do--for Millings." He +turned his back sadly enough to the canvas, which stood for him like a +monument to fallen hope. Sheila praised it with a faltering voice, but he +did not turn nor speak. So she carried the huge picture out of his sight. + +The next day, at about eleven o'clock in the morning, Hudson called. He +came with stiff, angular motions of his long, thin legs, up the four +steep, shabby flights and stopped at the top to get his breath. + +"The picture ain't worth the climb," he thought; and then, struck by the +peculiar stillness of the garret floor, he frowned. "Damned if the feller +ain't out!" He took a stride forward and knocked at Arundel's door. There +was no answer. He turned the knob and stepped into the studio. + +A screen stood between him and one half of the room. The other half was +empty. The place was very cold and still. It was deplorably bare and +shabby in the wintry morning light. Some one had eaten a meager breakfast +from a tray on the little table near the stove. Hudson's canvas stood +against the wall facing him, and its presence gave him a feeling of +ownership, of a right to be there. He put his long, stiff hands into his +pockets and strolled forward. He came round the corner of the screen and +found himself looking at the dead body of his host. + +The nurse, that morning, had come and gone. With Sheila's help she had +prepared Arundel for his burial. He lay in all the formal detachment of +death, his eyelids drawn decently down over his eyes, his lips put +carefully together, his hands, below their white cuffs and black sleeves, +laid carefully upon the clean smooth sheet. + +Hudson drew in a hissing breath, and at the sound Sheila, crumpled up in +exhausted slumber on the floor beside the bed, awoke and lifted her face. + +It was a heart-shaped face, a thin, white heart, the peak of her hair +cutting into the center of her forehead. The mouth struck a note of life +with its dull, soft red. There was not lacking in this young face the +slight exaggerations necessary to romantic beauty. Sheila had a strange, +arresting sort of jaw, a trifle over-accentuated and out of drawing. Her +eyes were long, flattened, narrow, the color of bubbles filled with +smoke, of a surface brilliance and an inner mistiness--indescribable +eyes, clear, very melting, wistful and beautiful under sooty lashes and +slender, arched black brows. + +Sheila lifted this strange, romantic face on its long, romantic throat +and looked at Hudson. Then she got to her feet. She was soft and silken, +smooth and tender, gleaming white of skin. She had put on an old black +dress, just a scrap of a flimsy, little worn-out gown. A certain slim, +crushable quality of her body was accentuated by this flimsiness of +covering. She looked as though she could be drawn through a ring--as +though, between your hands, you could fold her to nothing. A thin little +kitten of silky fur and small bones might have the same feel as Sheila. + +She stood up now and looked tragically and helplessly at Hudson and +tried to speak. + +He backed away from the bed, beckoned to her, and met her in the other +half of the room so that the leather screen stood between them and the +dead man. They spoke in hushed voices. + +"I had no notion, Miss Arundel, that--that--of--this," Hudson began in a +dry, jerky whisper. "Believe _me_, I wouldn't 'a' thought of intrudin'. I +ordered the picture there from your father a fortnight ago, and this was +the day I was to come and give it a last looking-over before I came +through with the cash, see? I hadn't heard he was sick even, much +less"--he cleared his throat--"gone beyond," he ended, quoting from the +"Millings Gazette" obituary column. "You get me?" + +"Yes," said Sheila, in her voice that in some mysterious way was another +expression of the clear mistiness of her eyes and the suppleness of her +body. "You are Mr. Hudson." She twisted her hands together behind her +back. She was shivering with cold and nervousness. "It's done, you see. +Father finished it." + +Hudson gave the canvas an absent glance and motioned Sheila to a chair +with a stiff gesture of his arm. + +"You set down," he said. + +She obeyed, and he walked to and fro before her. + +"Say, now," he said, "I'll take the picture all right. But I'd like to +know, Miss Arundel, if you'll excuse me, how you're fixed?" + +"Fixed?" Sheila faltered. + +"Why, yes, ma'am--as to finances, I mean. You've got some funds, or some +relations or some friends to call upon--?" + +Sheila drew up her head a trifle, lowered her eyes, and began to plait +her thin skirt across her knee with small, delicate fingers. Hudson +stopped in his walk to watch this mechanical occupation. She struggled +dumbly with her emotion and managed to answer him at last. + +"No, Mr. Hudson. Father is very poor. I haven't any relations. We have no +friends here nor anywhere near. We lived in Europe till quite lately--a +fishing village in Normandy. I--I shall have to get some work." + +"Say!" It was an ejaculation of pity, but there was a note of triumph in +it, too; perhaps the joy of the gratified philanthropist. + +"Now, look-a-here, little girl, the price of that picture will just about +cover your expenses, eh?--board and--er--funeral?" + +Sheila nodded, her throat working, her lids pressing down tears. + +"Well, now, look-a-here. I've got a missus at home." + +Sheila looked up and the tears fell. She brushed them from her cheeks. +"A missus?" + +"Yes'm--my wife. And a couple of gels about your age. Well, say, we've +got a job for you." + +Sheila put her hand to her head as though she would stop a whirling +sensation there. + +"You mean you have some work for me in your home?" + +"You've got it first time. Yes, _ma'am_. Sure thing. At Millings, finest +city in the world. After you're through here, you pack up your duds and +you come West with me. Make a fresh start, eh? Why, it'll make me plumb +cheerful to have a gel with me on that journey ... seem like I'd Girlie +or Babe along. They just cried to come, but, say, Noo York's no place for +the young." + +"But, Mr. Hudson, my ticket? I'm sure I won't have the money--?" + +"Advance it to you on your pay, Miss Arundel." + +"But what is the work?" Sheila still held her hand against her forehead. + +Hudson laughed his short, cracked cackle. "Jest old-fashioned house-work, +dish-washing and such. 'Help' can't be had in Millings, and Girlie and +Babe kick like steers when Momma leads 'em to the dish-pan. Not that +you'd have to do it all, you know, just lend a hand to Momma. Maybe +you're too fine for that?" + +"Oh, no. I have done all the work here. I'd be glad. Only--" + +He came closer to her and held up a long, threatening forefinger. It was +a playful gesture, but Sheila had a distinct little tremor of fear. She +looked up into his small, brown, pensive eyes, and her own were held as +though their look had been fastened to his with rivets. + +"Now, look-a-here, Miss Arundel, don't you say 'only' to me. Nor 'but.' +Nor 'if.' Nary one of those words, if you please. Say, I've got daughters +of my own and I can manage gels. I know _how_. Do you know my nickname? +Well--say--it's 'Pap.' Pap Hudson. I'm the adopting kind. Sort of +paternal, I guess. Kids and dogs follow me in the streets. You want a +recommend? Just call up Mr. Hazeldean on the telephone. He's the man that +fetched me here to buy that picture off Poppa." + +"Oh," said Sheila, daughter of Mark who looked at stars, "of course +I shouldn't think of asking for a recommendation. You've been only +too kind--" + +He put his hand on her shoulder in its thin covering and patted it, +wondering at the silken, cool feeling against his palm. + +"Kind, Miss Arundel? Pshaw! My middle name's 'Kind' and that's the truth. +Why, how does the song go--''T is love, 't is love that makes the world +go round'--love's just another word for kindness, ain't it? And it's not +such a bad old world either, eh?" + +Without knowing it, with the sort of good luck that often attends the +enterprises of such men, Hudson had used a spell. He had quoted, almost +literally, her father's last words and she felt that it was a message +from the other side of death. + +She twisted about in her chair, took his hand from her shoulder, and drew +it, stiff and sallow, to her young lips. + +"Oh," she sobbed, "you're kind! It _is_ a good world if there are such +men as you!" + +When Sylvester Hudson went down the stairs a minute or two after Sheila's +impetuous outbreak, his sallow face was deeply flushed. He stopped to +tell the Irishwoman who rented the garret floor to the Arundels, that +Sheila's future was in his care. During this colloquy, pure business on +his side and mixed business and sentiment on Mrs. Halligan's, Sylvester +did not once look the landlady in the eye. His own eyes skipped hers, now +across, now under, now over. There are some philanthropists who are +overcome with such bashfulness in the face of their own good deeds. But, +sitting back alone in his taxicab on his way to the station to buy +Sheila's ticket to Millings, Sylvester turned his emerald rapidly about +on his finger and whistled to himself. And cryptically he expressed his +glow of gratified fatherliness. + +"As smooth as silk," said Sylvester aloud. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE FINEST CITY IN THE WORLD + + +So Sheila Arundel left the garret where the stars pressed close, and +went with Sylvester Hudson out into the world. It was, that morning, a +world of sawing wind, of flying papers and dust-dervishes, a world, to +meet which people bent their shrinking faces and drew their bodies +together as against the lashing of a whip. Sheila thought she had never +seen New York so drab and soulless; it hurt her to leave it under so +desolate an aspect. + +"Cheery little old town, isn't it?" said Sylvester. "Gee! Millings is +God's country all right." + +On the journey he put Sheila into a compartment, supplied her with +magazines and left her for the most part to herself--for which isolation +she was grateful. With her compartment door ajar, she could see him in +his section, when he was not in the smoking-car, or rather she could see +his lean legs, his long, dark hands, and the top of his sleek head. The +rest was an outspread newspaper. Occasionally he would come into the +compartment to read aloud some bit of information which he thought might +interest her. Once it was the prowess of a record-breaking hen; again it +was a joke about a mother-in-law; another time it was the Hilliard murder +case, a scandal of New York high-life, the psychology of which intrigued +Sylvester. + +"Isn't it queer, though, Miss Arundel, that such things happen in the +slums and they happen in the smart set, but they don't happen near so +often with just plain folks like you and me! Isn't this, now, a real +Tenderloin Tale--South American wife and American husband and all their +love affairs, and then one day her up and shooting him! Money," quoth +Sylvester, "sure makes love popular. Now for that little ro-mance, poor +folks would hardly stop a day's work, but just because the Hilliards here +have po-sition and spon-dulix, why, they'll run a couple of columns about +'em for a week. What's your opinion on the subject, Miss Arundel?" + +He was continually asking this, and poor Sheila, strange, bewildered, +oppressed by his intrusion into her uprooted life, would grope wildly +through her odds and ends of thought and find that on most of the +subjects that interested him, she had no opinions at all. + +"You must think I'm dreadfully stupid, Mr. Hudson," she faltered once +after a particularly deplorable failure. + +"Oh, you're a kid, Miss Sheila, that's all your trouble. And I reckon +you're half asleep, eh? Kind of brought up on pictures and country walks, +in--what's the name of the foreign part?--Normandy? No friends of your +own age? No beaux?" + +Sheila shook her head, smiling. Her flexible smile was as charming as a +child's. It dawned on the gravity of her face with an effect of spring +moonlight. In it there was some of the mischief of fairyland. + +"What _you_ need is--Millings," prescribed Sylvester. "Girlie and Babe +will wake you up. Yes, and the boys. You'll make a hit in Millings." He +contemplated her for an instant with his head on one side. "We ain't got +anything like you in Millings." + +Sheila, looking out at the wide Nebraskan prairies that slipped +endlessly past her window hour by hour that day, felt that she would not +make a hit at Millings. She was afraid of Millings. Her terror of Babe +and Girlie was profound. She had lived and grown up, as it were, under +her father's elbow. Her adoration of him had stood between her and +experience. She knew nothing of humanity except Marcus Arundel. And he +was hardly typical--a shy, proud, head-in-the-air sort of man, who would +have been greatly loved if he had not shrunk morbidly from human +contacts. Sheila's Irish mother had wooed and won him and had made a +merry midsummer madness in his life, as brief as a dream. Sheila was all +that remained of it. But, for all her quietness, the shadow of his +broken heart upon her spirit, she was a Puck. She could make laughter +and mischief for him and for herself--not for any one else yet; she was +too shy. But that might come. Only, Puck laughter is a little unearthly, +a little delicate. The ear of Millings might not be attuned.... Just +now, Sheila felt that she would never laugh again. Sylvester's humor +certainly did not move her. She almost choked trying to swallow +becomingly the mother-in-law anecdote. + +But Sylvester's talk, his questions, even his jokes, were not what most +oppressed her. Sometimes, looking up, she would find him staring at her +over the top of his newspaper as though he were speculating about +something, weighing her, judging her by some inner measurement. It was +rather like the way her father had looked a model over to see if she +would fit his dream. + +At such moments Sylvester's small brown eyes were the eyes of an +artist, of a visionary. They embarrassed her painfully. What was it, +after all, that he expected of her? For an expectation of some kind he +most certainly had, and it could hardly have to do with her skill in +washing dishes. + +She asked him a few small questions as they drew near to Millings. The +strangeness of the country they were now running through excited her and +fired her courage--these orange-colored cliffs, these purple buttes, +these strange twisting cañons with their fierce green streams. + +"Please tell me about Mrs. Hudson and your daughters?" she asked. + +This was a few hours before they were to come to Millings. They had +changed trains at a big, bare, glaring city several hours before and +were now in a small, gritty car with imitation-leather seats. They were +running through a gorge, and below and ahead Sheila could see the brown +plain with its patches of snow and, like a large group of red toy +houses, the town of Millings, far away but astonishingly distinct in the +clear air. + +Sylvester, considering her question, turned his emerald slowly. + +"The girls are all _right_, Miss Sheila. They're lookers. I guess I've +spoiled 'em some. They'll be crazy over you--sort of a noo pet in the +house, eh? I've wired to 'em. They must be hoppin' up and down like a +popper full of corn." + +"And Mrs. Hudson?" + +Sylvester grinned--the wrinkle cutting long and deep across his lip. +"Well, ma'am, she ain't the hoppin' kind." + +A few minutes later Sheila discovered that emphatically she was not the +hopping kind. A great, bony woman with a wide, flat, handsome face, she +came along the station platform, kissed Sylvester with hard lips and +stared at Sheila ... the stony stare of her kind. + +"Babe ran the Ford down, Sylly," she said in the harshest voice Sheila +had ever heard. "Where's the girl's trunk?" + +Sylvester's sallow face reddened. He turned quickly to Sheila. + +"Run over to the car yonder, Miss Sheila, and get used to Babe, while I +kind of take the edge off Momma." + +Sheila did not run. She walked in a peculiar light-footed manner which +gave her the look of a proud deer. + +"Momma" was taken firmly to the baggage-room, where, it would seem, the +edge was removed with difficulty, for Sheila waited in the motor with +Babe for half an hour. + +Babe hopped. She hopped out of her seat at the wheel and shook Sheila's +hand and told her to "jump right in." + +"Sit by me on the way home, Sheila." Babe had a tremendous voice. "And +leave the old folks to gossip on the back seat. Gee! you're different +from what I thought you'd be. Ain't you small, though? You've got no +form. Say, Millings will do lots for you. Isn't Pap a character, though? +Weren't you tickled the way he took you up? Your Poppa was a painter, +wasn't he? Can you make a picture of me? I've got a steady that would be +just wild if you could." + +Sheila sat with hands clenched in her shabby muff and smiled her +moonlight smile. She was giddy with the intoxicating, heady air, with the +brilliant sunset light, with Babe's loud cordiality. She wanted +desperately to like Babe; she wanted even more desperately to be liked. +She was in an unimaginable panic, now. + +Babe was a splendid young animal, handsome and round and rosy, her body +crowded into a bright-blue braided, fur-trimmed coat, her face crowded +into a tight, much-ornamented veil, her head with heavy chestnut hair, +crowded into a cherry-colored, velvet turban round which seemed to be +wrapped the tail of some large wild beast. Her hands were ready to burst +from yellow buckskin gloves; her feet, with high, thick insteps, from +their tight, thin, buttoned boots, even her legs shone pink and plump +below her short skirt, through silk stockings that were threatened at the +seams. And the blue of her eyes, the red of her cheeks, the white of her +teeth, had the look of being uncontainable, too brilliant and full to +stay where they belonged. The whole creature flashed and glowed and +distended herself. Her voice was a riot of uncontrolled vitality, and, as +though to use up a little of all this superfluous energy, she was +violently chewing gum. Except for an occasional slight smacking sound, it +did not materially interfere with speech. + +"There's Poppa now," she said at last. "Say, Poppa, you two sit in the +back, will you? Sheila and I are having a fine time. But, Poppa, you old +tin-horn, what did you mean by saying in your wire that she was a husky +girl? Why, she's got the build of a sagebrush mosquito! Look-a-here, +Sheila." Babe by a miracle got her plump hand in and out of a pocket and +handed a telegram to her new friend. "Read that and learn to know Poppa!" + +Sylvester laughed rather sheepishly as Sheila read: + +Am bringing home artist's A1 picture for The Aura and artist's A1 +daughter. Husky girl. Will help Momma. + +"Well," said Sylvester apologetically, "she's one of the wiry kind, +aren't you, Miss Sheila?" + +Sheila was struggling with an attack of hysterical mirth. She nodded +and put her muff before her mouth to hide an uncontrollable quivering +of her lips. + +"Momma" had not spoken. Her face was all one even tone of red, her +nostrils opened and shut, her lips were tight. Sylvester, however, was in +a genial humor. He leaned forward with his arms folded along the back of +the front seat and pointed out the beauties of Millings. He showed Sheila +the Garage, the Post-Office, and the Trading Company, and suddenly +pressing her shoulder with his hand, he cracked out sharply: + +"There's The Aura, girl!" + +His eyes were again those of the artist and the visionary. They glowed. + +Sheila turned her head. They were passing the double door of the saloon +and went slowly along the front of the hotel. + +It stood on that corner where the main business street intersects with +the Best Residence Street. Its main entrance opened into the flattened +corner of the building where the roof rose to a fantastic façade. For the +rest, the hotel was of yellowish-brick, half-surrounded by a wooden porch +where at milder seasons of the year in deep wicker chairs men and women +were always rocking with the air of people engaged in serious and not +unimportant work. At such friendlier seasons, too, by the curb was always +a weary-looking Ford car from which grotesquely arrayed "travelers" from +near-by towns and cities were descending covered with alkali dust--faces, +chiffon veils, spotted silk dresses, high white kid boots, dangling +purses and all, their men dust-powdered to a wrinkled sameness of aspect. +At this time of the year the porch was deserted, and the only car in +sight was Hudson's own, which wriggled and slipped its way courageously +along the rutted, dirty snow. + +Around the corner next to the hotel stood Hudson's home. It was a large +house of tortured architecture, cupolas and twisted supports and strange, +overlapping scallops of wood, painted wavy green, pinkish red and yellow. +Its windows were of every size and shape and appeared in unreasonable, +impossible places--opening enormous mouths on tiny balconies with twisted +posts and scalloped railings, like embroidery patterns, one on top of the +other up to a final absurdity of a bird cage which found room for itself +between two cupolas under the roof. + +Up the steps of the porch Mrs. Hudson mounted grimly, followed by Babe. +Sylvester stayed to tinker with the car, and Sheila, after a doubtful, +tremulous moment, went slowly up the icy path after the two women. + +She stumbled a little on the lowest step and, in recovering herself, she +happened to turn her head. And so, between two slender aspen trees that +grew side by side like white, captive nymphs in Hudson's yard, she saw a +mountain-top. The sun had set. There was a crystal, turquoise +translucency behind the exquisite snowy peak, which seemed to stand there +facing God, forgetful of the world behind it, remote and reverent and +most serene in the light of His glory. And just above where the turquoise +faded to pure pale green, a big white star trembled. Sheila's heart +stopped in her breast. She stood on the step and drew breath, throwing +back her veil. A flush crept up into her face. She felt that she had been +traveling all her life toward her meeting with this mountain and this +star. She felt radiant and comforted. + +"How beautiful!" she whispered. + +Sylvester had joined her. + +"Finest city in the world!" he said. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +MOONSHINE + + +Dickie Hudson pushed from him to the full length of his arm the ledger of +The Aura Hotel, tilted his chair back from the desk, and, leaning far +over to one side, set the needle on a phonograph record, pressed the +starter, and absorbed himself in rolling and lighting a cigarette. This +accomplished, he put his hands behind his head and, wreathed in aromatic, +bluish smoke, gave himself up to complete enjoyment of the music. + +It was a song from some popular light opera. A very high soprano and a +musical tenor duet, sentimental, humoresque: + +"There, dry your eyes, +I sympathize +Just as a mother would-- +Give me your hand, +I understand, we're off to slumber land +Like a father, like a mother, like a sister, like a brother." + +Listening to this melody, Dickie Hudson's face under the gaslight +expressed a rapt and spiritual delight, tender, romantic, melancholy. + +He was a slight, undersized youth, very pale, very fair, with the face of +a delicate boy. He had large, near-sighted blue eyes in which lurked a +wistful, deprecatory smile, a small chin running from wide cheek-bones +to a point. His lips were sensitive and undecided, his nose unformed, his +hair soft and easily ruffled. There were hard blue marks under the +long-lashed eyes, an unhealthy pallor to his cheeks, a slight +unsteadiness of his fingers. + +Dickie held a position of minor importance in the hotel, and his pale, +innocent face was almost as familiar to its patrons as to those of the +saloon next door--more familiar to both than it was to Hudson's +"residence." Sometimes for weeks Dickie did not strain the scant welcome +of his "folks." To-night, however, he was resolved to tempt it. After +listening to the record, he strolled over to the saloon. + +Dickie was curious. He shared Millings's interest in the "young lady from +Noo York." Shyness fought with a sense of adventure, until to-night, a +night fully ten nights after Sheila's arrival, the courage he imbibed at +the bar of The Aura gave him the necessary impetus. He pulled himself up +from his elbow, removed his foot from the rail, straightened his spotted +tie, and pushed through the swinging doors out into the night. + +It was a moonlit night, as still and pure as an angel of annunciation--a +night that carried tall, silver lilies in its hands. Above the small, +sleepy town were lifted the circling rim of mountains and the web of +blazing stars. Sylvester's son, after a few crunching steps along the icy +pavement, stopped with his hand against the wall, and stood, not quite +steadily, his face lifted. The whiteness sank through his tainted body +and brain to the undefiled child-soul. The stars blazed awfully for +Dickie, and the mountains were awfully white and high, and the air +shattered against his spirit like a crystal sword. He stood for an +instant as though on a single point of solid earth and looked giddily +beyond earthly barriers. + +His lips began to move. He was trying to put that mystery, that +emotion, into words ... "It's white," he murmured, "and +sharp--burning--like--like"--his fancy fumbled--"like the inside of a +cold flame." He shook his head. That did not describe the marvelous +quality of the night. And yet--if the world had gone up to heaven in a +single, streaming point of icy fire and a fellow stood in it, frozen, +swept up out of a fellow's body.... Again he shook his head and his eyes +were possessed by the wistful, apologetic smile. He wished he were not +tormented by this queer need of describing his sensations. He remembered +very vividly one of the many occasions when it had roused his father's +anger. Dickie, standing with his hand against the cold bricks of The +Aura, smiled with his lips, not happily, but with a certain amusement, +thinking of how Sylvester's hand had cracked against his cheek and sent +all his thoughts flying like broken china. He had been apologizing for +his slowness over an errand--something about leaves, it had been--the +leaves of those aspens in the yard--he had told his father that they had +been little green flames--he had stopped to look at them. + +"You damn fool!" Sylvester had said as he struck. + +"You damn fool!" Once, when a stranger asked five-year-old Dickie his +name, he had answered innocently "Dickie-damn-fool!" + +"They'll probably put it on my tombstone," Dickie concluded, and, stung +by the cold, he shrank into his coat and stumbled round the corner of the +street. The reek of spirits trailed behind him through the purity like a +soiled rag. + +Number 18 Cottonwood Avenue was brilliantly lighted. Girlie was playing +the piano, Babe's voice, "sassing Poppa," was audible from one end to the +other of the empty street. Her laughter slapped the air. Dickie +hesitated. He was afraid of them all--of Sylvester's pensive, small, +brown eyes and hard, long hands, of Babe's bodily vigor, of Girlie's mild +contemptuous look, of his mother's gloomy, furtive tenderness. Dickie +felt a sort of aching and compassionate dread of the rough, awkward +caress of her big red hand against his cheek. As he hesitated, the door +opened--a blaze of light, yellow as old gold, streamed into the blue +brilliance of the moon. It was blotted out and a figure came quickly down +the steps. It had an air of hurry and escape. A small, slim figure, it +came along the path and through the gate; then, after just an instant of +hesitation, it turned away from Dickie and sped up the wide street. + +Dickie named it at once. "That's the girl," he said; and possessed by +his curiosity and by the sense of adventure which whiskey had fortified, +he began to walk rapidly in the same direction. Out there, where the +short street ended, began the steep side of a mesa. The snow on the road +that was graded along its front was packed by the runners of freighting +sleighs, but it was rough. He could not believe the girl meant to go for +a walk alone. And yet, would she be out visiting already, she, a +stranger? At the end of the street the small, determined figure did not +stop; it went on, a little more slowly, but as decidedly as ever, up the +slope. On the hard, frozen crust, her feet made hardly a sound. Above the +level top of the white hill, the peak that looked remote from Hudson's +yard became immediate. It seemed to peer--to lean forward, bright as a +silver helmet against the purple sky. Dickie could see that "the girl" +walked with her head tilted back as though she were looking at the sky. +Perhaps it was the sheer beauty of the winter night that had brought her +out. Following slowly up the hill, he felt a sense of nearness, of +warmth; his aching, lifelong loneliness was remotely comforted because a +girl, skimming ahead of him, had tilted her chin up so that she could see +the stars. She reached the top of the mesa several minutes before he did +and disappeared. She was now, he knew, on the edge of a great plateau, in +summer covered with the greenish silver of sagebrush, now an unbroken, +glittering expanse. He stood still to get his breath and listen to the +very light crunch of her steps. He could hear a coyote wailing off there +in the foothills, and the rushing noise of the small mountain river that +hurled itself down upon Millings, ran through it at frenzied speed, and +made for the canon on the other side of the valley. Below him Millings +twinkled with a few sparse lights, and he could, even from here, +distinguish the clatter of Babe's voice. But when he came to the top, +Millings dropped away from the reach of his senses. Here was dazzling +space, the amazing presence of the mountains, the pressure of the starry +sky. Far off already across the flat, that small, dark figure moved. She +had left the road, which ran parallel with the mountain range, and was +walking over the hard, sparkling crust. It supported her weight, but +Dickie was not sure that it would do the same for his. He tried it +carefully. It held, and he followed the faint track of small feet. It did +not occur to him, dazed as he was by the fumes of whiskey and the heady +air, that the sight of a man in swift pursuit of her loneliness might +frighten Sheila. For some reason he imagined that she would know that he +was Sylvester's son, and that he was possessed only by the most sociable +and protective impulses. + +He was, besides, possessed by a fateful feeling that it was intended that +out here in the brilliant night he should meet her and talk to her. The +adventurous heart of Dickie was aflame. + +When the hurrying figure stopped and turned quickly, he did not +pause, but rather hastened his steps. He saw her lift her muff up to +her heart, saw her waver, then move resolutely toward him. She came +thus two or three steps, when a treacherous pitfall in the snow opened +under her frightened feet and she went down almost shoulder deep. +Dickie ran forward. + +Bending over her, he saw her white, heart-shaped face, and its red mouth +as startling as a June rose out here in the snow. And he saw, too, the +panic of her shining eyes. + +"Miss Arundel"--his voice came thin and tender, feeling its way +doubtfully as though it was too heavy a reality--"let me help you. You +_are_ Miss Arundel, aren't you? I'm Dickie--Dickie Hudson, Pap Hudson's +son. You hadn't ought to be scared. I saw you coming out alone and took +after you. I thought you might find it kind of lonesome up here on the +flat at night in all the moonlight--hearing the coyotes and all. And, +look-a-here, you might have had a time getting out of the snow. Oncet a +fellow breaks through it sure means a floundering time before a fellow +pulls himself out--" + +She had given him a hand, and he had pulled her up beside him. Her smile +of relief seemed very beautiful to Dickie. + +"I came out," she said, "because it looked so wonderful--and I wanted +to see--" She stopped, looking at him doubtfully, as though she +expected him not to understand, to think her rather mad. But he +finished her sentence. + +"--To see the mountains, wasn't it?" + +"Yes." She was again relieved, almost as much so, it seemed, as at the +knowledge of his friendliness. "Especially that big one." She waved her +muff toward the towering peak. "I never did see such a night! It's +like--it's like--" She widened her eyes, as though, by taking into her +brain an immense picture of the night, she might find out its likeness. + +Dickie, moving uncertainly beside her, murmured, "Like the inside of a +cold flame, a very white flame." + +Sheila turned her chin, pointed above the fur collar of her coat, and +included him in the searching and astonished wideness of her look. + +"You work at The Aura, don't you?" she asked with childlike _brusquerie_. + +Dickie's sensitive, undecided mouth settled into mournfulness. He +looked away. + +"Yes, ma'am," he said plaintively. + +Sheila's widened eyes, still fixed upon him, began to embarrass him. A +flush came up into his face. + +She moved her look across him and away to the range. + +"It _is_ like that," she said--"like a cold flame, going up--how did you +think of that?" + +Dickie looked quickly, gratefully at her. "I kind of felt," he said +lamely, "that I had got to find out what it was like. But"--he shook his +head with his deprecatory smile--"but that don't tell it, Miss Arundel. +It's more than that." He smiled again. "I bet you, you could think of +somethin' better to say about it, couldn't you?" + +Sheila laughed. "What a funny boy you are! Not like the others. You don't +even look like them. How old are you? When I first saw you I thought you +were quite grown up. But you can't be much more than nineteen." + +"Just that," he said, "but I'll be twenty next month." + +"You've always lived here in Millings?" + +"Yes, ma'am. Do you like it? I mean, do you like Millings? I hope you +do." + +Sheila pressed her muff against her mouth and looked at him over it. Her +eyes were shining as though the moonlight had got into their misty +grayness. She shook her head; then, as his face fell, she began to +apologize. + +"Your father has been so awfully kind to me. I am so grateful. And the +girls are awfully good to me. But, Millings, you know?--I wouldn't +have told you," she said half-angrily, "if I hadn't been so sure you +hated it." + +They had come to the edge of the mesa, and there below shone the small, +scattered lights of the town. The graphophone was playing in the saloon. +Its music--some raucous, comic song--insulted the night. + +"Why, no," said Dickie, "I don't hate Millings. I never thought about it +that way. It's not such a bad place. Honest, it isn't. There's lots of +fine folks in it. Have you met Jim Greely?" + +"Why, no, but I've seen him. Isn't that Girlie's--'fellow'?" + +Dickie made round, respectful eyes. He was evidently very much impressed. + +"Say!" he ejaculated. "Is that the truth? Girlie's aiming kind of high." + +It was not easy to walk side by side on the rutted snow of the road. +Sheila here slipped ahead of him and went on quickly along the middle rut +where the horses' hoofs had beaten a pitted path. + +She looked back at him over her shoulder with a sort of malice. + +"Is it aiming high?" she said. "Girlie is much more beautiful than +Jim Greely." + +"Oh, but he's some looker--Jim." + +"Do you think so?" she said indifferently, with a dainty touch of scorn. + +Dickie staggered physically from the shock of her speech. She had been +speaking--was it possible?--of Jim Greely.... + +"I mean Mr. James Greely, the son of the president of the Millings +National Bank," he said painstakingly, and a queer confusion came to him +that the words were his feet and that neither were under his control. +Also, he was not sure that he had said "Natural," or "National." + +"I do mean Mr. James Greely," Sheila's clear voice came back to him. "He +is, I should think, a very great hero of yours." + +"Yes, ma'am," said Dickie. + +Astonished at the abject humility of his tone, Sheila stopped and turned +quite around to look at him. He seemed to be floundering in and out of +invisible holes in the snow. He stepped very high, plunged, put out his +hand, and righted himself by her shoulder. And he stayed there, lurched +against her for a moment. She shook him off and began to run down the +hill. His breath had struck her face. She knew that he was drunk. + +Dickie followed her as fast as he could. Several times he fell, but, on +the whole, he made fairly rapid progress, so that, by the time she dashed +into the Hudsons' gate, he was only a few steps behind her and caught the +gate before it shut. Sheila fled up the steps and beat at the door with +her fist. Dickie was just behind her. + +Sylvester himself opened the door. Back of him pressed Babe. + +"Why, say," she said, "it's Sheila and she's got a beau already. You're +some girl--" + +"Please let me in," begged Sheila; "I--I am frightened. It's your +brother, Dickie--but I think--there's something wrong--" + +Sylvester put his hand on her and pushed her to one side. + +He strode out on the small porch. Dickie wavered before him on +the top step. + +"I thought I'd make the ac-acquaintance of the young lady," he began +doubtfully. "I saw her admiring at the stars and I--" + +"Oh, you did!" snarled Hudson. "All right. Now go and make acquaintance +with the bottom step." He thrust a long, hard hand at Dickie's chest, and +the boy fell backward, clattering ruefully down the steps with a rattle +of thin knees and elbows. At the bottom he lay for a minute, painfully +huddled in the snow. + +"Go in, Miss Sheila," said Sylvester. "I'm sorry my son came home +to-night and frightened you. He usually has more sense. He'll have more +sense next time." + +He ran down the steps, but before he could reach the huddled figure it +gathered itself fearfully together and fled, limping and staggering +across the yard, through the gate and around the corner of the street. + +Hudson came up, breathing hard. + +"Where's Sheila?" he asked sharply. + +"She ran upstairs," said Babe. "Ain't it a shame? What got into Dick?" + +"Something that will get kicked out of him good and proper to-morrow," +said his father grimly. + +He stood at the bottom of the steep, narrow stairs, looking up, his hands +thrust into his pockets, his under lip stuck out. His eyes were unusually +gentle and pensive. + +"I wouldn't 'a' had her scared that way for anything," he said, "not for +anything. That's likely to spoil all my plans." + +He swore under his breath, wheeled about, and going into the parlor he +shut the door and began walking to and fro. Babe crept rather quietly up +the stairs. There were times when even Babe was afraid of "Poppa." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +INTERCESSION + + +Babe tiptoed up the first flight, walked solidly and boldly up the +second, and ran up the third. She had decided to have a talk with Sheila, +to soothe her indignation, and, if possible, to explain Dickie. It seemed +to Babe that Dickie needed explanation. + +Sheila's room was at the top of the house--the very room, in fact, whose +door opened on the bird cage of a balcony between two cupolas. Babe came +to the door and knocked. A voice answered sharply: "Come in," and Babe, +entering, shut the door and leaned against it. + +It was a small, bare, whitewashed room, with a narrow cot, a washstand, +a bureau, and two extraordinary chairs--a huge one that rocked on +damaged springs, enclosed in plaited leather like the case of an +accordion, and one that had been a rocker, but stood unevenly on its +diminished legs. Babe had protested against Momma's disposal of the +"girl from Noo York," and had begged that Sheila be allowed to share her +own red, white, and blue boudoir below. But Sheila had preferred her +small room. It was red as a rose at sunset, still and high, remote from +Millings, and it faced The Hill. + +Now, the gaslight flared against the bare walls and ceiling. Sheila's +hat and coat and muff lay on the bed where she had thrown them. She +stood, looking at Babe. Her face was flushed, her eyes gleamed, that +slight exaggeration of her chin was more pronounced than usual. + +Babe put her head on one side. "Oh, say, Sheila, why bother about Dickie. +Nobody cares about Dickie. He'll get a proper bawlin'-out from Poppa +to-morrow. But I'd think myself simple to be scared by him. He's +harmless. The poor kid can't half help himself now. He got started when +he was awful young." + +"Oh," said Sheila, as sharply as before, stopping before Babe, "I'm not +frightened. I'm angry--angry at myself. I _like_ Dickie. I like him!" + +Babe's lips fell apart. She sat down in the accordion-plaited chair and +rocked. A squealing, shaking noise accompanied the motion. Her fingers +sought and found against the chair-back a piece of chewing-gum which she +had stuck there during her last visit to Sheila. Babe hid and resurrected +chewing-gum as instinctively as a dog hides and resurrects his bones. + +"I can _see_ you likin' Dickie," she remarked ironically. + +"But I do, I tell you! He was sweet. He didn't say a word or do a thing +to frighten me--" + +"But he was full, Shee, you know he was." + +"Yes. He'd been drinking. I smelt it. And he didn't walk very straight, +and he was a little mixed in his speech. But, all the same, he was as +good as gold. And friendly and nice. I might have walked home quietly +with him and sent him away at the door. And he wouldn't have been seen by +his father." Sheila's eyes filled. "It was dreadful--to--to knock him +down the steps!" + +"Say, if you'd had as much to put up with from Dickie as Poppa's had--" + +"Oh," said Sheila in a tone that welled up as from under a weight, "if I +had always lived in Millings, I'd drink myself!" + +Babe looked red and resentful, but Sheila's voice rushed on. + +"That saloon is the only interesting and attractive place in town. The +only thrilling people that ever come here go in through those doors. I've +seen some wonderful-looking men. I'd like to paint them. I've made some +drawings of them--men from over there back of the mountains." + +"You mean the cowboys from over The Hill, I guess," drawled Babe +contemptuously. "Those sagebrush fellows from Hidden Creek. I don't think +a whole lot of them. Put one of them alongside of one of our town boys! +Why, they don't speak good, Sheila, and they're rough as a hill trail. +You'd be scared to death of them if you knew them better." + +"They look like real men to me," said Sheila. "And I never did +like towns." + +"But you're a town girl." + +"I am not. I've been in cities and I've been in the country. I've never +lived in a town." + +"Well, there'll be a dance one of these days next summer in the Town +Hall, and maybe you'll meet some of those rough-necks. You'll change your +mind about them. Why, I'd sooner dance with a sheep-herder from beyond +the bad-lands, or with one of the hands from the oil-fields, than with +those Hidden Creek fellows. Horse-thieves and hold-ups and Lord knows +what-all they are. No account runaways. Nothing solid or respectable +about them. Take a boy like Robert, now, or Jim--" + +Sheila put her hands to her ears. Her face, between the hands, looked +rather wicked in a sprite-like fashion. + +"Don't mention to me Mr. James Greely of the Millings National Bank!" + +Babe rose pompously. "I think you're kind of off your bat to-night, +Sheila Arundel," she said, chewing noisily. "First you run out at night +with the mercury at 4 below and come dashing back scared to death, +banging at the door, and then you tell me you like Dickie and ask me not +to mention the finest fellow in Millings!" + +"The finest fellow in the finest city in the world!" cried Sheila and +laughed. Her laugh was like a torrent of silver coins, but it had the +right maliceful ring of a brownie's "Ho! Ho! Ho!" + +Babe stopped in the doorway and spoke heavily. + +"You're short on sense, Sheila," she said. "You're kind of dippy ... +going out to look at the stars and drawing pictures of that Hidden Creek +trash. But you'll learn better, maybe." + +"Wait a minute, Babe!" Sheila was sober again and not unpenitent. "I'm +coming down with you. I want to tell your father that Dickie was sweet to +me. I don't want him to--to--what was it he was going to do to-morrow?" + +"Bawl Dickie out." + +"Yes. I don't want him to do that. It sounds awful." + +"Well, it is. But it won't hurt Dickie any. He's used to it." + +Babe, forgiving and demonstrative, here forgot the insult to Millings and +Jim Greely, put her arm round Sheila, and went down the stairs, squeezing +the smaller girl against the wall. + +"I guess I won't go with you to see Poppa," she said, stopping at the top +of the last flight. "Poppa's kind of a rough talker sometimes." + +Sheila looked rather alarmed. "You mean you think he--he will bawl me +out?" + +"I wouldn't wonder." Babe smiled, showing a lump of putty-colored +chewing-gum between her flashing teeth. + +Sheila stood halfway down the stairs. She had not yet quite admitted to +herself that she was afraid of Sylvester Hudson and now she did admit it. +But with a forlorn memory of Dickie, she braced herself and went slowly +down the six remaining steps. The parlor door was shut and back of it to +and fro prowled Sylvester. Sheila opened the door. + +Hudson's face, ready with a scowl, changed. He came quickly toward her. + +"Well, say, Miss Sheila, I am sure-ly sorry--" + +Sheila shook her head. "Not half so sorry as I am, Mr. Hudson. I came +down to apologize." + +He pulled out a chair and Sheila sat down. Sylvester placed himself +opposite to her and lighted a huge black cigar, watching her meanwhile +curiously, even anxiously. His face was as quiet and sallow and gentle as +usual. Sheila's fear subsided. + +"_You_ came down to apologize?" repeated Hudson. "Well, ma'am, that +sounds kind of upside down to me." + +"I behaved like a goose. Your son hadn't done or said anything to +frighten me. He was sweet. I like him so much. He was coming home and saw +me walking off alone, and he thought that I might be lonely or frightened +or fall into the snow--which I did"--Sheila smiled coaxingly; "I went +down up to my neck and Dickie pulled me out and was--lovely to me. It +wasn't till I was halfway down the hill that I--that it came to me, all +of a sudden, that--perhaps--he'd been drinking--" + +"Perhaps," said Sylvester dryly. "It's never perhaps with Dickie." + +Sheila's eyes filled. For a seventeen-year-old girl the situation was +difficult. It was not easy to discuss Dickie's habit with his father. + +"I am so--sorry," she faltered. "I behaved absurdly. Just because I saw +that he wasn't quite himself I ran away from him and made a scene. Truly, +Mr. Hudson, he had not said or done anything the least bit horrid. He'd +been sensible and nice and friendly--Oh, dear!" For she saw before her a +relentless and incredulous face. "You won't believe me now, I suppose!" + +"I can't altogether, Miss Sheila, for I reckon you wouldn't have run away +from a true-blue, friendly fellow, would you?" + +"Yes, Mr. Hudson, I would. Because, you see, I did. It was just a sort of +panic. Too much moonshine." + +"Yes, ma'am. Too much moonshine inside of Dickie. I hope"--he leaned +toward her, and Sheila, the child, could not help but be flattered by his +deference--"I hope you're not thinking that Dickie's unfortunate habit is +my fault. I'm his father and I own that saloon. But, all the same, it's +not my fault nor The Aura's fault either. I never did spoil Dickie. And +I'm a sober man myself. He's just naturally ornery, no account. He always +was. I believe he's kind of lacking in the upper story." + +"Oh, _no_, Mr. Hudson!" + +The protest was so emphatic that Sylvester pulled his cigar out of his +mouth, brushed away the smoke, and looked searchingly at Sheila. She was +sitting very straight. Against the crimson plush of an enormous +chair-back her small figure looked extravagantly delicate and her little +pointed fingers on the arms, startlingly white and fine. A color flamed +in her cheeks, her eyes and lips were possessed by the remorseful +earnestness of her appeal. + +"Well, say, if _you_ think not!" Sylvester narrowed his eyes and thrust +the cigar back into a hole made by his mouth for its reception; "you're +the first person that hasn't kind of agreed with me on that point. I +can't see why he took to the whiskey, anyway. Moderation's my motto and +always was. It's the motto of The Aura. There ain't a bar east nor west +of the Rockies, Miss Sheila, believe _me_, that has the reputation for +decency and moderation that my Aura has. She's classy, she's +stylish--well, sir--she's exquisite"--he pronounced it ex-_squis_it--"I +don't mind sayin' so. She's a saloon in a million. And she's famous. You +can hear talk of The Aura in the best clubs, the most se-lect bars of +Chicago and Noo York and San Francisco. She's mighty near perfect. Well, +say, there was an Englishman in there one night two summers ago. He was +some Englishman, too, an earl, that was him. Been all over the world, +east, west, and in between. Had a glass in his eye--one of those fellers. +Do you know what he told me, Miss Sheila? Can you guess?" + +"That The Aura was classy?" suggested Sheila bravely. + +"More'n that," Sylvester leaned farther toward her and emphasized his +words with the long forefinger. + +"'It's all but perfect'--that's what he said--'it only needs one thing to +make it quite perfect!'" + +"What was the thing?" + +But Hudson did not heed her question. "Believe me or not, Miss Sheila, +that saloon--" + +"But I do believe you," said Sheila with her enchanting smile. "And +that's just the trouble with Dickie, isn't it? Your saloon is--must +be--the most fascinating place in Millings. Why, Mr. Hudson, ever since I +came here, I've been longing to go into it myself!" + +She got up after this speech and went to stand near the stove. Not that +she was cold--the small room, which looked even smaller on account of its +huge flaming furniture and the enormous roses on its carpet and +wall-paper, was as hot as a furnace--but because she was abashed by her +own speech and by his curious reception of it. The dark blood of his body +had risen to his face; he had opened his eyes wide upon her, had sunk +back again and begun to smoke with short, excited puffs. + +Sheila thought that he was shocked and she was very close to tears. She +blinked at the stove and moved her fingers uncertainly. "Nice girls," she +thought, "never want to go into saloons!" + +Then Sylvester spoke. "You're a girl in a million, Miss Sheila!" he +said. His voice was more cracked than usual. Sheila transferred her +blinking, almost tearful look from the stove to him. "You're a heap too +good for dish-washing," said Sylvester. + +For some reason the girl's heart began to beat unevenly. She had a +feeling of excitement and suspense. It was as if, after walking for many +hours through a wood where there was a lurking presence of danger, she +had heard a nearing step. She kept her eyes upon Sylvester. In his there +was that mysterious look of appraisal, of vision. He seemed nervous, +rolled his cigar and moved his feet. + +"Are you satisfied with your work, Miss Sheila?" + +Sheila assembled her courage. "I know you'll think me a beast, Mr. +Hudson, after all your kindness--and it isn't that I don't like the work. +But I've a feeling--no, it's more than a feeling!--I _know_ that your +wife doesn't need me. And I know she doesn't want me. She doesn't like to +have me here. I've been unhappy about that ever since I came. And it's +been getting worse. Yesterday she said she couldn't bear to have me +whistling round her kitchen. Mr. Hudson"--Sheila's voice broke +childishly--"I can't help whistling. It's a habit. I couldn't work at all +if I didn't whistle. I wouldn't have told you, but since you asked me--" + +Sylvester held up his long hand. Its emerald glittered. + +"That's all right," he said. "I wanted to learn the truth about it. +Perhaps you've noticed, Miss Sheila, that I'm not a very happy man at +home." + +"You mean--?" + +"I mean," said Sylvester heavily--"_Momma_." + +Sheila overcame a horrible inclination to laugh. + +"I'm so sorry," she said uncertainly. She was acutely embarrassed, but +did not know how to escape. And she _was_ sorry for him, for certainly it +seemed to her that a man married to Momma had just cause for unhappiness. + +"I ought to be ashamed of myself for bringing you here, Miss Sheila. You +see, that's me. I'm so all-fired soft-hearted that I just don't think. +I'm all feelings. My heart's stronger than my head, as the palmists say." +He rose and came over to Sheila; standing beside her and smiling so that +the wrinkle stood out sharply across his unwilling lip. "Did you ever go +to one of those fellows?" he asked. + +"Palmists?" + +"Yes, ma'am. Well, now, say, did they ever tell you that you were +going to be the pride and joy of old Pap Hudson? Give me your little +paw, girl!" + +Sheila's hand obeyed rather unwillingly her irresolute, polite will. +Hudson's came quickly to meet it, spread it out flat in his own long +palm, and examined the small rigid surface. + +"Well, now, Miss Sheila, I can read something there." + +"What can you read?" + +"You're goin' to be famous. You're goin' to make Millings famous. Girl, +you're goin' to be a picture that will live in the hearts of fellows and +keep 'em warm when they're herding winter nights. The thought of you is +goin' to keep 'em straight and pull 'em back here. You 're goin' to be +a--a sort of a beacon light." + +He was holding her slim hand with its small, crushable bones in an +excited grip. He was bending forward, not looking at the palm, but at +her. Sheila pulled back, wincing a little. + +"What do you mean, Mr. Hudson? How could I be all that?" + +Sylvester let her go. He began to pace the room. He stopped and looked at +her, almost wistfully. + +"You really think that I've been kind of nice to you?" he asked. + +"Indeed, you have!" + +"I'm not a happy man and I've got to be sort of distrustful. I haven't +got much faith in the thankfulness of people. I've got fooled too often." + +"Try me," said Sheila quickly. + +He looked at her with a long and searching look. Then he sighed. + +"Some day maybe I will. Run away to bed now." + +Sheila felt as if she had been pushed away from a half-opened door. +She drew herself up and walked across the huge flowers of the carpet. +But before going out she turned back. Sylvester quickly banished a +sly smile. + +"You won't be angry with Dickie?" she asked. + +"Not if it's going to deal you any misery, little girl." + +"You're _very_ kind to me." + +He put up his hand. "That's all right, Miss Sheila," he said. "That's all +right. It's a real pleasure and comfort to me to have you here and I'll +try to shape things so they'll suit you--and Momma too. Trust _me_. But +don't you ask me to put any faith in Dickie's upper story. I've climbed +up there too often. I'll give up my plan to go round there to-morrow +and--" He paused grimly. + +"And bawl him out?" suggested Sheila with one of her Puckish impulses. + +"Hump! I was going a little further than that. He would likely have done +the bawlin'. But don't you worry yourself about Dickie. He's safe for +this time--so long's you don't blame me, or--The Aura." + +His voice on the last word suffered from one of its cracks. It was as +though it had broken under a load of pride and tenderness. + +Sheila saw for a moment how it was with him. To every man his passion and +his dream: to Sylvester Hudson, his Aura. More than wife or child, he +loved his bar. It was a fetish, an idol. To Sheila's fancy Dickie +suddenly appeared the sacrifice. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE BAWLING-OUT + + +Dickie's room in The Aura Hotel was fitted in between the Men's Lavatory +and the Linen Room. It smelt of soiled linen and defective plumbing. +Also, into its single narrow window rose the dust of ashes, of old rags +and other refuse thrown light-heartedly into the back yard, which not +being visible from the street supplied the typical housewife of a +frontier town with that relaxation from any necessity to keep up an +appearance of economy and cleanliness so desirable to her liberty-loving +soul. The housekeeper at The Aura was not Mrs. Hudson, but an enormously +stout young woman with blonde hair, named Amelia Plecks. She was so +tightly laced and booted that her hard breathing and creaking were +audible all over the hotel. When Dickie woke in his narrow room after his +moonlight adventure, he heard this heavy breathing in the linen room and, +groaning, thrust his head under the pillow. With whatever bitterness his +kindly heart could entertain, he loathed Amelia. She took advantage of +the favor of Sylvester and of her own exalted position in the hotel to +taunt and to humiliate him. His plunge under the pillow did not escape +her notice. + +"Ain't you up yet, lazybones?" she cried, rapping on the wall. "You +won't get no breakfast. It's half-past seven. Who's at the desk to see +them Duluth folks off? Pap's not going to be pleased with you." + +"I don't want any breakfast," muttered Dickie. + +Amelia laughed. "No. I'll be bound you don't. Tongue like a kitten and a +head like a cracked stove!" + +She slapped down some clean sheets on a shelf and creaked toward the +hall, but stopped at the open door. Sylvester Hudson was coming down the +passage and she was in no mind to miss the "bawling-out" of Dickie which +this visit must portend. She shut the linen-room door softly, therefore, +and controlled her breathing. + +But Dickie knew that she was there and, when his father rapped, he knew +why she was there. + +He tumbled wretchedly from his bed, swore at his injured ankle, hopped to +the door, unlocked it, and hopped back with panic swiftness before his +father's entrance. He sat in his crumpled pajamas amidst his crumpled, +dingy bedclothes, his hair scattered over his forehead, his large, heavy +eyes fixed anxiously upon Sylvester. + +"Say, Poppa--" he began. + +Then "Pap's" voice cracked out at him. + +"You hold your tongue," snapped Sylvester, "or you'll get what's comin' +to you!" He jerked Dickie's single chair from against the wall, threw the +clothing from it, and sat down, crossing his legs, and holding up at his +son the long finger that had frightened Sheila. Dickie blinked at it. + +"You know what I was plannin' to do to you after last night? I meant to +come round here and pull you out of your covers and onto the floor +there"--he pointed to a spot on the boards to which Dickie fearfully +directed his own eyes--"and kick the stuffin' out of you." Dickie +contemplated the long, pointed russet shoes of his parent and shuddered +visibly. Nevertheless in the slow look he lifted from the boot to his +father's face, there was a faint gleam of irony. + +"What made you change your mind?" he asked impersonally. + +It was this curious detachment of Dickie's, this imperturbability, that +most infuriated Hudson. He flushed. + +"Just a little sass from you will bring me back to the idea," he +said sharply. + +Dickie lowered his eyes. + +"What made me change was--Miss Arundel's kindness. She came and begged +you off. She said you hadn't done anything or said anything to frighten +her, that you'd been"--Sylvester drawled out the two words in the +sing-song of Western mockery--"'sweet and love-ly.'" + +Dickie's face was pink. He began to tie a knot in the corner of one of +his thin gray sheet-blankets. + +"I don't know how sweet and lovely you can be, Dickie, when you're lit +up, but I guess you were awful sweet. Anyway, if you didn't say anything +or do anything to scare her, you don't deserve a kickin'. But, just the +same, I've a mind to turn you out of Millings." + +This time, Dickie's look was not ironical. It was terrified. "Oh, Poppa, +say! I'll try not to do it again." + +"I never heard that before, did I?" sneered Sylvester. "You put shame on +me and my bar. And I'm not goin' to stand it. If you want to get drunk +buy a bottle and come up here in your room. God damn you! You're a nice +son for the owner of The Aura!" + +He stood up and looked with frank disgust at the thin, huddled figure. +Under this look, Dickie grew slowly redder and his eyes watered. + +Sylvester lifted his upper lip. "Faugh!" he said. He walked over to the +door. "Get up and go down to your job and don't you bother Miss +Sheila--hear me? Keep away from her. She's not used to your sort and +you'll disgust her. She's here under my protection and I've got my plans +for her. I'm her guardian--that's what I am." Sylvester was pleased like +a man that has made a discovery. "Her guardian," he repeated as though +the word had a fine taste. + +Dickie watched him. There was no expression whatever in his face and his +lips stood vacantly apart. He might have been seven years old. + +"Keep away from her--hear me?" + +"Yes, sir," said Dickie meekly. + +After his father had gone out, Dickie sat for an instant with his head +on one side, listening intently. Then he got up, limped quietly and +quickly on his bare feet out into the hall, and locked the linen-room +door on the outside. + +"Amelia's clean forgot to lock it," he said aloud. "Ain't she careless, +though, this morning!" + +He went back. There was certainly a sound now behind the partition, a +sound of hard breathing that could no longer be controlled. + +"I'll hand the key over to Mary," soliloquized Dickie in the hollow and +unnatural voice of stage confidences. "She'll be goin' in for the towels +about noon." + +Then he fell on his bed and smothered a fit of chuckling. + +Suddenly the mirth died out of him. He lay still, conscious of a pain in +his head and in his ankle and somewhere else--an indeterminate spot deep +in his being. He had been forbidden to see the girl who ran away out into +the night to look at the stars, the girl who had not laughed at his +attempt to describe the white ecstasy of the winter moon. He had +frightened her--disgusted her. He must have been more drunk than he +imagined. It _was_ disgusting--and so hopeless. Perhaps it would be +better to leave Millings. + +He sat up on the edge of his bed and let his hands hang limply down +between his knees. It seemed to him that his thoughts were like a wheel, +half-submerged in running water. The wheel went round rapidly, plunging +in and out of his consciousness. Hardly had he grasped the meaning of one +half when it went under and another blur of moving spokes emerged. +Something his father had said, for instance, now began to pass through +his mind.... "I've got my plans for her".... Dickie tried to stop the +turning wheel because this speech gave him a distinct feeling of anger +and alarm. By an effort of his will, he held it before his +contemplation.... What possible plans could Sylvester have for Sheila? +Did she understand his plans? Did she approve of them? She was so young +and small, with that sad, soft mouth and those shining, misty eyes. +Dickie, with almost a paternal air, shook his ruffled head. He shut his +eyes so that the long lashes stood out in little points. A vision of +those two faces--Sheila's so gleaming fair and open, Sylvester's so dark +and shut--stood there to be compared. Her guardian, indeed! + +Dickie dressed slowly and dragged himself down to the desk, where very +soberly and sadly he gave the key of the linen room to Mary. Then he sat +down, turned on the Victor, and lit a cigarette. The "Duluth folks" had +gone without any assistance from him. There was nothing to do. It +occurred to Dickie, all at once, that in Millings there was always +nothing to do. Nothing, that is, for him to do. Perhaps, after all, he +didn't like Millings. Perhaps that was what was wrong with him. + +The Victor was playing: + +"Here comes Tootsie, +Play a little music on the band. +Here comes Tootsie, +Tootsie, you are looking simply grand. +Play a little tune on the piccolo and flutes, +The man who wrote the rag wrote it especially for Toots. +Here comes Tootsie--play a little music on the band." + +On the last nasal note, the door of The Aura flew open and a resplendent +figure crossed the chocolate-colored varnish of the floor. Tootsie +herself was not more "simply grand." This was a young man, perhaps it +would be more descriptive to say _the_ young man that accompanies _the_ +young woman on the cover of the average American magazine. He had--a +nose, a chin, a beautiful mouth, large brown eyes, wavy chestnut hair, a +ruddy complexion, and, what is not always given to the young man on the +cover, a deep and generous dimple in the ruddiest part of his right +cheek. He was dressed in the latest suit produced by Schaffner and Marx; +he wore a tie of variegated silk which, like Browning's star, "dartled" +now red, now blue. The silk handkerchief, which protruded carefully from +his breast pocket, also "dartled." So did the socks. One felt that the +heart of this young man matched his tie and socks. It was resplendent +with the vanity and hopefulness and illusions of twenty-two years. + +The large, dingy, chocolate-colored lobby became suddenly a background to +Mr. James Greely, cashier of the Millings National Bank, and the only +child of its president. + +Upon the ruffled and rumpled Dickie he smiled pleasantly, made a curious +gesture with his hand--they both belonged to the Knights of Sagittarius +and the Fire Brigade--and came to lean upon the desk. + +"Holiday at the bank this morning," he said, "in honor of Dad's +wedding-anniversary. We're giving a dance to-night in the Hall. Want to +come, Dickie?" + +"No," said Dickie, "I hurt my ankle last night on the icy pavement. And +anyhow I can't dance. And I sort of find girls kind of tiresome." + +"That's too bad. I'm sure sorry for you, Hudson. Particularly as I came +here just for the purpose of handing you over the cutest little billy-doo +you ever saw." + +He drew out of his pocket an envelope and held it away from Dickie. + +"You're trying to job me, Jim,"--but Dickie had his head coaxingly on one +side and his face was pink. + +"I'll give it to you if you can guess the sender." + +"Babe?" + +"Wrong." + +"Girlie?" + +"Well, sir, it ain't Girlie's fist--not the fist she uses when she drops +_me_ billy-doos." + +Dickie's eyes fell. He turned aside in his chair and stopped the +grinding of the graphophone. He made no further guess. Jim, with his +dimple deepening, tossed the small paper into the air and caught it +again deftly. + +"It's from the young lady from Noo York who's helping Mrs. Hudson," he +said. "I guess she's kind of wishful for a beau. She's not much of a +looker Girlie tells me." + +"Haven't you met her yet, Jim?" Dickie's hands were in his pockets, but +his eyes followed the gyrations of the paper. + +"No. Ain't that a funny thing, too? Seems like I never get round to it. I +just saw her peeping at me one day through the parlor curtains while I +was saying sweet nothings to Girlie on the porch. I guess she was kind of +in-ter-ested. She's skinny and pale, Girlie says. Your mother hasn't got +any use for her. I bet you, it won't be long before she makes tracks back +to Noo York, Dickie. Girlie says she won't be lingering on here much +longer. Too much competition." + +Jim handed the note to Dickie, who had listened to this speech with his +seven-year-old expression. He made no comment, but silently unfolded +Sheila's note. + +The writing itself was like her, slender and fine and straight, a little +reckless, daintily desperate. That "I," now, on the white paper might be +Sheila skimming across the snow. + +"_My dear Dickie_--somehow I can't call you 'Mr. Hudson'--I am so +terribly sorry about the way I acted to you last night. I don't know +why I was so foolish. I have tried to explain to your father that you +did nothing and said nothing to frighten me, that you were very polite +and kind, but I am afraid he doesn't quite understand. I hope he won't +be very cross with you, because it was all my fault--no, not quite all, +because I think you oughtn't to have followed me. I'm sure you're sorry +that you did. But it was a great deal my fault, so I'm writing this to +tell you that I wasn't really frightened nor very angry. Just sorry and +disappointed. Because I thought you were so very nice. And not like +Millings. And you liked the mountains better than the town. I wanted--I +still want--you to be my friend. For I do need a friend here, +dreadfully. Will you come to see me some afternoon? I hope you didn't +hurt yourself when you slipped on those icy steps. + +"Sincerely SHEILA ARUNDEL" + +Dickie put the note into his pocket and looked unseeingly at Jim. Jim was +turning up the bottoms of his trousers preparing to go. + +"So you won't come to our dance?" he asked straightening himself, more +ruddy than ever. + +"Well, sir," said Dickie slowly and indifferently, "I wouldn't wonder +if I would." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +DISH-WASHING + + +On that night, while all Millings was preparing itself for the Greelys' +dance, while Dickie, bent close to his cracked mirror, was tying his +least crumpled tie with not too steady fingers, while Jim was applying to +his brown crest a pomade sent to him by a girl in Cheyenne, while Babe +was wondering anxiously whether green slippers could be considered a +match or a foil to a dress of turquoise blue, while Girlie touched her +cream-gold hair with cream-padded finger-tips, Sheila Arundel prowled +about her room with hot anger and cold fear in her heart. + +Nothing, perhaps, in all this mysterious world is so inscrutable a +mystery as the mind of early youth. It crawls, the beetle creature, in a +hard shell, hiding the dim, inner struggle of its growing wings, moving +numbly as if in a torpid dream. It has forgotten the lively grub stage of +childhood, and it cannot foresee the dragon-fly adventure just ahead. +This blind, dumb, numb, imprisoned thing, an irritation to the nerves of +every one who has to deal with it, suffers. First it suffers darkly and +dimly the pain growth, and then it suffers the sharp agony of a splitting +shell, the dazzling wounds of light, the torture of first moving its +feeble wings. It drags itself from its shell, it clings to its perch, it +finds itself born anew into the world. + +When Sheila had left the studio with Sylvester, she was not yet possessed +of wings. Now, the shell was cracking, the dragon-fly adventure about to +begin. To a changed world, changed stars--the heavens above and the earth +beneath were strange to her that night. + +It had begun, this first piercing contact of reality, rudely enough. Mrs. +Hudson had helped to split the protecting shell which had saved Sheila's +growing dreams. Perhaps "Momma" had her instructions, perhaps it was only +her own disposition left by her knowing husband to do his trick for him. +Sheila had not overstated the unhappiness that Mrs. Hudson's evident +dislike had caused her. In fact, she had greatly understated it. From the +first moment at the station, when the hard eyes had looked her over and +the harsh voice had asked about "the girl's trunk," Sheila's +sensitiveness had begun to suffer. It was not easy, even with Babe's +good-humored help, to go down into the kitchen and submit to Mrs. +Hudson's hectoring. "Momma" had all the insolence of the underdog. Of her +daughters, as of her husband, she was very much afraid. They all bullied +her, Babe with noisy, cheerful effrontery--"sass" Sylvester called +it--and Girlie with a soft, unyielding tyranny that had the smothering +pressure of a large silk pillow. Girlie was tall and serious and +beautiful, the proud possessor of what Millings called "a perfect form." +She was inexpressibly slow and untidy, vain and ignorant and +self-absorbed. At this time her whole being was centered upon the +attentions of Jim Greely, with whom she was "keeping company." With Jim +Greely in her mind, she had looked Sheila over, thin and weary Sheila in +her shabby black dress, and had decided that here no danger threatened. +Nevertheless she did not take chances. Sheila had been in Millings a +fortnight and had not met the admirable Jim. Her attempt that morning to +send the note to Dickie by Jim was exactly the action that led to the +painful splitting of her shell. + +She had seen from her window Sylvester's departure after breakfast. There +was something in his grim, angular figure, moving carefully over the icy +pavement in the direction of the hotel, that gave her a pang for Dickie. +She was sure that Hudson was going to be very disagreeable in spite of +her attempt to soften his anger. And she was sorry that Dickie, with his +odd, wistful, friendly face and his eyes so wide and youthful and +apologetic for their visions, should think that she was angry or +disgusted. She wrote her letter in a little glow of rescue, and was proud +of the tact of that reference to his "fall down the steps"--for she +reasoned that the self-esteem of any boy of nineteen must suffer +poignantly over the memory of being knocked down by his father before the +eyes of a strange girl. She wrote her note and ran down the stairs, then +stopped to wonder how she could get it promptly to Dickie. It was +intended as a poultice to be applied after the "bawling-out," and she +could not very well take it to him herself. She knew that he worked in +the hotel, and the hotel was just around the corner. All that was needed +was a messenger. + +She was standing, pink of cheek and vague of eye, fingering her apron +like a cottage child and nibbling at the corner of her envelope, the +light from a window on the stairs falling on the jewel-like polish of her +hair, when Girlie opened the door of the "parlor" and came out into the +hall. Girlie saw her and half-closed the door. Her lazy eyes, as +reflective and receptive and inexpressive as small meadow pools under a +summer sky, rested upon Sheila. In the parlor a pleasant baritone voice +was singing, + +"Treat me nice, Miss Mandy Jane, + Treat me nice. + Don't you know I'se not to blame, + Lovers all act just the same, + Treat me nice..." + +Girlie's fingers tightened on the doorknob. + +"What do you want, Sheila?" she asked, and into the slow, gentle tones of +her voice something had crept, something sinuous and subtle, something +that slid into the world with Lilith for the eternal torment of earth's +daughters. + +"I want to send this note to your brother," said Sheila with the +simplicity of the aristocrat. "Is that Mr. Greely? Is he going past +the hotel?" + +She took a step toward Jim, but Girlie held out her soft long hand. + +"Give it to me. I'll ask him." + +Sheila surrendered the note. + +"You'd better get back to the dishes," said Girlie over her shoulder. +"Momma's kind of rushed this morning. She's helping Babe with her party +dress. I wouldn't 'a' put in my time writing notes to Dickie to-day if +I'd 'a' been you. Sort of risky." + +She slid in through the jealous door and Sheila hurried along the hall to +the kitchen where there was an angry clash and clack of crockery. + +The kitchen was furnished almost entirely with blue-flowered oilcloth; +the tables were covered with it, the floor was covered with it, the +shelves were draped in it. Cold struck up through the shining, clammy +surface underfoot so that while Sheila's face burned from the heat of the +stove her feet were icy. The back door was warped and let in a current of +frosty air over its sill, a draught that circled her ankles like cold +metal. On the table in the middle of the room, "Momma" had placed an +enormous tin dish-pan piled high with dirty dishes, over which she was +pouring the contents of the kettle. Steam rose in clouds, half-veiling +her big, fierce face which, seen through holes in the vapor, was like +that of a handsome, vulgar witch. + +Through the steam she shot at Sheila a cruel look. "Aren't you planning +to do any work to-day, Sheila?" she asked in her voice of harsh, +monotonous accents. "Here it's nine o'clock and I ain't been able to do a +stroke to Babe's dress. I dunno what you was designed for in this +house--an ornament on the parlor mantel, I guess." + +Sheila's heart suffered one of the terrible swift enlargements of angry +youth. It seemed to fill her chest and stop her breath, forcing water +into her eyes. She could not speak, went quickly up and took the kettle +from "Momma's" red hand. + +The table at which dish-washing was done, was inconveniently high. When +the big dishpan with its piled dishes topped it, Sheila's arms and back +were strained over her work. She usually pulled up a box on which she +stood, but now she went to work blindly, her teeth clenched, her flexible +red lips set close to cover them. The Celtic fire of her Irish blood gave +her eyes a sort of phosphorescent glitter. "Momma" looked at her. + +"Don't show temper!" she said. "What were you doin'? Upstairs work?" + +"I was writing a letter," said Sheila in a low voice, beginning to wash +the plates and shrinking at the pain of scalding water. + +"Hmp! Writing letters at this hour! One of your friends back East? I +thought it was about time somebody was looking you up. What do your +acquaintance think of you comin' West with Sylly?" + +Now that she was at liberty to put a "stroke" of work; on Babe's dress, +"Momma" seemed in no particular hurry to do so. She stood in the middle +of the kitchen wrapping her great bony arms in her checked apron and +staring at Sheila. Her eyes were like Girlie's turned to stone, as blank +and blind as living eyes can be. + +Sheila did not answer. She was white and her hands shook. + +"Hmp!" said "Momma" again. "We aren't goin' to talk about our +acquaintance, are we? Well, some folks' acquaintance don't bear talkin' +about; they're either too fine or they ain't the kind that gets into +decent conversation." She walked away. + +Sheila did her work, holding her anger and her misery away from her, +refusing to look at them, to analyze their cause. It was a very busy day. +The help Babe usually gave, and "Momma's" more effectual assistance, were +not to be had. Sheila cleaned up the kitchen, swept the dining-room, set +the table and cooked the supper. Her exquisite French omelette and savory +baked tomatoes were reviled. The West knows no cooking but its own, and, +like all victims of uneducated taste, it prefers the familiar bad to the +unfamiliar good. + +"You've spoiled a whole can of tomatoes," said Babe. + +Sylvester laughed good-humoredly: "Oh, well, Miss Sheila, you'll learn!" +This, to Sheila, whose omelette had been taught her by Mimi Lolotte and +whose baked tomatoes, delicately flavored with onion, were something to +dream about. And she had toasted the bread golden brown and buttered it, +and she had made a delectable vegetable soup! She had never before been +asked to cook a meal at Number 18 Cottonwood Avenue and she was eager to +please Sylvester. His comment, "You'll learn," fairly took her breath. +She would not sit down with them at the table, but hurried back into the +kitchen, put her scorched cheek against some cold linoleum, and cried. + +By the time dinner was over and more dishes ready to be washed, the +cook's wounded pride was under control. Her few tears had left no +marks on her face. Babe, helping her, did not even know that there had +been a shower. + +Babe was excited; her chewing was more energetic even than usual. It +smacked audibly. + +"Say, Sheila, wot'll you wear to-night?" she yelled above the clatter. + +"Wear?" repeated Sheila. + +"To the dance, you silly! What did you think I meant--to bed?" + +Sheila's tired pallor deepened a little. "I am not going to the dance." + +"Not going?" Babe put down a plate. "What do you mean? Of course you're +going! You've gotta go. Say--Momma, Pap, Girlie"--she ran, at a sort of +sliding gallop across the oilcloth through the swinging door into the +dining-room--"will you listen to this? Sheila says she's not going to +the dance!" + +"Well," said "Momma" audibly, "she'd better. I'm agoin' to put out the +fires, and the house'll be about 12 below." + +Sylvester murmured, "Oh, we must change that." + +And Girlie said nothing. + +"Well," vociferated Babe. "I call it too mean for words. I've just set my +heart on her meeting some of the folks and getting to know Millings. +She's been here a whole two weeks and she hasn't met a single fellow but +Dickie, and he don't count, and she hasn't even got friendly with any of +the girls. And I wanted her to see one of our real swell affairs. +Why--just for the credit of Millings, she's gotta go." + +"Why fuss her about it, if she don't want to?" Girlie's soft voice was +poured like oil on the troubled billows of Babe's outburst. + +"I'll see to her," Sylvester's chair scraped the floor as he rose. "I +know how to manage girls. Trust Poppa!" + +He pushed through the door, followed by Babe. Sheila looked up at him +helplessly. She had her box under her feet, and so was not entirely +hidden by the dishpan. She drew up her head and faced him. + +"Mr. Hudson," she began--"please! I can't go to a dance. You know +I can't--" + +"Nonsense!" said Pap. "In the bright lexicon of youth there's no such +word as 'can't.' Say, girl, you can and you must. I won't have Babe +crying her eyes out and myself the most unpopular man in Millings. Say, +leave your dishes and go up and put on your best duds." + +"That's talking," commented Babe. + +In the dining-room "Momma" said, "Hmp!" and Girlie was silent. + +Sheila looked at her protector. "But, you see, Mr. Hudson, I--I--it was +only a month ago--" She made a gesture with her hands to show him her +black dress, and her lips trembled. + +Pap walked round to her and patted her shoulder. "I know," he said. "I +savvy. I get you, little girl. But, say, it won't do. You've got to begin +to live again and brighten up. You're only seventeen and that's no age +for mourning, no, nor moping. You must learn to forget, at least, that +is"--for he saw the horrified pain of her eyes--"that is, to be happy +again. Yes'm. Happiness--that's got to be your middle name. Now, Miss +Sheila, as a favor to me!" + +Sheila put up both her hands and pushed his from her shoulder. She ran +from him past Babe into the dining-room, where, as she would have sped +by, "Momma" caught her by the arm. + +"If you're not aimin' to please _him_," said "Momma" harshly, "wot are +you here for?" + +Sheila looked at her unseeingly, pulled herself away, and went upstairs +on wings. In her room the tumult, held down all through the ugly, +cluttered, drudging day, broke out and had its violent course. She flew +about the room or tossed on the bed, sobbing and whispering to herself. +Her wound bled freely for the first time since it had been given her by +death. She called to her father, and her heart writhed in the grim +talons of its loneliness. That was her first agony and then came the +lesser stings of "Momma's" insults, and at last, a fear. An +incomprehensible fear. She began to doubt the wisdom of her Western +venture. She began to be terrified at her situation. All about her lay a +frozen world, a wilderness, so many thousand miles from anything that +she and her father had ever known. And in her pocket there was no penny +for rescue or escape. Over her life brooded powerfully Sylvester Hudson, +with his sallow face and gentle, contemplative eyes. He had brought her +to his home. Surely that was an honorable and generous deed. He had +given her over to the care and protection of his wife and daughters. But +why didn't Mrs. Hudson like it? Why did she tighten her lips and pull +her nostrils when she looked at her helper? And what was the sinister, +inner meaning of those two speeches ... about the purpose of her being +in the house at all? "An ornament on the parlor mantel" ... "aiming to +please him...." Of the existence of a sinister, inner meaning, "Momma's" +voice and look left no doubt. + +Something was wrong. Something was hideously wrong. And to whom might she +go for help or for advice? As though to answer her question came a +foot-step on the stair. It was a slow, not very heavy step. It came to +her door and there followed a sharp but gentle rap. + +"Who is it?" asked Sheila. And suddenly she felt very weak. + +"It's Pap. Open your door, girl." + +She hesitated. Her head seemed to go round. Then she obeyed his +gentle request. + +Pap walked into the room. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +ARTISTS + + +Pap closed the door carefully behind him before he looked at Sheila. At +once his face changed to one of deep concern. + +"Why, girl! What's happened to you? You got no call to feel like that!" + +He went over to her and took her limp hand. She half turned away. He +patted the hand. + +"Why, girl! This isn't very pleasant for me. I aimed to make you happy +when I brought you out to Millings. I kind of wanted to work myself into +your Poppa's place, kind of meant to make it up to you some way. I aimed +to give you a home. 'Home, sweet home, there's no place like home'--that +was my motto. And here you are, all pale around the gills and tears all +over your face--and, say, there's a regular pool there on your pillow. +Now, now--" he clicked with his tongue. "You're a bad girl, a regular +bad, ungrateful girl, hanged if you aren't! You know what I'd do to you +if you were as young as you are little and foolish? Smack you--good and +plenty. But I'm not agoin' to do it, no, ma'am. Don't pull your hand +away. Smacking's not in my line. I never smacked my own children in their +lives, except Dickie. There was no other way with him. He was ornery. +You come and set down here in the big chair and I'll pull up the little +one and we'll talk things over. Put your trust in me, Miss Sheila. I'm +all heart. I wasn't called 'Pap' for nothing. You know what I am? I'm +your guardian. Yes'm. And you just got to make up your mind to cast your +care upon me, as the hymn says. Nary worry must you keep to yourself. +Come on now, kid, out with it. Get it off your chest." + +Sheila had let him put her into the big creaking leather chair. She sat +with a handkerchief clenched in both her hands, upon which he, drawing up +the other chair, now placed one of his. She kept her head down, for she +was ashamed of the pale, stained, and distorted little face which she +could not yet control. + +"Now, then, girl ... Well, if you won't talk to me, I'll just light up +and wait. I'm a patient man, I am. Don't hurry yourself any." + +He withdrew his hand and took out a cigar. In a moment he was sitting on +the middle of his spine, his long legs sprawled half across the room, his +hands in his pockets, his head on the chair-back so that his chin pointed +up to the ceiling. Smoke rose from him as from a volcano. + +Sheila presently laughed uncertainly. + +"That's better," he mumbled around his cigar. + +"I've had a dreadful day," said Sheila. + +"You won't have any more of them, my dear," Sylvester promised quietly. + +She looked at him with faint hope. + +"Yes'm, dish-washing's dead." + +"But what can I do, then?" + +Hudson nodded his head slowly, or, rather, he sawed the air up and down +with his chin. He was still looking at the ceiling so that Sheila could +see only the triangle beneath his jaw and the dark, stringy neck above +his collar. + +"I've got a job for you, girl--a real one." + +He pulled out his cigar and sat up. "You remember what I told you the +other night?" + +"About my being a--a--beacon?" Sheila's voice was delicately tinged with +mockery. So was her doubtful smile. + +"Yes'm," he said seriously. "Well, that's it." + +"What does a beacon do?" she asked. + +"It burns. It shines. It looks bright. It wears the neatest little black +dress with a frilly apron and deep frilly cuffs. Say, do you recollect +something else I told you?" + +"I remember everything you told me." + +"Well, ma'am, I remember everything you told _me_. Somebody said she +was grateful. Somebody said she'd do anything for Pap. Somebody +said--'Try me.'" + +"I meant it, Mr. Hudson. I did mean it." + +"Do you mean it now?" + +"Yes. I--I owe you so much. You're always so very kind to me. And I +behave very badly. I was hateful to you this evening. And, when you came +to my door, just now, I was--I was _scared_." + +Pap opened his eyes at her, held his cigar away from him and laughed. +The laugh was both bitter and amused. + +"Scared of Pap Hudson? _You_ scared? But, look-a-here, girl, what've I +done to deserve that?" + +He sat forward, rested his chin in his hand, supported by an elbow on his +crossed knees and fixed her with gentle and reproachful eyes. + +"Honest, you kind of make me feel bad, Miss Sheila." + +"I am dreadfully sorry. It was horrid of me. I only told you because I +wanted you to know that I'm not worth helping. I don't deserve you to be +so kind to me. I--I must be disgustingly suspicious." + +"Well!" Sylvester sighed. "Very few folks get me. I'm kind of +mis-understood. I'm a real lonesome sort of man. But, honest, Miss +Sheila, I thought you were my friend. I don't mind telling you, you've +hurt my feelings. That shot kind of got me. It's stuck into me." + +"I'm horrid!" Sheila's eyes were wounded with remorse. + +"Oh, well, I'm not expecting understanding any more." + +"Oh, but I do--I do understand!" she said eagerly and she put her hand +shyly on his arm. "I think I do understand you. I'm very grateful. I'm +very fond of you." + +"Ah!" said Sylvester softly. "That's a good hearing!" He lifted his arm +with Sheila's hand on it and touched it with his lips. "You got me plumb +stirred up," he said with a certain huskiness. "Well!" She took away her +hand and he made a great show of returning to common sense. "I reckon we +are a pretty good pair of friends, after all. But you mustn't be scared +of me, Miss Sheila. That does hurt. Let's forget you told me that." + +"Yes--please!" + +"Well, then--to get back to business. Do you recollect a story I +told you?" + +"A story? Oh, yes--about an Englishman--?" + +"Yes, ma'am. That Englishman put his foot on the rail and stuck his glass +in his eye and set his tumbler down empty. And he looked round that bar +of mine, Miss Sheila. You savvy, he'd been all over the globe, that +feller, and I should say his ex-perience of bars was--some--and he said, +'Hudson, it's all but perfect. It only needs one thing.'" + +This time Sheila did not ask. She waited. + +"'And that's something we have in our country,' said he." Hudson cleared +his throat. He also moistened his lips. He was very apparently excited. +He leaned even farther forward, tilting on the front legs of his chair +and thrusting his face close to Sheila's "'_A pretty barmaid_!' said he." + +There was a profound silence in the small room. The runners of a sleigh +scraped the icy street below, its horses' hoofs cracked noisily. The +music of a fiddle sounded in the distance. Babe's voice humming a waltz +tune rose from the second story. + +"A barmaid?" asked Sheila breathlessly. She got up from her chair and +walked over to the window. The moon was already high. Over there, +beckoning, stood her mountain and her star. It was all so shining and +pure and still. + +"That's what you want me to be--your barmaid?" + +"Yes'm," said Sylvester humbly. "Don't make up your mind in a hurry, Miss +Sheila. Wait till I tell you more about it. It's--it's a kind of dream of +mine. I think it'd come close to breaking me up if you turned down the +proposition. The Aura's not an ordin-ar-y bar and I'm not an ordin-ar-y +man, and, say, Miss Sheila, you're not an ordin-ar-y girl." + +"Is that why you want me to work in your saloon?" said Sheila, staring +at the star. + +"Yes'm. That's why. Let me tell you that I've searched this continent for +a girl to fit my ideal. That's what it is, girl--my ideal. That bar of +mine has got to be perfect. It's near to perfect now. I want when that +Englishman comes back to Millings to hear him say, 'It's perfect' ... no +'all but,' you notice. Why, miss, I could 'a' got a hundred ordin-ar-y +girls, lookers too. The world's full of lookers." + +"Why didn't you offer your--'job' to Babe or Girlie?" + +Sylvester laughed. "Well, girl, as a matter of fact, I did." + +"You did?" Sheila turned back and faced him. There was plenty of color +in her cheeks now. Her narrow eyes were widely opened. Astonishingly +large and clear they were, when she so opened them. + +"Yes'm." Sylvester glanced aside for an instant. + +"And what did they say?" + +"They balked," Sylvester admitted calmly. "They're fine girls, Miss +Sheila. And they're lookers. But they just aren't quite fine enough. +They're not artists, like your Poppa and like you--and like me." + +Sheila put a hand up to her cheek. Her eyes came back to their accustomed +narrowness and a look of doubt stole into her face. + +"Artists?" + +"Yes'm." Sylvester had begun to walk about. "Artists. Why, what's an +artist but a person with a dream he wants to make real? My dream's--The +Aura, girl. For three years now"--he half-shut his eyes and moved his arm +in front of him as though he were putting in the broad first lines of a +picture--"I've seen that girl there back of my bar--shining and _good_ +and fine--not the sort of a girl a man'd be lookin' for, mind you, just +_not_ that! A girl that would sort of take your breath. Say, picture it, +Sheila!" He stood by her and pointed it out as though he showed her a +view. "You're a cowboy. And you come ridin' in, bone-tired, dusty, with a +_thirst_. Well, sir, a thirst in your throat and a thirst in your heart +and a thirst in your soul. You're wantin' re-freshment. For your body +and your eyes and your mind. Well, ma'am, you tie your pony up there and +you push open those doors and you push 'em open and step plumb into +Paradise. It's cool in there--I'm picturin' a July evenin', Miss +Sheila--and it's quiet and it's shining clean. And there's a big man in +white who's servin' drinks--cold drinks with a grand smell. That's my man +Carthy. He keeps order. You bet you, he does keep it too. And beside him +stands a girl. Well, she's the kind of girl you--the cowboy--would 'a' +dreamed about, lyin' out in your blanket under the stars, if you'd 'a' +knowed enough to be able to dream about her. After you've set eyes on +her, you don't dream about any other kind of girl. And just seein' her +there so sweet and bright and dainty-like, makes a different fellow of +you. Say, goin' into that bar is like goin' into church and havin' a +jim-dandy time when you get there--which is something the churches +haven't got round to offerin' yet to my way of thinkin'. Now. I want to +ask you, Miss Sheila, if you've got red blood in your veins and a love of +adventure and a wish to see that real entertaining show we call +'life'--and mighty few females ever get a glimpse of it--and if you've +acquired a feeling of gratitude for Pap and if you've got any real +religion, or any ambition to play a part, if you're a real woman that +wants to be an in-spire-ation to men, well, ma'am, I ask you, could you +turn down a chance like that?" + +He stood away a pace and put his question with a lifted forefinger. + +Sheila's eyes were caught and held by his. Again her mind seemed to be +fastened to his will. And the blood ran quickly in her veins. Her heart +beat. She was excited, stirred. He had seen through her shell unerringly +as no one else in all her life had seen. He had mysteriously guessed that +she had the dangerous gift of adventure, that under the shyness and +uncertainty of inexperience there was no fear in her, that she was one of +those that would rather play with fire than warm herself before it. +Sheila stood there, discovered and betrayed. He had played upon her as +upon a flexible young reed: that stop, her ambition, this, her +romanticism, that, her vanity, the fourth, her gratitude, the fifth, her +idealism, the sixth, her recklessness. And there was this added urge--she +must stay here and drudge under the lash of "Momma's" tongue or she must +accept this strange, this unimaginable offer. Again she opened her eyes +wider and wider. The pupils swallowed up the misty gray. Her lips parted. + +"I'll do it," she said, narrowed her eyes and shut her mouth tight. With +such a look she might have thrown a fateful toss of dice. + +Sylvester caught her hands, pressed them up to his chest. + +"It's a promise, girl?" + +"Yes." + +"God bless you!" + +He let her go. He walked on air. He threw open the door. + +There on the threshold--stood "Momma." + +"I kind of see," she drawled, "why Sheila don't take no interest +in dancin'!" + +"You're wrong," said Sheila very clearly. "I have been persuaded. I am +going to the dance." + +Sylvester laughed aloud. "One for you, Momma!" he said. "Come on down, +old girl, while Miss Sheila gets into her party dress. Say, Aura, aren't +you goin' to give me a dance to-night?" + +His wife looked curiously at his red, excited face. She followed him in +silence down the stairs. + +Sheila stood still listening to their descending steps, then she knelt +down beside her little trunk and opened the lid. The sound of the fiddle +stole hauntingly, beseechingly, tauntingly into her consciousness. There +in the top tray of her trunk wrapped in tissue paper lay the only evening +frock she had, a filmy French dress of white tulle, a Christmas present +from her father, a breath-taking, intoxicating extravagance. She had worn +it only once. + +It was with the strangest feeling that she took it out. It seemed to her +that the Sheila that had worn that dress was dead. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +A SINGEING OF WINGS + + +All the vitality of Millings--and whatever its deficiencies the town +lacked nothing of the splendor and vigor of its youth--throbbed and +stamped and shook the walls of the Town Hall that night. To understand +that dance, it is necessary to remember that it took place on a February +night with the thermometer at zero and with the ground five feet beneath +the surface of the snow. There were men and women and children, too, who +had come on skis and in toboggans for twenty miles from distant ranches +to do honor to the wedding-anniversary of Greely and his wife. + +A room near the ballroom was reserved for babies, and here, early in the +evening, lay small bundles in helpless, more or less protesting, rows, +their needs attended to between waltzes and polkas by father or mother +according to the leisure of the parent and the nature of the need. One +infant, whose home discipline was not up to the requirements of this +event, refused to accommodate himself to loneliness and so spent the +evening being dandled, first by father, then by mother, in a chair +immediately beside the big drum. Whether the spot was chosen for the +purpose of smothering his cries or enlivening his spirits nobody cared +to inquire. Infants in the Millings and Hidden Creek communities, where +certified milk and scientific feeding were unknown, were treated rather +like family parasites to be attended to only when the irritation they +caused became acute. They were not taken very seriously. That they grew +up at all was largely due to their being turned out as soon as they could +walk into an air that buoyed the entire nervous and circulatory systems +almost above the need of any other stimulant. + +The dance began when the first guests arrived, which on this occasion was +at about six o'clock, and went on till the last guest left, at about ten +the next morning. In the meantime the Greelys' hospitality provided every +variety of refreshment. + +When Sheila reached the Town Hall, crowded between Sylvester and joyous +Babe in her turquoise blue on the front seat of the Ford, while the back +seat was occupied by Girlie in scarlet and "Momma" in purple velveteen, +the dance was well under way. The Hudsons came in upon the tumult of a +quadrille. The directions, chanted above the din, were not very exactly +heeded; there was as much confusion as there was mirth. Sheila, standing +near Girlie's elbow, felt the exhilaration which youth does feel at the +impact of explosive noise and motion, the stamping of feet, the shouting, +the loud laughter, the music, the bounding, prancing bodies: savagery in +a good humor, childhood again, but without the painful intensity of +childhood. Sheila wondered just as any _débutante_ in a city ballroom +wonders, whether she would have partners, whether she would have "a good +time." Color came into her face. She forgot everything except the +immediate prospect of flattery and rhythmic motion. + +Babe pounced upon a young man who was shouldering his way toward Girlie. + +"Say, Jim, meet Miss Arundel! Gee! I've been wanting you two to get +acquainted." + +Sheila held out her hand to Mr. James Greely, who took it with a +surprised and dazzled look. + +"Pleased to meet you," he murmured, and the dimple deepened in his ruddy +right cheek. + +He turned his blushing face to Girlie. "Gee! You look great!" he said. + +She was, in fact, very beautiful--a long, firm, round body, youthful and +strong, sheathed in a skin of cream and roses, lips that looked as though +they had been used for nothing but the tranquil eating of ripe fruit, +eyes of unfathomable serenity, and hair almost as soft and creamy as her +shoulders and her finger-tips. Her beauty was not marred to Jim Greely's +eyes by the fact that she was chewing gum. Amongst animals the only +social poise, the only true self-possession and absence of shyness is +shown by the cud-chewing cow. She is diverted from fear and soothed from +self-consciousness by having her nervous attention distracted. The +smoking man has this release, the knitting woman has it. Girlie and Babe +had it from the continual labor of their jaws. Every hope and longing and +ambition in Girlie's heart centered upon this young man now complimenting +her, but as he turned to her, she just stood there and looked up at him. +Her jaws kept on moving slightly. There was in her eyes the minimum of +human intelligence and the maximum of unconscious animal invitation--a +blank, defenseless expression of--"Here I am. Take me." As Jim Greely +expressed the look: "Girlie makes everything easy. She don't give a +fellow any discomfort like some of these skittish girls do. She's kind of +home folks at once." + +"We can't get into the quadrille now," said Jim, "but you'll give me the +next, won't you, Girlie?" + +"Sure, Jim," said the unsmiling, rosy mouth. + +Jim moved uneasily on his patent-leather feet. He shot a sidelong glance +at Sheila. + +"Say, Miss Arundel, may I have the next after ... Meet Mr. Gates," he +added spasmodically, as the hand of a gigantic friend crushed his elbow. + +Sheila looked up a yard or two of youth and accepted Mr. Gates's +invitation for "the next." + +The head at the top of the tower bent itself down to her with a +snakelike motion. + +"Us fellows," it said, "have been aiming to give you a good time +to-night." + +Sheila was relieved to find him within hearing. Her smile dawned +enchantingly. It had all the inevitability of some sweet natural event. + +"That's very good of--you fellows. I didn't know you knew that there was +such a person as--as me in Millings." + +"You bet you, we knew. Here goes the waltz. Do you want to Castle it? I +worked in a Yellowstone Park Hotel last summer, and I'm wise on dancing." + +Sheila found herself stretched ceilingwards. She must hold one arm +straight in the air, one elbow as high as she could make it go, and she +must dance on her very tip-toes. Like every girl whose life has taken her +in and out of Continental hotels, she could dance, and she had the gift +of intuitive rhythm and of yielding to her partner's intentions almost +before they were muscularly expressed. Mr. Gates felt that he was dancing +with moonlight, only the figure of speech is not his own. + +Girlie in the arms of Jim spoke to him above her rigid chin. Girlie had +the haughty manner of dancing. + +"She's not much of a looker, is she, Jim?" But the pain in her heart gave +the speech an audible edge. + +"She's not much of anything," said Jim, who had not looked like the +young man on the magazine cover for several busy years in vain. "She's +just a scrap." + +But Girlie could not be deceived. Sheila's delicate, crystalline beauty +pierced her senses like the frosty beauty of a winter star: her dress of +white mist, her slender young arms, her long, slim, romantic throat, the +finish and polish of her, every detail done lovingly as if by a master's +silver-pointed pencil, her hair so artlessly simple and shining, smooth +and rippled under the lights, the strangeness of her face! Girlie told +herself again that it was an irregular face, that the chin was not right, +that the eyes were not well-opened and lacked color, that the nose was +odd, defying classification; she knew, in spite of the rigid ignorance of +her ideals, that these things mysteriously spelled enchantment. Sheila +was as much more beautiful than anything Millings had ever seen as her +white gown was more exquisite than anything Millings had ever worn. It +was a work of art, and Sheila was, also, in some strange sense, a work of +art, something shaped and fashioned through generations, something tinted +and polished and retouched by race, something mellowed and restrained, +something bred. Girlie did not know why the white tulle frock, absolutely +plain, shamed her elaborate red satin with its exaggerated lines. But she +did know. She did not know why Sheila's subtle beauty was greater than +her obvious own. But she did know. And so great and bewildering a fear +did this knowledge give her that, for an instant, it confused her wits. + +"She's going back East soon," she said sharply. + +"Is she?" Jim's question was indifferent, but from that instant his +attention wandered. + +When he took the small, crushable silken partner into his arms for "the +next after," a one-step, he was troubled by a sense of hurry, by that +desire to make the most of his opportunity that torments the reader of a +"best-seller" from the circulating library. + +"Say, Miss Arundel," he began, looking down at the smooth, jewel-bright +head, "you haven't given Millings a square deal." + +Sheila looked at him quizzically. + +"You see," went on Jim, "it's winter now." + +"Yes, Mr. Greely. It _is_ winter." + +"And that's not our best season. When summer comes, it's awfully pretty +and it's good fun. We have all sorts of larks--us fellows and the girls. +You'd like a motor ride, wouldn't you?" + +"Not especially, thank you," said Sheila, who really at times deserved +the Western condemnation of "ornery." "I don't like motors. In fact, I +hate motors." + +Jim swallowed a nervous lump. This girl was not "home folks." She made +him feel awkward and uncouth. He tried to remember that he was Mr. James +Greely, of the Millings National Bank, and, remembering at the same time +something that the girl from Cheyenne had said about his smile, he caught +Sheila's eye deliberately and made use of his dimple. + +"What do you like?" he asked. "If you tell me what you like, I--I'll see +that you get it." + +"You're very powerful, aren't you? You sound like a fairy godmother." + +"You look like a fairy. That's just what you do look like." + +"I like horses much better than motors," said Sheila. "I thought the West +would be full of adorable little ponies. I thought you'd ride like +wizards, bucking--you know." + +"Well, I can ride. But, I guess you've been going to the movies or the +Wild West shows. This town _must_ seem kind of dead after Noo York." + +"I hate the movies," said Sheila sweetly. + +"Say, it would be easy to get a pony for you as soon as the snow goes. I +sold my horse when Dad bought me my Ford." + +"Sold him? Sold your own special horse!" + +"Well, yes, Miss Arundel. Does that make you think awfully bad of me?" + +"Yes. It does. It makes me think _awfully_ 'bad' of you. If I had a +horse, I'd--I'd tie him to my bedpost at night and feed him on +rose-leaves and tie ribbons in his mane." + +Jim laughed, delighted at her childishness. It brought back something of +his own assurance. + +"I don't think Pap Hudson would quite stand for that, would he? Seems to +me as if--" + +But here his partner stopped short, turned against his arm, and her face +shone with a sudden friendly sweetness of surprise. "There's Dickie!" + +She left Jim, she slipped across the floor. Dickie limped toward her. His +face was white. + +"Dickie! I'm so glad you came. Somehow I didn't expect you to be here. +But you're lame! Then you can't dance. What a shame. After Mr. Greely and +I have finished this, could you sit one out with me?" + +"Yes'm," whispered Dickie. + +He was not as inexpressive as it might seem however. His face, a rather +startling face here in this crowded, boisterous room, a face that seemed +to have come in out of the night bringing with it a quality of eternal +childhood, of quaint, half-forgotten dreams--his face was very +expressive. So much so, that Sheila, embarrassed, went back almost +abruptly to Jim. Her smile was left to bewilder Dickie. He began to +describe it to himself. And this was the first time a woman had stirred +that mysterious trouble in his brain. + +"It's not like a smile at all," thought Dickie, the dancing crowd +invisible to him; "it's like something--it's--what is it? It's as if the +wind blew it into her face and blew it out again. It doesn't come from +anywhere, it doesn't seem to be going anywhere, at least not anywhere a +fellow knows ..." Here he was rudely joggled by a passing elbow and the +pain of his ankle brought a sharp "Damn!" out of him. He found a niche to +lean in, and he watched Sheila and Jim. He found himself not quite so +overwhelmed as usual by admiration of his friend. His mood was even very +faintly critical. But, as the dance came to an end, Dickie fell a prey to +base anxiety. How would "Poppa" take it if he, Dickie, should be seen +sitting out a dance with Miss Arundel? Dickie was profoundly afraid of +his father. It was a fear that he had never been allowed the leisure to +outgrow. Sylvester with torture of hand and foot and tongue had fostered +it. And Dickie's childhood had lingered painfully upon him. He could not +outgrow all sorts of feelings that other fellows seemed to shed with +their short trousers. He was afraid of his father, physically and +morally; his very nerves quivered under the look of the small brown eyes. + +Nevertheless, as Sheila thanked Jim for her waltz, her elbow was touched +by a cold finger. + +"Here I am," said Dickie. He had a demure and startled look. "Let's sit +it out in the room between the babies and the dancin'-room--two kinds of +a b-a-w-l, ain't it? But I guess we can hear ourselves speak in there. +There's a sort of a bench, kind of a hard one..." + +Sheila followed and found herself presently in a half-dark place under a +row of dangling coats. An iron stove near by glowed with red sides and a +round red mouth. It gave a flush to Dickie's pale face. Sheila thought +she had never seen such a wistful and untidy lad. + +Yet, poor Dickie at the moment appeared to himself rather a dashing and +heroic figure. He had certainly shown courage and had done his deed with +jauntiness. Besides, he had on his only good suit of dark-blue serge, +very thin serge. It was one that he had bought second-hand from Jim, and +he was sure, therefore, of its perfection. He thought, too, that he had +mastered, by the stern use of a wet brush, a cowlick which usually +disgraced the crown of his head. He hadn't. It had long ago risen to its +wispish height. + +"Jim dances fine, don't he?" Dickie said. "I kind of wish I liked to +dance. Seems like athletic stunts don't appeal to me some way." + +"Would you call dancing an athletic stunt?" Sheila leaned back against a +coat that smelled strongly of hay and tobacco and caught up her knees in +her two hands so that the small white slippers pointed daintily, clear of +the floor. + +Dickie looked at them. It seemed to him suddenly that a giant's hand had +laid itself upon his heart and turned it backwards as a pilot turns his +wheel to change the course of a ship. The contrary movement made him +catch his breath. He wanted to put the two white silken feet against his +breast, to button them inside his coat, to keep them in his care. + +"Ain't it, though?" he managed to say. "Ain't it an athletic stunt?" + +"I've always heard it called an accomplishment." + +"God!" said Dickie gently. "I'd 'a' never thought of that. I do like +ski-ing, though. Have you tried it, Miss Arundel?" + +"No. If I call you Dickie, you might call me Sheila, I think." + +Dickie lifted his eyes from the feet. "Sheila," he said. + +He was curiously eloquent. Again Sheila felt the confusion that had sent +her abruptly back to Jim. She smoothed out the tulle on her knee. + +"I think I'd love to ski. Is it awfully hard to learn?" + +"No, ma'am. It's just dandy. Especially on a moonlight night, like night +before last. And if you'd 'a' had skis on you wouldn't 'a' broke through. +You go along so quiet and easy, pushing yourself a little with your pole. +There's a kind of a swing to it--" + +He stood up and threw his light, thin body gracefully into the skier's +pose. "See? You slide on one foot, then on the other. It's as easy as +dreaming, and as still." + +"It's like a gondola--" suggested Sheila. + +Dickie put his head on one side and Sheila explained. She also sang a +snatch of a Gondel-lied to show him the motion. + +"Yes'm," said Dickie. "It's like that. It kind of has a--has a--" + +"Rhythm?" + +"I guess that's the word. So's riding. I like to do the things that +have that." + +"Well, then, you ought to like dancing." + +"Yes'm. Maybe I would if it wasn't for havin' to pull a girl round about +with me. It kind of takes my mind off the pleasure." + +Sheila laughed. Then, "Did you get my note?" she asked. + +"Yes'm." Her laughter had embarrassed him, and he had suddenly a +hunted look. + +"And are you going to be my friend?" + +The sliding of feet on a floor none too smooth, the music, the wailing of +a baby accompanied Dickie's silence. He was very silent and sat very +still, his hands hanging between his knees, his head bent. He stared at +Sheila's feet. His face, what she could see of it, was, even beyond the +help of firelight, pale. + +"Why, Dickie, I believe you're going to say No!" + +"Some fellows would say Yes," Dickie answered. "But I sort of promised +not to be your friend. Poppa said I'd kind of disgust you. And I figure +that I would--" + +Sheila hesitated. + +"You mean because you--you--?" + +"Yes'm." + +"Can't you stop?" + +He shook his head and gave her a tormented look. + +"Oh, Dickie! Of course you can! At your age!" + +"Seems like it means more to me than anything else." + +"Dickie! Dickie!" + +"Yes'm. It kind of takes the awful edge off things." + +"What _do_ you mean? I don't understand." + +"Things are so sort of--sharp to me. I mean, I don't know if I can tell +you. I feel like I had to put something between me and--and things. Oh, +damn! I can't make you see--" + +"No," said Sheila, distressed. + +"It's always that-a-way," Dickie went on. "I mean, everything's kind +of--too much. I used to run miles when I was a kid. And sometimes now +when I can get out and walk or ski, the feeling goes. But other +times--well, ma'am, whiskey sort of takes the edge off and lets something +kind of slack down that gets sort of screwed up. Oh, I don't know ..." + +"Did you ever go to a doctor about it?" + +Dickie looked up at her and smiled. It was the sweetest smile--so patient +of this misunderstanding of hers. "No, ma'am." + +"Then you don't care to be my friend enough to--to try--" + +"I wouldn't be a good friend to you," said Dickie. And he spoke now +almost sullenly. "Because I wouldn't want you to have any other friends. +I hate it to see you with any other fellow." + +"How absurd!" + +"Maybe it is absurd. I guess it seems awful foolish to you." He moved his +cracked patent-leather pump in a sort of pattern on the floor. Again he +looked up, this time with a freakish, an almost elfin flicker of his +extravagant eyelashes. "There's something I could be real well," he said. +"Only, I guess Poppa's got there ahead of me. I could be a dandy guardian +to you--Sheila." + +Again Sheila laughed. But the ringing of her silver coins was not quite +true. There was a false note. She shut her eyes involuntarily. She was +remembering that instant an hour or two before when Sylvester's look had +held hers to his will. The thought of what she had promised crushed down +upon her consciousness with the smothering, sudden weight of its reality. +She could not tell Dickie. She could not--though this she did not +admit--bear that he should know. + +"Very well," she said, in a hard and weary voice. "Be my guardian. That +ought to sober any one. I think I shall need as many guardians as +possible. And--here comes your father. I have this dance with him." + +Dickie got hurriedly to his feet. "Oh, gosh!" said he. He was obviously +and vividly a victim of panic. Sheila's small and very expressive face +showed a little gleam of amused contempt. "My guardian!" she seemed to +mock. To shorten the embarrassment of the moment she stepped quickly into +the elder Hudson's arm. He took her hand and began to pump it up and +down, keeping time to the music and counting audibly. "One, two, three." +To Dickie he gave neither a word nor look. + +Sheila lifted her chin so that she could smile at Dickie over Pap's +shoulder. It was an indulgent and forgiving smile, but, meeting Dickie's +look, it went out. + +The boy's face was scarlet, his body rigid, his lips tight. The eyes with +which he had overcome her smile were the hard eyes of a man. Sheila's +contempt had fallen upon him like a flame. In a few dreadful minutes as +he stood there it burnt up a part of his childishness. + +Sheila went on, dancing like a mist in Hudson's arms. She knew that she +had done something to Dickie. But she did not know what it was that she +had done.... + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE BEACON LIGHT + + +Out of the Wyoming Bad Lands--orange, turquoise-green, and murky blue, of +outlandish ridges, of streaked rock, of sudden, twisted cañons, a country +like a dream of the far side of the moon--rode Cosme Hilliard in a +choking cloud of alkali dust. He rode down Crazy Woman's Hill toward the +sagebrush flat, where, in a half-circle of cloudless, snow-streaked +mountains, lay the town of Millings on its rapid glacier river. + +Hilliard's black hair was powdered with dust; his olive face was gray; +dust lay thick in the folds of his neck-handkerchief; his pony matched +the gray-white road and plodded wearily, coughing and tossing his head in +misery from the nose-flies, the horse-flies, the mosquitoes, a swarm of +small, tormenting presences. His rider seemed to be charmed into +patience, and yet his aquiline face was not the face of a patient man. It +was young in a keen, hard fashion; the mouth and eyes were those of a +Spanish-American mother, golden eyes and a mouth originally beautiful, +soft, and cruel, which had been tightened and straightened by a man's +will and experience. It had been used so often for careless, humorous +smiling that the cruelty had been almost worked out of it. Almost, not +altogether. His mother's blood kept its talons on him. He was Latin and +dangerous to look at, for all the big white Anglo-Saxon teeth, the slow, +slack, Western American carriage, the guarded and amused expression of +the golden eyes. Here was a bundle of racial contradictions, not yet +welded, not yet attuned. Perhaps the one consistent, the one solvent, +expression was that of alert restlessness. Cosme Hilliard was not happy, +was not content, but he was eternally entertained. He was not uplifted by +the hopeful illusions proper to his age, but he loved adventure. It was a +bitter face, bitter and impatient and unschooled. It seemed to laugh, to +expect the worst from life, and not to care greatly if the worst should +come. But for such minor matters of dust and thirst and weariness, he had +patience. Physically the young man was hard and well-schooled. He rode +like a cowboy and carried a cowboy's rope tied to his saddle. And the +rope looked as though it had been used. + +Millings, that seemed so close below there through the clear, high +atmosphere, was far to reach. The sun had slipped down like a thin, +bright coin back of an iron rock before the traveler rode into the town. +His pony shied wearily at an automobile and tried to make up his mind to +buck, but a light pressure of the spur and a smiling word was enough to +change his mind. + +"Don't be a fool, Dusty! You know it's not worth the trouble. Remember +that fifty miles you've come to-day!" + +The occupants of the motor snapped a camera and hummed away. They had no +prevision of being stuck halfway up Crazy Woman's Hill with no water +within fifteen miles, or they wouldn't have exclaimed so gayly at the +beauty and picturesqueness of the tired cowboy. + +"He looks like a movie hero, doesn't he?" said a girl. + +"No, ma'am," protested the Western driver, who had been a chauffeur only +for a fortnight and knew considerably less about the insides of his Ford +than he did about the insides of Hilliard's cow-pony. "He ain't no show. +He's the real thing. Seems like you dudes got things kinder twisted. +Things ain't like shows. Shows is sometimes like things." + +"The real thing" certainly behaved as the real thing would. He rode +straight to the nearest saloon and swung out of his saddle. He licked the +dust off his lips, looked wistfully at the swinging door, and turned back +to his pony. + +"You first, Dusty--damn you!" and led the stumbling beast into the yard +of The Aura. In an hour or more he came back. He had dined at the hotel +and he had bathed. His naturally vivid coloring glowed under the +street-light. He was shaved and brushed and sleek. He pushed quickly +through the swinging doors of the bar and stepped into the saloon. It +was truly a famous bar--The Aura--and it deserved its fame. It shone +bright and cool and polished. There was a cheerful clink of glasses, a +subdued, comfortable sound of talk. Men drank at the bar, and drank and +played cards at the small tables. A giant in a white apron stood to +serve the newcomer. + +Hilliard ordered his drink, sipped it leisurely, then wandered off to a +near-by table. There he stood, watching the game. Not long after, he +accepted an invitation and joined the players. From then till midnight he +was oblivious of everything but the magic squares of pasteboard, the +shifting pile of dirty silver at his elbow, the faces--vacant, clever, or +rascally--of his opponents. But at about midnight, trouble came. For some +time Hilliard had been subconsciously irritated by the divided attention +of a player opposite to him across the table. This man, with a long, thin +face, was constantly squinting past Cosme's shoulder, squinting and +leering and stretching his great full-lipped mouth into a queer +half-smile. At last, abruptly, the irritation came to consciousness and +Cosme threw an angry glance over his own shoulder. + +Beside the giant who had served him his drink a girl stood: a thin, +straight girl in black and white who held herself so still that she +seemed painted there against the mirror on the wall. Her hands rested on +her slight hips, the fine, pointed, ringless fingers white against the +black stuff of her dress. Her neck, too, was white and her face, the pure +unpowdered whiteness of childhood. Her chin was lifted, her lips laid +together, her eyes, brilliant and clear, of no definite color, looked +through her surroundings. She was very young, not more than seventeen. +The mere presence of a girl was startling enough. Barmaids are unknown to +the experience of the average cowboy. But this girl was trebly startling. +For her face was rare. It was not Western, not even American. It was a +fine-drawn, finished, Old-World face, with long, arched eyebrows, large +lids, shadowed eyes, nostrils a little pinched, a sad and tender mouth. +It was a face whose lines might have followed the pencil of +Botticelli--those little hollows in the cheeks, that slight exaggeration +of the pointed chin, that silky, rippling brown hair. There was no touch +of artifice; it was an unpainted young face; hair brushed and knotted +simply; the very carriage of the body was alien; supple, unconscious, +restrained. + +Cosme Hilliard's look lasted for a minute. Returning to his opponent it +met an ugly grimace. He flushed and the game went on. + +But the incident had roused Hilliard's antagonism. He disliked that +man with the grimacing mouth. He began to watch him. An hour or two +later Cosme's thin, dark hand shot across the table and gripped the +fellow's wrist. + +"Caught you that time, you tin-horn," he said quietly. + +Instantly, almost before the speech was out, the giant in the apron had +hurled himself across the room and gripped the cheat, who stood, a hand +arrested on its way to his pocket, snarling helplessly. But the other +players, his fellow sheep-herders, fell away from Hilliard dangerously. + +"No shootin'," said the giant harshly. "No shoot-in' in The Aura. It +ain't allowed." + +"No callin' names either," growled the prisoner. "Me and my friends would +like to settle with the youthful stranger." + +"Settle with him, then, but somewheres else. No fightin' in The Aura." + +There was an acquiescent murmur from the other table and the sheep-herder +gave in. He exchanged a look with his friends, and Carthy, seeing them +disposed to return quietly to the game, left them and took up his usual +position behind the bar. The barmaid moved a little closer to his elbow. +Hilliard noticed that her eyes had widened in her pale face. He made a +brief, contemptuous excuse to his opponents, settled his account with +them, and strolled over to the bar. From Carthy he ordered another drink. +He saw the girl's eyes studying the hand he put out for his glass and he +smiled a little to himself. When she looked up he was ready with his +golden eyes to catch her glance. Both pairs of eyes smiled. She came a +step toward him. + +"I believe I've heard of you, miss," he said. + +A delicate pink stained her face and throat and he wondered if she could +possibly be shy. + +"Some fellows I met over in the Big Horn country lately told me to look +you up if I came to Millings. They said something about Hudson's Queen. +It's the Hudson Hotel isn't it?--" + +A puzzled, rather worried look crept into her eyes, but she avoided his +question. "You were working in the Big Horn country? I hoped you were +from Hidden Creek." + +"I'm on my way there," he said. "I know that country well. You come from +over there?" + +"No." She smiled faintly. "But"--and here her breast lifted on a deep, +spasmodic sigh--"some day I'm going there." + +"It's not like any other country," he said, turning his glass in his +supple fingers. "It's wonderful. But wild and lonesome. You wouldn't be +caring for it--not for longer than a sunny day or two, I reckon." + +He used the native phrases with sure familiarity, and yet in his speaking +of them there was something unfamiliar. Evidently she was puzzled by him, +and Cosme was not sorry that he had so roused her curiosity. He was very +curious himself, so much so that he had forgotten the explosive moment of +a few short minutes back. + +The occupants of the second table pushed away their chairs and came over +to the bar. For a while the barmaid was busy, making their change, +answering their jests, bidding them good-night. It was, "Well, +good-night, Miss Arundel, and thank you." + +"See you next Saturday, Miss Arundel, if I'm alive--" + +Hilliard drummed on the counter with his fingertips and frowned. His +puzzled eyes wove a pattern of inquiry from the men to the girl and back. +One of them, a ruddy-faced, town boy, lingered. He had had a drop too +much of The Aura's hospitality. He rested rather top-heavily against the +bar and stretched out his hand. + +"Aren't you going to say me a real good-night, Miss Sheila," he besought, +and a tipsy dimple cut itself into his cheek. + +"Do go home, Jim," murmured the barmaid. "You've broken your promise +again. It's two o'clock." + +He made great ox-eyes at her, his hand still begging, its blunt fingers +curled upward like a thirsty cup. + +His face was emptied of everything but its desire. + +It was perfectly evident that "Miss Sheila" was tormented by the look, by +the eyes, by the hand, by the very presence of the boy. She pressed her +lips tight, drew her fine arched brows together, and twisted her fingers. + +"I'll go home," he asserted obstinately, "when you tell me a proper +goo'-night--not before." + +Her eyes glittered. "Shall I tell Carthy to turn you out, Jim?" + +He smiled triumphantly. "Uh," said he, "your watch-dog went out. +Dickie called him to answer the telephone. Now, will you tell me +good-night, Sheila?" + +Cosme hoped that the girl would glance at him for help, he had his long +steel muscles braced; but, after a moment's thought--"And she can think. +She's as cool as she's shy," commented the observer--she put her hand on +Jim's. He grabbed it, pressed his lips upon it. + +"Goo'-night," he said, "Goo'-night. I'll go now." He swaggered out as +though she had given him a rose. + +The barmaid put her hand beneath her apron and rubbed it. Cosme laughed a +little at the quaint action. + +"Do they give you lots of trouble, Miss Arundel?" he asked her +sympathetically. + +She looked at him. But her attitude was not so simple and friendly as it +had been. Evidently her little conflict with Jim had jarred her humor. +She looked distressed, angry. Cosme felt that, unfairly enough, she +lumped him with The Enemy. He wondered pitifully if she had given The +Enemy its name, if her experience had given her the knowledge of such +names. He had a vision of the pretty, delicate little thing standing +there night after night as though divided by the bar from prowling +beasts. And yet she was known over the whole wide, wild country as +"Hudson's Queen." Her crystal, childlike look must be one of those +extraordinary survivals, a piteous sort of accident. Cosme called himself +a sentimentalist. Spurred by this reaction against his more romantic +tendencies, he leaned forward. He too was going to ask the barmaid for a +good-night or a greeting or a good-bye. His hand was out, when he saw her +face stiffen, her lips open to an "Oh!" of warning or of fear. He wheeled +and flung up his arm against a hurricane of blows. + +His late opponents had decided to take advantage of Carthy's absence, and +inflict chastisement prompt and merciless upon the "youthful stranger." +If it had not been for that small frightened "Oh" Cosme would have been +down at once. + +With that moment's advantage he fought like a tiger, his golden eyes +ablaze. Swift and dangerous anger was one of his gifts. He was against +the wall, he was torn from it. One of his opponents staggered across the +room and fell, another crumpled up against the bar. Hilliard wheeled and +jabbed, plunged, was down, was up, bleeding and laughing. He was whirled +this way and that, the men from whom he had struck himself free recovered +themselves, closed in upon him. A blow between the eyes half stunned him, +another on his mouth silenced his laughter. The room was getting blurred. +He was forced back against the bar, fighting, but not effectively. The +snarling laughter was not his now, but that of the cheat. + +Something gave way behind him; it was as if the bar, against which he was +bent backwards, had melted to him and hardened against his foes. For an +instant he was free from blows and tearing hands. He saw that a door in +the bar had opened and shut. There was a small pressure on his arm, a +pressure which he blindly obeyed. In front of him another door opened, +and closed. He heard the shooting of a bolt. He was in the dark. The +small pressure, cold through the torn silk sleeve of his white shirt, +continued to urge him swiftly along a passage. He was allowed to rest an +instant against a wall. A light was turned on with a little click above +his head. He found himself at the end of the open hallway. Before him lay +the brilliant velvet night. + +Hilliard pressed his hands upon his eyes trying to clear his vision. He +felt sick and giddy. The little barmaid's face, all terrified and urgent +eyes, danced up and down. + +"Don't waste any time!" she said. "Get out of Millings! Where's +your pony?" + +At that he looked at her and smiled. + +"I'm not leaving Millings till to-morrow," he said uncertainly with +wounded lips. "Don't look like that, girl. I'm not much hurt, If I'm not +mistaken, your watch-dog is back and very much on his job. I reckon that +our friends will leave Millings considerably before I do." + +In fact, behind them at the end of the passage there was a sort of roar. +Carthy had returned to avenge The Aura. + +"You're sure you're not hurt? You're sure they won't try to hurt +you again?" + +He shook his head. "Not they..." He stood looking at her and the mist +slowly cleared, his vision of her steadied. "Shall I see you to-morrow?" + +She drew back from him a little. "No," she said. "I sleep all the +morning. And, afterwards, I don't see any one except a few old friends. I +go riding..." + +He puckered his eyelids inquiringly. Then, with a sudden reckless fling +of his shoulders, he put out his hand boldly and caught her small pointed +chin in his palm. He bent down his head. + +She stood there quite still and white, looking straight up into his face. +The exquisite smoothness of her little cool chin photographed itself upon +his memory. As he bent down closer to the grave and tender lips, he was +suddenly, unaccountably frightened and ashamed. His hand dropped, sought +for her small limp hand. His lips shifted from their course and went +lower, just brushing her fingers. + +"I beg your pardon," he said confusedly. He was painfully embarrassed, +stammered, "I--I wanted to thank you. Good-bye..." + +She said good-bye in the smallest sweet voice he had ever heard. It +followed his memory like some weary, pitiful little ghost. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +IN THE PUBLIC EYE + + +No sight more familiar to the corner of Main and Resident Streets than +that of Sylvester Hudson's Ford car sliding up to the curb in front of +his hotel at two o'clock in a summer afternoon. He would slip out from +under his steering-wheel, his linen duster flapping about his long legs, +and he would stalk through the rocking, meditative observers on the +piazza and through the lobby past Dickie's frozen stare, upstairs to the +door of Miss Arundel's "suite." There he was bidden to come in. A few +minutes later they would come down together, Sheila, too, passing Dickie +wordlessly, and they would hum away from Millings leaving a veil of +golden dust to smother the comments in their wake. There were days when +Sheila's pony, a gift from Jim Greely, was led up earlier than the hour +of Hudson's arrival, on which days Sheila, in a short skirt and a boy's +shirt and a small felt Stetson, would ride away alone toward the mountain +of her dreams. Sometimes Jim rode with her. It was not always possible to +forbid him. + +The day after Cosme Hilliard's spectacular passage was one of Hudson's +days. The pony did not appear, but Sylvester did and came down with his +prize. The lobby was crowded. Sheila threaded her way amongst the medley +of tourists, paused and deliberately drew near to the desk. At sight of +her Dickie's whiteness dyed itself scarlet. He rose and with an apparent +effort lifted his eyes to her look. + +They did not smile at each other. Sheila spoke sharply, each word a +little soft lash. + +"I want to speak to you. Will you come to my sitting-room when I +get back?" + +"Yes'm," said Dickie. It was the tone of an unwincing pride. Under the +desk, hidden from sight, his hand was a white-knuckled fist. + +Sheila passed on, trailed by Hudson, who was smiling not agreeably to +himself. Over the smile he gave his son a cruel look. It was as though an +enemy had said, "Hurts you, doesn't it?" Dickie returned the look with +level eyes. + +The rockers on the piazza stopped rocking, stopped talking, stopped +breathing, it would seem, to watch Sylvester help Sheila into his car; +not that he helped her greatly--she had an appearance of melting +through his hands and getting into her place beside his by a sort of +sleight of body. He made a series of angular movements, smiled at her, +and started the car. + +"Well, little girl," said he, "where to this afternoon?" + +When Sheila rode her pony she always rode toward The Hill. But in that +direction she had never allowed Sylvester to take her. She looked vaguely +through the wind-shield now and said, "Anywhere--that cañon, the one we +came home by last week. It was so queer." + +"It'll be dern dusty, I'm afraid." + +"I don't care." Sheila wrapped her gray veil over her small hat which +fitted close about her face. "I'm getting used to the dust. Does it ever +rain around Millings? And does it ever stop blowing?" + +"We don't like Millings to-day, do we?" + +Sylvester was bending his head to peer through the gray mist of her veil. +She held herself stiffly beside him, showing the profile of a small +Sphinx. Suddenly it turned slightly, seemed to wince back. Girlie, at the +gate of Number 18 Cottonwood Avenue, had stopped to watch them pass. +Girlie did not speak. Her face looked smitten, the ripe fruit had turned +bitter upon her ruddy lips. The tranquil emptiness of her beauty had +filled itself stormily. + +Sheila did not answer Hudson's reproachful question. She leaned back, +dropped back, rather, into a tired little heap and let the country slide +by--the strange, wide, broken country with its circling mesas, its +somber grays and browns and dusty greens, its bare purple hills, rocks +and sand and golden dirt, and now and then, in the sudden valley +bottoms, swaying groves of vivid green and ribbons of emerald meadows. +The mountains shifted and opened their cañons, gave a glimpse of their +beckoning and forbidding fastnesses and closed them again as though by a +whispered Sesame. + +"What was the row last night?" asked Sylvester in his voice of cracked +tenderness. "Carthy says there was a bunch of toughs. Were you scared +good and plenty? I'm sorry. It don't happen often, believe _me._ + +"I wish you could 'a' heard Carthy talkin' about you, Sheila," went on +Sylvester, his eyes, filled with uneasiness, studying her silence and her +huddled smallness, hands in the pockets of her light coat, veiled face +turned a little away, "Say, that would 'a' set you up all right! Talk +about beacons!" + +Here she flashed round on him, as though her whole body had been +electrified. "Tell me all that again," she begged in a voice that he +could not interpret except that there was in it a sound of tears. "Tell +me again about a beacon ..." + +He stammered. He was confused. But stumblingly he tried to fulfill her +demand. Here was a thirst for something, and he wanted above everything +in the world to satisfy it. Sheila listened to him with unsteady, parted +lips. He could see them through the veil. + +"You still think I am that?" she asked. + +He was eager to prove it to her. "Still think? Still think? Why, girl, I +don't hev to think. Don't the tillbox speak for itself? Don't Carthy +handle a crowd that's growing under his eyes? Don't we sell more booze in +a week now than we used to in a--" Suddenly he realized that he was on +the wrong tack. It was his first break. He drew in a sharp breath and +stopped, his face flushing deeply. + +"Yes?" questioned Sheila, melting her syllables like slivers of ice on +her tongue. "Go on." + +"Er--er, don't we draw a finer lot of fellows than we ever did before? +Don't they behave more decent and orderly? Don't they get civilization +just for looking at you, Miss Sheila?" + +"And--and booze? Jim Greely, for instance, Mr. James Greely, of the +Millings National Bank--he never used to patronize The Aura. And now he's +there every night till twelve and often later, for he won't obey me any +more. I wonder whether Mr. and Mrs. Greely are glad that you are getting +a better type of customer! Mrs. Greely almost stopped me on the street +the other day--that is, she almost got up courage to speak to me. Before +now she's cut me, just as Girlie does, just as your wife does, just as +Dickie does--" + +"Dickie cut you?" Sylvester threw back his head and laughed uneasily, and +with a strained note of alarm. "That's a good one, Miss Sheila. I kinder +fancied you did the cuttin' there." + +"Dickie hasn't spoken to me since he came to me that day when he heard +what I was going to do and tried to talk me out of doing it." + +"Yes'm. He came to me first," drawled Sylvester. + +They were both silent, busy with the amazing memory of Dickie, of his +disheveled fury, of his lashing eloquence. He had burst in upon his +family at breakfast that April morning when Millings was humming with +the news, had advanced upon his father, stood above him. + +"Is it true that you are going to make a barmaid of Sheila?" + +Sylvester, in an effort to get to his feet, had been held back by +Dickie's thin hand that shot out at him like a sword. + +"Sure it's true," Sylvester had said coolly. But he had not felt cool. He +had felt shaken and confused. The boy's entire self-forgetfulness, his +entire absence of fear, had made Hudson feel that he was talking to a +stranger, a not inconsiderable one. + +"It's true, then." Dickie had drawn a big breath. "You--you"--he seemed +to swallow an epithet--"you'll let that girl go into your filthy saloon +and make money for you by her--by her prettiness and her--her +ignorance--" + +"Say, Dickie," his father had drawled, "you goin' to run for the +legislature? Such a lot of classy words!" But anger and alarm were +rising in him. + +"You've fetched her away out here," went on Dickie, "and kinder got her +cornered and you've talked a lot of slush to her and you've--" + +Here Girlie came to the rescue. + +"Well, anyway, she's a willing victim, Dickie," Girlie had said. + +Dickie had flashed her one look. "Is she? I'll see about that. +Where's Sheila?" + +And then, there was Sheila's memory. Dickie had come upon her in a +confusion of boxes, her little trunk half-unpacked, its treasures +scattered over the chairs and floor. Sheila had lifted to him from where +she knelt a glowing and excited face. "Oh, Dickie," she had said, her +relief at the escape from Mrs. Hudson pouring music into her voice, "have +you heard?" + +He had sat down on one of the plush chairs of "the suite" as though he +felt weak. Then he had got up and had walked to and fro while she +described her dream, the beauty of her chosen mission, the glory of the +saloon whose high priestess she had become. And Dickie had listened with +the bitter and disillusioned and tender face of a father hearing the +prattle of a beloved child. + +"You honest think all that, Sheila?" he had asked her patiently. + +She had started again, standing now to face him and beginning to be angry +at his look. This boy whom she had lifted up to be her friend! + +"Say," Dickie had drawled, "Poppa's some guardian!" He had advanced upon +her as though he wanted to shake her. "You gotta give it right up, +Sheila," he had said sternly. "Sooner than immediately. It's not to go +through. Say, girl, you don't know much about bars." He had drawn a +picture for her, drawing partly upon experience, partly upon his +imagination, the gift of vivid metaphor descending upon him. He used +words that bit into her memory. Sheila had listened and then she had put +her hands over her ears. He pulled them down. He went on. Sheila's Irish +blood had boiled up into her brain. She stormed back at him. + +"It's you, it's your use of The Aura that has been its only shame, +Dickie," was the last of all the things she had said. + +At which, Dickie standing very still, had answered, "If you go there and +stand behind the bar all night with Carthy to keep hands off, I--I swear +I'll never set foot inside the place again. You ain't agoin' to be _my_ +beacon light--" + +"Well, then," said Sheila, "I shall have done one good thing at least by +being there." + +Dickie, going out, had passed a breathless Sylvester on his way in. The +two had looked at each other with a look that cut in two the tie between +them, and Sheila, running to Sylvester, had burst into tears. + + * * * * * + +The motor hummed evenly on its way. It began, with a change of tune, to +climb the graded side of one of the enormous mesas. Sheila, having lived +through again that scene with Dickie, took out a small handkerchief and +busied herself with it under her veil. She laughed shakily. + +"Perhaps a beacon does more good by warning people away than by +attracting them," she said. "Dickie has certainly kept his word. I don't +believe he's touched a drop since I've been barmaid, Mr. Hudson. I +should think you'd be proud of him." + +Sylvester was silent while they climbed the hill. He changed gears and +sounded his horn. They passed another motor on a dangerous curve. They +began to drop down again. + +"Some day," said Sylvester in a quiet voice, "I'll break every bone in +Dickie's body." He murmured something more under his breath in too low a +tone, fortunately, for Sheila's ear. From her position behind the bar, +she had become used to swearing. She had heard a strange variety of +language. But when Sylvester drew upon his experience and his fancy, the +artist in him was at work. + +"Do you suppose," asked his companion in an impersonal tone, "that it was +really a hard thing for Dickie to do--to give it up, I mean?" + +"By the look of him the last few months," snarled Sylvester, "I should +say it had taken out of him what little real feller there ever was in." + +Sheila considered this. She remembered Dickie, as he had risen behind the +desk half an hour before. She did not contradict Sylvester. She had +learned not to contradict him. But Dickie's face with its tight-knit look +of battle stood out very clear to refute the accusation of any loss of +manliness. He was still a quaint and ruffled Dickie. But he was vastly +aged. From twenty to twenty-seven, he seemed to have jumped in a few +weeks. A key had turned in the formerly open door of his spirit. The +indeterminate lips had shut hard, the long-lashed eyes had definitely put +a guard upon their dreams. He was shockingly thin and colorless, however. +Sheila dwelt painfully upon the sort of devastation she had wrought. +Girlie's face, and Dickie's, and Jim's. A grieving pressure squeezed her +heart; she lifted her chest with an effort on a stifled breath. + +"God! Sheila," said Sylvester harshly. The car wobbled a little. "Ain't +you happy, girl?" + +Sheila looked up at him. Her veil was wet against her cheeks. + +"Last night," she said unevenly, "a man was going to kiss me on my +mouth and--and he changed his mind and kissed my hand instead. He left +a smear of blood on my fingers from where those--those other men had +struck his lips. I don't know why it f-frightens me so to think about +that. But it does." + +She seemed to collapse before him into a little sobbing child. + +"And every day when I wake up," she wailed, "I t-taste whiskey on my +tongue and I--I smell cigarette smoke in my hair. And I d-dream about men +looking at me--the way Jim looks. And I can't let myself think of Father +any more. He used to hold his chin up and walk along as if he looked +above every one and everything. I don't believe he'd ever seen a barmaid +or a drunken man--not really seen them, Mr. Hudson." + +"Then he wasn't a real artist after all," Sylvester spoke slowly and +carefully. He was pale. + +"He l-loved the stars," sobbed Sheila, her broken reserve had let out a +flood; "he told me to keep looking at the stars." + +"Well, ma'am," Sylvester spoke again, "I never knowed the stars to turn +their backs on anything. Barmaids or drunks or kings--they all look about +alike to the stars, I reckon. Say, Sheila, maybe you haven't got the +pluck for real living. Maybe you're the kind of doll-baby girl that +craves sheltering. I reckon I made a big mistake." + +Sheila moved slightly as though his speech had pricked her. + +"It kind of didn't occur to me," went on Sylvester, "that you'd care a +whole lot about being ig-nored by Momma and Mr. and Mrs. Greely and +Girlie. Say, Girlie's got to take her chance same's anybody else. Why +don't you give Jim a jolt?" + +Sheila at this began to laugh. She caught her breath. She laughed and +cried together. + +Sylvester patted her shoulder. "Poor kid! You're all in. Late hours too +much for you, I reckon. Come on now--tell Pap everything. Ease off your +heart. It's wonderful what crying does for the nervous system. I laid out +on a prairie one night when I was about your age and just naturally +bawled. You'd 'a' thought I was a baby steer, hanged if you wouldn't 'a' +thought so. It's the fight scared you plumb to pieces. Carthy told me +about it and how you let the good-looking kid out by the back. I seen him +ride off toward Hidden Creek this morning. He was a real pretty boy too. +Say, Sheila, wasn't you ever kissed?" + +"No," said Sheila. "And I don't want to be." Sylvester laughed with a +little low cackle of intense pleasure and amusement. "Well, you shan't +be. No, you shan't. Nobody shall kiss Sheila!" + +His method seemed to him successful. Sheila stopped crying and stopped +laughing, dried her eyes, murmured, "I'm all right now, thank you, Mr. +Hudson," and fell into an abysmal silence. + +He talked smoothly, soothingly, skillfully, confident of his power to +manage "gels." Once in a while he saw her teeth gleam as though she +smiled. As they came back to Millings in the afterglow of a brief Western +twilight, she unfastened her veil and showed a quiet, thoughtful face. + +She thanked him, gave him her hand. "Don't come up, please, Mr. Hudson," +she said with that cool composure of which at times she was surprisingly +capable. "I shall have my dinner sent up and take a little rest before I +go to work." + +"You feel O.K.?" he asked her doubtfully. His brown eyes had an almost +doglike wistfulness. + +"Quite, thank you." Her easy, effortless smile passed across her face and +in and out of her eyes. + +Hudson stood beside his wheel tapping his teeth and staring after her. +The rockers on the veranda stopped their rocking, stopped their talking, +stopped their breathing to see Sheila pass. When she had gone, they +fastened their attention upon Sylvester. He was not aware of them. He +stood there a full three minutes under the glare of publicity. Then he +sighed and climbed into his car. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +HUDSON'S QUEEN + + +The lobby, empty of its crowd when Sheila passed through it on her way up +to her rooms, was filled by a wheezy, bullying voice. In front of the +desk a little barrel of a man with piggish eyes was disputing his bill +with Dickie. At the sound of Sheila's entrance he turned, stopped his +complaint, watched her pass, and spat into a near-by receptacle. Sheila +remembered that he had visited the bar early in the evening before, and +had guzzled his whiskey and made some wheezy attempts at gallantry. +Dickie, flushed, his hair at wild odds with composure, was going over the +bill. In the midst of his calculations the man would interrupt him with a +plump dirty forefinger pounced upon the paper. "Wassa meanin' of this +item, f'rinstance? Highway robbery, thassa meanin' of it. My wife take +breakfast in her room? I'd like to see her try it!" + +Sheila went upstairs. She took off her things, washed off the dust, and +changed into the black-and-white barmaid's costume, fastening the frilly +apron, the cuffs, the delicate fichu with mechanical care. She put on the +silk stockings and the buckled shoes and the tiny cap. Then she went into +her sitting-room, chose the most dignified chair, folded her hands in +her lap, and waited for Dickie. Waiting, she looked out through the +window and saw the glow fade from the snowy crest of The Hill. The +evening star let itself delicately down through the sweeping shadows of +the earth from some mysterious fastness of invisibility. The room was dim +when Dickie's knock made her turn her head. + +"Come in." + +He appeared, shut the door without looking at her, then came unwillingly +across the carpet and stopped at about three steps from her chair, +standing with one hand in his pocket. He had slicked down his hair with +a wet brush and changed his suit. It was the dark-blue serge he had worn +at the dance five months before. What those five months had been to +Dickie, through what abasements and exaltations, furies and despairs he +had traveled since he had looked up from Sheila's slippered feet with +his heart turned backward like a pilot's wheel, was only faintly +indicated in his face. And yet the face gave Sheila a pang. And, +unsupported by anger, he was far from formidable, a mere youth. Sheila +wondered at her long and sustained persecution of him. She smiled, her +lips, her eyes, and her heart. + +"Aren't you going to sit down, Dickie? This isn't a school examination." + +"If it was," said Dickie, with an uncertain attempt at ease, "I wouldn't +pass." He felt for a chair and got into it. He caught a knee in his hand +and looked about him. "You've made the room awful pretty, Sheila." + +She had spent some of the rather large pay she drew upon coverings of +French blue for the plush furniture, upon a dainty yellow porcelain +tea-set, upon little oddments of decoration. The wall-paper and carpet +were inoffensive, the quietest probably in Millings, so that her efforts +had met with some success. There was a lounge with cushions, there were +some little volumes, a picture of her father, a bowl of pink wild roses, +a vase of vivid cactus flowers. Some sketches in water-color--Marcus's +most happy medium--had been tacked up. A piece of tapestry decorated the +back of the chair Sheila had chosen. In the dim light it all had an air +of quiet richness. It seemed a room transplanted to Millings from some +finer soil. + +Dickie looked at the tapestry because it was the nearest he dared come to +looking at Sheila. His hands and knees shook with the terrible beating of +his heart. It was not right, thought Dickie resentfully, that any feeling +should take hold of a fellow and shake and terrify him so. He threw +himself back suddenly and folded his arms tight across his chest. + +"You wanted to see me about something?" he asked. + +"Yes. I'll give you some tea first." + +Dickie's lips fell apart. He said neither yea nor nay, but watched +dazedly her preparations, her concoctions, her advance upon him with a +yellow teacup and a wafer. He did not stand up to take it and he knew too +late that this was a blunder. He tingled with shame. + +Sheila went back to her chair and sipped from her own cup. + +"I've been angry with you for three months now, Dickie." + +"Yes'm," he said meekly. + +"That's the longest I've ever been angry with any one in my life. Once I +hated a teacher for two weeks, and it almost killed me. But what I felt +about her was--was weakness to the way I've felt about you." + +"Yes'm," again said Dickie. His tea was terribly hot and burnt his +tongue, so that tears stood in his eyes. + +"And I suppose you've been angry with me." + +"No, ma'am." + +Sheila was not particularly pleased with this gentle reply. "Why, Dickie, +you _know_ you have!" + +"No, ma'am." + +"Then why haven't you spoken to me? Why have you looked that way at me?" + +"I don't speak to folks that don't speak to me," said Dickie, lifting the +wafer as though its extreme lightness was faintly repulsive to him. + +"Well," said Sheila bitterly, "you haven't been alone in your attitude. +Very few people have been speaking to me. My only loyal friends are Mr. +Hudson and Amelia Plecks and Carthy and Jim. Jim made no promises about +being my guardian, but--" + +"But he _is_ your guardian?" Dickie drawled the question slightly. His +gift of faint irony and impersonal detachment flicked Sheila's temper as +it had always flicked his father's. + +"Jim is my friend," Sheila maintained in defiance of a still, small +voice. "He has given me a pony and has taken me riding--" + +"Yes'm, I've saw you--" Dickie's English was peculiarly fallible in +moments of emotion. Now he seemed determined to cut Sheila's description +short. "Say, Sheila, did you send for me to tell me about this lovely +friendship of yours with Jim?" + +Sheila set her cup down on the window-sill. She did not want to lose her +temper with Dickie. She brushed a wafer crumb from her knee. + +"No, Dickie, I didn't. I sent for you because, after all, though I've +been so angry with you, I've known in my heart that--that--you are a +loyal friend and that you tell the truth." + +This admission was an effort. Sheila's pride suffered to the point of +bringing a dim sound of tears into her voice.... + +Dickie did not speak. He too put down his tea-cup and his wafer side by +side on the floor near his chair. He put his elbows on his knees and bent +his head down as though he were examining his thin, locked hands. + +Sheila waited for a long minute; then she said angrily, "Aren't you glad +I think that of you?" + +"Yes'm." Dickie's voice was indistinct. + +"You don't seem glad." + +Dickie made some sort of struggle. Sheila could not quite make out its +nature. "I'm glad. I'm so glad that it kind of--hurts," he said. + +"Oh!" That at least was pleasant intelligence to a wounded pride. + +Fortified, Sheila began the real business of the interview. "You are not +an artist, Dickie," she said, "and you don't understand why your father +asked me to work at The Aura nor why I wanted to work there. It was your +entire inability to understand--" + +"Entire inability--" whispered Dickie as though he were taking down the +phrase with an intention of looking it up later. + +This confused Sheila. "Your--your entire inability," she repeated +rapidly, "your--your entire inability--" + +"Yes'm. I've got that." + +"--To understand that made me so angry that day." Sheila was glad to be +rid of that obstruction. She had planned this speech rather carefully in +the watches of the wakeful, feverish morning which had been her night. +"You seemed to be trying to pull your father and me down to some lower +spiritual level of your own." + +"Lower spiritual level," repeated Dickie. + +"Dickie, stop that, please!" + +He looked up, startled by her sharpness. "Stop what, ma'am?" + +"Saying things after me. It's insufferable." + +"Insufferable--oh, I suppose it is. You're usin' so many words, Sheila. I +kind of forgot there was so many words as you're makin' use of this +afternoon." + +"Oh, Dickie, Dickie! Can't you see how miserable I am! I am so unhappy +and--and scared, and you--you are making fun of me." + +At that, spoken in a changed and quavering key of helplessness, Dickie +hurried to her, knelt down beside her chair, and took her hands. + +"Sheila! I'll do anything!" + +His presence, his boyish, quivering touch, so withheld from anything but +boyishness, even the impulsive humility of his thin, kneeling body, were +inexpressibly soothing, inexpressibly comforting. She did not draw away +her hands. She let them cling to his. + +"Dickie, will you answer me, quite truthfully and simply, without any +explaining or softening, please, if I ask you a--a dreadful question?" + +"Yes, dear." + +"I'm not sure if it is a dreadful question, but--but I'm afraid it is." + +"Don't worry. Ask me. Surely, I'll answer you the truth without +any fixin's." + +Her hands clung a little closer. She was silent, gathering courage. He +felt her slim knees quiver. + +"What do they mean, Dickie," she whispered with a wan look, "when they +call me--'Hudson's Queen'?" + +Dickie bent from her look as though he felt a pain. He took her hands up +close to his breast. "Who told you that they called you that?" he asked +breathlessly. + +"That's what every one calls me--the men over in the Big Horn +country--they tell men that are coming to Millings to be sure to look up +'Hudson's Queen.' Do they mean the Hotel, Dickie? They _do_ mean the +Hotel, don't they, Dickie?--that I am _The_ Hudson's Queen?" + +The truth sometimes presents itself like a withering flame. Dickie got +up, put away her hands, walked up and down, then came back to her. He had +heard the epithet and he knew its meaning. He wrestled now with his +longing to keep her from such understanding, or, at least, to soften it. +She had asked for the clear truth and he had promised it to her. He stood +away because he could not trust himself to endure the wincing of her +hands and body when she heard the truth. He hoped dimly that she might +not understand it. + +"They don't mean the Hotel, Sheila," he said harshly. "They mean--Father. +You know now what they mean--?" In her stricken and bewildered eyes he +saw that she did know. "I would like to kill them," sobbed Dickie +suddenly. "I would like to kill--_him_. No, no, Sheila, don't you cry. +Don't you. It's not worth cryin' for. It's jest ignorant folks's ignorant +and stupid talk. It's not worth cryin' for." He sat down on the arm of +her chair and fairly gathered her into his arms. He rocked and patted her +shoulder and kissed her gently on her hair--all with that boyishness, +that brotherliness, that vast restraint so that she could not even guess +the strange and unimaginable pangs he suffered from his self-control. + +Before Dickie's resolution was burnt away by the young inner fire, Sheila +withdrew herself gently from his arms and got up from the chair. She +walked over to one of the two large windows--the sunset windows she +called them, in contradistinction to the one sunrise window--and stood +composing herself, her hands twisted together and lifted to the top of +the lower sash, her forehead rested on them. + +A rattle of china, a creaking step outside the door, interrupted their +tremulous silence in which who knows what mysterious currents were +passing between their young minds. + +"It's my dinner," said Sheila, and Dickie walked over mechanically and +opened the door. + +Amelia Plecks came panting into the room, set the tray down on a small +table, and looked contempt at Dickie. + +"There now, Miss Arundel," she said with breathless tenderness, "I've +pro-cured a dandy chop for you. You said you was kind of famished for a +lamb chop, and, of course, in a sheep country good mutton's real hard to +come by, and this ain't properly speaking--lamb, _but_--! Well, say, it's +just dandy meat." + +She ignored Dickie as one might ignore the presence of some obnoxious +insect in the reception-room of a queen. Her eyes were disgustedly +fascinated by his presence, but in her conversation she would not admit +this preoccupation of disgust. + +"I'll be going," said Dickie. + +Amelia nodded as one who applauds the becoming move of an inferior. + +"Here's a note for you, Miss Arundel," she said, coming over to Sheila's +post at the window, where she was trying to hide the traces of her tears. +"Well, say, who's been botherin' you?" Amelia's voice went down a long, +threatening octave to a sinister bass note, at the voicing of which she +turned to look at Dickie. + +"Good-night, Sheila," he said diffidently; and Sheila coming quickly +toward him, put out her hand. The note Amelia had handed her fell. Dickie +and Amelia both bent to pick it up. + +"No, you don't," said Amelia, snatching it and accusing him, by her tone, +of inexpressibly base intentions. "Say, Miss Arundel," in a whisper of +thrilled confidence, "_Mister Jim_! Uh?" + +"Thank you, Dickie," murmured Sheila, half-embarrassed, half-amused by +her adoring follower's innuendoes. "Thank you for everything. I shall +have to think what I can do ... Good-night." + +Dickie, his eyes forcibly held away from Jim's note, murmured, +"Good-night, ma'am," and went out, closing the door with exaggerated +gentleness. The quietness of his departure seemed to spare Sheila's +sensitiveness. + +"Ain't he a worm, though!" exclaimed Amelia, sparing nobody's +sensitiveness. + +"He's nothing of the sort," Sheila protested indignantly. "He is a dear!" + +Amelia opened her prominent eyes and pursed her lips. A reassuring light +dawned on her bewilderment. "Oh, say, dearie, I wasn't speakin' of your +Mister Jim. I was makin' reference to Dickie." + +Sheila thrust the note into her pocket and went over to the table to +light her lamp. "I know quite well that you meant Dickie," she said. +"Nobody in Millings would ever dream of comparing Mr. James Greely to a +worm, even if he came out from the ground just in time for the early bird +to peck him. I know that." + +"You're ornery to-night, dearie," announced Amelia, and with exemplary +tact she creaked and breathed herself to the door. There she had a +relapse from tactfulness, however, and planted herself to stare. "Ain't +you goin' to read your note?" + +Sheila, to be rid of her, unfolded the paper and read. It was quite +beautifully penned in green ink on violet paper. Jim had written both +wisely and too well. + +"My darling--Why not permit me to call you that when it is the simple and +sincere truth?" An astonished little voice in Sheila's brain here seemed +to counter-question mechanically "Why not, indeed?"--"I cannot think of +anything but you and how I love you. These little notes I am going to +keep a-sending you are messengers of love. You will never meet with a +more tremendous lover than me.... Be _my_ Queen," Jim had written with a +great climatic splash of ink, and he had signed himself, "Your James." + +Sheila's face was crimson when she put down the note. She stared straight +in front of her for an instant with very large eyes in this scarlet rose +of countenance and then she crumpled into mirth. She put her face into +her hands and rocked. It seemed as though a giant of laughter had caught +her about the ribs. + +Amelia stared and felt a wound. She swallowed a lump of balked sentiment +as she went out. Her idol was faintly tarnished, her heroine's stature +preceptibly diminished. The sort of Madame du Barry atmosphere with which +Sheila's image was surrounded in Amelia's fancy lost a little of its rosy +glow. The favorite of Kings, the _amorita_ of Dukes, does not rock with +laughter over scented notes from a High Desirable. + +"She ain't just quite up to it," was Amelia's comment, which she +probably could not have explained even to herself. + +Sheila presently was done with laughter. She ate a nibble of dinner as +soberly as Amelia could have wished, then sat back, her eyes closed with +a resolve to think clearly, closely, to some determination of her life. +But Jim's note, which had so roused her amusement, began to force itself +in another fashion upon her. She discovered that it was an insufferable +note. It insinuated everything, it suggested--everything. It was a +boastful messenger. It swaggered male-ishly. It threw out its chest and +smacked its lips. "See what a sad dog my master is," it said; "a regular +devil of a fellow." Sheila found her thoughts confused by anger. She +found that she was too disturbed for any clear decision. She was terribly +weary and full of dread for the long night before her. And a startled +look at her clock told her it was time now to go over to the saloon. + +She got up, went to her mirror, smoothed her rippled hair with two +strokes of a brush, readjusted her cap, and decided that, for once, a +little powder on the nose was a necessity. Carthy must not see that she +had been crying. As it was, her brilliant color was suspicious, and her +eyes, with their deep distended look of tears. She shut them, drew a +breath, put out her light, and went down the back stairs to a narrow +alley. It led from the hotel to the street that ran back of The Aura ... +the street to which she had taken young Hilliard the night before. + +The alley seemed to Sheila, as she stepped into it from the glare of the +electric-lighted hotel, a stream of cool and silvery light. Above lay a +strip of tender sky in which already the stars shook. In this high +atmosphere they were always tremulous, dancing, beating, almost leaping, +with a fullness of quick light. They seemed very near to the edges of the +alley walls, to be especially visiting it with their detached regard, +peering down for some small divine occasion for influence. Sheila prayed +to them a desperate prayer of human helplessness. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +SYLVESTER CELEBRATES + + +"Hey, you girl there! Hi! Hey!" + +These exclamations called in a resonant, deep-chested voice succeeded at +last in attracting Sheila's attention. She had lingered at the alley's +mouth, shirking her entrance into the saloon, and now she saw, halfway +down the short, wide street, a gesticulating figure. + +At first, as she obeyed the summons, she thought the summoner a man, but +on near view it proved itself a woman, of broad, massive hips and +shoulders, dressed in a man's flannel shirt and a pair of large corduroy +trousers, their legs tucked into high cowboy boots. She wore no hat, and +her hair was cut square across her neck and forehead; hair of a dark +rusty red, it was, and matched eyes like dark panes of glass before a +fire, red-brown and very bright, ruddy eyes in a square, ruddy face, +which, with its short, straight, wide-bridged nose, well-shaped lips, +square chin, and brilliant teeth, made up a striking and not unattractive +countenance. + +"I've got a horse here; won't stand," said the woman. "Will you hold +his head? Can leaking back here in my wagon, leaking all over my +other stuff." + +The horse came round the corner. He moved resolutely to meet them. He +was the boniest, small horse Sheila had ever seen--a shadow of a horse, +one-eyed, morose, embittered. The harness hung loose upon his meagerness; +the shafts stuck up like the points of a large collar on a small old man. + +"He's not running away," explained the owner superfluously. "It's just +that he can't stop. You'd think, to look at him, that stopping would +be his favorite sport. But you'd be mistaken. Go he must. He's kind of +always crazy to get there--Lord knows where--probably to the end of +his life." + +Sheila held the horse, and rubbed his nose with her small and gentle +hand. The creature drooped under the caress and let its lower lip, with a +few stiff white hairs, hang and quiver bitterly. It half-closed its one +useful eye, a pale eye of intense, colorless disillusionment. + +When the wagon stopped, a dog who was trotting under it stopped too +and lay down in the dust, panting. Sheila bent her head a little to +see the dog. She had a child's intense interest in animals. Through +the dimness she made out a big, wolfish creature with a splendid, +clean, gray coat, his pointed nose, short, pointed ears, deep, wild +eyes, and scarlet tongue, set in a circular ruff of black. His bushy +tail curled up over his back. + +"What kind of dog is that?" asked Sheila, thinking the great animal under +the wagon better fitted to pull the load than the shadowy little horse in +front of it. + +"Quarter wolf," answered the woman in her casual manner of speech, her +resonant voice falling pleasantly on the light coolness of the evening +air; "Malamute. This fellow was littered on the body of a dead man." + +Sheila had also the child's interest in tales. "Tell me about it," she +begged fervently. + +The woman stopped in her business of tying down a canvas cover over her +load and gave Sheila an amused and searching look. She held an iron spike +between her teeth, but spoke around it skillfully. + +"Arctic exploration it was. My brother was one of the party. 'T was he +brought me home Berg. Berg's mother was one of the sledge dogs. Party was +shipwrecked, starved, most of the dogs eaten, one man dead. Berg's mother +littered on the body one night. Next morning they were rescued and the +new family was saved. Otherwise I guess they'd have had a puppy stew and +Berg and his wife and family wouldn't be earning their living with me." + +"How do they earn their living?" asked Sheila, still peering at the hero +of the tale. + +"They pull my sled about winters, Hidden Creek." + +"Oh, you live in the Hidden Creek country?" + +"Yes. Got a ranch up not far from the source. Ever been over The Hill?" + +She came toward Sheila, gathered the reins into her strong, broad hands, +held them in her teeth, and began to pull on her canvas gloves. She +talked with the reins between her teeth as she had with the spike, her +enunciation triumphantly forceful and distinct. + +"Some day, I'm coming over The Hill," said Sheila, less successful with a +contraction in her throat. + +The woman made a few strides. Now she was looking shrewdly, close into +Sheila's face. + +"You're a biscuit-shooter at the hotel?" + +"No. I work in the saloon." + +"In the saloon? Oh, sure. Barmaid. I've heard of you." + +Here she put a square finger-tip under Sheila's chin and looked even +closer than before. "Not happy, are you?" she said. She moved away +abruptly. "Tired of town life. Been crying. Well, when you want to pull +out, come over to my ranch. I need a girl. I'm kind of lonesome winters. +It's a pretty place if you aren't looking for street-lamps and +talking-machines. You don't hear much more than coyotes and the river and +the pines and, if you're looking for high lights, you can sure see the +stars ..." + +She climbed up to her seat, using the hub of her wheel for a foothold, +and springing with surprising agility and strength. + +Sheila stepped aside and the horse started instantly. She made a few +hurried steps to keep up. + +"Thank you," she said, looking up into the ruddy eyes that looked down. +"I'll remember that. What is your name?" + +"Christina Blake, Miss Blake. I'll make The Hill before morning if +I'm lucky. Less dust and heat by night and the horse has loafed +since morning.... I mean that about coming to my place. Any time. +Good-bye to you." + +She smiled a smile as casual in its own way as Sheila's own. Berg, under +the wagon, trotted silently. He looked neither to right nor left. His +wild, deep-set eyes were fastened on the heels of the small horse. He +looked as though he were trotting relentlessly toward some wolfish goal +of satisfied hunger. A little cloud of dust rose up from the wheels and +stood between Sheila and the wagon. She conquered an impulse to run after +it, shut her hand tight, and walked in at the back door of the saloon. + +A teamster, with a lean, fatherly face, his mouth veiled by a +shaggy blond mustache, his eyes as blue as larkspur, smiled at her +across the bar. + +"Hullo," said he. "How's your pony?" + +Sheila had struck up one of her sudden friendships with this man, who +visited the saloon at regular intervals. This question warmed her heart. +The little pony of Jim's giving was dear. She thought of his soft eyes +and snuggling nose almost as often and as fondly as a lover thinks of the +face of his lady. + +"Tuck's splendid, Mr. Thatcher," she said, leaning her elbows on the bar +and cupping her chin in her hands. Her face was bright with its tender, +Puckish look. "He's too cute. He can take sugar out of my apron pocket. +And he'll shake hands. I'd just love you to see him. Will you be here +to-morrow afternoon?" + +"No, ma'am. I'm pullin' out about sunup. Round the time you tumble into +bed. Got to make The Hill." + +"How's your baby?" + +A shining smile rewarded her interest in the recent invalid. "Fine and +dandy. You ought to see her walk!" + +"Isn't that splendid! And how's the little boy? Is he with you?" + +"No, ma'am. I kind o' left him to mind the ranch. He's gettin' to be a +real rancher, that boy. He was sure sorry not to make Hidden Creek this +trip, though. Say, he was set on seein' you. I told him about you." + +Sheila's face flamed and her eyes smarted. Gratitude and shame possessed +her. This man, then, did not speak of her as "Hudson's Queen"--not if he +told his boy about her. She turned away to hide the flame and smart. When +she looked back, Sylvester himself stood at Thatcher's elbow. He very +rarely came into the saloon. At sight of him Sheila's heart leaped as +though it had been struck. + +"Say, Sheila," he murmured, "I'm celebratin' to-night." + +She tried to dismiss from her mind its new and ugly consciousness. She +tried to smile. The result was an expression strange enough. + +Sylvester, however, missed it. He was dressed in one of the brown +checked suits, a new one, freshly creased; there was a red wild-rose bud +in his buttonhole. The emerald gleamed on his well-kept, sallow hand. He +was sipping from his glass and had put a confidential hand on Thatcher's +shoulder. He grinned at Carthy. + +"Well, sir," he said, "nobody has in-quired as to my celebration. But I'm +not proud. I'll tell you. I'm celebratin' to-night the winnin' of a bet." + +"That's sure a deservin' cause," said Thatcher. + +"Yes, sir. Had a bet with Carthy here. Look at him blush! Carthy sure-ly +hates to be wrong. And he's mostly right in his prog-nos-ti-cations. He +sure is. You bet yer. That's why I'm so festive." + +"What'd he prognosticate?" asked Thatcher obligingly. He had moved his +shoulder away from Hudson's hand. + +Sylvester wrinkled his upper lip into its smile and looked down into his +glass. He turned his emerald. + +"Carthy prophesied that about this time a little--er--dream--of mine +would go bust," said Hudson. He lifted up his eyes pensively to Sheila, +first his eyes and then his glass. "Here's to my dream--you, girl," he +said softly. + +He drank with his eyes upon her face, drew a deep breath, and looked +about the room. + +Thatcher glanced from him to Sheila. "Goodnight to you, ma'am," he said +with gentleness. "Next time I'll bring the boy." + +"Please, please do." + +Sheila put her hand in his. He looked down at it as though something had +startled him. In fact, her touch was like a flake of snow. + +When Thatcher had gone, Sylvester leaned closer to her across the bar. He +moved his glass around in his hand and looked up at her humbly. + +"The tables kind of turned, eh?" he said. + +"What do you mean, Mr. Hudson?" Sheila, by lifting her voice, tried to +dissipate the atmosphere of confidence, of secrecy. Carthy had moved away +from them, the other occupants of the saloon were very apparently not +listening. + +"Well, ma'am," Sylvester explained, "six months ago I was kind of layin' +claim to gratitude from you, and now it's the other way round." + +"Yes," she said. "But I am still grateful." The words came, however, with +a certain unwillingness, a certain lack of spontaneity. + +"Are you, though?" He put his head on one side so that Sheila was +reminded of Dickie. For the first time a sort of shadowy resemblance +between father and son was apparent to her. "Well, you've wiped the +reckonin' off the slate by what you've done for me. You've given me my +Aura. Say, you have been my fairy godmother, all right. Talk about wishes +comin' true!" + +Again he looked about the room, and that wistfulness of the visionary +stole into his face. His eyes came back to her with an expression that +was almost beautiful. "If only that Englishman was here," he sighed. "Yes +ma'am. I'm sure celebratin' to-night!" + +It was soon very apparent that he was celebrating. For an hour he stood +every newcomer to a drink, and then he withdrew to a table in a shadowy +corner, and sitting there, tilted against the wall, he sipped from his +glass, smoked and dreamed. Hour after hour of the slow, noisy night went +by and still he sat there, watching Sheila through the smoke, seeing in +her, more and more glowingly, the body of his dream. + +It was after dawn when Sheila touched Carthy's elbow. The big Irishman +looked down at her small, drawn face. + +"Mr. Carthy," she whispered, "would it be all right if I went home now? +It's earlier than usual, but I'm so--awfully tired?" + +There was so urgent an air of secrecy in her manner that Carthy +muttered his permission out of the corner of his mouth. Sheila melted +from his side. + +The alley that had been silvery cool with dusk was now even more silvery +cool with morning twilight. Small sunrise clouds were winging over it +like golden doves. Sheila did not look at them. She ran breathless to her +door, opened it, and found herself face to face with Dickie. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE LIGHT OF DAWN + + +There was a light of dawn in the room and through the open window blew in +the keen air of daybreak. Dickie was standing quite still in the middle +of the floor. He was more neat and groomed than Sheila had ever seen him. +He looked as though he had stepped from a bath; his hair was sleek and +wet so that it was dark above the pure pallor of his face; his suit was +carefully put on; his cuffs and collar were clean. He did not have the +look of a man that has been awake all night, nor did he look as though he +had ever been asleep. His face and eyes were alight, his lips firm and +delicate with feeling. + +Before him Sheila felt old and stained. The smoke and fumes of the bar +hung about her. She was shamed by the fresh youthfulness of his slender, +eager carriage and of his eyes. + +"Dickie," she faltered, and stood against the door, drooping wearily, +"what are you doing here at this hour?" + +"What does the hour matter?" he asked impatiently. "Come over to the +window. I want you to look at this big star. I've been watching it. It's +almost gone. It's like a white bird flying straight into the sun." + +He was imperative, laid his cool hand upon hers and drew her to the +window. They stood facing the sunrise. + +"Why did you come here?" again asked Sheila. The beauty of the sky only +deepened her misery and shame. + +"Because I couldn't wait any longer than one night. It's sure been an +awful long night for me, Sheila ... Sheila--" He drew the hand he still +held close to him with a trembling touch and laid his other hand over it. +Then she felt the terrible beating of his heart, felt that he was +shaking. "Sheila, I love you." She had hidden her face against the +curtain, had turned from him. She felt nothing but weariness and shame. +She was like a leaden weight tied coldly to his throbbing youth. Her hand +under his was hot and lifeless like a scorched rose. "I want you to come +away with me from Millings. You can't keep on a-working in that saloon. +You can't a-bear to have folks saying and thinking the fool things they +do. And I can't a-bear it even if you can. I'd go loco, and kill. Sheila, +I've been thinking all night, just sitting on the edge of my bed and +thinking. Sheila, if you will marry me, I will promise you to take care +of you. I won't let you suffer any. I will die"--his voice rocked on the +word, spoken with an awful sincerity of young love--"before I let you +suffer any. If you could love me a little bit"--he stopped as though that +leaping heart had sprung up into his throat--"only a little bit, +Sheila," he whispered, "maybe--?" + +"I can't," she said. "I can't love you that way even a little bit. I +can't marry you, Dickie. I wish I could. I am so tired." + +She drew her hand away, or rather it fell from the slackening grasp of +his, and hung at her side. She looked up from the curtain to his face. It +was still alight and tender and pale. + +"You're real sure, Sheila, that you _never_ could?--that you'd rather go +on with this--?" + +She pressed all the curves and the color out of her lips, still looking +at him, and nodded her head. + +"I can't stay in Millings," Dickie said, "and work in Poppa's hotel and +watch this, Sheila--unless, some way, I can help you." + +"Then you'd better go," she said lifelessly, "because I can't see what +else there is for me to do. Oh, I shan't go on with it for very long, +of course--" + +He came an eager half-step nearer. "Then, anyway, you'll let me go away +and work, and when I've kind of got a start, you'll let me come back +and--and see if--if you feel any sort of--different from what you do now? +It wouldn't be so awful long. I'd work like--like Hell!" His thin hand +shot into a fist. + +Sheila's lassitude was startled by his word into a faint, unwilling +smile. + +"Don't laugh at me!" he cried out. + +"Oh, Dickie, my dear, I'm not laughing. I'm so tired I can hardly stand. +And truly you must go now. I'm horrid to you. I always am. And yet I do +like you so much. And you are such a dear. And I feel there's something +great about you. I should be glad for you to leave Millings. There is a +much better chance for you away from Millings. I feel years old to-day. I +think I've grown up too old all at once and missed lovely things that I +ought to have had. Dickie"--she gave a dry sort of sob--"_you_ are one of +the lovely things." + +His arms drew gently round her. "Let me kiss you, Sheila," he pleaded +with tremulous lips. "I want just to kiss you once for good-bye. I'll be +so careful. If you knowed how I feel, you'd let me." + +She lifted up her mouth like an obedient child. Then, back of Dickie, she +saw Sylvester's face. + +It was more sallow than usual; its upper lip was drawn away from the +teeth and deeply wrinkled; the eyes, half-closed, were very soft; they +looked as though there was a veil across their pensiveness. He caught +Dickie's elbow in his hand, twisted him about, thrusting a knee into his +back, and with his other long, bony hand he struck him brutally across +the face. The emerald on his finger caught the light of the rising sun +and flashed like a little stream of green fire. + +Dickie, caught unawares by superior strength, was utterly defenseless. He +writhed and struggled vainly, gasping under the blows. Sylvester forced +him across the room, still inflicting punishment. His hand made a great +cracking sound at every slap. + +Sheila hid her face from the dreadful sight. "Oh, don't, don't, don't!" +she wailed again and again. + +Then it was over. Dickie was flung out; the door was locked against him +and Sylvester came back across the floor. + +His collar stood up in a half-moon back of his ears, his hair fell across +his forehead, his face was flushed, his lip bled. He had either bitten it +himself or Dickie had struck it. But he seemed quite calm, only a little +breathless. He was neither snarling nor smiling now. He took Sheila very +gently by the wrists, drawing her hands down from her face, and he put +her arms at their full length behind her, holding them there. + +"You meet Dickie here when you're through work, dream-girl," he said +gently. "You kiss Dickie when you leave my Aura, you little beacon light. +I've kept my hands off you and my lips off you and my mind off you, +because I thought you were too fine and good for anything but my ideal. +And all this while you've been sneaking up here to Dickie and Jim and +Lord knows who else besides. Now, I am agoin' to kiss you and then you +gotta get out of Millings. Do you hear? After I've kissed you, you ain't +good enough for my purpose--not for mine." + +Gathering both her hands in one of his, he put the hard, long fingers of +his free hand back of her head, holding it from wincing or turning and +his mouth dropped upon hers and seemed to smother out her life. She +tasted whiskey and the blood from his cut lips. + +"You won't tell _me_, anyway, that lie again," he panted, keeping his +face close, staring into her wide eyes of a horrified childishness--"that +you've never been kissed." + +Again his lips fastened on her mouth. He let her go, strode to the door, +unlocked it, and went out. + +She had fallen to the floor, her head against the chair. She beat the +chair with her hands, calling softly for her father and for her God. She +reproached them both. "You told me it was a good old world," she sobbed. +"You told me it was a good old world." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +FLAMES + + +A hot, dry day followed on the cool dawn. In his room Dickie lay across +his bed. The sun blazed in at his single long window; the big flies that +had risen from the dirty yard buzzed and bumped against the upper pane +and made aimless, endless, mazy circles above and below one another in +the stifling, odorous atmosphere. Dickie lay there like an image of +Icarus, an eternal symbol of defeated youth; one could almost see about +his slenderness the trailing, shattered wings. He had wept out the first +shock of his anger and his shame; now he lay in a despairing stupor. His +bruised face burned and ached; his chest felt tight with the aching and +burning of his heart. Any suspicion of his father's interpretation of his +presence in Sheila's room was mercifully spared him, but the knowledge +that he had been brutally jerked back from her pure and patient lips, had +been ignominiously punished before her eyes and turned out like a whipped +boy--this knowledge was a dreadful torture to his pride. Sheila, to be +sure, did not love him even a little bit; she had said so. All the +longing and the tumult of his heart during these months had made no more +impression upon her than a frantic sea makes upon the little bird at the +top of the cliff. She had, he must think, hardly been aware of it. And +it was such a terrible and frantic actuality. He had fancied that it must +have beaten forever, day by day, night by night, at her consciousness. +Can a woman live near so turbulent a thing and not even guess at its +existence? Her hand against his heart had lain so limp and dead. He +hadn't hoped, of course, that she loved him the way he loved. Probably no +one else could feel what he felt and live--so Dickie in young love's +eternal fashion believed in his own miracle; but she might have loved him +a little, a very little, in time--if she hadn't seen him beaten and +shamed and cuffed out of her presence like a dog. Now there was no hope. +No hope at all. No hope. Dickie rocked his head against his arm. He had +told Sheila that he would take care of her, but he could not even defend +himself. He had told her that he would die to save her any suffering, +but, before her, he had writhed and gasped helplessly under the weight of +another man's hand, his open hand, not even a fist.... No after act of +his could efface from Sheila's memory that picture of his ignominy. She +had seen him twisted and bent and beaten and thrown away. His father had +triumphantly returned to reassure and comfort her for the insult of a +boy's impertinence. Would Sheila defend him? Would she understand? Or +would she not be justified in contemptuous laughter at his pretensions? + +Such thoughts--less like thoughts, however, than like fiery fever +fits--twisted and scorched Dickie's mind as he lay there. They burnt into +him wounds that for years throbbed slowly into scars. + +At noon the heat of his room became even more intolerable than his +thoughts. His head beat with pain. He was bathed in sweat, weak and +trembling. He dragged himself up, went to his washstand, and dipped his +wincing face into the warmish, stale water. His lips felt cracked and dry +and swollen. In the wavy mirror he saw a distorted image of his face, +with its heavy eyes, scattered hair, and the darkening marks of his +father's blows, punctuated by the scarlet scratches of the emerald. He +dried his face, loosened his collar, and, gasping for air, came out into +the narrow hall. + +The hotel was very still. He hurried through it, his face bent, and went +by the back way to the saloon. At this hour Sheila was asleep. Carthy +would be alone in The Aura and there would be few, if any, customers. +Dickie found the place cool and quiet and empty, shuttered from the sun, +the air stirred by electric fans. Carthy dozed in his chair behind the +bar. He gave Dickie his order, somnambulantly. Dickie took it off to a +dim corner and drank with the thirst of a wounded beast. + +Three or four hours later he staggered back to his room. A thunderstorm +was rumbling and flashing down from the mountains to the north. The +window was purple-black, and a storm wind blew the dirty curtains, +straight and steady, into the room. The cool wind tasted and smelt of hot +dust. Dickie felt his dazed way to the bed and steadied himself into a +sitting posture. With infinite difficulty he rolled and lighted a +cigarette, drew at it, took it out, tried to put it again between his +lips, and fell over on his back, his arm trailing over the edge of the +bed. The lighted cigarette slipped from his fingers to the ragged strip +of matting. Dickie lay there, breathing heavily and regularly in a +drunken and exhausted sleep. + +A vivid, flickering pain in his arm woke him. He thought for an instant +that he must have died and dropped straight into Hell. The wind still +blew in upon him, but it blew fire against him. Above him there was a +heavy panoply of smoke. His bedclothes were burning, his sleeve was on +fire. The boards of his floor cracked and snapped in regiments of flame. +He got up, still in a half stupor, plunged his arm into the water +pitcher, saw, with a startled oath, that the woodwork about his door was +blazing in long tongues of fire which leaped up into the rafters of the +roof. His brain began to telegraph its messages ... the hotel was on +fire. He could not imagine what had started it. He remembered Sheila. + +He ran along the passage, the roar of that wind-driven fire following +him as the draft from his window through his opened door gave a sudden +impulse to the flames, and he came to Sheila's sitting-room. He +knocked, had no answer, and burst in. He saw instantly that she had +gone. Her father's picture had been taken, her little books, her +sketches, her work-basket, her small yellow vase. Things were scattered +about. As he stood staring, a billow of black smoke rolled into the +room. He went quickly through the bedroom and the bath, calling +"Sheila" in a low, uncertain voice, returned to the sitting-room to +find the air already pungent and hot. There was a paper pinned up on +the mantel. Sheila's writing marched across it. Dickie rubbed the smoke +from his eyes and read: + +"I am going away from Millings. And I am not coming back. Amelia may have +the things I have left. I don't want them." + +This statement was addressed to no one. + +"She has gone to New York," thought Dickie. His confused mind became +possessed with the immediate purpose of following her. There was an +Eastern train in the late afternoon. Only he must have money and it +was--most of it--in his room. He dashed back. The passage was ablaze; his +room roared like the very heart of a furnace. It was no use to think of +getting in there. Well, he had something in his pocket, enough to start +him. He plunged, choking, into Sheila's sitting-room again. For some +reason this flight of hers had brought back his hope. There was to be a +beginning, a fresh start, a chance. + +He went over to the chair where Sheila had sat in the comfort, of his +arms and he touched the piece of tapestry on its back. That was his +good-bye to Millings. Then he fastened his collar, smoothed his hair, +standing close before Sheila's mirror, peering and blinking through the +smoke, and buttoned his coat painstakingly. There would be a hat +downstairs. As he turned to go he saw a little brown leather book lying +on the floor below the mantel. He picked it up. Here was something he +could take to Sheila. With an impulse of tenderness he opened it. His +eyes were caught by a stanza-- + +"The blessed damozel leaned out +From the gold bar of Heaven; +Her eyes were deeper than the depth +Of waters stilled at even; +She had three lilies in her hand, +And the stars in her hair were seven--" + +There are people, no doubt, who will not be able to believe this truthful +bit of Dickie's history. The smoke was drifting across him, the roar of +the nearing fire was in his ears, he was at a great crisis in his +affairs, his heart was hot with wounded love, and his brain hot with +whiskey and with hope. Nevertheless, he did now, under the spell of those +printed words, which did not even remotely resemble any words that he had +ever read or heard before, forget the smoke, the roar, the love, the +hope, and, standing below Sheila's mirror, he did read "The Blessed +Damozel" from end to end. And the love of those lovers, divided by all +the space between the shaken worlds, and the beauty of her tears made a +great and mystic silence of rapture about him. "O God!" Dickie said +twice as he read. He brushed away the smoke to see the last lines,--"And +wept--I heard her tears." The ecstatic pain of beauty gripped him to the +forgetfulness of all other pain or ecstasy. "O God!" + +He came to with a start, shut the book, stuck it into his pocket, and, +crooking his arm over his smarting eyes, he plunged out of the room. +Millings had become aware of its disaster. Dickie, fleeing by the back +way, leaping dangers and beating through fire, knew by the distant +commotion that the Fire Brigade, of which he was a member, was gathering +its men for the glory of their name. He saw, too, that with a wind like +this to aid the fire, there wasn't a chance for The Aura, and a queer +pang of sympathy for his father stabbed him. "It will kill Pap," thought +Dickie. Save for this pang, he ran along the road toward the station with +a light, adventurous heart. He did not know that he had started the fire +himself. The stupor of his sleep had smothered out all memory of the +cigarette he had lighted and let fall. Unwittingly Dickie had killed the +beauty of his father's dream, and now, just as unwittingly, he was about +to kill the object of his father's passion. When he looked back from the +station platform, the roof of The Aura was already in a blaze. + + + + +PART TWO + +THE STARS + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE HILL + + +Thatcher spoke to his horses, now fatherly, now masterly, now with a +professorial sarcasm: "Come on, Monkey, there's a good girl! Get out of +that, you Fox! Dern you! You call that pulling? It's my notion of layin' +off for the day." Even at its most urgent, his voice was soft, hushed by +the great loneliness of this cañon up which he slowly crept. Monkey and +Fox had been plodding, foot by foot, the creaking wagon at their heels, +since dawn. It was now ten o'clock and they were just beginning to climb. +The Hill, that looked so near to the mesa above Hudson's yard, still +stood aloof. It had towered there ahead of them as they jerked and toiled +across the interminable flat in their accompanying cloud of dust. The +great circle of the world had dwarfed them to a bitter insignificance: a +team of crickets, they seemed, driven by a gnome. The hushed tone of +Thatcher's voice made unconscious tribute to this immensity. + +As they came to the opening of the cañon, the high mountain-top +disappeared; the immediate foothills closed down and shut it out. The air +grew headily light. Even under the blazing July sun, it came cool to the +lungs, cool and intensely sweet. Thousands of wild flowers perfumed it +and the sun-drawn resin of a thousand firs. All the while the rushing of +water accompanied the creaking of Thatcher's progress. Not far from the +road, down there below in a tangle of pine branches, willows, and ferns, +the frost-white stream fled toward the valley with all the seeming terror +of escape. Here the team began their tugging and their panting and their +long pauses to get breath. Thatcher would push forward the wooden handle +that moved his brake, and at the sound and the grating of the wheel the +horses would stop automatically and stand with heaving sides. The wagon +shook slightly with their breathing. At such times the stream seemed to +shout in the stillness. Below, there began to be an extraordinary view of +the golden country with its orange mesas and its dark, purple rim of +mountains. Millings was a tiny circle of square pebbles, something built +up by children in their play. The awful impersonalities of sky and earth +swept away its small human importance. Thatcher's larkspur-colored eyes +absorbed serenity. They had drawn their color and their far-sighted +clearness from such long contemplations of distant horizon lines. + +Now and again, however, Thatcher would glance back and down from his high +seat at his load. It consisted, for the most part, of boxes of canned +goods, but near the front there was a sort of nest, made from bags of +Indian meal. In the middle of the nest lay another bundle of slim, +irregular outline. It was covered with a thin blanket and a piece of +sacking protected it from the sun. A large, clumsy parcel lay beside it. +Each time Thatcher looked at this portion of his load he pulled more +anxiously at his mustache. At last, when the noon sun stood straight +above the pass and he stopped to water his horses at a trough which +caught a trickle of spring water, he bent down and softly raised the +piece of sacking, suspended like a tent from one fat sack to another +above the object of his uneasiness. There, in the complete relaxation of +exhausted sleep, lay Sheila, no child more limp and innocent of aspect; +her hair damp and ringed on her smooth forehead, her lips mournful and +sweet, sedately closed, her expression at once proud and innocent and +wistful, as is the sleeping face of a little, little girl. There was that +look of a broken flower, that look of lovely death, that stops the heart +of a mother sometimes when she bends over a crib and sees damp curls in a +halo about a strange, familiar face. + +Thatcher, looking at Sheila, had some of these thoughts. A teamster is +either philosopher or clown. One cannot move, day after day, all day for +a thousand days, under a changeless, changeful sky, inch by inch, across +the surface of a changeless, changeful earth and not come very near to +some of the locked doors of the temple where clowns sleep and wise men +meditate. And Thatcher was a father, one of the wise and reasonable +fathers of the West, whose seven-year-old sons are friends and helpmates +and toward whom six-year-old daughters are moved to little acts of +motherliness. + +The sun blazed for a minute on Sheila's face. She opened her eyes, looked +vaguely from some immense distance at Thatcher, and then sat up. + +"Oh, gracious!" said Sheila, woman and sprite and adventurer again. +"Where the dickens is my hat? Did it fall out?" + +"No, ma'am," Thatcher smiled in a relieved fashion. "I put it under +the seat." + +Sheila scrambled to a perch on one of the sacks and faced the surface of +half a world. + +"Oh, Mr. Thatcher, isn't it too wonderful! How high are we? Is this the +other side? Oh, no, I can see Millings. Poor tiny, tiny Millings! It _is_ +small, isn't it? How very small it is! What air!" She shut her eyes, +drawing in the perfumed tonic. The altitude had intoxicated her. Her +heart was beating fast, her blood tingling, her brain electrified. Every +sense seemed to be sharpened. She saw and smelt and heard with abnormal +vividness. + +"The flowers are awfully bright up here, aren't they?" she said. "What's +that coral-colored bushy one?" + +"Indian paint-brush." + +"And that blue one? It _is_ blue! I don't believe I ever knew what +blueness meant before." + +"Lupine. And over yonder's monkshead. That other's larkspur, that +poisons cattle in the spring. On the other side you'll see a whole lot +more--wild hollyhock and fireweed and columbine--well, say, I learned all +them names from a dude I drove over one summer." + +"And such a sky!" said Sheila, lifting her head, "and such big pines!" +She lost herself for a minute in the azure immensity above. A vast mosque +of cloud, dome bubbles great and small, stood ahead of them, dwarfing +every human experience of height. "Mr. Thatcher, there isn't any air up +here. What is it we're trying to breathe, anyway?" + +He smiled patiently, sympathetically, and handed her a tin mug of icy +water from the little trickling spring. The bruise of Hudson's kiss ached +at the cold touch of the water and a shadow fell over her excitement. She +thanked the driver gravely. + +"What time is it now?" she asked. + +"Past noon. Better eat your sandwich." + +She took one from its wrapping pensively, but ate it with absent-minded +eagerness. Thatcher's blue eyes twinkled. + +"Seems like I recollect a lady that didn't want no food to be put +in for her." + +"I remember her, too," said Sheila, between bites, "but very, very +vaguely." + +She stood up after a third sandwich, shook crumbs from her skirt, and +stretched her arms. "What a great sleep I've had! Since six o'clock!" +She stared down at the lower world. "I've left somebody at Millings." + +"Who's that?" asked Thatcher, drawling the words a trifle as a Westerner +does when he is conscious of a double meaning. + +"Me." + +Thatcher laughed. "You're a real funny girl, Miss Arundel," he said. + +"Yes, I left one Me when I decided to go into the saloon, and now I've +left another Me. I believe people shed their skins like snakes." + +"Yes'm, I've had that notion myself. But as you get older, your skin kind +of peels off easy and gradual--you don't get them shocks when you sort of +come out all new and shiny and admirin' of yourself." + +Sheila blushed faintly and looked at him. His face was serene and empty +of intention. But she felt that she had been guilty of egotism, as indeed +she had. She asked rather meekly for her hat, and having put it on like a +shadow above her fairness, she climbed up to Thatcher's side on the +driver's seat. The hat was her felt Stetson, and, for the rest, she was +clad in her riding-clothes, the boy's shirt, the short corduroy skirt, +the high-laced boots. Her youthfulness, rather than her strange beauty, +was accentuated by this dress. She had the look of a super-delicate boy, +a sort of rose-leaf fairy prince. + +"Are we on the road?" asked Sheila presently. + +Thatcher gave way to mirth. "Don't it seem like a road to you?" + +She lurched against him, then saved herself from falling out at the other +side by a frantic clutch. + +"Is it a road?" She looked down a dizzy slope of which the horse's +foothold seemed to her the most precarious part. + +"Yes'm--all the road there is. We call it that. We're kind of po-lite to +these little efforts of the Government--kind of want to encourage 'em. +Congressmen kind of needs coaxin' and flat'ry. They're right ornery +critters. I heard an argyment atween a feller with a hoss and a feller +with a mule onct. The mule feller was kind of uppish about hosses; said +he didn't see the advantage of the critter. A mule now was steady and +easy fed and strong. Well, ma'am, the hoss feller got kind of hot after +some of this, so he says, 'Well, sir,' he says, 'there's this about it. +When you got a hoss, you got a hoss. You know what you got. He's goin' to +act like a hoss. But when you got a mule, why, you can't never tell. All +of a sudden one of these days, he's like as not to turn into a +Congressman.' Well, ma'am, that's the way we feel about Congressmen.--Ho, +there, Monkey! Keep up! I'll just get out an' hang on the wheel while we +make this corner. That'll keep us from turnin' over, I reckon." + +Sheila sat and held on with both hands. Her eyes were wide and very +bright. She held her breath till Thatcher got in again, the corner +safely made. For the next creeping, lurching mile, Sheila found that +every muscle in her body had its use in keeping her on that seat. Then +they reached the snow and matters grew definitely worse. Here, half the +road was four feet of dirty, icy drift and half of abysmal mud. They +slipped from drift to mire with awful perils and rackings of the wagon +and painful struggles of the team. Sometimes the snow softened and let +the horses in up to their necks when Thatcher plied whip and tongue with +necessary cruelty. At last there came disaster. They were making one of +those heart-stopping turns. Sheila had got out and was adding her +mosquito weight to Thatcher's on the upper side, half-walking, +half-hanging to the wagon. The outer wheels were deep in mud, the inner +wheels hung clear. The horses strained--and slipped. + +"Let go!" shouted Thatcher. + +Sheila fell back into the snow, and the wagon turned quietly over and +began to slide down the slope. Thatcher sprang to his horses' heads. For +an instant it seemed that they would be dragged over the edge. Then the +wagon stopped, and Thatcher, grim and pale, unhitched his team. He swore +fluently under his breath during this entire operation. Afterwards, he +turned to the scarlet and astounded passenger and gave her one of his +shining smiles. + +"Well, ma'am," he said, beginning to roll a cigarette, "what do you +think of that?" + +"Whatever shall we do now?" asked Sheila. She had identified herself +utterly with this team, this load, this driver. She brushed the snow from +her skirt, climbed down from the drift to the edge of the mire by +Thatcher's elbow. The team stood with hanging heads, panting and +steaming, glad of the rest and the release. + +"Well, ma'am," said Thatcher, looking down at the loyal, anxious face +with a certain tenderness, "I'm agoin' to do one of two things. I'm +agoin' to lead my team over The Hill and come back with two more horses +and a hand to help me or I'm agoin' to set here and wait for the stage." + +"How long will it be before the stage comes?" + +"Matter of four or five hours." + +"Oh, dear! Then I can't possibly overtake my--my friend, Miss Blake!" + +"No, ma'am. But you can walk on a quarter-mile; take a rest at Duff's +place top of The Hill. I can pick you up when I come by; like as not I'll +spend the night at Duff's. By the time I get my load together it'll be +along dark--Hullo!" He interrupted himself, lifting his chin. "I hear +hosses now." + +They both listened. "No wagon," said Thatcher. + +Five minutes later, a slouching horseman, cigarette in mouth, shaggy +chaps on long legs, spurred and booted and decorated with a red +neck-scarf came picturesquely into view. His pony dug sturdy feet into +the steep roadside, avoiding the mud of the road itself. The man led two +other horses, saddled, but empty of riders. He stopped and between him +and Thatcher took place one of the immensely tranquil, meditative, and +deliberate conversations of the Far West. + +Sheila's quick, Celtic nerves tormented her. At last she broke in with an +inspiration. "Couldn't I hire one of your horses?" she asked, rising from +an overturned sack of which she had made a resting-place. + +The man looked down at her with grave, considerate eyes. + +"Why, yes, ma'am. I reckon you could," he said gently. "They're right +gentle ponies," he added. + +"Are they yours?" + +"One of 'em is. The other belongs to Kearney, dude-wrangler up the +valley. But, say, if you're goin' to Rusty you c'd leave my hoss at +Lander's and I c'd get him when I come along. I am stoppin' here to help +with the load. It would cost you nothin', lady. The hoss has got to go +over to Rusty and I'd be pleased to let you ride him. You're no weight." + +"How good of you!" said Sheila. "I'll take the best care of him I know +how to take. Could I find my way? How far is it?" + +"All downhill after a half-mile, lady. You c'd make Rusty afore dark. +It's a whole lot easier on hoofs than it is on wheels. You can't miss the +road on account of it bein' the only road there is. And Lander's is the +only one hotel in Rusty. You'd best stop the night there." + +He evidently wanted to ask her her destination, but his courtesy +forbade. + +Sheila volunteered, "I am going to Miss Blake's ranch up Hidden Creek." + +A sort of flash of surprise passed across the reserved, brown, young +face. "Yes, ma'am," he said with no expression. "Well, you better leave +the rest of your trip until to-morrow." + +He slipped from his horse with an effortless ripple, untied a tawny +little pony with a thick neck, a round body, and a mild, intelligent +face, and led him to Sheila who mounted from her sack. Thatcher carefully +adjusted the stirrups, a primitive process that involved the wearisome +lacing and unlacing of leather thongs. Sheila bade him a bright and +adventurous "Good-bye." thanked the unknown owner of the horse, and +started. The pony showed some unwillingness to leave his companions, +fretted and tossed his head, and made a few attempts at a right-about +face, but Sheila dug in her small spurred heels and spoke beguilingly. At +last he settled down to sober climbing. Sheila looked back and waved her +hand. The two tall, lean men were gazing after her. They took off their +hats and waved. She felt a warmth that was almost loving for their +gracefulness and gravity and kindness. Here was another breed of man than +that produced by Millings. A few minutes later she came to the top of The +Pass and looked down into Hidden Creek. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +ADVENTURE + + +Sheila stood and drew breath. The shadow of the high peak, in the lap of +which she stood, poured itself eastward across the warm, lush, narrow +land. This was different from the hard, dull gold and alkali dust of the +Millings country: here were silvery-green miles of range, and +purple-green miles of pine forest, and lovely lighter fringes and groves +of cottonwood and aspen trees. Here and there were little dots of +ranches, visible more by their vivid oat and alfalfa fields than by their +small log cabins. Down the valley the river flickered, lifted by its +brightness above the hollow that held it, till it seemed just hung there +like a string of jewels. Beyond it the land rose slowly in noble sweeps +to the opposite ranges, two chains that sloped across each other in a +glorious confusion of heads, round and soft as velvet against the blue +sky or blunt and broken with a thundery look of extinct craters. To the +north Sheila saw a further serenity of mountains, lying low and soft on +the horizon, of another and more wistful blue. Over it all was a sort of +magical haze, soft and brilliant as though the air were a melted +sapphire. There was still blessedness such as Sheila had never felt. She +was filled with a longing to ride on and on until her spirit should pass +into the wide, tranquil, glowing spirit of the lonely land. It seemed to +her that some forgotten medicine man sat cross-legged in a hollow of the +hills, blowing, from a great peace pipe, the blue smoke of peace down and +along the hollows and the cañons and the level lengths of range. In the +mighty breast of the blower there was not even a memory of trouble, only +a noble savage serenity too deep for prayer. + +She rode for a long while--no sound but her pony's hoofs--her eyes lifted +across the valley until a sudden fragrance drew her attention earthwards. +She was going through an open glade of aspens and the ground was white +with columbine, enormous flowers snowy and crisp as though freshly +starched by fairy laundresses. With a cry of delight Sheila jumped off +her horse, tied him by his reins to a tree, and began gathering flowers +with all the eager concentration of a six-year-old. And, like all the +flower-gatherers of fable from Proserpina down, she found herself the +victim of disaster. When she came back to the road with a useless, +already perishing mass of white, the pony had disappeared. Her knot had +been unfaithful. Quietly that mild-nosed, pensive-eyed, round-bodied +animal had pulled himself free and tiptoed back to join his friends. + +Sheila hurried up the road toward the summit she had so recently crossed, +till the altitude forced her to stop with no breath in her body and a +pounding redness before her eyes. She stamped her feet with vexation. +She longed to cry. She remembered confusedly, but with a certain +satisfaction, some of the things Thatcher had said to his team. An entire +and sudden lenience toward the gentle art of swearing was born in her. +She threw her columbine angrily away. She had come so far on her journey +that she could never be able to get back to Thatcher nor even to Duff's +shanty before dark. And how far down still the valley lay with that +shadow widening and lengthening across it! + +Her sudden loneliness descended upon her with an almost audible rush. +Dusk at this height--dusk with a keen smell of glaciers and wind-stung +pines--dusk with the world nine thousand feet below; and about her this +falling-away of mountain-side, where the trees seemed to slant and the +very flowers to be outrun by a mysterious sort of flight of rebel earth +toward space! The great and heady height was informed with a presence +which if not hostile was terrifyingly ignorant of man. There was some one +not far away, she felt, just above there behind the rocky ridge, just +back there in the confusion of purplish darkness streaked by pine-tree +columns, just below in the thicket of the stream--some one to meet whose +look meant death. + +Her first instinct was to keep to the road. She walked on down toward +the valley very rapidly. But going down meant meeting darkness. She +began to be unreasonably afraid of the night. She was afflicted by an +old, old childish, immemorial dread of bears. In spite of the chill, +she was very warm, her tongue dry with rapid breathing of the thin air. +She was intolerably thirsty. The sound of water called to her in a +lisping, inhuman voice. She resisted till she was ashamed of her +cowardice, stepped furtively off the track, scrambled down a slope, +parted some branches, and found herself on a rock above a little +swirling pool. On the other side a man kneeling over the water lifted a +white and startled face. + +Through the eerie green twilight up into which the pool threw a shifty +leaden brightness, the two stared at each other for a moment. Then the +man rose to his feet and smiled. Sheila noticed that he had been bathing +a bloody wrist round which he was now wrapping clumsily a handkerchief. + +"Don't be frightened," he said in a rather uncertain voice; "I'm not near +so desperate as I look. Do you want a drink? Hand me down your cup if you +have one and I'll fill it for you." + +"I'm not afraid now," Sheila quavered, and drew a big breath. "But I +was startled for a minute. I haven't any cup. I--I suppose, in a +way--I 'm lost." + +He was peering at her now, and when she took off her hat and rubbed her +damp forehead with a weary, worried gesture, he gave a little +exclamation and swung himself across the stream by a branch, and up to +her side on the rock. + +"The barmaid!" he said. "And I was coming to see you!" + +Sheila laughed in the relieved surprise of recognition. "Why, you are the +cowboy--the one that fought so--so terribly. Have you been fighting +again? Your wrist is hurt. May I tie it up for you?" + +He held out his arm silently and she tied the handkerchief--a large, +clean, coarse one--neatly about it. What with weariness and the shock of +her fright, her fingers were not very steady. He looked down at her +during the operation with a contented expression. It seemed that the +moment was filled for him with satisfaction to a complete forgetfulness +of past or present annoyances. + +"This is a big piece of luck for me," he said. "But"--with a sudden +thundery change of countenance--"you're not going over to Hidden +Creek, are you?" + +"I'm trying to go there," said Sheila; "I've been trying ever since five +o'clock this morning. But I don't seem to be getting there very fast. I +wanted to make Rusty before dark. And my pony got away from me and went +back. I know he went back because I saw the marks of his feet and he +would have gone back. Wouldn't he? Do you think I could get to Rusty on +foot to-night?" + +"No, ma'am. I know you couldn't. You could make it easy on horseback, +though." He stared meditatively above her head and then said in a tone of +resignation: "I believe I better go back myself. I'll take you." + +She had finished her bandage. She looked up at him. "Go back? But you +must have just started from there a few hours ago." + +"Well, ma'am, I didn't come very direct. I kind of shifted round. But I +can go back straight. And I'd really rather. I think I'd better. It was +all foolishness my coming over. I can put you up back of me on my horse, +if you don't mind, and we'll get to Rusty before it's lit up. I'd rather. +You don't mind riding that way, do you? You see, if I put you up and +walked, it'd take lots more time." + +"I don't mind," said Sheila, but she said it rather proudly so that +Hilliard smiled. + +"Well, ma'am, we can try it, anyway. If you go back to the road, I'll get +my horse." + +He seemed to have hidden his horse in a density of trees a mile from the +road. Sheila waited till she thought she must have dreamed her meeting +with him. He came back, looking a trifle sheepish. + +"You see," he said, "I didn't come by the road, ma'am." + +The horse was a large, bony animal with a mean eye. + +"That isn't the pony you rode when you came to Millings," said Sheila. + +He bent to examine his saddle-girth. "No, ma'am," he said gently. "I've +been riding quite a variety of horse-flesh lately. I'll get on first if +you don't mind and give you a hand up. You put your foot on mine. The +horse will stand." + +Sheila obeyed, pressing her lips tight, for she was afraid. However, his +long, supple fingers closed over her wrist like steel and she got quickly +and easily to her perch and clung nervously to him. + +"That's right. Put your arms round tight. Are you all fixed?" + +"Y--yes." + +"And comfortable?" + +"Y--yes, I think so." + +"We're off, then." + +They started on a quick, steady walk down the road. Once, Cosme loosened +the six-shooter on his hip. He whistled incessantly through his teeth. +Except for this, they were both silent. + +"Were you coming to Millings?" asked Sheila at last. She was of the world +where silence has a certain oppressive significance. She was getting used +to her peculiar physical position and found she did not have to cling so +desperately. But in a social sense she was embarrassed. He was quite +impersonal about the situation, which made matters easier for her. Now +and then she suppressed a frantic impulse to giggle. + +"Yes, ma'am. To see you," he answered. "I never rightly thanked you." She +saw the back of his neck flush and she blushed too, remembering his +quickly diverted kiss which had left a smear of blood across her +fingers. That had happened only a few days before, but they were long +days. He too must have been well occupied. There was still a bruise on +his temple. "I--I wasn't quite right in the head after those fellows had +beat me up, and I kind of wanted to show you that I am something like a +gentleman." + +"Have you been in Hidden Creek?" + +"Yes, ma'am. I was thinking of prospecting around. I meant to homestead +over there. I like the country. But when it comes to settling down I get +kind of restless. And usually I get into a mix-up that changes my +intentions. So I'd about decided to go back down Arizona way and +work.--Where are you going to stay in Hidden Creek?" he asked. "Where's +your stuff?" + +"Mr. Thatcher has it in his wagon. I'm going to Miss Blake's ranch. She +invited me." + +"Miss Blake? You mean the lady that wears pants? You don't mean it! Well, +that's right amusing." He laughed. + +Sheila stirred angrily. "I can't see why it's amusing." + +He sobered at once. "Well, ma'am, maybe it isn't. No, I reckon it isn't. +How long will you stay?" + +Sheila gave a big, sobbing sigh. "I don't know. If she likes me and if +I'm happy, I'll stay there always." She added with a queer, dazed +realization of the truth: "I've nowhere else to go." + +"Haven't you any--folks?" he asked. + +"No." + +"Got tired of Millings?" + +"Yes--very." + +"I don't blame you! It's not much of a town. You'll like Hidden Creek. +And Miss Blake's ranch is a mighty pretty place, lonesome but wonderfully +pretty. Right on a bend of the creek, 'way up the valley, close under the +mountains. But can you stand loneliness, Miss--What _is_ your name?" + +There were curious breaks in his manner of a Western cowboy, breaks that +startled Sheila like little echoes from her life abroad and in the East. +There was a quickness of voice and manner, an impatience, a hot and +nervous something, and his voice and accent suggested training. The +abrupt question, for instance, was not in the least characteristic of a +Westerner. + +"My name is Sheila Arundel. I don't know yours either." + +"Do you come from the East?" + +"Yes. From New York." He gave an infinitesimal jerk. "But I've lived +abroad nearly all my life. I think it would be politer if you would +answer my question now." + +She felt that he controlled an anxious breath. "My name is Hilliard," he +said, and he pronounced the name with a queer bitter accent as though the +taste of it was unpleasant to his tongue. "Cosme Hilliard. Don't you +think it's a--_nice_ name?" + +For half a second she was silent; then she spoke with careful +unconsciousness. "Yes. Very nice and very unusual. Hilliard is an English +name, isn't it? Where did the Cosme come from?" + +It was well done, so well that she felt a certain tightening of his body +relax and his voice sounded fuller. "That's Spanish. I've some Spanish +blood. Here's Buffin's ranch. We're getting down." + +Sheila was remembering vividly; Sylvester had come into her compartment. +She could see the rolling Nebraskan country slipping by the window of the +train. She could see his sallow fingers folding the paper so that she +could conveniently read a paragraph. She remembered his gentle, pensive +speech. "Ain't it funny, though, those things happen in the slums and +they happen in the smart set, but they don't happen near so often to just +middling folks like you and me! Don't it sound like a Tenderloin tale, +though, South American wife and American husband and her getting jealous +and up and shooting him? Money sure makes love popular. Now, if it had +been poor folks, why, they'd have hardly missed a day's work, but just +because these Hilliards have got spondulix they'll run a paragraph about +'em in the papers for a month."--Sheila began to make comparisons: a +South American wife and an American husband, and here, this young man +with the Spanish-American name and the Spanish-Saxon physique, and a +voice that showed training and faltered over the pronouncing of the +"Hilliard" as though he expected it to be too well remembered. Had there +been some mention in the paper of a son?--a son in the West?--a son under +a cloud of some sort? But--she checked her spinning of romance--this +youth was too genuine a cowboy, the way he rode, the way he moved, held +himself, his phrases, his turn of speech! With all that wealth behind him +how had he been allowed to grow up like this? No, her notion was +unreasonable, almost impossible. Although dismissed, it hung about her +mental presentment of him, however, like a rather baleful aura, not +without fascination to a seventeen-year-old imagination. So busy was she +with her fabrications that several miles of road slipped by unnoticed. +There came a strange confusion in her thoughts. It seemed to her that she +was arguing the Hilliard case with some one. Then with a horrible start +she saw that the face of her opponent was Sylvester's and she pushed it +violently away.... + +"Don't you go to sleep," said Hilliard softly, laughing a little. "You +might fall off." + +"I--I was asleep," Sheila confessed, in confusion at discovering that her +head had dropped against him. "How dark it's getting! We're in the +valley, aren't we?" + +"Yes, ma'am, we're most there." He hesitated. "Miss Arundel, I think I'd +best let you get down just before we get to Rusty." + +"Get down? Why?" + +He cleared his throat, half-turning to her. In the dusky twilight, that +was now very nearly darkness, his face was troubled and ashamed, like the +face of a boy who tries to make little of a scrape. "Well, ma'am, +yesterday, the folks in Rusty kind of lost their heads. They had a bad +case of Sherlock Holmes. I bought a horse up the valley from a chap who +was all-fired anxious to sell him, and before I knew it I was playing the +title part in a man-hunt. It seems that I was riding one of a string this +chap had rustled from several of the natives. They knew the horse and +that was enough for their nervous system. They had never set eyes on me +before and they wouldn't take my word for my blameless past. They told me +to keep my story for trial when they took me over to the court. Meanwhile +they gave me a free lodging in their pen. Miss Arundel--" Hilliard +dropped his ironic tone and spoke in a low, tense voice of child-like +horror. His face stiffened and paled. "That was awful. To be locked in. +Not to be able to get fresh breath in your lungs. Not to be able to go +where you please, when you please. I can't tell you what it's like ... I +can't stand it! I can't stand a minute of it! I was in that pen six +hours. I felt I'd go loco if I was there all night. I guess I am a kind +of fool. I broke jail early in the morning and caught up the sheriff's +horse. They got a shot or two at me, hit my wrist, but I made my getaway. +This horse is not much on looks, but he sure can get over the sagebrush. +I was coming over to see you." + +There was that in his voice when he said this that touched Sheila's +heart, profoundly. This restless, violent young adventurer, homeless, +foot-loose, without discipline or duty, had turned to her in his trouble +as instinctively as though she had been his mother. This, because she had +once served him. Something stirred in Sheila's heart. + +"And then," Hilliard went on, "I was going to get down to Arizona. But +when I heard you were coming over into Hidden Creek, it seemed like +foolishness to cut myself off from the country by running away from +nothing. Of course there are ways to prove my identity with those +fellows. It only means putting up with a few days of pen." He gave a +sigh. "But you can understand, ma'am, that this isn't just the horse that +will give you quietest entrance into Rusty and that I'm not just one of +the First Citizens." + +"But," said Sheila, "if they see you riding in with me, they certainly +won't shoot." + +He laughed admiringly. "You're game!" he said. "But, Miss Arundel, +they're not likely to do any more shooting. It's not a man riding into +Rusty that they're after. It's a man riding out of Rusty. They'll know +I'm coming to give myself up." + +"I'll just stay here," said Sheila firmly. + +"I can't let you." + +"I'm too tired to walk. I'm too sleepy. It'll be all right." + +"Then I'll walk." He pulled in his horse, but at the instant stiffened in +his saddle and wheeled about on the road. A rattle of galloping hoofs +struck the ground behind them; two riders wheeled and stopped. One drew +close and held out his hand. + +"Say, stranger, shake," he said. "We've been kickin' up the dust to beg +your pardon. We got the real rustler this mornin' shortly after you left. +I'm plumb disgusted and disheartened with young Tommins for losin' his +head an' shootin' off his gun. He's a dern fool, that kid, a regular +tenderfoot. Nothin' won't ever cure him short of growin' up. Come from +Chicago, anyway. One of them Eastern towns. I see he got you, too." + +"Winged me," smiled Hilliard. "Well, I'm right pleased I won't have to +spend another night in your pen." + +"You're entered for drinks. The sheriff stands 'em." Here he bowed to +Sheila, removing his hat. + +"This lady"--Hilliard performed the introduction--"lost her horse on The +Hill. She's aiming to stop at Rusty for to-night." + +The man who had spoken turned to his silent companion. "Ride ahead, +Shorty, why don't you?" he said indignantly, "and tell Mrs. Lander +there's a lady that'll want to sleep in Number Five." + +The other horseman, after a swift, searching look at Sheila, said +"Sure," in a very mild, almost cooing, voice and was off. It looked to +Sheila like a runaway. But the men showed no concern. + +They jogged companionably on their way. Fifteen minutes later they +crossed a bridge and pulled up before a picket fence and a gate. + +They were in Rusty. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +JOURNEY'S END + + +The social life of Rusty, already complicated by the necessity it was +under to atone for a mistake, was almost unbearably discomposed by the +arrival of a strange lady. This was no light matter, be it understood. +Hidden Creek was not a resort for ladies: and so signal an event as the +appearance of a lady, a young lady, a pretty young lady, demanded +considerable effort. But Rusty had five minutes for preparation. By the +time Hilliard rode up to Lander's gate a representative group of citizens +had gathered there. One contingent took charge of Hilliard--married men, +a little unwilling, and a few even more reluctant elders, and led him to +the bowl of reparation which was to wash away all memory of his wrongs. +The others, far the larger group, escorted Sheila up the twelve feet of +board walk to the porch of hospitality filled by the massive person of +Mrs. Lander. On that brief walk Sheila was fathered, brothered, +grandfathered, husbanded, and befriended and on the porch, all in the +person of Mrs. Lander, she was mothered, sistered, and grandmothered. Up +the stairs to Number Five she was "eased"--there is no other word to +express the process--and down again she was eased to supper, where in a +daze of fatigue she ate with surprising relish tough fried meat and +large wet potatoes, a bowl of raw canned tomatoes and a huge piece of +heavy-crusted preserved-peach pie. She also drank, with no effect upon +her drowsiness, an enormous thick cupful of strong coffee, slightly +tempered by canned milk. She sat at the foot of the long table, opposite +Mr. Lander, a fat, sly-looking man whose eyes twinkled with a look of +mysterious inner amusement, caused, probably, by astonishment at his own +respectability. He had behind him a career of unprecedented villainy, and +that he should end here at Rusty as the solid and well-considered keeper +of the roadhouse was, no doubt, a perpetual tickle to his consciousness. +Down either side of the table were silent and impressive figures busy +with their food. Courteous and quiet they were and beautifully +uninquiring, except in the matter of her supplies. The yellow lamplight +shone on brown bearded and brown clean-shaven faces, rugged and strong +and clean-cut. These bared throats and thickly thatched heads, these +faces, lighted by extraordinary, far-seeing brilliant, brooding eyes, +reminded Sheila of a master's painting of The Last Supper--so did their +coarse clothing melt into the gold-brown shadows of the room and so did +their hands and throats and faces pick themselves out in mellow lights +and darknesses. + +After the meal she dragged herself upstairs to Number Five, made scant +use of nicked basin, spoutless pitcher, and rough clean towel, blew out +her little shadeless lamp, and crept in under an immense, elephantine, +grateful weight of blankets and patchwork quilts, none too fresh, +probably, though the sheet blankets were evidently newly washed. Of +muslin sheeting there was none. The pillow was flat and musty. Sheila +cuddled into it as though it had been a mother's shoulder. That instant +she was asleep. Once in the night she woke. A dream waked her. It seemed +to her that a great white flower had blossomed in the window of her room +and that in the heart of it was Dickie's face, tender and as pale as a +petal. It drew near to her and bent over her wistfully. She held out her +arms with a piteous longing to comfort his wistfulness and woke. Her face +was wet with the mystery of dream tears. The flower dwindled to a small +white moon standing high in the upper pane of one of the uncurtained +windows. The room was full of eager mountain air. She could hear a +water-wheel turning with a soft splash in the stream below. There was no +other sound. The room smelt of snowy heights and brilliant stars. She +breathed deep and, quite as though she had breathed a narcotic, slept +suddenly again. This, before any memory of Hudson burned her +consciousness. + +The next morning she found that her journey had been carefully arranged. +Thatcher had come and gone. The responsibility for her further progress +had been shifted to the shoulders of a teamster, whose bearded face, +except for the immense humor and gallantry of his gray eyes, was +startlingly like one of Albrecht Dürer's apostles. Her bundle was in his +wagon, half of his front seat was cushioned for her. After breakfast she +was again escorted down the board walk to the gate. Mrs. Lander fastened +a huge bunch of sweet peas to her coat and kissed her cheek. Sheila bade +innumerable good-byes, expressed innumerable thanks. For Hilliard's +absence Rusty offered its apologies. They said that he had been much +entertained and, after the hurt he had suffered to his wrist, late sleep +was a necessity. Sheila understood. The bowl of reparation had been +emptied to its last atoning dregs. She mounted to the side of "Saint +Mark," she bowed and smiled, made promises, gave thanks again, and waved +herself out of Rusty at last. She had never felt so flattered and so +warmed at heart. + +"I'm agoin'," quoth Saint Mark, "right clost to Miss Blake's. If we don't +overtake her--and that hoss of hers sure travels wonderful fast, +somethin' wonderful, yes, ma'am, by God--excuse me, lady--it's sure +surprisin' the way that skinny little hoss of hers will travel--why, I +c'n take you acrost the ford. There ain't no way of gettin' into Miss +Blake's exceptin' by the ford. And then I c'n take my team back to the +road. From the ford it's a quarter-mile walk to Miss Blake's house. You +c'n cache your bundle and she'll likely get it for you in the mornin'. +We had ought to be there by sundown. Her trail from the ford's clear +enough. I'm a-takin' this lumber to the Gover'ment bridge forty mile up. +Yes, by God--excuse _me_, lady--it's agoin' to be jest a dandy bridge +until the river takes it out next spring, by God--you'll have to excuse +me again, lady." + +He seemed rather mournfully surprised by the frequent need for these +apologies. "It was my raisin', lady," he explained. "My father was a +Methody preacher. Yes'm, he sure was, by God, yes--excuse me again, lady. +He was always a-prayin'. It kinder got me into bad habits. Yes, ma'am. +Those words you learn when you're a kid they do stick in your mind. By +God, yes, they do--excuse _me_, lady. That's why I run away. I couldn't +stand so much prayin' all the time. And bein' licked when I wasn't bein' +prayed at. He sure licked me, that dern son of a--Oh, by God, lady, +you'll just hev to excuse me, please." He wiped his forehead. "I reckon I +better keep still." + +Sheila struggled, then gave way to mirth. Her companion, after a doubtful +look, relaxed into his wide, bearded smile. After that matters were on an +easy footing between them and the "excuse me, lady," was, for the most +part, left to her understanding. + +They drifted like a lurching vessel through the long crystal day. Never +before this journey into Hidden Creek had time meant anything to Sheila +but a series of incidents, occupations, or emotions; now first she +understood the Greek impersonation of the dancing hours. She had watched +the varying faces the day turns to those who fold their hands and still +their minds to watch its progress. She had seen the gradual heightening +of brilliance from dawn to noon, and then the fading-out from that high, +white-hot glare, through gold and rose and salmon and purple, to the ashy +lavenders of twilight and so into gray and the metallic, glittering +coldness of the mountain night. It was the purple hour when she said +good-bye to Saint Mark on the far side of a swift and perilous ford. She +was left standing in the shadow of a near-by mountain-side while he rode +away into the still golden expanse of valley beyond the leafy course of +the stream. Hidden Creek had narrowed and deepened. It ran past Sheila +now with a loud clapping and knocking at its cobbled bed and with an +over-current of noisy murmurs. The hurrying water was purple, with flecks +of lavender and gold. The trees on its banks were topped with emerald +fire where they caught the light of the sun. The trail to Miss Blake's +ranch ran along the river on the edge of a forest of pines. At this hour +they looked like a wall into which some magic permitted the wanderer to +walk interminably. Sheila was glad that she did not have to make use of +this wizard invitation. She "cached" her bundle, as Saint Mark had +advised, in a thicket near the stream and walked resolutely forward +along the trail. Not even when her pony had left her on The Hill had she +felt so desolate or so afraid. + +She could not understand why she was here on her way to the ranch of this +strange woman. She felt astonished by her loneliness, by her rashness, by +the dreadful lack in her life of all the usual protections. Was youth +meant so to venture itself? This was what young men had done since the +beginning of time. She thought of Hilliard. His life must have been just +such a series of disconnected experiments. Danger was in the very pattern +of such freedom. But she was a girl, _only_ a girl as the familiar phrase +expresses it--a seventeen-year-old girl. She was reminded of a pathetic +and familiar line, "A woman naturally born to fears ..." A wholesome +reaction to pride followed and, suddenly, an amusing memory of Miss +Blake, of her corduroy trousers stuffed into boots, of her broad, strong +body, her square face with its firm lips and masterful red-brown eyes; a +very heartening memory for such a moment. Here was a woman that had +adventured without fear and had quite evidently met with no disaster. + +Sheila came to a little tumbling tributary and crossed it on a log. On +the farther side the trail broadened, grew more distinct; through an +opening in tall, gray, misty cottonwoods she saw the corner of a log +house. At the same instant a dreadful tumult broke out. The sound sent +Sheila's blood in a slapping wave back upon her heart. All of her body +turned cold. She was fastened by stone feet to the ground. It was the +laughter of a mob of damned souls, an inhuman, despairing mockery of +God. It tore the quiet evening into shreds of fear. This house was a +madhouse holding revelry. No--of course, they were wolves, a pack of +wolves. Then, with a warmth of returning circulation, Sheila remembered +Miss Blake's dogs, the descendants of the wolf-dog that had littered on +the body of a dead man. Quarter-wolf, was it? These voices had no hint +of the homely barking of a watchdog, the friend of man's loneliness! But +Sheila braced her courage. Miss Blake made good use of her pack. They +pulled her sled, winters, in Hidden Creek. They must then be partly +civilized by service. If only--she smiled a desperate smile at the +uncertainty--they didn't tear her to pieces when she came out from the +shelter of the trees. There was very great courage in Sheila's short, +lonely march through the little grove of cottonwood trees. She was as +white as the mountain columbine. She walked slowly and held her head +high. She had taken up a stone for comfort. + +At the end of the trees she saw a house, a three-sided, one-storied +building of logs very pleasantly set in a circle of aspen trees, +backed by taller firs, toppling over which stood a great sharp crest +of rocky ledges, nine thousand feet high, edged with the fire of +sunset. At one side of the house eight big dogs were leaping at the +ends of their chains. They were tied to trees or to small kennels at +the foot of trees. And, God be thanked! Sheila let fall her +stone--they were _all_ tied. + +The door at the end of the nearest wing of the house opened and Miss +Blake stood on the threshold and held up her hands. At sight of her the +dogs stopped their howling instantly and cringed on their bellies or sat +yawning on their bushy haunches. Miss Blake's resonant, deep voice seemed +to pounce upon Sheila above the chatter of the stream which, running +about three sides of the glade, was now, at the silence of the dogs, +incessantly audible. + +"Well, if it isn't the little barmaid!" cried Miss Blake, and advanced, +wiping her hand on a white apron tied absurdly over the corduroy +trousers and cowboy boots. "Well, if you aren't as welcome as the +flowers in May! So you thought you'd leave the street-lamps and come +take a look at the stars?" + +They met and Sheila took the strong, square hand. She was afflicted by a +sudden dizziness. + +"That's it," she faltered; "this time I thought I'd try--the stars." + +With that she fell against Miss Blake and felt, just before she dropped +into blackness, that she had been saved by firm arms from falling to +the ground. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +BEASTS + + +The city rippled into light. It bloomed, blossom on blossom, like some +enchanted jungle under the heavy summer sky. Dickie sat on a bench in +Washington Square. He sat forward, his hands hanging between his knees, +his lips parted, and he watched the night. It seemed to him that it was +filled with the clamor of iron-throated beasts running to and fro after +their prey. The heat was a humid, solid, breathless weight--a heat +unknown to Millings. Dickie wore his threadbare blue serge suit. It felt +like a garment of lead. + +There were other people on the benches--limp and sodden outlines. Dickie +had glanced at them and had glanced away. He did not want to think that +he looked like one of these--half-crushed insects,--bruised into +immobility. A bus swept round the corner and moved with a sort of +topheavy, tipsy dignity under the white arch. It was loaded with +humanity, its top black with heads. "It ain't a crowd," thought Dickie; +"it's a swarm." His eyes followed the ragged sky-line. "Why is it so +horrible?" he asked himself--"horrible and beautiful and sort of +poisonous--it plumb scares a fellow--" A diminished moon, battered and +dim like a trodden silver coin, stood up above him. By tilting his head +he could look directly at it through an opening in the dusty, +electric-brightened boughs. The stars were pin-pricks here and there in +the dense sky. The city flaunted its easy splendor triumphantly before +their pallid insignificance. Tarnished purities, forgotten ecstasies, +burned-out inspirations--so the city shouted raucously to its faded +firmament. + +Dickie's fingers slid into his pocket. The moon had reminded him of his +one remaining dime. He might have bought a night's lodging with it, but +after one experience of such lodgings he preferred his present quarters. +In Dickie's mind there was no association of shame or ignominy with a +night spent under the sky. But fear and ignominy tainted and clung to +his memory of that other night. He had saved his dime deliberately, +going hungry rather than admit to himself that he was absolutely at the +end of his resources. To-morrow he would not especially need that dime. +He had a job. He would begin to draw pay. In his own phrasing he would +"buy him a square meal and rent him a room somewhere." Upon these two +prospects his brain fastened with a leech-like persistency. And yet +above anything he had faced in his life he dreaded the job and the room. +The inspiration of his flight, the impulse that had sped him out of +Millings like a fire-tipped arrow, that determination to find Sheila, to +rehabilitate himself in her esteem, to serve her, to make a fresh start, +had fallen from him like a dead flame. The arrow-flight was spent. He +had not found Sheila. He had no way of finding her. She was not at her +old address. Her father's friend, the Mr. Hazeldean that had brought +Sylvester to Marcus's studio, knew nothing of her. Mrs. Halligan, her +former landlady, knew nothing of her. Dickie, having summoned Mrs. +Halligan to her doorsill, had looked past her up the narrow, steep +staircase. "Did she live away up there?" he had asked. "Yes, sorr. And +'t was a climb for the poor little crayture, but there was days when +she'd come down it like a burrd to meet her Pa." Dickie had faltered, +white and empty-hearted, before the kindly Irishwoman who remembered so +vividly Sheila's downward, winged rush of welcome. For several hours +after his visit to the studio building he had wandered aimlessly about, +then his hunger had bitten at him and he had begun to look for work. It +was not difficult to find. A small restaurant displayed a need of +waiters. Dickie applied. He had often "helped out" in that capacity, as +in most others, at The Aura. He cited his experience, referred to Mr. +Hazeldean, and was engaged. The pay seemed to him sufficient to maintain +life. So much for that! Then he went to his bench and watched the day +pant itself into the night. His loneliness was a pitiful thing; his +utter lack of hope or inspiration was a terrible thing. + +But as the night went slowly by, he faced this desolation with +extraordinary fortitude. It was part of that curious detachment, that +strange gift of impersonal observation. Dickie bore no grudges against +life. His spirit had a fashion of standing away, tiptoe, on wings. It +stood so now like a presence above the miserable, half-starved body that +occupied the bench and suffered the sultriness of August and the pains of +abstinence. Dickie's wide eyes, that watched the city and found it +horrible and beautiful and frightening, were entirely empty of bitterness +and of self-pity. They had a sort of wistful patience. + +There came at last a cool little wind and under its ministration Dickie +let fall his head on his arms and slept. He was blessed by a dream: +shallow water clapping over a cobbled bed, the sharp rustle of wind-edged +aspen leaves, and two stars, tender and misty, that bent close and +smiled. He woke up and stared at the city. He got up and walked about. He +was faint now and felt chilled, although the asphalt was still soft +underfoot and smelled of hot tar. As he moved listlessly along the +pavement, a girl brushed against him, looked up, and murmured to him. She +was small and slight. His heart seemed to leap away from the contact and +then to leap almost irresistibly to meet it. He turned away and went back +quickly toward the Square. It seemed to him that he was followed. He +looked over his shoulder furtively. But the girl had disappeared and +there was no one in sight but a man who walked unsteadily. Dickie +suddenly knew why he had saved that dime. The energy of a definite +purpose came to him. He remembered a swinging door back there around a +corner, but when he reached the saloon, it was closed. Dickie had a +humiliating struggle with tears. He went back to his bench and sat there, +trembling and swearing softly to himself. He had not the strength to look +farther. He was no longer the Dickie of Millings, a creature possessed of +loneliness and vacancy and wandering fancies, he was no longer Sheila's +lover, he was a prey to strong desires. In truth, thought Dickie, seeking +even now with his deprecatory smile for likenesses and words, the city +was full of beasts, silent and stealthy and fanged. That spirit, aloof, +maintained its sweet detachment. Beneath its observation Dickie fought +with a grim, unreasoning panic that was very like the fear of a man +pursued by wolves. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +NEIGHBOR NEIGHBOR + + +Even in the shadow of after events, those first two months at Miss +Blake's ranch swam like a golden galleon through Sheila's memory. Never +had she felt such well-being of body, mind, and soul. Never had she known +such dawns and days, such dusks, such sapphire nights. Sleep came like a +highwayman to hold up an eager traveler, but came irresistibly. It caught +her up out of life as it catches up a healthy child. Never before had she +worked so heartily: out of doors in the vegetable garden; indoors in the +sunny kitchen, its windows and door open to the tonic air; never before +had she eaten so heartily. Nothing had tasted like the trout they caught +in Hidden Creek, like the juicy, sweet vegetables they picked from their +own laborious rows, like the berries they gathered in nervous +anticipation of that rival berryer, the brown bear. And Miss Blake's +casual treatment of her, half-bluff, half-mocking, her curt, good-humored +commands, her cordial bullying, were a rest to nerves more raveled than +Sheila knew from her experience in Millings. She grew rosy brown; her +hair seemed to sparkle along its crisp ripples; her little throat filled +itself out, round and firm; she walked with a spring and a swing; she +sang and whistled, no Mrs. Hudson near to scowl at her. Dish-washing was +not drudgery, cooking was a positive pleasure. Everything smelt so good. +She was always shutting her eyes to enjoy the smell of things, forgetting +to listen in order to taste thoroughly, forgetting to look in the delight +of listening to such musical silences, and forgetting even to breathe in +the rapture of sight ... Miss Blake and she put up preserves, and Sheila +had to invent jests to find some pretext for her laughter, so ridiculous +was the look of that broad square back, its hair short above the man's +flannel collar, and the apron-strings tied pertly above the very wide, +slightly worn corduroy breeches and the big boots. Sheila was always +thinking of a certain famous Puss of fairy-tale memory, and biting her +tongue to keep it from the epithet. After Hilliard gave her the black +horse and she began to explore the mountain game trails, her life seemed +as full of pleasantness as it could hold. And yet ... with just that gift +of Hilliard's, the overshadowing of her joy began. No, really before +that, with his first visit. + +That was in late September when the nights were frosty and Miss Blake had +begun to cut and stack her wood for winter, and to use it for a crackling +hearth-fire after supper. They were sitting before such a fire when +Hilliard came. + +Miss Blake sat man-fashion on the middle of her spine, her legs crossed, +a magazine in her hands, and on her blunt nose a pair of large, +black-rimmed spectacles. Her feet and hands and her cropped head, though +big for a woman's, looked absurdly small in comparison to the breadth of +her hips and shoulders. She was reading the "Popular Science Monthly." +This and the "Geographic" and "Current Events" were regularly taken by +her and most thoroughly digested. She read with keen intelligence; her +comments were as shrewd as a knife-edge. The chair she sat in was made +from elk-horns and looked like the throne of some Norse chieftain. Behind +her on the wall hung the stuffed head of a huge walrus, his tusks +gleaming, the gift of that exploring brother who seemed to be her only +living relative. There were other tokens of his wanderings, a polar-bear +skin, an ivory Eskimo spear. As a more homelike trophy Miss Blake had +hung an elk head which she herself had laid low, a very creditable shot, +though out of season. She had been short of meat. In the corner was a +pianola topped by piles of record-boxes. At her feet lay Berg, the dog, +snoring faintly and as cozy as a kitten. + +The firelight made Miss Blake's face and hair ruddier than usual; her +eyes, when she raised them for a glance at Sheila, looked as though they +were full of red sparks which might at any instant break into flame. +Sheila was wearing one of her flimsy little black frocks, recovered from +the wrinkles of its journey, and she had decorated her square-cut neck +with some yellow flowers. On these Miss Blake's eyes rested every now +and then with a sardonic gleam. + +Outside Hidden Creek told its interminable chattering tale, centuries +long, the little skinny horse cropped getting his difficult meal with +his few remaining teeth. They could hear the dogs move with a faint +rattle of chains. Sometimes there would be a distant rushing sound, a +snow-slide thousands of feet above their heads on the mountain. Above +these familiar sounds there came, at about eight o'clock that evening, +the rattle of horse's hoofs through the little stream and at the instant +broke out the hideous clamor of the dogs, a noise that never failed to +whiten Sheila's cheeks. + +Miss Blake sat up straight and snatched off her spectacles. She looked at +Sheila with a hard look. + +"Have you been sending out invitations, Sheila?" she asked. + +"No, of course not," Sheila had flushed. She could guess whose horse's +hoofs were trotting across the little clearing. + +A man's voice spoke to the dogs commandingly. Miss Blake's eyebrows came +down over her eyes. A man's step struck the porch. A man's knock rapped +sharply at the door. + +"Come in!" said Miss Blake. She spoke it like a sentry's challenge. + +The door opened and there stood Cosme Hilliard, hat in hand, his smiling +Latin mouth showing the big white Saxon teeth. + +Sheila had not before quite realized his good looks. Now, all his lithe, +long gracefulness was painted for her against a square of purple night. +The clean white silk shirt fitted his broad shoulders, the wide rider's +belt clung to his supple waist, the leather chaps were shaped to his +Greek hips and thighs. No civilized man's costume could so have revealed +and enhanced his beautiful strength. And above the long body his face +glowed with its vivid coloring, the liquid golden eyes that moved easily +under their lids, the polished black hair sleekly brushed, the red-brown +cheeks, the bright lips, flexible and curved, of his Spanish mother. + +"Who in God's name are you?" demanded Miss Blake in her deepest voice. + +"This is Mr. Hilliard," Sheila came forward. "He is the man that brought +me over The Hill, Miss Blake--after I'd lost my horse, you know." There +was some urgency in Sheila's tone, a sort of prod to courtesy. Miss Blake +settled back on her spine and recrossed her legs. + +"Well, come in," she said, "and shut the door. No use frosting us all, is +there?" She resumed her spectacles and her reading of the "Popular +Science Monthly." + +Hilliard, still smiling, bowed to her, took Sheila's hand for an instant, +then moved easily across the room and settled on his heels at one corner +of the hearth. He had been riding, it would seem, in the thin silk shirt +and had found the night air crisp. He rolled a cigarette with the hands +that had first drawn Sheila's notice as they held his glass on the bar; +gentleman's hands, clever, sensitive, carefully kept. From his +occupation, he looked up at Miss Blake audaciously. + +"You'd better make friends with me, ma'am," he said, "because we're going +to be neighbors." + +"How's that?" + +"I'm taking up my homestead right down here below you on Hidden Creek a +ways. About six miles below your ford." + +Miss Blake's face filled with dark blood. She said nothing, put up +her magazine. + +Sheila, however, exclaimed delightedly, "Taken up a homestead?" + +"Yes, ma'am." He turned his floating, glowing look to her and there it +stayed almost without deviation during the rest of his visit. "I've built +me a log house--a dandy. I had a man up from Rusty to help me. I've +bought me a cow. I'm getting my furnishings ready. That's what I've been +doing these two months." + +"And never rode up to call on us?" Sheila reproached him. + +"No, ma'am. I'll tell you the reason for that. I wasn't sure of myself." +She opened rather puzzled and astonished eyes at this, but for an instant +his look went beyond her and remembered troubling things. "You see, Miss +Arundel, I'm not used to settling down. That's something that I've had no +practice in. I'm impatient. I get tired quickly. Damn quickly. I change +my mind. It's the worst thing in me--a sort of devil-horse always thirsty +for new things. It's touch and go with him. He runs with me. You see, +I've always given him his head." His look had come back to her face and +dwelt there speaking for him a language headier than that of his tongue. +"I thought I'd tie the dern fool down to some good tough work and test +him out. Well, ma'am, he hasn't quit on me this time. I think he won't. +I've got a ball and chain round about that cloven foot." He drew at his +cigarette, half-veiling in smoke the ardor of his look. "I'd like to show +you my house, Miss Arundel. It's fine. I worked with a builder one season +when I was a lad. I've got it peeled inside. The logs shine and I've got +a fireplace twice the size of this in my living-room"--he made graceful +gestures with the hand that held the cigarette. "Yes, ma'am, a +living-room, and a kitchen, and," with a whimsical smile, "a butler's +pantry. And, oh, a great big bedroom that gets the morning sun." He +paused an instant and flushed from chin to brow, an Anglo-Saxon flush it +was, but the bold Latin eyes did not fall. "I've made some furnishings +already. And I've sent out an order for kitchen stuff." + +Here Miss Blake changed the crossing of her legs. Sheila was angry with +herself because she was consumed with the contagion of his blush. She +wished that he would not look as if he had seen the blush and was pleased +by it. She wished that his clean young strength and beauty and the ardor +of his eyes did not speak quite so eloquently. + +"I bought a little black horse about so high"--he held his hand an absurd +distance from the floor and laughed--"just the size for a little girl +and--do you know who I'm going to give him to?" + +Here Miss Blake got up, strode to the pianola, adjusted it, and sat down, +broad and solid and unabashed by absence of feminine draperies, upon the +stool. She played a comic song. + +"I don't like your _fam_ily--" + +in some such dreadful way it expressed itself-- + +"They do _not_ look good to me. +I don't think your _Unc_le John +Ever _had_ a collar on ..." + +She played it very loud. + +Hilliard stood up and came close to Sheila. + +"She's mad as a March hare," he whispered, "and she doesn't like me a +little bit. Come out while I patch up Dusty, won't you, please? It's +moonlight. I'll be going." He repeated this very loud for Miss Blake's +benefit with no apparent effect upon her enjoyment of the song. She was +rocking to its rhythm. + +Hilliard was overwhelmed suddenly by the appearance of her. He put his +hand to his mouth and bolted. Sheila, following, found him around the +corner of the house rocking and gasping with mirth. He looked at her +through tears. + +"Puss-in-Boots," he gasped, and Sheila ran to the edge of the clearing to +be safe in a mighty self-indulgence. + +There they crouched like two children till their laughter spent itself. +Hilliard was serious first. + +"You're a bad, ungrateful girl," he said weakly, "to laugh at a sweet old +lady like that." + +"Oh, I am!" Sheila took it almost seriously. "She's been wonderful to +me." + +"I bet she works you," he said jealously. + +"Oh, no. Not a bit too hard. I love it." + +"Well," he admitted, "you do look pretty fine, that's a fact. Better than +you did at Hudson's. What did you quit for?" + +Sheila was sober enough now. The moonlight let some of its silver, +uncaught by the twinkling aspen leaves, splash down on her face. It +seemed to flicker and quiver like the leaves. She shook her head. + +He looked a trifle sullen. "Oh, you won't tell me.... Funny idea, you +being a barmaid. Hudson's notion, wasn't it?" + +Sheila lifted her clear eyes. "I thought asking questions wasn't good +manners in the West." + +"Damn!" he said. "Don't you make me angry! I've got a right to ask you +questions." + +She put her hand up against the smooth white trunk of the tree near +which she stood. She seemed to grow a little taller. + +"Oh, have you? I don't think I quite understand how you got any such +right. And you like to be questioned yourself?" + +She had him there, had him rather cruelly, though he was not aware of the +weapon of her suspicion. She felt a little ashamed when she saw him +wince. He slapped his gloves against his leather chaps, looking at her +with hot, sulky eyes. + +"Oh, well... I beg your pardon.... Listen--" He flung his ill-humor aside +and was sweet and cool again like the night. "Are you going to take the +little horse?" + +"I don't know." + +His face shadowed and fell so expressively, so utterly, that she melted. + +"Oh," he stammered, half-turning from her, "I was sure. I brought him +up." + +This completed the melting process. "Of course I'll take him!" she cried. +"Where is he?" + +She inspected the beautiful little animal by the moonlight. She even let +Hilliard mount her on the shining glossy back and rode slowly about +clinging to his mane, ecstatic over the rippling movement under her. + +"He's like a rocking-chair," said Cosme. "You can ride him all day and +not feel it." He looked about the silver meadow. "Good feed here, isn't +there? I bet he'll stay. If not, I'll get him for you." + +Sheila slipped down. They left the horse to graze. + +"Yes, it's first-rate feed. Do you think Miss Blake will let me +keep him?" + +His answer was entirely lost by a sudden outbreak from the dogs. + +"Good Lord!" said Cosme, making himself heard, "what a breed! Isn't that +awful! Why does she keep the brutes? Isn't she scared they'll eat her?" + +Sheila shook her head. Presently the tumult quieted down. "They're afraid +of her," she said. "She has a dreadful whip. She likes to bully them. I +think she's rather cruel. But she does love Berg; she says he's the only +real dog in the pack." + +"Was Berg the one on the bearskin inside?" + +"Yes." + +"He's sure a beauty. But I don't like him. He has wolf eyes. See +here--you're shivering. I've kept you out here in the cold. I'll go. +Good-night. Thank you for keeping the horse. Will you come down to see my +house? I built it"--he drawled the words--"for you"--and added after a +tingling moment--"to see, ma'am." + +This experiment in words sent Sheila to the house, her hand crushed and +aching with his good-bye grasp, her heart jumping with a queer fright. + +Miss Blake stood astraddle on the hearth, her hands behind her back. + +"You better go to bed, Sheila," she said; "it's eleven o'clock and +to-morrow's wash-day." + +Her voice was pleasant enough, but its bluffness had a new edge. Sheila +found it easy to obey. She climbed up the ladder to the little gabled +loft which was her bedroom. Halfway up she paused to assert a belated +independence of spirit. "Good-night," she said, "how do you like our +neighbor?" + +Miss Blake stared up. Her lips were set tight. She made no answer. After +an instant she sauntered across the room and out of the door. The whip +with which she beat the dogs swung in her hand. A moment later a fearful +howling and yelping showed that some culprit had been chosen for condign +punishment. + +Sheila set down her candle, sat on the edge of her cot, and covered her +ears with her hands. When it was over she crept into bed. She felt, +though she chided herself for the absurdity, like a naughty child who has +been forcibly reminded of the consequences of rebellion. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +A HISTORY AND A LETTER + + +The next morning, it seemed Miss Blake's humor had completely changed. It +showed something like an apologetic softness. She patted Sheila's +shoulder when she passed the girl at work. When Hilliard next appeared, a +morning visit this time, he was bidden to share their dinner; he was even +smiled upon. + +"She's not such a bad old girl, is she?" he admitted when Sheila had been +given a half-holiday and was riding on the black horse beside Hilliard on +his Dusty across one of the mountain meadows. + +"_I_ think she's a dear," said Sheila, pink with gratitude; then, +shadowing, "If only she wouldn't beat the dogs and would give up +trapping." + +"Why in thunder shouldn't she trap?" + +"I loathe trapping. Do you remember how you felt in the pen? It's bad +enough to shoot down splendid wild things for food, but, to trap +them!--small furry things or even big furry things like bears, why, it's +cruel! It's hideously cruel! When a woman does it--" + +"Come, now, don't call _her_ a woman!" + +"Yes, she is. Think of the aprons! And she is so tidy." + +"That's not just a woman's virtue." + +"Maybe not. I'm not sure. But I've a feeling that it was Eve who first +discovered dust." + +"Very bad job if she did. Think of all the bother we've been going +through ever since." + +"There!" Sheila triumphed. "To you it's just bother. You're a man. To me +it's a form of sport.... I wonder what Miss Blake's story is." + +"You mean--?" He turned in his saddle to stare wonderingly at her. "You +don't know?" + +"No." Sheila blushed confusedly. "I--I don't know anything about her--" + +"Good Lord!" He whistled softly. "Sometimes those ventures turn out all +right." He looked dubious. "I'm glad I'm here!" + +Sheila's smile slipped sweetly across her mouth and eyes. "So am I. But," +she added after a thoughtful moment, "I don't know much about your story +either, do I?" + +"I might say something about asking questions," began Cosme with +grimness, but changed his tone quickly with a light, apologetic touch on +her arm, "but--but I won't. I ran away from school when I was fourteen +and I've been knocking around the West ever since." + +"What school?" asked Sheila. + +He did not answer for several minutes. They had come to the end of the +meadow and were mounting a slope on a narrow trail where the ponies +seemed to nose their way among the trees. Now and then Sheila had to put +out her hand to push her knee away from a threatening trunk. Below were +the vivid paintbrush flowers and the blue mountain lupine and all about +the nymph-white aspens with leaves turning to restless gold against the +sky. The horses moved quietly with a slight creaking of saddles. There +was a feeling of stealth, of mystery--that tiptoe breathless expectation +of Pan pipes.... At last Cosme turned in his saddle, rested his hand on +the cantle, and looked at Sheila from a bent face with troubled eyes. + +"It was an Eastern school," he said. "No doubt you've heard of it. It +was Groton." + +The name here in these Wyoming woods brought a picture as foreign as the +artificiality of a drawing-room. + +"Groton? You ran away?" + +"Yes, ma'am." + +Sheila's suspicions were returning forcibly. "I'll have to ask questions, +Mr. Hilliard, because it seems so strange--what you are now, and your +running away and never having been brought back to the East by--by +whoever it was that sent you to Groton." + +"I want you to ask questions," he said rather wistfully. "You have +the right." + +This forced her into something of a dilemma. She ignored it and waited, +looking away from him. He would not leave her this loophole, however. + +"Why don't you look at me?" he demanded crossly. + +She did, and smiled again. + +"You have the prettiest smile I ever saw!" he cried; then went on +quickly, "I ran away because of something that happened. I'll tell you. +My mother"--he flushed and his eyes fell--"came up to see me at school +one day. My mother was very beautiful.... I was mad about her." Curiously +enough, every trace of the Western cowboy had gone out of his voice and +manner, which were an echo of the voice and manner of the Groton +schoolboy whose experience he told. "I was proud of her--you know how a +kid is. I kind of paraded her round and showed her off to the other +fellows. No other fellow had such a beautiful mother. Then, as we were +saying good-bye, a crowd of the boys all round, I did something--trod on +her foot or something, I don't quite know what--and she lifted up her +hand and slapped me across the face." He was white at the shocking +memory. "Right there before them all, when I--I was adoring her. She had +the temper of a devil, a sudden Spanish temper--the kind I have, too--and +she never made the slightest effort to hold it down. She hit me and she +laughed as though it was funny and she got into her carriage. I cut off +to my room. I wanted to kill myself. I couldn't face any one. I wanted +never to see her again. I guess I was a queer sort of kid.... I don't +know ..." He drew a big breath, dropped back to the present and his +vivid color returned. "That's why I ran away from school, Miss Arundel." + +"And they never brought you back?" + +He laughed. "They never found me. I had quite a lot of money and I +lost myself pretty cleverly...a boy of fourteen can, you know. It's +a very common history. Well, I suppose they didn't break their necks +over me either, after the first panic. They were busy people--my +parents--remarkably busy going to the devil.... And they were eternally +hard-up. You see, my grandfather had the money--still has it--and he's +remarkably tight. I wrote to them after six years, when I was twenty. +They wrote back; at least their lawyer did. They tried, not very +sincerely, though, I think, to coax me East again... told me they'd +double my allowance if I did--they've sent me a pittance--" He shuddered +suddenly, a violent, primitive shiver. "I'm glad I didn't go," he said. + +There was a long stillness. That dreadful climax to the special +"business" of the Hilliards was relived in both their memories. But it +was something of which neither could speak. Sheila wondered if the +beautiful mother was that instant wearing the hideous prison dress. She +wished that she had read the result of the trial. She wouldn't for the +world question this pale and silent young man. The rest of their ride was +quiet and rather mournful. They rode back at sunset and Hilliard bade her +a troubled good-bye. + +She wanted to say something comforting, reassuring. She watched him +helplessly from where she stood on the porch as he walked across the +clearing to his horse. Suddenly he slapped the pocket of his chaps and +turned back. "Thunder!" he cried, "I'd forgotten the mail. A fellow left +it at the ford. A paper for Miss Blake and a letter for you." + +Sheila held out her hand. "A letter for me?" She took it. It was a +strange hand, small and rather unsteady. The envelope was fat, the +postmark Millings. Her flush of surprise ebbed. She knew whose letter it +was--Sylvester Hudson's. He had found her out. + +She did not even notice Cosme's departure. She went up to her loft, sat +down on her cot and read. + +"MY DEAR MISS SHEILA: + +"I don't rightly know how to express myself in this letter because I know +what your feelings toward Pap must be like, and they are fierce. But I +have got to try to write you a letter just the same, for there are some +things that need explaining. At first, when my hotel and my Aura were +burned down [here the writing was especially shaky] and I found that you +and Dickie had both vamoosed, I thought that you had paid me out and gone +off together. You can't blame me for that thought, Miss Sheila, for I +had found him in your room at that time of night or morning and I +couldn't help but see that he was aiming to kiss you and you were waiting +for his kiss. So I was angry and I had been drinking and I kissed you +myself, taking advantage of you in a way that no gentleman would do. But +I thought you were different from the Sheila I had brought to be my +barmaid. + +"Well, ma'am, for a while after the fire, I was pretty near crazy. I was +about loco. Then I was sick. When I got well again, a fellow who come +over from Hidden Creek told me you had gone over to be at a ranch there +and that you had come in alone. That sort of got me to thinking about you +more and more and studying you out, and I begun to see that I had made a +bad mistake. Whatsoever reason brought that damn fool Dickie to your room +that morning, it wasn't your doings, and the way you was waiting for his +kiss was more a mother's way. I have had some hard moments with myself, +Miss Sheila, and I have come to this that I have got to write and tell +you how I feel. And ask your forgiveness. You see you were something in +my life, different from anything that had ever been there. I don't +rightly know--I likely never will know--what you meant in my life. I +handled you in my heart like a flower. Before God, I had a religion for +you. And that was just why, when I thought you was bad, that it drove me +crazy. I wonder if you will understand this. You are awful young and +awful ignorant. And I have hurt your pride. You are terrible proud for +your years, Miss Sheila. I ache all over when I think that I hurt your +pretty mouth. I hope it is smiling now. I am moving out of Millings,--Me +and Momma and Babe. But Girlie is agoing to marry Jim. He run right back +to her like a little lost lamb the second you was gone. Likely, he'll +never touch liquor again. I haven't heard from Dickie. I guess he's gone +where the saloons are bigger and where you can get oysters with your +drinks. He always was a damn fool. I would dearly like to go over to +Hidden Creek and see you, but I feel like I'd better not. It would hurt +me if I got a turn-down from you like it will hurt me if you don't +answer this letter, which is a mighty poor attempt to tell you my bad +reasons for behaving like I did. I am not sorry I thrashed Dickie. He had +ought to be thrashed good and plenty. And he has sure paid me off by +burning down my Aura. That was a saloon in a million, Miss Sheila, and +the picture of you standing there back of my bar, looking so dainty and +sweet and fine in your black dress and your frills--well, ma'am, I'll +sure try to be thinking of that when I cash in. + +"Well, Miss Sheila, I wish you good fortune in whatever you do, and I +hope that if you ever need a friend you will overlook my bad break and +remember the artist that tried to put you in his big work and--failed." + +This extraordinary document was signed--"Sylvester." Sheila was left +bewildered with strange tears in her throat. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +SANCTUARY + + +There came to the restaurant where Dickie worked, a certain sallow and +irritable man, no longer in his early youth. He came daily for one of his +three meals: it might be lunch or dinner or even breakfast, Dickie was +always in haste to serve him. For some reason, the man's clever and +nervous personality intrigued his interest. And this, although his +customer never threw him a glance, scowled at a newspaper, barked out an +order, gulped his food, stuck a fair-sized tip under the edge of his +plate, and jerked himself away. + +On a certain sluggish noon hour in August, Dickie, as far as the +kitchen door with a tray balanced on his palm, realized that he had +forgotten this man's order. He hesitated to go back. "Like as not," +reasoned Dickie, "he didn't rightly know what the order was. He never +does look at his food. I'll fetch him a Spanish omelette and a salad +and a glass of iced tea. It's a whole lot better order than he'd have +thought of himself." + +Nevertheless, it was with some trepidation that he set the omelette down +before that lined and averted countenance. Its owner was screwed into his +chair as usual, eyes, with a sharp cleft between their brows, bent on his +folded newspaper, and he put his right hand blindly on the fork. But as +it pricked the contents of the plate a savory fragrance rose and the +reader looked. + +"Here, you damn fool--that's not my order," he snapped out. + +Dickie tasted a homely memory--"Dickie damn fool." He stood silent a +moment looking down with one of his quaint, impersonal looks. + +"Well, sir," then he said slowly, "it ain't your order, but you look a +whole lot more like a feller that would order Spanish omelette than like +a feller that would order Hamburger steak." + +For the first time the man turned about, flung his arm over his +chair-back, and looked up at Dickie. In fact, he stared. His thin lips, +enclosed in an ill-tempered parenthesis of double lines, twisted +themselves slightly. + +"I'll be derned!" he said. "But, look here, my man, I didn't order +Hamburger steak; I ordered chicken." + +Dickie deliberately smoothed down the cowlick on his head. He wore his +look of a seven-year-old with which he was wont to face the extremity of +Sylvester's exasperation. + +"I reckon I clean forgot your order, sir," he said. "I figured out that +you wouldn't be caring what was on your plate. This heat," he added, +"sure puts a blinder on a feller's memory." + +The man laughed shortly. "It's all right," he said. "This'll go down." + +He ate in silence. Then he glanced up again. "What are you waiting +for, anyway?" + +Dickie flushed faintly. "I was sort of wishful to see how it would go +down." + +"Oh, I don't mean that kind of waiting. I mean--why are you a waiter in +this--hash-hole?" + +Dickie meditated. "There ain't no answer to that," he said. "I don't know +why--" He added--"Why anything. It's a sort of extry word in the +dictionary--don't mean much any way you look at it." + +He gathered up the dishes. The man watched him, tilting back a little in +his chair, his eyes twinkling under brows drawn together. A moment +afterwards he left the restaurant. + +It was a few nights later when Dickie saw him again--or rather when +Dickie was again seen by him. This time Dickie was not in the restaurant. +He was at a table in a small Free Library near Greenwich Avenue, and he +was copying painstakingly with one hand from a fat volume which he held +down with the other. The strong, heavily-shaded light made a circle of +brilliance about him; his fair hair shone silvery bright, his face had a +sort of seraphic pallor. The orderer of chicken, striding away from the +desk with a hastily obtained book of reference, stopped short and stared +at him; then came close and touched the thin, shiny shoulder of the blue +serge coat. + +"This the way you take your pleasure?" he asked abruptly. + +Dickie looked up slowly, and his consciousness seemed to travel even more +slowly back from the fairy doings of a midsummer night. Under the +observant eyes bent upon it, his face changed extraordinarily from the +face of untroubled, almost immortal childhood to the face of struggling +and reserved manhood. + +"Hullo," he said with a smile of recognition. "Well--yes--not always." + +"What are you reading?" The man slipped into the chair beside Dickie, put +on his glasses, and looked at the fat book. "Poetry? Hmp! What are you +copying it for?--letter to your girl?" + +Dickie had all the Westerner's prejudice against questions, but he felt +drawn to this patron of the "hash-hole," so, though he drawled his answer +slightly, it was an honest answer. + +"It ain't my book," he said. "That's why I'm copying it." + +"Why in thunder don't you take it out, you young idiot?" + +Dickie colored. "Well, sir, I don't rightly understand the workings of +this place. I come by it on the way home and I kep' a-seein' folks goin' +in with books and comin' out with books. I figured it was a kind of +exchange proposition. I've only got one book--and that ain't rightly +mine--" the man looking at him wondered why his face flamed--"so, when I +came in, I just watched and I figured you could read here if you had the +notion to take down a book and fetch it over to the table and copy from +it and return it. So I've been doin' that." + +"Why didn't you go to the desk, youngster, and ask questions?" + +"Where I come from"--Dickie was drawling again--"folks don't deal so much +in questions as they do here." + +"Where you came from! You came from Mars! Come along to the desk and +I'll fix you up with a card and you can take an armful of poetry home +with you." + +Dickie went to the desk and signed his name. The stranger signed +his--Augustus Lorrimer. The librarian stamped a bit of cardboard and +stuck it into the fat volume. She handed it to Dickie wearily. + +"Thank _you_, ma'am," he said with such respectful fervor that she looked +up at him and smiled. + +"Now, where's your diggings," asked Lorrimer, who had taken no hints +about asking questions, "east or west?" He was a newspaper reporter. + +"Would you be carin' to walk home with me?" asked Dickie. There was a +great deal of dignity in his tone, more in his carriage. + +"Yes. I'd be caring to! Lead on, Martian!" And Lorrimer felt, after +he said that, that he was a vulgarian--a long-forgotten sensation. +"In Mars," he commented to himself, "this young man was some kind of +a prince." + +"What do you look over your shoulder that way for, Dick?" he asked aloud, +a few blocks on their way. "Scared the police will take away your book?" + +Dickie blinked at him with a startled air. "Did I? I reckon a feller +gets into queer ways when he's alone a whole lot. I get kind of feelin' +like somebody was following me in this town--so many folks goin' to and +fro does it to me most likely." + +"Yes, a fellow does get into queer ways when he's alone a whole lot," +said Lorrimer slowly. His mind went back a dozen years to his own first +winter in New York. He looked with keenness at Dickie's face. It was a +curiously charming face, he thought, but it was tight-knit with a +harried, struggling sort of look, and this in spite of its quaint +detachment. + +"Know any one in this city?" + +"No, sir, not rightly. I've made acquaintance with some of the waiters. +They've asked me to join a club. But I haven't got the cash." + +"What pay do you draw?" + +Dickie named a sum. + +"Not much, eh? But you've got your tips." + +"Yes, sir. I pay my board with my pay and live on the tips." + +"Must be uncertain kind of living! Where do you live, anyway? +What? Here?" + +They had crossed Washington Square and were entering a tall studio +building to the south and east. Dickie climbed lightly up the stairs. +Lorrimer followed with a feeling of bewilderment. On the top landing, +dimly lighted, Dickie unlocked a door and stood aside. + +"Just step in and look up," he said, "afore I light the light. You'll +see something." + +Lorrimer obeyed. A swarm of golden bees glimmered before his eyes. + +"Stars," said Dickie. "Down below you wouldn't hardly know you had 'em, +would you?" + +Lorrimer did not answer. A moment later an asthmatic gas-jet caught its +breath and he saw a bare studio room almost vacant of furniture. There +was a bed and a screen and a few chairs, one window facing an alley wall. +The stars had vanished. + +"Pretty palatial quarters for a fellow on your job," Lorrimer remarked. +"How did you happen to get here?" + +"Some--people I knowed of once lived here." Dickie's voice had taken on a +certain remoteness, and even Lorrimer knew that here questions stopped. +He accepted a chair, declined "the makings," proffered a cigarette. +During these amenities his eyes flew about the room. + +"Good Lord!" he ejaculated, "is all that stuff your copying?" + +There was a pile of loose and scattered manuscript upon the table under +the gas-jet. + +"Yes, sir," Dickie smiled. "I was plumb foolish to go to all that labor." + +Lorrimer drew near to the table and coolly looked over the papers. +Dickie watched him with rather a startled air and a flush that might +have seemed one of resentment if his eyes had not worn their +impersonal, observing look. + +"All poetry," muttered Lorrimer. "But some of it only a line--or a +word." He read aloud,--"'Close to the sun in lonely lands--' what's that +from, anyway?" + +"A poem about an eagle by a man named Alfred Tennyson. Ain't it the way a +feller feels, though, up on the top of a rocky peak?" + +"Never been on the top of a rocky peak--kind of a sky-scraper sensation, +isn't it? What's all this--'An' I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, +after my fashion'?" + +Dickie's face again flamed in spite of himself. "It's a love poem. The +feller couldn't forget. He couldn't keep himself from loving that-away +because he loved so much the other way--well, sir, you better read it for +yourself. It's a mighty real sort of a poem--if you were that sort of a +feller, I mean." + +"And this is 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' And here's a sonnet, 'It was +not like your great and gracious ways'--? Coventry Patmore. Well, young +man, you've a catholic taste." + +"I don't rightly belong to any church," said Dickie gravely. "My mother +is a Methodist." + +Lorrimer moved; abruptly away and moved abruptly back. + +"Where were you educated, Dick?" + +"I was raised in Millings"--Dickie named the Western State--"I didn't +get only to grammar school. My father needed me to work in his hotel." + +"Too bad!" sighed Lorrimer. "Well, I'll bid you good-night. And many +thanks. You've got a fine place here." Again he sighed. "I dare say--one +of these days--" + +He was absent and irritable again. Dickie accompanied him down the three +long, narrow flights and climbed back to his loneliness. He was, however, +very much excited by his adventure, excited and disturbed. He felt +restless. He walked about and whistled to himself. + +Until now he had had but one companion--the thought of Sheila. It was +extraordinary how immediate she was. During the first dreadful weeks of +his drudgery in the stifling confusions of the restaurant, when even the +memory of Sylvester's tongue-lashings faded under the acute reality of +the head waiter's sarcasms, that love of his for Sheila had fled away and +left him dull and leaden and empty of his soul. And his tiny third-story +bedroom had seemed like a coffin when he laid himself down in it and +tried to remember her. It had come to him like a mountain wind, +overwhelmingly, irresistibly, the desire to live where she lived: the +first wish he had had since he had learned that she was not to be found +by him. And the miracle had accomplished itself. Mrs. Halligan had been +instructed to get a lodger at almost any price for the long-vacant studio +room. She lowered the rent to the exact limit of Dickie's wages. She had +never bargained with so bright-eyed a hungry-looking applicant for +lodgings. And that night he lay awake under Sheila's stars. From then on +he lived always in her presence. And here in the room that had known her +he kept himself fastidious and clean. He shut out the wolf-pack of his +shrewd desires. The room was sanctuary. It was to rescue Sheila rather +than himself that Dickie fled up to the stars. So deeply, so intimately +had she become a part of him that he seemed to carry her soul in his +hands. So had the young dreamer wedded his dream. He lived with Sheila as +truly, as loyally, as though he knew that she would welcome him with one +of those downward rushes or give him Godspeed on sultry, feverish dawns +with a cool kiss. Dickie lay sometimes across his bed and drew her cheek +in trembling fancy close to his until the anguish wet his pillow with +mute tears. + +Now to this dual loneliness Lorrimer had climbed, and Dickie felt, rather +gratefully, that life had reached up to the aching unrealities of his +existence. His tight and painful life had opened like the first fold of a +fan. He built upon the promise of a friendship with this questioning, +impertinent, mocking, keenly sympathetic visitor. + +But a fortnight passed without Lorrimer's appearing at the restaurant +and, when at last he did come, Dickie, flying to his chair, was greeted +by a cold, unsmiling word, and a businesslike quotation from the menu. +He felt as though he had been struck. His face burned. In the West, a +fellow couldn't do that and get away with it! He tightened an impotent, +thin fist. He filled the order and kept his distance, and, absurdly +enough, gave Lorrimer's tip to another waiter and went without his own +dinner. For the first time in his life a sense of social inferiority, of +humiliation concerning the nature of his work, came to him. He felt the +pang of servitude, a pang unknown to the inhabitants of frontier towns. +When Sheila washed dishes for Mrs. Hudson she was "the young lady from +Noo York who helps round at Hudson's house." Dickie fought this shame +sturdily, but it seemed to cling, to have a sticky pervasiveness. Try as +he might he couldn't brush it off his mind. Nevertheless, it was on the +very heels of this embittering experience that life plucked him up from +his slough. One of the leveling public catastrophes came to Dickie's +aid--not that he knew he was a dumb prayer for aid. He knew only that +every day was harder to face than the last, that every night the stars up +there through Sheila's skylight seemed to glimmer more dully with less +inspiration on his fagged spirit. + +The sluggish monotony of the restaurant's existence was stirred that +September night by a big neighboring fire. Waiters and guests tumbled out +to the call of fire-engines and running feet. Dickie found himself +beside Lorrimer, who caught him by the elbow. + +"Keep by me, kid," he said, and there was something in his tone +that softened injury. "If you want a good look-in, I can get +through the ropes." + +He showed his card to a policeman, pulled Dickie after him, and they +found themselves in an inner circle of the inferno. Before them a tall, +hideous warehouse broke forth into a horrible beauty. It was as though a +tortured soul had burst bars. It roared and glowed and sent up petals of +smoky rose and seeds of fire against the blue-black sky. The crowds +pressed against the ropes and turned up their faces to drink in the +terror of the spectacle. + +Lorrimer had out his notebook. "Damn fires!" he said. "They bore me. Does +all this look like anything to you? That fire and those people and their +silly faces all tilted up and turned red and blue and purple--" + +He was talking to himself, and so, really, was Dickie when he made his +own statement in a queer tone of frightened awe. "They look like a flower +garden in Hell," he whispered. + +Lorrimer threw up his chin. "Say that again, will you?" he snapped out. +"Go on! Don't stop! Tell me everything that comes into your damn young +head of a wandering Martian! Fly at it! I'll take you down." + +"You mean," said Dickie, "tell you what I think this looks like?" + +"That's what I mean, do." + +Dickie smiled a queer sort of smile. He had found a listener at last. A +moment later Lorrimer's pencil was in rapid motion. And the reporter's +eyes shot little stabbing looks at Dickie's unselfconscious face. When +it was over he snapped an elastic round his notebook, returned it to his +pocket, and laid his hand on Dickie's thin, tense arm. + +"Come along with me, Dick," said Lorrimer. "You've won. I've been +fighting you and my duty to my neighbor for a fortnight. Your waiter days +are over. I've adopted you. I'm my brother's keeper all right. We'll both +go hungry now and then probably, but what's the odds! I need you. I +haven't been able to hand in a story like that for years. I'm a burnt-out +candle and you're the divine fire. I'm going to educate the life out of +you. I'm going to train you till you wish you'd died young and +ungrammatical in Millings. I may not be much good myself," he added +solemnly, "but God gave me the sense to know the real thing when I see +it. I've been fighting you, calling myself a fool for weeks. Come along, +young fellow, don't hang back, and for your credit's sake close your lips +so you won't look like a case of arrested development. First we'll say +good-bye to the hash-hole and the white apron and then I'll take you up +to your sky parlor and we'll talk things over." + +"God!" said Dickie faintly. It was a prayer for some enlightenment. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +DESERTION + + +Hilliard rode up along Hidden Creek on a frosty October morning. +Everywhere now the aspens were torches of gold, the cottonwood trees +smoky and gaunt, the ground bright with fallen leaves. He had the look of +a man who has swept his heart clean of devils...his face was keen with +his desire. He sang as he rode--sweetly an old sentimental Spanish song, +something his mother had taught him; but it was not of his mother he +thought, or only, perhaps, deep down in his subconsciousness, of that +early mother-worship, age-old and most mysterious, which now he had +translated and transferred. + +"Sweet, sweet is the jasmine flower-- +Let its stars guide thee. +Sweet is the heart of a rose... +Sweet is the thought of thee... +Deep in my heart..." + +The dogs were off coursing the woods that afternoon, and the little +clearing lay as still as a green lake under the threatening crest of the +mountain. Cosme slipped from his horse, pulled the reins over his head, +and left him to graze at will. + +Miss Blake opened the ranch-house door at his knock. She greeted him with +a sardonic smile. "I don't know whether you'll see your girl or not," +she said. "Give her time to get over her tantrums." + +Cosme turned a lightning look upon her. "Tantrums? Sheila?" + +"Oh, my friend, she has a devil of her own, that little angel-face! Make +yourself comfortable." Miss Blake pointed him to a chair. "I'll tell her +you're here." + +She went to the foot of the ladder, which rose from the middle of the +living-room floor, and called heartily, an indulgent laugh in her voice, +"You, Sheila! Better come down! Here's your beau." + +There was no answer. + +"Hear me, Sheila? Mis-ter Cos-me Hill-iard." + +This time some brief and muffled answer was returned. Miss Blake smiled +and went over to her elk-horn throne. There she sat and sewed--an +incongruous occupation it looked. + +Cosme was leaning forward, elbows on knees, his face a study of +impatience, anger, and suspicion. + +"What made her mad?" he asked bluntly. + +"O-oh! She'll get over it. She'll be down. Sheila can't resist a young +man. You'll see." + +"What did you do?" insisted the stern, crisp, un-western voice. When +Cosme was angry he reverted rapidly to type. + +"Why," drawled Miss Blake, "I crept up when she was drying her hair and I +cut it off." She laughed loudly at his fierce start. + +"Cut off her hair! What right--?" + +"No right at all, my friend, but common sense. What's the good of all +that fluffy stuff hanging about and taking hours of her time to brush +and wash and what-not. Besides"--she shot a look at him--"it's part of +the cure." + +"By the Lord," said Cosme, "I'd like you to explain." + +The woman crossed her legs calmly. She was still indulgently amused. + +"Don't lose your head, young man," she advised. "Better smoke." + +After an instant Cosme rolled and lighted a cigarette and leaned back in +his chair. His anger had settled to a sort of patient contempt. + +"I've put her into breeches, too," said Miss Blake. + +"What the devil! What do you mean? She has a will of her own, +hasn't she?" + +"Oh, yes. But you see I've got Miss Sheila just about where I want her. +She's grateful enough for her food and the roof over her head and for the +chance I'm giving her." + +"Chance?" He laughed shortly. "Chance to do all your heavy work?" + +"Why not say _honest_ work? It's something new to her." + +There was a brief, thunderous silence. Cosme's cigarette burned between +his stiff fingers. "What do you mean?" he asked, hoarse with the effort +of his self-control. + +She looked at him sharply now. "Are you Paul Carey Hilliard's son--the +son of Roxana Hilliard?" she asked. She pointed a finger at him. + +"Yes," he answered with thin lips. His eyes narrowed. His face was all +Latin, all cruel. + +"Well"--Miss Blake slid her hands reflectively back and forth on the bone +arms of her chair. She had put down her work. "I was just thinking," she +said slowly and kindly, "that the son of your mother would be rather +extra careful in choosing the mother of his sons." + +"I shall be very careful," he answered between the thin lips. "I _am_ +being careful." + +She fell back with an air of relief. "Oh," she said, as though +illuminated. "O-oh! I understand. Then it's all right. I didn't read +your game." + +His face caught fire at her apparent misunderstanding. + +"I don't read yours," he said. + +"Game? Bless you, I've no game to play. I'm giving Sheila her chance. But +I'm not going to give her a chance at the cost of your happiness. You're +too good a lad for that. I thought you were going to ask her to be your +wife. And I wasn't going to allow you to do it--blind. I was going to +advise you to come back three years from now and see her again. Maybe +this fine clean air and this life and this honest work and the training +she gets from me will make her straight. My God! Cosme Hilliard, have you +set eyes on Hudson? What kind of girl travels West from New York at +Sylvester Hudson's expense and in his company and queens it in the suite +at his hotel?" + +"Miss Blake," he muttered, "do you _know_ this?" + +The cigarette had burnt itself out. Cosme's face was no longer cruel. It +was dazed. + +She laughed shortly. "Why, of course, I know Sheila. I know her whole +history--and it's some history! She's twice the age she looks. Do you +think I'd have her here with me this way without knowing the girl? I tell +you, I want to give her a chance. I don't care if you try to test her +out. I'd like to see if two months has done anything for her. She was +real set on being a good girl when she quit Hudson. I don't _know_, but +I'm willing to bet that she'll turn you down." + +From far away up the mountain-side came the fierce baying of the dog +pack. Cosme pulled himself together and stood up. His face had an +ignorant, baffled look, the look of an unskilled and simple mind +caught in a web. + +"I reckon she--she isn't coming down," he said slowly, without lifting +his eyes from the floor. "I reckon I'll be going. I won't wait." + +He walked to the door, his steps falling without spring, and went out and +so across the porch and the clearing to his horse. + +At the sound of the closing door there came a flurry of movement in the +loft. The trap was raised. Sheila came quickly down the ladder. She was +dressed in a pair of riding-breeches and her hair was cropped like Miss +Blake's just below the ears. The quaintest rose-leaf of a Rosalind she +looked, just a wisp of grace, utterly unlike a boy. All the soft, slim +litheness with its quick turns revealed--a little figure of unconscious +sweet enchantment. But the face was flushed and tear-stained, the eyes +distressed. She stood, hands on her belt, at the foot of the ladder. + +"Why has he gone? Why didn't he wait?" + +Miss Blake turned a frank, indulgent face. But it was deeply +flushed. "Oh, shucks!" she said, "I suppose he got tired. Why didn't +you come down?" + +Sheila sent a look down her slim legs. "Oh, because I _am_ a fool. Miss +Blake--did you _really_ burn my two frocks--both of them?" Her eyes +coaxed and filled. + +"It's all they're fit for, my dear. You can make yourself new ones. You +know it's more sensible and comfortable, too, to work and ride in +breeches. I know what I'm doing, child.--I've lived this way quite a +number of years. You look real nice. I can't abide female floppery, +anyhow. What's it a sign of? Rotten slavery." She set her very even teeth +together hard as she said this. + +But Sheila was neither looking nor listening. She had heard horse's +hoofs. Her cheeks flamed. She ran to the door. She stood on the porch +and called. + +"Cosme Hilliard! Come back!" + +There was no answer. A few minutes later she came in, pale and puzzled. + +"He didn't even wave," she said. "He turned back in his saddle and stared +at me. He rode away staring at me. Miss Blake--what did you say to him? +You were talking a long time." + +"We were talking," said Miss Blake, "about dogs and how to raise 'em. And +then he up and said goodbye. Oh, Sheila, it's all right. He'll be back +when he's got over being miffed. Why, he expected you to come tumblin' +down the ladder head over heels to see him--a handsome fellow like that! +Shucks! Haven't you ever dealt with the vanity of a young male before? +It's as jumpy as a rabbit. Get to work." + +And, as though to justify Miss Blake's prophecy, just ten days later, +Hilliard did come again. It was a Sunday and Sheila had packed her +lunch and gone off on "Nigger Baby" for the day. The ostensible object +of her ride was a visit to the source of Hidden Creek. Really she was +climbing away from a hurt. She felt Hilliard's wordless departure and +prolonged absence keenly. She had not--to put it euphemistically--many +friends. Her remedy was successful. Impossible, on such a ride, to +cherish minor or major pangs. She rode into the smoky dimness of +pine-woods where the sunlight burned in flecks and out again across the +little open mountain meadows, jeweled with white and gold, blue and +coral-colored flowers, a stained-glass window scattered across the +ground. From these glades she could see the forest, an army of tall +pilgrims, very grave, going up, with long staves in their hands, to +worship at a high shrine. The rocks above were very grave, too, and +grim and still against the even blue sky. Across their purplish gray a +waterfall streaked down struck crystal by the sun. An eagle turned in +great, swinging circles. Sheila had an exquisite lifting of heart, a +sense of entire fusion, body blessed by spirit, spirit blessed by body. +She felt a distinct pleasure in the flapping of her short, sun-filled +hair against her neck, at the pony's motion between her unhampered +legs, at the moist warmth of his neck under her hand--and this physical +pleasure seemed akin to the ecstasy of prayer. + +She came at last to a difficult, narrow, cañon trail, where the pony +hopped skillfully over fallen trees, until, for very weariness of his +choppy, determined efforts, she dismounted, tied him securely, and made +the rest of her climb on foot. Hidden Creek tumbled near her and its +voice swelled. All at once, round the corner of a great wall of rock, she +came upon the head. It gushed out of the mountain-side in a tumult of +life, not in a single stream, but in many frothy, writhing earth-snakes +of foam. She sat for an hour and watched this mysterious birth from the +mountain-side, watched till the pretty confusion of the water, with its +half-interpreted voices, had dizzied and dazed her to the point of +complete forgetfulness of self. She had entered into a sort of a trance, +a Nirvana ... She shook herself out of it, ate her lunch and scrambled +quickly back to "Nigger Baby." It was late afternoon when she crossed the +mountain glades. Their look had mysteriously changed. There was something +almost uncanny now about their brilliance in the sunset light, and when +she rode into the streaked darkness of the woods, they were full of +ghostly, unintelligible sounds. To rest her muscles she was riding with +her right leg thrown over the horn as though on a side saddle--a great +mass of flowers was tied in front of her. She had opened her shirt at the +neck and her head was bare. She was singing to keep up her heart. Then, +suddenly, she had no more need of singing. She saw Cosme walking toward +her up the trail. + +His face lacked all its vivid color. It was rather haggard and stern. The +devils he had swept out of his heart a fortnight earlier had, since then, +been violently entertained. He stepped out of the path and waited for +her, his hands on his hips. But, as she rode down, she saw this look +melt. The blood crept up to his cheeks, the light to his eyes. It was +like a rock taking the sun. She had smiled at him with all the usual +exquisite grace and simplicity. When she came beside him, she drew rein, +and at the same instant he put his hand on the pony's bridle. He looked +up at her dumbly, and for some reason she, too, found it impossible to +speak. She could see that he was breathing fast through parted lips and +that the lips were both cruel and sensitive. His hand slid back along +"Nigger Baby's" neck, paused, and rested on her knee. Then, suddenly, he +came a big step closer, threw both his arms, tightening with a python's +strength, about her and hid his face against her knees. + +"Sheila," he said thickly. He looked up with a sort of anguish into her +face. "Sheila, if you are not fit to be the mother of my children, you +are _sure_ fit for any man to love." + +Her soft, slim body hardened against him even before her face. They +stared at each other for a minute. + +"Let me get down," said Sheila. + +He stepped back, not quite understanding. She dropped off the horse, +dragging her flowers with her, and faced him. She did not feel small or +slender. She felt as high as a hill, although she had to look up at him +so far. Her anger had its head against the sky. + +"Why do you talk about a man's love?" she asked him with a queer sort +of patience. "I think--I hope--that you don't know anything about a +man's love, oh, the _way_ men love!" She thought with swift pain of +Jim, of Sylvester; "Oh, the _way_ they love!" And she found that, +under her breath, she was sobbing, "Dickie! Dickie!" as though her +heart had called. + +"Will you take back your horse, please?" she said, choking over these +sobs which hurt her more at the moment than he had hurt her. "I'll never +ride on him again. Don't come back here. Don't try to see me any more. I +suppose it--it--the way you love me--is because I was a barmaid, because +you heard people speak of me as 'Hudson's Queen.'" She conquered one of +the sobs. "I thought that after you'd looked into my face so hard that +night and stopped yourself from--from--my lips, that you had understood." +She shook her head from side to side so violently, so childishly, that +the short hair lashed across her eyes. "No one ever will understand!" She +ran away from him and cried under her breath, "Dickie! Dickie!" + +She ran straight into the living-room and stopped in the middle of the +floor. Her arms were full of the flowers she had pulled down from "Nigger +Baby's" neck. + +"What did you want to bring in all that truck--?" Miss Blake began, +rising from the pianola, then stopped. "What's the matter with you?" she +asked. "Did your young man find you? I sent him up the trail." Her red +eyes sparkled. + +"He insulted me!" gasped Sheila. "He dared to insult me!" She was +dramatic with her helpless young rage. "He said I wasn't fit to--to be +the mother of his children. And"--she laughed angrily, handling behind +Cosme's back the weapon that she had been too merciful to use--"and _his_ +mother is a murderess, found guilty of murder--and of worse!" + +A sort of ripple of sound behind made her turn. + +Cosme had followed her, was standing in the open door, and had heard her +speech. The weapon had struck home, and she saw how it had poisoned all +his blood. + +He vanished without a word. Sheila turned back to Miss Blake a paler +face. She let fall all her flowers. + +"Now he'll never come back," she said. + +She climbed up the ladder to her loft. + +There she sat for an hour, listening to the silence. Her mind busied +itself with trivial memories. She thought of Amelia Plecks.... It would +have comforted her to hear that knock and the rattle of her dinner tray. +The little sitting-room at Hudson's Hotel, with its bit of tapestry and +its yellow tea-set and its vases filled with flowers, seemed to her +memory as elaborate and artificial as the boudoir of a French princess. +Farther than Millings had seemed from her old life did this dark little +gabled attic seem from Millings. What was to be the end of this strange +wandering, this withdrawing of herself farther and farther into the +lonely places! She longed for the noise of Babe's hearty, irrepressible +voice with its smack of chewing, of her step coming up the stairs to that +little bedroom under Hudson's gaudy roof. Could it be possible that she +was homesick for Millings? For the bar with its lights and its visitors +and its big-aproned guardian? Her lids were actually smarting with tears +at the recollection of Carthy's big Irish face.... He had been such a +good, faithful watch-dog. Were men always like that--either watch-dogs +or wolves? The simile brought her back to Hidden Creek. It grew darker +and darker, a heavy darkness; the night had a new soft weight. There +began to be a sort of whisper in the stillness--not the motion of pines, +for there was no wind. Perhaps it was more a sensation than a sound, of +innumerable soft numb fingers working against the silence ... Sheila got +up, shivering, lighted her candle, and went over to the small, four-paned +window under the eaves. She pressed her face against it and started back. +Things were flying toward her. She opened the sash and a whirling scarf +of stars flung itself into the room. It was snowing. The night was blind +with snow. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +WORK AND A SONG + + +On the studio skylight the misty autumn rain fell that night, as the snow +fell against Sheila's window-panes, with a light tapping. Below it Dickie +worked. He had very little leisure now for stars or dreams. For the first +time in his neglected and mismanaged life he knew the pleasure of +congenial work; and this, although Lorrimer worked him like a slave. He +dragged him over the city and set his picture-painting faculty to labor +in dark corners. Dickie, every sense keen and clean, was not allowed to +flinch. No, his freshness was his value. And the power that was in him, +driven with whip and spur, throve and grew and fairly took the bit in its +teeth and ran away with its trainer. + +"Look here, my lad," Lorrimer had said that morning, "you keep on laying +hands on the English language the way you've been doing lately and I'll +have to get a job for you on the staff. Then my plagiarism that has been +paying us both so well comes to an end. I won't have the face to edit +stuff like this much longer." Lorrimer did not realize in his amazement +that Dickie's mind had always busied itself with this exciting and +nerve-racking matter of choosing words. From his childhood, in the face +of ridicule and outrage, he had fumbled with the tools of Lorrimer's +trade. No wonder that now knowledge and practice, and the sort of +intensive training he was under, magically fitted all the jumbled odds +and ends into place. Dickie had stopped looking over his shoulder. The +pursuing pack, the stealthy-footed beasts of the city, had dropped +utterly from his flying imagination. There was only one that remained +faithful--that craving for beauty--half-god, half-beast. Against him +Dickie still pressed his door shut. Lorrimer's gift of work had not +quieted the leader of the pack. But it had brought Dickie something that +was nearly happiness. The very look of him had changed; he looked driven +rather than harried, keen rather than harassed, eager instead of vague, +hungry rather than wistful. Only, sometimes, Dickie's brain would +suddenly turn blank and blind from sheer exhaustion. This happened to him +now. The printed lines he was studying lost all their meaning. He put his +forehead on his hands. Then he heard that eerie, light tapping above him +on the skylight. But he was too tired to look up. + +It was on that very afternoon when Sheila rode down the trail with her +flowers tied before her on the saddle, singing to keep up her heart. It +was that very afternoon when she had cried out half-consciously for +"Dickie--Dickie--Dickie"--and now it was, as though the cry had traveled, +that a memory of her leapt upon his mind; a memory of Sheila singing. +She had come into the chocolate-colored lobby from one of her rides with +Jim Greely. She had held a handful of cactus flowers. She had stopped +over there by one of the windows to put them in a glass. And to show +Dickie, a prisoner at his desk, that she did not consider his +presence--it was during the period of their estrangement--she had sung +softly as a girl sings when she knows herself to be alone: a little +tender, sad chanting song, that seemed made to fit her mouth. The pain +her singing had given him that afternoon had cut a picture of her on +Dickie's brain. Just because he had tried so hard not to look at her. Now +it jumped out at him against his closed, wet lids. The very motions of +her mouth came back, the positive dear curve of her chin, the +throat there slim against the light. Hard work had driven her +image a little from his mind lately; it returned now to revenge +his self-absorption--returned with a song. + +Dickie got up and wandered about the room. He tried to hum the air, but +his throat contracted. He tried to whistle, but his lips turned stiff. He +bent over his book--no use, she still sang. All night he was tormented by +that chanting, hurting song. He sobbed with the hurt of it. He tossed +about on his bed. He could not but remember how little she had loved him. +All at once there came to him a mysterious and beautiful release. It +seemed that the cool spirit, detached, winged, drew him to itself or +became itself entirely possessed of him. He was taken out of his pain +and yet he understood it. And he began suddenly, easily, to put it into +words. The misery was ecstasy, the hurt was inspiration, the song sang +sweetly as though it had been sung to soothe and not to make him suffer. + +"Oh, little song you sang to me"-- + +Ah, yes, at heart she had been singing to him-- + +"A hundred, hundred days ago, + Oh, little song, whose melody + Walks in my heart and stumbles so; + I cannot bear the level nights, + And all the days are over-long, + And all the hours from dark to dark + Turn to a little song ..." + +Dickie, not knowing how he got there, was at his table again. He was +writing. He was happy beyond any conception he had ever had of happiness. +That there was agony in his happiness only intensified it. The leader of +the wolf-pack, beast with a god's face, the noblest of man's desires, +that passionate and humble craving for beauty, had him by the throat. + +So it was that Dickie wrote his first poem. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +WINTER + + +Winter snapped at Hidden Creek as a wolf snaps, but held its grip as a +bulldog holds his. There came a few November days when all the air and +sky and tree-tops were filled with summer again, but the snow that had +poured itself down so steadily in that October storm did not give way. It +sank a trifle at noon and covered itself at night with a glare of ice. It +was impossible to go anywhere except on snow-shoes. Sheila quickly +learned the trick and plodded with bent knees, limber ankles, and +wide-apart feet through the winter miracle of the woods. It was another +revelation of pure beauty, but her heart was too sore to hold the +splendor as it had held the gentler beauty of summer and autumn. Besides, +little by little she was aware of a vague, encompassing uneasiness. Since +the winter jaws had snapped them in, setting its teeth between them and +all other life, Miss Blake had subtly and gradually changed. It was as +though her stature had increased, her color deepened. Sometimes to Sheila +that square, strong body seemed to fill the world. She was more and more +masterful, quicker with her orders, charier of her smiles, shorter of +speech and temper. Her eyes seemed to grow redder, the sparks closer to +flame, as though the intense cold fanned them. + +Once they harnessed the dogs to the sled and rode down the country for +the mail. The trip they made together. Sheila sat wrapped in furs in +front of the broad figure of her companion, who stood at the back of the +sledge, used a long whip, and shouted to the dogs by name in her great +musical voice of which the mountain echo made fine use. They sped close +to the frozen whiteness of the world, streaked down the slopes, and were +drawn soundlessly through the columned vistas of the woods. Here, there, +and everywhere were tracks, of coyotes, fox, rabbit, martin, and the +little pointed patteran of winter birds, yet they saw nothing living. +"What's got the elk and moose this season?" muttered Miss Blake. Nothing +stirred except the soft plop of shaken snow or the little flurry of +drifting flakes. These frost-flakes lay two inches deep on the surface of +the snow, dry and distinct all day in the cold so that they could be +blown apart at a breath. Miss Blake was cheerful on this journey. She +sang songs, she told brief stories of other sled trips. At the +post-office an old, lonely man delivered them some parcels and a vast +bagful of magazines. There was a brief passage of arms between him and +Miss Blake. She accused him of withholding a box of cartridges, and would +not be content till she had poked about his office in dark corners. She +came out swearing at the failure of her search. "I needed that shot," +she said. "My supply is short. I made sure it'd be here to-day." There +were no letters for either of them, and Sheila felt again that queer +shiver of her loneliness. But, on the whole, it was a wonderful day, and, +under a world of most amazing stars, the small, valiant ranch-house, with +its glowing stove and its hot mess of supper, felt like home.... Not long +after that came the first stroke of fate. + +The little old horse left them and, though they shoed patiently for miles +following his track, it was only to find his bones gnawed clean by +coyotes or by wolves. Sheila's tears froze to her lashes, but Miss +Blake's face went a little pale. She said nothing, and in her steps +Sheila plodded home in silence. That evening Miss Blake laid hands on +her.... They had washed up their dishes. Sheila was putting a log on the +fire. It rolled out of her grasp to the bearskin rug and struck Miss +Blake's foot. Before Sheila could even say her quick "I'm sorry," the +woman had come at her with a sort of spring, had gripped her by the +shoulders, had shaken her with ferocity, and let her go. Sheila fell +back, her own hands raised to her bruised shoulders, her eyes +phosphorescent in a pale face. + +"Miss Blake, how dare you touch me!" + +The woman kicked back the log, turned a red face, and laughed. + +"Dare! You little silly! What's to scare me of you?" + +An awful conviction of helplessness depressed Sheila's heart, but she +kept her eyes leveled on Miss Blake's. + +"Do you suppose I will stay here with you one hour, if you treat me +like this?" + +That brought another laugh. But Miss Blake was evidently trying to make +light of her outbreak. "Scared you, didn't I?" she said. "I guess you +never got much training, eh!" + +"I am not a dog," said Sheila shortly. + +"Well, if you aren't"--Miss Blake returned to her chair and took up a +magazine. She put the spectacles on her nose with shaking hands. "You're +my girl, aren't you? You can't expect to get nothing but petting from +me, Sheila." + +If she had not been icy with rage, Sheila might have smiled at this. "I +don't know what you mean, Miss Blake, by my being your girl. I work for +you, to be sure. I know that. But I know, too, that you will have to +apologize to me for this." + +Miss Blake swung one leg across the other and stared above her glasses. + +"Apologize to _you_!" + +"Yes. I will allow nobody to touch me." + +"Shucks! Go tell that to the marines! You've never been touched, have +you? Sweet sixteen!" + +Hudson's kiss again scorched Sheila's mouth and her whole body burned. +Miss Blake watched that fire consume her, and again she laughed. + +"I'm waiting for you to apologize," said Sheila again, this time between +small set teeth. + +"Well, my girl, wait. That'll cool you off." + +Sheila stood and felt the violent beating of her heart. A log in the wall +snapped from the bitter frost. + +"Miss Blake," she said presently, a pitiful young quaver in her voice, +"if you don't beg my pardon I'll go to-morrow." + +Miss Blake flung her book down with a gesture of impatience. "Oh, quit +your nonsense, Sheila!" she said. "What's a shaking! You know you can't +get out of here. It'd take you a week to get anywhere at all except into +a frozen supper for the coyotes. Your beau's left the country--Madder +told me at the post-office. Make the best of it, Sheila. Lucky if you +don't get worse than that before spring. You'll get used to me in time, +get broken in and learn my ways. I'm not half bad, but I've got to be +obeyed. I've got to be master. That's me. What do you think I've come +'way out here to the wilderness for, if not because I can't stand +anything less than being master? Here I've got my place and my dogs and a +world that don't talk back. And now I've got you for company and to do my +work. You've got to fall into line, Sheila, right in the ranks. Once, +some one out there in the world"--she made a gesture, dropped her chin on +her big chest, and looked out under her short, dense, rust-colored +eyelashes--"tried to break _me_. I won't tell you what he got. That's +where I quit the ways of women--yes, ma'am, and the ways of men." She +stood up and walked over to the window and looked out. The dogs were +sleeping in their kennels, but a chain rattled. "I've broke the +wolf-pack. You've seen them wriggle on their bellies for me, haven't you? +Well, my girl, do you think I can't break you?" She wheeled back and +stood with her hands on her hips. It was at that moment that she seemed +to fill the world. Her ruddy eyes glowed like blood. They were not quite +sane. That was it. Sheila went suddenly weak. They were not _quite_ +sane--those red eyes filled with sparks. + +The girl stepped back and sat down in her chair. She bent forward, +pressed her hands flat together, palm to palm between her knees, and +stared fixedly down at them. She made no secret of her desperate +preoccupation. + +Miss Blake's face softened a little at this withdrawal. She came back to +her place and resumed her spectacles. + +"I'll tell you why I'm snappy," she said presently. "I'm scared." + +This startled Sheila into a look. Miss Blake was moistening her lips. +"That horse--you know--the coyotes got him. I guess he went down and they +fell upon him. Well, he was to feed the dogs with until I could get my +winter meat." + +"What do you mean?" + +"That's what I buy 'em for. Little old horses, for a couple of bits, +and work 'em out and shoot 'em for dog-feed. Well, Sheila, when they're +fed, they're dogs. But when they're starved--they're wolves ... And I +can't think what's come to the elk this year. To-morrow I'll take out my +little old gun." + +To-morrow and the next day and the next she took her gun and strapped on +her shoes and went out for all day long into the cold. Each time she came +back more exhausted and more fierce. Sheila would have her supper ready +and waiting sometimes for hours. + +"The dogs have scared 'em off," said Miss Blake. "That must be the +truth." She let the pack hunt for itself at night, and they came back +sometimes with bloody jaws. But the prey must have been small, for they +were not satisfied. They grew more and more gaunt and wolfish. They would +howl for hours, wailing and yelping in ragged cadence to the stars. +Table-scraps and brews of Indian meal vanished and left their bellies +almost as empty as before. + +"And," said Miss Blake, "we got to eat, ourselves." + +"Hadn't we better go down to the post-office or to Rusty?" Sheila asked +nervously. + +Miss Blake snapped at her. "Harness that team now? As much as your life +is worth, Sheila! And we can't make it on foot. We'd drop in our tracks +and freeze. If it comes to the worst we may have to try it, but--oh, I'll +get something to-morrow." + +But to-morrow brought no better luck. During the hunting the dogs were +left on their chains, and Sheila, through the lonely hours, would watch +them through the window and could almost see the wolfishness grow in +their deep, wild eyes. She would try to talk to them, pat them, coax them +into doggy-ness. But day by day they responded more unwillingly. All but +Berg: Berg stayed with her in the house, lay on her feet, leaned against +her knee. He shared her meals. He was beginning to swing his heart from +Miss Blake to her, and this was the second cause for strife. + +Since that one outbreak, Sheila had gone carefully. She was dignified, +aloof, very still. She obeyed and slaved as she had never done in the +summer days. The dread of physical violence hung on her brain like a +cloud. She encouraged Berg's affection, and wondered, if it came to a +struggle, whether he would side with her. She was given the opportunity +to put this matter to the test. + +Miss Blake was very late that night. It was midnight, a stark midnight of +stars and biting cold, when Berg stood up from his sleep and barked his +low, short bark of welcome. Outside the other dogs broke into their +clamor, drowning all other sound, and in the midst of it the door flew +rudely open. Miss Blake stood and clung to the side of the door. Her face +was bluish-white. She put out her hand toward Sheila, clutching the air. +Sheila ran over to her. + +"You're hurt?" + +"Twisted my blamed ankle. God!" She hobbled over, a heavy arm round +Sheila, to her chair and sat there while the girl gave her some brandy, +removed the snowshoes, and cut away the boot from a swollen and +discolored leg. + +"That's the end of my hunting," grunted the patient, who bore the agony +of rubbing and bathing stoically. "And, I reckon, I couldn't have stood +much more." She clenched her hand in Berg's mane. "God! Those dogs! I'll +have to shoot them--next." Sheila looked up to her with a sort of +horrified hope. There was then a way out from that fear. + +"I'd rather die, I think," said the woman hoarsely. "I love those dogs." +Sheila looked up into a tender and quivering face--the face of a mother. +"They mean something to me--those brutes. I guess I kind of centered my +heart on 'em--out here alone. I raised 'em up, from puppies, all but Berg +and the mother. They were the cutest little fellows. I remember when +Wreck got porcupine quills in his nose and came to me and lay on his back +and whined to me. It was as if he said, 'Help me, momma.' Sure it was. +And he pretty near died. Oh, damn! If I have to shoot 'em I might just as +well shoot myself and be done with it...Thanks, Sheila. I'll eat my +supper here and then you can help me to bed. When my ankle's all well, we +can have a try for the post-office, perhaps." She leaned back and drew +Berg roughly up against her. She caressed him. He made little soft, +throaty sounds of tenderness. + +Sheila came back with a tray and, as she came, Berg pulled himself away +from his mistress and went wagging over to greet her. + +"Come here!" snapped Miss Blake. Berg hesitated, cuddled close to Sheila, +and kept step beside her. + +Miss Blake's eyes went red. "Come here!" she said again. Berg did not +cringe or hasten. He reached Miss Blake's chair at the same instant as +Sheila, not a moment earlier. + +Miss Blake pulled herself up. The tray went shattering to the floor. She +hobbled over to the fire, white with the anguish, took down the whip from +its nail. At that Berg cringed and whined. The woman fell upon him with +her terrible lash. She held herself with one hand on the mantel-shelf, +while with the other she scored the howling victim. His fur came off his +back under the dreadful, knife-edge blows. + +"Oh, stop!" cried Sheila. "Stop! You're killing him!" She ran over and +caught Miss Blake's arm. + +"Damn you!" said the woman fiercely. She stood breathing fast. Sweat +of pain and rage and exertion stood out on her face. "Do _you_ want +that whip?" + +She half-turned, lifting her lash, and at that, with a snarl, Berg +crouched himself and bared his teeth. + +Miss Blake started and stared at him. Suddenly she gave in. Pain and +anger twisted her spirit. + +"You'd turn my Berg against me!" she choked, and fell heavily down on the +rug in a dead faint. + +When she came to she was grim and silent. She got herself with scant +help to bed, her big bed in the corner of the living-room, and for a week +she was kept there with fever and much pain. Berg lay beside her or +followed Sheila about her work, and the woman watched them both with +ruddy eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE PACK + + +In January a wind blew steadily from the east and snow came as if to +bury them alive. The cabin turned to a cave, a small square of warmth +under a mountain of impenetrable white; one door and one window only, +opening to a space of sun. Against the others the blank white lids of +winter pressed. Sheila shoveled this space out sometimes twice a day. +The dog kennels were moved into it, and stood against the side of a +snow-bank eight feet high, up which, when they were unchained, the +gaunt, wolfish animals leapt in a loosely formed pack, the great mother, +Brenda, at their head, and padded off into the silent woods in their +hungry search for food. + +But, one day, they refused to go. Miss Blake, her whip in her hand, +limped out. The snow had stopped. The day was still and bright again +above the snowy firs, the mountain scraped against the blue sky like a +cliff of broken ice. The dogs had crept out of their houses and were +squatted or huddled in the sun. As she came out they rose and strained at +their tethers. One of them whined. Brenda, the mother, bared her teeth. +One by one, as they were freed, they slunk close to Miss Blake, looking +up into her face. They crowded close at her heels as she went back to the +house. She had to push the door to in their very jaws and they pressed +against it, their heads hung low, sniffing the odor of food. Presently a +long-drawn, hideous howling rose from them. Time and again Miss Blake +drove them away with lash and voice. Time and again they came back. They +scratched at the threshold, whimpered, and whined. + +Sheila and Miss Blake gave them what food they would have eaten +themselves that day. It served only to excite their restlessness, to hold +them there at the crack of the door, snuffling and slobbering. The outer +circle slept, the inner watched. Then they would shift, like sentries. +They had a horrible sort of system. Most of that dreadful afternoon Miss +Blake paced the floor, trying to strengthen her ankle for the trip to the +post-office. At sunset, when the small snow-banked room was nearly dark, +she stopped, threw up her head, and looked at Sheila. The girl was +sitting on the lowest step of the ladder washing some dried apples. Her +face had thinned to a silvery wedge between the thick square masses of +her hair. There was a haunted look in her clear eyes. The soft mouth had +tightened. + +"How in God's name," said Miss Blake, "shall I get 'em on their +chains again?" + +Sheila stopped her work, and her lips fell helplessly apart. She looked +up at the older woman and shook her head. + +Miss Blake's fear snapped into a sort of frenzy. She gritted her teeth +and stamped. "You simpleton!" she said. "You never have a notion in +your head." + +Sheila stood up quickly. Something told her that she had better be on her +feet. She kept very still. "You will know better than I could what to do +about the dogs," she said quietly. "They'll go back on their chains for +you, I should think. They're afraid of you." + +"Aren't you?" Miss Blake asked roughly. + +"No. Of course not." + +"You little liar! You're scared half out of your wits. You're scared of +the whole thing--scared of the snow, scared of the cold, scared of the +dogs, and scared sick of me. Come, now. Tell me the truth." + +It was almost her old bluff, bullying tone, but back of it was a +disorder of stretched nerves. Sheila weighed her words and tried to +weigh her thoughts. + +"I don't think I am afraid, Miss Blake. Why should I be afraid of the +dogs, if you aren't? And why should I be afraid of you? You have been +good to me. You are a good woman." + +At this Miss Blake threw back her head and laughed. She was terribly like +one of the dogs howling. There was something wild and wolfish in her +broad neck and in the sound she made. And she snapped back into silence +with wolfish suddenness. + +"If you're not scared, then," she scoffed, "go and chain up the dogs +yourself." + +For an instant Sheila quite calmly balanced the danger out of doors +against the danger within. + +"I think," she said--and managed one of her drifting smiles--"I think I +am a great deal more afraid of the dogs than I am of you, Miss Blake." + +The woman studied her for a minute in silence, then she walked over to +her elk-horn throne and sat down on it. + +She leaned back in a royal way and spread her dark broad hands across the +arms. + +"Well," she said coolly, "did you hear what I said? Go out and chain up +the dogs!" + +Sheila held herself like a slim little cavalier. "If I go out," she said +coolly, "I will not take a whip. I'll take a gun." + +"And shoot my dogs?" + +"Miss Blake, what else is left for us to do? We can't let them claw down +the door and tear us into bits, can we?" + +"You'd shoot my dogs?" + +"You said yourself that we might have to shoot them." + +Miss Blake gave her a stealthy and cunning look. "Take my gun, then"--her +voice rose to a key that was both crafty and triumphant--"and much good +it will do you! There's shot enough to kill one if you are a first-rate +shot. I lost what was left of my ammunition the day I hurt my ankle. The +new stuff is down at the post-office by now, I guess." + +The long silence was filled by the shifting of the dog-watch outside the +door. + +"We must chain them up at any cost," said Sheila. Her lips were dry and +felt cold to her tongue. + +"Go out and do it, then." The mistress of the house leaned back and +crossed her ankles. + +"Miss Blake, be reasonable. You have a great deal of control over the +dogs and I have none. I _am_ afraid of them and they will know it. +Animals always know when you're afraid..." Again she managed a smile. +"I shall begin to think you are a coward," she said. + +At that Miss Blake stood up from her chair. Her face was red with a +violent rush of blood and the sparks in her eyes seemed to have broken +into flame. + +"Very good, Miss," she said brutally. "I'll go out and chain 'em up and +then I'll come back and thrash you to a frazzle. Then you'll know how to +obey my orders next time." + +She caught up her whip, swung it in her hand, and strode to the door. + +"And mind you, Sheila, you won't be able to hide yourself from me. Nor +make a getaway. I'll lock this door outside and winter's locked the +other. You wait. You'll see what you'll get for calling me a coward. Your +friend Berg's gone off on a long hunt ... he's left his friends outside +there and he's left you.... Understand?" + +She shouted roughly to the dogs, snapped her whip, threw open the door, +and stepped out boldly. She shut the door behind her and shot a bolt. It +creaked as though it had grown rusty with disuse. + +In the stillness--for, except for a quick shuffling of paws, there was no +sound at first--Sheila chose her weapon of defense. She took down from +its place the Eskimo ivory spear, and, holding it short in her hand, she +put herself behind the great elk-horn chair. Her Celtic blood was +pounding gloriously now. She was not afraid; though if there had been +time to notice it, she would have confessed to an abysmal sense of horror +and despair. And again she wondered at her own loneliness and youth and +the astounding danger that she faced. Yes, it was more astonishment than +any other emotion that possessed her consciousness. The horror was below +the threshold practicing its part. + +Then anger, astonishment, horror itself were suddenly thrown out of her. +She was left like an empty vessel waiting to be filled with fear. Miss +Blake had cried aloud, "Help, Sheila! Help!" This was followed by a +dreadful screaming. Sheila dropped her spear and leapt to the door. On +it, outside, Miss Blake beat and screamed, "Open, for God's sake!" + +Sheila shouted in as dreadful a key. "On your side--the bolt! Miss +Blake--the bolt!" + +Fingers clawed at the bolt, but it would not slip. Through all the +horrible sounds the woman made, Sheila could hear the snarling and +leaping and snapping of the dogs. She dashed to the small, tight window, +broke a pane with her fist, and thrust out her arm. She meant to reach +the bolt, but what she saw took the warm life out of her. Miss Blake had +gone down under the whirling, slobbering pack. The screaming had stopped. +In that one awful look the poor child saw that no human help could save. +She dropped down on the floor and lay there moaning, her hands pressed +over her ears.... + +So she lay, shuddering and gasping, the great part of the night. At last +the intense cold drove her to the fire. She heaped up the logs high and +hung close above them. Her very heart was cold. Liquid ice moved +sluggishly along her veins. The morning brought no comfort or courage to +her, only a freshening of horror and of fear. The dogs had gone, and all +the winter world lay still about the house. + +She was shaken by a regular pulse of nervous sobbing. But, driven by a +sort of restlessness, she made herself coffee and forced some food down +her contracted throat. Then she put on her coat, took down Miss Blake's +six-shooter and cartridge belt, and saw, with a slight relaxing of the +cramp about her heart, that there were four shots in the chamber. Four +shots and eight dogs, but--at least--she could save herself from _that_ +death! She strapped the gun round her slim hips, filled her pockets with +supplies--a box of dried raisins, some hard bread, a cake of chocolate, +some matches--pulled her cap down over her ears, and took her snowshoes +from the wall. With closed eyes she put her arm out through the broken +pane, and, after a short struggle, slipped the rusty bolt. Then she went +over to the door and, leaning against it, prayed. Even with the +mysterious strength she drew from that sense of kinship with a superhuman +Power, it was a long time before she could force herself to open. At +last, with a big gasp, she flung the door wide, skirted the house, her +hands against the logs, her eyes shut, ran across the open space, +scrambled up the drift, tied on her snowshoes, and fled away under the +snow-laden pines. There moved in all the wilderness that day no more +hunted and fearful a thing. + +The fresh snow sunk a little under her webs, but she was a featherweight +of girlhood, and made quicker and easier progress than would have been +possible to any one else but a child. And her fear gave her both strength +and speed. Sometimes she looked back over her shoulder; always she +strained her ears for the pad of following feet. It was a day of rainbows +and of diamond spray, where the sun struck the shaken snow sifted from +overweighted branches. Sheila remembered well enough the route to the +post-office. It meant miles of weary plodding, but she thought that she +could do it before night. If not, she would travel by starlight and the +wan reflection of the snow. There was no darkness in these clear, keen +nights. She would not tell herself what gave her strength such impetus. +She thought resolutely of the post-office, of the old, friendly man, of +his stove, of his chairs and his picture of the President, of his gun +laid across two nails against his kitchen wall--all this, not more than +eighteen miles away! And she thought of Hilliard, too; of his young +strength and the bold young glitter of his eyes. + +She stopped for a minute at noon to drink some water from Hidden Creek +and to eat a bite or so of bread. She was pulling on her gloves again +when a distant baying first reached her ears. She turned faint, seemed to +stand in a mist; then, with her teeth set defiantly, she started again, +faster and steadier, her body bent forward, her head turned back. Before +her now lay a great stretch of undulating, unbroken white. At its farther +edge the line of blue-black pines began again. She strained her steps to +reach this shelter. The baying had been very faint and far away--it might +have been sounded for some other hunting. She would make the woods, take +off her webs, climb up into a tree and, perhaps, attracted by those four +shots--no, three, she must save one--some trapper, some unimaginable +wanderer in the winter forest, would come to her and rescue her before +the end. So her mind twisted itself with hope. But, an hour later, with +the pines not very far away, the baying rose so close behind that it +stopped her heart. Twenty minutes had passed when above a rise of ground +she saw the shaggy, trotting black-gray body of Brenda, the leader of the +pack. She was running slowly, her nose close to the snow, casting a +little right and left over the tracks. Sheila counted eight--Berg, then, +had joined them. She thought that she could distinguish him in the rear. +It was now late afternoon, and the sun slanted driving back the shadows +of the nearing trees, of Sheila, of the dogs. It all seemed +fantastic--the weird beauty of the scene, the weird horror of it. Sheila +reckoned the distance before her, reckoned the speed of the dogs. She +knew now that there was no hope. Ahead of her rose a sharp, sudden +slope--she could never make it. There came to her quite suddenly, like a +gift, a complete release from fear. She stopped and wheeled. It seemed +that the brutes had not yet seen her. They were nose down at the scent. +One by one they vanished in a little dip of ground, one by one they +reappeared, two yards away. Sheila pulled out her gun, deliberately aimed +and fired. + +A spurt of snow showed that she had aimed short. But the loud, sudden +report made Brenda swerve. All the dogs stopped and slunk together +circling, their haunches lowered. Wreck squatted, threw up his head, and +howled. Sheila spoke to them, clear and loud, her young voice ringing out +into that loneliness. + +"You Berg! Good dog! Come here." + +One of the shaggy animals moved toward her timidly, looking back, +pausing. Brenda snarled. + +"Berg, come here, boy!" + +Sheila patted her knee. At this the big dog whined, cringed, and began +to swarm up the slope toward her on his belly. His eyes shifted, the +struggle of his mind was pitifully visible--pack-law, pack-power, the +wolf-heart and the wolf-belly, and against them that queer hunger for the +love and the touch of man. Sheila could not tell if it were hunger or +loyalty that was creeping up to her in the body of the beast. She kept +her gun leveled on him. When he had come to within two feet of her, he +paused. Then, from behind him rose the starved baying of his brothers. +Sheila looked up. They were bounding toward her, all wolf these--but more +dangerous after their taste of human blood than wolves--to the bristling +hair along their backs and the bared fangs. Again she fired. This time +she struck Wreck's paw. He lifted it and howled. She fired again. Brenda +snapped sideways at her shoulder, but was not checked. There was one shot +left. Sheila knew how it must be used. Quickly she turned the muzzle up +toward her own head. + +Then behind her came a sharp, loud explosion. Brenda leapt high into +the air and fell at Sheila's feet. At that first rifle-shot, Berg fled +with shadow swiftness through the trees. For the rest, it was as though +a magic wall had stopped them, as though, at a certain point, they fell +upon death. Crack, crack, crack--one after another, they came up, +leapt, and dropped, choking and bleeding on the snow. At the end Sheila +turned blindly. A yard behind her and slightly above her there under +the pines stood Hilliard, very pale, his gun tucked under his arm, the +smoking muzzle lowered. Weakly she felt her way up toward him, groping +with her hands. + +He slid down noiselessly on his long skis and she stood clinging to his +arm, looking up dumbly into his strained face. + +"I heard your shots," he said breathlessly. "You're within a hundred +yards of my house.... For months I've been trying to make up my mind to +come to you. God forgive me, Sheila, for not coming before!" + +Swinging his gun on its strap across his shoulder, he lifted her in his +arms, and, like a child, she was carried through the silence of the +woods, all barred with blood-red glimmers from a setting sun. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE GOOD OLD WORLD AGAIN + + +Hilliard carried Sheila into the house that he had built for her and laid +her down in that big bedroom that "got the morning sun." For a while it +seemed to him that she would never open her eyes again, and when she did +regain consciousness she was so prostrate with her long fear and the +shock of Miss Blake's death that she lay there too weak to smile or +speak, too weak almost to breathe. Hilliard turned nurse, a puzzled, +anxious nurse. He would sit up in his living-room half the night, and +when sleep overpowered his anxiety he would fall prone on the elk-hide +rug before his fire. + +At last Sheila pulled herself up and crept about the house. She spent +a day in the big log chair before Hilliard's hearth, looking very wan, +shrinking from speech, her soft mouth gray and drawn. + +"Aren't you ever going to smile for me again?" he asked her, after a long +half-hour during which he had stood as still as stone, his arm along the +pine mantelshelf, looking at her from the shelter of a propping hand. + +She lifted her face to him and made a pitiful effort enough. But it +brought tears. They ran down her cheeks, and she leaned back and closed +her lids, but the crystal drops forced themselves out, clung to her +lashes, and fell down on her clenched hands. Hilliard went over to her +and took the small, cold hands in both of his. + +"Tell me about what happened, Sheila," he begged her. "It will help." + +Word by difficult word, he still holding fast to her hands, she sobbed +and gasped out her story, to which he listened with a whitening face. He +gripped her hands tighter, then, toward the end, he rose with a sharp +oath, lit his cigarette, paced to and fro. + +"God!" he said at the last. "And she told you I had gone from the +country! The devil! I can't help saying it, Sheila--she tortured you. She +deserved what God sent her." + +"Oh, no!"--Sheila rocked to and fro--"no one could deserve such dreadful +terror and pain. She--she wasn't sane. I was--foolish to trust her ... I +am so foolish--I think I must be too young or too stupid for--for all +this. I thought the world would be a much safer place." She looked up +again, and speech had given her tormented nerves relief, for her eyes +were much more like her own, clear and young again. "Mr. Hilliard--what +shall I do with my life, I wonder? I've lost my faith and trustingness. +I'm horribly afraid." + +He stood before her and spoke in a gentle and reasonable tone. "I'll tell +you the answer to that, ma'am," he said. "I've thought that all out +while I've been taking care of you." + +She waited anxiously with parted lips. + +"Well, ma'am, you see--it's like this. I'm plumb ashamed of myself +through and through for the way I have acted toward you. I was a fool to +listen to that dern lunatic. She told me--lies about you." + +"Miss Blake did?" + +"Yes, ma'am." His face crimsoned under her look. + +Sheila closed her eyes and frowned. A faint pink stole up into her face. +She lifted her lids again and he saw the brightness of anger. "And, of +course, you took her lies for the truth?" + +"Oh, damn! Now you're mad with me and you won't listen to my plan!" + +He was so childish in this outbreak that Sheila was moved to dim +amusement. "I'm too beaten to be angry at anything," she said. "Just tell +me your plan." + +"No," he said sullenly. "I'll wait. I'm scared to tell you now!" + +She did not urge him, and it was not till the next morning that he spoke +about his plan. She had got out to her chair again and had made a +pretense of eating an ill-cooked mess of canned stuff which he had +brought to her on a tray. It was after he had taken this breakfast away +that he broke out as though his excitement had forced a lock. + +"I'm going down to Rusty to-day," he said. His eyes were shining. He +looked at her boldly enough now. + +"And take me?" Sheila half-started up. "And take me?" + +"No, ma'am. You're to stay here safe and snug." She dropped back. "I'll +leave everything handy for you. There's enough food here for an army +and enough fuel.... You're as safe here as though you were at the foot +of God's throne. Don't look like that, girl. I can't take you. You're +not strong enough to make the journey in this cold, even on a sled. And +we can't"--his voice sunk and his eyes fell--"we can't go on like this, +I reckon." + +"N-no." Sheila's forehead was puckered. Her fingers trembled on the arms +of her chair. "N-no...." Then, with a sort of quaver, she added, "Oh, why +can't we go on like this?--till the snow goes and I can travel with you!" + +"Because," he said roughly, "we can't. You take my word for it." After a +pause he went on in his former decisive tone. "I'll be back in two or +three days. I'll fetch the parson." + +Sheila sat up straight. + +His eyes held hers. "Yes, ma'am. The parson. I'm going to marry +you, Sheila." + +She repeated this like a lesson. "You are going to marry me...." + +"Yes, ma'am. You'll have three days to think it over. If you don't want +to marry me when the parson comes, why, you can just go back to Rusty +with him." He laughed a little, came over to her, put a hand on each arm +of her chair, and bent down. She shrank back before him. His eyes had the +glitter of a hawk's, and his red and beautiful lips were soft and eager +and--again--a little cruel. + +"No," he said, "I won't kiss you till I come back--not even for good-bye. +Then you'll know how I feel about you. You'll know that I believe that +you're a good girl and, Sheila"--here he seemed to melt and falter +before her: he slipped down with one of his graceful Latin movements and +hid his forehead on her knees--"Sheila, my _darling_--that I know you are +fit--oh, so much more than fit--to be the mother of my children ..." + +In half an hour, during which they were both profoundly silent, he came +to her again. He was ready for his journey. She was sitting far back in +her chair, her slim legs stretched out. She raised inscrutable eyes +wide to his. + +"Good-bye," he said softly. "It's hard to leave you. Good-bye." + +She said good-bye even more softly with no change in her look. And he +went out, looking at her over his shoulder till the last second. She +heard the voice of his skis, hissing across the hard crust of the snow. +She sat there stiff and still till the great, wordless silence settled +down again. Then she started up from her chair, ran across to the window, +and saw that he was indeed gone. She came storming back and threw +herself down upon the hide. She cried like a deserted child. + +"Oh, Cosme, I'm afraid to be alone! I'm afraid! Why did I let you go? +Come back! Oh, please come back!" + + * * * * * + +It was late that night when Hilliard reached Rusty, traveling with all +his young strength across the easy, polished surface of the world. He was +dog-tired. He went first to the saloon. Then to the post-office. To his +astonishment he found a letter. It was postmarked New York and he +recognized the small, cramped hand of the family lawyer. He took the +letter up to his bedroom in the Lander Hotel and sat on the bed, turning +the square envelope about in his hands. At last, he opened it. + +"MY DEAR COSME [the lawyer had written ... he had known Hilliard as a +child], It is my strong hope that this letter will reach you promptly and +safely at the address you sent me. Your grandfather's death, on the +fifteenth instant, leaves you, as you are no doubt aware, heir to his +fortune, reckoned at about thirty millions. If you will wire on receipt +of this and follow wire in person as soon as convenient, it will greatly +facilitate arrangements. It is extremely important that you should come +at once. Every day makes things more complicated ... in the management +of the estate. I remain, with congratulations, + +"Sincerely your friend, ..." + +The young man sat there, dazed. + +He had always known about those millions; the expectation of them had +always vaguely dazzled his imagination, tampered more than he was aware +with the sincerity of his feelings, with the reality of his life; but now +the shower of gold had fallen all about him and his fancy stretched its +eyes to take in the immediate glitter. + +Why, thought Hilliard, this turns life upside down ... I can begin to +live ... I can go East. He saw that the world and its gifts were as truly +his as though he were a fairy prince. A sort of confusion of highly +colored pictures danced through his quick and ignorant brain. The blood +pounded in his ears. He got up and prowled about the little room. It was +oppressively small. He felt caged. The widest prairie would have given +him scant elbow-room. He was planning his trip to the East when the +thought of Sheila first struck him like a cold wave ... or rather it was +as if the wave of his selfish excitement had crashed against the wave of +his desire for her. All was foam and confusion in his spirit. He was +quite incapable of self-sacrifice--a virtue in which his free life and +his temperament had given him little training. It was simply a war of +impulses. His instinct was to give up nothing--to keep hold of every +gift. He wanted, as he had never in his life wanted anything before, to +have his fling. He wanted his birthright of experience. He had cut +himself off from all the gentle ways of his inheritance and lived like a +very Ishmael through no fault of his own. Now, it seemed to him that +before he settled down to the soberness of marriage, he must take one +hasty, heady, compensating draft of life, of the sort of life he might +have had. He would go East, go at once; he would fling himself into a +tumultuous bath of pleasure, and then he would come back to Sheila and +lay a great gift of gold at her feet. He thought over his plans, +reconstructing them. He got pen and ink and wrote a letter to Sheila. He +wrote badly--a schoolboy's inexpressive letter. But he told his story and +his astounding news and drew a vivid enough picture of the havoc it had +wrought in his simplicity. He used a lover's language, but his letter was +as cold and lumpish as a golden ingot. And yet the writer was not cold. +He was throbbing and distraught, confused and overthrown, a boy of +fourteen beside himself at the prospect of a holiday ... It was a stolen +holiday, to be sure, a sort of truancy from manliness, but none the less +intoxicating for that. Cosme's Latin nature was on top; Saxon loyalty and +conscience overthrown. He was an egoist to his finger-tips that night. He +did not sleep a wink, did not even try, but lay on his back across the +bed, hands locked over his hair while "visions of sugar plums danced +through his head." In the morning he went down and made his arrangements +for Sheila, a little less complete, perhaps, than he had intended, for he +met a worthy citizen of Rusty starting up the country with a sled to +visit his traps and to him he gave the letter and confided his +perplexities. It was a hasty interview, for the stage was about to start. + +"My wife will sure take your girl and welcome; don't even have to ask +her," the kind-eyed old fellow assured Hilliard. "We'll be glad to have +her for a couple of months. She'll like the kids. It'll be home for her. +Yes, sir"--he patted the excited traveler on the shoulder--"you pile +into the stage and don't you worry any. I'll be up at your place before +night and bring the lady down on my sled. Yes, sir. Pile in and don't +you worry any." + +Cosme wrung his hand, avoided his clear eye, and climbed up beside the +driver on the stage. He did not look after the trapper. He stared +ahead beyond the horses to the high white hill against a low and heavy +sky of clouds. + +"There's a big snowstorm a comin' down," growled the driver. "Lucky if we +make The Hill to-day. A reg'lar oldtimer it's agoin' to be. And +cold--ugh!" + +Cosme hardly heard this speech. The gray world was a golden ball for him +to spin at his will. Midas had touched the snow. The sleigh started with +a jerk and a jingle. In a moment it was running lightly with a crisp, +cutting noise. Cosme's thoughts outran it, leaping toward their gaudy +goal ... a journey out to life and a journey back to love--no wonder his +golden eyes shone and his cheeks flushed. + +"You look almighty glad to be going out of here," the driver made +comment. + +Hilliard laughed an explosive and excited laugh. "No almighty gladder +than I shall be to be coming back again," he prophesied. + +But to prophesy is a mistake. One should leave the future humbly on the +knees of the gods. That night, when Hilliard was lying wakeful in his +berth listening to the click of rails, the old trapper lay under the +driving snow. But he was not wakeful. He slept with no visions of gold or +love, a frozen and untroubled sleep. He had caught his foot in a trap, +and the blizzard had found him there and had taken mercy on his pain. +They did not find his body until spring, and then Cosme's letter to +Sheila lay wet and withered in his pocket. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +LONELINESS + + +The first misery of loneliness takes the form of a restless inability to +concentrate. It is as if the victim wanted to escape from himself. After +Cosme's departure Sheila prowled about the silent cabin, began this bit +of work and that, dropped it, found herself staring vaguely, listening, +waiting, and nervously shook herself into activity again. She tried to +whistle, but it seemed like somebody else's music and frightened her +ears. At dusk she fastened sacking across the uncurtained windows, +lighted both Cosme's lamps, bringing the second from her bedroom, and +heaped up a dancing and jubilant fire upon the hearth. In the midst of +this illumination she sat, very stiff and still, in the angular +elk-hide-covered chair, and knitted her hands together on her knee. Her +mind was now intensely active; memories, thoughts, plans, fancies racing +fast and furious like screen pictures across her brain. And they seemed +to describe themselves in loud whispers. She had difficulty in keeping +these voices from taking possession of her tongue. + +"I don't want to talk to myself," she murmured, and glanced over +her shoulder. + +A man has need of his fellows for a shield. Man is man's shelter from +all the storm of unanswered questions. Where am I? What am I? Why am +I?--No reply. No reassuring double to take away the ghost-sense of self, +that unseen, intangible aura of personality in which each of us moves as +in a cloud. In the souls of some there is an ever-present Man God who +will forever save them from this supreme experience. Sheila's religion, +vague, conventional, childish, faltered away from her soul. Except for +her fire, which had a sort of sympathy of life and warmth and motion, she +was unutterably alone. And she was beginning to suffer from the second +misery of solitude--a sense of being many personalities instead of one. +She seemed to be entertaining a little crowd of confused and +argumentative Sheilas. To silence them she fixed her mind on her +immediate problem. + +She tried to draw Hilliard close to her heart. She had an honest hunger +for his warm and graceful beauty, for his young strength, but this +natural hunger continually shocked her. She tried not to remember the +smoothness of his neck as her half-conscious hands had slipped away from +it that afternoon when he raised her from the snow. It seemed to her that +her desire for him was centered somewhere in her body. Her mind remained +cool, detached, critical, even hostile. She disliked the manner of his +wooing--not that there should have been any insult to the pride of a +nameless little adventurer, Hudson's barmaid, a waif, in being told that +she was a "good girl" and fit to be the mother of this young man's +children. But Sheila knew instinctively that these things could not be +said, could not even be thought of by such a man as Marcus Arundel. She +remembered his words about her mother.... Sheila wanted with a great +longing to be loved like that, to be so spoken of, so exquisitely +entreated. A phrase in Hudson's letter came to her mind, "I handled you +in my heart like a flower" ... Unconsciously she pressed her hand against +her lips, remembered the taste of whiskey and of blood. If only it had +been Dickie's lips that had first touched her own. Blinding tears fell. +The memory of Dickie's comfort, of Dickie's tremulous restraint, had a +strange poignancy.... Why was he so different from all the rest? So much +more like her father? What was there in this pale little hotel clerk who +drank too much that lifted him out and up into a sort of radiance? Her +memory of Dickie was always white--the whiteness of that moonlight of +their first, of that dawn of their last, meeting. He had had no chance in +his short, unhappy, and restricted life--not half the chance that young +Hilliard's life had given him--to learn such delicate appreciations, such +tenderness, such reserves. Where had he got his delightful, gentle +whimsicalities, that sweet, impersonal detachment that refused to yield +to stupid angers and disgusts? He was like--in Dickie's own fashion she +fumbled for a simile. But there was no word. She thought of a star, that +morning star he had drawn her over to look at from the window of her +sitting-room. Perhaps the artist in Sylvester had expressed itself in +this son he so despised; perhaps Dickie was, after all, Hudson's great +work ... All sorts of meanings and symbols pelted Sheila's brain as she +sat there, exciting and fevering her nerves. + +In three days Hilliard would be coming back. His warm youth would +again fill the house, pour itself over her heart. After the silence, +his voice would be terribly persuasive, after the loneliness, his eager, +golden eyes would be terribly compelling! He was going to "fetch the +parson" ... Sheila actually wrung her hands. Only three days for this +decision and, without a decision, that awful, helpless wandering, those +dangers, those rash confidences of hers. "O God, where are you? Why don't +you help me now?" That was Sheila's prayer. It gave her little comfort, +but she did fall asleep from the mental exhaustion to which it brought at +least the relief of expression. + +When she woke, she found the world a horrible confusion of storm. It +could hardly be called morning--a heavy, flying darkness of drift, a wind +filled with icy edges that stung the face and cut the eyes, a wind with +the voice of a driven saw. The little cabin was caught in the whirling +heart of a snow spout twenty feet high. The firs bent and groaned. There +is a storm-fear, one of the inherited instinctive fears. Sheila's little +face looked out of the whipped windows with a pinched and shrinking +stare. She went from window to hearth, looking and listening, all day. A +drift was blown in under the door and hardly melted for all the blazing +fire. That night she couldn't go to bed. She wrapped herself in blankets +and curled herself up in the chair, nodding and starting in the circle of +the firelight. + +For three terrible days the world was lost in snow. Before the end of +that time Sheila was talking to herself and glad of the sound of her own +hurried little voice. Then, like God, came a beautiful stillness and the +sun. She opened the door on the fourth morning and saw, above the fresh, +soft, ascending dazzle of the drift, a sky that laughed in azure, the +green, snow-laden firs, a white and purple peak. She spread out her hands +to feel the sun and found it warm. She held it like a friendly hand. She +forced herself that day to shovel, to sweep, even to eat. Perhaps Cosme +would be back before night. He and the parson would have waited for the +storm to be over before they made their start. She believed in her own +excuses for five uneasy days, and then she believed in the worst of all +her fears. She had a hundred to choose from--Cosme's desertion, Cosme's +death.... One day she spent walking to and fro with her nails driven into +her palms. + + * * * * * + +Late that night the white world dipped into the still influence of a full +white moon. Before Hilliard's cabin the great firs caught the light with +a deepening flush of green, their shadows fell in even lavender tracery +delicate and soft across the snow, across the drifted roof. The smoke +from the half-buried chimney turned to a moving silver plume across the +blue of the winter night sky--intense and warm as though it reflected an +August lake. + +The door of the cabin opened with a sharp thrust and Sheila stepped +out. She walked quickly through the firs and stood on the edge of the +open range-land, beyond and below which began the dark ridge of the +primeval woods. She stood perfectly still and lifted her face to the +sky. For all the blaze of the moon the greater stars danced in +radiance. Their constellations sloped nobly across her dazzled vision. +She had come very close to madness, and now her brain was dumb and +dark as though it had been shut into a blank-walled cell. She stood +with her hands hanging. She had no will nor wish to pray. The knowledge +had come to her that if she went out and looked this winter Pan in the +face, her brain would snap, either to life or death. It would burst its +prison ... She stared, wide-eyed, dry-eyed, through the immense cold +height of air up at the stars. + +All at once a door flew open in her soul and she knew God ... no visible +presence and yet an enveloping reality, the God of the savage earth, of +the immense sky, of the stars, the God unsullied and untempted by man's +worship, no God that she had ever known, had ever dreamed of, had ever +prayed to before. She did not pray to Him now. She let her soul stand +open till it was filled as were the stars and the earth with light.... + +The next day Sheila found her voice and sang at her work. She gave +herself an overwhelming task of cleaning and scrubbing. She was on her +knees like a charwoman, sniffing the strong reek of suds, when there came +a knocking at her door. She leapt up with pounding heart. But the +knocking was more like a scraping and it was followed by a low whine. For +a second Sheila's head filled with a fog of terror and then came a homely +little begging bark, just the throaty, snuffling sob of a homeless puppy. +Sheila took Cosme's six-shooter, saw that it was loaded, and, standing in +the shelter of the door, she slowly opened it. A few moments later the +gun lay a yard away on the soapy, steaming floor and Berg was held tight +in her arms. His ecstasy of greeting was no greater than her ecstasy of +welcome. She cried and laughed and hugged and kissed him. That night, +after a mighty supper, he slept on her bed across her feet. Two or three +times she woke and reached her hand down to caress his rough thick coat. +The warmth of his body mounted from her feet to her heart. She thought +that he had been sent to her by that new God. As for Berg, he had found +his God again, the taming touch of a small human hand. + + * * * * * + +It was in May, one morning in May--she had long ago lost count of her +days--when Sheila stepped across her sill and saw the ground. Just a +patch it was, no bigger than a tablecloth, but it made her catch her +breath. She knelt down and ran her hands across it, sifted some gravel +through her fingers. How strange and various and colorful were the atoms +of stone, rare as jewels to her eyes so long used to the white and violet +monotony of snow. Beyond the gravel, at the very edge of the drift, a +slender crescent of green startled her eyes and--yes--there were a dozen +valorous little golden flowers, as flat and round as fairy doubloons. + +Attracted by her cry, Berg came out, threw up his nose, and snuffed. +Spring spoke loudly to his nostrils. There was sap, rabbits were +about--all of it no news to him. Sheila sat down on the sill and hugged +him close. The sun was warm on his back, on her hands, on the boards +beneath her. + +"May--May--May--" she whispered, and up in the firs quite suddenly, as +though he had thrown reserve to the four winds, a bluebird repeated her +"May--May--May" on three notes, high, low, and high again, a little +musical stumble of delight. It had begun again--that whistling-away of +winter fear and winter hopelessness. + +The birds sang and built and the May flies crept up through the snow and +spun silver in the air for a brief dazzle of life. + +The sun was so warm that Berg and Sheila dozed on their doorsill. They +did little else, these days, but dream and doze and wait. + +The snow melted from underneath, sinking with audible groans of +collapse and running off across the frozen ground to swell Hidden +Creek. The river roared into a yellow flood, tripped its trees, sliced +at its banks. Sheila snowshoed down twice a day to look at it. It was a +sufficient barrier, she thought, between her and the world. And now, +she had attained to the savage joy of loneliness. She dreaded change. +Above all she dreaded Hilliard. That warmth of his beauty had faded +utterly from her senses. It seemed as faint as a fresco on a +long-buried wall. Intrusion must bring anxiety and pain, it might bring +fear. She had had long communion with her stars and the God whose name +they signaled. She, with her dog friend under her hand, had come to +something very like content. + +The roar of Hidden Creek swelled and swelled. After the snow had shrunk +into patches here and there under the pines and against hilly slopes, +there was still the melting of the mountain glaciers. + +"Nobody can possibly cross!" Sheila exulted. "A man would have to risk +his life." And it was in one of those very moments of her savage +self-congratulation when there came the sound of nearing hoofs. + +She was sitting on her threshold, watching the slow darkness, a +sifting-down of ashes through the still air. It was so very still that +the little new moon hung there above the firs like faint music. Silver +and gray, and silver and green, and violet--Sheila named the delicacies +of dappled light. The stars had begun to shake little shivers of radiance +through the firs. They were softer than the winter stars--their keenness +melted by the warm blue of the air. Sheila sat and held her knees and +smiled. The distant, increasing tumult of the river, so part of the +silence that it seemed no sound at all, lulled her--Then--above it--the +beat of horse's hoofs. + +At first she just sat empty of sensation except for the shock of those +faint thuds of sound. Then her heart began to beat to bursting; with +dread, with a suffocation of suspense. She got up, quiet as a thief. The +horse stopped. There came a step, rapid and eager. She fled like a +furtive shadow into the house, fell on her knees there by the hearth, and +hid her face against the big hide-covered chair. Her eyes were full of +cold tears. Her finger-tips were ice. She was shaking--shuddering, +rather--from head to foot. The steps had come close, had struck the +threshold. There they stopped. After a pause, which her pulses filled +with shaken rhythm, her name was spoken--So long it had been since she +had heard it that it fell on her ear like a foreign speech. + +"Sheila! Sheila!" + +She lifted her head sharply. It was not Hilliard's voice. + +"Sheila--" There was such an agony of fear in the softly spoken +syllables, there was such a weight of dread on the breath of the speaker, +that, for very pity, Sheila forgot herself. She got up from the floor and +moved dazedly to meet the figure on the threshold. It was dimly outlined +against the violet evening light. Sheila came up quite close and put her +hands on the tense, hanging arms. They caught her. Then she sobbed and +laughed aloud, calling out in her astonishment again and again, softly, +incredulously-- + +"_You_, Dickie? Oh, Dickie, Dickie, it's--_you_?" + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +SHEILA AND THE STARS + + +Hilliard's first messenger had been hindered by death. Several times it +seemed that his second messenger would suffer the same grim prevention. +But this second messenger was young and set like steel to his purpose. He +left the railroad at Millings, hired a horse, crossed the great plain +above the town and braved the Pass, dangerous with overbalanced weights +of melting snow. There, on the lonely Hill, he had his first encounter +with that Arch-Hinderer. A snow-slide caught him and he left his horse +buried, struggling out himself from the cold smother like a maimed insect +to lie for hours by the road till breath and life came back to him. He +got himself on foot to the nearest ranch, and there he hired a fresh +horse and reached Rusty, at the end of the third day. + +Rusty was overshadowed by a tragedy. The body of the trapper, Hilliard's +first messenger, had been found under the melting snow, a few days +before, and to the white-faced young stranger was given that stained and +withered letter in which Hilliard had excused and explained his +desertion. + +Nothing, at Rusty, had been heard of Sheila. No one knew even that she +had ever left Miss Blake's ranch--the history of such lonely places is a +sealed book from snowfall until spring. Their tragedies are as dumb as +the tragedies of animal life. No one had ever connected Sheila's name +with Hilliard's. No one knew of his plans for her. The trapper had set +off without delay, not even going back to his house, some little distance +outside of Rusty, to tell his wife that he would be bringing home a +lodger with him. There was, to be sure, at the office a small bundle of +letters all in the same hand addressed to Miss Arundel. They had to wait, +perforce, till the snow-bound country was released. + +"It's not likely even now," sly and twinkling Lander of the hotel told +Dickie, "that you can make it to Miss Blake's place. No, sir, nor to +Hilliard's neither. Hidden Creek's up. She's sure some flood this time of +the year. It's as much as your life's good for, stranger." + +But Dickie merely smiled and got for himself a horse that was "good in +deep water." And he rode away from Rusty without looking back. + +He rode along a lush, wet land of roaring streams, and, on the bank of +Hidden Creek, there was a roaring that drowned even the beating of his +heart. The flood straddled across his path like Apollyon. + +A dozen times the horse refused the ford--at last with a desperate toss +of his head he made a plunge for it. Almost at once he was swept from the +cobbled bed. He swam sturdily, but the current whirled him down like a +straw--Dickie slipped from the saddle on the upper side so that the +water pressed him close to the horse, and, even when they both went +under, he held to the animal with hands like iron. This saved his life. +Five blind, black, gasping minutes later, the horse pulled him up on the +farther bank and they stood trembling together, dazed by life and the +warmth of the air. + +It was growing dark. The heavy shadow of the mountain fell across them +and across the swollen yellow river they had just escaped. There began to +be a dappling light--the faint shining of that slim young moon. She was +just a silver curl there above the edge of the hill. In an hour she would +set. Her brightness was as shy and subtle as the brightness of a smile. +The messenger pulled his trembling body to the wet saddle and, looking +about for landmarks that had been described to him, he found the faint +trail to Hilliard's ranch. Presently he made out the low building under +its firs. He dropped down, freed the good swimmer and turned him loose, +then moved rapidly across the little clearing. It was all so still. +Hidden Creek alone made a threatening tumult. Dickie stopped before he +came to the door. He stood with his hands clenched at his sides and his +chin lifted. He seemed to be speaking to the sky. Then he stumbled to the +door and called, + +"Sheila--" + +She seemed to rise up from the floor and stand before him and put her +hands on his arms. + +A sort of insanity of joy, of childish excitement came upon Sheila when +she had recognized her visitor. She flitted about the room, she laughed, +she talked half-wildly--it had been such a long silence--in broken, +ejaculatory sentences. It was Dickie's dumbness, as he leaned against the +door, looking at her, that sobered her at last. She came close to him +again and saw that he was shivering and that streams of water were +running from his clothes to the floor. + +"Why, Dickie! How wet you are!"--Again she put her hands on his arms--he +was indeed drenched. She looked up into his face. It was gray and drawn +in the uncertain light. + +"That dreadful river! How did you cross it!" + +Dickie smiled. + +"It would have taken more than a river to stop me," he said in his old, +half-demure, half-ironical fashion. And that was all Sheila ever heard of +that brief epic of his journey. He drew away from her now and went over +to the fire. + +"Dickie"--she followed him--"tell me how you came here. How you +knew where I was. Wait--I'll get you some of Cosme's clothes--and a +cup of tea." + +This time, exhausted as he was, Dickie did not fail to stand up to take +the cup she brought him. He shook his head at the dry clothes. He didn't +want Hilliard's things, thank you; he was drying out nicely by the fire. +He wasn't a bit cold. He sat and drank the tea, leaning forward, his +elbows on his knees. He was, after all, just the same, she decided--only +more so. His Dickie-ness had increased a hundredfold. There was still +that quaint look of having come in from the fairy doings of a midsummer +night. Only, now that his color had come back and the light of her lamp +shone on him, he had a firmer and more vital look. His sickly pallor had +gone, and the blue marks under his eyes--the eyes were fuller, deeper, +more brilliant. He was steadier, firmer. He had definitely shed the +pitifulness of his childhood. And Sheila did not remember that his mouth +had so sweet a firm line from sensitive end to end of the lips. + +Her impatience was driving her heart faster at every beat. + +"You _must_, please, tell me everything now, Dickie," she pleaded, +sitting on the arm of Hilliard's second chair. Her cheeks burned; her +hair, grown to an awkward length, had come loose from a ribbon and fallen +about her face and shoulders. She had made herself a frock of +orange-colored cotton stuff--something that Hilliard had bought for +curtains. It was a startling color enough, but it could not dim her gypsy +beauty of wild dark hair and browned skin with which the misty and +spiritual eyes and the slightly straightened and saddened lips made +exquisite disharmony. + +Dickie looked up at her a minute. He put down his cup and got to his +feet. He went to stand by the shelf, half-turned from her. + +"Tell me, at least," she begged in a cracked key of suspense, "do you +know anything about--_Hilliard_?" + +At that Dickie was vividly a victim of remorse. + +"Oh--Sheila--damn! I _am_ a beast. Of course--he's all right. Only, you +see, he's been hurt and is in the hospital. That's why I came." + +"You?--Hilliard?--Dickie. I can't really understand." She pushed back her +hair with the same gesture she had used in the studio when Sylvester +Hudson's offer of "a job" had set her brain whirling. + +"No, of course. You wouldn't." Dickie spoke slowly again, looking at the +rug. "I went East--" + +"But--Hilliard?" + +He looked up at her and flashed a queer, pained sort of smile. "I am +coming to him, Sheila. I've got to tell you _some_ about myself before I +get around to him or else you wouldn't savvy--" + +"Oh." She couldn't meet the look that went with the queer smile, for it +was even queerer and more pained, and was, somehow, too old a look for +Dickie. So she said, "Oh," again, childishly, and waited, staring at +her fingers. + +"I went to New York because I thought I'd find you there, Sheila. Pap's +hotel was on fire." + +"Did you really burn it down, Dickie?" + +He started violently. "_I_ burned it down? Good Lord! No. What made you +think such a thing?" + +"Never mind. Your father thought so." + +Dickie's face flushed. "I suppose he would." He thought it over, then +shrugged his shoulders. "I didn't. I don't know how it started ... I went +to New York and to that place you used to live in--the garret. I had the +address from the man who took Pap there." + +"The studio? _Our_ studio?--_You_ there, Dickie?" + +"Yes, ma'am. I lived there. I thought, at first, you might +come ... Well"--Dickie hurried as though he wanted to pass quickly over +this necessary history of his own experience--"I got a job at a hotel." +He smiled faintly. "I was a waiter. One night I went to look at a fire. +It was a big fire. I was trying to think out what it was like--you know +the way I always did. It used to drive Pap loco--I must have been talking +to myself. Anyway, there was a fellow standing near me with a notebook +and a pencil and he spoke up suddenly--kind of sharp, and said: 'Say that +again, will you?'--He was a newspaper reporter, Sheila ... That's how I +got into the job. But I'm only telling you because--" + +Sheila hit the rung of her chair with an impatient foot. "Oh, Dickie! How +silly you are! As if I weren't _dying_ to hear all about it. How did you +get 'into the job'? What job?" + +"Reporting," said Dickie. He was troubled by this urgency of hers. He +began to stammer a little. "Of course, the--the fellow helped me a lot. +He got me on the staff. He went round with me. He--he took down what I +said and later he--he kind of edited my copy before I handed it in. +He--he was almighty good to me. And I--I worked awfully hard. Like Hell. +Night classes when I wasn't on night duty, and books. Then, Sheila, I +began to get kind of crazy over words." His eyes kindled. And his face. +He straightened. He forgot himself, whatever it was that weighed upon +him. "Aren't they wonderful? They're like polished stones--each one a +different shape and color and feel. You fit 'em this way and that and +turn 'em and--all at once, they shine and sing. God! I never knowed what +was the matter with me till I began to work with words--and that _is_ +work. Sheila! Lord! How you hate them, and love them, and curse them, and +worship them. I used to think I wanted _whiskey_." He laughed scorn at +that old desire; then came to self-consciousness again and was +shamefaced--"I guess you think I am plumb out of my head," he apologized. +"You see, it was because I was a--a reporter, Sheila, that I happened to +be there when Hilliard was hurt. I was coming home from the night courts. +It was downtown. At a street-corner there was a crowd. Somebody told me; +'Young Hilliard's car ran into a milk cart; turned turtle. He's hurt.' +Well, of course, I knew it'd be a good story--all that about Hilliard and +his millions and his coming from the West to get his inheritance--it had +just come out a couple of months before...." + +"His millions?" repeated Sheila. She slipped off the arm of her chair +without turning her wide look from Dickie and sat down with an air of +deliberate sobriety. "His inheritance?" she repeated. + +"Yes, ma'am. That's what took him East. He had news at Rusty. He wrote +you a letter and sent it by a man who was to fetch you to Rusty. You were +to stay there with his wife till Hilliard would be coming back for you. +But, Sheila, the man was caught in a trap and buried by a blizzard. They +found him only about a week ago--with Hilliard's letter in his pocket." +Dickie fumbled in his own steaming coat. "Here it is. I've got it." + +"Don't give it to me yet," she said. "Go on." + +"Well," Dickie turned the shriveled and stained paper lightly in restless +fingers. "That morning in New York I got up close to the car and had my +notebook out. Hilliard was waiting for the ambulance. His ribs were +smashed and his arm broken. He was conscious. He was laughing and talking +and smoking cigarettes. I asked him some questions and he took a notion +to question _me_. 'You're from the West,' he said; and when I told him +'Millings,' he kind of gasped and sat up. That turned him faint. But when +they were carrying him off, he got a-holt of my hand and whispered, 'Come +see me at the hospital.' I was willing enough--I went. And they took me +to him--private room. And a nice-looking nurse. And flowers. He has lots +of friends in New York--Hilliard, you bet you--" It was irony again and +Sheila stirred nervously. That changed his tone. He moved abruptly and +came and sat down near her, locking his hands and bending his head to +study them in the old way. "He found out who I was and he told me about +you, Sheila, and, because he was too much hurt to travel or even to +write, he asked me to go out and carry a message for him. Nothing would +have kept me from going, anyway," Dickie added quaintly. "When I learned +what had been happening and how you were left and no letters coming from +Rusty to answer his--well, sir, I could hardly sit still to hear about +all that, Sheila. But, anyway--" Dickie moved his hands. They sought the +arms of his chair and the fingers tightened. He looked past Sheila. "He +told me then how it was with you and him. That you were planning to be +married. And I promised to find you and tell you what he said." + +"What did he say?" + +Dickie spoke carefully, using his strange gift. With every word his +face grew a trifle whiter, but that had no effect upon his eloquence. +He painted a vivid and touching picture of the shattered and wistful +youth. He repeated the shaken words of remorse and love. "I want her to +come East and marry me. I love her. Tell her I love her. Tell her I can +give her everything she wants in all the world. Tell her to come--" And +far more skillfully than ever Hilliard himself could have done, Dickie +pleaded the intoxication of that sudden shower of gold, the +bewildering change in the young waif's life, the necessity he was under +to go and see and touch the miracle. There was a long silence after +Dickie had delivered himself of the burden of his promise. The fire +leapt and crackled on Hilliard's forsaken hearth. It threw shadows and +gleams across Dickie's thin, exhausted face and Sheila's inscrutably +thoughtful one. + +She held out her hand. + +"Give me the letters now, Dickie." + +He handed her the bundle that had accumulated in Rusty and the little +withered one taken from the body of the trapper. Sheila took them and +held them on her knee. She pressed both her hands against her eyes; then, +leaning toward the fire, she read the letters, beginning with that one +that had spent so many months under the dumb snow. + +Berg, who had investigated Dickie, leaned against her knee while she +read, his eyes fixed upon her. She read and laid the pile by on the table +behind her. She sat for a long while, elbows on the arms of her chair, +fingers laced beneath her chin. She seemed to be looking at the fire, but +she was watching Dickie through her eyelashes. There was no ease in his +attitude. He had his arms folded, his hands gripped the damp sleeves of +his coat. When she spoke, he jumped as though she had fired a gun. + +"It is not true, Dickie, that things were--were that way between Cosme +and me ... We had not settled to be married ..." She paused and saw that +he forced himself to sit quiet. "Do you really think," she said, "that +the man that wrote those letters, loves me?" Dickie was silent. He would +not meet her look. "So you promised Hilliard that you would take me back +to marry him?" There was an edge to her voice. + +Dickie's face burned cruelly. "No," he said with shortness. "I was going +to take you to the train and then come back here. I am going to take up +this claim of Hilliard's--he's through with it. He likes the East. You +see, Sheila, he's got the whole world to play with. It's quite true." He +said this gravely, insistently. "He can give you everything--" + +"And you?" + +Dickie stared at her with parted lips. He seemed afraid to breathe lest +he startle away some hesitant hope. "I?" he whispered. + +"I mean--_you_ don't like the East?--You will give up your work?" + +"Oh--" He dropped back. The hope had flown and he was able to breathe +again, though breathing seemed to hurt. "Yes, ma'am. I'll give up +newspaper reporting. I don't like New York." + +"But, Dickie--your--words? I'd like to see something you've written." + +Dickie's hand went to an inner pocket. + +"I wanted you to see this, Sheila," His eyes were lowered to hide a +flaming pride. "My _poems_." + +Sheila felt a shock of dread. Dickie's _poems_! She was afraid to read +them. She could not help but think of his life at Millings, of that +sordid hotel lobby ... Newspaper stories--yes--that was imaginable. +But--poetry? Sheila had been brought up on verse. There was hardly a +beautiful line that had not sung itself into the fabric of her brain. + +"Poems?" she repeated, just a trifle blankly; then, seeing the hurt in +his face, about the sensitive and delicate lips, she put out a quick, +penitent hand. "Let me see them--at once!" + +He handed a few folded papers to her. They were damp. He put his face +down to his hands and looked at the floor as though he could not bear to +watch her face. Sheila saw that he was shaking. It meant so much to him, +then--? She unfolded the papers shrinkingly and read. As she read, the +blood rushed to her checks for shame. She ought never to have doubted +him. Never after the first look into his face, never after hearing him +speak of the "cold, white flame" of an unforgotten winter night. Dickie's +words, so greatly loved and groped for, so tirelessly pursued in the face +of his world's scorn and injury, came to him, when they did come, on +wings. In the four short poems, there was not a word outside of his inner +experience, and yet she felt that those words had blown through him +mysteriously on a wind--the wind that fans such flame-- + +"Oh, little song you sang to me +A hundred, hundred days ago, +Oh, little song whose melody +Walks in my heart and stumbles so; +I cannot bear the level nights, +And all the days are over-long, +And all the hours from dark to dark +Turn to a little song--" + +"Like the beat of the falling rain, +Until there seems no roof at all, +And my heart is washed with pain--" + +"Why is a woman's throat a bird, +White in the thicket of the years?--" + +Sheila suddenly thrust back the leaves at him, hid her face and fell to +crying bitterly. Dickie let fall his poems; he hovered over her, utterly +bewildered, utterly distressed. + +"Sheila--h-how could they possibly hurt you so? It was your song--your +song--Are you angry with me--? I couldn't help it. It kept singing in +me--It--it hurt." + +She thrust his hand away. + +"Don't be kind to me! Oh--I am ashamed! I've treated you _so_! And--and +snubbed you. And--and condescended to you, Dickie. And shamed you. +You--! And you can write such lines--and you are great--you will be very +great--a poet! Dickie, why couldn't I see? Father would have seen. Don't +touch me, please! I can't bear it. Oh, my dear, you must have been +through such long, long misery--there in Millings, behind that desk--all +stifled and cramped and shut in. And when I came, I might have helped +you. I might have understood ... But I hurt you more." + +"Please don't, Sheila--it isn't true. Oh,--_damn_ my poems!" + +This made her laugh a little, and she got up and dried her eyes and sat +before him like a humbled child. It was quite terrible for Dickie. His +face was drawn with the discomfort of it. He moved about the room, +miserable and restless. + +Sheila recovered herself and looked up at him with a sort of wan +resolution. + +"And you will stay here and work the ranch and write, Dickie?" + +"Yes, ma'am." He managed a smile. "If you think a fellow can push a +plough and write poetry with the same hand." + +"It's been done before. And--and you will send me back to Hilliard +and--the good old world?" + +Dickie's artificial smile left him. He stood, white and stiff, looking +down at her. He tried to speak and put his hand to his throat. + +"And I must leave you here," Sheila went on softly, "with my stars?" + +She got up and walked over to the door and stood, half-turned from him, +her fingers playing with the latch. + +Dickie found part of his voice. + +"What do you mean, Sheila, about your stars?" + +"You told me," she said carefully, "that you would go and work and then +come back--But, I suppose--" + +That was as far as she got. Dickie flung himself across the room. A chair +crashed. He had his arms about her. He was shaking. That pale and tender +light was in his face. The whiteness of a full moon, the whiteness of a +dawn seemed to fall over Sheila. + +"He--he can give you everything--" Dickie said shakily. + +"I've been waiting"--she said--"I didn't know it until lately. But I've +been waiting, so long now, for--for--" She closed her eyes and lifted her +soft sad mouth. It was no longer patient. + +That night Dickie and Berg lay together on the hide before the fire, +wrapped in a blanket. Dickie did not sleep. He looked through the +uncurtained, horizontal window, at the stars. + +"You've got everything else, Hilliard," he muttered. "You've got the +whole world to play with. After all, it was your own choice. I told you +how it was with me. I promised I'd play fair. I did play fair." He sighed +deeply and turned with his head on his arm and looked toward the door of +the inner room. "It's like sleeping just outside the gate of Heaven, +Berg," he said. "I never thought I'd get as close as that--" He listened +to the roar of Hidden Creek. "It won't be long, old fellow, before we +take her down to Rusty and bring her back." Tears stood on Dickie's +eye-lashes. "Then we'll walk straight into Heaven." He played with the +dog's rough mane. "She'll keep on looking at the stars," he murmured. +"But I'll keep on looking at her--_Sheila_." + +But Sheila, having made her choice, had shut her eyes to the world and to +the stars and slept like a good and happy child. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10978 *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0600267 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #10978 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10978) diff --git a/old/10978-8.txt b/old/10978-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..68b9020 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10978-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8570 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Hidden Creek, by Katharine Newlin Burt + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Hidden Creek + +Author: Katharine Newlin Burt + +Release Date: February 7, 2004 [eBook #10978] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIDDEN CREEK*** + + +E-text prepared by Rick Niles, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + +HIDDEN CREEK + +BY KATHARINE NEWLIN BURT + +AUTHOR OF "THE BRANDING IRON" AND "THE RED LADY" + +1920 + + + + + + +TO MAXWELL STRUTHERS BURT WHO BLAZED THE TRAIL + + + + +CONTENTS + + +PART ONE: THE GOOD OLD WORLD + + I. SHEILA'S LEGACY + II. SYLVESTER HUDSON COMES FOR HIS PICTURE + III. THE FINEST CITY IN THE WORLD + IV. MOONSHINE + V. INTERCESSION + VI. THE BAWLING-OUT + VII. DISH-WASHING +VIII. ARTISTS + IX. A SINGEING OF WINGS + X. THE BEACON LIGHT + XI. IN THE PUBLIC EYE + XII. HUDSON'S QUEEN +XIII. SYLVESTER CELEBRATES + XIV. THE LIGHT OF DAWN + XV. FLAMES + +PART TWO: THE STARS + + I. THE HILL + II. ADVENTURE + III. JOURNEY'S END + IV. BEASTS + V. NEIGHBOR NEIGHBOR + VI. A HISTORY AND A LETTER + VII. SANCTUARY +VIII. DESERTION + IX. WORK AND A SONG + X. WINTER + XI. THE PACK + XII. THE GOOD OLD WORLD AGAIN +XIII. LONELINESS + XIV. SHEILA AND THE STARS + + + + +HIDDEN CREEK + + + + +PART ONE + +THE GOOD OLD WORLD + + + + +CHAPTER I + +SHEILA'S LEGACY + + +Just before his death, Marcus Arundel, artist and father of Sheila, +bore witness to his faith in God and man. He had been lying apparently +unconscious, his slow, difficult breath drawn at longer and longer +intervals. Sheila was huddled on the floor beside his bed, her hand +pressing his urgently in the pitiful attempt, common to human love, to +hold back the resolute soul from the next step in its adventure. The +nurse, who came in by the day, had left a paper of instructions on the +table. Here a candle burned under a yellow shade, throwing a circle of +warm, unsteady light on the head of the girl, on the two hands, on the +rumpled coverlet, on the dying face. This circle of light seemed to +collect these things, to choose them, as though for the expression of +some meaning. It felt for them as an artist feels for his composition +and gave to them a symbolic value. The two hands were in the center of +the glow--the long, pale, slack one, the small, desperate, clinging +one. The conscious and the unconscious, life and death, humanity and +God--all that is mysterious and tragic seemed to find expression there +in the two hands. + +So they had been for six hours, and it would soon be morning. The large, +bare room, however, was still possessed by night, and the city outside +was at its lowest ebb of life, almost soundless. Against the skylight the +winter stars seemed to be pressing; the sky was laid across the panes of +glass like a purple cloth in which sparks burned. + +Suddenly and with strength Arundel sat up. Sheila rose with him, drawing +up his hand in hers to her heart. + +"Keep looking at the stars, Sheila," he said with thrilling emphasis, and +widened his eyes at the visible host of them. Then he looked down at her; +his eyes shone as though they had caught a reflection from the myriad +lights. "It is a good old world," he said heartily in a warm and human +voice, and he smiled his smile of everyday good-fellowship. + +Sheila thanked God for his return, and on the very instant he was gone. +He dropped back, and there were no more difficult breaths. + +Sheila, alone there in the garret studio above the city, cried to her +father and shook him, till, in very terror of her own frenzy in the face +of his stillness, she grew calm and laid herself down beside him, put his +dead arm around her, nestled her head against his shoulder. She was +seventeen years old, left alone and penniless in the old world that he +had just pronounced so good. She lay there staring at the stars till they +faded, and the cold, clear eye of day looked down into the room. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +SYLVESTER HUDSON COMES FOR HIS PICTURE + + +Back of his sallow, lantern-jawed face, Sylvester Hudson hid +successfully, though without intention, all that was in him whether of +good or ill. Certainly he did not look his history. He was +stoop-shouldered, pensive-eyed, with long hands on which he was always +turning and twisting a big emerald. He dressed quietly, almost correctly, +but there was always something a little wrong in the color or pattern of +his tie, and he was too fond of brown and green mixtures which did not +become his sallowness. He smiled very rarely, and when he did smile, his +long upper lip unfastened itself with an effort and showed a horizontal +wrinkle halfway between the pointed end of his nose and the irregular, +nicked row of his teeth. + +Altogether, he was a gentle, bilious-looking sort of man, who might have +been anything from a country gentleman to a moderately prosperous clerk. +As a matter of fact, he was the owner of a dozen small, not too +respectable, hotels through the West, and had an income of nearly half a +million dollars. He lived in Millings, a town in a certain Far-Western +State, where flourished the most pretentious and respectable of his +hotels. It had a famous bar, to which rode the sheep-herders, the +cowboys, the ranchers, the dry-farmers of the surrounding country--yes, +and sometimes, thirstiest of all, the workmen from more distant +oil-fields, a dangerous crew. Millings at that time had not yielded to +the generally increasing "dryness" of the West. It was "wet," +notwithstanding its choking alkali dust; and the deep pool of its +wetness lay in Hudson's bar, The Aura. It was named for a woman who had +become his wife. + +When Hudson came to New York he looked up his Eastern patrons, and it was +one of these who, knowing Arundel's need, encouraged the hotel-keeper in +his desire to secure a "jim-dandy picture" for the lobby of The Aura and +took him for the purpose to Marcus's studio. On that morning, hardly a +fortnight before the artist's death, Sheila was not at home. + +Marcus, in spite of himself, was managed into a sale. It was of an +enormous canvas, covered weakly enough by a thin reproduction of a range +of the Rockies and a sagebrush flat. Mr. Hudson in his hollow voice +pronounced it "classy." "Say," he said, "put a little life into the +foreground and that would please _me_. It's what I'm seekin'. Put in an +automobile meetin' one of these old-time prairie schooners--the old West +sayin' howdy to the noo. That will tickle the trade." Mark, who was +feeling weak and ill, consented wearily. He sketched in the proposed +amendment and Hudson approved with one of his wrinkled smiles. He offered +a small price, at which Arundel leapt like a famished hound. + +When his visitors had gone, the painter went feverishly to work. The day +before his death, Sheila, under his whispered directions, put the last +touches to the body of the "auto_m_obile." + +"It's ghastly," sighed the sick man, "but it will do--for Millings." He +turned his back sadly enough to the canvas, which stood for him like a +monument to fallen hope. Sheila praised it with a faltering voice, but he +did not turn nor speak. So she carried the huge picture out of his sight. + +The next day, at about eleven o'clock in the morning, Hudson called. He +came with stiff, angular motions of his long, thin legs, up the four +steep, shabby flights and stopped at the top to get his breath. + +"The picture ain't worth the climb," he thought; and then, struck by the +peculiar stillness of the garret floor, he frowned. "Damned if the feller +ain't out!" He took a stride forward and knocked at Arundel's door. There +was no answer. He turned the knob and stepped into the studio. + +A screen stood between him and one half of the room. The other half was +empty. The place was very cold and still. It was deplorably bare and +shabby in the wintry morning light. Some one had eaten a meager breakfast +from a tray on the little table near the stove. Hudson's canvas stood +against the wall facing him, and its presence gave him a feeling of +ownership, of a right to be there. He put his long, stiff hands into his +pockets and strolled forward. He came round the corner of the screen and +found himself looking at the dead body of his host. + +The nurse, that morning, had come and gone. With Sheila's help she had +prepared Arundel for his burial. He lay in all the formal detachment of +death, his eyelids drawn decently down over his eyes, his lips put +carefully together, his hands, below their white cuffs and black sleeves, +laid carefully upon the clean smooth sheet. + +Hudson drew in a hissing breath, and at the sound Sheila, crumpled up in +exhausted slumber on the floor beside the bed, awoke and lifted her face. + +It was a heart-shaped face, a thin, white heart, the peak of her hair +cutting into the center of her forehead. The mouth struck a note of life +with its dull, soft red. There was not lacking in this young face the +slight exaggerations necessary to romantic beauty. Sheila had a strange, +arresting sort of jaw, a trifle over-accentuated and out of drawing. Her +eyes were long, flattened, narrow, the color of bubbles filled with +smoke, of a surface brilliance and an inner mistiness--indescribable +eyes, clear, very melting, wistful and beautiful under sooty lashes and +slender, arched black brows. + +Sheila lifted this strange, romantic face on its long, romantic throat +and looked at Hudson. Then she got to her feet. She was soft and silken, +smooth and tender, gleaming white of skin. She had put on an old black +dress, just a scrap of a flimsy, little worn-out gown. A certain slim, +crushable quality of her body was accentuated by this flimsiness of +covering. She looked as though she could be drawn through a ring--as +though, between your hands, you could fold her to nothing. A thin little +kitten of silky fur and small bones might have the same feel as Sheila. + +She stood up now and looked tragically and helplessly at Hudson and +tried to speak. + +He backed away from the bed, beckoned to her, and met her in the other +half of the room so that the leather screen stood between them and the +dead man. They spoke in hushed voices. + +"I had no notion, Miss Arundel, that--that--of--this," Hudson began in a +dry, jerky whisper. "Believe _me_, I wouldn't 'a' thought of intrudin'. I +ordered the picture there from your father a fortnight ago, and this was +the day I was to come and give it a last looking-over before I came +through with the cash, see? I hadn't heard he was sick even, much +less"--he cleared his throat--"gone beyond," he ended, quoting from the +"Millings Gazette" obituary column. "You get me?" + +"Yes," said Sheila, in her voice that in some mysterious way was another +expression of the clear mistiness of her eyes and the suppleness of her +body. "You are Mr. Hudson." She twisted her hands together behind her +back. She was shivering with cold and nervousness. "It's done, you see. +Father finished it." + +Hudson gave the canvas an absent glance and motioned Sheila to a chair +with a stiff gesture of his arm. + +"You set down," he said. + +She obeyed, and he walked to and fro before her. + +"Say, now," he said, "I'll take the picture all right. But I'd like to +know, Miss Arundel, if you'll excuse me, how you're fixed?" + +"Fixed?" Sheila faltered. + +"Why, yes, ma'am--as to finances, I mean. You've got some funds, or some +relations or some friends to call upon--?" + +Sheila drew up her head a trifle, lowered her eyes, and began to plait +her thin skirt across her knee with small, delicate fingers. Hudson +stopped in his walk to watch this mechanical occupation. She struggled +dumbly with her emotion and managed to answer him at last. + +"No, Mr. Hudson. Father is very poor. I haven't any relations. We have no +friends here nor anywhere near. We lived in Europe till quite lately--a +fishing village in Normandy. I--I shall have to get some work." + +"Say!" It was an ejaculation of pity, but there was a note of triumph in +it, too; perhaps the joy of the gratified philanthropist. + +"Now, look-a-here, little girl, the price of that picture will just about +cover your expenses, eh?--board and--er--funeral?" + +Sheila nodded, her throat working, her lids pressing down tears. + +"Well, now, look-a-here. I've got a missus at home." + +Sheila looked up and the tears fell. She brushed them from her cheeks. +"A missus?" + +"Yes'm--my wife. And a couple of gels about your age. Well, say, we've +got a job for you." + +Sheila put her hand to her head as though she would stop a whirling +sensation there. + +"You mean you have some work for me in your home?" + +"You've got it first time. Yes, _ma'am_. Sure thing. At Millings, finest +city in the world. After you're through here, you pack up your duds and +you come West with me. Make a fresh start, eh? Why, it'll make me plumb +cheerful to have a gel with me on that journey ... seem like I'd Girlie +or Babe along. They just cried to come, but, say, Noo York's no place for +the young." + +"But, Mr. Hudson, my ticket? I'm sure I won't have the money--?" + +"Advance it to you on your pay, Miss Arundel." + +"But what is the work?" Sheila still held her hand against her forehead. + +Hudson laughed his short, cracked cackle. "Jest old-fashioned house-work, +dish-washing and such. 'Help' can't be had in Millings, and Girlie and +Babe kick like steers when Momma leads 'em to the dish-pan. Not that +you'd have to do it all, you know, just lend a hand to Momma. Maybe +you're too fine for that?" + +"Oh, no. I have done all the work here. I'd be glad. Only--" + +He came closer to her and held up a long, threatening forefinger. It was +a playful gesture, but Sheila had a distinct little tremor of fear. She +looked up into his small, brown, pensive eyes, and her own were held as +though their look had been fastened to his with rivets. + +"Now, look-a-here, Miss Arundel, don't you say 'only' to me. Nor 'but.' +Nor 'if.' Nary one of those words, if you please. Say, I've got daughters +of my own and I can manage gels. I know _how_. Do you know my nickname? +Well--say--it's 'Pap.' Pap Hudson. I'm the adopting kind. Sort of +paternal, I guess. Kids and dogs follow me in the streets. You want a +recommend? Just call up Mr. Hazeldean on the telephone. He's the man that +fetched me here to buy that picture off Poppa." + +"Oh," said Sheila, daughter of Mark who looked at stars, "of course +I shouldn't think of asking for a recommendation. You've been only +too kind--" + +He put his hand on her shoulder in its thin covering and patted it, +wondering at the silken, cool feeling against his palm. + +"Kind, Miss Arundel? Pshaw! My middle name's 'Kind' and that's the truth. +Why, how does the song go--''T is love, 't is love that makes the world +go round'--love's just another word for kindness, ain't it? And it's not +such a bad old world either, eh?" + +Without knowing it, with the sort of good luck that often attends the +enterprises of such men, Hudson had used a spell. He had quoted, almost +literally, her father's last words and she felt that it was a message +from the other side of death. + +She twisted about in her chair, took his hand from her shoulder, and drew +it, stiff and sallow, to her young lips. + +"Oh," she sobbed, "you're kind! It _is_ a good world if there are such +men as you!" + +When Sylvester Hudson went down the stairs a minute or two after Sheila's +impetuous outbreak, his sallow face was deeply flushed. He stopped to +tell the Irishwoman who rented the garret floor to the Arundels, that +Sheila's future was in his care. During this colloquy, pure business on +his side and mixed business and sentiment on Mrs. Halligan's, Sylvester +did not once look the landlady in the eye. His own eyes skipped hers, now +across, now under, now over. There are some philanthropists who are +overcome with such bashfulness in the face of their own good deeds. But, +sitting back alone in his taxicab on his way to the station to buy +Sheila's ticket to Millings, Sylvester turned his emerald rapidly about +on his finger and whistled to himself. And cryptically he expressed his +glow of gratified fatherliness. + +"As smooth as silk," said Sylvester aloud. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE FINEST CITY IN THE WORLD + + +So Sheila Arundel left the garret where the stars pressed close, and +went with Sylvester Hudson out into the world. It was, that morning, a +world of sawing wind, of flying papers and dust-dervishes, a world, to +meet which people bent their shrinking faces and drew their bodies +together as against the lashing of a whip. Sheila thought she had never +seen New York so drab and soulless; it hurt her to leave it under so +desolate an aspect. + +"Cheery little old town, isn't it?" said Sylvester. "Gee! Millings is +God's country all right." + +On the journey he put Sheila into a compartment, supplied her with +magazines and left her for the most part to herself--for which isolation +she was grateful. With her compartment door ajar, she could see him in +his section, when he was not in the smoking-car, or rather she could see +his lean legs, his long, dark hands, and the top of his sleek head. The +rest was an outspread newspaper. Occasionally he would come into the +compartment to read aloud some bit of information which he thought might +interest her. Once it was the prowess of a record-breaking hen; again it +was a joke about a mother-in-law; another time it was the Hilliard murder +case, a scandal of New York high-life, the psychology of which intrigued +Sylvester. + +"Isn't it queer, though, Miss Arundel, that such things happen in the +slums and they happen in the smart set, but they don't happen near so +often with just plain folks like you and me! Isn't this, now, a real +Tenderloin Tale--South American wife and American husband and all their +love affairs, and then one day her up and shooting him! Money," quoth +Sylvester, "sure makes love popular. Now for that little ro-mance, poor +folks would hardly stop a day's work, but just because the Hilliards here +have po-sition and spon-dulix, why, they'll run a couple of columns about +'em for a week. What's your opinion on the subject, Miss Arundel?" + +He was continually asking this, and poor Sheila, strange, bewildered, +oppressed by his intrusion into her uprooted life, would grope wildly +through her odds and ends of thought and find that on most of the +subjects that interested him, she had no opinions at all. + +"You must think I'm dreadfully stupid, Mr. Hudson," she faltered once +after a particularly deplorable failure. + +"Oh, you're a kid, Miss Sheila, that's all your trouble. And I reckon +you're half asleep, eh? Kind of brought up on pictures and country walks, +in--what's the name of the foreign part?--Normandy? No friends of your +own age? No beaux?" + +Sheila shook her head, smiling. Her flexible smile was as charming as a +child's. It dawned on the gravity of her face with an effect of spring +moonlight. In it there was some of the mischief of fairyland. + +"What _you_ need is--Millings," prescribed Sylvester. "Girlie and Babe +will wake you up. Yes, and the boys. You'll make a hit in Millings." He +contemplated her for an instant with his head on one side. "We ain't got +anything like you in Millings." + +Sheila, looking out at the wide Nebraskan prairies that slipped +endlessly past her window hour by hour that day, felt that she would not +make a hit at Millings. She was afraid of Millings. Her terror of Babe +and Girlie was profound. She had lived and grown up, as it were, under +her father's elbow. Her adoration of him had stood between her and +experience. She knew nothing of humanity except Marcus Arundel. And he +was hardly typical--a shy, proud, head-in-the-air sort of man, who would +have been greatly loved if he had not shrunk morbidly from human +contacts. Sheila's Irish mother had wooed and won him and had made a +merry midsummer madness in his life, as brief as a dream. Sheila was all +that remained of it. But, for all her quietness, the shadow of his +broken heart upon her spirit, she was a Puck. She could make laughter +and mischief for him and for herself--not for any one else yet; she was +too shy. But that might come. Only, Puck laughter is a little unearthly, +a little delicate. The ear of Millings might not be attuned.... Just +now, Sheila felt that she would never laugh again. Sylvester's humor +certainly did not move her. She almost choked trying to swallow +becomingly the mother-in-law anecdote. + +But Sylvester's talk, his questions, even his jokes, were not what most +oppressed her. Sometimes, looking up, she would find him staring at her +over the top of his newspaper as though he were speculating about +something, weighing her, judging her by some inner measurement. It was +rather like the way her father had looked a model over to see if she +would fit his dream. + +At such moments Sylvester's small brown eyes were the eyes of an +artist, of a visionary. They embarrassed her painfully. What was it, +after all, that he expected of her? For an expectation of some kind he +most certainly had, and it could hardly have to do with her skill in +washing dishes. + +She asked him a few small questions as they drew near to Millings. The +strangeness of the country they were now running through excited her and +fired her courage--these orange-colored cliffs, these purple buttes, +these strange twisting cañons with their fierce green streams. + +"Please tell me about Mrs. Hudson and your daughters?" she asked. + +This was a few hours before they were to come to Millings. They had +changed trains at a big, bare, glaring city several hours before and +were now in a small, gritty car with imitation-leather seats. They were +running through a gorge, and below and ahead Sheila could see the brown +plain with its patches of snow and, like a large group of red toy +houses, the town of Millings, far away but astonishingly distinct in the +clear air. + +Sylvester, considering her question, turned his emerald slowly. + +"The girls are all _right_, Miss Sheila. They're lookers. I guess I've +spoiled 'em some. They'll be crazy over you--sort of a noo pet in the +house, eh? I've wired to 'em. They must be hoppin' up and down like a +popper full of corn." + +"And Mrs. Hudson?" + +Sylvester grinned--the wrinkle cutting long and deep across his lip. +"Well, ma'am, she ain't the hoppin' kind." + +A few minutes later Sheila discovered that emphatically she was not the +hopping kind. A great, bony woman with a wide, flat, handsome face, she +came along the station platform, kissed Sylvester with hard lips and +stared at Sheila ... the stony stare of her kind. + +"Babe ran the Ford down, Sylly," she said in the harshest voice Sheila +had ever heard. "Where's the girl's trunk?" + +Sylvester's sallow face reddened. He turned quickly to Sheila. + +"Run over to the car yonder, Miss Sheila, and get used to Babe, while I +kind of take the edge off Momma." + +Sheila did not run. She walked in a peculiar light-footed manner which +gave her the look of a proud deer. + +"Momma" was taken firmly to the baggage-room, where, it would seem, the +edge was removed with difficulty, for Sheila waited in the motor with +Babe for half an hour. + +Babe hopped. She hopped out of her seat at the wheel and shook Sheila's +hand and told her to "jump right in." + +"Sit by me on the way home, Sheila." Babe had a tremendous voice. "And +leave the old folks to gossip on the back seat. Gee! you're different +from what I thought you'd be. Ain't you small, though? You've got no +form. Say, Millings will do lots for you. Isn't Pap a character, though? +Weren't you tickled the way he took you up? Your Poppa was a painter, +wasn't he? Can you make a picture of me? I've got a steady that would be +just wild if you could." + +Sheila sat with hands clenched in her shabby muff and smiled her +moonlight smile. She was giddy with the intoxicating, heady air, with the +brilliant sunset light, with Babe's loud cordiality. She wanted +desperately to like Babe; she wanted even more desperately to be liked. +She was in an unimaginable panic, now. + +Babe was a splendid young animal, handsome and round and rosy, her body +crowded into a bright-blue braided, fur-trimmed coat, her face crowded +into a tight, much-ornamented veil, her head with heavy chestnut hair, +crowded into a cherry-colored, velvet turban round which seemed to be +wrapped the tail of some large wild beast. Her hands were ready to burst +from yellow buckskin gloves; her feet, with high, thick insteps, from +their tight, thin, buttoned boots, even her legs shone pink and plump +below her short skirt, through silk stockings that were threatened at the +seams. And the blue of her eyes, the red of her cheeks, the white of her +teeth, had the look of being uncontainable, too brilliant and full to +stay where they belonged. The whole creature flashed and glowed and +distended herself. Her voice was a riot of uncontrolled vitality, and, as +though to use up a little of all this superfluous energy, she was +violently chewing gum. Except for an occasional slight smacking sound, it +did not materially interfere with speech. + +"There's Poppa now," she said at last. "Say, Poppa, you two sit in the +back, will you? Sheila and I are having a fine time. But, Poppa, you old +tin-horn, what did you mean by saying in your wire that she was a husky +girl? Why, she's got the build of a sagebrush mosquito! Look-a-here, +Sheila." Babe by a miracle got her plump hand in and out of a pocket and +handed a telegram to her new friend. "Read that and learn to know Poppa!" + +Sylvester laughed rather sheepishly as Sheila read: + +Am bringing home artist's A1 picture for The Aura and artist's A1 +daughter. Husky girl. Will help Momma. + +"Well," said Sylvester apologetically, "she's one of the wiry kind, +aren't you, Miss Sheila?" + +Sheila was struggling with an attack of hysterical mirth. She nodded +and put her muff before her mouth to hide an uncontrollable quivering +of her lips. + +"Momma" had not spoken. Her face was all one even tone of red, her +nostrils opened and shut, her lips were tight. Sylvester, however, was in +a genial humor. He leaned forward with his arms folded along the back of +the front seat and pointed out the beauties of Millings. He showed Sheila +the Garage, the Post-Office, and the Trading Company, and suddenly +pressing her shoulder with his hand, he cracked out sharply: + +"There's The Aura, girl!" + +His eyes were again those of the artist and the visionary. They glowed. + +Sheila turned her head. They were passing the double door of the saloon +and went slowly along the front of the hotel. + +It stood on that corner where the main business street intersects with +the Best Residence Street. Its main entrance opened into the flattened +corner of the building where the roof rose to a fantastic façade. For the +rest, the hotel was of yellowish-brick, half-surrounded by a wooden porch +where at milder seasons of the year in deep wicker chairs men and women +were always rocking with the air of people engaged in serious and not +unimportant work. At such friendlier seasons, too, by the curb was always +a weary-looking Ford car from which grotesquely arrayed "travelers" from +near-by towns and cities were descending covered with alkali dust--faces, +chiffon veils, spotted silk dresses, high white kid boots, dangling +purses and all, their men dust-powdered to a wrinkled sameness of aspect. +At this time of the year the porch was deserted, and the only car in +sight was Hudson's own, which wriggled and slipped its way courageously +along the rutted, dirty snow. + +Around the corner next to the hotel stood Hudson's home. It was a large +house of tortured architecture, cupolas and twisted supports and strange, +overlapping scallops of wood, painted wavy green, pinkish red and yellow. +Its windows were of every size and shape and appeared in unreasonable, +impossible places--opening enormous mouths on tiny balconies with twisted +posts and scalloped railings, like embroidery patterns, one on top of the +other up to a final absurdity of a bird cage which found room for itself +between two cupolas under the roof. + +Up the steps of the porch Mrs. Hudson mounted grimly, followed by Babe. +Sylvester stayed to tinker with the car, and Sheila, after a doubtful, +tremulous moment, went slowly up the icy path after the two women. + +She stumbled a little on the lowest step and, in recovering herself, she +happened to turn her head. And so, between two slender aspen trees that +grew side by side like white, captive nymphs in Hudson's yard, she saw a +mountain-top. The sun had set. There was a crystal, turquoise +translucency behind the exquisite snowy peak, which seemed to stand there +facing God, forgetful of the world behind it, remote and reverent and +most serene in the light of His glory. And just above where the turquoise +faded to pure pale green, a big white star trembled. Sheila's heart +stopped in her breast. She stood on the step and drew breath, throwing +back her veil. A flush crept up into her face. She felt that she had been +traveling all her life toward her meeting with this mountain and this +star. She felt radiant and comforted. + +"How beautiful!" she whispered. + +Sylvester had joined her. + +"Finest city in the world!" he said. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +MOONSHINE + + +Dickie Hudson pushed from him to the full length of his arm the ledger of +The Aura Hotel, tilted his chair back from the desk, and, leaning far +over to one side, set the needle on a phonograph record, pressed the +starter, and absorbed himself in rolling and lighting a cigarette. This +accomplished, he put his hands behind his head and, wreathed in aromatic, +bluish smoke, gave himself up to complete enjoyment of the music. + +It was a song from some popular light opera. A very high soprano and a +musical tenor duet, sentimental, humoresque: + +"There, dry your eyes, +I sympathize +Just as a mother would-- +Give me your hand, +I understand, we're off to slumber land +Like a father, like a mother, like a sister, like a brother." + +Listening to this melody, Dickie Hudson's face under the gaslight +expressed a rapt and spiritual delight, tender, romantic, melancholy. + +He was a slight, undersized youth, very pale, very fair, with the face of +a delicate boy. He had large, near-sighted blue eyes in which lurked a +wistful, deprecatory smile, a small chin running from wide cheek-bones +to a point. His lips were sensitive and undecided, his nose unformed, his +hair soft and easily ruffled. There were hard blue marks under the +long-lashed eyes, an unhealthy pallor to his cheeks, a slight +unsteadiness of his fingers. + +Dickie held a position of minor importance in the hotel, and his pale, +innocent face was almost as familiar to its patrons as to those of the +saloon next door--more familiar to both than it was to Hudson's +"residence." Sometimes for weeks Dickie did not strain the scant welcome +of his "folks." To-night, however, he was resolved to tempt it. After +listening to the record, he strolled over to the saloon. + +Dickie was curious. He shared Millings's interest in the "young lady from +Noo York." Shyness fought with a sense of adventure, until to-night, a +night fully ten nights after Sheila's arrival, the courage he imbibed at +the bar of The Aura gave him the necessary impetus. He pulled himself up +from his elbow, removed his foot from the rail, straightened his spotted +tie, and pushed through the swinging doors out into the night. + +It was a moonlit night, as still and pure as an angel of annunciation--a +night that carried tall, silver lilies in its hands. Above the small, +sleepy town were lifted the circling rim of mountains and the web of +blazing stars. Sylvester's son, after a few crunching steps along the icy +pavement, stopped with his hand against the wall, and stood, not quite +steadily, his face lifted. The whiteness sank through his tainted body +and brain to the undefiled child-soul. The stars blazed awfully for +Dickie, and the mountains were awfully white and high, and the air +shattered against his spirit like a crystal sword. He stood for an +instant as though on a single point of solid earth and looked giddily +beyond earthly barriers. + +His lips began to move. He was trying to put that mystery, that +emotion, into words ... "It's white," he murmured, "and +sharp--burning--like--like"--his fancy fumbled--"like the inside of a +cold flame." He shook his head. That did not describe the marvelous +quality of the night. And yet--if the world had gone up to heaven in a +single, streaming point of icy fire and a fellow stood in it, frozen, +swept up out of a fellow's body.... Again he shook his head and his eyes +were possessed by the wistful, apologetic smile. He wished he were not +tormented by this queer need of describing his sensations. He remembered +very vividly one of the many occasions when it had roused his father's +anger. Dickie, standing with his hand against the cold bricks of The +Aura, smiled with his lips, not happily, but with a certain amusement, +thinking of how Sylvester's hand had cracked against his cheek and sent +all his thoughts flying like broken china. He had been apologizing for +his slowness over an errand--something about leaves, it had been--the +leaves of those aspens in the yard--he had told his father that they had +been little green flames--he had stopped to look at them. + +"You damn fool!" Sylvester had said as he struck. + +"You damn fool!" Once, when a stranger asked five-year-old Dickie his +name, he had answered innocently "Dickie-damn-fool!" + +"They'll probably put it on my tombstone," Dickie concluded, and, stung +by the cold, he shrank into his coat and stumbled round the corner of the +street. The reek of spirits trailed behind him through the purity like a +soiled rag. + +Number 18 Cottonwood Avenue was brilliantly lighted. Girlie was playing +the piano, Babe's voice, "sassing Poppa," was audible from one end to the +other of the empty street. Her laughter slapped the air. Dickie +hesitated. He was afraid of them all--of Sylvester's pensive, small, +brown eyes and hard, long hands, of Babe's bodily vigor, of Girlie's mild +contemptuous look, of his mother's gloomy, furtive tenderness. Dickie +felt a sort of aching and compassionate dread of the rough, awkward +caress of her big red hand against his cheek. As he hesitated, the door +opened--a blaze of light, yellow as old gold, streamed into the blue +brilliance of the moon. It was blotted out and a figure came quickly down +the steps. It had an air of hurry and escape. A small, slim figure, it +came along the path and through the gate; then, after just an instant of +hesitation, it turned away from Dickie and sped up the wide street. + +Dickie named it at once. "That's the girl," he said; and possessed by +his curiosity and by the sense of adventure which whiskey had fortified, +he began to walk rapidly in the same direction. Out there, where the +short street ended, began the steep side of a mesa. The snow on the road +that was graded along its front was packed by the runners of freighting +sleighs, but it was rough. He could not believe the girl meant to go for +a walk alone. And yet, would she be out visiting already, she, a +stranger? At the end of the street the small, determined figure did not +stop; it went on, a little more slowly, but as decidedly as ever, up the +slope. On the hard, frozen crust, her feet made hardly a sound. Above the +level top of the white hill, the peak that looked remote from Hudson's +yard became immediate. It seemed to peer--to lean forward, bright as a +silver helmet against the purple sky. Dickie could see that "the girl" +walked with her head tilted back as though she were looking at the sky. +Perhaps it was the sheer beauty of the winter night that had brought her +out. Following slowly up the hill, he felt a sense of nearness, of +warmth; his aching, lifelong loneliness was remotely comforted because a +girl, skimming ahead of him, had tilted her chin up so that she could see +the stars. She reached the top of the mesa several minutes before he did +and disappeared. She was now, he knew, on the edge of a great plateau, in +summer covered with the greenish silver of sagebrush, now an unbroken, +glittering expanse. He stood still to get his breath and listen to the +very light crunch of her steps. He could hear a coyote wailing off there +in the foothills, and the rushing noise of the small mountain river that +hurled itself down upon Millings, ran through it at frenzied speed, and +made for the canon on the other side of the valley. Below him Millings +twinkled with a few sparse lights, and he could, even from here, +distinguish the clatter of Babe's voice. But when he came to the top, +Millings dropped away from the reach of his senses. Here was dazzling +space, the amazing presence of the mountains, the pressure of the starry +sky. Far off already across the flat, that small, dark figure moved. She +had left the road, which ran parallel with the mountain range, and was +walking over the hard, sparkling crust. It supported her weight, but +Dickie was not sure that it would do the same for his. He tried it +carefully. It held, and he followed the faint track of small feet. It did +not occur to him, dazed as he was by the fumes of whiskey and the heady +air, that the sight of a man in swift pursuit of her loneliness might +frighten Sheila. For some reason he imagined that she would know that he +was Sylvester's son, and that he was possessed only by the most sociable +and protective impulses. + +He was, besides, possessed by a fateful feeling that it was intended that +out here in the brilliant night he should meet her and talk to her. The +adventurous heart of Dickie was aflame. + +When the hurrying figure stopped and turned quickly, he did not +pause, but rather hastened his steps. He saw her lift her muff up to +her heart, saw her waver, then move resolutely toward him. She came +thus two or three steps, when a treacherous pitfall in the snow opened +under her frightened feet and she went down almost shoulder deep. +Dickie ran forward. + +Bending over her, he saw her white, heart-shaped face, and its red mouth +as startling as a June rose out here in the snow. And he saw, too, the +panic of her shining eyes. + +"Miss Arundel"--his voice came thin and tender, feeling its way +doubtfully as though it was too heavy a reality--"let me help you. You +_are_ Miss Arundel, aren't you? I'm Dickie--Dickie Hudson, Pap Hudson's +son. You hadn't ought to be scared. I saw you coming out alone and took +after you. I thought you might find it kind of lonesome up here on the +flat at night in all the moonlight--hearing the coyotes and all. And, +look-a-here, you might have had a time getting out of the snow. Oncet a +fellow breaks through it sure means a floundering time before a fellow +pulls himself out--" + +She had given him a hand, and he had pulled her up beside him. Her smile +of relief seemed very beautiful to Dickie. + +"I came out," she said, "because it looked so wonderful--and I wanted +to see--" She stopped, looking at him doubtfully, as though she +expected him not to understand, to think her rather mad. But he +finished her sentence. + +"--To see the mountains, wasn't it?" + +"Yes." She was again relieved, almost as much so, it seemed, as at the +knowledge of his friendliness. "Especially that big one." She waved her +muff toward the towering peak. "I never did see such a night! It's +like--it's like--" She widened her eyes, as though, by taking into her +brain an immense picture of the night, she might find out its likeness. + +Dickie, moving uncertainly beside her, murmured, "Like the inside of a +cold flame, a very white flame." + +Sheila turned her chin, pointed above the fur collar of her coat, and +included him in the searching and astonished wideness of her look. + +"You work at The Aura, don't you?" she asked with childlike _brusquerie_. + +Dickie's sensitive, undecided mouth settled into mournfulness. He +looked away. + +"Yes, ma'am," he said plaintively. + +Sheila's widened eyes, still fixed upon him, began to embarrass him. A +flush came up into his face. + +She moved her look across him and away to the range. + +"It _is_ like that," she said--"like a cold flame, going up--how did you +think of that?" + +Dickie looked quickly, gratefully at her. "I kind of felt," he said +lamely, "that I had got to find out what it was like. But"--he shook his +head with his deprecatory smile--"but that don't tell it, Miss Arundel. +It's more than that." He smiled again. "I bet you, you could think of +somethin' better to say about it, couldn't you?" + +Sheila laughed. "What a funny boy you are! Not like the others. You don't +even look like them. How old are you? When I first saw you I thought you +were quite grown up. But you can't be much more than nineteen." + +"Just that," he said, "but I'll be twenty next month." + +"You've always lived here in Millings?" + +"Yes, ma'am. Do you like it? I mean, do you like Millings? I hope you +do." + +Sheila pressed her muff against her mouth and looked at him over it. Her +eyes were shining as though the moonlight had got into their misty +grayness. She shook her head; then, as his face fell, she began to +apologize. + +"Your father has been so awfully kind to me. I am so grateful. And the +girls are awfully good to me. But, Millings, you know?--I wouldn't +have told you," she said half-angrily, "if I hadn't been so sure you +hated it." + +They had come to the edge of the mesa, and there below shone the small, +scattered lights of the town. The graphophone was playing in the saloon. +Its music--some raucous, comic song--insulted the night. + +"Why, no," said Dickie, "I don't hate Millings. I never thought about it +that way. It's not such a bad place. Honest, it isn't. There's lots of +fine folks in it. Have you met Jim Greely?" + +"Why, no, but I've seen him. Isn't that Girlie's--'fellow'?" + +Dickie made round, respectful eyes. He was evidently very much impressed. + +"Say!" he ejaculated. "Is that the truth? Girlie's aiming kind of high." + +It was not easy to walk side by side on the rutted snow of the road. +Sheila here slipped ahead of him and went on quickly along the middle rut +where the horses' hoofs had beaten a pitted path. + +She looked back at him over her shoulder with a sort of malice. + +"Is it aiming high?" she said. "Girlie is much more beautiful than +Jim Greely." + +"Oh, but he's some looker--Jim." + +"Do you think so?" she said indifferently, with a dainty touch of scorn. + +Dickie staggered physically from the shock of her speech. She had been +speaking--was it possible?--of Jim Greely.... + +"I mean Mr. James Greely, the son of the president of the Millings +National Bank," he said painstakingly, and a queer confusion came to him +that the words were his feet and that neither were under his control. +Also, he was not sure that he had said "Natural," or "National." + +"I do mean Mr. James Greely," Sheila's clear voice came back to him. "He +is, I should think, a very great hero of yours." + +"Yes, ma'am," said Dickie. + +Astonished at the abject humility of his tone, Sheila stopped and turned +quite around to look at him. He seemed to be floundering in and out of +invisible holes in the snow. He stepped very high, plunged, put out his +hand, and righted himself by her shoulder. And he stayed there, lurched +against her for a moment. She shook him off and began to run down the +hill. His breath had struck her face. She knew that he was drunk. + +Dickie followed her as fast as he could. Several times he fell, but, on +the whole, he made fairly rapid progress, so that, by the time she dashed +into the Hudsons' gate, he was only a few steps behind her and caught the +gate before it shut. Sheila fled up the steps and beat at the door with +her fist. Dickie was just behind her. + +Sylvester himself opened the door. Back of him pressed Babe. + +"Why, say," she said, "it's Sheila and she's got a beau already. You're +some girl--" + +"Please let me in," begged Sheila; "I--I am frightened. It's your +brother, Dickie--but I think--there's something wrong--" + +Sylvester put his hand on her and pushed her to one side. + +He strode out on the small porch. Dickie wavered before him on +the top step. + +"I thought I'd make the ac-acquaintance of the young lady," he began +doubtfully. "I saw her admiring at the stars and I--" + +"Oh, you did!" snarled Hudson. "All right. Now go and make acquaintance +with the bottom step." He thrust a long, hard hand at Dickie's chest, and +the boy fell backward, clattering ruefully down the steps with a rattle +of thin knees and elbows. At the bottom he lay for a minute, painfully +huddled in the snow. + +"Go in, Miss Sheila," said Sylvester. "I'm sorry my son came home +to-night and frightened you. He usually has more sense. He'll have more +sense next time." + +He ran down the steps, but before he could reach the huddled figure it +gathered itself fearfully together and fled, limping and staggering +across the yard, through the gate and around the corner of the street. + +Hudson came up, breathing hard. + +"Where's Sheila?" he asked sharply. + +"She ran upstairs," said Babe. "Ain't it a shame? What got into Dick?" + +"Something that will get kicked out of him good and proper to-morrow," +said his father grimly. + +He stood at the bottom of the steep, narrow stairs, looking up, his hands +thrust into his pockets, his under lip stuck out. His eyes were unusually +gentle and pensive. + +"I wouldn't 'a' had her scared that way for anything," he said, "not for +anything. That's likely to spoil all my plans." + +He swore under his breath, wheeled about, and going into the parlor he +shut the door and began walking to and fro. Babe crept rather quietly up +the stairs. There were times when even Babe was afraid of "Poppa." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +INTERCESSION + + +Babe tiptoed up the first flight, walked solidly and boldly up the +second, and ran up the third. She had decided to have a talk with Sheila, +to soothe her indignation, and, if possible, to explain Dickie. It seemed +to Babe that Dickie needed explanation. + +Sheila's room was at the top of the house--the very room, in fact, whose +door opened on the bird cage of a balcony between two cupolas. Babe came +to the door and knocked. A voice answered sharply: "Come in," and Babe, +entering, shut the door and leaned against it. + +It was a small, bare, whitewashed room, with a narrow cot, a washstand, +a bureau, and two extraordinary chairs--a huge one that rocked on +damaged springs, enclosed in plaited leather like the case of an +accordion, and one that had been a rocker, but stood unevenly on its +diminished legs. Babe had protested against Momma's disposal of the +"girl from Noo York," and had begged that Sheila be allowed to share her +own red, white, and blue boudoir below. But Sheila had preferred her +small room. It was red as a rose at sunset, still and high, remote from +Millings, and it faced The Hill. + +Now, the gaslight flared against the bare walls and ceiling. Sheila's +hat and coat and muff lay on the bed where she had thrown them. She +stood, looking at Babe. Her face was flushed, her eyes gleamed, that +slight exaggeration of her chin was more pronounced than usual. + +Babe put her head on one side. "Oh, say, Sheila, why bother about Dickie. +Nobody cares about Dickie. He'll get a proper bawlin'-out from Poppa +to-morrow. But I'd think myself simple to be scared by him. He's +harmless. The poor kid can't half help himself now. He got started when +he was awful young." + +"Oh," said Sheila, as sharply as before, stopping before Babe, "I'm not +frightened. I'm angry--angry at myself. I _like_ Dickie. I like him!" + +Babe's lips fell apart. She sat down in the accordion-plaited chair and +rocked. A squealing, shaking noise accompanied the motion. Her fingers +sought and found against the chair-back a piece of chewing-gum which she +had stuck there during her last visit to Sheila. Babe hid and resurrected +chewing-gum as instinctively as a dog hides and resurrects his bones. + +"I can _see_ you likin' Dickie," she remarked ironically. + +"But I do, I tell you! He was sweet. He didn't say a word or do a thing +to frighten me--" + +"But he was full, Shee, you know he was." + +"Yes. He'd been drinking. I smelt it. And he didn't walk very straight, +and he was a little mixed in his speech. But, all the same, he was as +good as gold. And friendly and nice. I might have walked home quietly +with him and sent him away at the door. And he wouldn't have been seen by +his father." Sheila's eyes filled. "It was dreadful--to--to knock him +down the steps!" + +"Say, if you'd had as much to put up with from Dickie as Poppa's had--" + +"Oh," said Sheila in a tone that welled up as from under a weight, "if I +had always lived in Millings, I'd drink myself!" + +Babe looked red and resentful, but Sheila's voice rushed on. + +"That saloon is the only interesting and attractive place in town. The +only thrilling people that ever come here go in through those doors. I've +seen some wonderful-looking men. I'd like to paint them. I've made some +drawings of them--men from over there back of the mountains." + +"You mean the cowboys from over The Hill, I guess," drawled Babe +contemptuously. "Those sagebrush fellows from Hidden Creek. I don't think +a whole lot of them. Put one of them alongside of one of our town boys! +Why, they don't speak good, Sheila, and they're rough as a hill trail. +You'd be scared to death of them if you knew them better." + +"They look like real men to me," said Sheila. "And I never did +like towns." + +"But you're a town girl." + +"I am not. I've been in cities and I've been in the country. I've never +lived in a town." + +"Well, there'll be a dance one of these days next summer in the Town +Hall, and maybe you'll meet some of those rough-necks. You'll change your +mind about them. Why, I'd sooner dance with a sheep-herder from beyond +the bad-lands, or with one of the hands from the oil-fields, than with +those Hidden Creek fellows. Horse-thieves and hold-ups and Lord knows +what-all they are. No account runaways. Nothing solid or respectable +about them. Take a boy like Robert, now, or Jim--" + +Sheila put her hands to her ears. Her face, between the hands, looked +rather wicked in a sprite-like fashion. + +"Don't mention to me Mr. James Greely of the Millings National Bank!" + +Babe rose pompously. "I think you're kind of off your bat to-night, +Sheila Arundel," she said, chewing noisily. "First you run out at night +with the mercury at 4 below and come dashing back scared to death, +banging at the door, and then you tell me you like Dickie and ask me not +to mention the finest fellow in Millings!" + +"The finest fellow in the finest city in the world!" cried Sheila and +laughed. Her laugh was like a torrent of silver coins, but it had the +right maliceful ring of a brownie's "Ho! Ho! Ho!" + +Babe stopped in the doorway and spoke heavily. + +"You're short on sense, Sheila," she said. "You're kind of dippy ... +going out to look at the stars and drawing pictures of that Hidden Creek +trash. But you'll learn better, maybe." + +"Wait a minute, Babe!" Sheila was sober again and not unpenitent. "I'm +coming down with you. I want to tell your father that Dickie was sweet to +me. I don't want him to--to--what was it he was going to do to-morrow?" + +"Bawl Dickie out." + +"Yes. I don't want him to do that. It sounds awful." + +"Well, it is. But it won't hurt Dickie any. He's used to it." + +Babe, forgiving and demonstrative, here forgot the insult to Millings and +Jim Greely, put her arm round Sheila, and went down the stairs, squeezing +the smaller girl against the wall. + +"I guess I won't go with you to see Poppa," she said, stopping at the top +of the last flight. "Poppa's kind of a rough talker sometimes." + +Sheila looked rather alarmed. "You mean you think he--he will bawl me +out?" + +"I wouldn't wonder." Babe smiled, showing a lump of putty-colored +chewing-gum between her flashing teeth. + +Sheila stood halfway down the stairs. She had not yet quite admitted to +herself that she was afraid of Sylvester Hudson and now she did admit it. +But with a forlorn memory of Dickie, she braced herself and went slowly +down the six remaining steps. The parlor door was shut and back of it to +and fro prowled Sylvester. Sheila opened the door. + +Hudson's face, ready with a scowl, changed. He came quickly toward her. + +"Well, say, Miss Sheila, I am sure-ly sorry--" + +Sheila shook her head. "Not half so sorry as I am, Mr. Hudson. I came +down to apologize." + +He pulled out a chair and Sheila sat down. Sylvester placed himself +opposite to her and lighted a huge black cigar, watching her meanwhile +curiously, even anxiously. His face was as quiet and sallow and gentle as +usual. Sheila's fear subsided. + +"_You_ came down to apologize?" repeated Hudson. "Well, ma'am, that +sounds kind of upside down to me." + +"I behaved like a goose. Your son hadn't done or said anything to +frighten me. He was sweet. I like him so much. He was coming home and saw +me walking off alone, and he thought that I might be lonely or frightened +or fall into the snow--which I did"--Sheila smiled coaxingly; "I went +down up to my neck and Dickie pulled me out and was--lovely to me. It +wasn't till I was halfway down the hill that I--that it came to me, all +of a sudden, that--perhaps--he'd been drinking--" + +"Perhaps," said Sylvester dryly. "It's never perhaps with Dickie." + +Sheila's eyes filled. For a seventeen-year-old girl the situation was +difficult. It was not easy to discuss Dickie's habit with his father. + +"I am so--sorry," she faltered. "I behaved absurdly. Just because I saw +that he wasn't quite himself I ran away from him and made a scene. Truly, +Mr. Hudson, he had not said or done anything the least bit horrid. He'd +been sensible and nice and friendly--Oh, dear!" For she saw before her a +relentless and incredulous face. "You won't believe me now, I suppose!" + +"I can't altogether, Miss Sheila, for I reckon you wouldn't have run away +from a true-blue, friendly fellow, would you?" + +"Yes, Mr. Hudson, I would. Because, you see, I did. It was just a sort of +panic. Too much moonshine." + +"Yes, ma'am. Too much moonshine inside of Dickie. I hope"--he leaned +toward her, and Sheila, the child, could not help but be flattered by his +deference--"I hope you're not thinking that Dickie's unfortunate habit is +my fault. I'm his father and I own that saloon. But, all the same, it's +not my fault nor The Aura's fault either. I never did spoil Dickie. And +I'm a sober man myself. He's just naturally ornery, no account. He always +was. I believe he's kind of lacking in the upper story." + +"Oh, _no_, Mr. Hudson!" + +The protest was so emphatic that Sylvester pulled his cigar out of his +mouth, brushed away the smoke, and looked searchingly at Sheila. She was +sitting very straight. Against the crimson plush of an enormous +chair-back her small figure looked extravagantly delicate and her little +pointed fingers on the arms, startlingly white and fine. A color flamed +in her cheeks, her eyes and lips were possessed by the remorseful +earnestness of her appeal. + +"Well, say, if _you_ think not!" Sylvester narrowed his eyes and thrust +the cigar back into a hole made by his mouth for its reception; "you're +the first person that hasn't kind of agreed with me on that point. I +can't see why he took to the whiskey, anyway. Moderation's my motto and +always was. It's the motto of The Aura. There ain't a bar east nor west +of the Rockies, Miss Sheila, believe _me_, that has the reputation for +decency and moderation that my Aura has. She's classy, she's +stylish--well, sir--she's exquisite"--he pronounced it ex-_squis_it--"I +don't mind sayin' so. She's a saloon in a million. And she's famous. You +can hear talk of The Aura in the best clubs, the most se-lect bars of +Chicago and Noo York and San Francisco. She's mighty near perfect. Well, +say, there was an Englishman in there one night two summers ago. He was +some Englishman, too, an earl, that was him. Been all over the world, +east, west, and in between. Had a glass in his eye--one of those fellers. +Do you know what he told me, Miss Sheila? Can you guess?" + +"That The Aura was classy?" suggested Sheila bravely. + +"More'n that," Sylvester leaned farther toward her and emphasized his +words with the long forefinger. + +"'It's all but perfect'--that's what he said--'it only needs one thing to +make it quite perfect!'" + +"What was the thing?" + +But Hudson did not heed her question. "Believe me or not, Miss Sheila, +that saloon--" + +"But I do believe you," said Sheila with her enchanting smile. "And +that's just the trouble with Dickie, isn't it? Your saloon is--must +be--the most fascinating place in Millings. Why, Mr. Hudson, ever since I +came here, I've been longing to go into it myself!" + +She got up after this speech and went to stand near the stove. Not that +she was cold--the small room, which looked even smaller on account of its +huge flaming furniture and the enormous roses on its carpet and +wall-paper, was as hot as a furnace--but because she was abashed by her +own speech and by his curious reception of it. The dark blood of his body +had risen to his face; he had opened his eyes wide upon her, had sunk +back again and begun to smoke with short, excited puffs. + +Sheila thought that he was shocked and she was very close to tears. She +blinked at the stove and moved her fingers uncertainly. "Nice girls," she +thought, "never want to go into saloons!" + +Then Sylvester spoke. "You're a girl in a million, Miss Sheila!" he +said. His voice was more cracked than usual. Sheila transferred her +blinking, almost tearful look from the stove to him. "You're a heap too +good for dish-washing," said Sylvester. + +For some reason the girl's heart began to beat unevenly. She had a +feeling of excitement and suspense. It was as if, after walking for many +hours through a wood where there was a lurking presence of danger, she +had heard a nearing step. She kept her eyes upon Sylvester. In his there +was that mysterious look of appraisal, of vision. He seemed nervous, +rolled his cigar and moved his feet. + +"Are you satisfied with your work, Miss Sheila?" + +Sheila assembled her courage. "I know you'll think me a beast, Mr. +Hudson, after all your kindness--and it isn't that I don't like the work. +But I've a feeling--no, it's more than a feeling!--I _know_ that your +wife doesn't need me. And I know she doesn't want me. She doesn't like to +have me here. I've been unhappy about that ever since I came. And it's +been getting worse. Yesterday she said she couldn't bear to have me +whistling round her kitchen. Mr. Hudson"--Sheila's voice broke +childishly--"I can't help whistling. It's a habit. I couldn't work at all +if I didn't whistle. I wouldn't have told you, but since you asked me--" + +Sylvester held up his long hand. Its emerald glittered. + +"That's all right," he said. "I wanted to learn the truth about it. +Perhaps you've noticed, Miss Sheila, that I'm not a very happy man at +home." + +"You mean--?" + +"I mean," said Sylvester heavily--"_Momma_." + +Sheila overcame a horrible inclination to laugh. + +"I'm so sorry," she said uncertainly. She was acutely embarrassed, but +did not know how to escape. And she _was_ sorry for him, for certainly it +seemed to her that a man married to Momma had just cause for unhappiness. + +"I ought to be ashamed of myself for bringing you here, Miss Sheila. You +see, that's me. I'm so all-fired soft-hearted that I just don't think. +I'm all feelings. My heart's stronger than my head, as the palmists say." +He rose and came over to Sheila; standing beside her and smiling so that +the wrinkle stood out sharply across his unwilling lip. "Did you ever go +to one of those fellows?" he asked. + +"Palmists?" + +"Yes, ma'am. Well, now, say, did they ever tell you that you were +going to be the pride and joy of old Pap Hudson? Give me your little +paw, girl!" + +Sheila's hand obeyed rather unwillingly her irresolute, polite will. +Hudson's came quickly to meet it, spread it out flat in his own long +palm, and examined the small rigid surface. + +"Well, now, Miss Sheila, I can read something there." + +"What can you read?" + +"You're goin' to be famous. You're goin' to make Millings famous. Girl, +you're goin' to be a picture that will live in the hearts of fellows and +keep 'em warm when they're herding winter nights. The thought of you is +goin' to keep 'em straight and pull 'em back here. You 're goin' to be +a--a sort of a beacon light." + +He was holding her slim hand with its small, crushable bones in an +excited grip. He was bending forward, not looking at the palm, but at +her. Sheila pulled back, wincing a little. + +"What do you mean, Mr. Hudson? How could I be all that?" + +Sylvester let her go. He began to pace the room. He stopped and looked at +her, almost wistfully. + +"You really think that I've been kind of nice to you?" he asked. + +"Indeed, you have!" + +"I'm not a happy man and I've got to be sort of distrustful. I haven't +got much faith in the thankfulness of people. I've got fooled too often." + +"Try me," said Sheila quickly. + +He looked at her with a long and searching look. Then he sighed. + +"Some day maybe I will. Run away to bed now." + +Sheila felt as if she had been pushed away from a half-opened door. +She drew herself up and walked across the huge flowers of the carpet. +But before going out she turned back. Sylvester quickly banished a +sly smile. + +"You won't be angry with Dickie?" she asked. + +"Not if it's going to deal you any misery, little girl." + +"You're _very_ kind to me." + +He put up his hand. "That's all right, Miss Sheila," he said. "That's all +right. It's a real pleasure and comfort to me to have you here and I'll +try to shape things so they'll suit you--and Momma too. Trust _me_. But +don't you ask me to put any faith in Dickie's upper story. I've climbed +up there too often. I'll give up my plan to go round there to-morrow +and--" He paused grimly. + +"And bawl him out?" suggested Sheila with one of her Puckish impulses. + +"Hump! I was going a little further than that. He would likely have done +the bawlin'. But don't you worry yourself about Dickie. He's safe for +this time--so long's you don't blame me, or--The Aura." + +His voice on the last word suffered from one of its cracks. It was as +though it had broken under a load of pride and tenderness. + +Sheila saw for a moment how it was with him. To every man his passion and +his dream: to Sylvester Hudson, his Aura. More than wife or child, he +loved his bar. It was a fetish, an idol. To Sheila's fancy Dickie +suddenly appeared the sacrifice. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE BAWLING-OUT + + +Dickie's room in The Aura Hotel was fitted in between the Men's Lavatory +and the Linen Room. It smelt of soiled linen and defective plumbing. +Also, into its single narrow window rose the dust of ashes, of old rags +and other refuse thrown light-heartedly into the back yard, which not +being visible from the street supplied the typical housewife of a +frontier town with that relaxation from any necessity to keep up an +appearance of economy and cleanliness so desirable to her liberty-loving +soul. The housekeeper at The Aura was not Mrs. Hudson, but an enormously +stout young woman with blonde hair, named Amelia Plecks. She was so +tightly laced and booted that her hard breathing and creaking were +audible all over the hotel. When Dickie woke in his narrow room after his +moonlight adventure, he heard this heavy breathing in the linen room and, +groaning, thrust his head under the pillow. With whatever bitterness his +kindly heart could entertain, he loathed Amelia. She took advantage of +the favor of Sylvester and of her own exalted position in the hotel to +taunt and to humiliate him. His plunge under the pillow did not escape +her notice. + +"Ain't you up yet, lazybones?" she cried, rapping on the wall. "You +won't get no breakfast. It's half-past seven. Who's at the desk to see +them Duluth folks off? Pap's not going to be pleased with you." + +"I don't want any breakfast," muttered Dickie. + +Amelia laughed. "No. I'll be bound you don't. Tongue like a kitten and a +head like a cracked stove!" + +She slapped down some clean sheets on a shelf and creaked toward the +hall, but stopped at the open door. Sylvester Hudson was coming down the +passage and she was in no mind to miss the "bawling-out" of Dickie which +this visit must portend. She shut the linen-room door softly, therefore, +and controlled her breathing. + +But Dickie knew that she was there and, when his father rapped, he knew +why she was there. + +He tumbled wretchedly from his bed, swore at his injured ankle, hopped to +the door, unlocked it, and hopped back with panic swiftness before his +father's entrance. He sat in his crumpled pajamas amidst his crumpled, +dingy bedclothes, his hair scattered over his forehead, his large, heavy +eyes fixed anxiously upon Sylvester. + +"Say, Poppa--" he began. + +Then "Pap's" voice cracked out at him. + +"You hold your tongue," snapped Sylvester, "or you'll get what's comin' +to you!" He jerked Dickie's single chair from against the wall, threw the +clothing from it, and sat down, crossing his legs, and holding up at his +son the long finger that had frightened Sheila. Dickie blinked at it. + +"You know what I was plannin' to do to you after last night? I meant to +come round here and pull you out of your covers and onto the floor +there"--he pointed to a spot on the boards to which Dickie fearfully +directed his own eyes--"and kick the stuffin' out of you." Dickie +contemplated the long, pointed russet shoes of his parent and shuddered +visibly. Nevertheless in the slow look he lifted from the boot to his +father's face, there was a faint gleam of irony. + +"What made you change your mind?" he asked impersonally. + +It was this curious detachment of Dickie's, this imperturbability, that +most infuriated Hudson. He flushed. + +"Just a little sass from you will bring me back to the idea," he +said sharply. + +Dickie lowered his eyes. + +"What made me change was--Miss Arundel's kindness. She came and begged +you off. She said you hadn't done anything or said anything to frighten +her, that you'd been"--Sylvester drawled out the two words in the +sing-song of Western mockery--"'sweet and love-ly.'" + +Dickie's face was pink. He began to tie a knot in the corner of one of +his thin gray sheet-blankets. + +"I don't know how sweet and lovely you can be, Dickie, when you're lit +up, but I guess you were awful sweet. Anyway, if you didn't say anything +or do anything to scare her, you don't deserve a kickin'. But, just the +same, I've a mind to turn you out of Millings." + +This time, Dickie's look was not ironical. It was terrified. "Oh, Poppa, +say! I'll try not to do it again." + +"I never heard that before, did I?" sneered Sylvester. "You put shame on +me and my bar. And I'm not goin' to stand it. If you want to get drunk +buy a bottle and come up here in your room. God damn you! You're a nice +son for the owner of The Aura!" + +He stood up and looked with frank disgust at the thin, huddled figure. +Under this look, Dickie grew slowly redder and his eyes watered. + +Sylvester lifted his upper lip. "Faugh!" he said. He walked over to the +door. "Get up and go down to your job and don't you bother Miss +Sheila--hear me? Keep away from her. She's not used to your sort and +you'll disgust her. She's here under my protection and I've got my plans +for her. I'm her guardian--that's what I am." Sylvester was pleased like +a man that has made a discovery. "Her guardian," he repeated as though +the word had a fine taste. + +Dickie watched him. There was no expression whatever in his face and his +lips stood vacantly apart. He might have been seven years old. + +"Keep away from her--hear me?" + +"Yes, sir," said Dickie meekly. + +After his father had gone out, Dickie sat for an instant with his head +on one side, listening intently. Then he got up, limped quietly and +quickly on his bare feet out into the hall, and locked the linen-room +door on the outside. + +"Amelia's clean forgot to lock it," he said aloud. "Ain't she careless, +though, this morning!" + +He went back. There was certainly a sound now behind the partition, a +sound of hard breathing that could no longer be controlled. + +"I'll hand the key over to Mary," soliloquized Dickie in the hollow and +unnatural voice of stage confidences. "She'll be goin' in for the towels +about noon." + +Then he fell on his bed and smothered a fit of chuckling. + +Suddenly the mirth died out of him. He lay still, conscious of a pain in +his head and in his ankle and somewhere else--an indeterminate spot deep +in his being. He had been forbidden to see the girl who ran away out into +the night to look at the stars, the girl who had not laughed at his +attempt to describe the white ecstasy of the winter moon. He had +frightened her--disgusted her. He must have been more drunk than he +imagined. It _was_ disgusting--and so hopeless. Perhaps it would be +better to leave Millings. + +He sat up on the edge of his bed and let his hands hang limply down +between his knees. It seemed to him that his thoughts were like a wheel, +half-submerged in running water. The wheel went round rapidly, plunging +in and out of his consciousness. Hardly had he grasped the meaning of one +half when it went under and another blur of moving spokes emerged. +Something his father had said, for instance, now began to pass through +his mind.... "I've got my plans for her".... Dickie tried to stop the +turning wheel because this speech gave him a distinct feeling of anger +and alarm. By an effort of his will, he held it before his +contemplation.... What possible plans could Sylvester have for Sheila? +Did she understand his plans? Did she approve of them? She was so young +and small, with that sad, soft mouth and those shining, misty eyes. +Dickie, with almost a paternal air, shook his ruffled head. He shut his +eyes so that the long lashes stood out in little points. A vision of +those two faces--Sheila's so gleaming fair and open, Sylvester's so dark +and shut--stood there to be compared. Her guardian, indeed! + +Dickie dressed slowly and dragged himself down to the desk, where very +soberly and sadly he gave the key of the linen room to Mary. Then he sat +down, turned on the Victor, and lit a cigarette. The "Duluth folks" had +gone without any assistance from him. There was nothing to do. It +occurred to Dickie, all at once, that in Millings there was always +nothing to do. Nothing, that is, for him to do. Perhaps, after all, he +didn't like Millings. Perhaps that was what was wrong with him. + +The Victor was playing: + +"Here comes Tootsie, +Play a little music on the band. +Here comes Tootsie, +Tootsie, you are looking simply grand. +Play a little tune on the piccolo and flutes, +The man who wrote the rag wrote it especially for Toots. +Here comes Tootsie--play a little music on the band." + +On the last nasal note, the door of The Aura flew open and a resplendent +figure crossed the chocolate-colored varnish of the floor. Tootsie +herself was not more "simply grand." This was a young man, perhaps it +would be more descriptive to say _the_ young man that accompanies _the_ +young woman on the cover of the average American magazine. He had--a +nose, a chin, a beautiful mouth, large brown eyes, wavy chestnut hair, a +ruddy complexion, and, what is not always given to the young man on the +cover, a deep and generous dimple in the ruddiest part of his right +cheek. He was dressed in the latest suit produced by Schaffner and Marx; +he wore a tie of variegated silk which, like Browning's star, "dartled" +now red, now blue. The silk handkerchief, which protruded carefully from +his breast pocket, also "dartled." So did the socks. One felt that the +heart of this young man matched his tie and socks. It was resplendent +with the vanity and hopefulness and illusions of twenty-two years. + +The large, dingy, chocolate-colored lobby became suddenly a background to +Mr. James Greely, cashier of the Millings National Bank, and the only +child of its president. + +Upon the ruffled and rumpled Dickie he smiled pleasantly, made a curious +gesture with his hand--they both belonged to the Knights of Sagittarius +and the Fire Brigade--and came to lean upon the desk. + +"Holiday at the bank this morning," he said, "in honor of Dad's +wedding-anniversary. We're giving a dance to-night in the Hall. Want to +come, Dickie?" + +"No," said Dickie, "I hurt my ankle last night on the icy pavement. And +anyhow I can't dance. And I sort of find girls kind of tiresome." + +"That's too bad. I'm sure sorry for you, Hudson. Particularly as I came +here just for the purpose of handing you over the cutest little billy-doo +you ever saw." + +He drew out of his pocket an envelope and held it away from Dickie. + +"You're trying to job me, Jim,"--but Dickie had his head coaxingly on one +side and his face was pink. + +"I'll give it to you if you can guess the sender." + +"Babe?" + +"Wrong." + +"Girlie?" + +"Well, sir, it ain't Girlie's fist--not the fist she uses when she drops +_me_ billy-doos." + +Dickie's eyes fell. He turned aside in his chair and stopped the +grinding of the graphophone. He made no further guess. Jim, with his +dimple deepening, tossed the small paper into the air and caught it +again deftly. + +"It's from the young lady from Noo York who's helping Mrs. Hudson," he +said. "I guess she's kind of wishful for a beau. She's not much of a +looker Girlie tells me." + +"Haven't you met her yet, Jim?" Dickie's hands were in his pockets, but +his eyes followed the gyrations of the paper. + +"No. Ain't that a funny thing, too? Seems like I never get round to it. I +just saw her peeping at me one day through the parlor curtains while I +was saying sweet nothings to Girlie on the porch. I guess she was kind of +in-ter-ested. She's skinny and pale, Girlie says. Your mother hasn't got +any use for her. I bet you, it won't be long before she makes tracks back +to Noo York, Dickie. Girlie says she won't be lingering on here much +longer. Too much competition." + +Jim handed the note to Dickie, who had listened to this speech with his +seven-year-old expression. He made no comment, but silently unfolded +Sheila's note. + +The writing itself was like her, slender and fine and straight, a little +reckless, daintily desperate. That "I," now, on the white paper might be +Sheila skimming across the snow. + +"_My dear Dickie_--somehow I can't call you 'Mr. Hudson'--I am so +terribly sorry about the way I acted to you last night. I don't know +why I was so foolish. I have tried to explain to your father that you +did nothing and said nothing to frighten me, that you were very polite +and kind, but I am afraid he doesn't quite understand. I hope he won't +be very cross with you, because it was all my fault--no, not quite all, +because I think you oughtn't to have followed me. I'm sure you're sorry +that you did. But it was a great deal my fault, so I'm writing this to +tell you that I wasn't really frightened nor very angry. Just sorry and +disappointed. Because I thought you were so very nice. And not like +Millings. And you liked the mountains better than the town. I wanted--I +still want--you to be my friend. For I do need a friend here, +dreadfully. Will you come to see me some afternoon? I hope you didn't +hurt yourself when you slipped on those icy steps. + +"Sincerely SHEILA ARUNDEL" + +Dickie put the note into his pocket and looked unseeingly at Jim. Jim was +turning up the bottoms of his trousers preparing to go. + +"So you won't come to our dance?" he asked straightening himself, more +ruddy than ever. + +"Well, sir," said Dickie slowly and indifferently, "I wouldn't wonder +if I would." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +DISH-WASHING + + +On that night, while all Millings was preparing itself for the Greelys' +dance, while Dickie, bent close to his cracked mirror, was tying his +least crumpled tie with not too steady fingers, while Jim was applying to +his brown crest a pomade sent to him by a girl in Cheyenne, while Babe +was wondering anxiously whether green slippers could be considered a +match or a foil to a dress of turquoise blue, while Girlie touched her +cream-gold hair with cream-padded finger-tips, Sheila Arundel prowled +about her room with hot anger and cold fear in her heart. + +Nothing, perhaps, in all this mysterious world is so inscrutable a +mystery as the mind of early youth. It crawls, the beetle creature, in a +hard shell, hiding the dim, inner struggle of its growing wings, moving +numbly as if in a torpid dream. It has forgotten the lively grub stage of +childhood, and it cannot foresee the dragon-fly adventure just ahead. +This blind, dumb, numb, imprisoned thing, an irritation to the nerves of +every one who has to deal with it, suffers. First it suffers darkly and +dimly the pain growth, and then it suffers the sharp agony of a splitting +shell, the dazzling wounds of light, the torture of first moving its +feeble wings. It drags itself from its shell, it clings to its perch, it +finds itself born anew into the world. + +When Sheila had left the studio with Sylvester, she was not yet possessed +of wings. Now, the shell was cracking, the dragon-fly adventure about to +begin. To a changed world, changed stars--the heavens above and the earth +beneath were strange to her that night. + +It had begun, this first piercing contact of reality, rudely enough. Mrs. +Hudson had helped to split the protecting shell which had saved Sheila's +growing dreams. Perhaps "Momma" had her instructions, perhaps it was only +her own disposition left by her knowing husband to do his trick for him. +Sheila had not overstated the unhappiness that Mrs. Hudson's evident +dislike had caused her. In fact, she had greatly understated it. From the +first moment at the station, when the hard eyes had looked her over and +the harsh voice had asked about "the girl's trunk," Sheila's +sensitiveness had begun to suffer. It was not easy, even with Babe's +good-humored help, to go down into the kitchen and submit to Mrs. +Hudson's hectoring. "Momma" had all the insolence of the underdog. Of her +daughters, as of her husband, she was very much afraid. They all bullied +her, Babe with noisy, cheerful effrontery--"sass" Sylvester called +it--and Girlie with a soft, unyielding tyranny that had the smothering +pressure of a large silk pillow. Girlie was tall and serious and +beautiful, the proud possessor of what Millings called "a perfect form." +She was inexpressibly slow and untidy, vain and ignorant and +self-absorbed. At this time her whole being was centered upon the +attentions of Jim Greely, with whom she was "keeping company." With Jim +Greely in her mind, she had looked Sheila over, thin and weary Sheila in +her shabby black dress, and had decided that here no danger threatened. +Nevertheless she did not take chances. Sheila had been in Millings a +fortnight and had not met the admirable Jim. Her attempt that morning to +send the note to Dickie by Jim was exactly the action that led to the +painful splitting of her shell. + +She had seen from her window Sylvester's departure after breakfast. There +was something in his grim, angular figure, moving carefully over the icy +pavement in the direction of the hotel, that gave her a pang for Dickie. +She was sure that Hudson was going to be very disagreeable in spite of +her attempt to soften his anger. And she was sorry that Dickie, with his +odd, wistful, friendly face and his eyes so wide and youthful and +apologetic for their visions, should think that she was angry or +disgusted. She wrote her letter in a little glow of rescue, and was proud +of the tact of that reference to his "fall down the steps"--for she +reasoned that the self-esteem of any boy of nineteen must suffer +poignantly over the memory of being knocked down by his father before the +eyes of a strange girl. She wrote her note and ran down the stairs, then +stopped to wonder how she could get it promptly to Dickie. It was +intended as a poultice to be applied after the "bawling-out," and she +could not very well take it to him herself. She knew that he worked in +the hotel, and the hotel was just around the corner. All that was needed +was a messenger. + +She was standing, pink of cheek and vague of eye, fingering her apron +like a cottage child and nibbling at the corner of her envelope, the +light from a window on the stairs falling on the jewel-like polish of her +hair, when Girlie opened the door of the "parlor" and came out into the +hall. Girlie saw her and half-closed the door. Her lazy eyes, as +reflective and receptive and inexpressive as small meadow pools under a +summer sky, rested upon Sheila. In the parlor a pleasant baritone voice +was singing, + +"Treat me nice, Miss Mandy Jane, + Treat me nice. + Don't you know I'se not to blame, + Lovers all act just the same, + Treat me nice..." + +Girlie's fingers tightened on the doorknob. + +"What do you want, Sheila?" she asked, and into the slow, gentle tones of +her voice something had crept, something sinuous and subtle, something +that slid into the world with Lilith for the eternal torment of earth's +daughters. + +"I want to send this note to your brother," said Sheila with the +simplicity of the aristocrat. "Is that Mr. Greely? Is he going past +the hotel?" + +She took a step toward Jim, but Girlie held out her soft long hand. + +"Give it to me. I'll ask him." + +Sheila surrendered the note. + +"You'd better get back to the dishes," said Girlie over her shoulder. +"Momma's kind of rushed this morning. She's helping Babe with her party +dress. I wouldn't 'a' put in my time writing notes to Dickie to-day if +I'd 'a' been you. Sort of risky." + +She slid in through the jealous door and Sheila hurried along the hall to +the kitchen where there was an angry clash and clack of crockery. + +The kitchen was furnished almost entirely with blue-flowered oilcloth; +the tables were covered with it, the floor was covered with it, the +shelves were draped in it. Cold struck up through the shining, clammy +surface underfoot so that while Sheila's face burned from the heat of the +stove her feet were icy. The back door was warped and let in a current of +frosty air over its sill, a draught that circled her ankles like cold +metal. On the table in the middle of the room, "Momma" had placed an +enormous tin dish-pan piled high with dirty dishes, over which she was +pouring the contents of the kettle. Steam rose in clouds, half-veiling +her big, fierce face which, seen through holes in the vapor, was like +that of a handsome, vulgar witch. + +Through the steam she shot at Sheila a cruel look. "Aren't you planning +to do any work to-day, Sheila?" she asked in her voice of harsh, +monotonous accents. "Here it's nine o'clock and I ain't been able to do a +stroke to Babe's dress. I dunno what you was designed for in this +house--an ornament on the parlor mantel, I guess." + +Sheila's heart suffered one of the terrible swift enlargements of angry +youth. It seemed to fill her chest and stop her breath, forcing water +into her eyes. She could not speak, went quickly up and took the kettle +from "Momma's" red hand. + +The table at which dish-washing was done, was inconveniently high. When +the big dishpan with its piled dishes topped it, Sheila's arms and back +were strained over her work. She usually pulled up a box on which she +stood, but now she went to work blindly, her teeth clenched, her flexible +red lips set close to cover them. The Celtic fire of her Irish blood gave +her eyes a sort of phosphorescent glitter. "Momma" looked at her. + +"Don't show temper!" she said. "What were you doin'? Upstairs work?" + +"I was writing a letter," said Sheila in a low voice, beginning to wash +the plates and shrinking at the pain of scalding water. + +"Hmp! Writing letters at this hour! One of your friends back East? I +thought it was about time somebody was looking you up. What do your +acquaintance think of you comin' West with Sylly?" + +Now that she was at liberty to put a "stroke" of work; on Babe's dress, +"Momma" seemed in no particular hurry to do so. She stood in the middle +of the kitchen wrapping her great bony arms in her checked apron and +staring at Sheila. Her eyes were like Girlie's turned to stone, as blank +and blind as living eyes can be. + +Sheila did not answer. She was white and her hands shook. + +"Hmp!" said "Momma" again. "We aren't goin' to talk about our +acquaintance, are we? Well, some folks' acquaintance don't bear talkin' +about; they're either too fine or they ain't the kind that gets into +decent conversation." She walked away. + +Sheila did her work, holding her anger and her misery away from her, +refusing to look at them, to analyze their cause. It was a very busy day. +The help Babe usually gave, and "Momma's" more effectual assistance, were +not to be had. Sheila cleaned up the kitchen, swept the dining-room, set +the table and cooked the supper. Her exquisite French omelette and savory +baked tomatoes were reviled. The West knows no cooking but its own, and, +like all victims of uneducated taste, it prefers the familiar bad to the +unfamiliar good. + +"You've spoiled a whole can of tomatoes," said Babe. + +Sylvester laughed good-humoredly: "Oh, well, Miss Sheila, you'll learn!" +This, to Sheila, whose omelette had been taught her by Mimi Lolotte and +whose baked tomatoes, delicately flavored with onion, were something to +dream about. And she had toasted the bread golden brown and buttered it, +and she had made a delectable vegetable soup! She had never before been +asked to cook a meal at Number 18 Cottonwood Avenue and she was eager to +please Sylvester. His comment, "You'll learn," fairly took her breath. +She would not sit down with them at the table, but hurried back into the +kitchen, put her scorched cheek against some cold linoleum, and cried. + +By the time dinner was over and more dishes ready to be washed, the +cook's wounded pride was under control. Her few tears had left no +marks on her face. Babe, helping her, did not even know that there had +been a shower. + +Babe was excited; her chewing was more energetic even than usual. It +smacked audibly. + +"Say, Sheila, wot'll you wear to-night?" she yelled above the clatter. + +"Wear?" repeated Sheila. + +"To the dance, you silly! What did you think I meant--to bed?" + +Sheila's tired pallor deepened a little. "I am not going to the dance." + +"Not going?" Babe put down a plate. "What do you mean? Of course you're +going! You've gotta go. Say--Momma, Pap, Girlie"--she ran, at a sort of +sliding gallop across the oilcloth through the swinging door into the +dining-room--"will you listen to this? Sheila says she's not going to +the dance!" + +"Well," said "Momma" audibly, "she'd better. I'm agoin' to put out the +fires, and the house'll be about 12 below." + +Sylvester murmured, "Oh, we must change that." + +And Girlie said nothing. + +"Well," vociferated Babe. "I call it too mean for words. I've just set my +heart on her meeting some of the folks and getting to know Millings. +She's been here a whole two weeks and she hasn't met a single fellow but +Dickie, and he don't count, and she hasn't even got friendly with any of +the girls. And I wanted her to see one of our real swell affairs. +Why--just for the credit of Millings, she's gotta go." + +"Why fuss her about it, if she don't want to?" Girlie's soft voice was +poured like oil on the troubled billows of Babe's outburst. + +"I'll see to her," Sylvester's chair scraped the floor as he rose. "I +know how to manage girls. Trust Poppa!" + +He pushed through the door, followed by Babe. Sheila looked up at him +helplessly. She had her box under her feet, and so was not entirely +hidden by the dishpan. She drew up her head and faced him. + +"Mr. Hudson," she began--"please! I can't go to a dance. You know +I can't--" + +"Nonsense!" said Pap. "In the bright lexicon of youth there's no such +word as 'can't.' Say, girl, you can and you must. I won't have Babe +crying her eyes out and myself the most unpopular man in Millings. Say, +leave your dishes and go up and put on your best duds." + +"That's talking," commented Babe. + +In the dining-room "Momma" said, "Hmp!" and Girlie was silent. + +Sheila looked at her protector. "But, you see, Mr. Hudson, I--I--it was +only a month ago--" She made a gesture with her hands to show him her +black dress, and her lips trembled. + +Pap walked round to her and patted her shoulder. "I know," he said. "I +savvy. I get you, little girl. But, say, it won't do. You've got to begin +to live again and brighten up. You're only seventeen and that's no age +for mourning, no, nor moping. You must learn to forget, at least, that +is"--for he saw the horrified pain of her eyes--"that is, to be happy +again. Yes'm. Happiness--that's got to be your middle name. Now, Miss +Sheila, as a favor to me!" + +Sheila put up both her hands and pushed his from her shoulder. She ran +from him past Babe into the dining-room, where, as she would have sped +by, "Momma" caught her by the arm. + +"If you're not aimin' to please _him_," said "Momma" harshly, "wot are +you here for?" + +Sheila looked at her unseeingly, pulled herself away, and went upstairs +on wings. In her room the tumult, held down all through the ugly, +cluttered, drudging day, broke out and had its violent course. She flew +about the room or tossed on the bed, sobbing and whispering to herself. +Her wound bled freely for the first time since it had been given her by +death. She called to her father, and her heart writhed in the grim +talons of its loneliness. That was her first agony and then came the +lesser stings of "Momma's" insults, and at last, a fear. An +incomprehensible fear. She began to doubt the wisdom of her Western +venture. She began to be terrified at her situation. All about her lay a +frozen world, a wilderness, so many thousand miles from anything that +she and her father had ever known. And in her pocket there was no penny +for rescue or escape. Over her life brooded powerfully Sylvester Hudson, +with his sallow face and gentle, contemplative eyes. He had brought her +to his home. Surely that was an honorable and generous deed. He had +given her over to the care and protection of his wife and daughters. But +why didn't Mrs. Hudson like it? Why did she tighten her lips and pull +her nostrils when she looked at her helper? And what was the sinister, +inner meaning of those two speeches ... about the purpose of her being +in the house at all? "An ornament on the parlor mantel" ... "aiming to +please him...." Of the existence of a sinister, inner meaning, "Momma's" +voice and look left no doubt. + +Something was wrong. Something was hideously wrong. And to whom might she +go for help or for advice? As though to answer her question came a +foot-step on the stair. It was a slow, not very heavy step. It came to +her door and there followed a sharp but gentle rap. + +"Who is it?" asked Sheila. And suddenly she felt very weak. + +"It's Pap. Open your door, girl." + +She hesitated. Her head seemed to go round. Then she obeyed his +gentle request. + +Pap walked into the room. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +ARTISTS + + +Pap closed the door carefully behind him before he looked at Sheila. At +once his face changed to one of deep concern. + +"Why, girl! What's happened to you? You got no call to feel like that!" + +He went over to her and took her limp hand. She half turned away. He +patted the hand. + +"Why, girl! This isn't very pleasant for me. I aimed to make you happy +when I brought you out to Millings. I kind of wanted to work myself into +your Poppa's place, kind of meant to make it up to you some way. I aimed +to give you a home. 'Home, sweet home, there's no place like home'--that +was my motto. And here you are, all pale around the gills and tears all +over your face--and, say, there's a regular pool there on your pillow. +Now, now--" he clicked with his tongue. "You're a bad girl, a regular +bad, ungrateful girl, hanged if you aren't! You know what I'd do to you +if you were as young as you are little and foolish? Smack you--good and +plenty. But I'm not agoin' to do it, no, ma'am. Don't pull your hand +away. Smacking's not in my line. I never smacked my own children in their +lives, except Dickie. There was no other way with him. He was ornery. +You come and set down here in the big chair and I'll pull up the little +one and we'll talk things over. Put your trust in me, Miss Sheila. I'm +all heart. I wasn't called 'Pap' for nothing. You know what I am? I'm +your guardian. Yes'm. And you just got to make up your mind to cast your +care upon me, as the hymn says. Nary worry must you keep to yourself. +Come on now, kid, out with it. Get it off your chest." + +Sheila had let him put her into the big creaking leather chair. She sat +with a handkerchief clenched in both her hands, upon which he, drawing up +the other chair, now placed one of his. She kept her head down, for she +was ashamed of the pale, stained, and distorted little face which she +could not yet control. + +"Now, then, girl ... Well, if you won't talk to me, I'll just light up +and wait. I'm a patient man, I am. Don't hurry yourself any." + +He withdrew his hand and took out a cigar. In a moment he was sitting on +the middle of his spine, his long legs sprawled half across the room, his +hands in his pockets, his head on the chair-back so that his chin pointed +up to the ceiling. Smoke rose from him as from a volcano. + +Sheila presently laughed uncertainly. + +"That's better," he mumbled around his cigar. + +"I've had a dreadful day," said Sheila. + +"You won't have any more of them, my dear," Sylvester promised quietly. + +She looked at him with faint hope. + +"Yes'm, dish-washing's dead." + +"But what can I do, then?" + +Hudson nodded his head slowly, or, rather, he sawed the air up and down +with his chin. He was still looking at the ceiling so that Sheila could +see only the triangle beneath his jaw and the dark, stringy neck above +his collar. + +"I've got a job for you, girl--a real one." + +He pulled out his cigar and sat up. "You remember what I told you the +other night?" + +"About my being a--a--beacon?" Sheila's voice was delicately tinged with +mockery. So was her doubtful smile. + +"Yes'm," he said seriously. "Well, that's it." + +"What does a beacon do?" she asked. + +"It burns. It shines. It looks bright. It wears the neatest little black +dress with a frilly apron and deep frilly cuffs. Say, do you recollect +something else I told you?" + +"I remember everything you told me." + +"Well, ma'am, I remember everything you told _me_. Somebody said she +was grateful. Somebody said she'd do anything for Pap. Somebody +said--'Try me.'" + +"I meant it, Mr. Hudson. I did mean it." + +"Do you mean it now?" + +"Yes. I--I owe you so much. You're always so very kind to me. And I +behave very badly. I was hateful to you this evening. And, when you came +to my door, just now, I was--I was _scared_." + +Pap opened his eyes at her, held his cigar away from him and laughed. +The laugh was both bitter and amused. + +"Scared of Pap Hudson? _You_ scared? But, look-a-here, girl, what've I +done to deserve that?" + +He sat forward, rested his chin in his hand, supported by an elbow on his +crossed knees and fixed her with gentle and reproachful eyes. + +"Honest, you kind of make me feel bad, Miss Sheila." + +"I am dreadfully sorry. It was horrid of me. I only told you because I +wanted you to know that I'm not worth helping. I don't deserve you to be +so kind to me. I--I must be disgustingly suspicious." + +"Well!" Sylvester sighed. "Very few folks get me. I'm kind of +mis-understood. I'm a real lonesome sort of man. But, honest, Miss +Sheila, I thought you were my friend. I don't mind telling you, you've +hurt my feelings. That shot kind of got me. It's stuck into me." + +"I'm horrid!" Sheila's eyes were wounded with remorse. + +"Oh, well, I'm not expecting understanding any more." + +"Oh, but I do--I do understand!" she said eagerly and she put her hand +shyly on his arm. "I think I do understand you. I'm very grateful. I'm +very fond of you." + +"Ah!" said Sylvester softly. "That's a good hearing!" He lifted his arm +with Sheila's hand on it and touched it with his lips. "You got me plumb +stirred up," he said with a certain huskiness. "Well!" She took away her +hand and he made a great show of returning to common sense. "I reckon we +are a pretty good pair of friends, after all. But you mustn't be scared +of me, Miss Sheila. That does hurt. Let's forget you told me that." + +"Yes--please!" + +"Well, then--to get back to business. Do you recollect a story I +told you?" + +"A story? Oh, yes--about an Englishman--?" + +"Yes, ma'am. That Englishman put his foot on the rail and stuck his glass +in his eye and set his tumbler down empty. And he looked round that bar +of mine, Miss Sheila. You savvy, he'd been all over the globe, that +feller, and I should say his ex-perience of bars was--some--and he said, +'Hudson, it's all but perfect. It only needs one thing.'" + +This time Sheila did not ask. She waited. + +"'And that's something we have in our country,' said he." Hudson cleared +his throat. He also moistened his lips. He was very apparently excited. +He leaned even farther forward, tilting on the front legs of his chair +and thrusting his face close to Sheila's "'_A pretty barmaid_!' said he." + +There was a profound silence in the small room. The runners of a sleigh +scraped the icy street below, its horses' hoofs cracked noisily. The +music of a fiddle sounded in the distance. Babe's voice humming a waltz +tune rose from the second story. + +"A barmaid?" asked Sheila breathlessly. She got up from her chair and +walked over to the window. The moon was already high. Over there, +beckoning, stood her mountain and her star. It was all so shining and +pure and still. + +"That's what you want me to be--your barmaid?" + +"Yes'm," said Sylvester humbly. "Don't make up your mind in a hurry, Miss +Sheila. Wait till I tell you more about it. It's--it's a kind of dream of +mine. I think it'd come close to breaking me up if you turned down the +proposition. The Aura's not an ordin-ar-y bar and I'm not an ordin-ar-y +man, and, say, Miss Sheila, you're not an ordin-ar-y girl." + +"Is that why you want me to work in your saloon?" said Sheila, staring +at the star. + +"Yes'm. That's why. Let me tell you that I've searched this continent for +a girl to fit my ideal. That's what it is, girl--my ideal. That bar of +mine has got to be perfect. It's near to perfect now. I want when that +Englishman comes back to Millings to hear him say, 'It's perfect' ... no +'all but,' you notice. Why, miss, I could 'a' got a hundred ordin-ar-y +girls, lookers too. The world's full of lookers." + +"Why didn't you offer your--'job' to Babe or Girlie?" + +Sylvester laughed. "Well, girl, as a matter of fact, I did." + +"You did?" Sheila turned back and faced him. There was plenty of color +in her cheeks now. Her narrow eyes were widely opened. Astonishingly +large and clear they were, when she so opened them. + +"Yes'm." Sylvester glanced aside for an instant. + +"And what did they say?" + +"They balked," Sylvester admitted calmly. "They're fine girls, Miss +Sheila. And they're lookers. But they just aren't quite fine enough. +They're not artists, like your Poppa and like you--and like me." + +Sheila put a hand up to her cheek. Her eyes came back to their accustomed +narrowness and a look of doubt stole into her face. + +"Artists?" + +"Yes'm." Sylvester had begun to walk about. "Artists. Why, what's an +artist but a person with a dream he wants to make real? My dream's--The +Aura, girl. For three years now"--he half-shut his eyes and moved his arm +in front of him as though he were putting in the broad first lines of a +picture--"I've seen that girl there back of my bar--shining and _good_ +and fine--not the sort of a girl a man'd be lookin' for, mind you, just +_not_ that! A girl that would sort of take your breath. Say, picture it, +Sheila!" He stood by her and pointed it out as though he showed her a +view. "You're a cowboy. And you come ridin' in, bone-tired, dusty, with a +_thirst_. Well, sir, a thirst in your throat and a thirst in your heart +and a thirst in your soul. You're wantin' re-freshment. For your body +and your eyes and your mind. Well, ma'am, you tie your pony up there and +you push open those doors and you push 'em open and step plumb into +Paradise. It's cool in there--I'm picturin' a July evenin', Miss +Sheila--and it's quiet and it's shining clean. And there's a big man in +white who's servin' drinks--cold drinks with a grand smell. That's my man +Carthy. He keeps order. You bet you, he does keep it too. And beside him +stands a girl. Well, she's the kind of girl you--the cowboy--would 'a' +dreamed about, lyin' out in your blanket under the stars, if you'd 'a' +knowed enough to be able to dream about her. After you've set eyes on +her, you don't dream about any other kind of girl. And just seein' her +there so sweet and bright and dainty-like, makes a different fellow of +you. Say, goin' into that bar is like goin' into church and havin' a +jim-dandy time when you get there--which is something the churches +haven't got round to offerin' yet to my way of thinkin'. Now. I want to +ask you, Miss Sheila, if you've got red blood in your veins and a love of +adventure and a wish to see that real entertaining show we call +'life'--and mighty few females ever get a glimpse of it--and if you've +acquired a feeling of gratitude for Pap and if you've got any real +religion, or any ambition to play a part, if you're a real woman that +wants to be an in-spire-ation to men, well, ma'am, I ask you, could you +turn down a chance like that?" + +He stood away a pace and put his question with a lifted forefinger. + +Sheila's eyes were caught and held by his. Again her mind seemed to be +fastened to his will. And the blood ran quickly in her veins. Her heart +beat. She was excited, stirred. He had seen through her shell unerringly +as no one else in all her life had seen. He had mysteriously guessed that +she had the dangerous gift of adventure, that under the shyness and +uncertainty of inexperience there was no fear in her, that she was one of +those that would rather play with fire than warm herself before it. +Sheila stood there, discovered and betrayed. He had played upon her as +upon a flexible young reed: that stop, her ambition, this, her +romanticism, that, her vanity, the fourth, her gratitude, the fifth, her +idealism, the sixth, her recklessness. And there was this added urge--she +must stay here and drudge under the lash of "Momma's" tongue or she must +accept this strange, this unimaginable offer. Again she opened her eyes +wider and wider. The pupils swallowed up the misty gray. Her lips parted. + +"I'll do it," she said, narrowed her eyes and shut her mouth tight. With +such a look she might have thrown a fateful toss of dice. + +Sylvester caught her hands, pressed them up to his chest. + +"It's a promise, girl?" + +"Yes." + +"God bless you!" + +He let her go. He walked on air. He threw open the door. + +There on the threshold--stood "Momma." + +"I kind of see," she drawled, "why Sheila don't take no interest +in dancin'!" + +"You're wrong," said Sheila very clearly. "I have been persuaded. I am +going to the dance." + +Sylvester laughed aloud. "One for you, Momma!" he said. "Come on down, +old girl, while Miss Sheila gets into her party dress. Say, Aura, aren't +you goin' to give me a dance to-night?" + +His wife looked curiously at his red, excited face. She followed him in +silence down the stairs. + +Sheila stood still listening to their descending steps, then she knelt +down beside her little trunk and opened the lid. The sound of the fiddle +stole hauntingly, beseechingly, tauntingly into her consciousness. There +in the top tray of her trunk wrapped in tissue paper lay the only evening +frock she had, a filmy French dress of white tulle, a Christmas present +from her father, a breath-taking, intoxicating extravagance. She had worn +it only once. + +It was with the strangest feeling that she took it out. It seemed to her +that the Sheila that had worn that dress was dead. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +A SINGEING OF WINGS + + +All the vitality of Millings--and whatever its deficiencies the town +lacked nothing of the splendor and vigor of its youth--throbbed and +stamped and shook the walls of the Town Hall that night. To understand +that dance, it is necessary to remember that it took place on a February +night with the thermometer at zero and with the ground five feet beneath +the surface of the snow. There were men and women and children, too, who +had come on skis and in toboggans for twenty miles from distant ranches +to do honor to the wedding-anniversary of Greely and his wife. + +A room near the ballroom was reserved for babies, and here, early in the +evening, lay small bundles in helpless, more or less protesting, rows, +their needs attended to between waltzes and polkas by father or mother +according to the leisure of the parent and the nature of the need. One +infant, whose home discipline was not up to the requirements of this +event, refused to accommodate himself to loneliness and so spent the +evening being dandled, first by father, then by mother, in a chair +immediately beside the big drum. Whether the spot was chosen for the +purpose of smothering his cries or enlivening his spirits nobody cared +to inquire. Infants in the Millings and Hidden Creek communities, where +certified milk and scientific feeding were unknown, were treated rather +like family parasites to be attended to only when the irritation they +caused became acute. They were not taken very seriously. That they grew +up at all was largely due to their being turned out as soon as they could +walk into an air that buoyed the entire nervous and circulatory systems +almost above the need of any other stimulant. + +The dance began when the first guests arrived, which on this occasion was +at about six o'clock, and went on till the last guest left, at about ten +the next morning. In the meantime the Greelys' hospitality provided every +variety of refreshment. + +When Sheila reached the Town Hall, crowded between Sylvester and joyous +Babe in her turquoise blue on the front seat of the Ford, while the back +seat was occupied by Girlie in scarlet and "Momma" in purple velveteen, +the dance was well under way. The Hudsons came in upon the tumult of a +quadrille. The directions, chanted above the din, were not very exactly +heeded; there was as much confusion as there was mirth. Sheila, standing +near Girlie's elbow, felt the exhilaration which youth does feel at the +impact of explosive noise and motion, the stamping of feet, the shouting, +the loud laughter, the music, the bounding, prancing bodies: savagery in +a good humor, childhood again, but without the painful intensity of +childhood. Sheila wondered just as any _débutante_ in a city ballroom +wonders, whether she would have partners, whether she would have "a good +time." Color came into her face. She forgot everything except the +immediate prospect of flattery and rhythmic motion. + +Babe pounced upon a young man who was shouldering his way toward Girlie. + +"Say, Jim, meet Miss Arundel! Gee! I've been wanting you two to get +acquainted." + +Sheila held out her hand to Mr. James Greely, who took it with a +surprised and dazzled look. + +"Pleased to meet you," he murmured, and the dimple deepened in his ruddy +right cheek. + +He turned his blushing face to Girlie. "Gee! You look great!" he said. + +She was, in fact, very beautiful--a long, firm, round body, youthful and +strong, sheathed in a skin of cream and roses, lips that looked as though +they had been used for nothing but the tranquil eating of ripe fruit, +eyes of unfathomable serenity, and hair almost as soft and creamy as her +shoulders and her finger-tips. Her beauty was not marred to Jim Greely's +eyes by the fact that she was chewing gum. Amongst animals the only +social poise, the only true self-possession and absence of shyness is +shown by the cud-chewing cow. She is diverted from fear and soothed from +self-consciousness by having her nervous attention distracted. The +smoking man has this release, the knitting woman has it. Girlie and Babe +had it from the continual labor of their jaws. Every hope and longing and +ambition in Girlie's heart centered upon this young man now complimenting +her, but as he turned to her, she just stood there and looked up at him. +Her jaws kept on moving slightly. There was in her eyes the minimum of +human intelligence and the maximum of unconscious animal invitation--a +blank, defenseless expression of--"Here I am. Take me." As Jim Greely +expressed the look: "Girlie makes everything easy. She don't give a +fellow any discomfort like some of these skittish girls do. She's kind of +home folks at once." + +"We can't get into the quadrille now," said Jim, "but you'll give me the +next, won't you, Girlie?" + +"Sure, Jim," said the unsmiling, rosy mouth. + +Jim moved uneasily on his patent-leather feet. He shot a sidelong glance +at Sheila. + +"Say, Miss Arundel, may I have the next after ... Meet Mr. Gates," he +added spasmodically, as the hand of a gigantic friend crushed his elbow. + +Sheila looked up a yard or two of youth and accepted Mr. Gates's +invitation for "the next." + +The head at the top of the tower bent itself down to her with a +snakelike motion. + +"Us fellows," it said, "have been aiming to give you a good time +to-night." + +Sheila was relieved to find him within hearing. Her smile dawned +enchantingly. It had all the inevitability of some sweet natural event. + +"That's very good of--you fellows. I didn't know you knew that there was +such a person as--as me in Millings." + +"You bet you, we knew. Here goes the waltz. Do you want to Castle it? I +worked in a Yellowstone Park Hotel last summer, and I'm wise on dancing." + +Sheila found herself stretched ceilingwards. She must hold one arm +straight in the air, one elbow as high as she could make it go, and she +must dance on her very tip-toes. Like every girl whose life has taken her +in and out of Continental hotels, she could dance, and she had the gift +of intuitive rhythm and of yielding to her partner's intentions almost +before they were muscularly expressed. Mr. Gates felt that he was dancing +with moonlight, only the figure of speech is not his own. + +Girlie in the arms of Jim spoke to him above her rigid chin. Girlie had +the haughty manner of dancing. + +"She's not much of a looker, is she, Jim?" But the pain in her heart gave +the speech an audible edge. + +"She's not much of anything," said Jim, who had not looked like the +young man on the magazine cover for several busy years in vain. "She's +just a scrap." + +But Girlie could not be deceived. Sheila's delicate, crystalline beauty +pierced her senses like the frosty beauty of a winter star: her dress of +white mist, her slender young arms, her long, slim, romantic throat, the +finish and polish of her, every detail done lovingly as if by a master's +silver-pointed pencil, her hair so artlessly simple and shining, smooth +and rippled under the lights, the strangeness of her face! Girlie told +herself again that it was an irregular face, that the chin was not right, +that the eyes were not well-opened and lacked color, that the nose was +odd, defying classification; she knew, in spite of the rigid ignorance of +her ideals, that these things mysteriously spelled enchantment. Sheila +was as much more beautiful than anything Millings had ever seen as her +white gown was more exquisite than anything Millings had ever worn. It +was a work of art, and Sheila was, also, in some strange sense, a work of +art, something shaped and fashioned through generations, something tinted +and polished and retouched by race, something mellowed and restrained, +something bred. Girlie did not know why the white tulle frock, absolutely +plain, shamed her elaborate red satin with its exaggerated lines. But she +did know. She did not know why Sheila's subtle beauty was greater than +her obvious own. But she did know. And so great and bewildering a fear +did this knowledge give her that, for an instant, it confused her wits. + +"She's going back East soon," she said sharply. + +"Is she?" Jim's question was indifferent, but from that instant his +attention wandered. + +When he took the small, crushable silken partner into his arms for "the +next after," a one-step, he was troubled by a sense of hurry, by that +desire to make the most of his opportunity that torments the reader of a +"best-seller" from the circulating library. + +"Say, Miss Arundel," he began, looking down at the smooth, jewel-bright +head, "you haven't given Millings a square deal." + +Sheila looked at him quizzically. + +"You see," went on Jim, "it's winter now." + +"Yes, Mr. Greely. It _is_ winter." + +"And that's not our best season. When summer comes, it's awfully pretty +and it's good fun. We have all sorts of larks--us fellows and the girls. +You'd like a motor ride, wouldn't you?" + +"Not especially, thank you," said Sheila, who really at times deserved +the Western condemnation of "ornery." "I don't like motors. In fact, I +hate motors." + +Jim swallowed a nervous lump. This girl was not "home folks." She made +him feel awkward and uncouth. He tried to remember that he was Mr. James +Greely, of the Millings National Bank, and, remembering at the same time +something that the girl from Cheyenne had said about his smile, he caught +Sheila's eye deliberately and made use of his dimple. + +"What do you like?" he asked. "If you tell me what you like, I--I'll see +that you get it." + +"You're very powerful, aren't you? You sound like a fairy godmother." + +"You look like a fairy. That's just what you do look like." + +"I like horses much better than motors," said Sheila. "I thought the West +would be full of adorable little ponies. I thought you'd ride like +wizards, bucking--you know." + +"Well, I can ride. But, I guess you've been going to the movies or the +Wild West shows. This town _must_ seem kind of dead after Noo York." + +"I hate the movies," said Sheila sweetly. + +"Say, it would be easy to get a pony for you as soon as the snow goes. I +sold my horse when Dad bought me my Ford." + +"Sold him? Sold your own special horse!" + +"Well, yes, Miss Arundel. Does that make you think awfully bad of me?" + +"Yes. It does. It makes me think _awfully_ 'bad' of you. If I had a +horse, I'd--I'd tie him to my bedpost at night and feed him on +rose-leaves and tie ribbons in his mane." + +Jim laughed, delighted at her childishness. It brought back something of +his own assurance. + +"I don't think Pap Hudson would quite stand for that, would he? Seems to +me as if--" + +But here his partner stopped short, turned against his arm, and her face +shone with a sudden friendly sweetness of surprise. "There's Dickie!" + +She left Jim, she slipped across the floor. Dickie limped toward her. His +face was white. + +"Dickie! I'm so glad you came. Somehow I didn't expect you to be here. +But you're lame! Then you can't dance. What a shame. After Mr. Greely and +I have finished this, could you sit one out with me?" + +"Yes'm," whispered Dickie. + +He was not as inexpressive as it might seem however. His face, a rather +startling face here in this crowded, boisterous room, a face that seemed +to have come in out of the night bringing with it a quality of eternal +childhood, of quaint, half-forgotten dreams--his face was very +expressive. So much so, that Sheila, embarrassed, went back almost +abruptly to Jim. Her smile was left to bewilder Dickie. He began to +describe it to himself. And this was the first time a woman had stirred +that mysterious trouble in his brain. + +"It's not like a smile at all," thought Dickie, the dancing crowd +invisible to him; "it's like something--it's--what is it? It's as if the +wind blew it into her face and blew it out again. It doesn't come from +anywhere, it doesn't seem to be going anywhere, at least not anywhere a +fellow knows ..." Here he was rudely joggled by a passing elbow and the +pain of his ankle brought a sharp "Damn!" out of him. He found a niche to +lean in, and he watched Sheila and Jim. He found himself not quite so +overwhelmed as usual by admiration of his friend. His mood was even very +faintly critical. But, as the dance came to an end, Dickie fell a prey to +base anxiety. How would "Poppa" take it if he, Dickie, should be seen +sitting out a dance with Miss Arundel? Dickie was profoundly afraid of +his father. It was a fear that he had never been allowed the leisure to +outgrow. Sylvester with torture of hand and foot and tongue had fostered +it. And Dickie's childhood had lingered painfully upon him. He could not +outgrow all sorts of feelings that other fellows seemed to shed with +their short trousers. He was afraid of his father, physically and +morally; his very nerves quivered under the look of the small brown eyes. + +Nevertheless, as Sheila thanked Jim for her waltz, her elbow was touched +by a cold finger. + +"Here I am," said Dickie. He had a demure and startled look. "Let's sit +it out in the room between the babies and the dancin'-room--two kinds of +a b-a-w-l, ain't it? But I guess we can hear ourselves speak in there. +There's a sort of a bench, kind of a hard one..." + +Sheila followed and found herself presently in a half-dark place under a +row of dangling coats. An iron stove near by glowed with red sides and a +round red mouth. It gave a flush to Dickie's pale face. Sheila thought +she had never seen such a wistful and untidy lad. + +Yet, poor Dickie at the moment appeared to himself rather a dashing and +heroic figure. He had certainly shown courage and had done his deed with +jauntiness. Besides, he had on his only good suit of dark-blue serge, +very thin serge. It was one that he had bought second-hand from Jim, and +he was sure, therefore, of its perfection. He thought, too, that he had +mastered, by the stern use of a wet brush, a cowlick which usually +disgraced the crown of his head. He hadn't. It had long ago risen to its +wispish height. + +"Jim dances fine, don't he?" Dickie said. "I kind of wish I liked to +dance. Seems like athletic stunts don't appeal to me some way." + +"Would you call dancing an athletic stunt?" Sheila leaned back against a +coat that smelled strongly of hay and tobacco and caught up her knees in +her two hands so that the small white slippers pointed daintily, clear of +the floor. + +Dickie looked at them. It seemed to him suddenly that a giant's hand had +laid itself upon his heart and turned it backwards as a pilot turns his +wheel to change the course of a ship. The contrary movement made him +catch his breath. He wanted to put the two white silken feet against his +breast, to button them inside his coat, to keep them in his care. + +"Ain't it, though?" he managed to say. "Ain't it an athletic stunt?" + +"I've always heard it called an accomplishment." + +"God!" said Dickie gently. "I'd 'a' never thought of that. I do like +ski-ing, though. Have you tried it, Miss Arundel?" + +"No. If I call you Dickie, you might call me Sheila, I think." + +Dickie lifted his eyes from the feet. "Sheila," he said. + +He was curiously eloquent. Again Sheila felt the confusion that had sent +her abruptly back to Jim. She smoothed out the tulle on her knee. + +"I think I'd love to ski. Is it awfully hard to learn?" + +"No, ma'am. It's just dandy. Especially on a moonlight night, like night +before last. And if you'd 'a' had skis on you wouldn't 'a' broke through. +You go along so quiet and easy, pushing yourself a little with your pole. +There's a kind of a swing to it--" + +He stood up and threw his light, thin body gracefully into the skier's +pose. "See? You slide on one foot, then on the other. It's as easy as +dreaming, and as still." + +"It's like a gondola--" suggested Sheila. + +Dickie put his head on one side and Sheila explained. She also sang a +snatch of a Gondel-lied to show him the motion. + +"Yes'm," said Dickie. "It's like that. It kind of has a--has a--" + +"Rhythm?" + +"I guess that's the word. So's riding. I like to do the things that +have that." + +"Well, then, you ought to like dancing." + +"Yes'm. Maybe I would if it wasn't for havin' to pull a girl round about +with me. It kind of takes my mind off the pleasure." + +Sheila laughed. Then, "Did you get my note?" she asked. + +"Yes'm." Her laughter had embarrassed him, and he had suddenly a +hunted look. + +"And are you going to be my friend?" + +The sliding of feet on a floor none too smooth, the music, the wailing of +a baby accompanied Dickie's silence. He was very silent and sat very +still, his hands hanging between his knees, his head bent. He stared at +Sheila's feet. His face, what she could see of it, was, even beyond the +help of firelight, pale. + +"Why, Dickie, I believe you're going to say No!" + +"Some fellows would say Yes," Dickie answered. "But I sort of promised +not to be your friend. Poppa said I'd kind of disgust you. And I figure +that I would--" + +Sheila hesitated. + +"You mean because you--you--?" + +"Yes'm." + +"Can't you stop?" + +He shook his head and gave her a tormented look. + +"Oh, Dickie! Of course you can! At your age!" + +"Seems like it means more to me than anything else." + +"Dickie! Dickie!" + +"Yes'm. It kind of takes the awful edge off things." + +"What _do_ you mean? I don't understand." + +"Things are so sort of--sharp to me. I mean, I don't know if I can tell +you. I feel like I had to put something between me and--and things. Oh, +damn! I can't make you see--" + +"No," said Sheila, distressed. + +"It's always that-a-way," Dickie went on. "I mean, everything's kind +of--too much. I used to run miles when I was a kid. And sometimes now +when I can get out and walk or ski, the feeling goes. But other +times--well, ma'am, whiskey sort of takes the edge off and lets something +kind of slack down that gets sort of screwed up. Oh, I don't know ..." + +"Did you ever go to a doctor about it?" + +Dickie looked up at her and smiled. It was the sweetest smile--so patient +of this misunderstanding of hers. "No, ma'am." + +"Then you don't care to be my friend enough to--to try--" + +"I wouldn't be a good friend to you," said Dickie. And he spoke now +almost sullenly. "Because I wouldn't want you to have any other friends. +I hate it to see you with any other fellow." + +"How absurd!" + +"Maybe it is absurd. I guess it seems awful foolish to you." He moved his +cracked patent-leather pump in a sort of pattern on the floor. Again he +looked up, this time with a freakish, an almost elfin flicker of his +extravagant eyelashes. "There's something I could be real well," he said. +"Only, I guess Poppa's got there ahead of me. I could be a dandy guardian +to you--Sheila." + +Again Sheila laughed. But the ringing of her silver coins was not quite +true. There was a false note. She shut her eyes involuntarily. She was +remembering that instant an hour or two before when Sylvester's look had +held hers to his will. The thought of what she had promised crushed down +upon her consciousness with the smothering, sudden weight of its reality. +She could not tell Dickie. She could not--though this she did not +admit--bear that he should know. + +"Very well," she said, in a hard and weary voice. "Be my guardian. That +ought to sober any one. I think I shall need as many guardians as +possible. And--here comes your father. I have this dance with him." + +Dickie got hurriedly to his feet. "Oh, gosh!" said he. He was obviously +and vividly a victim of panic. Sheila's small and very expressive face +showed a little gleam of amused contempt. "My guardian!" she seemed to +mock. To shorten the embarrassment of the moment she stepped quickly into +the elder Hudson's arm. He took her hand and began to pump it up and +down, keeping time to the music and counting audibly. "One, two, three." +To Dickie he gave neither a word nor look. + +Sheila lifted her chin so that she could smile at Dickie over Pap's +shoulder. It was an indulgent and forgiving smile, but, meeting Dickie's +look, it went out. + +The boy's face was scarlet, his body rigid, his lips tight. The eyes with +which he had overcome her smile were the hard eyes of a man. Sheila's +contempt had fallen upon him like a flame. In a few dreadful minutes as +he stood there it burnt up a part of his childishness. + +Sheila went on, dancing like a mist in Hudson's arms. She knew that she +had done something to Dickie. But she did not know what it was that she +had done.... + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE BEACON LIGHT + + +Out of the Wyoming Bad Lands--orange, turquoise-green, and murky blue, of +outlandish ridges, of streaked rock, of sudden, twisted cañons, a country +like a dream of the far side of the moon--rode Cosme Hilliard in a +choking cloud of alkali dust. He rode down Crazy Woman's Hill toward the +sagebrush flat, where, in a half-circle of cloudless, snow-streaked +mountains, lay the town of Millings on its rapid glacier river. + +Hilliard's black hair was powdered with dust; his olive face was gray; +dust lay thick in the folds of his neck-handkerchief; his pony matched +the gray-white road and plodded wearily, coughing and tossing his head in +misery from the nose-flies, the horse-flies, the mosquitoes, a swarm of +small, tormenting presences. His rider seemed to be charmed into +patience, and yet his aquiline face was not the face of a patient man. It +was young in a keen, hard fashion; the mouth and eyes were those of a +Spanish-American mother, golden eyes and a mouth originally beautiful, +soft, and cruel, which had been tightened and straightened by a man's +will and experience. It had been used so often for careless, humorous +smiling that the cruelty had been almost worked out of it. Almost, not +altogether. His mother's blood kept its talons on him. He was Latin and +dangerous to look at, for all the big white Anglo-Saxon teeth, the slow, +slack, Western American carriage, the guarded and amused expression of +the golden eyes. Here was a bundle of racial contradictions, not yet +welded, not yet attuned. Perhaps the one consistent, the one solvent, +expression was that of alert restlessness. Cosme Hilliard was not happy, +was not content, but he was eternally entertained. He was not uplifted by +the hopeful illusions proper to his age, but he loved adventure. It was a +bitter face, bitter and impatient and unschooled. It seemed to laugh, to +expect the worst from life, and not to care greatly if the worst should +come. But for such minor matters of dust and thirst and weariness, he had +patience. Physically the young man was hard and well-schooled. He rode +like a cowboy and carried a cowboy's rope tied to his saddle. And the +rope looked as though it had been used. + +Millings, that seemed so close below there through the clear, high +atmosphere, was far to reach. The sun had slipped down like a thin, +bright coin back of an iron rock before the traveler rode into the town. +His pony shied wearily at an automobile and tried to make up his mind to +buck, but a light pressure of the spur and a smiling word was enough to +change his mind. + +"Don't be a fool, Dusty! You know it's not worth the trouble. Remember +that fifty miles you've come to-day!" + +The occupants of the motor snapped a camera and hummed away. They had no +prevision of being stuck halfway up Crazy Woman's Hill with no water +within fifteen miles, or they wouldn't have exclaimed so gayly at the +beauty and picturesqueness of the tired cowboy. + +"He looks like a movie hero, doesn't he?" said a girl. + +"No, ma'am," protested the Western driver, who had been a chauffeur only +for a fortnight and knew considerably less about the insides of his Ford +than he did about the insides of Hilliard's cow-pony. "He ain't no show. +He's the real thing. Seems like you dudes got things kinder twisted. +Things ain't like shows. Shows is sometimes like things." + +"The real thing" certainly behaved as the real thing would. He rode +straight to the nearest saloon and swung out of his saddle. He licked the +dust off his lips, looked wistfully at the swinging door, and turned back +to his pony. + +"You first, Dusty--damn you!" and led the stumbling beast into the yard +of The Aura. In an hour or more he came back. He had dined at the hotel +and he had bathed. His naturally vivid coloring glowed under the +street-light. He was shaved and brushed and sleek. He pushed quickly +through the swinging doors of the bar and stepped into the saloon. It +was truly a famous bar--The Aura--and it deserved its fame. It shone +bright and cool and polished. There was a cheerful clink of glasses, a +subdued, comfortable sound of talk. Men drank at the bar, and drank and +played cards at the small tables. A giant in a white apron stood to +serve the newcomer. + +Hilliard ordered his drink, sipped it leisurely, then wandered off to a +near-by table. There he stood, watching the game. Not long after, he +accepted an invitation and joined the players. From then till midnight he +was oblivious of everything but the magic squares of pasteboard, the +shifting pile of dirty silver at his elbow, the faces--vacant, clever, or +rascally--of his opponents. But at about midnight, trouble came. For some +time Hilliard had been subconsciously irritated by the divided attention +of a player opposite to him across the table. This man, with a long, thin +face, was constantly squinting past Cosme's shoulder, squinting and +leering and stretching his great full-lipped mouth into a queer +half-smile. At last, abruptly, the irritation came to consciousness and +Cosme threw an angry glance over his own shoulder. + +Beside the giant who had served him his drink a girl stood: a thin, +straight girl in black and white who held herself so still that she +seemed painted there against the mirror on the wall. Her hands rested on +her slight hips, the fine, pointed, ringless fingers white against the +black stuff of her dress. Her neck, too, was white and her face, the pure +unpowdered whiteness of childhood. Her chin was lifted, her lips laid +together, her eyes, brilliant and clear, of no definite color, looked +through her surroundings. She was very young, not more than seventeen. +The mere presence of a girl was startling enough. Barmaids are unknown to +the experience of the average cowboy. But this girl was trebly startling. +For her face was rare. It was not Western, not even American. It was a +fine-drawn, finished, Old-World face, with long, arched eyebrows, large +lids, shadowed eyes, nostrils a little pinched, a sad and tender mouth. +It was a face whose lines might have followed the pencil of +Botticelli--those little hollows in the cheeks, that slight exaggeration +of the pointed chin, that silky, rippling brown hair. There was no touch +of artifice; it was an unpainted young face; hair brushed and knotted +simply; the very carriage of the body was alien; supple, unconscious, +restrained. + +Cosme Hilliard's look lasted for a minute. Returning to his opponent it +met an ugly grimace. He flushed and the game went on. + +But the incident had roused Hilliard's antagonism. He disliked that +man with the grimacing mouth. He began to watch him. An hour or two +later Cosme's thin, dark hand shot across the table and gripped the +fellow's wrist. + +"Caught you that time, you tin-horn," he said quietly. + +Instantly, almost before the speech was out, the giant in the apron had +hurled himself across the room and gripped the cheat, who stood, a hand +arrested on its way to his pocket, snarling helplessly. But the other +players, his fellow sheep-herders, fell away from Hilliard dangerously. + +"No shootin'," said the giant harshly. "No shoot-in' in The Aura. It +ain't allowed." + +"No callin' names either," growled the prisoner. "Me and my friends would +like to settle with the youthful stranger." + +"Settle with him, then, but somewheres else. No fightin' in The Aura." + +There was an acquiescent murmur from the other table and the sheep-herder +gave in. He exchanged a look with his friends, and Carthy, seeing them +disposed to return quietly to the game, left them and took up his usual +position behind the bar. The barmaid moved a little closer to his elbow. +Hilliard noticed that her eyes had widened in her pale face. He made a +brief, contemptuous excuse to his opponents, settled his account with +them, and strolled over to the bar. From Carthy he ordered another drink. +He saw the girl's eyes studying the hand he put out for his glass and he +smiled a little to himself. When she looked up he was ready with his +golden eyes to catch her glance. Both pairs of eyes smiled. She came a +step toward him. + +"I believe I've heard of you, miss," he said. + +A delicate pink stained her face and throat and he wondered if she could +possibly be shy. + +"Some fellows I met over in the Big Horn country lately told me to look +you up if I came to Millings. They said something about Hudson's Queen. +It's the Hudson Hotel isn't it?--" + +A puzzled, rather worried look crept into her eyes, but she avoided his +question. "You were working in the Big Horn country? I hoped you were +from Hidden Creek." + +"I'm on my way there," he said. "I know that country well. You come from +over there?" + +"No." She smiled faintly. "But"--and here her breast lifted on a deep, +spasmodic sigh--"some day I'm going there." + +"It's not like any other country," he said, turning his glass in his +supple fingers. "It's wonderful. But wild and lonesome. You wouldn't be +caring for it--not for longer than a sunny day or two, I reckon." + +He used the native phrases with sure familiarity, and yet in his speaking +of them there was something unfamiliar. Evidently she was puzzled by him, +and Cosme was not sorry that he had so roused her curiosity. He was very +curious himself, so much so that he had forgotten the explosive moment of +a few short minutes back. + +The occupants of the second table pushed away their chairs and came over +to the bar. For a while the barmaid was busy, making their change, +answering their jests, bidding them good-night. It was, "Well, +good-night, Miss Arundel, and thank you." + +"See you next Saturday, Miss Arundel, if I'm alive--" + +Hilliard drummed on the counter with his fingertips and frowned. His +puzzled eyes wove a pattern of inquiry from the men to the girl and back. +One of them, a ruddy-faced, town boy, lingered. He had had a drop too +much of The Aura's hospitality. He rested rather top-heavily against the +bar and stretched out his hand. + +"Aren't you going to say me a real good-night, Miss Sheila," he besought, +and a tipsy dimple cut itself into his cheek. + +"Do go home, Jim," murmured the barmaid. "You've broken your promise +again. It's two o'clock." + +He made great ox-eyes at her, his hand still begging, its blunt fingers +curled upward like a thirsty cup. + +His face was emptied of everything but its desire. + +It was perfectly evident that "Miss Sheila" was tormented by the look, by +the eyes, by the hand, by the very presence of the boy. She pressed her +lips tight, drew her fine arched brows together, and twisted her fingers. + +"I'll go home," he asserted obstinately, "when you tell me a proper +goo'-night--not before." + +Her eyes glittered. "Shall I tell Carthy to turn you out, Jim?" + +He smiled triumphantly. "Uh," said he, "your watch-dog went out. +Dickie called him to answer the telephone. Now, will you tell me +good-night, Sheila?" + +Cosme hoped that the girl would glance at him for help, he had his long +steel muscles braced; but, after a moment's thought--"And she can think. +She's as cool as she's shy," commented the observer--she put her hand on +Jim's. He grabbed it, pressed his lips upon it. + +"Goo'-night," he said, "Goo'-night. I'll go now." He swaggered out as +though she had given him a rose. + +The barmaid put her hand beneath her apron and rubbed it. Cosme laughed a +little at the quaint action. + +"Do they give you lots of trouble, Miss Arundel?" he asked her +sympathetically. + +She looked at him. But her attitude was not so simple and friendly as it +had been. Evidently her little conflict with Jim had jarred her humor. +She looked distressed, angry. Cosme felt that, unfairly enough, she +lumped him with The Enemy. He wondered pitifully if she had given The +Enemy its name, if her experience had given her the knowledge of such +names. He had a vision of the pretty, delicate little thing standing +there night after night as though divided by the bar from prowling +beasts. And yet she was known over the whole wide, wild country as +"Hudson's Queen." Her crystal, childlike look must be one of those +extraordinary survivals, a piteous sort of accident. Cosme called himself +a sentimentalist. Spurred by this reaction against his more romantic +tendencies, he leaned forward. He too was going to ask the barmaid for a +good-night or a greeting or a good-bye. His hand was out, when he saw her +face stiffen, her lips open to an "Oh!" of warning or of fear. He wheeled +and flung up his arm against a hurricane of blows. + +His late opponents had decided to take advantage of Carthy's absence, and +inflict chastisement prompt and merciless upon the "youthful stranger." +If it had not been for that small frightened "Oh" Cosme would have been +down at once. + +With that moment's advantage he fought like a tiger, his golden eyes +ablaze. Swift and dangerous anger was one of his gifts. He was against +the wall, he was torn from it. One of his opponents staggered across the +room and fell, another crumpled up against the bar. Hilliard wheeled and +jabbed, plunged, was down, was up, bleeding and laughing. He was whirled +this way and that, the men from whom he had struck himself free recovered +themselves, closed in upon him. A blow between the eyes half stunned him, +another on his mouth silenced his laughter. The room was getting blurred. +He was forced back against the bar, fighting, but not effectively. The +snarling laughter was not his now, but that of the cheat. + +Something gave way behind him; it was as if the bar, against which he was +bent backwards, had melted to him and hardened against his foes. For an +instant he was free from blows and tearing hands. He saw that a door in +the bar had opened and shut. There was a small pressure on his arm, a +pressure which he blindly obeyed. In front of him another door opened, +and closed. He heard the shooting of a bolt. He was in the dark. The +small pressure, cold through the torn silk sleeve of his white shirt, +continued to urge him swiftly along a passage. He was allowed to rest an +instant against a wall. A light was turned on with a little click above +his head. He found himself at the end of the open hallway. Before him lay +the brilliant velvet night. + +Hilliard pressed his hands upon his eyes trying to clear his vision. He +felt sick and giddy. The little barmaid's face, all terrified and urgent +eyes, danced up and down. + +"Don't waste any time!" she said. "Get out of Millings! Where's +your pony?" + +At that he looked at her and smiled. + +"I'm not leaving Millings till to-morrow," he said uncertainly with +wounded lips. "Don't look like that, girl. I'm not much hurt, If I'm not +mistaken, your watch-dog is back and very much on his job. I reckon that +our friends will leave Millings considerably before I do." + +In fact, behind them at the end of the passage there was a sort of roar. +Carthy had returned to avenge The Aura. + +"You're sure you're not hurt? You're sure they won't try to hurt +you again?" + +He shook his head. "Not they..." He stood looking at her and the mist +slowly cleared, his vision of her steadied. "Shall I see you to-morrow?" + +She drew back from him a little. "No," she said. "I sleep all the +morning. And, afterwards, I don't see any one except a few old friends. I +go riding..." + +He puckered his eyelids inquiringly. Then, with a sudden reckless fling +of his shoulders, he put out his hand boldly and caught her small pointed +chin in his palm. He bent down his head. + +She stood there quite still and white, looking straight up into his face. +The exquisite smoothness of her little cool chin photographed itself upon +his memory. As he bent down closer to the grave and tender lips, he was +suddenly, unaccountably frightened and ashamed. His hand dropped, sought +for her small limp hand. His lips shifted from their course and went +lower, just brushing her fingers. + +"I beg your pardon," he said confusedly. He was painfully embarrassed, +stammered, "I--I wanted to thank you. Good-bye..." + +She said good-bye in the smallest sweet voice he had ever heard. It +followed his memory like some weary, pitiful little ghost. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +IN THE PUBLIC EYE + + +No sight more familiar to the corner of Main and Resident Streets than +that of Sylvester Hudson's Ford car sliding up to the curb in front of +his hotel at two o'clock in a summer afternoon. He would slip out from +under his steering-wheel, his linen duster flapping about his long legs, +and he would stalk through the rocking, meditative observers on the +piazza and through the lobby past Dickie's frozen stare, upstairs to the +door of Miss Arundel's "suite." There he was bidden to come in. A few +minutes later they would come down together, Sheila, too, passing Dickie +wordlessly, and they would hum away from Millings leaving a veil of +golden dust to smother the comments in their wake. There were days when +Sheila's pony, a gift from Jim Greely, was led up earlier than the hour +of Hudson's arrival, on which days Sheila, in a short skirt and a boy's +shirt and a small felt Stetson, would ride away alone toward the mountain +of her dreams. Sometimes Jim rode with her. It was not always possible to +forbid him. + +The day after Cosme Hilliard's spectacular passage was one of Hudson's +days. The pony did not appear, but Sylvester did and came down with his +prize. The lobby was crowded. Sheila threaded her way amongst the medley +of tourists, paused and deliberately drew near to the desk. At sight of +her Dickie's whiteness dyed itself scarlet. He rose and with an apparent +effort lifted his eyes to her look. + +They did not smile at each other. Sheila spoke sharply, each word a +little soft lash. + +"I want to speak to you. Will you come to my sitting-room when I +get back?" + +"Yes'm," said Dickie. It was the tone of an unwincing pride. Under the +desk, hidden from sight, his hand was a white-knuckled fist. + +Sheila passed on, trailed by Hudson, who was smiling not agreeably to +himself. Over the smile he gave his son a cruel look. It was as though an +enemy had said, "Hurts you, doesn't it?" Dickie returned the look with +level eyes. + +The rockers on the piazza stopped rocking, stopped talking, stopped +breathing, it would seem, to watch Sylvester help Sheila into his car; +not that he helped her greatly--she had an appearance of melting +through his hands and getting into her place beside his by a sort of +sleight of body. He made a series of angular movements, smiled at her, +and started the car. + +"Well, little girl," said he, "where to this afternoon?" + +When Sheila rode her pony she always rode toward The Hill. But in that +direction she had never allowed Sylvester to take her. She looked vaguely +through the wind-shield now and said, "Anywhere--that cañon, the one we +came home by last week. It was so queer." + +"It'll be dern dusty, I'm afraid." + +"I don't care." Sheila wrapped her gray veil over her small hat which +fitted close about her face. "I'm getting used to the dust. Does it ever +rain around Millings? And does it ever stop blowing?" + +"We don't like Millings to-day, do we?" + +Sylvester was bending his head to peer through the gray mist of her veil. +She held herself stiffly beside him, showing the profile of a small +Sphinx. Suddenly it turned slightly, seemed to wince back. Girlie, at the +gate of Number 18 Cottonwood Avenue, had stopped to watch them pass. +Girlie did not speak. Her face looked smitten, the ripe fruit had turned +bitter upon her ruddy lips. The tranquil emptiness of her beauty had +filled itself stormily. + +Sheila did not answer Hudson's reproachful question. She leaned back, +dropped back, rather, into a tired little heap and let the country slide +by--the strange, wide, broken country with its circling mesas, its +somber grays and browns and dusty greens, its bare purple hills, rocks +and sand and golden dirt, and now and then, in the sudden valley +bottoms, swaying groves of vivid green and ribbons of emerald meadows. +The mountains shifted and opened their cañons, gave a glimpse of their +beckoning and forbidding fastnesses and closed them again as though by a +whispered Sesame. + +"What was the row last night?" asked Sylvester in his voice of cracked +tenderness. "Carthy says there was a bunch of toughs. Were you scared +good and plenty? I'm sorry. It don't happen often, believe _me._ + +"I wish you could 'a' heard Carthy talkin' about you, Sheila," went on +Sylvester, his eyes, filled with uneasiness, studying her silence and her +huddled smallness, hands in the pockets of her light coat, veiled face +turned a little away, "Say, that would 'a' set you up all right! Talk +about beacons!" + +Here she flashed round on him, as though her whole body had been +electrified. "Tell me all that again," she begged in a voice that he +could not interpret except that there was in it a sound of tears. "Tell +me again about a beacon ..." + +He stammered. He was confused. But stumblingly he tried to fulfill her +demand. Here was a thirst for something, and he wanted above everything +in the world to satisfy it. Sheila listened to him with unsteady, parted +lips. He could see them through the veil. + +"You still think I am that?" she asked. + +He was eager to prove it to her. "Still think? Still think? Why, girl, I +don't hev to think. Don't the tillbox speak for itself? Don't Carthy +handle a crowd that's growing under his eyes? Don't we sell more booze in +a week now than we used to in a--" Suddenly he realized that he was on +the wrong tack. It was his first break. He drew in a sharp breath and +stopped, his face flushing deeply. + +"Yes?" questioned Sheila, melting her syllables like slivers of ice on +her tongue. "Go on." + +"Er--er, don't we draw a finer lot of fellows than we ever did before? +Don't they behave more decent and orderly? Don't they get civilization +just for looking at you, Miss Sheila?" + +"And--and booze? Jim Greely, for instance, Mr. James Greely, of the +Millings National Bank--he never used to patronize The Aura. And now he's +there every night till twelve and often later, for he won't obey me any +more. I wonder whether Mr. and Mrs. Greely are glad that you are getting +a better type of customer! Mrs. Greely almost stopped me on the street +the other day--that is, she almost got up courage to speak to me. Before +now she's cut me, just as Girlie does, just as your wife does, just as +Dickie does--" + +"Dickie cut you?" Sylvester threw back his head and laughed uneasily, and +with a strained note of alarm. "That's a good one, Miss Sheila. I kinder +fancied you did the cuttin' there." + +"Dickie hasn't spoken to me since he came to me that day when he heard +what I was going to do and tried to talk me out of doing it." + +"Yes'm. He came to me first," drawled Sylvester. + +They were both silent, busy with the amazing memory of Dickie, of his +disheveled fury, of his lashing eloquence. He had burst in upon his +family at breakfast that April morning when Millings was humming with +the news, had advanced upon his father, stood above him. + +"Is it true that you are going to make a barmaid of Sheila?" + +Sylvester, in an effort to get to his feet, had been held back by +Dickie's thin hand that shot out at him like a sword. + +"Sure it's true," Sylvester had said coolly. But he had not felt cool. He +had felt shaken and confused. The boy's entire self-forgetfulness, his +entire absence of fear, had made Hudson feel that he was talking to a +stranger, a not inconsiderable one. + +"It's true, then." Dickie had drawn a big breath. "You--you"--he seemed +to swallow an epithet--"you'll let that girl go into your filthy saloon +and make money for you by her--by her prettiness and her--her +ignorance--" + +"Say, Dickie," his father had drawled, "you goin' to run for the +legislature? Such a lot of classy words!" But anger and alarm were +rising in him. + +"You've fetched her away out here," went on Dickie, "and kinder got her +cornered and you've talked a lot of slush to her and you've--" + +Here Girlie came to the rescue. + +"Well, anyway, she's a willing victim, Dickie," Girlie had said. + +Dickie had flashed her one look. "Is she? I'll see about that. +Where's Sheila?" + +And then, there was Sheila's memory. Dickie had come upon her in a +confusion of boxes, her little trunk half-unpacked, its treasures +scattered over the chairs and floor. Sheila had lifted to him from where +she knelt a glowing and excited face. "Oh, Dickie," she had said, her +relief at the escape from Mrs. Hudson pouring music into her voice, "have +you heard?" + +He had sat down on one of the plush chairs of "the suite" as though he +felt weak. Then he had got up and had walked to and fro while she +described her dream, the beauty of her chosen mission, the glory of the +saloon whose high priestess she had become. And Dickie had listened with +the bitter and disillusioned and tender face of a father hearing the +prattle of a beloved child. + +"You honest think all that, Sheila?" he had asked her patiently. + +She had started again, standing now to face him and beginning to be angry +at his look. This boy whom she had lifted up to be her friend! + +"Say," Dickie had drawled, "Poppa's some guardian!" He had advanced upon +her as though he wanted to shake her. "You gotta give it right up, +Sheila," he had said sternly. "Sooner than immediately. It's not to go +through. Say, girl, you don't know much about bars." He had drawn a +picture for her, drawing partly upon experience, partly upon his +imagination, the gift of vivid metaphor descending upon him. He used +words that bit into her memory. Sheila had listened and then she had put +her hands over her ears. He pulled them down. He went on. Sheila's Irish +blood had boiled up into her brain. She stormed back at him. + +"It's you, it's your use of The Aura that has been its only shame, +Dickie," was the last of all the things she had said. + +At which, Dickie standing very still, had answered, "If you go there and +stand behind the bar all night with Carthy to keep hands off, I--I swear +I'll never set foot inside the place again. You ain't agoin' to be _my_ +beacon light--" + +"Well, then," said Sheila, "I shall have done one good thing at least by +being there." + +Dickie, going out, had passed a breathless Sylvester on his way in. The +two had looked at each other with a look that cut in two the tie between +them, and Sheila, running to Sylvester, had burst into tears. + + * * * * * + +The motor hummed evenly on its way. It began, with a change of tune, to +climb the graded side of one of the enormous mesas. Sheila, having lived +through again that scene with Dickie, took out a small handkerchief and +busied herself with it under her veil. She laughed shakily. + +"Perhaps a beacon does more good by warning people away than by +attracting them," she said. "Dickie has certainly kept his word. I don't +believe he's touched a drop since I've been barmaid, Mr. Hudson. I +should think you'd be proud of him." + +Sylvester was silent while they climbed the hill. He changed gears and +sounded his horn. They passed another motor on a dangerous curve. They +began to drop down again. + +"Some day," said Sylvester in a quiet voice, "I'll break every bone in +Dickie's body." He murmured something more under his breath in too low a +tone, fortunately, for Sheila's ear. From her position behind the bar, +she had become used to swearing. She had heard a strange variety of +language. But when Sylvester drew upon his experience and his fancy, the +artist in him was at work. + +"Do you suppose," asked his companion in an impersonal tone, "that it was +really a hard thing for Dickie to do--to give it up, I mean?" + +"By the look of him the last few months," snarled Sylvester, "I should +say it had taken out of him what little real feller there ever was in." + +Sheila considered this. She remembered Dickie, as he had risen behind the +desk half an hour before. She did not contradict Sylvester. She had +learned not to contradict him. But Dickie's face with its tight-knit look +of battle stood out very clear to refute the accusation of any loss of +manliness. He was still a quaint and ruffled Dickie. But he was vastly +aged. From twenty to twenty-seven, he seemed to have jumped in a few +weeks. A key had turned in the formerly open door of his spirit. The +indeterminate lips had shut hard, the long-lashed eyes had definitely put +a guard upon their dreams. He was shockingly thin and colorless, however. +Sheila dwelt painfully upon the sort of devastation she had wrought. +Girlie's face, and Dickie's, and Jim's. A grieving pressure squeezed her +heart; she lifted her chest with an effort on a stifled breath. + +"God! Sheila," said Sylvester harshly. The car wobbled a little. "Ain't +you happy, girl?" + +Sheila looked up at him. Her veil was wet against her cheeks. + +"Last night," she said unevenly, "a man was going to kiss me on my +mouth and--and he changed his mind and kissed my hand instead. He left +a smear of blood on my fingers from where those--those other men had +struck his lips. I don't know why it f-frightens me so to think about +that. But it does." + +She seemed to collapse before him into a little sobbing child. + +"And every day when I wake up," she wailed, "I t-taste whiskey on my +tongue and I--I smell cigarette smoke in my hair. And I d-dream about men +looking at me--the way Jim looks. And I can't let myself think of Father +any more. He used to hold his chin up and walk along as if he looked +above every one and everything. I don't believe he'd ever seen a barmaid +or a drunken man--not really seen them, Mr. Hudson." + +"Then he wasn't a real artist after all," Sylvester spoke slowly and +carefully. He was pale. + +"He l-loved the stars," sobbed Sheila, her broken reserve had let out a +flood; "he told me to keep looking at the stars." + +"Well, ma'am," Sylvester spoke again, "I never knowed the stars to turn +their backs on anything. Barmaids or drunks or kings--they all look about +alike to the stars, I reckon. Say, Sheila, maybe you haven't got the +pluck for real living. Maybe you're the kind of doll-baby girl that +craves sheltering. I reckon I made a big mistake." + +Sheila moved slightly as though his speech had pricked her. + +"It kind of didn't occur to me," went on Sylvester, "that you'd care a +whole lot about being ig-nored by Momma and Mr. and Mrs. Greely and +Girlie. Say, Girlie's got to take her chance same's anybody else. Why +don't you give Jim a jolt?" + +Sheila at this began to laugh. She caught her breath. She laughed and +cried together. + +Sylvester patted her shoulder. "Poor kid! You're all in. Late hours too +much for you, I reckon. Come on now--tell Pap everything. Ease off your +heart. It's wonderful what crying does for the nervous system. I laid out +on a prairie one night when I was about your age and just naturally +bawled. You'd 'a' thought I was a baby steer, hanged if you wouldn't 'a' +thought so. It's the fight scared you plumb to pieces. Carthy told me +about it and how you let the good-looking kid out by the back. I seen him +ride off toward Hidden Creek this morning. He was a real pretty boy too. +Say, Sheila, wasn't you ever kissed?" + +"No," said Sheila. "And I don't want to be." Sylvester laughed with a +little low cackle of intense pleasure and amusement. "Well, you shan't +be. No, you shan't. Nobody shall kiss Sheila!" + +His method seemed to him successful. Sheila stopped crying and stopped +laughing, dried her eyes, murmured, "I'm all right now, thank you, Mr. +Hudson," and fell into an abysmal silence. + +He talked smoothly, soothingly, skillfully, confident of his power to +manage "gels." Once in a while he saw her teeth gleam as though she +smiled. As they came back to Millings in the afterglow of a brief Western +twilight, she unfastened her veil and showed a quiet, thoughtful face. + +She thanked him, gave him her hand. "Don't come up, please, Mr. Hudson," +she said with that cool composure of which at times she was surprisingly +capable. "I shall have my dinner sent up and take a little rest before I +go to work." + +"You feel O.K.?" he asked her doubtfully. His brown eyes had an almost +doglike wistfulness. + +"Quite, thank you." Her easy, effortless smile passed across her face and +in and out of her eyes. + +Hudson stood beside his wheel tapping his teeth and staring after her. +The rockers on the veranda stopped their rocking, stopped their talking, +stopped their breathing to see Sheila pass. When she had gone, they +fastened their attention upon Sylvester. He was not aware of them. He +stood there a full three minutes under the glare of publicity. Then he +sighed and climbed into his car. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +HUDSON'S QUEEN + + +The lobby, empty of its crowd when Sheila passed through it on her way up +to her rooms, was filled by a wheezy, bullying voice. In front of the +desk a little barrel of a man with piggish eyes was disputing his bill +with Dickie. At the sound of Sheila's entrance he turned, stopped his +complaint, watched her pass, and spat into a near-by receptacle. Sheila +remembered that he had visited the bar early in the evening before, and +had guzzled his whiskey and made some wheezy attempts at gallantry. +Dickie, flushed, his hair at wild odds with composure, was going over the +bill. In the midst of his calculations the man would interrupt him with a +plump dirty forefinger pounced upon the paper. "Wassa meanin' of this +item, f'rinstance? Highway robbery, thassa meanin' of it. My wife take +breakfast in her room? I'd like to see her try it!" + +Sheila went upstairs. She took off her things, washed off the dust, and +changed into the black-and-white barmaid's costume, fastening the frilly +apron, the cuffs, the delicate fichu with mechanical care. She put on the +silk stockings and the buckled shoes and the tiny cap. Then she went into +her sitting-room, chose the most dignified chair, folded her hands in +her lap, and waited for Dickie. Waiting, she looked out through the +window and saw the glow fade from the snowy crest of The Hill. The +evening star let itself delicately down through the sweeping shadows of +the earth from some mysterious fastness of invisibility. The room was dim +when Dickie's knock made her turn her head. + +"Come in." + +He appeared, shut the door without looking at her, then came unwillingly +across the carpet and stopped at about three steps from her chair, +standing with one hand in his pocket. He had slicked down his hair with +a wet brush and changed his suit. It was the dark-blue serge he had worn +at the dance five months before. What those five months had been to +Dickie, through what abasements and exaltations, furies and despairs he +had traveled since he had looked up from Sheila's slippered feet with +his heart turned backward like a pilot's wheel, was only faintly +indicated in his face. And yet the face gave Sheila a pang. And, +unsupported by anger, he was far from formidable, a mere youth. Sheila +wondered at her long and sustained persecution of him. She smiled, her +lips, her eyes, and her heart. + +"Aren't you going to sit down, Dickie? This isn't a school examination." + +"If it was," said Dickie, with an uncertain attempt at ease, "I wouldn't +pass." He felt for a chair and got into it. He caught a knee in his hand +and looked about him. "You've made the room awful pretty, Sheila." + +She had spent some of the rather large pay she drew upon coverings of +French blue for the plush furniture, upon a dainty yellow porcelain +tea-set, upon little oddments of decoration. The wall-paper and carpet +were inoffensive, the quietest probably in Millings, so that her efforts +had met with some success. There was a lounge with cushions, there were +some little volumes, a picture of her father, a bowl of pink wild roses, +a vase of vivid cactus flowers. Some sketches in water-color--Marcus's +most happy medium--had been tacked up. A piece of tapestry decorated the +back of the chair Sheila had chosen. In the dim light it all had an air +of quiet richness. It seemed a room transplanted to Millings from some +finer soil. + +Dickie looked at the tapestry because it was the nearest he dared come to +looking at Sheila. His hands and knees shook with the terrible beating of +his heart. It was not right, thought Dickie resentfully, that any feeling +should take hold of a fellow and shake and terrify him so. He threw +himself back suddenly and folded his arms tight across his chest. + +"You wanted to see me about something?" he asked. + +"Yes. I'll give you some tea first." + +Dickie's lips fell apart. He said neither yea nor nay, but watched +dazedly her preparations, her concoctions, her advance upon him with a +yellow teacup and a wafer. He did not stand up to take it and he knew too +late that this was a blunder. He tingled with shame. + +Sheila went back to her chair and sipped from her own cup. + +"I've been angry with you for three months now, Dickie." + +"Yes'm," he said meekly. + +"That's the longest I've ever been angry with any one in my life. Once I +hated a teacher for two weeks, and it almost killed me. But what I felt +about her was--was weakness to the way I've felt about you." + +"Yes'm," again said Dickie. His tea was terribly hot and burnt his +tongue, so that tears stood in his eyes. + +"And I suppose you've been angry with me." + +"No, ma'am." + +Sheila was not particularly pleased with this gentle reply. "Why, Dickie, +you _know_ you have!" + +"No, ma'am." + +"Then why haven't you spoken to me? Why have you looked that way at me?" + +"I don't speak to folks that don't speak to me," said Dickie, lifting the +wafer as though its extreme lightness was faintly repulsive to him. + +"Well," said Sheila bitterly, "you haven't been alone in your attitude. +Very few people have been speaking to me. My only loyal friends are Mr. +Hudson and Amelia Plecks and Carthy and Jim. Jim made no promises about +being my guardian, but--" + +"But he _is_ your guardian?" Dickie drawled the question slightly. His +gift of faint irony and impersonal detachment flicked Sheila's temper as +it had always flicked his father's. + +"Jim is my friend," Sheila maintained in defiance of a still, small +voice. "He has given me a pony and has taken me riding--" + +"Yes'm, I've saw you--" Dickie's English was peculiarly fallible in +moments of emotion. Now he seemed determined to cut Sheila's description +short. "Say, Sheila, did you send for me to tell me about this lovely +friendship of yours with Jim?" + +Sheila set her cup down on the window-sill. She did not want to lose her +temper with Dickie. She brushed a wafer crumb from her knee. + +"No, Dickie, I didn't. I sent for you because, after all, though I've +been so angry with you, I've known in my heart that--that--you are a +loyal friend and that you tell the truth." + +This admission was an effort. Sheila's pride suffered to the point of +bringing a dim sound of tears into her voice.... + +Dickie did not speak. He too put down his tea-cup and his wafer side by +side on the floor near his chair. He put his elbows on his knees and bent +his head down as though he were examining his thin, locked hands. + +Sheila waited for a long minute; then she said angrily, "Aren't you glad +I think that of you?" + +"Yes'm." Dickie's voice was indistinct. + +"You don't seem glad." + +Dickie made some sort of struggle. Sheila could not quite make out its +nature. "I'm glad. I'm so glad that it kind of--hurts," he said. + +"Oh!" That at least was pleasant intelligence to a wounded pride. + +Fortified, Sheila began the real business of the interview. "You are not +an artist, Dickie," she said, "and you don't understand why your father +asked me to work at The Aura nor why I wanted to work there. It was your +entire inability to understand--" + +"Entire inability--" whispered Dickie as though he were taking down the +phrase with an intention of looking it up later. + +This confused Sheila. "Your--your entire inability," she repeated +rapidly, "your--your entire inability--" + +"Yes'm. I've got that." + +"--To understand that made me so angry that day." Sheila was glad to be +rid of that obstruction. She had planned this speech rather carefully in +the watches of the wakeful, feverish morning which had been her night. +"You seemed to be trying to pull your father and me down to some lower +spiritual level of your own." + +"Lower spiritual level," repeated Dickie. + +"Dickie, stop that, please!" + +He looked up, startled by her sharpness. "Stop what, ma'am?" + +"Saying things after me. It's insufferable." + +"Insufferable--oh, I suppose it is. You're usin' so many words, Sheila. I +kind of forgot there was so many words as you're makin' use of this +afternoon." + +"Oh, Dickie, Dickie! Can't you see how miserable I am! I am so unhappy +and--and scared, and you--you are making fun of me." + +At that, spoken in a changed and quavering key of helplessness, Dickie +hurried to her, knelt down beside her chair, and took her hands. + +"Sheila! I'll do anything!" + +His presence, his boyish, quivering touch, so withheld from anything but +boyishness, even the impulsive humility of his thin, kneeling body, were +inexpressibly soothing, inexpressibly comforting. She did not draw away +her hands. She let them cling to his. + +"Dickie, will you answer me, quite truthfully and simply, without any +explaining or softening, please, if I ask you a--a dreadful question?" + +"Yes, dear." + +"I'm not sure if it is a dreadful question, but--but I'm afraid it is." + +"Don't worry. Ask me. Surely, I'll answer you the truth without +any fixin's." + +Her hands clung a little closer. She was silent, gathering courage. He +felt her slim knees quiver. + +"What do they mean, Dickie," she whispered with a wan look, "when they +call me--'Hudson's Queen'?" + +Dickie bent from her look as though he felt a pain. He took her hands up +close to his breast. "Who told you that they called you that?" he asked +breathlessly. + +"That's what every one calls me--the men over in the Big Horn +country--they tell men that are coming to Millings to be sure to look up +'Hudson's Queen.' Do they mean the Hotel, Dickie? They _do_ mean the +Hotel, don't they, Dickie?--that I am _The_ Hudson's Queen?" + +The truth sometimes presents itself like a withering flame. Dickie got +up, put away her hands, walked up and down, then came back to her. He had +heard the epithet and he knew its meaning. He wrestled now with his +longing to keep her from such understanding, or, at least, to soften it. +She had asked for the clear truth and he had promised it to her. He stood +away because he could not trust himself to endure the wincing of her +hands and body when she heard the truth. He hoped dimly that she might +not understand it. + +"They don't mean the Hotel, Sheila," he said harshly. "They mean--Father. +You know now what they mean--?" In her stricken and bewildered eyes he +saw that she did know. "I would like to kill them," sobbed Dickie +suddenly. "I would like to kill--_him_. No, no, Sheila, don't you cry. +Don't you. It's not worth cryin' for. It's jest ignorant folks's ignorant +and stupid talk. It's not worth cryin' for." He sat down on the arm of +her chair and fairly gathered her into his arms. He rocked and patted her +shoulder and kissed her gently on her hair--all with that boyishness, +that brotherliness, that vast restraint so that she could not even guess +the strange and unimaginable pangs he suffered from his self-control. + +Before Dickie's resolution was burnt away by the young inner fire, Sheila +withdrew herself gently from his arms and got up from the chair. She +walked over to one of the two large windows--the sunset windows she +called them, in contradistinction to the one sunrise window--and stood +composing herself, her hands twisted together and lifted to the top of +the lower sash, her forehead rested on them. + +A rattle of china, a creaking step outside the door, interrupted their +tremulous silence in which who knows what mysterious currents were +passing between their young minds. + +"It's my dinner," said Sheila, and Dickie walked over mechanically and +opened the door. + +Amelia Plecks came panting into the room, set the tray down on a small +table, and looked contempt at Dickie. + +"There now, Miss Arundel," she said with breathless tenderness, "I've +pro-cured a dandy chop for you. You said you was kind of famished for a +lamb chop, and, of course, in a sheep country good mutton's real hard to +come by, and this ain't properly speaking--lamb, _but_--! Well, say, it's +just dandy meat." + +She ignored Dickie as one might ignore the presence of some obnoxious +insect in the reception-room of a queen. Her eyes were disgustedly +fascinated by his presence, but in her conversation she would not admit +this preoccupation of disgust. + +"I'll be going," said Dickie. + +Amelia nodded as one who applauds the becoming move of an inferior. + +"Here's a note for you, Miss Arundel," she said, coming over to Sheila's +post at the window, where she was trying to hide the traces of her tears. +"Well, say, who's been botherin' you?" Amelia's voice went down a long, +threatening octave to a sinister bass note, at the voicing of which she +turned to look at Dickie. + +"Good-night, Sheila," he said diffidently; and Sheila coming quickly +toward him, put out her hand. The note Amelia had handed her fell. Dickie +and Amelia both bent to pick it up. + +"No, you don't," said Amelia, snatching it and accusing him, by her tone, +of inexpressibly base intentions. "Say, Miss Arundel," in a whisper of +thrilled confidence, "_Mister Jim_! Uh?" + +"Thank you, Dickie," murmured Sheila, half-embarrassed, half-amused by +her adoring follower's innuendoes. "Thank you for everything. I shall +have to think what I can do ... Good-night." + +Dickie, his eyes forcibly held away from Jim's note, murmured, +"Good-night, ma'am," and went out, closing the door with exaggerated +gentleness. The quietness of his departure seemed to spare Sheila's +sensitiveness. + +"Ain't he a worm, though!" exclaimed Amelia, sparing nobody's +sensitiveness. + +"He's nothing of the sort," Sheila protested indignantly. "He is a dear!" + +Amelia opened her prominent eyes and pursed her lips. A reassuring light +dawned on her bewilderment. "Oh, say, dearie, I wasn't speakin' of your +Mister Jim. I was makin' reference to Dickie." + +Sheila thrust the note into her pocket and went over to the table to +light her lamp. "I know quite well that you meant Dickie," she said. +"Nobody in Millings would ever dream of comparing Mr. James Greely to a +worm, even if he came out from the ground just in time for the early bird +to peck him. I know that." + +"You're ornery to-night, dearie," announced Amelia, and with exemplary +tact she creaked and breathed herself to the door. There she had a +relapse from tactfulness, however, and planted herself to stare. "Ain't +you goin' to read your note?" + +Sheila, to be rid of her, unfolded the paper and read. It was quite +beautifully penned in green ink on violet paper. Jim had written both +wisely and too well. + +"My darling--Why not permit me to call you that when it is the simple and +sincere truth?" An astonished little voice in Sheila's brain here seemed +to counter-question mechanically "Why not, indeed?"--"I cannot think of +anything but you and how I love you. These little notes I am going to +keep a-sending you are messengers of love. You will never meet with a +more tremendous lover than me.... Be _my_ Queen," Jim had written with a +great climatic splash of ink, and he had signed himself, "Your James." + +Sheila's face was crimson when she put down the note. She stared straight +in front of her for an instant with very large eyes in this scarlet rose +of countenance and then she crumpled into mirth. She put her face into +her hands and rocked. It seemed as though a giant of laughter had caught +her about the ribs. + +Amelia stared and felt a wound. She swallowed a lump of balked sentiment +as she went out. Her idol was faintly tarnished, her heroine's stature +preceptibly diminished. The sort of Madame du Barry atmosphere with which +Sheila's image was surrounded in Amelia's fancy lost a little of its rosy +glow. The favorite of Kings, the _amorita_ of Dukes, does not rock with +laughter over scented notes from a High Desirable. + +"She ain't just quite up to it," was Amelia's comment, which she +probably could not have explained even to herself. + +Sheila presently was done with laughter. She ate a nibble of dinner as +soberly as Amelia could have wished, then sat back, her eyes closed with +a resolve to think clearly, closely, to some determination of her life. +But Jim's note, which had so roused her amusement, began to force itself +in another fashion upon her. She discovered that it was an insufferable +note. It insinuated everything, it suggested--everything. It was a +boastful messenger. It swaggered male-ishly. It threw out its chest and +smacked its lips. "See what a sad dog my master is," it said; "a regular +devil of a fellow." Sheila found her thoughts confused by anger. She +found that she was too disturbed for any clear decision. She was terribly +weary and full of dread for the long night before her. And a startled +look at her clock told her it was time now to go over to the saloon. + +She got up, went to her mirror, smoothed her rippled hair with two +strokes of a brush, readjusted her cap, and decided that, for once, a +little powder on the nose was a necessity. Carthy must not see that she +had been crying. As it was, her brilliant color was suspicious, and her +eyes, with their deep distended look of tears. She shut them, drew a +breath, put out her light, and went down the back stairs to a narrow +alley. It led from the hotel to the street that ran back of The Aura ... +the street to which she had taken young Hilliard the night before. + +The alley seemed to Sheila, as she stepped into it from the glare of the +electric-lighted hotel, a stream of cool and silvery light. Above lay a +strip of tender sky in which already the stars shook. In this high +atmosphere they were always tremulous, dancing, beating, almost leaping, +with a fullness of quick light. They seemed very near to the edges of the +alley walls, to be especially visiting it with their detached regard, +peering down for some small divine occasion for influence. Sheila prayed +to them a desperate prayer of human helplessness. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +SYLVESTER CELEBRATES + + +"Hey, you girl there! Hi! Hey!" + +These exclamations called in a resonant, deep-chested voice succeeded at +last in attracting Sheila's attention. She had lingered at the alley's +mouth, shirking her entrance into the saloon, and now she saw, halfway +down the short, wide street, a gesticulating figure. + +At first, as she obeyed the summons, she thought the summoner a man, but +on near view it proved itself a woman, of broad, massive hips and +shoulders, dressed in a man's flannel shirt and a pair of large corduroy +trousers, their legs tucked into high cowboy boots. She wore no hat, and +her hair was cut square across her neck and forehead; hair of a dark +rusty red, it was, and matched eyes like dark panes of glass before a +fire, red-brown and very bright, ruddy eyes in a square, ruddy face, +which, with its short, straight, wide-bridged nose, well-shaped lips, +square chin, and brilliant teeth, made up a striking and not unattractive +countenance. + +"I've got a horse here; won't stand," said the woman. "Will you hold +his head? Can leaking back here in my wagon, leaking all over my +other stuff." + +The horse came round the corner. He moved resolutely to meet them. He +was the boniest, small horse Sheila had ever seen--a shadow of a horse, +one-eyed, morose, embittered. The harness hung loose upon his meagerness; +the shafts stuck up like the points of a large collar on a small old man. + +"He's not running away," explained the owner superfluously. "It's just +that he can't stop. You'd think, to look at him, that stopping would +be his favorite sport. But you'd be mistaken. Go he must. He's kind of +always crazy to get there--Lord knows where--probably to the end of +his life." + +Sheila held the horse, and rubbed his nose with her small and gentle +hand. The creature drooped under the caress and let its lower lip, with a +few stiff white hairs, hang and quiver bitterly. It half-closed its one +useful eye, a pale eye of intense, colorless disillusionment. + +When the wagon stopped, a dog who was trotting under it stopped too +and lay down in the dust, panting. Sheila bent her head a little to +see the dog. She had a child's intense interest in animals. Through +the dimness she made out a big, wolfish creature with a splendid, +clean, gray coat, his pointed nose, short, pointed ears, deep, wild +eyes, and scarlet tongue, set in a circular ruff of black. His bushy +tail curled up over his back. + +"What kind of dog is that?" asked Sheila, thinking the great animal under +the wagon better fitted to pull the load than the shadowy little horse in +front of it. + +"Quarter wolf," answered the woman in her casual manner of speech, her +resonant voice falling pleasantly on the light coolness of the evening +air; "Malamute. This fellow was littered on the body of a dead man." + +Sheila had also the child's interest in tales. "Tell me about it," she +begged fervently. + +The woman stopped in her business of tying down a canvas cover over her +load and gave Sheila an amused and searching look. She held an iron spike +between her teeth, but spoke around it skillfully. + +"Arctic exploration it was. My brother was one of the party. 'T was he +brought me home Berg. Berg's mother was one of the sledge dogs. Party was +shipwrecked, starved, most of the dogs eaten, one man dead. Berg's mother +littered on the body one night. Next morning they were rescued and the +new family was saved. Otherwise I guess they'd have had a puppy stew and +Berg and his wife and family wouldn't be earning their living with me." + +"How do they earn their living?" asked Sheila, still peering at the hero +of the tale. + +"They pull my sled about winters, Hidden Creek." + +"Oh, you live in the Hidden Creek country?" + +"Yes. Got a ranch up not far from the source. Ever been over The Hill?" + +She came toward Sheila, gathered the reins into her strong, broad hands, +held them in her teeth, and began to pull on her canvas gloves. She +talked with the reins between her teeth as she had with the spike, her +enunciation triumphantly forceful and distinct. + +"Some day, I'm coming over The Hill," said Sheila, less successful with a +contraction in her throat. + +The woman made a few strides. Now she was looking shrewdly, close into +Sheila's face. + +"You're a biscuit-shooter at the hotel?" + +"No. I work in the saloon." + +"In the saloon? Oh, sure. Barmaid. I've heard of you." + +Here she put a square finger-tip under Sheila's chin and looked even +closer than before. "Not happy, are you?" she said. She moved away +abruptly. "Tired of town life. Been crying. Well, when you want to pull +out, come over to my ranch. I need a girl. I'm kind of lonesome winters. +It's a pretty place if you aren't looking for street-lamps and +talking-machines. You don't hear much more than coyotes and the river and +the pines and, if you're looking for high lights, you can sure see the +stars ..." + +She climbed up to her seat, using the hub of her wheel for a foothold, +and springing with surprising agility and strength. + +Sheila stepped aside and the horse started instantly. She made a few +hurried steps to keep up. + +"Thank you," she said, looking up into the ruddy eyes that looked down. +"I'll remember that. What is your name?" + +"Christina Blake, Miss Blake. I'll make The Hill before morning if +I'm lucky. Less dust and heat by night and the horse has loafed +since morning.... I mean that about coming to my place. Any time. +Good-bye to you." + +She smiled a smile as casual in its own way as Sheila's own. Berg, under +the wagon, trotted silently. He looked neither to right nor left. His +wild, deep-set eyes were fastened on the heels of the small horse. He +looked as though he were trotting relentlessly toward some wolfish goal +of satisfied hunger. A little cloud of dust rose up from the wheels and +stood between Sheila and the wagon. She conquered an impulse to run after +it, shut her hand tight, and walked in at the back door of the saloon. + +A teamster, with a lean, fatherly face, his mouth veiled by a +shaggy blond mustache, his eyes as blue as larkspur, smiled at her +across the bar. + +"Hullo," said he. "How's your pony?" + +Sheila had struck up one of her sudden friendships with this man, who +visited the saloon at regular intervals. This question warmed her heart. +The little pony of Jim's giving was dear. She thought of his soft eyes +and snuggling nose almost as often and as fondly as a lover thinks of the +face of his lady. + +"Tuck's splendid, Mr. Thatcher," she said, leaning her elbows on the bar +and cupping her chin in her hands. Her face was bright with its tender, +Puckish look. "He's too cute. He can take sugar out of my apron pocket. +And he'll shake hands. I'd just love you to see him. Will you be here +to-morrow afternoon?" + +"No, ma'am. I'm pullin' out about sunup. Round the time you tumble into +bed. Got to make The Hill." + +"How's your baby?" + +A shining smile rewarded her interest in the recent invalid. "Fine and +dandy. You ought to see her walk!" + +"Isn't that splendid! And how's the little boy? Is he with you?" + +"No, ma'am. I kind o' left him to mind the ranch. He's gettin' to be a +real rancher, that boy. He was sure sorry not to make Hidden Creek this +trip, though. Say, he was set on seein' you. I told him about you." + +Sheila's face flamed and her eyes smarted. Gratitude and shame possessed +her. This man, then, did not speak of her as "Hudson's Queen"--not if he +told his boy about her. She turned away to hide the flame and smart. When +she looked back, Sylvester himself stood at Thatcher's elbow. He very +rarely came into the saloon. At sight of him Sheila's heart leaped as +though it had been struck. + +"Say, Sheila," he murmured, "I'm celebratin' to-night." + +She tried to dismiss from her mind its new and ugly consciousness. She +tried to smile. The result was an expression strange enough. + +Sylvester, however, missed it. He was dressed in one of the brown +checked suits, a new one, freshly creased; there was a red wild-rose bud +in his buttonhole. The emerald gleamed on his well-kept, sallow hand. He +was sipping from his glass and had put a confidential hand on Thatcher's +shoulder. He grinned at Carthy. + +"Well, sir," he said, "nobody has in-quired as to my celebration. But I'm +not proud. I'll tell you. I'm celebratin' to-night the winnin' of a bet." + +"That's sure a deservin' cause," said Thatcher. + +"Yes, sir. Had a bet with Carthy here. Look at him blush! Carthy sure-ly +hates to be wrong. And he's mostly right in his prog-nos-ti-cations. He +sure is. You bet yer. That's why I'm so festive." + +"What'd he prognosticate?" asked Thatcher obligingly. He had moved his +shoulder away from Hudson's hand. + +Sylvester wrinkled his upper lip into its smile and looked down into his +glass. He turned his emerald. + +"Carthy prophesied that about this time a little--er--dream--of mine +would go bust," said Hudson. He lifted up his eyes pensively to Sheila, +first his eyes and then his glass. "Here's to my dream--you, girl," he +said softly. + +He drank with his eyes upon her face, drew a deep breath, and looked +about the room. + +Thatcher glanced from him to Sheila. "Goodnight to you, ma'am," he said +with gentleness. "Next time I'll bring the boy." + +"Please, please do." + +Sheila put her hand in his. He looked down at it as though something had +startled him. In fact, her touch was like a flake of snow. + +When Thatcher had gone, Sylvester leaned closer to her across the bar. He +moved his glass around in his hand and looked up at her humbly. + +"The tables kind of turned, eh?" he said. + +"What do you mean, Mr. Hudson?" Sheila, by lifting her voice, tried to +dissipate the atmosphere of confidence, of secrecy. Carthy had moved away +from them, the other occupants of the saloon were very apparently not +listening. + +"Well, ma'am," Sylvester explained, "six months ago I was kind of layin' +claim to gratitude from you, and now it's the other way round." + +"Yes," she said. "But I am still grateful." The words came, however, with +a certain unwillingness, a certain lack of spontaneity. + +"Are you, though?" He put his head on one side so that Sheila was +reminded of Dickie. For the first time a sort of shadowy resemblance +between father and son was apparent to her. "Well, you've wiped the +reckonin' off the slate by what you've done for me. You've given me my +Aura. Say, you have been my fairy godmother, all right. Talk about wishes +comin' true!" + +Again he looked about the room, and that wistfulness of the visionary +stole into his face. His eyes came back to her with an expression that +was almost beautiful. "If only that Englishman was here," he sighed. "Yes +ma'am. I'm sure celebratin' to-night!" + +It was soon very apparent that he was celebrating. For an hour he stood +every newcomer to a drink, and then he withdrew to a table in a shadowy +corner, and sitting there, tilted against the wall, he sipped from his +glass, smoked and dreamed. Hour after hour of the slow, noisy night went +by and still he sat there, watching Sheila through the smoke, seeing in +her, more and more glowingly, the body of his dream. + +It was after dawn when Sheila touched Carthy's elbow. The big Irishman +looked down at her small, drawn face. + +"Mr. Carthy," she whispered, "would it be all right if I went home now? +It's earlier than usual, but I'm so--awfully tired?" + +There was so urgent an air of secrecy in her manner that Carthy +muttered his permission out of the corner of his mouth. Sheila melted +from his side. + +The alley that had been silvery cool with dusk was now even more silvery +cool with morning twilight. Small sunrise clouds were winging over it +like golden doves. Sheila did not look at them. She ran breathless to her +door, opened it, and found herself face to face with Dickie. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE LIGHT OF DAWN + + +There was a light of dawn in the room and through the open window blew in +the keen air of daybreak. Dickie was standing quite still in the middle +of the floor. He was more neat and groomed than Sheila had ever seen him. +He looked as though he had stepped from a bath; his hair was sleek and +wet so that it was dark above the pure pallor of his face; his suit was +carefully put on; his cuffs and collar were clean. He did not have the +look of a man that has been awake all night, nor did he look as though he +had ever been asleep. His face and eyes were alight, his lips firm and +delicate with feeling. + +Before him Sheila felt old and stained. The smoke and fumes of the bar +hung about her. She was shamed by the fresh youthfulness of his slender, +eager carriage and of his eyes. + +"Dickie," she faltered, and stood against the door, drooping wearily, +"what are you doing here at this hour?" + +"What does the hour matter?" he asked impatiently. "Come over to the +window. I want you to look at this big star. I've been watching it. It's +almost gone. It's like a white bird flying straight into the sun." + +He was imperative, laid his cool hand upon hers and drew her to the +window. They stood facing the sunrise. + +"Why did you come here?" again asked Sheila. The beauty of the sky only +deepened her misery and shame. + +"Because I couldn't wait any longer than one night. It's sure been an +awful long night for me, Sheila ... Sheila--" He drew the hand he still +held close to him with a trembling touch and laid his other hand over it. +Then she felt the terrible beating of his heart, felt that he was +shaking. "Sheila, I love you." She had hidden her face against the +curtain, had turned from him. She felt nothing but weariness and shame. +She was like a leaden weight tied coldly to his throbbing youth. Her hand +under his was hot and lifeless like a scorched rose. "I want you to come +away with me from Millings. You can't keep on a-working in that saloon. +You can't a-bear to have folks saying and thinking the fool things they +do. And I can't a-bear it even if you can. I'd go loco, and kill. Sheila, +I've been thinking all night, just sitting on the edge of my bed and +thinking. Sheila, if you will marry me, I will promise you to take care +of you. I won't let you suffer any. I will die"--his voice rocked on the +word, spoken with an awful sincerity of young love--"before I let you +suffer any. If you could love me a little bit"--he stopped as though that +leaping heart had sprung up into his throat--"only a little bit, +Sheila," he whispered, "maybe--?" + +"I can't," she said. "I can't love you that way even a little bit. I +can't marry you, Dickie. I wish I could. I am so tired." + +She drew her hand away, or rather it fell from the slackening grasp of +his, and hung at her side. She looked up from the curtain to his face. It +was still alight and tender and pale. + +"You're real sure, Sheila, that you _never_ could?--that you'd rather go +on with this--?" + +She pressed all the curves and the color out of her lips, still looking +at him, and nodded her head. + +"I can't stay in Millings," Dickie said, "and work in Poppa's hotel and +watch this, Sheila--unless, some way, I can help you." + +"Then you'd better go," she said lifelessly, "because I can't see what +else there is for me to do. Oh, I shan't go on with it for very long, +of course--" + +He came an eager half-step nearer. "Then, anyway, you'll let me go away +and work, and when I've kind of got a start, you'll let me come back +and--and see if--if you feel any sort of--different from what you do now? +It wouldn't be so awful long. I'd work like--like Hell!" His thin hand +shot into a fist. + +Sheila's lassitude was startled by his word into a faint, unwilling +smile. + +"Don't laugh at me!" he cried out. + +"Oh, Dickie, my dear, I'm not laughing. I'm so tired I can hardly stand. +And truly you must go now. I'm horrid to you. I always am. And yet I do +like you so much. And you are such a dear. And I feel there's something +great about you. I should be glad for you to leave Millings. There is a +much better chance for you away from Millings. I feel years old to-day. I +think I've grown up too old all at once and missed lovely things that I +ought to have had. Dickie"--she gave a dry sort of sob--"_you_ are one of +the lovely things." + +His arms drew gently round her. "Let me kiss you, Sheila," he pleaded +with tremulous lips. "I want just to kiss you once for good-bye. I'll be +so careful. If you knowed how I feel, you'd let me." + +She lifted up her mouth like an obedient child. Then, back of Dickie, she +saw Sylvester's face. + +It was more sallow than usual; its upper lip was drawn away from the +teeth and deeply wrinkled; the eyes, half-closed, were very soft; they +looked as though there was a veil across their pensiveness. He caught +Dickie's elbow in his hand, twisted him about, thrusting a knee into his +back, and with his other long, bony hand he struck him brutally across +the face. The emerald on his finger caught the light of the rising sun +and flashed like a little stream of green fire. + +Dickie, caught unawares by superior strength, was utterly defenseless. He +writhed and struggled vainly, gasping under the blows. Sylvester forced +him across the room, still inflicting punishment. His hand made a great +cracking sound at every slap. + +Sheila hid her face from the dreadful sight. "Oh, don't, don't, don't!" +she wailed again and again. + +Then it was over. Dickie was flung out; the door was locked against him +and Sylvester came back across the floor. + +His collar stood up in a half-moon back of his ears, his hair fell across +his forehead, his face was flushed, his lip bled. He had either bitten it +himself or Dickie had struck it. But he seemed quite calm, only a little +breathless. He was neither snarling nor smiling now. He took Sheila very +gently by the wrists, drawing her hands down from her face, and he put +her arms at their full length behind her, holding them there. + +"You meet Dickie here when you're through work, dream-girl," he said +gently. "You kiss Dickie when you leave my Aura, you little beacon light. +I've kept my hands off you and my lips off you and my mind off you, +because I thought you were too fine and good for anything but my ideal. +And all this while you've been sneaking up here to Dickie and Jim and +Lord knows who else besides. Now, I am agoin' to kiss you and then you +gotta get out of Millings. Do you hear? After I've kissed you, you ain't +good enough for my purpose--not for mine." + +Gathering both her hands in one of his, he put the hard, long fingers of +his free hand back of her head, holding it from wincing or turning and +his mouth dropped upon hers and seemed to smother out her life. She +tasted whiskey and the blood from his cut lips. + +"You won't tell _me_, anyway, that lie again," he panted, keeping his +face close, staring into her wide eyes of a horrified childishness--"that +you've never been kissed." + +Again his lips fastened on her mouth. He let her go, strode to the door, +unlocked it, and went out. + +She had fallen to the floor, her head against the chair. She beat the +chair with her hands, calling softly for her father and for her God. She +reproached them both. "You told me it was a good old world," she sobbed. +"You told me it was a good old world." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +FLAMES + + +A hot, dry day followed on the cool dawn. In his room Dickie lay across +his bed. The sun blazed in at his single long window; the big flies that +had risen from the dirty yard buzzed and bumped against the upper pane +and made aimless, endless, mazy circles above and below one another in +the stifling, odorous atmosphere. Dickie lay there like an image of +Icarus, an eternal symbol of defeated youth; one could almost see about +his slenderness the trailing, shattered wings. He had wept out the first +shock of his anger and his shame; now he lay in a despairing stupor. His +bruised face burned and ached; his chest felt tight with the aching and +burning of his heart. Any suspicion of his father's interpretation of his +presence in Sheila's room was mercifully spared him, but the knowledge +that he had been brutally jerked back from her pure and patient lips, had +been ignominiously punished before her eyes and turned out like a whipped +boy--this knowledge was a dreadful torture to his pride. Sheila, to be +sure, did not love him even a little bit; she had said so. All the +longing and the tumult of his heart during these months had made no more +impression upon her than a frantic sea makes upon the little bird at the +top of the cliff. She had, he must think, hardly been aware of it. And +it was such a terrible and frantic actuality. He had fancied that it must +have beaten forever, day by day, night by night, at her consciousness. +Can a woman live near so turbulent a thing and not even guess at its +existence? Her hand against his heart had lain so limp and dead. He +hadn't hoped, of course, that she loved him the way he loved. Probably no +one else could feel what he felt and live--so Dickie in young love's +eternal fashion believed in his own miracle; but she might have loved him +a little, a very little, in time--if she hadn't seen him beaten and +shamed and cuffed out of her presence like a dog. Now there was no hope. +No hope at all. No hope. Dickie rocked his head against his arm. He had +told Sheila that he would take care of her, but he could not even defend +himself. He had told her that he would die to save her any suffering, +but, before her, he had writhed and gasped helplessly under the weight of +another man's hand, his open hand, not even a fist.... No after act of +his could efface from Sheila's memory that picture of his ignominy. She +had seen him twisted and bent and beaten and thrown away. His father had +triumphantly returned to reassure and comfort her for the insult of a +boy's impertinence. Would Sheila defend him? Would she understand? Or +would she not be justified in contemptuous laughter at his pretensions? + +Such thoughts--less like thoughts, however, than like fiery fever +fits--twisted and scorched Dickie's mind as he lay there. They burnt into +him wounds that for years throbbed slowly into scars. + +At noon the heat of his room became even more intolerable than his +thoughts. His head beat with pain. He was bathed in sweat, weak and +trembling. He dragged himself up, went to his washstand, and dipped his +wincing face into the warmish, stale water. His lips felt cracked and dry +and swollen. In the wavy mirror he saw a distorted image of his face, +with its heavy eyes, scattered hair, and the darkening marks of his +father's blows, punctuated by the scarlet scratches of the emerald. He +dried his face, loosened his collar, and, gasping for air, came out into +the narrow hall. + +The hotel was very still. He hurried through it, his face bent, and went +by the back way to the saloon. At this hour Sheila was asleep. Carthy +would be alone in The Aura and there would be few, if any, customers. +Dickie found the place cool and quiet and empty, shuttered from the sun, +the air stirred by electric fans. Carthy dozed in his chair behind the +bar. He gave Dickie his order, somnambulantly. Dickie took it off to a +dim corner and drank with the thirst of a wounded beast. + +Three or four hours later he staggered back to his room. A thunderstorm +was rumbling and flashing down from the mountains to the north. The +window was purple-black, and a storm wind blew the dirty curtains, +straight and steady, into the room. The cool wind tasted and smelt of hot +dust. Dickie felt his dazed way to the bed and steadied himself into a +sitting posture. With infinite difficulty he rolled and lighted a +cigarette, drew at it, took it out, tried to put it again between his +lips, and fell over on his back, his arm trailing over the edge of the +bed. The lighted cigarette slipped from his fingers to the ragged strip +of matting. Dickie lay there, breathing heavily and regularly in a +drunken and exhausted sleep. + +A vivid, flickering pain in his arm woke him. He thought for an instant +that he must have died and dropped straight into Hell. The wind still +blew in upon him, but it blew fire against him. Above him there was a +heavy panoply of smoke. His bedclothes were burning, his sleeve was on +fire. The boards of his floor cracked and snapped in regiments of flame. +He got up, still in a half stupor, plunged his arm into the water +pitcher, saw, with a startled oath, that the woodwork about his door was +blazing in long tongues of fire which leaped up into the rafters of the +roof. His brain began to telegraph its messages ... the hotel was on +fire. He could not imagine what had started it. He remembered Sheila. + +He ran along the passage, the roar of that wind-driven fire following +him as the draft from his window through his opened door gave a sudden +impulse to the flames, and he came to Sheila's sitting-room. He +knocked, had no answer, and burst in. He saw instantly that she had +gone. Her father's picture had been taken, her little books, her +sketches, her work-basket, her small yellow vase. Things were scattered +about. As he stood staring, a billow of black smoke rolled into the +room. He went quickly through the bedroom and the bath, calling +"Sheila" in a low, uncertain voice, returned to the sitting-room to +find the air already pungent and hot. There was a paper pinned up on +the mantel. Sheila's writing marched across it. Dickie rubbed the smoke +from his eyes and read: + +"I am going away from Millings. And I am not coming back. Amelia may have +the things I have left. I don't want them." + +This statement was addressed to no one. + +"She has gone to New York," thought Dickie. His confused mind became +possessed with the immediate purpose of following her. There was an +Eastern train in the late afternoon. Only he must have money and it +was--most of it--in his room. He dashed back. The passage was ablaze; his +room roared like the very heart of a furnace. It was no use to think of +getting in there. Well, he had something in his pocket, enough to start +him. He plunged, choking, into Sheila's sitting-room again. For some +reason this flight of hers had brought back his hope. There was to be a +beginning, a fresh start, a chance. + +He went over to the chair where Sheila had sat in the comfort, of his +arms and he touched the piece of tapestry on its back. That was his +good-bye to Millings. Then he fastened his collar, smoothed his hair, +standing close before Sheila's mirror, peering and blinking through the +smoke, and buttoned his coat painstakingly. There would be a hat +downstairs. As he turned to go he saw a little brown leather book lying +on the floor below the mantel. He picked it up. Here was something he +could take to Sheila. With an impulse of tenderness he opened it. His +eyes were caught by a stanza-- + +"The blessed damozel leaned out +From the gold bar of Heaven; +Her eyes were deeper than the depth +Of waters stilled at even; +She had three lilies in her hand, +And the stars in her hair were seven--" + +There are people, no doubt, who will not be able to believe this truthful +bit of Dickie's history. The smoke was drifting across him, the roar of +the nearing fire was in his ears, he was at a great crisis in his +affairs, his heart was hot with wounded love, and his brain hot with +whiskey and with hope. Nevertheless, he did now, under the spell of those +printed words, which did not even remotely resemble any words that he had +ever read or heard before, forget the smoke, the roar, the love, the +hope, and, standing below Sheila's mirror, he did read "The Blessed +Damozel" from end to end. And the love of those lovers, divided by all +the space between the shaken worlds, and the beauty of her tears made a +great and mystic silence of rapture about him. "O God!" Dickie said +twice as he read. He brushed away the smoke to see the last lines,--"And +wept--I heard her tears." The ecstatic pain of beauty gripped him to the +forgetfulness of all other pain or ecstasy. "O God!" + +He came to with a start, shut the book, stuck it into his pocket, and, +crooking his arm over his smarting eyes, he plunged out of the room. +Millings had become aware of its disaster. Dickie, fleeing by the back +way, leaping dangers and beating through fire, knew by the distant +commotion that the Fire Brigade, of which he was a member, was gathering +its men for the glory of their name. He saw, too, that with a wind like +this to aid the fire, there wasn't a chance for The Aura, and a queer +pang of sympathy for his father stabbed him. "It will kill Pap," thought +Dickie. Save for this pang, he ran along the road toward the station with +a light, adventurous heart. He did not know that he had started the fire +himself. The stupor of his sleep had smothered out all memory of the +cigarette he had lighted and let fall. Unwittingly Dickie had killed the +beauty of his father's dream, and now, just as unwittingly, he was about +to kill the object of his father's passion. When he looked back from the +station platform, the roof of The Aura was already in a blaze. + + + + +PART TWO + +THE STARS + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE HILL + + +Thatcher spoke to his horses, now fatherly, now masterly, now with a +professorial sarcasm: "Come on, Monkey, there's a good girl! Get out of +that, you Fox! Dern you! You call that pulling? It's my notion of layin' +off for the day." Even at its most urgent, his voice was soft, hushed by +the great loneliness of this cañon up which he slowly crept. Monkey and +Fox had been plodding, foot by foot, the creaking wagon at their heels, +since dawn. It was now ten o'clock and they were just beginning to climb. +The Hill, that looked so near to the mesa above Hudson's yard, still +stood aloof. It had towered there ahead of them as they jerked and toiled +across the interminable flat in their accompanying cloud of dust. The +great circle of the world had dwarfed them to a bitter insignificance: a +team of crickets, they seemed, driven by a gnome. The hushed tone of +Thatcher's voice made unconscious tribute to this immensity. + +As they came to the opening of the cañon, the high mountain-top +disappeared; the immediate foothills closed down and shut it out. The air +grew headily light. Even under the blazing July sun, it came cool to the +lungs, cool and intensely sweet. Thousands of wild flowers perfumed it +and the sun-drawn resin of a thousand firs. All the while the rushing of +water accompanied the creaking of Thatcher's progress. Not far from the +road, down there below in a tangle of pine branches, willows, and ferns, +the frost-white stream fled toward the valley with all the seeming terror +of escape. Here the team began their tugging and their panting and their +long pauses to get breath. Thatcher would push forward the wooden handle +that moved his brake, and at the sound and the grating of the wheel the +horses would stop automatically and stand with heaving sides. The wagon +shook slightly with their breathing. At such times the stream seemed to +shout in the stillness. Below, there began to be an extraordinary view of +the golden country with its orange mesas and its dark, purple rim of +mountains. Millings was a tiny circle of square pebbles, something built +up by children in their play. The awful impersonalities of sky and earth +swept away its small human importance. Thatcher's larkspur-colored eyes +absorbed serenity. They had drawn their color and their far-sighted +clearness from such long contemplations of distant horizon lines. + +Now and again, however, Thatcher would glance back and down from his high +seat at his load. It consisted, for the most part, of boxes of canned +goods, but near the front there was a sort of nest, made from bags of +Indian meal. In the middle of the nest lay another bundle of slim, +irregular outline. It was covered with a thin blanket and a piece of +sacking protected it from the sun. A large, clumsy parcel lay beside it. +Each time Thatcher looked at this portion of his load he pulled more +anxiously at his mustache. At last, when the noon sun stood straight +above the pass and he stopped to water his horses at a trough which +caught a trickle of spring water, he bent down and softly raised the +piece of sacking, suspended like a tent from one fat sack to another +above the object of his uneasiness. There, in the complete relaxation of +exhausted sleep, lay Sheila, no child more limp and innocent of aspect; +her hair damp and ringed on her smooth forehead, her lips mournful and +sweet, sedately closed, her expression at once proud and innocent and +wistful, as is the sleeping face of a little, little girl. There was that +look of a broken flower, that look of lovely death, that stops the heart +of a mother sometimes when she bends over a crib and sees damp curls in a +halo about a strange, familiar face. + +Thatcher, looking at Sheila, had some of these thoughts. A teamster is +either philosopher or clown. One cannot move, day after day, all day for +a thousand days, under a changeless, changeful sky, inch by inch, across +the surface of a changeless, changeful earth and not come very near to +some of the locked doors of the temple where clowns sleep and wise men +meditate. And Thatcher was a father, one of the wise and reasonable +fathers of the West, whose seven-year-old sons are friends and helpmates +and toward whom six-year-old daughters are moved to little acts of +motherliness. + +The sun blazed for a minute on Sheila's face. She opened her eyes, looked +vaguely from some immense distance at Thatcher, and then sat up. + +"Oh, gracious!" said Sheila, woman and sprite and adventurer again. +"Where the dickens is my hat? Did it fall out?" + +"No, ma'am," Thatcher smiled in a relieved fashion. "I put it under +the seat." + +Sheila scrambled to a perch on one of the sacks and faced the surface of +half a world. + +"Oh, Mr. Thatcher, isn't it too wonderful! How high are we? Is this the +other side? Oh, no, I can see Millings. Poor tiny, tiny Millings! It _is_ +small, isn't it? How very small it is! What air!" She shut her eyes, +drawing in the perfumed tonic. The altitude had intoxicated her. Her +heart was beating fast, her blood tingling, her brain electrified. Every +sense seemed to be sharpened. She saw and smelt and heard with abnormal +vividness. + +"The flowers are awfully bright up here, aren't they?" she said. "What's +that coral-colored bushy one?" + +"Indian paint-brush." + +"And that blue one? It _is_ blue! I don't believe I ever knew what +blueness meant before." + +"Lupine. And over yonder's monkshead. That other's larkspur, that +poisons cattle in the spring. On the other side you'll see a whole lot +more--wild hollyhock and fireweed and columbine--well, say, I learned all +them names from a dude I drove over one summer." + +"And such a sky!" said Sheila, lifting her head, "and such big pines!" +She lost herself for a minute in the azure immensity above. A vast mosque +of cloud, dome bubbles great and small, stood ahead of them, dwarfing +every human experience of height. "Mr. Thatcher, there isn't any air up +here. What is it we're trying to breathe, anyway?" + +He smiled patiently, sympathetically, and handed her a tin mug of icy +water from the little trickling spring. The bruise of Hudson's kiss ached +at the cold touch of the water and a shadow fell over her excitement. She +thanked the driver gravely. + +"What time is it now?" she asked. + +"Past noon. Better eat your sandwich." + +She took one from its wrapping pensively, but ate it with absent-minded +eagerness. Thatcher's blue eyes twinkled. + +"Seems like I recollect a lady that didn't want no food to be put +in for her." + +"I remember her, too," said Sheila, between bites, "but very, very +vaguely." + +She stood up after a third sandwich, shook crumbs from her skirt, and +stretched her arms. "What a great sleep I've had! Since six o'clock!" +She stared down at the lower world. "I've left somebody at Millings." + +"Who's that?" asked Thatcher, drawling the words a trifle as a Westerner +does when he is conscious of a double meaning. + +"Me." + +Thatcher laughed. "You're a real funny girl, Miss Arundel," he said. + +"Yes, I left one Me when I decided to go into the saloon, and now I've +left another Me. I believe people shed their skins like snakes." + +"Yes'm, I've had that notion myself. But as you get older, your skin kind +of peels off easy and gradual--you don't get them shocks when you sort of +come out all new and shiny and admirin' of yourself." + +Sheila blushed faintly and looked at him. His face was serene and empty +of intention. But she felt that she had been guilty of egotism, as indeed +she had. She asked rather meekly for her hat, and having put it on like a +shadow above her fairness, she climbed up to Thatcher's side on the +driver's seat. The hat was her felt Stetson, and, for the rest, she was +clad in her riding-clothes, the boy's shirt, the short corduroy skirt, +the high-laced boots. Her youthfulness, rather than her strange beauty, +was accentuated by this dress. She had the look of a super-delicate boy, +a sort of rose-leaf fairy prince. + +"Are we on the road?" asked Sheila presently. + +Thatcher gave way to mirth. "Don't it seem like a road to you?" + +She lurched against him, then saved herself from falling out at the other +side by a frantic clutch. + +"Is it a road?" She looked down a dizzy slope of which the horse's +foothold seemed to her the most precarious part. + +"Yes'm--all the road there is. We call it that. We're kind of po-lite to +these little efforts of the Government--kind of want to encourage 'em. +Congressmen kind of needs coaxin' and flat'ry. They're right ornery +critters. I heard an argyment atween a feller with a hoss and a feller +with a mule onct. The mule feller was kind of uppish about hosses; said +he didn't see the advantage of the critter. A mule now was steady and +easy fed and strong. Well, ma'am, the hoss feller got kind of hot after +some of this, so he says, 'Well, sir,' he says, 'there's this about it. +When you got a hoss, you got a hoss. You know what you got. He's goin' to +act like a hoss. But when you got a mule, why, you can't never tell. All +of a sudden one of these days, he's like as not to turn into a +Congressman.' Well, ma'am, that's the way we feel about Congressmen.--Ho, +there, Monkey! Keep up! I'll just get out an' hang on the wheel while we +make this corner. That'll keep us from turnin' over, I reckon." + +Sheila sat and held on with both hands. Her eyes were wide and very +bright. She held her breath till Thatcher got in again, the corner +safely made. For the next creeping, lurching mile, Sheila found that +every muscle in her body had its use in keeping her on that seat. Then +they reached the snow and matters grew definitely worse. Here, half the +road was four feet of dirty, icy drift and half of abysmal mud. They +slipped from drift to mire with awful perils and rackings of the wagon +and painful struggles of the team. Sometimes the snow softened and let +the horses in up to their necks when Thatcher plied whip and tongue with +necessary cruelty. At last there came disaster. They were making one of +those heart-stopping turns. Sheila had got out and was adding her +mosquito weight to Thatcher's on the upper side, half-walking, +half-hanging to the wagon. The outer wheels were deep in mud, the inner +wheels hung clear. The horses strained--and slipped. + +"Let go!" shouted Thatcher. + +Sheila fell back into the snow, and the wagon turned quietly over and +began to slide down the slope. Thatcher sprang to his horses' heads. For +an instant it seemed that they would be dragged over the edge. Then the +wagon stopped, and Thatcher, grim and pale, unhitched his team. He swore +fluently under his breath during this entire operation. Afterwards, he +turned to the scarlet and astounded passenger and gave her one of his +shining smiles. + +"Well, ma'am," he said, beginning to roll a cigarette, "what do you +think of that?" + +"Whatever shall we do now?" asked Sheila. She had identified herself +utterly with this team, this load, this driver. She brushed the snow from +her skirt, climbed down from the drift to the edge of the mire by +Thatcher's elbow. The team stood with hanging heads, panting and +steaming, glad of the rest and the release. + +"Well, ma'am," said Thatcher, looking down at the loyal, anxious face +with a certain tenderness, "I'm agoin' to do one of two things. I'm +agoin' to lead my team over The Hill and come back with two more horses +and a hand to help me or I'm agoin' to set here and wait for the stage." + +"How long will it be before the stage comes?" + +"Matter of four or five hours." + +"Oh, dear! Then I can't possibly overtake my--my friend, Miss Blake!" + +"No, ma'am. But you can walk on a quarter-mile; take a rest at Duff's +place top of The Hill. I can pick you up when I come by; like as not I'll +spend the night at Duff's. By the time I get my load together it'll be +along dark--Hullo!" He interrupted himself, lifting his chin. "I hear +hosses now." + +They both listened. "No wagon," said Thatcher. + +Five minutes later, a slouching horseman, cigarette in mouth, shaggy +chaps on long legs, spurred and booted and decorated with a red +neck-scarf came picturesquely into view. His pony dug sturdy feet into +the steep roadside, avoiding the mud of the road itself. The man led two +other horses, saddled, but empty of riders. He stopped and between him +and Thatcher took place one of the immensely tranquil, meditative, and +deliberate conversations of the Far West. + +Sheila's quick, Celtic nerves tormented her. At last she broke in with an +inspiration. "Couldn't I hire one of your horses?" she asked, rising from +an overturned sack of which she had made a resting-place. + +The man looked down at her with grave, considerate eyes. + +"Why, yes, ma'am. I reckon you could," he said gently. "They're right +gentle ponies," he added. + +"Are they yours?" + +"One of 'em is. The other belongs to Kearney, dude-wrangler up the +valley. But, say, if you're goin' to Rusty you c'd leave my hoss at +Lander's and I c'd get him when I come along. I am stoppin' here to help +with the load. It would cost you nothin', lady. The hoss has got to go +over to Rusty and I'd be pleased to let you ride him. You're no weight." + +"How good of you!" said Sheila. "I'll take the best care of him I know +how to take. Could I find my way? How far is it?" + +"All downhill after a half-mile, lady. You c'd make Rusty afore dark. +It's a whole lot easier on hoofs than it is on wheels. You can't miss the +road on account of it bein' the only road there is. And Lander's is the +only one hotel in Rusty. You'd best stop the night there." + +He evidently wanted to ask her her destination, but his courtesy +forbade. + +Sheila volunteered, "I am going to Miss Blake's ranch up Hidden Creek." + +A sort of flash of surprise passed across the reserved, brown, young +face. "Yes, ma'am," he said with no expression. "Well, you better leave +the rest of your trip until to-morrow." + +He slipped from his horse with an effortless ripple, untied a tawny +little pony with a thick neck, a round body, and a mild, intelligent +face, and led him to Sheila who mounted from her sack. Thatcher carefully +adjusted the stirrups, a primitive process that involved the wearisome +lacing and unlacing of leather thongs. Sheila bade him a bright and +adventurous "Good-bye." thanked the unknown owner of the horse, and +started. The pony showed some unwillingness to leave his companions, +fretted and tossed his head, and made a few attempts at a right-about +face, but Sheila dug in her small spurred heels and spoke beguilingly. At +last he settled down to sober climbing. Sheila looked back and waved her +hand. The two tall, lean men were gazing after her. They took off their +hats and waved. She felt a warmth that was almost loving for their +gracefulness and gravity and kindness. Here was another breed of man than +that produced by Millings. A few minutes later she came to the top of The +Pass and looked down into Hidden Creek. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +ADVENTURE + + +Sheila stood and drew breath. The shadow of the high peak, in the lap of +which she stood, poured itself eastward across the warm, lush, narrow +land. This was different from the hard, dull gold and alkali dust of the +Millings country: here were silvery-green miles of range, and +purple-green miles of pine forest, and lovely lighter fringes and groves +of cottonwood and aspen trees. Here and there were little dots of +ranches, visible more by their vivid oat and alfalfa fields than by their +small log cabins. Down the valley the river flickered, lifted by its +brightness above the hollow that held it, till it seemed just hung there +like a string of jewels. Beyond it the land rose slowly in noble sweeps +to the opposite ranges, two chains that sloped across each other in a +glorious confusion of heads, round and soft as velvet against the blue +sky or blunt and broken with a thundery look of extinct craters. To the +north Sheila saw a further serenity of mountains, lying low and soft on +the horizon, of another and more wistful blue. Over it all was a sort of +magical haze, soft and brilliant as though the air were a melted +sapphire. There was still blessedness such as Sheila had never felt. She +was filled with a longing to ride on and on until her spirit should pass +into the wide, tranquil, glowing spirit of the lonely land. It seemed to +her that some forgotten medicine man sat cross-legged in a hollow of the +hills, blowing, from a great peace pipe, the blue smoke of peace down and +along the hollows and the cañons and the level lengths of range. In the +mighty breast of the blower there was not even a memory of trouble, only +a noble savage serenity too deep for prayer. + +She rode for a long while--no sound but her pony's hoofs--her eyes lifted +across the valley until a sudden fragrance drew her attention earthwards. +She was going through an open glade of aspens and the ground was white +with columbine, enormous flowers snowy and crisp as though freshly +starched by fairy laundresses. With a cry of delight Sheila jumped off +her horse, tied him by his reins to a tree, and began gathering flowers +with all the eager concentration of a six-year-old. And, like all the +flower-gatherers of fable from Proserpina down, she found herself the +victim of disaster. When she came back to the road with a useless, +already perishing mass of white, the pony had disappeared. Her knot had +been unfaithful. Quietly that mild-nosed, pensive-eyed, round-bodied +animal had pulled himself free and tiptoed back to join his friends. + +Sheila hurried up the road toward the summit she had so recently crossed, +till the altitude forced her to stop with no breath in her body and a +pounding redness before her eyes. She stamped her feet with vexation. +She longed to cry. She remembered confusedly, but with a certain +satisfaction, some of the things Thatcher had said to his team. An entire +and sudden lenience toward the gentle art of swearing was born in her. +She threw her columbine angrily away. She had come so far on her journey +that she could never be able to get back to Thatcher nor even to Duff's +shanty before dark. And how far down still the valley lay with that +shadow widening and lengthening across it! + +Her sudden loneliness descended upon her with an almost audible rush. +Dusk at this height--dusk with a keen smell of glaciers and wind-stung +pines--dusk with the world nine thousand feet below; and about her this +falling-away of mountain-side, where the trees seemed to slant and the +very flowers to be outrun by a mysterious sort of flight of rebel earth +toward space! The great and heady height was informed with a presence +which if not hostile was terrifyingly ignorant of man. There was some one +not far away, she felt, just above there behind the rocky ridge, just +back there in the confusion of purplish darkness streaked by pine-tree +columns, just below in the thicket of the stream--some one to meet whose +look meant death. + +Her first instinct was to keep to the road. She walked on down toward +the valley very rapidly. But going down meant meeting darkness. She +began to be unreasonably afraid of the night. She was afflicted by an +old, old childish, immemorial dread of bears. In spite of the chill, +she was very warm, her tongue dry with rapid breathing of the thin air. +She was intolerably thirsty. The sound of water called to her in a +lisping, inhuman voice. She resisted till she was ashamed of her +cowardice, stepped furtively off the track, scrambled down a slope, +parted some branches, and found herself on a rock above a little +swirling pool. On the other side a man kneeling over the water lifted a +white and startled face. + +Through the eerie green twilight up into which the pool threw a shifty +leaden brightness, the two stared at each other for a moment. Then the +man rose to his feet and smiled. Sheila noticed that he had been bathing +a bloody wrist round which he was now wrapping clumsily a handkerchief. + +"Don't be frightened," he said in a rather uncertain voice; "I'm not near +so desperate as I look. Do you want a drink? Hand me down your cup if you +have one and I'll fill it for you." + +"I'm not afraid now," Sheila quavered, and drew a big breath. "But I +was startled for a minute. I haven't any cup. I--I suppose, in a +way--I 'm lost." + +He was peering at her now, and when she took off her hat and rubbed her +damp forehead with a weary, worried gesture, he gave a little +exclamation and swung himself across the stream by a branch, and up to +her side on the rock. + +"The barmaid!" he said. "And I was coming to see you!" + +Sheila laughed in the relieved surprise of recognition. "Why, you are the +cowboy--the one that fought so--so terribly. Have you been fighting +again? Your wrist is hurt. May I tie it up for you?" + +He held out his arm silently and she tied the handkerchief--a large, +clean, coarse one--neatly about it. What with weariness and the shock of +her fright, her fingers were not very steady. He looked down at her +during the operation with a contented expression. It seemed that the +moment was filled for him with satisfaction to a complete forgetfulness +of past or present annoyances. + +"This is a big piece of luck for me," he said. "But"--with a sudden +thundery change of countenance--"you're not going over to Hidden +Creek, are you?" + +"I'm trying to go there," said Sheila; "I've been trying ever since five +o'clock this morning. But I don't seem to be getting there very fast. I +wanted to make Rusty before dark. And my pony got away from me and went +back. I know he went back because I saw the marks of his feet and he +would have gone back. Wouldn't he? Do you think I could get to Rusty on +foot to-night?" + +"No, ma'am. I know you couldn't. You could make it easy on horseback, +though." He stared meditatively above her head and then said in a tone of +resignation: "I believe I better go back myself. I'll take you." + +She had finished her bandage. She looked up at him. "Go back? But you +must have just started from there a few hours ago." + +"Well, ma'am, I didn't come very direct. I kind of shifted round. But I +can go back straight. And I'd really rather. I think I'd better. It was +all foolishness my coming over. I can put you up back of me on my horse, +if you don't mind, and we'll get to Rusty before it's lit up. I'd rather. +You don't mind riding that way, do you? You see, if I put you up and +walked, it'd take lots more time." + +"I don't mind," said Sheila, but she said it rather proudly so that +Hilliard smiled. + +"Well, ma'am, we can try it, anyway. If you go back to the road, I'll get +my horse." + +He seemed to have hidden his horse in a density of trees a mile from the +road. Sheila waited till she thought she must have dreamed her meeting +with him. He came back, looking a trifle sheepish. + +"You see," he said, "I didn't come by the road, ma'am." + +The horse was a large, bony animal with a mean eye. + +"That isn't the pony you rode when you came to Millings," said Sheila. + +He bent to examine his saddle-girth. "No, ma'am," he said gently. "I've +been riding quite a variety of horse-flesh lately. I'll get on first if +you don't mind and give you a hand up. You put your foot on mine. The +horse will stand." + +Sheila obeyed, pressing her lips tight, for she was afraid. However, his +long, supple fingers closed over her wrist like steel and she got quickly +and easily to her perch and clung nervously to him. + +"That's right. Put your arms round tight. Are you all fixed?" + +"Y--yes." + +"And comfortable?" + +"Y--yes, I think so." + +"We're off, then." + +They started on a quick, steady walk down the road. Once, Cosme loosened +the six-shooter on his hip. He whistled incessantly through his teeth. +Except for this, they were both silent. + +"Were you coming to Millings?" asked Sheila at last. She was of the world +where silence has a certain oppressive significance. She was getting used +to her peculiar physical position and found she did not have to cling so +desperately. But in a social sense she was embarrassed. He was quite +impersonal about the situation, which made matters easier for her. Now +and then she suppressed a frantic impulse to giggle. + +"Yes, ma'am. To see you," he answered. "I never rightly thanked you." She +saw the back of his neck flush and she blushed too, remembering his +quickly diverted kiss which had left a smear of blood across her +fingers. That had happened only a few days before, but they were long +days. He too must have been well occupied. There was still a bruise on +his temple. "I--I wasn't quite right in the head after those fellows had +beat me up, and I kind of wanted to show you that I am something like a +gentleman." + +"Have you been in Hidden Creek?" + +"Yes, ma'am. I was thinking of prospecting around. I meant to homestead +over there. I like the country. But when it comes to settling down I get +kind of restless. And usually I get into a mix-up that changes my +intentions. So I'd about decided to go back down Arizona way and +work.--Where are you going to stay in Hidden Creek?" he asked. "Where's +your stuff?" + +"Mr. Thatcher has it in his wagon. I'm going to Miss Blake's ranch. She +invited me." + +"Miss Blake? You mean the lady that wears pants? You don't mean it! Well, +that's right amusing." He laughed. + +Sheila stirred angrily. "I can't see why it's amusing." + +He sobered at once. "Well, ma'am, maybe it isn't. No, I reckon it isn't. +How long will you stay?" + +Sheila gave a big, sobbing sigh. "I don't know. If she likes me and if +I'm happy, I'll stay there always." She added with a queer, dazed +realization of the truth: "I've nowhere else to go." + +"Haven't you any--folks?" he asked. + +"No." + +"Got tired of Millings?" + +"Yes--very." + +"I don't blame you! It's not much of a town. You'll like Hidden Creek. +And Miss Blake's ranch is a mighty pretty place, lonesome but wonderfully +pretty. Right on a bend of the creek, 'way up the valley, close under the +mountains. But can you stand loneliness, Miss--What _is_ your name?" + +There were curious breaks in his manner of a Western cowboy, breaks that +startled Sheila like little echoes from her life abroad and in the East. +There was a quickness of voice and manner, an impatience, a hot and +nervous something, and his voice and accent suggested training. The +abrupt question, for instance, was not in the least characteristic of a +Westerner. + +"My name is Sheila Arundel. I don't know yours either." + +"Do you come from the East?" + +"Yes. From New York." He gave an infinitesimal jerk. "But I've lived +abroad nearly all my life. I think it would be politer if you would +answer my question now." + +She felt that he controlled an anxious breath. "My name is Hilliard," he +said, and he pronounced the name with a queer bitter accent as though the +taste of it was unpleasant to his tongue. "Cosme Hilliard. Don't you +think it's a--_nice_ name?" + +For half a second she was silent; then she spoke with careful +unconsciousness. "Yes. Very nice and very unusual. Hilliard is an English +name, isn't it? Where did the Cosme come from?" + +It was well done, so well that she felt a certain tightening of his body +relax and his voice sounded fuller. "That's Spanish. I've some Spanish +blood. Here's Buffin's ranch. We're getting down." + +Sheila was remembering vividly; Sylvester had come into her compartment. +She could see the rolling Nebraskan country slipping by the window of the +train. She could see his sallow fingers folding the paper so that she +could conveniently read a paragraph. She remembered his gentle, pensive +speech. "Ain't it funny, though, those things happen in the slums and +they happen in the smart set, but they don't happen near so often to just +middling folks like you and me! Don't it sound like a Tenderloin tale, +though, South American wife and American husband and her getting jealous +and up and shooting him? Money sure makes love popular. Now, if it had +been poor folks, why, they'd have hardly missed a day's work, but just +because these Hilliards have got spondulix they'll run a paragraph about +'em in the papers for a month."--Sheila began to make comparisons: a +South American wife and an American husband, and here, this young man +with the Spanish-American name and the Spanish-Saxon physique, and a +voice that showed training and faltered over the pronouncing of the +"Hilliard" as though he expected it to be too well remembered. Had there +been some mention in the paper of a son?--a son in the West?--a son under +a cloud of some sort? But--she checked her spinning of romance--this +youth was too genuine a cowboy, the way he rode, the way he moved, held +himself, his phrases, his turn of speech! With all that wealth behind him +how had he been allowed to grow up like this? No, her notion was +unreasonable, almost impossible. Although dismissed, it hung about her +mental presentment of him, however, like a rather baleful aura, not +without fascination to a seventeen-year-old imagination. So busy was she +with her fabrications that several miles of road slipped by unnoticed. +There came a strange confusion in her thoughts. It seemed to her that she +was arguing the Hilliard case with some one. Then with a horrible start +she saw that the face of her opponent was Sylvester's and she pushed it +violently away.... + +"Don't you go to sleep," said Hilliard softly, laughing a little. "You +might fall off." + +"I--I was asleep," Sheila confessed, in confusion at discovering that her +head had dropped against him. "How dark it's getting! We're in the +valley, aren't we?" + +"Yes, ma'am, we're most there." He hesitated. "Miss Arundel, I think I'd +best let you get down just before we get to Rusty." + +"Get down? Why?" + +He cleared his throat, half-turning to her. In the dusky twilight, that +was now very nearly darkness, his face was troubled and ashamed, like the +face of a boy who tries to make little of a scrape. "Well, ma'am, +yesterday, the folks in Rusty kind of lost their heads. They had a bad +case of Sherlock Holmes. I bought a horse up the valley from a chap who +was all-fired anxious to sell him, and before I knew it I was playing the +title part in a man-hunt. It seems that I was riding one of a string this +chap had rustled from several of the natives. They knew the horse and +that was enough for their nervous system. They had never set eyes on me +before and they wouldn't take my word for my blameless past. They told me +to keep my story for trial when they took me over to the court. Meanwhile +they gave me a free lodging in their pen. Miss Arundel--" Hilliard +dropped his ironic tone and spoke in a low, tense voice of child-like +horror. His face stiffened and paled. "That was awful. To be locked in. +Not to be able to get fresh breath in your lungs. Not to be able to go +where you please, when you please. I can't tell you what it's like ... I +can't stand it! I can't stand a minute of it! I was in that pen six +hours. I felt I'd go loco if I was there all night. I guess I am a kind +of fool. I broke jail early in the morning and caught up the sheriff's +horse. They got a shot or two at me, hit my wrist, but I made my getaway. +This horse is not much on looks, but he sure can get over the sagebrush. +I was coming over to see you." + +There was that in his voice when he said this that touched Sheila's +heart, profoundly. This restless, violent young adventurer, homeless, +foot-loose, without discipline or duty, had turned to her in his trouble +as instinctively as though she had been his mother. This, because she had +once served him. Something stirred in Sheila's heart. + +"And then," Hilliard went on, "I was going to get down to Arizona. But +when I heard you were coming over into Hidden Creek, it seemed like +foolishness to cut myself off from the country by running away from +nothing. Of course there are ways to prove my identity with those +fellows. It only means putting up with a few days of pen." He gave a +sigh. "But you can understand, ma'am, that this isn't just the horse that +will give you quietest entrance into Rusty and that I'm not just one of +the First Citizens." + +"But," said Sheila, "if they see you riding in with me, they certainly +won't shoot." + +He laughed admiringly. "You're game!" he said. "But, Miss Arundel, +they're not likely to do any more shooting. It's not a man riding into +Rusty that they're after. It's a man riding out of Rusty. They'll know +I'm coming to give myself up." + +"I'll just stay here," said Sheila firmly. + +"I can't let you." + +"I'm too tired to walk. I'm too sleepy. It'll be all right." + +"Then I'll walk." He pulled in his horse, but at the instant stiffened in +his saddle and wheeled about on the road. A rattle of galloping hoofs +struck the ground behind them; two riders wheeled and stopped. One drew +close and held out his hand. + +"Say, stranger, shake," he said. "We've been kickin' up the dust to beg +your pardon. We got the real rustler this mornin' shortly after you left. +I'm plumb disgusted and disheartened with young Tommins for losin' his +head an' shootin' off his gun. He's a dern fool, that kid, a regular +tenderfoot. Nothin' won't ever cure him short of growin' up. Come from +Chicago, anyway. One of them Eastern towns. I see he got you, too." + +"Winged me," smiled Hilliard. "Well, I'm right pleased I won't have to +spend another night in your pen." + +"You're entered for drinks. The sheriff stands 'em." Here he bowed to +Sheila, removing his hat. + +"This lady"--Hilliard performed the introduction--"lost her horse on The +Hill. She's aiming to stop at Rusty for to-night." + +The man who had spoken turned to his silent companion. "Ride ahead, +Shorty, why don't you?" he said indignantly, "and tell Mrs. Lander +there's a lady that'll want to sleep in Number Five." + +The other horseman, after a swift, searching look at Sheila, said +"Sure," in a very mild, almost cooing, voice and was off. It looked to +Sheila like a runaway. But the men showed no concern. + +They jogged companionably on their way. Fifteen minutes later they +crossed a bridge and pulled up before a picket fence and a gate. + +They were in Rusty. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +JOURNEY'S END + + +The social life of Rusty, already complicated by the necessity it was +under to atone for a mistake, was almost unbearably discomposed by the +arrival of a strange lady. This was no light matter, be it understood. +Hidden Creek was not a resort for ladies: and so signal an event as the +appearance of a lady, a young lady, a pretty young lady, demanded +considerable effort. But Rusty had five minutes for preparation. By the +time Hilliard rode up to Lander's gate a representative group of citizens +had gathered there. One contingent took charge of Hilliard--married men, +a little unwilling, and a few even more reluctant elders, and led him to +the bowl of reparation which was to wash away all memory of his wrongs. +The others, far the larger group, escorted Sheila up the twelve feet of +board walk to the porch of hospitality filled by the massive person of +Mrs. Lander. On that brief walk Sheila was fathered, brothered, +grandfathered, husbanded, and befriended and on the porch, all in the +person of Mrs. Lander, she was mothered, sistered, and grandmothered. Up +the stairs to Number Five she was "eased"--there is no other word to +express the process--and down again she was eased to supper, where in a +daze of fatigue she ate with surprising relish tough fried meat and +large wet potatoes, a bowl of raw canned tomatoes and a huge piece of +heavy-crusted preserved-peach pie. She also drank, with no effect upon +her drowsiness, an enormous thick cupful of strong coffee, slightly +tempered by canned milk. She sat at the foot of the long table, opposite +Mr. Lander, a fat, sly-looking man whose eyes twinkled with a look of +mysterious inner amusement, caused, probably, by astonishment at his own +respectability. He had behind him a career of unprecedented villainy, and +that he should end here at Rusty as the solid and well-considered keeper +of the roadhouse was, no doubt, a perpetual tickle to his consciousness. +Down either side of the table were silent and impressive figures busy +with their food. Courteous and quiet they were and beautifully +uninquiring, except in the matter of her supplies. The yellow lamplight +shone on brown bearded and brown clean-shaven faces, rugged and strong +and clean-cut. These bared throats and thickly thatched heads, these +faces, lighted by extraordinary, far-seeing brilliant, brooding eyes, +reminded Sheila of a master's painting of The Last Supper--so did their +coarse clothing melt into the gold-brown shadows of the room and so did +their hands and throats and faces pick themselves out in mellow lights +and darknesses. + +After the meal she dragged herself upstairs to Number Five, made scant +use of nicked basin, spoutless pitcher, and rough clean towel, blew out +her little shadeless lamp, and crept in under an immense, elephantine, +grateful weight of blankets and patchwork quilts, none too fresh, +probably, though the sheet blankets were evidently newly washed. Of +muslin sheeting there was none. The pillow was flat and musty. Sheila +cuddled into it as though it had been a mother's shoulder. That instant +she was asleep. Once in the night she woke. A dream waked her. It seemed +to her that a great white flower had blossomed in the window of her room +and that in the heart of it was Dickie's face, tender and as pale as a +petal. It drew near to her and bent over her wistfully. She held out her +arms with a piteous longing to comfort his wistfulness and woke. Her face +was wet with the mystery of dream tears. The flower dwindled to a small +white moon standing high in the upper pane of one of the uncurtained +windows. The room was full of eager mountain air. She could hear a +water-wheel turning with a soft splash in the stream below. There was no +other sound. The room smelt of snowy heights and brilliant stars. She +breathed deep and, quite as though she had breathed a narcotic, slept +suddenly again. This, before any memory of Hudson burned her +consciousness. + +The next morning she found that her journey had been carefully arranged. +Thatcher had come and gone. The responsibility for her further progress +had been shifted to the shoulders of a teamster, whose bearded face, +except for the immense humor and gallantry of his gray eyes, was +startlingly like one of Albrecht Dürer's apostles. Her bundle was in his +wagon, half of his front seat was cushioned for her. After breakfast she +was again escorted down the board walk to the gate. Mrs. Lander fastened +a huge bunch of sweet peas to her coat and kissed her cheek. Sheila bade +innumerable good-byes, expressed innumerable thanks. For Hilliard's +absence Rusty offered its apologies. They said that he had been much +entertained and, after the hurt he had suffered to his wrist, late sleep +was a necessity. Sheila understood. The bowl of reparation had been +emptied to its last atoning dregs. She mounted to the side of "Saint +Mark," she bowed and smiled, made promises, gave thanks again, and waved +herself out of Rusty at last. She had never felt so flattered and so +warmed at heart. + +"I'm agoin'," quoth Saint Mark, "right clost to Miss Blake's. If we don't +overtake her--and that hoss of hers sure travels wonderful fast, +somethin' wonderful, yes, ma'am, by God--excuse me, lady--it's sure +surprisin' the way that skinny little hoss of hers will travel--why, I +c'n take you acrost the ford. There ain't no way of gettin' into Miss +Blake's exceptin' by the ford. And then I c'n take my team back to the +road. From the ford it's a quarter-mile walk to Miss Blake's house. You +c'n cache your bundle and she'll likely get it for you in the mornin'. +We had ought to be there by sundown. Her trail from the ford's clear +enough. I'm a-takin' this lumber to the Gover'ment bridge forty mile up. +Yes, by God--excuse _me_, lady--it's agoin' to be jest a dandy bridge +until the river takes it out next spring, by God--you'll have to excuse +me again, lady." + +He seemed rather mournfully surprised by the frequent need for these +apologies. "It was my raisin', lady," he explained. "My father was a +Methody preacher. Yes'm, he sure was, by God, yes--excuse me again, lady. +He was always a-prayin'. It kinder got me into bad habits. Yes, ma'am. +Those words you learn when you're a kid they do stick in your mind. By +God, yes, they do--excuse _me_, lady. That's why I run away. I couldn't +stand so much prayin' all the time. And bein' licked when I wasn't bein' +prayed at. He sure licked me, that dern son of a--Oh, by God, lady, +you'll just hev to excuse me, please." He wiped his forehead. "I reckon I +better keep still." + +Sheila struggled, then gave way to mirth. Her companion, after a doubtful +look, relaxed into his wide, bearded smile. After that matters were on an +easy footing between them and the "excuse me, lady," was, for the most +part, left to her understanding. + +They drifted like a lurching vessel through the long crystal day. Never +before this journey into Hidden Creek had time meant anything to Sheila +but a series of incidents, occupations, or emotions; now first she +understood the Greek impersonation of the dancing hours. She had watched +the varying faces the day turns to those who fold their hands and still +their minds to watch its progress. She had seen the gradual heightening +of brilliance from dawn to noon, and then the fading-out from that high, +white-hot glare, through gold and rose and salmon and purple, to the ashy +lavenders of twilight and so into gray and the metallic, glittering +coldness of the mountain night. It was the purple hour when she said +good-bye to Saint Mark on the far side of a swift and perilous ford. She +was left standing in the shadow of a near-by mountain-side while he rode +away into the still golden expanse of valley beyond the leafy course of +the stream. Hidden Creek had narrowed and deepened. It ran past Sheila +now with a loud clapping and knocking at its cobbled bed and with an +over-current of noisy murmurs. The hurrying water was purple, with flecks +of lavender and gold. The trees on its banks were topped with emerald +fire where they caught the light of the sun. The trail to Miss Blake's +ranch ran along the river on the edge of a forest of pines. At this hour +they looked like a wall into which some magic permitted the wanderer to +walk interminably. Sheila was glad that she did not have to make use of +this wizard invitation. She "cached" her bundle, as Saint Mark had +advised, in a thicket near the stream and walked resolutely forward +along the trail. Not even when her pony had left her on The Hill had she +felt so desolate or so afraid. + +She could not understand why she was here on her way to the ranch of this +strange woman. She felt astonished by her loneliness, by her rashness, by +the dreadful lack in her life of all the usual protections. Was youth +meant so to venture itself? This was what young men had done since the +beginning of time. She thought of Hilliard. His life must have been just +such a series of disconnected experiments. Danger was in the very pattern +of such freedom. But she was a girl, _only_ a girl as the familiar phrase +expresses it--a seventeen-year-old girl. She was reminded of a pathetic +and familiar line, "A woman naturally born to fears ..." A wholesome +reaction to pride followed and, suddenly, an amusing memory of Miss +Blake, of her corduroy trousers stuffed into boots, of her broad, strong +body, her square face with its firm lips and masterful red-brown eyes; a +very heartening memory for such a moment. Here was a woman that had +adventured without fear and had quite evidently met with no disaster. + +Sheila came to a little tumbling tributary and crossed it on a log. On +the farther side the trail broadened, grew more distinct; through an +opening in tall, gray, misty cottonwoods she saw the corner of a log +house. At the same instant a dreadful tumult broke out. The sound sent +Sheila's blood in a slapping wave back upon her heart. All of her body +turned cold. She was fastened by stone feet to the ground. It was the +laughter of a mob of damned souls, an inhuman, despairing mockery of +God. It tore the quiet evening into shreds of fear. This house was a +madhouse holding revelry. No--of course, they were wolves, a pack of +wolves. Then, with a warmth of returning circulation, Sheila remembered +Miss Blake's dogs, the descendants of the wolf-dog that had littered on +the body of a dead man. Quarter-wolf, was it? These voices had no hint +of the homely barking of a watchdog, the friend of man's loneliness! But +Sheila braced her courage. Miss Blake made good use of her pack. They +pulled her sled, winters, in Hidden Creek. They must then be partly +civilized by service. If only--she smiled a desperate smile at the +uncertainty--they didn't tear her to pieces when she came out from the +shelter of the trees. There was very great courage in Sheila's short, +lonely march through the little grove of cottonwood trees. She was as +white as the mountain columbine. She walked slowly and held her head +high. She had taken up a stone for comfort. + +At the end of the trees she saw a house, a three-sided, one-storied +building of logs very pleasantly set in a circle of aspen trees, +backed by taller firs, toppling over which stood a great sharp crest +of rocky ledges, nine thousand feet high, edged with the fire of +sunset. At one side of the house eight big dogs were leaping at the +ends of their chains. They were tied to trees or to small kennels at +the foot of trees. And, God be thanked! Sheila let fall her +stone--they were _all_ tied. + +The door at the end of the nearest wing of the house opened and Miss +Blake stood on the threshold and held up her hands. At sight of her the +dogs stopped their howling instantly and cringed on their bellies or sat +yawning on their bushy haunches. Miss Blake's resonant, deep voice seemed +to pounce upon Sheila above the chatter of the stream which, running +about three sides of the glade, was now, at the silence of the dogs, +incessantly audible. + +"Well, if it isn't the little barmaid!" cried Miss Blake, and advanced, +wiping her hand on a white apron tied absurdly over the corduroy +trousers and cowboy boots. "Well, if you aren't as welcome as the +flowers in May! So you thought you'd leave the street-lamps and come +take a look at the stars?" + +They met and Sheila took the strong, square hand. She was afflicted by a +sudden dizziness. + +"That's it," she faltered; "this time I thought I'd try--the stars." + +With that she fell against Miss Blake and felt, just before she dropped +into blackness, that she had been saved by firm arms from falling to +the ground. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +BEASTS + + +The city rippled into light. It bloomed, blossom on blossom, like some +enchanted jungle under the heavy summer sky. Dickie sat on a bench in +Washington Square. He sat forward, his hands hanging between his knees, +his lips parted, and he watched the night. It seemed to him that it was +filled with the clamor of iron-throated beasts running to and fro after +their prey. The heat was a humid, solid, breathless weight--a heat +unknown to Millings. Dickie wore his threadbare blue serge suit. It felt +like a garment of lead. + +There were other people on the benches--limp and sodden outlines. Dickie +had glanced at them and had glanced away. He did not want to think that +he looked like one of these--half-crushed insects,--bruised into +immobility. A bus swept round the corner and moved with a sort of +topheavy, tipsy dignity under the white arch. It was loaded with +humanity, its top black with heads. "It ain't a crowd," thought Dickie; +"it's a swarm." His eyes followed the ragged sky-line. "Why is it so +horrible?" he asked himself--"horrible and beautiful and sort of +poisonous--it plumb scares a fellow--" A diminished moon, battered and +dim like a trodden silver coin, stood up above him. By tilting his head +he could look directly at it through an opening in the dusty, +electric-brightened boughs. The stars were pin-pricks here and there in +the dense sky. The city flaunted its easy splendor triumphantly before +their pallid insignificance. Tarnished purities, forgotten ecstasies, +burned-out inspirations--so the city shouted raucously to its faded +firmament. + +Dickie's fingers slid into his pocket. The moon had reminded him of his +one remaining dime. He might have bought a night's lodging with it, but +after one experience of such lodgings he preferred his present quarters. +In Dickie's mind there was no association of shame or ignominy with a +night spent under the sky. But fear and ignominy tainted and clung to +his memory of that other night. He had saved his dime deliberately, +going hungry rather than admit to himself that he was absolutely at the +end of his resources. To-morrow he would not especially need that dime. +He had a job. He would begin to draw pay. In his own phrasing he would +"buy him a square meal and rent him a room somewhere." Upon these two +prospects his brain fastened with a leech-like persistency. And yet +above anything he had faced in his life he dreaded the job and the room. +The inspiration of his flight, the impulse that had sped him out of +Millings like a fire-tipped arrow, that determination to find Sheila, to +rehabilitate himself in her esteem, to serve her, to make a fresh start, +had fallen from him like a dead flame. The arrow-flight was spent. He +had not found Sheila. He had no way of finding her. She was not at her +old address. Her father's friend, the Mr. Hazeldean that had brought +Sylvester to Marcus's studio, knew nothing of her. Mrs. Halligan, her +former landlady, knew nothing of her. Dickie, having summoned Mrs. +Halligan to her doorsill, had looked past her up the narrow, steep +staircase. "Did she live away up there?" he had asked. "Yes, sorr. And +'t was a climb for the poor little crayture, but there was days when +she'd come down it like a burrd to meet her Pa." Dickie had faltered, +white and empty-hearted, before the kindly Irishwoman who remembered so +vividly Sheila's downward, winged rush of welcome. For several hours +after his visit to the studio building he had wandered aimlessly about, +then his hunger had bitten at him and he had begun to look for work. It +was not difficult to find. A small restaurant displayed a need of +waiters. Dickie applied. He had often "helped out" in that capacity, as +in most others, at The Aura. He cited his experience, referred to Mr. +Hazeldean, and was engaged. The pay seemed to him sufficient to maintain +life. So much for that! Then he went to his bench and watched the day +pant itself into the night. His loneliness was a pitiful thing; his +utter lack of hope or inspiration was a terrible thing. + +But as the night went slowly by, he faced this desolation with +extraordinary fortitude. It was part of that curious detachment, that +strange gift of impersonal observation. Dickie bore no grudges against +life. His spirit had a fashion of standing away, tiptoe, on wings. It +stood so now like a presence above the miserable, half-starved body that +occupied the bench and suffered the sultriness of August and the pains of +abstinence. Dickie's wide eyes, that watched the city and found it +horrible and beautiful and frightening, were entirely empty of bitterness +and of self-pity. They had a sort of wistful patience. + +There came at last a cool little wind and under its ministration Dickie +let fall his head on his arms and slept. He was blessed by a dream: +shallow water clapping over a cobbled bed, the sharp rustle of wind-edged +aspen leaves, and two stars, tender and misty, that bent close and +smiled. He woke up and stared at the city. He got up and walked about. He +was faint now and felt chilled, although the asphalt was still soft +underfoot and smelled of hot tar. As he moved listlessly along the +pavement, a girl brushed against him, looked up, and murmured to him. She +was small and slight. His heart seemed to leap away from the contact and +then to leap almost irresistibly to meet it. He turned away and went back +quickly toward the Square. It seemed to him that he was followed. He +looked over his shoulder furtively. But the girl had disappeared and +there was no one in sight but a man who walked unsteadily. Dickie +suddenly knew why he had saved that dime. The energy of a definite +purpose came to him. He remembered a swinging door back there around a +corner, but when he reached the saloon, it was closed. Dickie had a +humiliating struggle with tears. He went back to his bench and sat there, +trembling and swearing softly to himself. He had not the strength to look +farther. He was no longer the Dickie of Millings, a creature possessed of +loneliness and vacancy and wandering fancies, he was no longer Sheila's +lover, he was a prey to strong desires. In truth, thought Dickie, seeking +even now with his deprecatory smile for likenesses and words, the city +was full of beasts, silent and stealthy and fanged. That spirit, aloof, +maintained its sweet detachment. Beneath its observation Dickie fought +with a grim, unreasoning panic that was very like the fear of a man +pursued by wolves. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +NEIGHBOR NEIGHBOR + + +Even in the shadow of after events, those first two months at Miss +Blake's ranch swam like a golden galleon through Sheila's memory. Never +had she felt such well-being of body, mind, and soul. Never had she known +such dawns and days, such dusks, such sapphire nights. Sleep came like a +highwayman to hold up an eager traveler, but came irresistibly. It caught +her up out of life as it catches up a healthy child. Never before had she +worked so heartily: out of doors in the vegetable garden; indoors in the +sunny kitchen, its windows and door open to the tonic air; never before +had she eaten so heartily. Nothing had tasted like the trout they caught +in Hidden Creek, like the juicy, sweet vegetables they picked from their +own laborious rows, like the berries they gathered in nervous +anticipation of that rival berryer, the brown bear. And Miss Blake's +casual treatment of her, half-bluff, half-mocking, her curt, good-humored +commands, her cordial bullying, were a rest to nerves more raveled than +Sheila knew from her experience in Millings. She grew rosy brown; her +hair seemed to sparkle along its crisp ripples; her little throat filled +itself out, round and firm; she walked with a spring and a swing; she +sang and whistled, no Mrs. Hudson near to scowl at her. Dish-washing was +not drudgery, cooking was a positive pleasure. Everything smelt so good. +She was always shutting her eyes to enjoy the smell of things, forgetting +to listen in order to taste thoroughly, forgetting to look in the delight +of listening to such musical silences, and forgetting even to breathe in +the rapture of sight ... Miss Blake and she put up preserves, and Sheila +had to invent jests to find some pretext for her laughter, so ridiculous +was the look of that broad square back, its hair short above the man's +flannel collar, and the apron-strings tied pertly above the very wide, +slightly worn corduroy breeches and the big boots. Sheila was always +thinking of a certain famous Puss of fairy-tale memory, and biting her +tongue to keep it from the epithet. After Hilliard gave her the black +horse and she began to explore the mountain game trails, her life seemed +as full of pleasantness as it could hold. And yet ... with just that gift +of Hilliard's, the overshadowing of her joy began. No, really before +that, with his first visit. + +That was in late September when the nights were frosty and Miss Blake had +begun to cut and stack her wood for winter, and to use it for a crackling +hearth-fire after supper. They were sitting before such a fire when +Hilliard came. + +Miss Blake sat man-fashion on the middle of her spine, her legs crossed, +a magazine in her hands, and on her blunt nose a pair of large, +black-rimmed spectacles. Her feet and hands and her cropped head, though +big for a woman's, looked absurdly small in comparison to the breadth of +her hips and shoulders. She was reading the "Popular Science Monthly." +This and the "Geographic" and "Current Events" were regularly taken by +her and most thoroughly digested. She read with keen intelligence; her +comments were as shrewd as a knife-edge. The chair she sat in was made +from elk-horns and looked like the throne of some Norse chieftain. Behind +her on the wall hung the stuffed head of a huge walrus, his tusks +gleaming, the gift of that exploring brother who seemed to be her only +living relative. There were other tokens of his wanderings, a polar-bear +skin, an ivory Eskimo spear. As a more homelike trophy Miss Blake had +hung an elk head which she herself had laid low, a very creditable shot, +though out of season. She had been short of meat. In the corner was a +pianola topped by piles of record-boxes. At her feet lay Berg, the dog, +snoring faintly and as cozy as a kitten. + +The firelight made Miss Blake's face and hair ruddier than usual; her +eyes, when she raised them for a glance at Sheila, looked as though they +were full of red sparks which might at any instant break into flame. +Sheila was wearing one of her flimsy little black frocks, recovered from +the wrinkles of its journey, and she had decorated her square-cut neck +with some yellow flowers. On these Miss Blake's eyes rested every now +and then with a sardonic gleam. + +Outside Hidden Creek told its interminable chattering tale, centuries +long, the little skinny horse cropped getting his difficult meal with +his few remaining teeth. They could hear the dogs move with a faint +rattle of chains. Sometimes there would be a distant rushing sound, a +snow-slide thousands of feet above their heads on the mountain. Above +these familiar sounds there came, at about eight o'clock that evening, +the rattle of horse's hoofs through the little stream and at the instant +broke out the hideous clamor of the dogs, a noise that never failed to +whiten Sheila's cheeks. + +Miss Blake sat up straight and snatched off her spectacles. She looked at +Sheila with a hard look. + +"Have you been sending out invitations, Sheila?" she asked. + +"No, of course not," Sheila had flushed. She could guess whose horse's +hoofs were trotting across the little clearing. + +A man's voice spoke to the dogs commandingly. Miss Blake's eyebrows came +down over her eyes. A man's step struck the porch. A man's knock rapped +sharply at the door. + +"Come in!" said Miss Blake. She spoke it like a sentry's challenge. + +The door opened and there stood Cosme Hilliard, hat in hand, his smiling +Latin mouth showing the big white Saxon teeth. + +Sheila had not before quite realized his good looks. Now, all his lithe, +long gracefulness was painted for her against a square of purple night. +The clean white silk shirt fitted his broad shoulders, the wide rider's +belt clung to his supple waist, the leather chaps were shaped to his +Greek hips and thighs. No civilized man's costume could so have revealed +and enhanced his beautiful strength. And above the long body his face +glowed with its vivid coloring, the liquid golden eyes that moved easily +under their lids, the polished black hair sleekly brushed, the red-brown +cheeks, the bright lips, flexible and curved, of his Spanish mother. + +"Who in God's name are you?" demanded Miss Blake in her deepest voice. + +"This is Mr. Hilliard," Sheila came forward. "He is the man that brought +me over The Hill, Miss Blake--after I'd lost my horse, you know." There +was some urgency in Sheila's tone, a sort of prod to courtesy. Miss Blake +settled back on her spine and recrossed her legs. + +"Well, come in," she said, "and shut the door. No use frosting us all, is +there?" She resumed her spectacles and her reading of the "Popular +Science Monthly." + +Hilliard, still smiling, bowed to her, took Sheila's hand for an instant, +then moved easily across the room and settled on his heels at one corner +of the hearth. He had been riding, it would seem, in the thin silk shirt +and had found the night air crisp. He rolled a cigarette with the hands +that had first drawn Sheila's notice as they held his glass on the bar; +gentleman's hands, clever, sensitive, carefully kept. From his +occupation, he looked up at Miss Blake audaciously. + +"You'd better make friends with me, ma'am," he said, "because we're going +to be neighbors." + +"How's that?" + +"I'm taking up my homestead right down here below you on Hidden Creek a +ways. About six miles below your ford." + +Miss Blake's face filled with dark blood. She said nothing, put up +her magazine. + +Sheila, however, exclaimed delightedly, "Taken up a homestead?" + +"Yes, ma'am." He turned his floating, glowing look to her and there it +stayed almost without deviation during the rest of his visit. "I've built +me a log house--a dandy. I had a man up from Rusty to help me. I've +bought me a cow. I'm getting my furnishings ready. That's what I've been +doing these two months." + +"And never rode up to call on us?" Sheila reproached him. + +"No, ma'am. I'll tell you the reason for that. I wasn't sure of myself." +She opened rather puzzled and astonished eyes at this, but for an instant +his look went beyond her and remembered troubling things. "You see, Miss +Arundel, I'm not used to settling down. That's something that I've had no +practice in. I'm impatient. I get tired quickly. Damn quickly. I change +my mind. It's the worst thing in me--a sort of devil-horse always thirsty +for new things. It's touch and go with him. He runs with me. You see, +I've always given him his head." His look had come back to her face and +dwelt there speaking for him a language headier than that of his tongue. +"I thought I'd tie the dern fool down to some good tough work and test +him out. Well, ma'am, he hasn't quit on me this time. I think he won't. +I've got a ball and chain round about that cloven foot." He drew at his +cigarette, half-veiling in smoke the ardor of his look. "I'd like to show +you my house, Miss Arundel. It's fine. I worked with a builder one season +when I was a lad. I've got it peeled inside. The logs shine and I've got +a fireplace twice the size of this in my living-room"--he made graceful +gestures with the hand that held the cigarette. "Yes, ma'am, a +living-room, and a kitchen, and," with a whimsical smile, "a butler's +pantry. And, oh, a great big bedroom that gets the morning sun." He +paused an instant and flushed from chin to brow, an Anglo-Saxon flush it +was, but the bold Latin eyes did not fall. "I've made some furnishings +already. And I've sent out an order for kitchen stuff." + +Here Miss Blake changed the crossing of her legs. Sheila was angry with +herself because she was consumed with the contagion of his blush. She +wished that he would not look as if he had seen the blush and was pleased +by it. She wished that his clean young strength and beauty and the ardor +of his eyes did not speak quite so eloquently. + +"I bought a little black horse about so high"--he held his hand an absurd +distance from the floor and laughed--"just the size for a little girl +and--do you know who I'm going to give him to?" + +Here Miss Blake got up, strode to the pianola, adjusted it, and sat down, +broad and solid and unabashed by absence of feminine draperies, upon the +stool. She played a comic song. + +"I don't like your _fam_ily--" + +in some such dreadful way it expressed itself-- + +"They do _not_ look good to me. +I don't think your _Unc_le John +Ever _had_ a collar on ..." + +She played it very loud. + +Hilliard stood up and came close to Sheila. + +"She's mad as a March hare," he whispered, "and she doesn't like me a +little bit. Come out while I patch up Dusty, won't you, please? It's +moonlight. I'll be going." He repeated this very loud for Miss Blake's +benefit with no apparent effect upon her enjoyment of the song. She was +rocking to its rhythm. + +Hilliard was overwhelmed suddenly by the appearance of her. He put his +hand to his mouth and bolted. Sheila, following, found him around the +corner of the house rocking and gasping with mirth. He looked at her +through tears. + +"Puss-in-Boots," he gasped, and Sheila ran to the edge of the clearing to +be safe in a mighty self-indulgence. + +There they crouched like two children till their laughter spent itself. +Hilliard was serious first. + +"You're a bad, ungrateful girl," he said weakly, "to laugh at a sweet old +lady like that." + +"Oh, I am!" Sheila took it almost seriously. "She's been wonderful to +me." + +"I bet she works you," he said jealously. + +"Oh, no. Not a bit too hard. I love it." + +"Well," he admitted, "you do look pretty fine, that's a fact. Better than +you did at Hudson's. What did you quit for?" + +Sheila was sober enough now. The moonlight let some of its silver, +uncaught by the twinkling aspen leaves, splash down on her face. It +seemed to flicker and quiver like the leaves. She shook her head. + +He looked a trifle sullen. "Oh, you won't tell me.... Funny idea, you +being a barmaid. Hudson's notion, wasn't it?" + +Sheila lifted her clear eyes. "I thought asking questions wasn't good +manners in the West." + +"Damn!" he said. "Don't you make me angry! I've got a right to ask you +questions." + +She put her hand up against the smooth white trunk of the tree near +which she stood. She seemed to grow a little taller. + +"Oh, have you? I don't think I quite understand how you got any such +right. And you like to be questioned yourself?" + +She had him there, had him rather cruelly, though he was not aware of the +weapon of her suspicion. She felt a little ashamed when she saw him +wince. He slapped his gloves against his leather chaps, looking at her +with hot, sulky eyes. + +"Oh, well... I beg your pardon.... Listen--" He flung his ill-humor aside +and was sweet and cool again like the night. "Are you going to take the +little horse?" + +"I don't know." + +His face shadowed and fell so expressively, so utterly, that she melted. + +"Oh," he stammered, half-turning from her, "I was sure. I brought him +up." + +This completed the melting process. "Of course I'll take him!" she cried. +"Where is he?" + +She inspected the beautiful little animal by the moonlight. She even let +Hilliard mount her on the shining glossy back and rode slowly about +clinging to his mane, ecstatic over the rippling movement under her. + +"He's like a rocking-chair," said Cosme. "You can ride him all day and +not feel it." He looked about the silver meadow. "Good feed here, isn't +there? I bet he'll stay. If not, I'll get him for you." + +Sheila slipped down. They left the horse to graze. + +"Yes, it's first-rate feed. Do you think Miss Blake will let me +keep him?" + +His answer was entirely lost by a sudden outbreak from the dogs. + +"Good Lord!" said Cosme, making himself heard, "what a breed! Isn't that +awful! Why does she keep the brutes? Isn't she scared they'll eat her?" + +Sheila shook her head. Presently the tumult quieted down. "They're afraid +of her," she said. "She has a dreadful whip. She likes to bully them. I +think she's rather cruel. But she does love Berg; she says he's the only +real dog in the pack." + +"Was Berg the one on the bearskin inside?" + +"Yes." + +"He's sure a beauty. But I don't like him. He has wolf eyes. See +here--you're shivering. I've kept you out here in the cold. I'll go. +Good-night. Thank you for keeping the horse. Will you come down to see my +house? I built it"--he drawled the words--"for you"--and added after a +tingling moment--"to see, ma'am." + +This experiment in words sent Sheila to the house, her hand crushed and +aching with his good-bye grasp, her heart jumping with a queer fright. + +Miss Blake stood astraddle on the hearth, her hands behind her back. + +"You better go to bed, Sheila," she said; "it's eleven o'clock and +to-morrow's wash-day." + +Her voice was pleasant enough, but its bluffness had a new edge. Sheila +found it easy to obey. She climbed up the ladder to the little gabled +loft which was her bedroom. Halfway up she paused to assert a belated +independence of spirit. "Good-night," she said, "how do you like our +neighbor?" + +Miss Blake stared up. Her lips were set tight. She made no answer. After +an instant she sauntered across the room and out of the door. The whip +with which she beat the dogs swung in her hand. A moment later a fearful +howling and yelping showed that some culprit had been chosen for condign +punishment. + +Sheila set down her candle, sat on the edge of her cot, and covered her +ears with her hands. When it was over she crept into bed. She felt, +though she chided herself for the absurdity, like a naughty child who has +been forcibly reminded of the consequences of rebellion. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +A HISTORY AND A LETTER + + +The next morning, it seemed Miss Blake's humor had completely changed. It +showed something like an apologetic softness. She patted Sheila's +shoulder when she passed the girl at work. When Hilliard next appeared, a +morning visit this time, he was bidden to share their dinner; he was even +smiled upon. + +"She's not such a bad old girl, is she?" he admitted when Sheila had been +given a half-holiday and was riding on the black horse beside Hilliard on +his Dusty across one of the mountain meadows. + +"_I_ think she's a dear," said Sheila, pink with gratitude; then, +shadowing, "If only she wouldn't beat the dogs and would give up +trapping." + +"Why in thunder shouldn't she trap?" + +"I loathe trapping. Do you remember how you felt in the pen? It's bad +enough to shoot down splendid wild things for food, but, to trap +them!--small furry things or even big furry things like bears, why, it's +cruel! It's hideously cruel! When a woman does it--" + +"Come, now, don't call _her_ a woman!" + +"Yes, she is. Think of the aprons! And she is so tidy." + +"That's not just a woman's virtue." + +"Maybe not. I'm not sure. But I've a feeling that it was Eve who first +discovered dust." + +"Very bad job if she did. Think of all the bother we've been going +through ever since." + +"There!" Sheila triumphed. "To you it's just bother. You're a man. To me +it's a form of sport.... I wonder what Miss Blake's story is." + +"You mean--?" He turned in his saddle to stare wonderingly at her. "You +don't know?" + +"No." Sheila blushed confusedly. "I--I don't know anything about her--" + +"Good Lord!" He whistled softly. "Sometimes those ventures turn out all +right." He looked dubious. "I'm glad I'm here!" + +Sheila's smile slipped sweetly across her mouth and eyes. "So am I. But," +she added after a thoughtful moment, "I don't know much about your story +either, do I?" + +"I might say something about asking questions," began Cosme with +grimness, but changed his tone quickly with a light, apologetic touch on +her arm, "but--but I won't. I ran away from school when I was fourteen +and I've been knocking around the West ever since." + +"What school?" asked Sheila. + +He did not answer for several minutes. They had come to the end of the +meadow and were mounting a slope on a narrow trail where the ponies +seemed to nose their way among the trees. Now and then Sheila had to put +out her hand to push her knee away from a threatening trunk. Below were +the vivid paintbrush flowers and the blue mountain lupine and all about +the nymph-white aspens with leaves turning to restless gold against the +sky. The horses moved quietly with a slight creaking of saddles. There +was a feeling of stealth, of mystery--that tiptoe breathless expectation +of Pan pipes.... At last Cosme turned in his saddle, rested his hand on +the cantle, and looked at Sheila from a bent face with troubled eyes. + +"It was an Eastern school," he said. "No doubt you've heard of it. It +was Groton." + +The name here in these Wyoming woods brought a picture as foreign as the +artificiality of a drawing-room. + +"Groton? You ran away?" + +"Yes, ma'am." + +Sheila's suspicions were returning forcibly. "I'll have to ask questions, +Mr. Hilliard, because it seems so strange--what you are now, and your +running away and never having been brought back to the East by--by +whoever it was that sent you to Groton." + +"I want you to ask questions," he said rather wistfully. "You have +the right." + +This forced her into something of a dilemma. She ignored it and waited, +looking away from him. He would not leave her this loophole, however. + +"Why don't you look at me?" he demanded crossly. + +She did, and smiled again. + +"You have the prettiest smile I ever saw!" he cried; then went on +quickly, "I ran away because of something that happened. I'll tell you. +My mother"--he flushed and his eyes fell--"came up to see me at school +one day. My mother was very beautiful.... I was mad about her." Curiously +enough, every trace of the Western cowboy had gone out of his voice and +manner, which were an echo of the voice and manner of the Groton +schoolboy whose experience he told. "I was proud of her--you know how a +kid is. I kind of paraded her round and showed her off to the other +fellows. No other fellow had such a beautiful mother. Then, as we were +saying good-bye, a crowd of the boys all round, I did something--trod on +her foot or something, I don't quite know what--and she lifted up her +hand and slapped me across the face." He was white at the shocking +memory. "Right there before them all, when I--I was adoring her. She had +the temper of a devil, a sudden Spanish temper--the kind I have, too--and +she never made the slightest effort to hold it down. She hit me and she +laughed as though it was funny and she got into her carriage. I cut off +to my room. I wanted to kill myself. I couldn't face any one. I wanted +never to see her again. I guess I was a queer sort of kid.... I don't +know ..." He drew a big breath, dropped back to the present and his +vivid color returned. "That's why I ran away from school, Miss Arundel." + +"And they never brought you back?" + +He laughed. "They never found me. I had quite a lot of money and I +lost myself pretty cleverly...a boy of fourteen can, you know. It's +a very common history. Well, I suppose they didn't break their necks +over me either, after the first panic. They were busy people--my +parents--remarkably busy going to the devil.... And they were eternally +hard-up. You see, my grandfather had the money--still has it--and he's +remarkably tight. I wrote to them after six years, when I was twenty. +They wrote back; at least their lawyer did. They tried, not very +sincerely, though, I think, to coax me East again... told me they'd +double my allowance if I did--they've sent me a pittance--" He shuddered +suddenly, a violent, primitive shiver. "I'm glad I didn't go," he said. + +There was a long stillness. That dreadful climax to the special +"business" of the Hilliards was relived in both their memories. But it +was something of which neither could speak. Sheila wondered if the +beautiful mother was that instant wearing the hideous prison dress. She +wished that she had read the result of the trial. She wouldn't for the +world question this pale and silent young man. The rest of their ride was +quiet and rather mournful. They rode back at sunset and Hilliard bade her +a troubled good-bye. + +She wanted to say something comforting, reassuring. She watched him +helplessly from where she stood on the porch as he walked across the +clearing to his horse. Suddenly he slapped the pocket of his chaps and +turned back. "Thunder!" he cried, "I'd forgotten the mail. A fellow left +it at the ford. A paper for Miss Blake and a letter for you." + +Sheila held out her hand. "A letter for me?" She took it. It was a +strange hand, small and rather unsteady. The envelope was fat, the +postmark Millings. Her flush of surprise ebbed. She knew whose letter it +was--Sylvester Hudson's. He had found her out. + +She did not even notice Cosme's departure. She went up to her loft, sat +down on her cot and read. + +"MY DEAR MISS SHEILA: + +"I don't rightly know how to express myself in this letter because I know +what your feelings toward Pap must be like, and they are fierce. But I +have got to try to write you a letter just the same, for there are some +things that need explaining. At first, when my hotel and my Aura were +burned down [here the writing was especially shaky] and I found that you +and Dickie had both vamoosed, I thought that you had paid me out and gone +off together. You can't blame me for that thought, Miss Sheila, for I +had found him in your room at that time of night or morning and I +couldn't help but see that he was aiming to kiss you and you were waiting +for his kiss. So I was angry and I had been drinking and I kissed you +myself, taking advantage of you in a way that no gentleman would do. But +I thought you were different from the Sheila I had brought to be my +barmaid. + +"Well, ma'am, for a while after the fire, I was pretty near crazy. I was +about loco. Then I was sick. When I got well again, a fellow who come +over from Hidden Creek told me you had gone over to be at a ranch there +and that you had come in alone. That sort of got me to thinking about you +more and more and studying you out, and I begun to see that I had made a +bad mistake. Whatsoever reason brought that damn fool Dickie to your room +that morning, it wasn't your doings, and the way you was waiting for his +kiss was more a mother's way. I have had some hard moments with myself, +Miss Sheila, and I have come to this that I have got to write and tell +you how I feel. And ask your forgiveness. You see you were something in +my life, different from anything that had ever been there. I don't +rightly know--I likely never will know--what you meant in my life. I +handled you in my heart like a flower. Before God, I had a religion for +you. And that was just why, when I thought you was bad, that it drove me +crazy. I wonder if you will understand this. You are awful young and +awful ignorant. And I have hurt your pride. You are terrible proud for +your years, Miss Sheila. I ache all over when I think that I hurt your +pretty mouth. I hope it is smiling now. I am moving out of Millings,--Me +and Momma and Babe. But Girlie is agoing to marry Jim. He run right back +to her like a little lost lamb the second you was gone. Likely, he'll +never touch liquor again. I haven't heard from Dickie. I guess he's gone +where the saloons are bigger and where you can get oysters with your +drinks. He always was a damn fool. I would dearly like to go over to +Hidden Creek and see you, but I feel like I'd better not. It would hurt +me if I got a turn-down from you like it will hurt me if you don't +answer this letter, which is a mighty poor attempt to tell you my bad +reasons for behaving like I did. I am not sorry I thrashed Dickie. He had +ought to be thrashed good and plenty. And he has sure paid me off by +burning down my Aura. That was a saloon in a million, Miss Sheila, and +the picture of you standing there back of my bar, looking so dainty and +sweet and fine in your black dress and your frills--well, ma'am, I'll +sure try to be thinking of that when I cash in. + +"Well, Miss Sheila, I wish you good fortune in whatever you do, and I +hope that if you ever need a friend you will overlook my bad break and +remember the artist that tried to put you in his big work and--failed." + +This extraordinary document was signed--"Sylvester." Sheila was left +bewildered with strange tears in her throat. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +SANCTUARY + + +There came to the restaurant where Dickie worked, a certain sallow and +irritable man, no longer in his early youth. He came daily for one of his +three meals: it might be lunch or dinner or even breakfast, Dickie was +always in haste to serve him. For some reason, the man's clever and +nervous personality intrigued his interest. And this, although his +customer never threw him a glance, scowled at a newspaper, barked out an +order, gulped his food, stuck a fair-sized tip under the edge of his +plate, and jerked himself away. + +On a certain sluggish noon hour in August, Dickie, as far as the +kitchen door with a tray balanced on his palm, realized that he had +forgotten this man's order. He hesitated to go back. "Like as not," +reasoned Dickie, "he didn't rightly know what the order was. He never +does look at his food. I'll fetch him a Spanish omelette and a salad +and a glass of iced tea. It's a whole lot better order than he'd have +thought of himself." + +Nevertheless, it was with some trepidation that he set the omelette down +before that lined and averted countenance. Its owner was screwed into his +chair as usual, eyes, with a sharp cleft between their brows, bent on his +folded newspaper, and he put his right hand blindly on the fork. But as +it pricked the contents of the plate a savory fragrance rose and the +reader looked. + +"Here, you damn fool--that's not my order," he snapped out. + +Dickie tasted a homely memory--"Dickie damn fool." He stood silent a +moment looking down with one of his quaint, impersonal looks. + +"Well, sir," then he said slowly, "it ain't your order, but you look a +whole lot more like a feller that would order Spanish omelette than like +a feller that would order Hamburger steak." + +For the first time the man turned about, flung his arm over his +chair-back, and looked up at Dickie. In fact, he stared. His thin lips, +enclosed in an ill-tempered parenthesis of double lines, twisted +themselves slightly. + +"I'll be derned!" he said. "But, look here, my man, I didn't order +Hamburger steak; I ordered chicken." + +Dickie deliberately smoothed down the cowlick on his head. He wore his +look of a seven-year-old with which he was wont to face the extremity of +Sylvester's exasperation. + +"I reckon I clean forgot your order, sir," he said. "I figured out that +you wouldn't be caring what was on your plate. This heat," he added, +"sure puts a blinder on a feller's memory." + +The man laughed shortly. "It's all right," he said. "This'll go down." + +He ate in silence. Then he glanced up again. "What are you waiting +for, anyway?" + +Dickie flushed faintly. "I was sort of wishful to see how it would go +down." + +"Oh, I don't mean that kind of waiting. I mean--why are you a waiter in +this--hash-hole?" + +Dickie meditated. "There ain't no answer to that," he said. "I don't know +why--" He added--"Why anything. It's a sort of extry word in the +dictionary--don't mean much any way you look at it." + +He gathered up the dishes. The man watched him, tilting back a little in +his chair, his eyes twinkling under brows drawn together. A moment +afterwards he left the restaurant. + +It was a few nights later when Dickie saw him again--or rather when +Dickie was again seen by him. This time Dickie was not in the restaurant. +He was at a table in a small Free Library near Greenwich Avenue, and he +was copying painstakingly with one hand from a fat volume which he held +down with the other. The strong, heavily-shaded light made a circle of +brilliance about him; his fair hair shone silvery bright, his face had a +sort of seraphic pallor. The orderer of chicken, striding away from the +desk with a hastily obtained book of reference, stopped short and stared +at him; then came close and touched the thin, shiny shoulder of the blue +serge coat. + +"This the way you take your pleasure?" he asked abruptly. + +Dickie looked up slowly, and his consciousness seemed to travel even more +slowly back from the fairy doings of a midsummer night. Under the +observant eyes bent upon it, his face changed extraordinarily from the +face of untroubled, almost immortal childhood to the face of struggling +and reserved manhood. + +"Hullo," he said with a smile of recognition. "Well--yes--not always." + +"What are you reading?" The man slipped into the chair beside Dickie, put +on his glasses, and looked at the fat book. "Poetry? Hmp! What are you +copying it for?--letter to your girl?" + +Dickie had all the Westerner's prejudice against questions, but he felt +drawn to this patron of the "hash-hole," so, though he drawled his answer +slightly, it was an honest answer. + +"It ain't my book," he said. "That's why I'm copying it." + +"Why in thunder don't you take it out, you young idiot?" + +Dickie colored. "Well, sir, I don't rightly understand the workings of +this place. I come by it on the way home and I kep' a-seein' folks goin' +in with books and comin' out with books. I figured it was a kind of +exchange proposition. I've only got one book--and that ain't rightly +mine--" the man looking at him wondered why his face flamed--"so, when I +came in, I just watched and I figured you could read here if you had the +notion to take down a book and fetch it over to the table and copy from +it and return it. So I've been doin' that." + +"Why didn't you go to the desk, youngster, and ask questions?" + +"Where I come from"--Dickie was drawling again--"folks don't deal so much +in questions as they do here." + +"Where you came from! You came from Mars! Come along to the desk and +I'll fix you up with a card and you can take an armful of poetry home +with you." + +Dickie went to the desk and signed his name. The stranger signed +his--Augustus Lorrimer. The librarian stamped a bit of cardboard and +stuck it into the fat volume. She handed it to Dickie wearily. + +"Thank _you_, ma'am," he said with such respectful fervor that she looked +up at him and smiled. + +"Now, where's your diggings," asked Lorrimer, who had taken no hints +about asking questions, "east or west?" He was a newspaper reporter. + +"Would you be carin' to walk home with me?" asked Dickie. There was a +great deal of dignity in his tone, more in his carriage. + +"Yes. I'd be caring to! Lead on, Martian!" And Lorrimer felt, after +he said that, that he was a vulgarian--a long-forgotten sensation. +"In Mars," he commented to himself, "this young man was some kind of +a prince." + +"What do you look over your shoulder that way for, Dick?" he asked aloud, +a few blocks on their way. "Scared the police will take away your book?" + +Dickie blinked at him with a startled air. "Did I? I reckon a feller +gets into queer ways when he's alone a whole lot. I get kind of feelin' +like somebody was following me in this town--so many folks goin' to and +fro does it to me most likely." + +"Yes, a fellow does get into queer ways when he's alone a whole lot," +said Lorrimer slowly. His mind went back a dozen years to his own first +winter in New York. He looked with keenness at Dickie's face. It was a +curiously charming face, he thought, but it was tight-knit with a +harried, struggling sort of look, and this in spite of its quaint +detachment. + +"Know any one in this city?" + +"No, sir, not rightly. I've made acquaintance with some of the waiters. +They've asked me to join a club. But I haven't got the cash." + +"What pay do you draw?" + +Dickie named a sum. + +"Not much, eh? But you've got your tips." + +"Yes, sir. I pay my board with my pay and live on the tips." + +"Must be uncertain kind of living! Where do you live, anyway? +What? Here?" + +They had crossed Washington Square and were entering a tall studio +building to the south and east. Dickie climbed lightly up the stairs. +Lorrimer followed with a feeling of bewilderment. On the top landing, +dimly lighted, Dickie unlocked a door and stood aside. + +"Just step in and look up," he said, "afore I light the light. You'll +see something." + +Lorrimer obeyed. A swarm of golden bees glimmered before his eyes. + +"Stars," said Dickie. "Down below you wouldn't hardly know you had 'em, +would you?" + +Lorrimer did not answer. A moment later an asthmatic gas-jet caught its +breath and he saw a bare studio room almost vacant of furniture. There +was a bed and a screen and a few chairs, one window facing an alley wall. +The stars had vanished. + +"Pretty palatial quarters for a fellow on your job," Lorrimer remarked. +"How did you happen to get here?" + +"Some--people I knowed of once lived here." Dickie's voice had taken on a +certain remoteness, and even Lorrimer knew that here questions stopped. +He accepted a chair, declined "the makings," proffered a cigarette. +During these amenities his eyes flew about the room. + +"Good Lord!" he ejaculated, "is all that stuff your copying?" + +There was a pile of loose and scattered manuscript upon the table under +the gas-jet. + +"Yes, sir," Dickie smiled. "I was plumb foolish to go to all that labor." + +Lorrimer drew near to the table and coolly looked over the papers. +Dickie watched him with rather a startled air and a flush that might +have seemed one of resentment if his eyes had not worn their +impersonal, observing look. + +"All poetry," muttered Lorrimer. "But some of it only a line--or a +word." He read aloud,--"'Close to the sun in lonely lands--' what's that +from, anyway?" + +"A poem about an eagle by a man named Alfred Tennyson. Ain't it the way a +feller feels, though, up on the top of a rocky peak?" + +"Never been on the top of a rocky peak--kind of a sky-scraper sensation, +isn't it? What's all this--'An' I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, +after my fashion'?" + +Dickie's face again flamed in spite of himself. "It's a love poem. The +feller couldn't forget. He couldn't keep himself from loving that-away +because he loved so much the other way--well, sir, you better read it for +yourself. It's a mighty real sort of a poem--if you were that sort of a +feller, I mean." + +"And this is 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' And here's a sonnet, 'It was +not like your great and gracious ways'--? Coventry Patmore. Well, young +man, you've a catholic taste." + +"I don't rightly belong to any church," said Dickie gravely. "My mother +is a Methodist." + +Lorrimer moved; abruptly away and moved abruptly back. + +"Where were you educated, Dick?" + +"I was raised in Millings"--Dickie named the Western State--"I didn't +get only to grammar school. My father needed me to work in his hotel." + +"Too bad!" sighed Lorrimer. "Well, I'll bid you good-night. And many +thanks. You've got a fine place here." Again he sighed. "I dare say--one +of these days--" + +He was absent and irritable again. Dickie accompanied him down the three +long, narrow flights and climbed back to his loneliness. He was, however, +very much excited by his adventure, excited and disturbed. He felt +restless. He walked about and whistled to himself. + +Until now he had had but one companion--the thought of Sheila. It was +extraordinary how immediate she was. During the first dreadful weeks of +his drudgery in the stifling confusions of the restaurant, when even the +memory of Sylvester's tongue-lashings faded under the acute reality of +the head waiter's sarcasms, that love of his for Sheila had fled away and +left him dull and leaden and empty of his soul. And his tiny third-story +bedroom had seemed like a coffin when he laid himself down in it and +tried to remember her. It had come to him like a mountain wind, +overwhelmingly, irresistibly, the desire to live where she lived: the +first wish he had had since he had learned that she was not to be found +by him. And the miracle had accomplished itself. Mrs. Halligan had been +instructed to get a lodger at almost any price for the long-vacant studio +room. She lowered the rent to the exact limit of Dickie's wages. She had +never bargained with so bright-eyed a hungry-looking applicant for +lodgings. And that night he lay awake under Sheila's stars. From then on +he lived always in her presence. And here in the room that had known her +he kept himself fastidious and clean. He shut out the wolf-pack of his +shrewd desires. The room was sanctuary. It was to rescue Sheila rather +than himself that Dickie fled up to the stars. So deeply, so intimately +had she become a part of him that he seemed to carry her soul in his +hands. So had the young dreamer wedded his dream. He lived with Sheila as +truly, as loyally, as though he knew that she would welcome him with one +of those downward rushes or give him Godspeed on sultry, feverish dawns +with a cool kiss. Dickie lay sometimes across his bed and drew her cheek +in trembling fancy close to his until the anguish wet his pillow with +mute tears. + +Now to this dual loneliness Lorrimer had climbed, and Dickie felt, rather +gratefully, that life had reached up to the aching unrealities of his +existence. His tight and painful life had opened like the first fold of a +fan. He built upon the promise of a friendship with this questioning, +impertinent, mocking, keenly sympathetic visitor. + +But a fortnight passed without Lorrimer's appearing at the restaurant +and, when at last he did come, Dickie, flying to his chair, was greeted +by a cold, unsmiling word, and a businesslike quotation from the menu. +He felt as though he had been struck. His face burned. In the West, a +fellow couldn't do that and get away with it! He tightened an impotent, +thin fist. He filled the order and kept his distance, and, absurdly +enough, gave Lorrimer's tip to another waiter and went without his own +dinner. For the first time in his life a sense of social inferiority, of +humiliation concerning the nature of his work, came to him. He felt the +pang of servitude, a pang unknown to the inhabitants of frontier towns. +When Sheila washed dishes for Mrs. Hudson she was "the young lady from +Noo York who helps round at Hudson's house." Dickie fought this shame +sturdily, but it seemed to cling, to have a sticky pervasiveness. Try as +he might he couldn't brush it off his mind. Nevertheless, it was on the +very heels of this embittering experience that life plucked him up from +his slough. One of the leveling public catastrophes came to Dickie's +aid--not that he knew he was a dumb prayer for aid. He knew only that +every day was harder to face than the last, that every night the stars up +there through Sheila's skylight seemed to glimmer more dully with less +inspiration on his fagged spirit. + +The sluggish monotony of the restaurant's existence was stirred that +September night by a big neighboring fire. Waiters and guests tumbled out +to the call of fire-engines and running feet. Dickie found himself +beside Lorrimer, who caught him by the elbow. + +"Keep by me, kid," he said, and there was something in his tone +that softened injury. "If you want a good look-in, I can get +through the ropes." + +He showed his card to a policeman, pulled Dickie after him, and they +found themselves in an inner circle of the inferno. Before them a tall, +hideous warehouse broke forth into a horrible beauty. It was as though a +tortured soul had burst bars. It roared and glowed and sent up petals of +smoky rose and seeds of fire against the blue-black sky. The crowds +pressed against the ropes and turned up their faces to drink in the +terror of the spectacle. + +Lorrimer had out his notebook. "Damn fires!" he said. "They bore me. Does +all this look like anything to you? That fire and those people and their +silly faces all tilted up and turned red and blue and purple--" + +He was talking to himself, and so, really, was Dickie when he made his +own statement in a queer tone of frightened awe. "They look like a flower +garden in Hell," he whispered. + +Lorrimer threw up his chin. "Say that again, will you?" he snapped out. +"Go on! Don't stop! Tell me everything that comes into your damn young +head of a wandering Martian! Fly at it! I'll take you down." + +"You mean," said Dickie, "tell you what I think this looks like?" + +"That's what I mean, do." + +Dickie smiled a queer sort of smile. He had found a listener at last. A +moment later Lorrimer's pencil was in rapid motion. And the reporter's +eyes shot little stabbing looks at Dickie's unselfconscious face. When +it was over he snapped an elastic round his notebook, returned it to his +pocket, and laid his hand on Dickie's thin, tense arm. + +"Come along with me, Dick," said Lorrimer. "You've won. I've been +fighting you and my duty to my neighbor for a fortnight. Your waiter days +are over. I've adopted you. I'm my brother's keeper all right. We'll both +go hungry now and then probably, but what's the odds! I need you. I +haven't been able to hand in a story like that for years. I'm a burnt-out +candle and you're the divine fire. I'm going to educate the life out of +you. I'm going to train you till you wish you'd died young and +ungrammatical in Millings. I may not be much good myself," he added +solemnly, "but God gave me the sense to know the real thing when I see +it. I've been fighting you, calling myself a fool for weeks. Come along, +young fellow, don't hang back, and for your credit's sake close your lips +so you won't look like a case of arrested development. First we'll say +good-bye to the hash-hole and the white apron and then I'll take you up +to your sky parlor and we'll talk things over." + +"God!" said Dickie faintly. It was a prayer for some enlightenment. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +DESERTION + + +Hilliard rode up along Hidden Creek on a frosty October morning. +Everywhere now the aspens were torches of gold, the cottonwood trees +smoky and gaunt, the ground bright with fallen leaves. He had the look of +a man who has swept his heart clean of devils...his face was keen with +his desire. He sang as he rode--sweetly an old sentimental Spanish song, +something his mother had taught him; but it was not of his mother he +thought, or only, perhaps, deep down in his subconsciousness, of that +early mother-worship, age-old and most mysterious, which now he had +translated and transferred. + +"Sweet, sweet is the jasmine flower-- +Let its stars guide thee. +Sweet is the heart of a rose... +Sweet is the thought of thee... +Deep in my heart..." + +The dogs were off coursing the woods that afternoon, and the little +clearing lay as still as a green lake under the threatening crest of the +mountain. Cosme slipped from his horse, pulled the reins over his head, +and left him to graze at will. + +Miss Blake opened the ranch-house door at his knock. She greeted him with +a sardonic smile. "I don't know whether you'll see your girl or not," +she said. "Give her time to get over her tantrums." + +Cosme turned a lightning look upon her. "Tantrums? Sheila?" + +"Oh, my friend, she has a devil of her own, that little angel-face! Make +yourself comfortable." Miss Blake pointed him to a chair. "I'll tell her +you're here." + +She went to the foot of the ladder, which rose from the middle of the +living-room floor, and called heartily, an indulgent laugh in her voice, +"You, Sheila! Better come down! Here's your beau." + +There was no answer. + +"Hear me, Sheila? Mis-ter Cos-me Hill-iard." + +This time some brief and muffled answer was returned. Miss Blake smiled +and went over to her elk-horn throne. There she sat and sewed--an +incongruous occupation it looked. + +Cosme was leaning forward, elbows on knees, his face a study of +impatience, anger, and suspicion. + +"What made her mad?" he asked bluntly. + +"O-oh! She'll get over it. She'll be down. Sheila can't resist a young +man. You'll see." + +"What did you do?" insisted the stern, crisp, un-western voice. When +Cosme was angry he reverted rapidly to type. + +"Why," drawled Miss Blake, "I crept up when she was drying her hair and I +cut it off." She laughed loudly at his fierce start. + +"Cut off her hair! What right--?" + +"No right at all, my friend, but common sense. What's the good of all +that fluffy stuff hanging about and taking hours of her time to brush +and wash and what-not. Besides"--she shot a look at him--"it's part of +the cure." + +"By the Lord," said Cosme, "I'd like you to explain." + +The woman crossed her legs calmly. She was still indulgently amused. + +"Don't lose your head, young man," she advised. "Better smoke." + +After an instant Cosme rolled and lighted a cigarette and leaned back in +his chair. His anger had settled to a sort of patient contempt. + +"I've put her into breeches, too," said Miss Blake. + +"What the devil! What do you mean? She has a will of her own, +hasn't she?" + +"Oh, yes. But you see I've got Miss Sheila just about where I want her. +She's grateful enough for her food and the roof over her head and for the +chance I'm giving her." + +"Chance?" He laughed shortly. "Chance to do all your heavy work?" + +"Why not say _honest_ work? It's something new to her." + +There was a brief, thunderous silence. Cosme's cigarette burned between +his stiff fingers. "What do you mean?" he asked, hoarse with the effort +of his self-control. + +She looked at him sharply now. "Are you Paul Carey Hilliard's son--the +son of Roxana Hilliard?" she asked. She pointed a finger at him. + +"Yes," he answered with thin lips. His eyes narrowed. His face was all +Latin, all cruel. + +"Well"--Miss Blake slid her hands reflectively back and forth on the bone +arms of her chair. She had put down her work. "I was just thinking," she +said slowly and kindly, "that the son of your mother would be rather +extra careful in choosing the mother of his sons." + +"I shall be very careful," he answered between the thin lips. "I _am_ +being careful." + +She fell back with an air of relief. "Oh," she said, as though +illuminated. "O-oh! I understand. Then it's all right. I didn't read +your game." + +His face caught fire at her apparent misunderstanding. + +"I don't read yours," he said. + +"Game? Bless you, I've no game to play. I'm giving Sheila her chance. But +I'm not going to give her a chance at the cost of your happiness. You're +too good a lad for that. I thought you were going to ask her to be your +wife. And I wasn't going to allow you to do it--blind. I was going to +advise you to come back three years from now and see her again. Maybe +this fine clean air and this life and this honest work and the training +she gets from me will make her straight. My God! Cosme Hilliard, have you +set eyes on Hudson? What kind of girl travels West from New York at +Sylvester Hudson's expense and in his company and queens it in the suite +at his hotel?" + +"Miss Blake," he muttered, "do you _know_ this?" + +The cigarette had burnt itself out. Cosme's face was no longer cruel. It +was dazed. + +She laughed shortly. "Why, of course, I know Sheila. I know her whole +history--and it's some history! She's twice the age she looks. Do you +think I'd have her here with me this way without knowing the girl? I tell +you, I want to give her a chance. I don't care if you try to test her +out. I'd like to see if two months has done anything for her. She was +real set on being a good girl when she quit Hudson. I don't _know_, but +I'm willing to bet that she'll turn you down." + +From far away up the mountain-side came the fierce baying of the dog +pack. Cosme pulled himself together and stood up. His face had an +ignorant, baffled look, the look of an unskilled and simple mind +caught in a web. + +"I reckon she--she isn't coming down," he said slowly, without lifting +his eyes from the floor. "I reckon I'll be going. I won't wait." + +He walked to the door, his steps falling without spring, and went out and +so across the porch and the clearing to his horse. + +At the sound of the closing door there came a flurry of movement in the +loft. The trap was raised. Sheila came quickly down the ladder. She was +dressed in a pair of riding-breeches and her hair was cropped like Miss +Blake's just below the ears. The quaintest rose-leaf of a Rosalind she +looked, just a wisp of grace, utterly unlike a boy. All the soft, slim +litheness with its quick turns revealed--a little figure of unconscious +sweet enchantment. But the face was flushed and tear-stained, the eyes +distressed. She stood, hands on her belt, at the foot of the ladder. + +"Why has he gone? Why didn't he wait?" + +Miss Blake turned a frank, indulgent face. But it was deeply +flushed. "Oh, shucks!" she said, "I suppose he got tired. Why didn't +you come down?" + +Sheila sent a look down her slim legs. "Oh, because I _am_ a fool. Miss +Blake--did you _really_ burn my two frocks--both of them?" Her eyes +coaxed and filled. + +"It's all they're fit for, my dear. You can make yourself new ones. You +know it's more sensible and comfortable, too, to work and ride in +breeches. I know what I'm doing, child.--I've lived this way quite a +number of years. You look real nice. I can't abide female floppery, +anyhow. What's it a sign of? Rotten slavery." She set her very even teeth +together hard as she said this. + +But Sheila was neither looking nor listening. She had heard horse's +hoofs. Her cheeks flamed. She ran to the door. She stood on the porch +and called. + +"Cosme Hilliard! Come back!" + +There was no answer. A few minutes later she came in, pale and puzzled. + +"He didn't even wave," she said. "He turned back in his saddle and stared +at me. He rode away staring at me. Miss Blake--what did you say to him? +You were talking a long time." + +"We were talking," said Miss Blake, "about dogs and how to raise 'em. And +then he up and said goodbye. Oh, Sheila, it's all right. He'll be back +when he's got over being miffed. Why, he expected you to come tumblin' +down the ladder head over heels to see him--a handsome fellow like that! +Shucks! Haven't you ever dealt with the vanity of a young male before? +It's as jumpy as a rabbit. Get to work." + +And, as though to justify Miss Blake's prophecy, just ten days later, +Hilliard did come again. It was a Sunday and Sheila had packed her +lunch and gone off on "Nigger Baby" for the day. The ostensible object +of her ride was a visit to the source of Hidden Creek. Really she was +climbing away from a hurt. She felt Hilliard's wordless departure and +prolonged absence keenly. She had not--to put it euphemistically--many +friends. Her remedy was successful. Impossible, on such a ride, to +cherish minor or major pangs. She rode into the smoky dimness of +pine-woods where the sunlight burned in flecks and out again across the +little open mountain meadows, jeweled with white and gold, blue and +coral-colored flowers, a stained-glass window scattered across the +ground. From these glades she could see the forest, an army of tall +pilgrims, very grave, going up, with long staves in their hands, to +worship at a high shrine. The rocks above were very grave, too, and +grim and still against the even blue sky. Across their purplish gray a +waterfall streaked down struck crystal by the sun. An eagle turned in +great, swinging circles. Sheila had an exquisite lifting of heart, a +sense of entire fusion, body blessed by spirit, spirit blessed by body. +She felt a distinct pleasure in the flapping of her short, sun-filled +hair against her neck, at the pony's motion between her unhampered +legs, at the moist warmth of his neck under her hand--and this physical +pleasure seemed akin to the ecstasy of prayer. + +She came at last to a difficult, narrow, cañon trail, where the pony +hopped skillfully over fallen trees, until, for very weariness of his +choppy, determined efforts, she dismounted, tied him securely, and made +the rest of her climb on foot. Hidden Creek tumbled near her and its +voice swelled. All at once, round the corner of a great wall of rock, she +came upon the head. It gushed out of the mountain-side in a tumult of +life, not in a single stream, but in many frothy, writhing earth-snakes +of foam. She sat for an hour and watched this mysterious birth from the +mountain-side, watched till the pretty confusion of the water, with its +half-interpreted voices, had dizzied and dazed her to the point of +complete forgetfulness of self. She had entered into a sort of a trance, +a Nirvana ... She shook herself out of it, ate her lunch and scrambled +quickly back to "Nigger Baby." It was late afternoon when she crossed the +mountain glades. Their look had mysteriously changed. There was something +almost uncanny now about their brilliance in the sunset light, and when +she rode into the streaked darkness of the woods, they were full of +ghostly, unintelligible sounds. To rest her muscles she was riding with +her right leg thrown over the horn as though on a side saddle--a great +mass of flowers was tied in front of her. She had opened her shirt at the +neck and her head was bare. She was singing to keep up her heart. Then, +suddenly, she had no more need of singing. She saw Cosme walking toward +her up the trail. + +His face lacked all its vivid color. It was rather haggard and stern. The +devils he had swept out of his heart a fortnight earlier had, since then, +been violently entertained. He stepped out of the path and waited for +her, his hands on his hips. But, as she rode down, she saw this look +melt. The blood crept up to his cheeks, the light to his eyes. It was +like a rock taking the sun. She had smiled at him with all the usual +exquisite grace and simplicity. When she came beside him, she drew rein, +and at the same instant he put his hand on the pony's bridle. He looked +up at her dumbly, and for some reason she, too, found it impossible to +speak. She could see that he was breathing fast through parted lips and +that the lips were both cruel and sensitive. His hand slid back along +"Nigger Baby's" neck, paused, and rested on her knee. Then, suddenly, he +came a big step closer, threw both his arms, tightening with a python's +strength, about her and hid his face against her knees. + +"Sheila," he said thickly. He looked up with a sort of anguish into her +face. "Sheila, if you are not fit to be the mother of my children, you +are _sure_ fit for any man to love." + +Her soft, slim body hardened against him even before her face. They +stared at each other for a minute. + +"Let me get down," said Sheila. + +He stepped back, not quite understanding. She dropped off the horse, +dragging her flowers with her, and faced him. She did not feel small or +slender. She felt as high as a hill, although she had to look up at him +so far. Her anger had its head against the sky. + +"Why do you talk about a man's love?" she asked him with a queer sort +of patience. "I think--I hope--that you don't know anything about a +man's love, oh, the _way_ men love!" She thought with swift pain of +Jim, of Sylvester; "Oh, the _way_ they love!" And she found that, +under her breath, she was sobbing, "Dickie! Dickie!" as though her +heart had called. + +"Will you take back your horse, please?" she said, choking over these +sobs which hurt her more at the moment than he had hurt her. "I'll never +ride on him again. Don't come back here. Don't try to see me any more. I +suppose it--it--the way you love me--is because I was a barmaid, because +you heard people speak of me as 'Hudson's Queen.'" She conquered one of +the sobs. "I thought that after you'd looked into my face so hard that +night and stopped yourself from--from--my lips, that you had understood." +She shook her head from side to side so violently, so childishly, that +the short hair lashed across her eyes. "No one ever will understand!" She +ran away from him and cried under her breath, "Dickie! Dickie!" + +She ran straight into the living-room and stopped in the middle of the +floor. Her arms were full of the flowers she had pulled down from "Nigger +Baby's" neck. + +"What did you want to bring in all that truck--?" Miss Blake began, +rising from the pianola, then stopped. "What's the matter with you?" she +asked. "Did your young man find you? I sent him up the trail." Her red +eyes sparkled. + +"He insulted me!" gasped Sheila. "He dared to insult me!" She was +dramatic with her helpless young rage. "He said I wasn't fit to--to be +the mother of his children. And"--she laughed angrily, handling behind +Cosme's back the weapon that she had been too merciful to use--"and _his_ +mother is a murderess, found guilty of murder--and of worse!" + +A sort of ripple of sound behind made her turn. + +Cosme had followed her, was standing in the open door, and had heard her +speech. The weapon had struck home, and she saw how it had poisoned all +his blood. + +He vanished without a word. Sheila turned back to Miss Blake a paler +face. She let fall all her flowers. + +"Now he'll never come back," she said. + +She climbed up the ladder to her loft. + +There she sat for an hour, listening to the silence. Her mind busied +itself with trivial memories. She thought of Amelia Plecks.... It would +have comforted her to hear that knock and the rattle of her dinner tray. +The little sitting-room at Hudson's Hotel, with its bit of tapestry and +its yellow tea-set and its vases filled with flowers, seemed to her +memory as elaborate and artificial as the boudoir of a French princess. +Farther than Millings had seemed from her old life did this dark little +gabled attic seem from Millings. What was to be the end of this strange +wandering, this withdrawing of herself farther and farther into the +lonely places! She longed for the noise of Babe's hearty, irrepressible +voice with its smack of chewing, of her step coming up the stairs to that +little bedroom under Hudson's gaudy roof. Could it be possible that she +was homesick for Millings? For the bar with its lights and its visitors +and its big-aproned guardian? Her lids were actually smarting with tears +at the recollection of Carthy's big Irish face.... He had been such a +good, faithful watch-dog. Were men always like that--either watch-dogs +or wolves? The simile brought her back to Hidden Creek. It grew darker +and darker, a heavy darkness; the night had a new soft weight. There +began to be a sort of whisper in the stillness--not the motion of pines, +for there was no wind. Perhaps it was more a sensation than a sound, of +innumerable soft numb fingers working against the silence ... Sheila got +up, shivering, lighted her candle, and went over to the small, four-paned +window under the eaves. She pressed her face against it and started back. +Things were flying toward her. She opened the sash and a whirling scarf +of stars flung itself into the room. It was snowing. The night was blind +with snow. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +WORK AND A SONG + + +On the studio skylight the misty autumn rain fell that night, as the snow +fell against Sheila's window-panes, with a light tapping. Below it Dickie +worked. He had very little leisure now for stars or dreams. For the first +time in his neglected and mismanaged life he knew the pleasure of +congenial work; and this, although Lorrimer worked him like a slave. He +dragged him over the city and set his picture-painting faculty to labor +in dark corners. Dickie, every sense keen and clean, was not allowed to +flinch. No, his freshness was his value. And the power that was in him, +driven with whip and spur, throve and grew and fairly took the bit in its +teeth and ran away with its trainer. + +"Look here, my lad," Lorrimer had said that morning, "you keep on laying +hands on the English language the way you've been doing lately and I'll +have to get a job for you on the staff. Then my plagiarism that has been +paying us both so well comes to an end. I won't have the face to edit +stuff like this much longer." Lorrimer did not realize in his amazement +that Dickie's mind had always busied itself with this exciting and +nerve-racking matter of choosing words. From his childhood, in the face +of ridicule and outrage, he had fumbled with the tools of Lorrimer's +trade. No wonder that now knowledge and practice, and the sort of +intensive training he was under, magically fitted all the jumbled odds +and ends into place. Dickie had stopped looking over his shoulder. The +pursuing pack, the stealthy-footed beasts of the city, had dropped +utterly from his flying imagination. There was only one that remained +faithful--that craving for beauty--half-god, half-beast. Against him +Dickie still pressed his door shut. Lorrimer's gift of work had not +quieted the leader of the pack. But it had brought Dickie something that +was nearly happiness. The very look of him had changed; he looked driven +rather than harried, keen rather than harassed, eager instead of vague, +hungry rather than wistful. Only, sometimes, Dickie's brain would +suddenly turn blank and blind from sheer exhaustion. This happened to him +now. The printed lines he was studying lost all their meaning. He put his +forehead on his hands. Then he heard that eerie, light tapping above him +on the skylight. But he was too tired to look up. + +It was on that very afternoon when Sheila rode down the trail with her +flowers tied before her on the saddle, singing to keep up her heart. It +was that very afternoon when she had cried out half-consciously for +"Dickie--Dickie--Dickie"--and now it was, as though the cry had traveled, +that a memory of her leapt upon his mind; a memory of Sheila singing. +She had come into the chocolate-colored lobby from one of her rides with +Jim Greely. She had held a handful of cactus flowers. She had stopped +over there by one of the windows to put them in a glass. And to show +Dickie, a prisoner at his desk, that she did not consider his +presence--it was during the period of their estrangement--she had sung +softly as a girl sings when she knows herself to be alone: a little +tender, sad chanting song, that seemed made to fit her mouth. The pain +her singing had given him that afternoon had cut a picture of her on +Dickie's brain. Just because he had tried so hard not to look at her. Now +it jumped out at him against his closed, wet lids. The very motions of +her mouth came back, the positive dear curve of her chin, the +throat there slim against the light. Hard work had driven her +image a little from his mind lately; it returned now to revenge +his self-absorption--returned with a song. + +Dickie got up and wandered about the room. He tried to hum the air, but +his throat contracted. He tried to whistle, but his lips turned stiff. He +bent over his book--no use, she still sang. All night he was tormented by +that chanting, hurting song. He sobbed with the hurt of it. He tossed +about on his bed. He could not but remember how little she had loved him. +All at once there came to him a mysterious and beautiful release. It +seemed that the cool spirit, detached, winged, drew him to itself or +became itself entirely possessed of him. He was taken out of his pain +and yet he understood it. And he began suddenly, easily, to put it into +words. The misery was ecstasy, the hurt was inspiration, the song sang +sweetly as though it had been sung to soothe and not to make him suffer. + +"Oh, little song you sang to me"-- + +Ah, yes, at heart she had been singing to him-- + +"A hundred, hundred days ago, + Oh, little song, whose melody + Walks in my heart and stumbles so; + I cannot bear the level nights, + And all the days are over-long, + And all the hours from dark to dark + Turn to a little song ..." + +Dickie, not knowing how he got there, was at his table again. He was +writing. He was happy beyond any conception he had ever had of happiness. +That there was agony in his happiness only intensified it. The leader of +the wolf-pack, beast with a god's face, the noblest of man's desires, +that passionate and humble craving for beauty, had him by the throat. + +So it was that Dickie wrote his first poem. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +WINTER + + +Winter snapped at Hidden Creek as a wolf snaps, but held its grip as a +bulldog holds his. There came a few November days when all the air and +sky and tree-tops were filled with summer again, but the snow that had +poured itself down so steadily in that October storm did not give way. It +sank a trifle at noon and covered itself at night with a glare of ice. It +was impossible to go anywhere except on snow-shoes. Sheila quickly +learned the trick and plodded with bent knees, limber ankles, and +wide-apart feet through the winter miracle of the woods. It was another +revelation of pure beauty, but her heart was too sore to hold the +splendor as it had held the gentler beauty of summer and autumn. Besides, +little by little she was aware of a vague, encompassing uneasiness. Since +the winter jaws had snapped them in, setting its teeth between them and +all other life, Miss Blake had subtly and gradually changed. It was as +though her stature had increased, her color deepened. Sometimes to Sheila +that square, strong body seemed to fill the world. She was more and more +masterful, quicker with her orders, charier of her smiles, shorter of +speech and temper. Her eyes seemed to grow redder, the sparks closer to +flame, as though the intense cold fanned them. + +Once they harnessed the dogs to the sled and rode down the country for +the mail. The trip they made together. Sheila sat wrapped in furs in +front of the broad figure of her companion, who stood at the back of the +sledge, used a long whip, and shouted to the dogs by name in her great +musical voice of which the mountain echo made fine use. They sped close +to the frozen whiteness of the world, streaked down the slopes, and were +drawn soundlessly through the columned vistas of the woods. Here, there, +and everywhere were tracks, of coyotes, fox, rabbit, martin, and the +little pointed patteran of winter birds, yet they saw nothing living. +"What's got the elk and moose this season?" muttered Miss Blake. Nothing +stirred except the soft plop of shaken snow or the little flurry of +drifting flakes. These frost-flakes lay two inches deep on the surface of +the snow, dry and distinct all day in the cold so that they could be +blown apart at a breath. Miss Blake was cheerful on this journey. She +sang songs, she told brief stories of other sled trips. At the +post-office an old, lonely man delivered them some parcels and a vast +bagful of magazines. There was a brief passage of arms between him and +Miss Blake. She accused him of withholding a box of cartridges, and would +not be content till she had poked about his office in dark corners. She +came out swearing at the failure of her search. "I needed that shot," +she said. "My supply is short. I made sure it'd be here to-day." There +were no letters for either of them, and Sheila felt again that queer +shiver of her loneliness. But, on the whole, it was a wonderful day, and, +under a world of most amazing stars, the small, valiant ranch-house, with +its glowing stove and its hot mess of supper, felt like home.... Not long +after that came the first stroke of fate. + +The little old horse left them and, though they shoed patiently for miles +following his track, it was only to find his bones gnawed clean by +coyotes or by wolves. Sheila's tears froze to her lashes, but Miss +Blake's face went a little pale. She said nothing, and in her steps +Sheila plodded home in silence. That evening Miss Blake laid hands on +her.... They had washed up their dishes. Sheila was putting a log on the +fire. It rolled out of her grasp to the bearskin rug and struck Miss +Blake's foot. Before Sheila could even say her quick "I'm sorry," the +woman had come at her with a sort of spring, had gripped her by the +shoulders, had shaken her with ferocity, and let her go. Sheila fell +back, her own hands raised to her bruised shoulders, her eyes +phosphorescent in a pale face. + +"Miss Blake, how dare you touch me!" + +The woman kicked back the log, turned a red face, and laughed. + +"Dare! You little silly! What's to scare me of you?" + +An awful conviction of helplessness depressed Sheila's heart, but she +kept her eyes leveled on Miss Blake's. + +"Do you suppose I will stay here with you one hour, if you treat me +like this?" + +That brought another laugh. But Miss Blake was evidently trying to make +light of her outbreak. "Scared you, didn't I?" she said. "I guess you +never got much training, eh!" + +"I am not a dog," said Sheila shortly. + +"Well, if you aren't"--Miss Blake returned to her chair and took up a +magazine. She put the spectacles on her nose with shaking hands. "You're +my girl, aren't you? You can't expect to get nothing but petting from +me, Sheila." + +If she had not been icy with rage, Sheila might have smiled at this. "I +don't know what you mean, Miss Blake, by my being your girl. I work for +you, to be sure. I know that. But I know, too, that you will have to +apologize to me for this." + +Miss Blake swung one leg across the other and stared above her glasses. + +"Apologize to _you_!" + +"Yes. I will allow nobody to touch me." + +"Shucks! Go tell that to the marines! You've never been touched, have +you? Sweet sixteen!" + +Hudson's kiss again scorched Sheila's mouth and her whole body burned. +Miss Blake watched that fire consume her, and again she laughed. + +"I'm waiting for you to apologize," said Sheila again, this time between +small set teeth. + +"Well, my girl, wait. That'll cool you off." + +Sheila stood and felt the violent beating of her heart. A log in the wall +snapped from the bitter frost. + +"Miss Blake," she said presently, a pitiful young quaver in her voice, +"if you don't beg my pardon I'll go to-morrow." + +Miss Blake flung her book down with a gesture of impatience. "Oh, quit +your nonsense, Sheila!" she said. "What's a shaking! You know you can't +get out of here. It'd take you a week to get anywhere at all except into +a frozen supper for the coyotes. Your beau's left the country--Madder +told me at the post-office. Make the best of it, Sheila. Lucky if you +don't get worse than that before spring. You'll get used to me in time, +get broken in and learn my ways. I'm not half bad, but I've got to be +obeyed. I've got to be master. That's me. What do you think I've come +'way out here to the wilderness for, if not because I can't stand +anything less than being master? Here I've got my place and my dogs and a +world that don't talk back. And now I've got you for company and to do my +work. You've got to fall into line, Sheila, right in the ranks. Once, +some one out there in the world"--she made a gesture, dropped her chin on +her big chest, and looked out under her short, dense, rust-colored +eyelashes--"tried to break _me_. I won't tell you what he got. That's +where I quit the ways of women--yes, ma'am, and the ways of men." She +stood up and walked over to the window and looked out. The dogs were +sleeping in their kennels, but a chain rattled. "I've broke the +wolf-pack. You've seen them wriggle on their bellies for me, haven't you? +Well, my girl, do you think I can't break you?" She wheeled back and +stood with her hands on her hips. It was at that moment that she seemed +to fill the world. Her ruddy eyes glowed like blood. They were not quite +sane. That was it. Sheila went suddenly weak. They were not _quite_ +sane--those red eyes filled with sparks. + +The girl stepped back and sat down in her chair. She bent forward, +pressed her hands flat together, palm to palm between her knees, and +stared fixedly down at them. She made no secret of her desperate +preoccupation. + +Miss Blake's face softened a little at this withdrawal. She came back to +her place and resumed her spectacles. + +"I'll tell you why I'm snappy," she said presently. "I'm scared." + +This startled Sheila into a look. Miss Blake was moistening her lips. +"That horse--you know--the coyotes got him. I guess he went down and they +fell upon him. Well, he was to feed the dogs with until I could get my +winter meat." + +"What do you mean?" + +"That's what I buy 'em for. Little old horses, for a couple of bits, +and work 'em out and shoot 'em for dog-feed. Well, Sheila, when they're +fed, they're dogs. But when they're starved--they're wolves ... And I +can't think what's come to the elk this year. To-morrow I'll take out my +little old gun." + +To-morrow and the next day and the next she took her gun and strapped on +her shoes and went out for all day long into the cold. Each time she came +back more exhausted and more fierce. Sheila would have her supper ready +and waiting sometimes for hours. + +"The dogs have scared 'em off," said Miss Blake. "That must be the +truth." She let the pack hunt for itself at night, and they came back +sometimes with bloody jaws. But the prey must have been small, for they +were not satisfied. They grew more and more gaunt and wolfish. They would +howl for hours, wailing and yelping in ragged cadence to the stars. +Table-scraps and brews of Indian meal vanished and left their bellies +almost as empty as before. + +"And," said Miss Blake, "we got to eat, ourselves." + +"Hadn't we better go down to the post-office or to Rusty?" Sheila asked +nervously. + +Miss Blake snapped at her. "Harness that team now? As much as your life +is worth, Sheila! And we can't make it on foot. We'd drop in our tracks +and freeze. If it comes to the worst we may have to try it, but--oh, I'll +get something to-morrow." + +But to-morrow brought no better luck. During the hunting the dogs were +left on their chains, and Sheila, through the lonely hours, would watch +them through the window and could almost see the wolfishness grow in +their deep, wild eyes. She would try to talk to them, pat them, coax them +into doggy-ness. But day by day they responded more unwillingly. All but +Berg: Berg stayed with her in the house, lay on her feet, leaned against +her knee. He shared her meals. He was beginning to swing his heart from +Miss Blake to her, and this was the second cause for strife. + +Since that one outbreak, Sheila had gone carefully. She was dignified, +aloof, very still. She obeyed and slaved as she had never done in the +summer days. The dread of physical violence hung on her brain like a +cloud. She encouraged Berg's affection, and wondered, if it came to a +struggle, whether he would side with her. She was given the opportunity +to put this matter to the test. + +Miss Blake was very late that night. It was midnight, a stark midnight of +stars and biting cold, when Berg stood up from his sleep and barked his +low, short bark of welcome. Outside the other dogs broke into their +clamor, drowning all other sound, and in the midst of it the door flew +rudely open. Miss Blake stood and clung to the side of the door. Her face +was bluish-white. She put out her hand toward Sheila, clutching the air. +Sheila ran over to her. + +"You're hurt?" + +"Twisted my blamed ankle. God!" She hobbled over, a heavy arm round +Sheila, to her chair and sat there while the girl gave her some brandy, +removed the snowshoes, and cut away the boot from a swollen and +discolored leg. + +"That's the end of my hunting," grunted the patient, who bore the agony +of rubbing and bathing stoically. "And, I reckon, I couldn't have stood +much more." She clenched her hand in Berg's mane. "God! Those dogs! I'll +have to shoot them--next." Sheila looked up to her with a sort of +horrified hope. There was then a way out from that fear. + +"I'd rather die, I think," said the woman hoarsely. "I love those dogs." +Sheila looked up into a tender and quivering face--the face of a mother. +"They mean something to me--those brutes. I guess I kind of centered my +heart on 'em--out here alone. I raised 'em up, from puppies, all but Berg +and the mother. They were the cutest little fellows. I remember when +Wreck got porcupine quills in his nose and came to me and lay on his back +and whined to me. It was as if he said, 'Help me, momma.' Sure it was. +And he pretty near died. Oh, damn! If I have to shoot 'em I might just as +well shoot myself and be done with it...Thanks, Sheila. I'll eat my +supper here and then you can help me to bed. When my ankle's all well, we +can have a try for the post-office, perhaps." She leaned back and drew +Berg roughly up against her. She caressed him. He made little soft, +throaty sounds of tenderness. + +Sheila came back with a tray and, as she came, Berg pulled himself away +from his mistress and went wagging over to greet her. + +"Come here!" snapped Miss Blake. Berg hesitated, cuddled close to Sheila, +and kept step beside her. + +Miss Blake's eyes went red. "Come here!" she said again. Berg did not +cringe or hasten. He reached Miss Blake's chair at the same instant as +Sheila, not a moment earlier. + +Miss Blake pulled herself up. The tray went shattering to the floor. She +hobbled over to the fire, white with the anguish, took down the whip from +its nail. At that Berg cringed and whined. The woman fell upon him with +her terrible lash. She held herself with one hand on the mantel-shelf, +while with the other she scored the howling victim. His fur came off his +back under the dreadful, knife-edge blows. + +"Oh, stop!" cried Sheila. "Stop! You're killing him!" She ran over and +caught Miss Blake's arm. + +"Damn you!" said the woman fiercely. She stood breathing fast. Sweat +of pain and rage and exertion stood out on her face. "Do _you_ want +that whip?" + +She half-turned, lifting her lash, and at that, with a snarl, Berg +crouched himself and bared his teeth. + +Miss Blake started and stared at him. Suddenly she gave in. Pain and +anger twisted her spirit. + +"You'd turn my Berg against me!" she choked, and fell heavily down on the +rug in a dead faint. + +When she came to she was grim and silent. She got herself with scant +help to bed, her big bed in the corner of the living-room, and for a week +she was kept there with fever and much pain. Berg lay beside her or +followed Sheila about her work, and the woman watched them both with +ruddy eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE PACK + + +In January a wind blew steadily from the east and snow came as if to +bury them alive. The cabin turned to a cave, a small square of warmth +under a mountain of impenetrable white; one door and one window only, +opening to a space of sun. Against the others the blank white lids of +winter pressed. Sheila shoveled this space out sometimes twice a day. +The dog kennels were moved into it, and stood against the side of a +snow-bank eight feet high, up which, when they were unchained, the +gaunt, wolfish animals leapt in a loosely formed pack, the great mother, +Brenda, at their head, and padded off into the silent woods in their +hungry search for food. + +But, one day, they refused to go. Miss Blake, her whip in her hand, +limped out. The snow had stopped. The day was still and bright again +above the snowy firs, the mountain scraped against the blue sky like a +cliff of broken ice. The dogs had crept out of their houses and were +squatted or huddled in the sun. As she came out they rose and strained at +their tethers. One of them whined. Brenda, the mother, bared her teeth. +One by one, as they were freed, they slunk close to Miss Blake, looking +up into her face. They crowded close at her heels as she went back to the +house. She had to push the door to in their very jaws and they pressed +against it, their heads hung low, sniffing the odor of food. Presently a +long-drawn, hideous howling rose from them. Time and again Miss Blake +drove them away with lash and voice. Time and again they came back. They +scratched at the threshold, whimpered, and whined. + +Sheila and Miss Blake gave them what food they would have eaten +themselves that day. It served only to excite their restlessness, to hold +them there at the crack of the door, snuffling and slobbering. The outer +circle slept, the inner watched. Then they would shift, like sentries. +They had a horrible sort of system. Most of that dreadful afternoon Miss +Blake paced the floor, trying to strengthen her ankle for the trip to the +post-office. At sunset, when the small snow-banked room was nearly dark, +she stopped, threw up her head, and looked at Sheila. The girl was +sitting on the lowest step of the ladder washing some dried apples. Her +face had thinned to a silvery wedge between the thick square masses of +her hair. There was a haunted look in her clear eyes. The soft mouth had +tightened. + +"How in God's name," said Miss Blake, "shall I get 'em on their +chains again?" + +Sheila stopped her work, and her lips fell helplessly apart. She looked +up at the older woman and shook her head. + +Miss Blake's fear snapped into a sort of frenzy. She gritted her teeth +and stamped. "You simpleton!" she said. "You never have a notion in +your head." + +Sheila stood up quickly. Something told her that she had better be on her +feet. She kept very still. "You will know better than I could what to do +about the dogs," she said quietly. "They'll go back on their chains for +you, I should think. They're afraid of you." + +"Aren't you?" Miss Blake asked roughly. + +"No. Of course not." + +"You little liar! You're scared half out of your wits. You're scared of +the whole thing--scared of the snow, scared of the cold, scared of the +dogs, and scared sick of me. Come, now. Tell me the truth." + +It was almost her old bluff, bullying tone, but back of it was a +disorder of stretched nerves. Sheila weighed her words and tried to +weigh her thoughts. + +"I don't think I am afraid, Miss Blake. Why should I be afraid of the +dogs, if you aren't? And why should I be afraid of you? You have been +good to me. You are a good woman." + +At this Miss Blake threw back her head and laughed. She was terribly like +one of the dogs howling. There was something wild and wolfish in her +broad neck and in the sound she made. And she snapped back into silence +with wolfish suddenness. + +"If you're not scared, then," she scoffed, "go and chain up the dogs +yourself." + +For an instant Sheila quite calmly balanced the danger out of doors +against the danger within. + +"I think," she said--and managed one of her drifting smiles--"I think I +am a great deal more afraid of the dogs than I am of you, Miss Blake." + +The woman studied her for a minute in silence, then she walked over to +her elk-horn throne and sat down on it. + +She leaned back in a royal way and spread her dark broad hands across the +arms. + +"Well," she said coolly, "did you hear what I said? Go out and chain up +the dogs!" + +Sheila held herself like a slim little cavalier. "If I go out," she said +coolly, "I will not take a whip. I'll take a gun." + +"And shoot my dogs?" + +"Miss Blake, what else is left for us to do? We can't let them claw down +the door and tear us into bits, can we?" + +"You'd shoot my dogs?" + +"You said yourself that we might have to shoot them." + +Miss Blake gave her a stealthy and cunning look. "Take my gun, then"--her +voice rose to a key that was both crafty and triumphant--"and much good +it will do you! There's shot enough to kill one if you are a first-rate +shot. I lost what was left of my ammunition the day I hurt my ankle. The +new stuff is down at the post-office by now, I guess." + +The long silence was filled by the shifting of the dog-watch outside the +door. + +"We must chain them up at any cost," said Sheila. Her lips were dry and +felt cold to her tongue. + +"Go out and do it, then." The mistress of the house leaned back and +crossed her ankles. + +"Miss Blake, be reasonable. You have a great deal of control over the +dogs and I have none. I _am_ afraid of them and they will know it. +Animals always know when you're afraid..." Again she managed a smile. +"I shall begin to think you are a coward," she said. + +At that Miss Blake stood up from her chair. Her face was red with a +violent rush of blood and the sparks in her eyes seemed to have broken +into flame. + +"Very good, Miss," she said brutally. "I'll go out and chain 'em up and +then I'll come back and thrash you to a frazzle. Then you'll know how to +obey my orders next time." + +She caught up her whip, swung it in her hand, and strode to the door. + +"And mind you, Sheila, you won't be able to hide yourself from me. Nor +make a getaway. I'll lock this door outside and winter's locked the +other. You wait. You'll see what you'll get for calling me a coward. Your +friend Berg's gone off on a long hunt ... he's left his friends outside +there and he's left you.... Understand?" + +She shouted roughly to the dogs, snapped her whip, threw open the door, +and stepped out boldly. She shut the door behind her and shot a bolt. It +creaked as though it had grown rusty with disuse. + +In the stillness--for, except for a quick shuffling of paws, there was no +sound at first--Sheila chose her weapon of defense. She took down from +its place the Eskimo ivory spear, and, holding it short in her hand, she +put herself behind the great elk-horn chair. Her Celtic blood was +pounding gloriously now. She was not afraid; though if there had been +time to notice it, she would have confessed to an abysmal sense of horror +and despair. And again she wondered at her own loneliness and youth and +the astounding danger that she faced. Yes, it was more astonishment than +any other emotion that possessed her consciousness. The horror was below +the threshold practicing its part. + +Then anger, astonishment, horror itself were suddenly thrown out of her. +She was left like an empty vessel waiting to be filled with fear. Miss +Blake had cried aloud, "Help, Sheila! Help!" This was followed by a +dreadful screaming. Sheila dropped her spear and leapt to the door. On +it, outside, Miss Blake beat and screamed, "Open, for God's sake!" + +Sheila shouted in as dreadful a key. "On your side--the bolt! Miss +Blake--the bolt!" + +Fingers clawed at the bolt, but it would not slip. Through all the +horrible sounds the woman made, Sheila could hear the snarling and +leaping and snapping of the dogs. She dashed to the small, tight window, +broke a pane with her fist, and thrust out her arm. She meant to reach +the bolt, but what she saw took the warm life out of her. Miss Blake had +gone down under the whirling, slobbering pack. The screaming had stopped. +In that one awful look the poor child saw that no human help could save. +She dropped down on the floor and lay there moaning, her hands pressed +over her ears.... + +So she lay, shuddering and gasping, the great part of the night. At last +the intense cold drove her to the fire. She heaped up the logs high and +hung close above them. Her very heart was cold. Liquid ice moved +sluggishly along her veins. The morning brought no comfort or courage to +her, only a freshening of horror and of fear. The dogs had gone, and all +the winter world lay still about the house. + +She was shaken by a regular pulse of nervous sobbing. But, driven by a +sort of restlessness, she made herself coffee and forced some food down +her contracted throat. Then she put on her coat, took down Miss Blake's +six-shooter and cartridge belt, and saw, with a slight relaxing of the +cramp about her heart, that there were four shots in the chamber. Four +shots and eight dogs, but--at least--she could save herself from _that_ +death! She strapped the gun round her slim hips, filled her pockets with +supplies--a box of dried raisins, some hard bread, a cake of chocolate, +some matches--pulled her cap down over her ears, and took her snowshoes +from the wall. With closed eyes she put her arm out through the broken +pane, and, after a short struggle, slipped the rusty bolt. Then she went +over to the door and, leaning against it, prayed. Even with the +mysterious strength she drew from that sense of kinship with a superhuman +Power, it was a long time before she could force herself to open. At +last, with a big gasp, she flung the door wide, skirted the house, her +hands against the logs, her eyes shut, ran across the open space, +scrambled up the drift, tied on her snowshoes, and fled away under the +snow-laden pines. There moved in all the wilderness that day no more +hunted and fearful a thing. + +The fresh snow sunk a little under her webs, but she was a featherweight +of girlhood, and made quicker and easier progress than would have been +possible to any one else but a child. And her fear gave her both strength +and speed. Sometimes she looked back over her shoulder; always she +strained her ears for the pad of following feet. It was a day of rainbows +and of diamond spray, where the sun struck the shaken snow sifted from +overweighted branches. Sheila remembered well enough the route to the +post-office. It meant miles of weary plodding, but she thought that she +could do it before night. If not, she would travel by starlight and the +wan reflection of the snow. There was no darkness in these clear, keen +nights. She would not tell herself what gave her strength such impetus. +She thought resolutely of the post-office, of the old, friendly man, of +his stove, of his chairs and his picture of the President, of his gun +laid across two nails against his kitchen wall--all this, not more than +eighteen miles away! And she thought of Hilliard, too; of his young +strength and the bold young glitter of his eyes. + +She stopped for a minute at noon to drink some water from Hidden Creek +and to eat a bite or so of bread. She was pulling on her gloves again +when a distant baying first reached her ears. She turned faint, seemed to +stand in a mist; then, with her teeth set defiantly, she started again, +faster and steadier, her body bent forward, her head turned back. Before +her now lay a great stretch of undulating, unbroken white. At its farther +edge the line of blue-black pines began again. She strained her steps to +reach this shelter. The baying had been very faint and far away--it might +have been sounded for some other hunting. She would make the woods, take +off her webs, climb up into a tree and, perhaps, attracted by those four +shots--no, three, she must save one--some trapper, some unimaginable +wanderer in the winter forest, would come to her and rescue her before +the end. So her mind twisted itself with hope. But, an hour later, with +the pines not very far away, the baying rose so close behind that it +stopped her heart. Twenty minutes had passed when above a rise of ground +she saw the shaggy, trotting black-gray body of Brenda, the leader of the +pack. She was running slowly, her nose close to the snow, casting a +little right and left over the tracks. Sheila counted eight--Berg, then, +had joined them. She thought that she could distinguish him in the rear. +It was now late afternoon, and the sun slanted driving back the shadows +of the nearing trees, of Sheila, of the dogs. It all seemed +fantastic--the weird beauty of the scene, the weird horror of it. Sheila +reckoned the distance before her, reckoned the speed of the dogs. She +knew now that there was no hope. Ahead of her rose a sharp, sudden +slope--she could never make it. There came to her quite suddenly, like a +gift, a complete release from fear. She stopped and wheeled. It seemed +that the brutes had not yet seen her. They were nose down at the scent. +One by one they vanished in a little dip of ground, one by one they +reappeared, two yards away. Sheila pulled out her gun, deliberately aimed +and fired. + +A spurt of snow showed that she had aimed short. But the loud, sudden +report made Brenda swerve. All the dogs stopped and slunk together +circling, their haunches lowered. Wreck squatted, threw up his head, and +howled. Sheila spoke to them, clear and loud, her young voice ringing out +into that loneliness. + +"You Berg! Good dog! Come here." + +One of the shaggy animals moved toward her timidly, looking back, +pausing. Brenda snarled. + +"Berg, come here, boy!" + +Sheila patted her knee. At this the big dog whined, cringed, and began +to swarm up the slope toward her on his belly. His eyes shifted, the +struggle of his mind was pitifully visible--pack-law, pack-power, the +wolf-heart and the wolf-belly, and against them that queer hunger for the +love and the touch of man. Sheila could not tell if it were hunger or +loyalty that was creeping up to her in the body of the beast. She kept +her gun leveled on him. When he had come to within two feet of her, he +paused. Then, from behind him rose the starved baying of his brothers. +Sheila looked up. They were bounding toward her, all wolf these--but more +dangerous after their taste of human blood than wolves--to the bristling +hair along their backs and the bared fangs. Again she fired. This time +she struck Wreck's paw. He lifted it and howled. She fired again. Brenda +snapped sideways at her shoulder, but was not checked. There was one shot +left. Sheila knew how it must be used. Quickly she turned the muzzle up +toward her own head. + +Then behind her came a sharp, loud explosion. Brenda leapt high into +the air and fell at Sheila's feet. At that first rifle-shot, Berg fled +with shadow swiftness through the trees. For the rest, it was as though +a magic wall had stopped them, as though, at a certain point, they fell +upon death. Crack, crack, crack--one after another, they came up, +leapt, and dropped, choking and bleeding on the snow. At the end Sheila +turned blindly. A yard behind her and slightly above her there under +the pines stood Hilliard, very pale, his gun tucked under his arm, the +smoking muzzle lowered. Weakly she felt her way up toward him, groping +with her hands. + +He slid down noiselessly on his long skis and she stood clinging to his +arm, looking up dumbly into his strained face. + +"I heard your shots," he said breathlessly. "You're within a hundred +yards of my house.... For months I've been trying to make up my mind to +come to you. God forgive me, Sheila, for not coming before!" + +Swinging his gun on its strap across his shoulder, he lifted her in his +arms, and, like a child, she was carried through the silence of the +woods, all barred with blood-red glimmers from a setting sun. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE GOOD OLD WORLD AGAIN + + +Hilliard carried Sheila into the house that he had built for her and laid +her down in that big bedroom that "got the morning sun." For a while it +seemed to him that she would never open her eyes again, and when she did +regain consciousness she was so prostrate with her long fear and the +shock of Miss Blake's death that she lay there too weak to smile or +speak, too weak almost to breathe. Hilliard turned nurse, a puzzled, +anxious nurse. He would sit up in his living-room half the night, and +when sleep overpowered his anxiety he would fall prone on the elk-hide +rug before his fire. + +At last Sheila pulled herself up and crept about the house. She spent +a day in the big log chair before Hilliard's hearth, looking very wan, +shrinking from speech, her soft mouth gray and drawn. + +"Aren't you ever going to smile for me again?" he asked her, after a long +half-hour during which he had stood as still as stone, his arm along the +pine mantelshelf, looking at her from the shelter of a propping hand. + +She lifted her face to him and made a pitiful effort enough. But it +brought tears. They ran down her cheeks, and she leaned back and closed +her lids, but the crystal drops forced themselves out, clung to her +lashes, and fell down on her clenched hands. Hilliard went over to her +and took the small, cold hands in both of his. + +"Tell me about what happened, Sheila," he begged her. "It will help." + +Word by difficult word, he still holding fast to her hands, she sobbed +and gasped out her story, to which he listened with a whitening face. He +gripped her hands tighter, then, toward the end, he rose with a sharp +oath, lit his cigarette, paced to and fro. + +"God!" he said at the last. "And she told you I had gone from the +country! The devil! I can't help saying it, Sheila--she tortured you. She +deserved what God sent her." + +"Oh, no!"--Sheila rocked to and fro--"no one could deserve such dreadful +terror and pain. She--she wasn't sane. I was--foolish to trust her ... I +am so foolish--I think I must be too young or too stupid for--for all +this. I thought the world would be a much safer place." She looked up +again, and speech had given her tormented nerves relief, for her eyes +were much more like her own, clear and young again. "Mr. Hilliard--what +shall I do with my life, I wonder? I've lost my faith and trustingness. +I'm horribly afraid." + +He stood before her and spoke in a gentle and reasonable tone. "I'll tell +you the answer to that, ma'am," he said. "I've thought that all out +while I've been taking care of you." + +She waited anxiously with parted lips. + +"Well, ma'am, you see--it's like this. I'm plumb ashamed of myself +through and through for the way I have acted toward you. I was a fool to +listen to that dern lunatic. She told me--lies about you." + +"Miss Blake did?" + +"Yes, ma'am." His face crimsoned under her look. + +Sheila closed her eyes and frowned. A faint pink stole up into her face. +She lifted her lids again and he saw the brightness of anger. "And, of +course, you took her lies for the truth?" + +"Oh, damn! Now you're mad with me and you won't listen to my plan!" + +He was so childish in this outbreak that Sheila was moved to dim +amusement. "I'm too beaten to be angry at anything," she said. "Just tell +me your plan." + +"No," he said sullenly. "I'll wait. I'm scared to tell you now!" + +She did not urge him, and it was not till the next morning that he spoke +about his plan. She had got out to her chair again and had made a +pretense of eating an ill-cooked mess of canned stuff which he had +brought to her on a tray. It was after he had taken this breakfast away +that he broke out as though his excitement had forced a lock. + +"I'm going down to Rusty to-day," he said. His eyes were shining. He +looked at her boldly enough now. + +"And take me?" Sheila half-started up. "And take me?" + +"No, ma'am. You're to stay here safe and snug." She dropped back. "I'll +leave everything handy for you. There's enough food here for an army +and enough fuel.... You're as safe here as though you were at the foot +of God's throne. Don't look like that, girl. I can't take you. You're +not strong enough to make the journey in this cold, even on a sled. And +we can't"--his voice sunk and his eyes fell--"we can't go on like this, +I reckon." + +"N-no." Sheila's forehead was puckered. Her fingers trembled on the arms +of her chair. "N-no...." Then, with a sort of quaver, she added, "Oh, why +can't we go on like this?--till the snow goes and I can travel with you!" + +"Because," he said roughly, "we can't. You take my word for it." After a +pause he went on in his former decisive tone. "I'll be back in two or +three days. I'll fetch the parson." + +Sheila sat up straight. + +His eyes held hers. "Yes, ma'am. The parson. I'm going to marry +you, Sheila." + +She repeated this like a lesson. "You are going to marry me...." + +"Yes, ma'am. You'll have three days to think it over. If you don't want +to marry me when the parson comes, why, you can just go back to Rusty +with him." He laughed a little, came over to her, put a hand on each arm +of her chair, and bent down. She shrank back before him. His eyes had the +glitter of a hawk's, and his red and beautiful lips were soft and eager +and--again--a little cruel. + +"No," he said, "I won't kiss you till I come back--not even for good-bye. +Then you'll know how I feel about you. You'll know that I believe that +you're a good girl and, Sheila"--here he seemed to melt and falter +before her: he slipped down with one of his graceful Latin movements and +hid his forehead on her knees--"Sheila, my _darling_--that I know you are +fit--oh, so much more than fit--to be the mother of my children ..." + +In half an hour, during which they were both profoundly silent, he came +to her again. He was ready for his journey. She was sitting far back in +her chair, her slim legs stretched out. She raised inscrutable eyes +wide to his. + +"Good-bye," he said softly. "It's hard to leave you. Good-bye." + +She said good-bye even more softly with no change in her look. And he +went out, looking at her over his shoulder till the last second. She +heard the voice of his skis, hissing across the hard crust of the snow. +She sat there stiff and still till the great, wordless silence settled +down again. Then she started up from her chair, ran across to the window, +and saw that he was indeed gone. She came storming back and threw +herself down upon the hide. She cried like a deserted child. + +"Oh, Cosme, I'm afraid to be alone! I'm afraid! Why did I let you go? +Come back! Oh, please come back!" + + * * * * * + +It was late that night when Hilliard reached Rusty, traveling with all +his young strength across the easy, polished surface of the world. He was +dog-tired. He went first to the saloon. Then to the post-office. To his +astonishment he found a letter. It was postmarked New York and he +recognized the small, cramped hand of the family lawyer. He took the +letter up to his bedroom in the Lander Hotel and sat on the bed, turning +the square envelope about in his hands. At last, he opened it. + +"MY DEAR COSME [the lawyer had written ... he had known Hilliard as a +child], It is my strong hope that this letter will reach you promptly and +safely at the address you sent me. Your grandfather's death, on the +fifteenth instant, leaves you, as you are no doubt aware, heir to his +fortune, reckoned at about thirty millions. If you will wire on receipt +of this and follow wire in person as soon as convenient, it will greatly +facilitate arrangements. It is extremely important that you should come +at once. Every day makes things more complicated ... in the management +of the estate. I remain, with congratulations, + +"Sincerely your friend, ..." + +The young man sat there, dazed. + +He had always known about those millions; the expectation of them had +always vaguely dazzled his imagination, tampered more than he was aware +with the sincerity of his feelings, with the reality of his life; but now +the shower of gold had fallen all about him and his fancy stretched its +eyes to take in the immediate glitter. + +Why, thought Hilliard, this turns life upside down ... I can begin to +live ... I can go East. He saw that the world and its gifts were as truly +his as though he were a fairy prince. A sort of confusion of highly +colored pictures danced through his quick and ignorant brain. The blood +pounded in his ears. He got up and prowled about the little room. It was +oppressively small. He felt caged. The widest prairie would have given +him scant elbow-room. He was planning his trip to the East when the +thought of Sheila first struck him like a cold wave ... or rather it was +as if the wave of his selfish excitement had crashed against the wave of +his desire for her. All was foam and confusion in his spirit. He was +quite incapable of self-sacrifice--a virtue in which his free life and +his temperament had given him little training. It was simply a war of +impulses. His instinct was to give up nothing--to keep hold of every +gift. He wanted, as he had never in his life wanted anything before, to +have his fling. He wanted his birthright of experience. He had cut +himself off from all the gentle ways of his inheritance and lived like a +very Ishmael through no fault of his own. Now, it seemed to him that +before he settled down to the soberness of marriage, he must take one +hasty, heady, compensating draft of life, of the sort of life he might +have had. He would go East, go at once; he would fling himself into a +tumultuous bath of pleasure, and then he would come back to Sheila and +lay a great gift of gold at her feet. He thought over his plans, +reconstructing them. He got pen and ink and wrote a letter to Sheila. He +wrote badly--a schoolboy's inexpressive letter. But he told his story and +his astounding news and drew a vivid enough picture of the havoc it had +wrought in his simplicity. He used a lover's language, but his letter was +as cold and lumpish as a golden ingot. And yet the writer was not cold. +He was throbbing and distraught, confused and overthrown, a boy of +fourteen beside himself at the prospect of a holiday ... It was a stolen +holiday, to be sure, a sort of truancy from manliness, but none the less +intoxicating for that. Cosme's Latin nature was on top; Saxon loyalty and +conscience overthrown. He was an egoist to his finger-tips that night. He +did not sleep a wink, did not even try, but lay on his back across the +bed, hands locked over his hair while "visions of sugar plums danced +through his head." In the morning he went down and made his arrangements +for Sheila, a little less complete, perhaps, than he had intended, for he +met a worthy citizen of Rusty starting up the country with a sled to +visit his traps and to him he gave the letter and confided his +perplexities. It was a hasty interview, for the stage was about to start. + +"My wife will sure take your girl and welcome; don't even have to ask +her," the kind-eyed old fellow assured Hilliard. "We'll be glad to have +her for a couple of months. She'll like the kids. It'll be home for her. +Yes, sir"--he patted the excited traveler on the shoulder--"you pile +into the stage and don't you worry any. I'll be up at your place before +night and bring the lady down on my sled. Yes, sir. Pile in and don't +you worry any." + +Cosme wrung his hand, avoided his clear eye, and climbed up beside the +driver on the stage. He did not look after the trapper. He stared +ahead beyond the horses to the high white hill against a low and heavy +sky of clouds. + +"There's a big snowstorm a comin' down," growled the driver. "Lucky if we +make The Hill to-day. A reg'lar oldtimer it's agoin' to be. And +cold--ugh!" + +Cosme hardly heard this speech. The gray world was a golden ball for him +to spin at his will. Midas had touched the snow. The sleigh started with +a jerk and a jingle. In a moment it was running lightly with a crisp, +cutting noise. Cosme's thoughts outran it, leaping toward their gaudy +goal ... a journey out to life and a journey back to love--no wonder his +golden eyes shone and his cheeks flushed. + +"You look almighty glad to be going out of here," the driver made +comment. + +Hilliard laughed an explosive and excited laugh. "No almighty gladder +than I shall be to be coming back again," he prophesied. + +But to prophesy is a mistake. One should leave the future humbly on the +knees of the gods. That night, when Hilliard was lying wakeful in his +berth listening to the click of rails, the old trapper lay under the +driving snow. But he was not wakeful. He slept with no visions of gold or +love, a frozen and untroubled sleep. He had caught his foot in a trap, +and the blizzard had found him there and had taken mercy on his pain. +They did not find his body until spring, and then Cosme's letter to +Sheila lay wet and withered in his pocket. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +LONELINESS + + +The first misery of loneliness takes the form of a restless inability to +concentrate. It is as if the victim wanted to escape from himself. After +Cosme's departure Sheila prowled about the silent cabin, began this bit +of work and that, dropped it, found herself staring vaguely, listening, +waiting, and nervously shook herself into activity again. She tried to +whistle, but it seemed like somebody else's music and frightened her +ears. At dusk she fastened sacking across the uncurtained windows, +lighted both Cosme's lamps, bringing the second from her bedroom, and +heaped up a dancing and jubilant fire upon the hearth. In the midst of +this illumination she sat, very stiff and still, in the angular +elk-hide-covered chair, and knitted her hands together on her knee. Her +mind was now intensely active; memories, thoughts, plans, fancies racing +fast and furious like screen pictures across her brain. And they seemed +to describe themselves in loud whispers. She had difficulty in keeping +these voices from taking possession of her tongue. + +"I don't want to talk to myself," she murmured, and glanced over +her shoulder. + +A man has need of his fellows for a shield. Man is man's shelter from +all the storm of unanswered questions. Where am I? What am I? Why am +I?--No reply. No reassuring double to take away the ghost-sense of self, +that unseen, intangible aura of personality in which each of us moves as +in a cloud. In the souls of some there is an ever-present Man God who +will forever save them from this supreme experience. Sheila's religion, +vague, conventional, childish, faltered away from her soul. Except for +her fire, which had a sort of sympathy of life and warmth and motion, she +was unutterably alone. And she was beginning to suffer from the second +misery of solitude--a sense of being many personalities instead of one. +She seemed to be entertaining a little crowd of confused and +argumentative Sheilas. To silence them she fixed her mind on her +immediate problem. + +She tried to draw Hilliard close to her heart. She had an honest hunger +for his warm and graceful beauty, for his young strength, but this +natural hunger continually shocked her. She tried not to remember the +smoothness of his neck as her half-conscious hands had slipped away from +it that afternoon when he raised her from the snow. It seemed to her that +her desire for him was centered somewhere in her body. Her mind remained +cool, detached, critical, even hostile. She disliked the manner of his +wooing--not that there should have been any insult to the pride of a +nameless little adventurer, Hudson's barmaid, a waif, in being told that +she was a "good girl" and fit to be the mother of this young man's +children. But Sheila knew instinctively that these things could not be +said, could not even be thought of by such a man as Marcus Arundel. She +remembered his words about her mother.... Sheila wanted with a great +longing to be loved like that, to be so spoken of, so exquisitely +entreated. A phrase in Hudson's letter came to her mind, "I handled you +in my heart like a flower" ... Unconsciously she pressed her hand against +her lips, remembered the taste of whiskey and of blood. If only it had +been Dickie's lips that had first touched her own. Blinding tears fell. +The memory of Dickie's comfort, of Dickie's tremulous restraint, had a +strange poignancy.... Why was he so different from all the rest? So much +more like her father? What was there in this pale little hotel clerk who +drank too much that lifted him out and up into a sort of radiance? Her +memory of Dickie was always white--the whiteness of that moonlight of +their first, of that dawn of their last, meeting. He had had no chance in +his short, unhappy, and restricted life--not half the chance that young +Hilliard's life had given him--to learn such delicate appreciations, such +tenderness, such reserves. Where had he got his delightful, gentle +whimsicalities, that sweet, impersonal detachment that refused to yield +to stupid angers and disgusts? He was like--in Dickie's own fashion she +fumbled for a simile. But there was no word. She thought of a star, that +morning star he had drawn her over to look at from the window of her +sitting-room. Perhaps the artist in Sylvester had expressed itself in +this son he so despised; perhaps Dickie was, after all, Hudson's great +work ... All sorts of meanings and symbols pelted Sheila's brain as she +sat there, exciting and fevering her nerves. + +In three days Hilliard would be coming back. His warm youth would +again fill the house, pour itself over her heart. After the silence, +his voice would be terribly persuasive, after the loneliness, his eager, +golden eyes would be terribly compelling! He was going to "fetch the +parson" ... Sheila actually wrung her hands. Only three days for this +decision and, without a decision, that awful, helpless wandering, those +dangers, those rash confidences of hers. "O God, where are you? Why don't +you help me now?" That was Sheila's prayer. It gave her little comfort, +but she did fall asleep from the mental exhaustion to which it brought at +least the relief of expression. + +When she woke, she found the world a horrible confusion of storm. It +could hardly be called morning--a heavy, flying darkness of drift, a wind +filled with icy edges that stung the face and cut the eyes, a wind with +the voice of a driven saw. The little cabin was caught in the whirling +heart of a snow spout twenty feet high. The firs bent and groaned. There +is a storm-fear, one of the inherited instinctive fears. Sheila's little +face looked out of the whipped windows with a pinched and shrinking +stare. She went from window to hearth, looking and listening, all day. A +drift was blown in under the door and hardly melted for all the blazing +fire. That night she couldn't go to bed. She wrapped herself in blankets +and curled herself up in the chair, nodding and starting in the circle of +the firelight. + +For three terrible days the world was lost in snow. Before the end of +that time Sheila was talking to herself and glad of the sound of her own +hurried little voice. Then, like God, came a beautiful stillness and the +sun. She opened the door on the fourth morning and saw, above the fresh, +soft, ascending dazzle of the drift, a sky that laughed in azure, the +green, snow-laden firs, a white and purple peak. She spread out her hands +to feel the sun and found it warm. She held it like a friendly hand. She +forced herself that day to shovel, to sweep, even to eat. Perhaps Cosme +would be back before night. He and the parson would have waited for the +storm to be over before they made their start. She believed in her own +excuses for five uneasy days, and then she believed in the worst of all +her fears. She had a hundred to choose from--Cosme's desertion, Cosme's +death.... One day she spent walking to and fro with her nails driven into +her palms. + + * * * * * + +Late that night the white world dipped into the still influence of a full +white moon. Before Hilliard's cabin the great firs caught the light with +a deepening flush of green, their shadows fell in even lavender tracery +delicate and soft across the snow, across the drifted roof. The smoke +from the half-buried chimney turned to a moving silver plume across the +blue of the winter night sky--intense and warm as though it reflected an +August lake. + +The door of the cabin opened with a sharp thrust and Sheila stepped +out. She walked quickly through the firs and stood on the edge of the +open range-land, beyond and below which began the dark ridge of the +primeval woods. She stood perfectly still and lifted her face to the +sky. For all the blaze of the moon the greater stars danced in +radiance. Their constellations sloped nobly across her dazzled vision. +She had come very close to madness, and now her brain was dumb and +dark as though it had been shut into a blank-walled cell. She stood +with her hands hanging. She had no will nor wish to pray. The knowledge +had come to her that if she went out and looked this winter Pan in the +face, her brain would snap, either to life or death. It would burst its +prison ... She stared, wide-eyed, dry-eyed, through the immense cold +height of air up at the stars. + +All at once a door flew open in her soul and she knew God ... no visible +presence and yet an enveloping reality, the God of the savage earth, of +the immense sky, of the stars, the God unsullied and untempted by man's +worship, no God that she had ever known, had ever dreamed of, had ever +prayed to before. She did not pray to Him now. She let her soul stand +open till it was filled as were the stars and the earth with light.... + +The next day Sheila found her voice and sang at her work. She gave +herself an overwhelming task of cleaning and scrubbing. She was on her +knees like a charwoman, sniffing the strong reek of suds, when there came +a knocking at her door. She leapt up with pounding heart. But the +knocking was more like a scraping and it was followed by a low whine. For +a second Sheila's head filled with a fog of terror and then came a homely +little begging bark, just the throaty, snuffling sob of a homeless puppy. +Sheila took Cosme's six-shooter, saw that it was loaded, and, standing in +the shelter of the door, she slowly opened it. A few moments later the +gun lay a yard away on the soapy, steaming floor and Berg was held tight +in her arms. His ecstasy of greeting was no greater than her ecstasy of +welcome. She cried and laughed and hugged and kissed him. That night, +after a mighty supper, he slept on her bed across her feet. Two or three +times she woke and reached her hand down to caress his rough thick coat. +The warmth of his body mounted from her feet to her heart. She thought +that he had been sent to her by that new God. As for Berg, he had found +his God again, the taming touch of a small human hand. + + * * * * * + +It was in May, one morning in May--she had long ago lost count of her +days--when Sheila stepped across her sill and saw the ground. Just a +patch it was, no bigger than a tablecloth, but it made her catch her +breath. She knelt down and ran her hands across it, sifted some gravel +through her fingers. How strange and various and colorful were the atoms +of stone, rare as jewels to her eyes so long used to the white and violet +monotony of snow. Beyond the gravel, at the very edge of the drift, a +slender crescent of green startled her eyes and--yes--there were a dozen +valorous little golden flowers, as flat and round as fairy doubloons. + +Attracted by her cry, Berg came out, threw up his nose, and snuffed. +Spring spoke loudly to his nostrils. There was sap, rabbits were +about--all of it no news to him. Sheila sat down on the sill and hugged +him close. The sun was warm on his back, on her hands, on the boards +beneath her. + +"May--May--May--" she whispered, and up in the firs quite suddenly, as +though he had thrown reserve to the four winds, a bluebird repeated her +"May--May--May" on three notes, high, low, and high again, a little +musical stumble of delight. It had begun again--that whistling-away of +winter fear and winter hopelessness. + +The birds sang and built and the May flies crept up through the snow and +spun silver in the air for a brief dazzle of life. + +The sun was so warm that Berg and Sheila dozed on their doorsill. They +did little else, these days, but dream and doze and wait. + +The snow melted from underneath, sinking with audible groans of +collapse and running off across the frozen ground to swell Hidden +Creek. The river roared into a yellow flood, tripped its trees, sliced +at its banks. Sheila snowshoed down twice a day to look at it. It was a +sufficient barrier, she thought, between her and the world. And now, +she had attained to the savage joy of loneliness. She dreaded change. +Above all she dreaded Hilliard. That warmth of his beauty had faded +utterly from her senses. It seemed as faint as a fresco on a +long-buried wall. Intrusion must bring anxiety and pain, it might bring +fear. She had had long communion with her stars and the God whose name +they signaled. She, with her dog friend under her hand, had come to +something very like content. + +The roar of Hidden Creek swelled and swelled. After the snow had shrunk +into patches here and there under the pines and against hilly slopes, +there was still the melting of the mountain glaciers. + +"Nobody can possibly cross!" Sheila exulted. "A man would have to risk +his life." And it was in one of those very moments of her savage +self-congratulation when there came the sound of nearing hoofs. + +She was sitting on her threshold, watching the slow darkness, a +sifting-down of ashes through the still air. It was so very still that +the little new moon hung there above the firs like faint music. Silver +and gray, and silver and green, and violet--Sheila named the delicacies +of dappled light. The stars had begun to shake little shivers of radiance +through the firs. They were softer than the winter stars--their keenness +melted by the warm blue of the air. Sheila sat and held her knees and +smiled. The distant, increasing tumult of the river, so part of the +silence that it seemed no sound at all, lulled her--Then--above it--the +beat of horse's hoofs. + +At first she just sat empty of sensation except for the shock of those +faint thuds of sound. Then her heart began to beat to bursting; with +dread, with a suffocation of suspense. She got up, quiet as a thief. The +horse stopped. There came a step, rapid and eager. She fled like a +furtive shadow into the house, fell on her knees there by the hearth, and +hid her face against the big hide-covered chair. Her eyes were full of +cold tears. Her finger-tips were ice. She was shaking--shuddering, +rather--from head to foot. The steps had come close, had struck the +threshold. There they stopped. After a pause, which her pulses filled +with shaken rhythm, her name was spoken--So long it had been since she +had heard it that it fell on her ear like a foreign speech. + +"Sheila! Sheila!" + +She lifted her head sharply. It was not Hilliard's voice. + +"Sheila--" There was such an agony of fear in the softly spoken +syllables, there was such a weight of dread on the breath of the speaker, +that, for very pity, Sheila forgot herself. She got up from the floor and +moved dazedly to meet the figure on the threshold. It was dimly outlined +against the violet evening light. Sheila came up quite close and put her +hands on the tense, hanging arms. They caught her. Then she sobbed and +laughed aloud, calling out in her astonishment again and again, softly, +incredulously-- + +"_You_, Dickie? Oh, Dickie, Dickie, it's--_you_?" + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +SHEILA AND THE STARS + + +Hilliard's first messenger had been hindered by death. Several times it +seemed that his second messenger would suffer the same grim prevention. +But this second messenger was young and set like steel to his purpose. He +left the railroad at Millings, hired a horse, crossed the great plain +above the town and braved the Pass, dangerous with overbalanced weights +of melting snow. There, on the lonely Hill, he had his first encounter +with that Arch-Hinderer. A snow-slide caught him and he left his horse +buried, struggling out himself from the cold smother like a maimed insect +to lie for hours by the road till breath and life came back to him. He +got himself on foot to the nearest ranch, and there he hired a fresh +horse and reached Rusty, at the end of the third day. + +Rusty was overshadowed by a tragedy. The body of the trapper, Hilliard's +first messenger, had been found under the melting snow, a few days +before, and to the white-faced young stranger was given that stained and +withered letter in which Hilliard had excused and explained his +desertion. + +Nothing, at Rusty, had been heard of Sheila. No one knew even that she +had ever left Miss Blake's ranch--the history of such lonely places is a +sealed book from snowfall until spring. Their tragedies are as dumb as +the tragedies of animal life. No one had ever connected Sheila's name +with Hilliard's. No one knew of his plans for her. The trapper had set +off without delay, not even going back to his house, some little distance +outside of Rusty, to tell his wife that he would be bringing home a +lodger with him. There was, to be sure, at the office a small bundle of +letters all in the same hand addressed to Miss Arundel. They had to wait, +perforce, till the snow-bound country was released. + +"It's not likely even now," sly and twinkling Lander of the hotel told +Dickie, "that you can make it to Miss Blake's place. No, sir, nor to +Hilliard's neither. Hidden Creek's up. She's sure some flood this time of +the year. It's as much as your life's good for, stranger." + +But Dickie merely smiled and got for himself a horse that was "good in +deep water." And he rode away from Rusty without looking back. + +He rode along a lush, wet land of roaring streams, and, on the bank of +Hidden Creek, there was a roaring that drowned even the beating of his +heart. The flood straddled across his path like Apollyon. + +A dozen times the horse refused the ford--at last with a desperate toss +of his head he made a plunge for it. Almost at once he was swept from the +cobbled bed. He swam sturdily, but the current whirled him down like a +straw--Dickie slipped from the saddle on the upper side so that the +water pressed him close to the horse, and, even when they both went +under, he held to the animal with hands like iron. This saved his life. +Five blind, black, gasping minutes later, the horse pulled him up on the +farther bank and they stood trembling together, dazed by life and the +warmth of the air. + +It was growing dark. The heavy shadow of the mountain fell across them +and across the swollen yellow river they had just escaped. There began to +be a dappling light--the faint shining of that slim young moon. She was +just a silver curl there above the edge of the hill. In an hour she would +set. Her brightness was as shy and subtle as the brightness of a smile. +The messenger pulled his trembling body to the wet saddle and, looking +about for landmarks that had been described to him, he found the faint +trail to Hilliard's ranch. Presently he made out the low building under +its firs. He dropped down, freed the good swimmer and turned him loose, +then moved rapidly across the little clearing. It was all so still. +Hidden Creek alone made a threatening tumult. Dickie stopped before he +came to the door. He stood with his hands clenched at his sides and his +chin lifted. He seemed to be speaking to the sky. Then he stumbled to the +door and called, + +"Sheila--" + +She seemed to rise up from the floor and stand before him and put her +hands on his arms. + +A sort of insanity of joy, of childish excitement came upon Sheila when +she had recognized her visitor. She flitted about the room, she laughed, +she talked half-wildly--it had been such a long silence--in broken, +ejaculatory sentences. It was Dickie's dumbness, as he leaned against the +door, looking at her, that sobered her at last. She came close to him +again and saw that he was shivering and that streams of water were +running from his clothes to the floor. + +"Why, Dickie! How wet you are!"--Again she put her hands on his arms--he +was indeed drenched. She looked up into his face. It was gray and drawn +in the uncertain light. + +"That dreadful river! How did you cross it!" + +Dickie smiled. + +"It would have taken more than a river to stop me," he said in his old, +half-demure, half-ironical fashion. And that was all Sheila ever heard of +that brief epic of his journey. He drew away from her now and went over +to the fire. + +"Dickie"--she followed him--"tell me how you came here. How you +knew where I was. Wait--I'll get you some of Cosme's clothes--and a +cup of tea." + +This time, exhausted as he was, Dickie did not fail to stand up to take +the cup she brought him. He shook his head at the dry clothes. He didn't +want Hilliard's things, thank you; he was drying out nicely by the fire. +He wasn't a bit cold. He sat and drank the tea, leaning forward, his +elbows on his knees. He was, after all, just the same, she decided--only +more so. His Dickie-ness had increased a hundredfold. There was still +that quaint look of having come in from the fairy doings of a midsummer +night. Only, now that his color had come back and the light of her lamp +shone on him, he had a firmer and more vital look. His sickly pallor had +gone, and the blue marks under his eyes--the eyes were fuller, deeper, +more brilliant. He was steadier, firmer. He had definitely shed the +pitifulness of his childhood. And Sheila did not remember that his mouth +had so sweet a firm line from sensitive end to end of the lips. + +Her impatience was driving her heart faster at every beat. + +"You _must_, please, tell me everything now, Dickie," she pleaded, +sitting on the arm of Hilliard's second chair. Her cheeks burned; her +hair, grown to an awkward length, had come loose from a ribbon and fallen +about her face and shoulders. She had made herself a frock of +orange-colored cotton stuff--something that Hilliard had bought for +curtains. It was a startling color enough, but it could not dim her gypsy +beauty of wild dark hair and browned skin with which the misty and +spiritual eyes and the slightly straightened and saddened lips made +exquisite disharmony. + +Dickie looked up at her a minute. He put down his cup and got to his +feet. He went to stand by the shelf, half-turned from her. + +"Tell me, at least," she begged in a cracked key of suspense, "do you +know anything about--_Hilliard_?" + +At that Dickie was vividly a victim of remorse. + +"Oh--Sheila--damn! I _am_ a beast. Of course--he's all right. Only, you +see, he's been hurt and is in the hospital. That's why I came." + +"You?--Hilliard?--Dickie. I can't really understand." She pushed back her +hair with the same gesture she had used in the studio when Sylvester +Hudson's offer of "a job" had set her brain whirling. + +"No, of course. You wouldn't." Dickie spoke slowly again, looking at the +rug. "I went East--" + +"But--Hilliard?" + +He looked up at her and flashed a queer, pained sort of smile. "I am +coming to him, Sheila. I've got to tell you _some_ about myself before I +get around to him or else you wouldn't savvy--" + +"Oh." She couldn't meet the look that went with the queer smile, for it +was even queerer and more pained, and was, somehow, too old a look for +Dickie. So she said, "Oh," again, childishly, and waited, staring at +her fingers. + +"I went to New York because I thought I'd find you there, Sheila. Pap's +hotel was on fire." + +"Did you really burn it down, Dickie?" + +He started violently. "_I_ burned it down? Good Lord! No. What made you +think such a thing?" + +"Never mind. Your father thought so." + +Dickie's face flushed. "I suppose he would." He thought it over, then +shrugged his shoulders. "I didn't. I don't know how it started ... I went +to New York and to that place you used to live in--the garret. I had the +address from the man who took Pap there." + +"The studio? _Our_ studio?--_You_ there, Dickie?" + +"Yes, ma'am. I lived there. I thought, at first, you might +come ... Well"--Dickie hurried as though he wanted to pass quickly over +this necessary history of his own experience--"I got a job at a hotel." +He smiled faintly. "I was a waiter. One night I went to look at a fire. +It was a big fire. I was trying to think out what it was like--you know +the way I always did. It used to drive Pap loco--I must have been talking +to myself. Anyway, there was a fellow standing near me with a notebook +and a pencil and he spoke up suddenly--kind of sharp, and said: 'Say that +again, will you?'--He was a newspaper reporter, Sheila ... That's how I +got into the job. But I'm only telling you because--" + +Sheila hit the rung of her chair with an impatient foot. "Oh, Dickie! How +silly you are! As if I weren't _dying_ to hear all about it. How did you +get 'into the job'? What job?" + +"Reporting," said Dickie. He was troubled by this urgency of hers. He +began to stammer a little. "Of course, the--the fellow helped me a lot. +He got me on the staff. He went round with me. He--he took down what I +said and later he--he kind of edited my copy before I handed it in. +He--he was almighty good to me. And I--I worked awfully hard. Like Hell. +Night classes when I wasn't on night duty, and books. Then, Sheila, I +began to get kind of crazy over words." His eyes kindled. And his face. +He straightened. He forgot himself, whatever it was that weighed upon +him. "Aren't they wonderful? They're like polished stones--each one a +different shape and color and feel. You fit 'em this way and that and +turn 'em and--all at once, they shine and sing. God! I never knowed what +was the matter with me till I began to work with words--and that _is_ +work. Sheila! Lord! How you hate them, and love them, and curse them, and +worship them. I used to think I wanted _whiskey_." He laughed scorn at +that old desire; then came to self-consciousness again and was +shamefaced--"I guess you think I am plumb out of my head," he apologized. +"You see, it was because I was a--a reporter, Sheila, that I happened to +be there when Hilliard was hurt. I was coming home from the night courts. +It was downtown. At a street-corner there was a crowd. Somebody told me; +'Young Hilliard's car ran into a milk cart; turned turtle. He's hurt.' +Well, of course, I knew it'd be a good story--all that about Hilliard and +his millions and his coming from the West to get his inheritance--it had +just come out a couple of months before...." + +"His millions?" repeated Sheila. She slipped off the arm of her chair +without turning her wide look from Dickie and sat down with an air of +deliberate sobriety. "His inheritance?" she repeated. + +"Yes, ma'am. That's what took him East. He had news at Rusty. He wrote +you a letter and sent it by a man who was to fetch you to Rusty. You were +to stay there with his wife till Hilliard would be coming back for you. +But, Sheila, the man was caught in a trap and buried by a blizzard. They +found him only about a week ago--with Hilliard's letter in his pocket." +Dickie fumbled in his own steaming coat. "Here it is. I've got it." + +"Don't give it to me yet," she said. "Go on." + +"Well," Dickie turned the shriveled and stained paper lightly in restless +fingers. "That morning in New York I got up close to the car and had my +notebook out. Hilliard was waiting for the ambulance. His ribs were +smashed and his arm broken. He was conscious. He was laughing and talking +and smoking cigarettes. I asked him some questions and he took a notion +to question _me_. 'You're from the West,' he said; and when I told him +'Millings,' he kind of gasped and sat up. That turned him faint. But when +they were carrying him off, he got a-holt of my hand and whispered, 'Come +see me at the hospital.' I was willing enough--I went. And they took me +to him--private room. And a nice-looking nurse. And flowers. He has lots +of friends in New York--Hilliard, you bet you--" It was irony again and +Sheila stirred nervously. That changed his tone. He moved abruptly and +came and sat down near her, locking his hands and bending his head to +study them in the old way. "He found out who I was and he told me about +you, Sheila, and, because he was too much hurt to travel or even to +write, he asked me to go out and carry a message for him. Nothing would +have kept me from going, anyway," Dickie added quaintly. "When I learned +what had been happening and how you were left and no letters coming from +Rusty to answer his--well, sir, I could hardly sit still to hear about +all that, Sheila. But, anyway--" Dickie moved his hands. They sought the +arms of his chair and the fingers tightened. He looked past Sheila. "He +told me then how it was with you and him. That you were planning to be +married. And I promised to find you and tell you what he said." + +"What did he say?" + +Dickie spoke carefully, using his strange gift. With every word his +face grew a trifle whiter, but that had no effect upon his eloquence. +He painted a vivid and touching picture of the shattered and wistful +youth. He repeated the shaken words of remorse and love. "I want her to +come East and marry me. I love her. Tell her I love her. Tell her I can +give her everything she wants in all the world. Tell her to come--" And +far more skillfully than ever Hilliard himself could have done, Dickie +pleaded the intoxication of that sudden shower of gold, the +bewildering change in the young waif's life, the necessity he was under +to go and see and touch the miracle. There was a long silence after +Dickie had delivered himself of the burden of his promise. The fire +leapt and crackled on Hilliard's forsaken hearth. It threw shadows and +gleams across Dickie's thin, exhausted face and Sheila's inscrutably +thoughtful one. + +She held out her hand. + +"Give me the letters now, Dickie." + +He handed her the bundle that had accumulated in Rusty and the little +withered one taken from the body of the trapper. Sheila took them and +held them on her knee. She pressed both her hands against her eyes; then, +leaning toward the fire, she read the letters, beginning with that one +that had spent so many months under the dumb snow. + +Berg, who had investigated Dickie, leaned against her knee while she +read, his eyes fixed upon her. She read and laid the pile by on the table +behind her. She sat for a long while, elbows on the arms of her chair, +fingers laced beneath her chin. She seemed to be looking at the fire, but +she was watching Dickie through her eyelashes. There was no ease in his +attitude. He had his arms folded, his hands gripped the damp sleeves of +his coat. When she spoke, he jumped as though she had fired a gun. + +"It is not true, Dickie, that things were--were that way between Cosme +and me ... We had not settled to be married ..." She paused and saw that +he forced himself to sit quiet. "Do you really think," she said, "that +the man that wrote those letters, loves me?" Dickie was silent. He would +not meet her look. "So you promised Hilliard that you would take me back +to marry him?" There was an edge to her voice. + +Dickie's face burned cruelly. "No," he said with shortness. "I was going +to take you to the train and then come back here. I am going to take up +this claim of Hilliard's--he's through with it. He likes the East. You +see, Sheila, he's got the whole world to play with. It's quite true." He +said this gravely, insistently. "He can give you everything--" + +"And you?" + +Dickie stared at her with parted lips. He seemed afraid to breathe lest +he startle away some hesitant hope. "I?" he whispered. + +"I mean--_you_ don't like the East?--You will give up your work?" + +"Oh--" He dropped back. The hope had flown and he was able to breathe +again, though breathing seemed to hurt. "Yes, ma'am. I'll give up +newspaper reporting. I don't like New York." + +"But, Dickie--your--words? I'd like to see something you've written." + +Dickie's hand went to an inner pocket. + +"I wanted you to see this, Sheila," His eyes were lowered to hide a +flaming pride. "My _poems_." + +Sheila felt a shock of dread. Dickie's _poems_! She was afraid to read +them. She could not help but think of his life at Millings, of that +sordid hotel lobby ... Newspaper stories--yes--that was imaginable. +But--poetry? Sheila had been brought up on verse. There was hardly a +beautiful line that had not sung itself into the fabric of her brain. + +"Poems?" she repeated, just a trifle blankly; then, seeing the hurt in +his face, about the sensitive and delicate lips, she put out a quick, +penitent hand. "Let me see them--at once!" + +He handed a few folded papers to her. They were damp. He put his face +down to his hands and looked at the floor as though he could not bear to +watch her face. Sheila saw that he was shaking. It meant so much to him, +then--? She unfolded the papers shrinkingly and read. As she read, the +blood rushed to her checks for shame. She ought never to have doubted +him. Never after the first look into his face, never after hearing him +speak of the "cold, white flame" of an unforgotten winter night. Dickie's +words, so greatly loved and groped for, so tirelessly pursued in the face +of his world's scorn and injury, came to him, when they did come, on +wings. In the four short poems, there was not a word outside of his inner +experience, and yet she felt that those words had blown through him +mysteriously on a wind--the wind that fans such flame-- + +"Oh, little song you sang to me +A hundred, hundred days ago, +Oh, little song whose melody +Walks in my heart and stumbles so; +I cannot bear the level nights, +And all the days are over-long, +And all the hours from dark to dark +Turn to a little song--" + +"Like the beat of the falling rain, +Until there seems no roof at all, +And my heart is washed with pain--" + +"Why is a woman's throat a bird, +White in the thicket of the years?--" + +Sheila suddenly thrust back the leaves at him, hid her face and fell to +crying bitterly. Dickie let fall his poems; he hovered over her, utterly +bewildered, utterly distressed. + +"Sheila--h-how could they possibly hurt you so? It was your song--your +song--Are you angry with me--? I couldn't help it. It kept singing in +me--It--it hurt." + +She thrust his hand away. + +"Don't be kind to me! Oh--I am ashamed! I've treated you _so_! And--and +snubbed you. And--and condescended to you, Dickie. And shamed you. +You--! And you can write such lines--and you are great--you will be very +great--a poet! Dickie, why couldn't I see? Father would have seen. Don't +touch me, please! I can't bear it. Oh, my dear, you must have been +through such long, long misery--there in Millings, behind that desk--all +stifled and cramped and shut in. And when I came, I might have helped +you. I might have understood ... But I hurt you more." + +"Please don't, Sheila--it isn't true. Oh,--_damn_ my poems!" + +This made her laugh a little, and she got up and dried her eyes and sat +before him like a humbled child. It was quite terrible for Dickie. His +face was drawn with the discomfort of it. He moved about the room, +miserable and restless. + +Sheila recovered herself and looked up at him with a sort of wan +resolution. + +"And you will stay here and work the ranch and write, Dickie?" + +"Yes, ma'am." He managed a smile. "If you think a fellow can push a +plough and write poetry with the same hand." + +"It's been done before. And--and you will send me back to Hilliard +and--the good old world?" + +Dickie's artificial smile left him. He stood, white and stiff, looking +down at her. He tried to speak and put his hand to his throat. + +"And I must leave you here," Sheila went on softly, "with my stars?" + +She got up and walked over to the door and stood, half-turned from him, +her fingers playing with the latch. + +Dickie found part of his voice. + +"What do you mean, Sheila, about your stars?" + +"You told me," she said carefully, "that you would go and work and then +come back--But, I suppose--" + +That was as far as she got. Dickie flung himself across the room. A chair +crashed. He had his arms about her. He was shaking. That pale and tender +light was in his face. The whiteness of a full moon, the whiteness of a +dawn seemed to fall over Sheila. + +"He--he can give you everything--" Dickie said shakily. + +"I've been waiting"--she said--"I didn't know it until lately. But I've +been waiting, so long now, for--for--" She closed her eyes and lifted her +soft sad mouth. It was no longer patient. + +That night Dickie and Berg lay together on the hide before the fire, +wrapped in a blanket. Dickie did not sleep. He looked through the +uncurtained, horizontal window, at the stars. + +"You've got everything else, Hilliard," he muttered. "You've got the +whole world to play with. After all, it was your own choice. I told you +how it was with me. I promised I'd play fair. I did play fair." He sighed +deeply and turned with his head on his arm and looked toward the door of +the inner room. "It's like sleeping just outside the gate of Heaven, +Berg," he said. "I never thought I'd get as close as that--" He listened +to the roar of Hidden Creek. "It won't be long, old fellow, before we +take her down to Rusty and bring her back." Tears stood on Dickie's +eye-lashes. "Then we'll walk straight into Heaven." He played with the +dog's rough mane. "She'll keep on looking at the stars," he murmured. +"But I'll keep on looking at her--_Sheila_." + +But Sheila, having made her choice, had shut her eyes to the world and to +the stars and slept like a good and happy child. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIDDEN CREEK*** + + +******* This file should be named 10978-8.txt or 10978-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/9/7/10978 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + +https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: +https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: +https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** diff --git a/old/10978-8.zip b/old/10978-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ee67a87 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10978-8.zip diff --git a/old/10978.txt b/old/10978.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d5ea260 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10978.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8570 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Hidden Creek, by Katharine Newlin Burt + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Hidden Creek + +Author: Katharine Newlin Burt + +Release Date: February 7, 2004 [eBook #10978] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: US-ASCII + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIDDEN CREEK*** + + +E-text prepared by Rick Niles, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + +HIDDEN CREEK + +BY KATHARINE NEWLIN BURT + +AUTHOR OF "THE BRANDING IRON" AND "THE RED LADY" + +1920 + + + + + + +TO MAXWELL STRUTHERS BURT WHO BLAZED THE TRAIL + + + + +CONTENTS + + +PART ONE: THE GOOD OLD WORLD + + I. SHEILA'S LEGACY + II. SYLVESTER HUDSON COMES FOR HIS PICTURE + III. THE FINEST CITY IN THE WORLD + IV. MOONSHINE + V. INTERCESSION + VI. THE BAWLING-OUT + VII. DISH-WASHING +VIII. ARTISTS + IX. A SINGEING OF WINGS + X. THE BEACON LIGHT + XI. IN THE PUBLIC EYE + XII. HUDSON'S QUEEN +XIII. SYLVESTER CELEBRATES + XIV. THE LIGHT OF DAWN + XV. FLAMES + +PART TWO: THE STARS + + I. THE HILL + II. ADVENTURE + III. JOURNEY'S END + IV. BEASTS + V. NEIGHBOR NEIGHBOR + VI. A HISTORY AND A LETTER + VII. SANCTUARY +VIII. DESERTION + IX. WORK AND A SONG + X. WINTER + XI. THE PACK + XII. THE GOOD OLD WORLD AGAIN +XIII. LONELINESS + XIV. SHEILA AND THE STARS + + + + +HIDDEN CREEK + + + + +PART ONE + +THE GOOD OLD WORLD + + + + +CHAPTER I + +SHEILA'S LEGACY + + +Just before his death, Marcus Arundel, artist and father of Sheila, +bore witness to his faith in God and man. He had been lying apparently +unconscious, his slow, difficult breath drawn at longer and longer +intervals. Sheila was huddled on the floor beside his bed, her hand +pressing his urgently in the pitiful attempt, common to human love, to +hold back the resolute soul from the next step in its adventure. The +nurse, who came in by the day, had left a paper of instructions on the +table. Here a candle burned under a yellow shade, throwing a circle of +warm, unsteady light on the head of the girl, on the two hands, on the +rumpled coverlet, on the dying face. This circle of light seemed to +collect these things, to choose them, as though for the expression of +some meaning. It felt for them as an artist feels for his composition +and gave to them a symbolic value. The two hands were in the center of +the glow--the long, pale, slack one, the small, desperate, clinging +one. The conscious and the unconscious, life and death, humanity and +God--all that is mysterious and tragic seemed to find expression there +in the two hands. + +So they had been for six hours, and it would soon be morning. The large, +bare room, however, was still possessed by night, and the city outside +was at its lowest ebb of life, almost soundless. Against the skylight the +winter stars seemed to be pressing; the sky was laid across the panes of +glass like a purple cloth in which sparks burned. + +Suddenly and with strength Arundel sat up. Sheila rose with him, drawing +up his hand in hers to her heart. + +"Keep looking at the stars, Sheila," he said with thrilling emphasis, and +widened his eyes at the visible host of them. Then he looked down at her; +his eyes shone as though they had caught a reflection from the myriad +lights. "It is a good old world," he said heartily in a warm and human +voice, and he smiled his smile of everyday good-fellowship. + +Sheila thanked God for his return, and on the very instant he was gone. +He dropped back, and there were no more difficult breaths. + +Sheila, alone there in the garret studio above the city, cried to her +father and shook him, till, in very terror of her own frenzy in the face +of his stillness, she grew calm and laid herself down beside him, put his +dead arm around her, nestled her head against his shoulder. She was +seventeen years old, left alone and penniless in the old world that he +had just pronounced so good. She lay there staring at the stars till they +faded, and the cold, clear eye of day looked down into the room. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +SYLVESTER HUDSON COMES FOR HIS PICTURE + + +Back of his sallow, lantern-jawed face, Sylvester Hudson hid +successfully, though without intention, all that was in him whether of +good or ill. Certainly he did not look his history. He was +stoop-shouldered, pensive-eyed, with long hands on which he was always +turning and twisting a big emerald. He dressed quietly, almost correctly, +but there was always something a little wrong in the color or pattern of +his tie, and he was too fond of brown and green mixtures which did not +become his sallowness. He smiled very rarely, and when he did smile, his +long upper lip unfastened itself with an effort and showed a horizontal +wrinkle halfway between the pointed end of his nose and the irregular, +nicked row of his teeth. + +Altogether, he was a gentle, bilious-looking sort of man, who might have +been anything from a country gentleman to a moderately prosperous clerk. +As a matter of fact, he was the owner of a dozen small, not too +respectable, hotels through the West, and had an income of nearly half a +million dollars. He lived in Millings, a town in a certain Far-Western +State, where flourished the most pretentious and respectable of his +hotels. It had a famous bar, to which rode the sheep-herders, the +cowboys, the ranchers, the dry-farmers of the surrounding country--yes, +and sometimes, thirstiest of all, the workmen from more distant +oil-fields, a dangerous crew. Millings at that time had not yielded to +the generally increasing "dryness" of the West. It was "wet," +notwithstanding its choking alkali dust; and the deep pool of its +wetness lay in Hudson's bar, The Aura. It was named for a woman who had +become his wife. + +When Hudson came to New York he looked up his Eastern patrons, and it was +one of these who, knowing Arundel's need, encouraged the hotel-keeper in +his desire to secure a "jim-dandy picture" for the lobby of The Aura and +took him for the purpose to Marcus's studio. On that morning, hardly a +fortnight before the artist's death, Sheila was not at home. + +Marcus, in spite of himself, was managed into a sale. It was of an +enormous canvas, covered weakly enough by a thin reproduction of a range +of the Rockies and a sagebrush flat. Mr. Hudson in his hollow voice +pronounced it "classy." "Say," he said, "put a little life into the +foreground and that would please _me_. It's what I'm seekin'. Put in an +automobile meetin' one of these old-time prairie schooners--the old West +sayin' howdy to the noo. That will tickle the trade." Mark, who was +feeling weak and ill, consented wearily. He sketched in the proposed +amendment and Hudson approved with one of his wrinkled smiles. He offered +a small price, at which Arundel leapt like a famished hound. + +When his visitors had gone, the painter went feverishly to work. The day +before his death, Sheila, under his whispered directions, put the last +touches to the body of the "auto_m_obile." + +"It's ghastly," sighed the sick man, "but it will do--for Millings." He +turned his back sadly enough to the canvas, which stood for him like a +monument to fallen hope. Sheila praised it with a faltering voice, but he +did not turn nor speak. So she carried the huge picture out of his sight. + +The next day, at about eleven o'clock in the morning, Hudson called. He +came with stiff, angular motions of his long, thin legs, up the four +steep, shabby flights and stopped at the top to get his breath. + +"The picture ain't worth the climb," he thought; and then, struck by the +peculiar stillness of the garret floor, he frowned. "Damned if the feller +ain't out!" He took a stride forward and knocked at Arundel's door. There +was no answer. He turned the knob and stepped into the studio. + +A screen stood between him and one half of the room. The other half was +empty. The place was very cold and still. It was deplorably bare and +shabby in the wintry morning light. Some one had eaten a meager breakfast +from a tray on the little table near the stove. Hudson's canvas stood +against the wall facing him, and its presence gave him a feeling of +ownership, of a right to be there. He put his long, stiff hands into his +pockets and strolled forward. He came round the corner of the screen and +found himself looking at the dead body of his host. + +The nurse, that morning, had come and gone. With Sheila's help she had +prepared Arundel for his burial. He lay in all the formal detachment of +death, his eyelids drawn decently down over his eyes, his lips put +carefully together, his hands, below their white cuffs and black sleeves, +laid carefully upon the clean smooth sheet. + +Hudson drew in a hissing breath, and at the sound Sheila, crumpled up in +exhausted slumber on the floor beside the bed, awoke and lifted her face. + +It was a heart-shaped face, a thin, white heart, the peak of her hair +cutting into the center of her forehead. The mouth struck a note of life +with its dull, soft red. There was not lacking in this young face the +slight exaggerations necessary to romantic beauty. Sheila had a strange, +arresting sort of jaw, a trifle over-accentuated and out of drawing. Her +eyes were long, flattened, narrow, the color of bubbles filled with +smoke, of a surface brilliance and an inner mistiness--indescribable +eyes, clear, very melting, wistful and beautiful under sooty lashes and +slender, arched black brows. + +Sheila lifted this strange, romantic face on its long, romantic throat +and looked at Hudson. Then she got to her feet. She was soft and silken, +smooth and tender, gleaming white of skin. She had put on an old black +dress, just a scrap of a flimsy, little worn-out gown. A certain slim, +crushable quality of her body was accentuated by this flimsiness of +covering. She looked as though she could be drawn through a ring--as +though, between your hands, you could fold her to nothing. A thin little +kitten of silky fur and small bones might have the same feel as Sheila. + +She stood up now and looked tragically and helplessly at Hudson and +tried to speak. + +He backed away from the bed, beckoned to her, and met her in the other +half of the room so that the leather screen stood between them and the +dead man. They spoke in hushed voices. + +"I had no notion, Miss Arundel, that--that--of--this," Hudson began in a +dry, jerky whisper. "Believe _me_, I wouldn't 'a' thought of intrudin'. I +ordered the picture there from your father a fortnight ago, and this was +the day I was to come and give it a last looking-over before I came +through with the cash, see? I hadn't heard he was sick even, much +less"--he cleared his throat--"gone beyond," he ended, quoting from the +"Millings Gazette" obituary column. "You get me?" + +"Yes," said Sheila, in her voice that in some mysterious way was another +expression of the clear mistiness of her eyes and the suppleness of her +body. "You are Mr. Hudson." She twisted her hands together behind her +back. She was shivering with cold and nervousness. "It's done, you see. +Father finished it." + +Hudson gave the canvas an absent glance and motioned Sheila to a chair +with a stiff gesture of his arm. + +"You set down," he said. + +She obeyed, and he walked to and fro before her. + +"Say, now," he said, "I'll take the picture all right. But I'd like to +know, Miss Arundel, if you'll excuse me, how you're fixed?" + +"Fixed?" Sheila faltered. + +"Why, yes, ma'am--as to finances, I mean. You've got some funds, or some +relations or some friends to call upon--?" + +Sheila drew up her head a trifle, lowered her eyes, and began to plait +her thin skirt across her knee with small, delicate fingers. Hudson +stopped in his walk to watch this mechanical occupation. She struggled +dumbly with her emotion and managed to answer him at last. + +"No, Mr. Hudson. Father is very poor. I haven't any relations. We have no +friends here nor anywhere near. We lived in Europe till quite lately--a +fishing village in Normandy. I--I shall have to get some work." + +"Say!" It was an ejaculation of pity, but there was a note of triumph in +it, too; perhaps the joy of the gratified philanthropist. + +"Now, look-a-here, little girl, the price of that picture will just about +cover your expenses, eh?--board and--er--funeral?" + +Sheila nodded, her throat working, her lids pressing down tears. + +"Well, now, look-a-here. I've got a missus at home." + +Sheila looked up and the tears fell. She brushed them from her cheeks. +"A missus?" + +"Yes'm--my wife. And a couple of gels about your age. Well, say, we've +got a job for you." + +Sheila put her hand to her head as though she would stop a whirling +sensation there. + +"You mean you have some work for me in your home?" + +"You've got it first time. Yes, _ma'am_. Sure thing. At Millings, finest +city in the world. After you're through here, you pack up your duds and +you come West with me. Make a fresh start, eh? Why, it'll make me plumb +cheerful to have a gel with me on that journey ... seem like I'd Girlie +or Babe along. They just cried to come, but, say, Noo York's no place for +the young." + +"But, Mr. Hudson, my ticket? I'm sure I won't have the money--?" + +"Advance it to you on your pay, Miss Arundel." + +"But what is the work?" Sheila still held her hand against her forehead. + +Hudson laughed his short, cracked cackle. "Jest old-fashioned house-work, +dish-washing and such. 'Help' can't be had in Millings, and Girlie and +Babe kick like steers when Momma leads 'em to the dish-pan. Not that +you'd have to do it all, you know, just lend a hand to Momma. Maybe +you're too fine for that?" + +"Oh, no. I have done all the work here. I'd be glad. Only--" + +He came closer to her and held up a long, threatening forefinger. It was +a playful gesture, but Sheila had a distinct little tremor of fear. She +looked up into his small, brown, pensive eyes, and her own were held as +though their look had been fastened to his with rivets. + +"Now, look-a-here, Miss Arundel, don't you say 'only' to me. Nor 'but.' +Nor 'if.' Nary one of those words, if you please. Say, I've got daughters +of my own and I can manage gels. I know _how_. Do you know my nickname? +Well--say--it's 'Pap.' Pap Hudson. I'm the adopting kind. Sort of +paternal, I guess. Kids and dogs follow me in the streets. You want a +recommend? Just call up Mr. Hazeldean on the telephone. He's the man that +fetched me here to buy that picture off Poppa." + +"Oh," said Sheila, daughter of Mark who looked at stars, "of course +I shouldn't think of asking for a recommendation. You've been only +too kind--" + +He put his hand on her shoulder in its thin covering and patted it, +wondering at the silken, cool feeling against his palm. + +"Kind, Miss Arundel? Pshaw! My middle name's 'Kind' and that's the truth. +Why, how does the song go--''T is love, 't is love that makes the world +go round'--love's just another word for kindness, ain't it? And it's not +such a bad old world either, eh?" + +Without knowing it, with the sort of good luck that often attends the +enterprises of such men, Hudson had used a spell. He had quoted, almost +literally, her father's last words and she felt that it was a message +from the other side of death. + +She twisted about in her chair, took his hand from her shoulder, and drew +it, stiff and sallow, to her young lips. + +"Oh," she sobbed, "you're kind! It _is_ a good world if there are such +men as you!" + +When Sylvester Hudson went down the stairs a minute or two after Sheila's +impetuous outbreak, his sallow face was deeply flushed. He stopped to +tell the Irishwoman who rented the garret floor to the Arundels, that +Sheila's future was in his care. During this colloquy, pure business on +his side and mixed business and sentiment on Mrs. Halligan's, Sylvester +did not once look the landlady in the eye. His own eyes skipped hers, now +across, now under, now over. There are some philanthropists who are +overcome with such bashfulness in the face of their own good deeds. But, +sitting back alone in his taxicab on his way to the station to buy +Sheila's ticket to Millings, Sylvester turned his emerald rapidly about +on his finger and whistled to himself. And cryptically he expressed his +glow of gratified fatherliness. + +"As smooth as silk," said Sylvester aloud. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE FINEST CITY IN THE WORLD + + +So Sheila Arundel left the garret where the stars pressed close, and +went with Sylvester Hudson out into the world. It was, that morning, a +world of sawing wind, of flying papers and dust-dervishes, a world, to +meet which people bent their shrinking faces and drew their bodies +together as against the lashing of a whip. Sheila thought she had never +seen New York so drab and soulless; it hurt her to leave it under so +desolate an aspect. + +"Cheery little old town, isn't it?" said Sylvester. "Gee! Millings is +God's country all right." + +On the journey he put Sheila into a compartment, supplied her with +magazines and left her for the most part to herself--for which isolation +she was grateful. With her compartment door ajar, she could see him in +his section, when he was not in the smoking-car, or rather she could see +his lean legs, his long, dark hands, and the top of his sleek head. The +rest was an outspread newspaper. Occasionally he would come into the +compartment to read aloud some bit of information which he thought might +interest her. Once it was the prowess of a record-breaking hen; again it +was a joke about a mother-in-law; another time it was the Hilliard murder +case, a scandal of New York high-life, the psychology of which intrigued +Sylvester. + +"Isn't it queer, though, Miss Arundel, that such things happen in the +slums and they happen in the smart set, but they don't happen near so +often with just plain folks like you and me! Isn't this, now, a real +Tenderloin Tale--South American wife and American husband and all their +love affairs, and then one day her up and shooting him! Money," quoth +Sylvester, "sure makes love popular. Now for that little ro-mance, poor +folks would hardly stop a day's work, but just because the Hilliards here +have po-sition and spon-dulix, why, they'll run a couple of columns about +'em for a week. What's your opinion on the subject, Miss Arundel?" + +He was continually asking this, and poor Sheila, strange, bewildered, +oppressed by his intrusion into her uprooted life, would grope wildly +through her odds and ends of thought and find that on most of the +subjects that interested him, she had no opinions at all. + +"You must think I'm dreadfully stupid, Mr. Hudson," she faltered once +after a particularly deplorable failure. + +"Oh, you're a kid, Miss Sheila, that's all your trouble. And I reckon +you're half asleep, eh? Kind of brought up on pictures and country walks, +in--what's the name of the foreign part?--Normandy? No friends of your +own age? No beaux?" + +Sheila shook her head, smiling. Her flexible smile was as charming as a +child's. It dawned on the gravity of her face with an effect of spring +moonlight. In it there was some of the mischief of fairyland. + +"What _you_ need is--Millings," prescribed Sylvester. "Girlie and Babe +will wake you up. Yes, and the boys. You'll make a hit in Millings." He +contemplated her for an instant with his head on one side. "We ain't got +anything like you in Millings." + +Sheila, looking out at the wide Nebraskan prairies that slipped +endlessly past her window hour by hour that day, felt that she would not +make a hit at Millings. She was afraid of Millings. Her terror of Babe +and Girlie was profound. She had lived and grown up, as it were, under +her father's elbow. Her adoration of him had stood between her and +experience. She knew nothing of humanity except Marcus Arundel. And he +was hardly typical--a shy, proud, head-in-the-air sort of man, who would +have been greatly loved if he had not shrunk morbidly from human +contacts. Sheila's Irish mother had wooed and won him and had made a +merry midsummer madness in his life, as brief as a dream. Sheila was all +that remained of it. But, for all her quietness, the shadow of his +broken heart upon her spirit, she was a Puck. She could make laughter +and mischief for him and for herself--not for any one else yet; she was +too shy. But that might come. Only, Puck laughter is a little unearthly, +a little delicate. The ear of Millings might not be attuned.... Just +now, Sheila felt that she would never laugh again. Sylvester's humor +certainly did not move her. She almost choked trying to swallow +becomingly the mother-in-law anecdote. + +But Sylvester's talk, his questions, even his jokes, were not what most +oppressed her. Sometimes, looking up, she would find him staring at her +over the top of his newspaper as though he were speculating about +something, weighing her, judging her by some inner measurement. It was +rather like the way her father had looked a model over to see if she +would fit his dream. + +At such moments Sylvester's small brown eyes were the eyes of an +artist, of a visionary. They embarrassed her painfully. What was it, +after all, that he expected of her? For an expectation of some kind he +most certainly had, and it could hardly have to do with her skill in +washing dishes. + +She asked him a few small questions as they drew near to Millings. The +strangeness of the country they were now running through excited her and +fired her courage--these orange-colored cliffs, these purple buttes, +these strange twisting canons with their fierce green streams. + +"Please tell me about Mrs. Hudson and your daughters?" she asked. + +This was a few hours before they were to come to Millings. They had +changed trains at a big, bare, glaring city several hours before and +were now in a small, gritty car with imitation-leather seats. They were +running through a gorge, and below and ahead Sheila could see the brown +plain with its patches of snow and, like a large group of red toy +houses, the town of Millings, far away but astonishingly distinct in the +clear air. + +Sylvester, considering her question, turned his emerald slowly. + +"The girls are all _right_, Miss Sheila. They're lookers. I guess I've +spoiled 'em some. They'll be crazy over you--sort of a noo pet in the +house, eh? I've wired to 'em. They must be hoppin' up and down like a +popper full of corn." + +"And Mrs. Hudson?" + +Sylvester grinned--the wrinkle cutting long and deep across his lip. +"Well, ma'am, she ain't the hoppin' kind." + +A few minutes later Sheila discovered that emphatically she was not the +hopping kind. A great, bony woman with a wide, flat, handsome face, she +came along the station platform, kissed Sylvester with hard lips and +stared at Sheila ... the stony stare of her kind. + +"Babe ran the Ford down, Sylly," she said in the harshest voice Sheila +had ever heard. "Where's the girl's trunk?" + +Sylvester's sallow face reddened. He turned quickly to Sheila. + +"Run over to the car yonder, Miss Sheila, and get used to Babe, while I +kind of take the edge off Momma." + +Sheila did not run. She walked in a peculiar light-footed manner which +gave her the look of a proud deer. + +"Momma" was taken firmly to the baggage-room, where, it would seem, the +edge was removed with difficulty, for Sheila waited in the motor with +Babe for half an hour. + +Babe hopped. She hopped out of her seat at the wheel and shook Sheila's +hand and told her to "jump right in." + +"Sit by me on the way home, Sheila." Babe had a tremendous voice. "And +leave the old folks to gossip on the back seat. Gee! you're different +from what I thought you'd be. Ain't you small, though? You've got no +form. Say, Millings will do lots for you. Isn't Pap a character, though? +Weren't you tickled the way he took you up? Your Poppa was a painter, +wasn't he? Can you make a picture of me? I've got a steady that would be +just wild if you could." + +Sheila sat with hands clenched in her shabby muff and smiled her +moonlight smile. She was giddy with the intoxicating, heady air, with the +brilliant sunset light, with Babe's loud cordiality. She wanted +desperately to like Babe; she wanted even more desperately to be liked. +She was in an unimaginable panic, now. + +Babe was a splendid young animal, handsome and round and rosy, her body +crowded into a bright-blue braided, fur-trimmed coat, her face crowded +into a tight, much-ornamented veil, her head with heavy chestnut hair, +crowded into a cherry-colored, velvet turban round which seemed to be +wrapped the tail of some large wild beast. Her hands were ready to burst +from yellow buckskin gloves; her feet, with high, thick insteps, from +their tight, thin, buttoned boots, even her legs shone pink and plump +below her short skirt, through silk stockings that were threatened at the +seams. And the blue of her eyes, the red of her cheeks, the white of her +teeth, had the look of being uncontainable, too brilliant and full to +stay where they belonged. The whole creature flashed and glowed and +distended herself. Her voice was a riot of uncontrolled vitality, and, as +though to use up a little of all this superfluous energy, she was +violently chewing gum. Except for an occasional slight smacking sound, it +did not materially interfere with speech. + +"There's Poppa now," she said at last. "Say, Poppa, you two sit in the +back, will you? Sheila and I are having a fine time. But, Poppa, you old +tin-horn, what did you mean by saying in your wire that she was a husky +girl? Why, she's got the build of a sagebrush mosquito! Look-a-here, +Sheila." Babe by a miracle got her plump hand in and out of a pocket and +handed a telegram to her new friend. "Read that and learn to know Poppa!" + +Sylvester laughed rather sheepishly as Sheila read: + +Am bringing home artist's A1 picture for The Aura and artist's A1 +daughter. Husky girl. Will help Momma. + +"Well," said Sylvester apologetically, "she's one of the wiry kind, +aren't you, Miss Sheila?" + +Sheila was struggling with an attack of hysterical mirth. She nodded +and put her muff before her mouth to hide an uncontrollable quivering +of her lips. + +"Momma" had not spoken. Her face was all one even tone of red, her +nostrils opened and shut, her lips were tight. Sylvester, however, was in +a genial humor. He leaned forward with his arms folded along the back of +the front seat and pointed out the beauties of Millings. He showed Sheila +the Garage, the Post-Office, and the Trading Company, and suddenly +pressing her shoulder with his hand, he cracked out sharply: + +"There's The Aura, girl!" + +His eyes were again those of the artist and the visionary. They glowed. + +Sheila turned her head. They were passing the double door of the saloon +and went slowly along the front of the hotel. + +It stood on that corner where the main business street intersects with +the Best Residence Street. Its main entrance opened into the flattened +corner of the building where the roof rose to a fantastic facade. For the +rest, the hotel was of yellowish-brick, half-surrounded by a wooden porch +where at milder seasons of the year in deep wicker chairs men and women +were always rocking with the air of people engaged in serious and not +unimportant work. At such friendlier seasons, too, by the curb was always +a weary-looking Ford car from which grotesquely arrayed "travelers" from +near-by towns and cities were descending covered with alkali dust--faces, +chiffon veils, spotted silk dresses, high white kid boots, dangling +purses and all, their men dust-powdered to a wrinkled sameness of aspect. +At this time of the year the porch was deserted, and the only car in +sight was Hudson's own, which wriggled and slipped its way courageously +along the rutted, dirty snow. + +Around the corner next to the hotel stood Hudson's home. It was a large +house of tortured architecture, cupolas and twisted supports and strange, +overlapping scallops of wood, painted wavy green, pinkish red and yellow. +Its windows were of every size and shape and appeared in unreasonable, +impossible places--opening enormous mouths on tiny balconies with twisted +posts and scalloped railings, like embroidery patterns, one on top of the +other up to a final absurdity of a bird cage which found room for itself +between two cupolas under the roof. + +Up the steps of the porch Mrs. Hudson mounted grimly, followed by Babe. +Sylvester stayed to tinker with the car, and Sheila, after a doubtful, +tremulous moment, went slowly up the icy path after the two women. + +She stumbled a little on the lowest step and, in recovering herself, she +happened to turn her head. And so, between two slender aspen trees that +grew side by side like white, captive nymphs in Hudson's yard, she saw a +mountain-top. The sun had set. There was a crystal, turquoise +translucency behind the exquisite snowy peak, which seemed to stand there +facing God, forgetful of the world behind it, remote and reverent and +most serene in the light of His glory. And just above where the turquoise +faded to pure pale green, a big white star trembled. Sheila's heart +stopped in her breast. She stood on the step and drew breath, throwing +back her veil. A flush crept up into her face. She felt that she had been +traveling all her life toward her meeting with this mountain and this +star. She felt radiant and comforted. + +"How beautiful!" she whispered. + +Sylvester had joined her. + +"Finest city in the world!" he said. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +MOONSHINE + + +Dickie Hudson pushed from him to the full length of his arm the ledger of +The Aura Hotel, tilted his chair back from the desk, and, leaning far +over to one side, set the needle on a phonograph record, pressed the +starter, and absorbed himself in rolling and lighting a cigarette. This +accomplished, he put his hands behind his head and, wreathed in aromatic, +bluish smoke, gave himself up to complete enjoyment of the music. + +It was a song from some popular light opera. A very high soprano and a +musical tenor duet, sentimental, humoresque: + +"There, dry your eyes, +I sympathize +Just as a mother would-- +Give me your hand, +I understand, we're off to slumber land +Like a father, like a mother, like a sister, like a brother." + +Listening to this melody, Dickie Hudson's face under the gaslight +expressed a rapt and spiritual delight, tender, romantic, melancholy. + +He was a slight, undersized youth, very pale, very fair, with the face of +a delicate boy. He had large, near-sighted blue eyes in which lurked a +wistful, deprecatory smile, a small chin running from wide cheek-bones +to a point. His lips were sensitive and undecided, his nose unformed, his +hair soft and easily ruffled. There were hard blue marks under the +long-lashed eyes, an unhealthy pallor to his cheeks, a slight +unsteadiness of his fingers. + +Dickie held a position of minor importance in the hotel, and his pale, +innocent face was almost as familiar to its patrons as to those of the +saloon next door--more familiar to both than it was to Hudson's +"residence." Sometimes for weeks Dickie did not strain the scant welcome +of his "folks." To-night, however, he was resolved to tempt it. After +listening to the record, he strolled over to the saloon. + +Dickie was curious. He shared Millings's interest in the "young lady from +Noo York." Shyness fought with a sense of adventure, until to-night, a +night fully ten nights after Sheila's arrival, the courage he imbibed at +the bar of The Aura gave him the necessary impetus. He pulled himself up +from his elbow, removed his foot from the rail, straightened his spotted +tie, and pushed through the swinging doors out into the night. + +It was a moonlit night, as still and pure as an angel of annunciation--a +night that carried tall, silver lilies in its hands. Above the small, +sleepy town were lifted the circling rim of mountains and the web of +blazing stars. Sylvester's son, after a few crunching steps along the icy +pavement, stopped with his hand against the wall, and stood, not quite +steadily, his face lifted. The whiteness sank through his tainted body +and brain to the undefiled child-soul. The stars blazed awfully for +Dickie, and the mountains were awfully white and high, and the air +shattered against his spirit like a crystal sword. He stood for an +instant as though on a single point of solid earth and looked giddily +beyond earthly barriers. + +His lips began to move. He was trying to put that mystery, that +emotion, into words ... "It's white," he murmured, "and +sharp--burning--like--like"--his fancy fumbled--"like the inside of a +cold flame." He shook his head. That did not describe the marvelous +quality of the night. And yet--if the world had gone up to heaven in a +single, streaming point of icy fire and a fellow stood in it, frozen, +swept up out of a fellow's body.... Again he shook his head and his eyes +were possessed by the wistful, apologetic smile. He wished he were not +tormented by this queer need of describing his sensations. He remembered +very vividly one of the many occasions when it had roused his father's +anger. Dickie, standing with his hand against the cold bricks of The +Aura, smiled with his lips, not happily, but with a certain amusement, +thinking of how Sylvester's hand had cracked against his cheek and sent +all his thoughts flying like broken china. He had been apologizing for +his slowness over an errand--something about leaves, it had been--the +leaves of those aspens in the yard--he had told his father that they had +been little green flames--he had stopped to look at them. + +"You damn fool!" Sylvester had said as he struck. + +"You damn fool!" Once, when a stranger asked five-year-old Dickie his +name, he had answered innocently "Dickie-damn-fool!" + +"They'll probably put it on my tombstone," Dickie concluded, and, stung +by the cold, he shrank into his coat and stumbled round the corner of the +street. The reek of spirits trailed behind him through the purity like a +soiled rag. + +Number 18 Cottonwood Avenue was brilliantly lighted. Girlie was playing +the piano, Babe's voice, "sassing Poppa," was audible from one end to the +other of the empty street. Her laughter slapped the air. Dickie +hesitated. He was afraid of them all--of Sylvester's pensive, small, +brown eyes and hard, long hands, of Babe's bodily vigor, of Girlie's mild +contemptuous look, of his mother's gloomy, furtive tenderness. Dickie +felt a sort of aching and compassionate dread of the rough, awkward +caress of her big red hand against his cheek. As he hesitated, the door +opened--a blaze of light, yellow as old gold, streamed into the blue +brilliance of the moon. It was blotted out and a figure came quickly down +the steps. It had an air of hurry and escape. A small, slim figure, it +came along the path and through the gate; then, after just an instant of +hesitation, it turned away from Dickie and sped up the wide street. + +Dickie named it at once. "That's the girl," he said; and possessed by +his curiosity and by the sense of adventure which whiskey had fortified, +he began to walk rapidly in the same direction. Out there, where the +short street ended, began the steep side of a mesa. The snow on the road +that was graded along its front was packed by the runners of freighting +sleighs, but it was rough. He could not believe the girl meant to go for +a walk alone. And yet, would she be out visiting already, she, a +stranger? At the end of the street the small, determined figure did not +stop; it went on, a little more slowly, but as decidedly as ever, up the +slope. On the hard, frozen crust, her feet made hardly a sound. Above the +level top of the white hill, the peak that looked remote from Hudson's +yard became immediate. It seemed to peer--to lean forward, bright as a +silver helmet against the purple sky. Dickie could see that "the girl" +walked with her head tilted back as though she were looking at the sky. +Perhaps it was the sheer beauty of the winter night that had brought her +out. Following slowly up the hill, he felt a sense of nearness, of +warmth; his aching, lifelong loneliness was remotely comforted because a +girl, skimming ahead of him, had tilted her chin up so that she could see +the stars. She reached the top of the mesa several minutes before he did +and disappeared. She was now, he knew, on the edge of a great plateau, in +summer covered with the greenish silver of sagebrush, now an unbroken, +glittering expanse. He stood still to get his breath and listen to the +very light crunch of her steps. He could hear a coyote wailing off there +in the foothills, and the rushing noise of the small mountain river that +hurled itself down upon Millings, ran through it at frenzied speed, and +made for the canon on the other side of the valley. Below him Millings +twinkled with a few sparse lights, and he could, even from here, +distinguish the clatter of Babe's voice. But when he came to the top, +Millings dropped away from the reach of his senses. Here was dazzling +space, the amazing presence of the mountains, the pressure of the starry +sky. Far off already across the flat, that small, dark figure moved. She +had left the road, which ran parallel with the mountain range, and was +walking over the hard, sparkling crust. It supported her weight, but +Dickie was not sure that it would do the same for his. He tried it +carefully. It held, and he followed the faint track of small feet. It did +not occur to him, dazed as he was by the fumes of whiskey and the heady +air, that the sight of a man in swift pursuit of her loneliness might +frighten Sheila. For some reason he imagined that she would know that he +was Sylvester's son, and that he was possessed only by the most sociable +and protective impulses. + +He was, besides, possessed by a fateful feeling that it was intended that +out here in the brilliant night he should meet her and talk to her. The +adventurous heart of Dickie was aflame. + +When the hurrying figure stopped and turned quickly, he did not +pause, but rather hastened his steps. He saw her lift her muff up to +her heart, saw her waver, then move resolutely toward him. She came +thus two or three steps, when a treacherous pitfall in the snow opened +under her frightened feet and she went down almost shoulder deep. +Dickie ran forward. + +Bending over her, he saw her white, heart-shaped face, and its red mouth +as startling as a June rose out here in the snow. And he saw, too, the +panic of her shining eyes. + +"Miss Arundel"--his voice came thin and tender, feeling its way +doubtfully as though it was too heavy a reality--"let me help you. You +_are_ Miss Arundel, aren't you? I'm Dickie--Dickie Hudson, Pap Hudson's +son. You hadn't ought to be scared. I saw you coming out alone and took +after you. I thought you might find it kind of lonesome up here on the +flat at night in all the moonlight--hearing the coyotes and all. And, +look-a-here, you might have had a time getting out of the snow. Oncet a +fellow breaks through it sure means a floundering time before a fellow +pulls himself out--" + +She had given him a hand, and he had pulled her up beside him. Her smile +of relief seemed very beautiful to Dickie. + +"I came out," she said, "because it looked so wonderful--and I wanted +to see--" She stopped, looking at him doubtfully, as though she +expected him not to understand, to think her rather mad. But he +finished her sentence. + +"--To see the mountains, wasn't it?" + +"Yes." She was again relieved, almost as much so, it seemed, as at the +knowledge of his friendliness. "Especially that big one." She waved her +muff toward the towering peak. "I never did see such a night! It's +like--it's like--" She widened her eyes, as though, by taking into her +brain an immense picture of the night, she might find out its likeness. + +Dickie, moving uncertainly beside her, murmured, "Like the inside of a +cold flame, a very white flame." + +Sheila turned her chin, pointed above the fur collar of her coat, and +included him in the searching and astonished wideness of her look. + +"You work at The Aura, don't you?" she asked with childlike _brusquerie_. + +Dickie's sensitive, undecided mouth settled into mournfulness. He +looked away. + +"Yes, ma'am," he said plaintively. + +Sheila's widened eyes, still fixed upon him, began to embarrass him. A +flush came up into his face. + +She moved her look across him and away to the range. + +"It _is_ like that," she said--"like a cold flame, going up--how did you +think of that?" + +Dickie looked quickly, gratefully at her. "I kind of felt," he said +lamely, "that I had got to find out what it was like. But"--he shook his +head with his deprecatory smile--"but that don't tell it, Miss Arundel. +It's more than that." He smiled again. "I bet you, you could think of +somethin' better to say about it, couldn't you?" + +Sheila laughed. "What a funny boy you are! Not like the others. You don't +even look like them. How old are you? When I first saw you I thought you +were quite grown up. But you can't be much more than nineteen." + +"Just that," he said, "but I'll be twenty next month." + +"You've always lived here in Millings?" + +"Yes, ma'am. Do you like it? I mean, do you like Millings? I hope you +do." + +Sheila pressed her muff against her mouth and looked at him over it. Her +eyes were shining as though the moonlight had got into their misty +grayness. She shook her head; then, as his face fell, she began to +apologize. + +"Your father has been so awfully kind to me. I am so grateful. And the +girls are awfully good to me. But, Millings, you know?--I wouldn't +have told you," she said half-angrily, "if I hadn't been so sure you +hated it." + +They had come to the edge of the mesa, and there below shone the small, +scattered lights of the town. The graphophone was playing in the saloon. +Its music--some raucous, comic song--insulted the night. + +"Why, no," said Dickie, "I don't hate Millings. I never thought about it +that way. It's not such a bad place. Honest, it isn't. There's lots of +fine folks in it. Have you met Jim Greely?" + +"Why, no, but I've seen him. Isn't that Girlie's--'fellow'?" + +Dickie made round, respectful eyes. He was evidently very much impressed. + +"Say!" he ejaculated. "Is that the truth? Girlie's aiming kind of high." + +It was not easy to walk side by side on the rutted snow of the road. +Sheila here slipped ahead of him and went on quickly along the middle rut +where the horses' hoofs had beaten a pitted path. + +She looked back at him over her shoulder with a sort of malice. + +"Is it aiming high?" she said. "Girlie is much more beautiful than +Jim Greely." + +"Oh, but he's some looker--Jim." + +"Do you think so?" she said indifferently, with a dainty touch of scorn. + +Dickie staggered physically from the shock of her speech. She had been +speaking--was it possible?--of Jim Greely.... + +"I mean Mr. James Greely, the son of the president of the Millings +National Bank," he said painstakingly, and a queer confusion came to him +that the words were his feet and that neither were under his control. +Also, he was not sure that he had said "Natural," or "National." + +"I do mean Mr. James Greely," Sheila's clear voice came back to him. "He +is, I should think, a very great hero of yours." + +"Yes, ma'am," said Dickie. + +Astonished at the abject humility of his tone, Sheila stopped and turned +quite around to look at him. He seemed to be floundering in and out of +invisible holes in the snow. He stepped very high, plunged, put out his +hand, and righted himself by her shoulder. And he stayed there, lurched +against her for a moment. She shook him off and began to run down the +hill. His breath had struck her face. She knew that he was drunk. + +Dickie followed her as fast as he could. Several times he fell, but, on +the whole, he made fairly rapid progress, so that, by the time she dashed +into the Hudsons' gate, he was only a few steps behind her and caught the +gate before it shut. Sheila fled up the steps and beat at the door with +her fist. Dickie was just behind her. + +Sylvester himself opened the door. Back of him pressed Babe. + +"Why, say," she said, "it's Sheila and she's got a beau already. You're +some girl--" + +"Please let me in," begged Sheila; "I--I am frightened. It's your +brother, Dickie--but I think--there's something wrong--" + +Sylvester put his hand on her and pushed her to one side. + +He strode out on the small porch. Dickie wavered before him on +the top step. + +"I thought I'd make the ac-acquaintance of the young lady," he began +doubtfully. "I saw her admiring at the stars and I--" + +"Oh, you did!" snarled Hudson. "All right. Now go and make acquaintance +with the bottom step." He thrust a long, hard hand at Dickie's chest, and +the boy fell backward, clattering ruefully down the steps with a rattle +of thin knees and elbows. At the bottom he lay for a minute, painfully +huddled in the snow. + +"Go in, Miss Sheila," said Sylvester. "I'm sorry my son came home +to-night and frightened you. He usually has more sense. He'll have more +sense next time." + +He ran down the steps, but before he could reach the huddled figure it +gathered itself fearfully together and fled, limping and staggering +across the yard, through the gate and around the corner of the street. + +Hudson came up, breathing hard. + +"Where's Sheila?" he asked sharply. + +"She ran upstairs," said Babe. "Ain't it a shame? What got into Dick?" + +"Something that will get kicked out of him good and proper to-morrow," +said his father grimly. + +He stood at the bottom of the steep, narrow stairs, looking up, his hands +thrust into his pockets, his under lip stuck out. His eyes were unusually +gentle and pensive. + +"I wouldn't 'a' had her scared that way for anything," he said, "not for +anything. That's likely to spoil all my plans." + +He swore under his breath, wheeled about, and going into the parlor he +shut the door and began walking to and fro. Babe crept rather quietly up +the stairs. There were times when even Babe was afraid of "Poppa." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +INTERCESSION + + +Babe tiptoed up the first flight, walked solidly and boldly up the +second, and ran up the third. She had decided to have a talk with Sheila, +to soothe her indignation, and, if possible, to explain Dickie. It seemed +to Babe that Dickie needed explanation. + +Sheila's room was at the top of the house--the very room, in fact, whose +door opened on the bird cage of a balcony between two cupolas. Babe came +to the door and knocked. A voice answered sharply: "Come in," and Babe, +entering, shut the door and leaned against it. + +It was a small, bare, whitewashed room, with a narrow cot, a washstand, +a bureau, and two extraordinary chairs--a huge one that rocked on +damaged springs, enclosed in plaited leather like the case of an +accordion, and one that had been a rocker, but stood unevenly on its +diminished legs. Babe had protested against Momma's disposal of the +"girl from Noo York," and had begged that Sheila be allowed to share her +own red, white, and blue boudoir below. But Sheila had preferred her +small room. It was red as a rose at sunset, still and high, remote from +Millings, and it faced The Hill. + +Now, the gaslight flared against the bare walls and ceiling. Sheila's +hat and coat and muff lay on the bed where she had thrown them. She +stood, looking at Babe. Her face was flushed, her eyes gleamed, that +slight exaggeration of her chin was more pronounced than usual. + +Babe put her head on one side. "Oh, say, Sheila, why bother about Dickie. +Nobody cares about Dickie. He'll get a proper bawlin'-out from Poppa +to-morrow. But I'd think myself simple to be scared by him. He's +harmless. The poor kid can't half help himself now. He got started when +he was awful young." + +"Oh," said Sheila, as sharply as before, stopping before Babe, "I'm not +frightened. I'm angry--angry at myself. I _like_ Dickie. I like him!" + +Babe's lips fell apart. She sat down in the accordion-plaited chair and +rocked. A squealing, shaking noise accompanied the motion. Her fingers +sought and found against the chair-back a piece of chewing-gum which she +had stuck there during her last visit to Sheila. Babe hid and resurrected +chewing-gum as instinctively as a dog hides and resurrects his bones. + +"I can _see_ you likin' Dickie," she remarked ironically. + +"But I do, I tell you! He was sweet. He didn't say a word or do a thing +to frighten me--" + +"But he was full, Shee, you know he was." + +"Yes. He'd been drinking. I smelt it. And he didn't walk very straight, +and he was a little mixed in his speech. But, all the same, he was as +good as gold. And friendly and nice. I might have walked home quietly +with him and sent him away at the door. And he wouldn't have been seen by +his father." Sheila's eyes filled. "It was dreadful--to--to knock him +down the steps!" + +"Say, if you'd had as much to put up with from Dickie as Poppa's had--" + +"Oh," said Sheila in a tone that welled up as from under a weight, "if I +had always lived in Millings, I'd drink myself!" + +Babe looked red and resentful, but Sheila's voice rushed on. + +"That saloon is the only interesting and attractive place in town. The +only thrilling people that ever come here go in through those doors. I've +seen some wonderful-looking men. I'd like to paint them. I've made some +drawings of them--men from over there back of the mountains." + +"You mean the cowboys from over The Hill, I guess," drawled Babe +contemptuously. "Those sagebrush fellows from Hidden Creek. I don't think +a whole lot of them. Put one of them alongside of one of our town boys! +Why, they don't speak good, Sheila, and they're rough as a hill trail. +You'd be scared to death of them if you knew them better." + +"They look like real men to me," said Sheila. "And I never did +like towns." + +"But you're a town girl." + +"I am not. I've been in cities and I've been in the country. I've never +lived in a town." + +"Well, there'll be a dance one of these days next summer in the Town +Hall, and maybe you'll meet some of those rough-necks. You'll change your +mind about them. Why, I'd sooner dance with a sheep-herder from beyond +the bad-lands, or with one of the hands from the oil-fields, than with +those Hidden Creek fellows. Horse-thieves and hold-ups and Lord knows +what-all they are. No account runaways. Nothing solid or respectable +about them. Take a boy like Robert, now, or Jim--" + +Sheila put her hands to her ears. Her face, between the hands, looked +rather wicked in a sprite-like fashion. + +"Don't mention to me Mr. James Greely of the Millings National Bank!" + +Babe rose pompously. "I think you're kind of off your bat to-night, +Sheila Arundel," she said, chewing noisily. "First you run out at night +with the mercury at 4 below and come dashing back scared to death, +banging at the door, and then you tell me you like Dickie and ask me not +to mention the finest fellow in Millings!" + +"The finest fellow in the finest city in the world!" cried Sheila and +laughed. Her laugh was like a torrent of silver coins, but it had the +right maliceful ring of a brownie's "Ho! Ho! Ho!" + +Babe stopped in the doorway and spoke heavily. + +"You're short on sense, Sheila," she said. "You're kind of dippy ... +going out to look at the stars and drawing pictures of that Hidden Creek +trash. But you'll learn better, maybe." + +"Wait a minute, Babe!" Sheila was sober again and not unpenitent. "I'm +coming down with you. I want to tell your father that Dickie was sweet to +me. I don't want him to--to--what was it he was going to do to-morrow?" + +"Bawl Dickie out." + +"Yes. I don't want him to do that. It sounds awful." + +"Well, it is. But it won't hurt Dickie any. He's used to it." + +Babe, forgiving and demonstrative, here forgot the insult to Millings and +Jim Greely, put her arm round Sheila, and went down the stairs, squeezing +the smaller girl against the wall. + +"I guess I won't go with you to see Poppa," she said, stopping at the top +of the last flight. "Poppa's kind of a rough talker sometimes." + +Sheila looked rather alarmed. "You mean you think he--he will bawl me +out?" + +"I wouldn't wonder." Babe smiled, showing a lump of putty-colored +chewing-gum between her flashing teeth. + +Sheila stood halfway down the stairs. She had not yet quite admitted to +herself that she was afraid of Sylvester Hudson and now she did admit it. +But with a forlorn memory of Dickie, she braced herself and went slowly +down the six remaining steps. The parlor door was shut and back of it to +and fro prowled Sylvester. Sheila opened the door. + +Hudson's face, ready with a scowl, changed. He came quickly toward her. + +"Well, say, Miss Sheila, I am sure-ly sorry--" + +Sheila shook her head. "Not half so sorry as I am, Mr. Hudson. I came +down to apologize." + +He pulled out a chair and Sheila sat down. Sylvester placed himself +opposite to her and lighted a huge black cigar, watching her meanwhile +curiously, even anxiously. His face was as quiet and sallow and gentle as +usual. Sheila's fear subsided. + +"_You_ came down to apologize?" repeated Hudson. "Well, ma'am, that +sounds kind of upside down to me." + +"I behaved like a goose. Your son hadn't done or said anything to +frighten me. He was sweet. I like him so much. He was coming home and saw +me walking off alone, and he thought that I might be lonely or frightened +or fall into the snow--which I did"--Sheila smiled coaxingly; "I went +down up to my neck and Dickie pulled me out and was--lovely to me. It +wasn't till I was halfway down the hill that I--that it came to me, all +of a sudden, that--perhaps--he'd been drinking--" + +"Perhaps," said Sylvester dryly. "It's never perhaps with Dickie." + +Sheila's eyes filled. For a seventeen-year-old girl the situation was +difficult. It was not easy to discuss Dickie's habit with his father. + +"I am so--sorry," she faltered. "I behaved absurdly. Just because I saw +that he wasn't quite himself I ran away from him and made a scene. Truly, +Mr. Hudson, he had not said or done anything the least bit horrid. He'd +been sensible and nice and friendly--Oh, dear!" For she saw before her a +relentless and incredulous face. "You won't believe me now, I suppose!" + +"I can't altogether, Miss Sheila, for I reckon you wouldn't have run away +from a true-blue, friendly fellow, would you?" + +"Yes, Mr. Hudson, I would. Because, you see, I did. It was just a sort of +panic. Too much moonshine." + +"Yes, ma'am. Too much moonshine inside of Dickie. I hope"--he leaned +toward her, and Sheila, the child, could not help but be flattered by his +deference--"I hope you're not thinking that Dickie's unfortunate habit is +my fault. I'm his father and I own that saloon. But, all the same, it's +not my fault nor The Aura's fault either. I never did spoil Dickie. And +I'm a sober man myself. He's just naturally ornery, no account. He always +was. I believe he's kind of lacking in the upper story." + +"Oh, _no_, Mr. Hudson!" + +The protest was so emphatic that Sylvester pulled his cigar out of his +mouth, brushed away the smoke, and looked searchingly at Sheila. She was +sitting very straight. Against the crimson plush of an enormous +chair-back her small figure looked extravagantly delicate and her little +pointed fingers on the arms, startlingly white and fine. A color flamed +in her cheeks, her eyes and lips were possessed by the remorseful +earnestness of her appeal. + +"Well, say, if _you_ think not!" Sylvester narrowed his eyes and thrust +the cigar back into a hole made by his mouth for its reception; "you're +the first person that hasn't kind of agreed with me on that point. I +can't see why he took to the whiskey, anyway. Moderation's my motto and +always was. It's the motto of The Aura. There ain't a bar east nor west +of the Rockies, Miss Sheila, believe _me_, that has the reputation for +decency and moderation that my Aura has. She's classy, she's +stylish--well, sir--she's exquisite"--he pronounced it ex-_squis_it--"I +don't mind sayin' so. She's a saloon in a million. And she's famous. You +can hear talk of The Aura in the best clubs, the most se-lect bars of +Chicago and Noo York and San Francisco. She's mighty near perfect. Well, +say, there was an Englishman in there one night two summers ago. He was +some Englishman, too, an earl, that was him. Been all over the world, +east, west, and in between. Had a glass in his eye--one of those fellers. +Do you know what he told me, Miss Sheila? Can you guess?" + +"That The Aura was classy?" suggested Sheila bravely. + +"More'n that," Sylvester leaned farther toward her and emphasized his +words with the long forefinger. + +"'It's all but perfect'--that's what he said--'it only needs one thing to +make it quite perfect!'" + +"What was the thing?" + +But Hudson did not heed her question. "Believe me or not, Miss Sheila, +that saloon--" + +"But I do believe you," said Sheila with her enchanting smile. "And +that's just the trouble with Dickie, isn't it? Your saloon is--must +be--the most fascinating place in Millings. Why, Mr. Hudson, ever since I +came here, I've been longing to go into it myself!" + +She got up after this speech and went to stand near the stove. Not that +she was cold--the small room, which looked even smaller on account of its +huge flaming furniture and the enormous roses on its carpet and +wall-paper, was as hot as a furnace--but because she was abashed by her +own speech and by his curious reception of it. The dark blood of his body +had risen to his face; he had opened his eyes wide upon her, had sunk +back again and begun to smoke with short, excited puffs. + +Sheila thought that he was shocked and she was very close to tears. She +blinked at the stove and moved her fingers uncertainly. "Nice girls," she +thought, "never want to go into saloons!" + +Then Sylvester spoke. "You're a girl in a million, Miss Sheila!" he +said. His voice was more cracked than usual. Sheila transferred her +blinking, almost tearful look from the stove to him. "You're a heap too +good for dish-washing," said Sylvester. + +For some reason the girl's heart began to beat unevenly. She had a +feeling of excitement and suspense. It was as if, after walking for many +hours through a wood where there was a lurking presence of danger, she +had heard a nearing step. She kept her eyes upon Sylvester. In his there +was that mysterious look of appraisal, of vision. He seemed nervous, +rolled his cigar and moved his feet. + +"Are you satisfied with your work, Miss Sheila?" + +Sheila assembled her courage. "I know you'll think me a beast, Mr. +Hudson, after all your kindness--and it isn't that I don't like the work. +But I've a feeling--no, it's more than a feeling!--I _know_ that your +wife doesn't need me. And I know she doesn't want me. She doesn't like to +have me here. I've been unhappy about that ever since I came. And it's +been getting worse. Yesterday she said she couldn't bear to have me +whistling round her kitchen. Mr. Hudson"--Sheila's voice broke +childishly--"I can't help whistling. It's a habit. I couldn't work at all +if I didn't whistle. I wouldn't have told you, but since you asked me--" + +Sylvester held up his long hand. Its emerald glittered. + +"That's all right," he said. "I wanted to learn the truth about it. +Perhaps you've noticed, Miss Sheila, that I'm not a very happy man at +home." + +"You mean--?" + +"I mean," said Sylvester heavily--"_Momma_." + +Sheila overcame a horrible inclination to laugh. + +"I'm so sorry," she said uncertainly. She was acutely embarrassed, but +did not know how to escape. And she _was_ sorry for him, for certainly it +seemed to her that a man married to Momma had just cause for unhappiness. + +"I ought to be ashamed of myself for bringing you here, Miss Sheila. You +see, that's me. I'm so all-fired soft-hearted that I just don't think. +I'm all feelings. My heart's stronger than my head, as the palmists say." +He rose and came over to Sheila; standing beside her and smiling so that +the wrinkle stood out sharply across his unwilling lip. "Did you ever go +to one of those fellows?" he asked. + +"Palmists?" + +"Yes, ma'am. Well, now, say, did they ever tell you that you were +going to be the pride and joy of old Pap Hudson? Give me your little +paw, girl!" + +Sheila's hand obeyed rather unwillingly her irresolute, polite will. +Hudson's came quickly to meet it, spread it out flat in his own long +palm, and examined the small rigid surface. + +"Well, now, Miss Sheila, I can read something there." + +"What can you read?" + +"You're goin' to be famous. You're goin' to make Millings famous. Girl, +you're goin' to be a picture that will live in the hearts of fellows and +keep 'em warm when they're herding winter nights. The thought of you is +goin' to keep 'em straight and pull 'em back here. You 're goin' to be +a--a sort of a beacon light." + +He was holding her slim hand with its small, crushable bones in an +excited grip. He was bending forward, not looking at the palm, but at +her. Sheila pulled back, wincing a little. + +"What do you mean, Mr. Hudson? How could I be all that?" + +Sylvester let her go. He began to pace the room. He stopped and looked at +her, almost wistfully. + +"You really think that I've been kind of nice to you?" he asked. + +"Indeed, you have!" + +"I'm not a happy man and I've got to be sort of distrustful. I haven't +got much faith in the thankfulness of people. I've got fooled too often." + +"Try me," said Sheila quickly. + +He looked at her with a long and searching look. Then he sighed. + +"Some day maybe I will. Run away to bed now." + +Sheila felt as if she had been pushed away from a half-opened door. +She drew herself up and walked across the huge flowers of the carpet. +But before going out she turned back. Sylvester quickly banished a +sly smile. + +"You won't be angry with Dickie?" she asked. + +"Not if it's going to deal you any misery, little girl." + +"You're _very_ kind to me." + +He put up his hand. "That's all right, Miss Sheila," he said. "That's all +right. It's a real pleasure and comfort to me to have you here and I'll +try to shape things so they'll suit you--and Momma too. Trust _me_. But +don't you ask me to put any faith in Dickie's upper story. I've climbed +up there too often. I'll give up my plan to go round there to-morrow +and--" He paused grimly. + +"And bawl him out?" suggested Sheila with one of her Puckish impulses. + +"Hump! I was going a little further than that. He would likely have done +the bawlin'. But don't you worry yourself about Dickie. He's safe for +this time--so long's you don't blame me, or--The Aura." + +His voice on the last word suffered from one of its cracks. It was as +though it had broken under a load of pride and tenderness. + +Sheila saw for a moment how it was with him. To every man his passion and +his dream: to Sylvester Hudson, his Aura. More than wife or child, he +loved his bar. It was a fetish, an idol. To Sheila's fancy Dickie +suddenly appeared the sacrifice. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE BAWLING-OUT + + +Dickie's room in The Aura Hotel was fitted in between the Men's Lavatory +and the Linen Room. It smelt of soiled linen and defective plumbing. +Also, into its single narrow window rose the dust of ashes, of old rags +and other refuse thrown light-heartedly into the back yard, which not +being visible from the street supplied the typical housewife of a +frontier town with that relaxation from any necessity to keep up an +appearance of economy and cleanliness so desirable to her liberty-loving +soul. The housekeeper at The Aura was not Mrs. Hudson, but an enormously +stout young woman with blonde hair, named Amelia Plecks. She was so +tightly laced and booted that her hard breathing and creaking were +audible all over the hotel. When Dickie woke in his narrow room after his +moonlight adventure, he heard this heavy breathing in the linen room and, +groaning, thrust his head under the pillow. With whatever bitterness his +kindly heart could entertain, he loathed Amelia. She took advantage of +the favor of Sylvester and of her own exalted position in the hotel to +taunt and to humiliate him. His plunge under the pillow did not escape +her notice. + +"Ain't you up yet, lazybones?" she cried, rapping on the wall. "You +won't get no breakfast. It's half-past seven. Who's at the desk to see +them Duluth folks off? Pap's not going to be pleased with you." + +"I don't want any breakfast," muttered Dickie. + +Amelia laughed. "No. I'll be bound you don't. Tongue like a kitten and a +head like a cracked stove!" + +She slapped down some clean sheets on a shelf and creaked toward the +hall, but stopped at the open door. Sylvester Hudson was coming down the +passage and she was in no mind to miss the "bawling-out" of Dickie which +this visit must portend. She shut the linen-room door softly, therefore, +and controlled her breathing. + +But Dickie knew that she was there and, when his father rapped, he knew +why she was there. + +He tumbled wretchedly from his bed, swore at his injured ankle, hopped to +the door, unlocked it, and hopped back with panic swiftness before his +father's entrance. He sat in his crumpled pajamas amidst his crumpled, +dingy bedclothes, his hair scattered over his forehead, his large, heavy +eyes fixed anxiously upon Sylvester. + +"Say, Poppa--" he began. + +Then "Pap's" voice cracked out at him. + +"You hold your tongue," snapped Sylvester, "or you'll get what's comin' +to you!" He jerked Dickie's single chair from against the wall, threw the +clothing from it, and sat down, crossing his legs, and holding up at his +son the long finger that had frightened Sheila. Dickie blinked at it. + +"You know what I was plannin' to do to you after last night? I meant to +come round here and pull you out of your covers and onto the floor +there"--he pointed to a spot on the boards to which Dickie fearfully +directed his own eyes--"and kick the stuffin' out of you." Dickie +contemplated the long, pointed russet shoes of his parent and shuddered +visibly. Nevertheless in the slow look he lifted from the boot to his +father's face, there was a faint gleam of irony. + +"What made you change your mind?" he asked impersonally. + +It was this curious detachment of Dickie's, this imperturbability, that +most infuriated Hudson. He flushed. + +"Just a little sass from you will bring me back to the idea," he +said sharply. + +Dickie lowered his eyes. + +"What made me change was--Miss Arundel's kindness. She came and begged +you off. She said you hadn't done anything or said anything to frighten +her, that you'd been"--Sylvester drawled out the two words in the +sing-song of Western mockery--"'sweet and love-ly.'" + +Dickie's face was pink. He began to tie a knot in the corner of one of +his thin gray sheet-blankets. + +"I don't know how sweet and lovely you can be, Dickie, when you're lit +up, but I guess you were awful sweet. Anyway, if you didn't say anything +or do anything to scare her, you don't deserve a kickin'. But, just the +same, I've a mind to turn you out of Millings." + +This time, Dickie's look was not ironical. It was terrified. "Oh, Poppa, +say! I'll try not to do it again." + +"I never heard that before, did I?" sneered Sylvester. "You put shame on +me and my bar. And I'm not goin' to stand it. If you want to get drunk +buy a bottle and come up here in your room. God damn you! You're a nice +son for the owner of The Aura!" + +He stood up and looked with frank disgust at the thin, huddled figure. +Under this look, Dickie grew slowly redder and his eyes watered. + +Sylvester lifted his upper lip. "Faugh!" he said. He walked over to the +door. "Get up and go down to your job and don't you bother Miss +Sheila--hear me? Keep away from her. She's not used to your sort and +you'll disgust her. She's here under my protection and I've got my plans +for her. I'm her guardian--that's what I am." Sylvester was pleased like +a man that has made a discovery. "Her guardian," he repeated as though +the word had a fine taste. + +Dickie watched him. There was no expression whatever in his face and his +lips stood vacantly apart. He might have been seven years old. + +"Keep away from her--hear me?" + +"Yes, sir," said Dickie meekly. + +After his father had gone out, Dickie sat for an instant with his head +on one side, listening intently. Then he got up, limped quietly and +quickly on his bare feet out into the hall, and locked the linen-room +door on the outside. + +"Amelia's clean forgot to lock it," he said aloud. "Ain't she careless, +though, this morning!" + +He went back. There was certainly a sound now behind the partition, a +sound of hard breathing that could no longer be controlled. + +"I'll hand the key over to Mary," soliloquized Dickie in the hollow and +unnatural voice of stage confidences. "She'll be goin' in for the towels +about noon." + +Then he fell on his bed and smothered a fit of chuckling. + +Suddenly the mirth died out of him. He lay still, conscious of a pain in +his head and in his ankle and somewhere else--an indeterminate spot deep +in his being. He had been forbidden to see the girl who ran away out into +the night to look at the stars, the girl who had not laughed at his +attempt to describe the white ecstasy of the winter moon. He had +frightened her--disgusted her. He must have been more drunk than he +imagined. It _was_ disgusting--and so hopeless. Perhaps it would be +better to leave Millings. + +He sat up on the edge of his bed and let his hands hang limply down +between his knees. It seemed to him that his thoughts were like a wheel, +half-submerged in running water. The wheel went round rapidly, plunging +in and out of his consciousness. Hardly had he grasped the meaning of one +half when it went under and another blur of moving spokes emerged. +Something his father had said, for instance, now began to pass through +his mind.... "I've got my plans for her".... Dickie tried to stop the +turning wheel because this speech gave him a distinct feeling of anger +and alarm. By an effort of his will, he held it before his +contemplation.... What possible plans could Sylvester have for Sheila? +Did she understand his plans? Did she approve of them? She was so young +and small, with that sad, soft mouth and those shining, misty eyes. +Dickie, with almost a paternal air, shook his ruffled head. He shut his +eyes so that the long lashes stood out in little points. A vision of +those two faces--Sheila's so gleaming fair and open, Sylvester's so dark +and shut--stood there to be compared. Her guardian, indeed! + +Dickie dressed slowly and dragged himself down to the desk, where very +soberly and sadly he gave the key of the linen room to Mary. Then he sat +down, turned on the Victor, and lit a cigarette. The "Duluth folks" had +gone without any assistance from him. There was nothing to do. It +occurred to Dickie, all at once, that in Millings there was always +nothing to do. Nothing, that is, for him to do. Perhaps, after all, he +didn't like Millings. Perhaps that was what was wrong with him. + +The Victor was playing: + +"Here comes Tootsie, +Play a little music on the band. +Here comes Tootsie, +Tootsie, you are looking simply grand. +Play a little tune on the piccolo and flutes, +The man who wrote the rag wrote it especially for Toots. +Here comes Tootsie--play a little music on the band." + +On the last nasal note, the door of The Aura flew open and a resplendent +figure crossed the chocolate-colored varnish of the floor. Tootsie +herself was not more "simply grand." This was a young man, perhaps it +would be more descriptive to say _the_ young man that accompanies _the_ +young woman on the cover of the average American magazine. He had--a +nose, a chin, a beautiful mouth, large brown eyes, wavy chestnut hair, a +ruddy complexion, and, what is not always given to the young man on the +cover, a deep and generous dimple in the ruddiest part of his right +cheek. He was dressed in the latest suit produced by Schaffner and Marx; +he wore a tie of variegated silk which, like Browning's star, "dartled" +now red, now blue. The silk handkerchief, which protruded carefully from +his breast pocket, also "dartled." So did the socks. One felt that the +heart of this young man matched his tie and socks. It was resplendent +with the vanity and hopefulness and illusions of twenty-two years. + +The large, dingy, chocolate-colored lobby became suddenly a background to +Mr. James Greely, cashier of the Millings National Bank, and the only +child of its president. + +Upon the ruffled and rumpled Dickie he smiled pleasantly, made a curious +gesture with his hand--they both belonged to the Knights of Sagittarius +and the Fire Brigade--and came to lean upon the desk. + +"Holiday at the bank this morning," he said, "in honor of Dad's +wedding-anniversary. We're giving a dance to-night in the Hall. Want to +come, Dickie?" + +"No," said Dickie, "I hurt my ankle last night on the icy pavement. And +anyhow I can't dance. And I sort of find girls kind of tiresome." + +"That's too bad. I'm sure sorry for you, Hudson. Particularly as I came +here just for the purpose of handing you over the cutest little billy-doo +you ever saw." + +He drew out of his pocket an envelope and held it away from Dickie. + +"You're trying to job me, Jim,"--but Dickie had his head coaxingly on one +side and his face was pink. + +"I'll give it to you if you can guess the sender." + +"Babe?" + +"Wrong." + +"Girlie?" + +"Well, sir, it ain't Girlie's fist--not the fist she uses when she drops +_me_ billy-doos." + +Dickie's eyes fell. He turned aside in his chair and stopped the +grinding of the graphophone. He made no further guess. Jim, with his +dimple deepening, tossed the small paper into the air and caught it +again deftly. + +"It's from the young lady from Noo York who's helping Mrs. Hudson," he +said. "I guess she's kind of wishful for a beau. She's not much of a +looker Girlie tells me." + +"Haven't you met her yet, Jim?" Dickie's hands were in his pockets, but +his eyes followed the gyrations of the paper. + +"No. Ain't that a funny thing, too? Seems like I never get round to it. I +just saw her peeping at me one day through the parlor curtains while I +was saying sweet nothings to Girlie on the porch. I guess she was kind of +in-ter-ested. She's skinny and pale, Girlie says. Your mother hasn't got +any use for her. I bet you, it won't be long before she makes tracks back +to Noo York, Dickie. Girlie says she won't be lingering on here much +longer. Too much competition." + +Jim handed the note to Dickie, who had listened to this speech with his +seven-year-old expression. He made no comment, but silently unfolded +Sheila's note. + +The writing itself was like her, slender and fine and straight, a little +reckless, daintily desperate. That "I," now, on the white paper might be +Sheila skimming across the snow. + +"_My dear Dickie_--somehow I can't call you 'Mr. Hudson'--I am so +terribly sorry about the way I acted to you last night. I don't know +why I was so foolish. I have tried to explain to your father that you +did nothing and said nothing to frighten me, that you were very polite +and kind, but I am afraid he doesn't quite understand. I hope he won't +be very cross with you, because it was all my fault--no, not quite all, +because I think you oughtn't to have followed me. I'm sure you're sorry +that you did. But it was a great deal my fault, so I'm writing this to +tell you that I wasn't really frightened nor very angry. Just sorry and +disappointed. Because I thought you were so very nice. And not like +Millings. And you liked the mountains better than the town. I wanted--I +still want--you to be my friend. For I do need a friend here, +dreadfully. Will you come to see me some afternoon? I hope you didn't +hurt yourself when you slipped on those icy steps. + +"Sincerely SHEILA ARUNDEL" + +Dickie put the note into his pocket and looked unseeingly at Jim. Jim was +turning up the bottoms of his trousers preparing to go. + +"So you won't come to our dance?" he asked straightening himself, more +ruddy than ever. + +"Well, sir," said Dickie slowly and indifferently, "I wouldn't wonder +if I would." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +DISH-WASHING + + +On that night, while all Millings was preparing itself for the Greelys' +dance, while Dickie, bent close to his cracked mirror, was tying his +least crumpled tie with not too steady fingers, while Jim was applying to +his brown crest a pomade sent to him by a girl in Cheyenne, while Babe +was wondering anxiously whether green slippers could be considered a +match or a foil to a dress of turquoise blue, while Girlie touched her +cream-gold hair with cream-padded finger-tips, Sheila Arundel prowled +about her room with hot anger and cold fear in her heart. + +Nothing, perhaps, in all this mysterious world is so inscrutable a +mystery as the mind of early youth. It crawls, the beetle creature, in a +hard shell, hiding the dim, inner struggle of its growing wings, moving +numbly as if in a torpid dream. It has forgotten the lively grub stage of +childhood, and it cannot foresee the dragon-fly adventure just ahead. +This blind, dumb, numb, imprisoned thing, an irritation to the nerves of +every one who has to deal with it, suffers. First it suffers darkly and +dimly the pain growth, and then it suffers the sharp agony of a splitting +shell, the dazzling wounds of light, the torture of first moving its +feeble wings. It drags itself from its shell, it clings to its perch, it +finds itself born anew into the world. + +When Sheila had left the studio with Sylvester, she was not yet possessed +of wings. Now, the shell was cracking, the dragon-fly adventure about to +begin. To a changed world, changed stars--the heavens above and the earth +beneath were strange to her that night. + +It had begun, this first piercing contact of reality, rudely enough. Mrs. +Hudson had helped to split the protecting shell which had saved Sheila's +growing dreams. Perhaps "Momma" had her instructions, perhaps it was only +her own disposition left by her knowing husband to do his trick for him. +Sheila had not overstated the unhappiness that Mrs. Hudson's evident +dislike had caused her. In fact, she had greatly understated it. From the +first moment at the station, when the hard eyes had looked her over and +the harsh voice had asked about "the girl's trunk," Sheila's +sensitiveness had begun to suffer. It was not easy, even with Babe's +good-humored help, to go down into the kitchen and submit to Mrs. +Hudson's hectoring. "Momma" had all the insolence of the underdog. Of her +daughters, as of her husband, she was very much afraid. They all bullied +her, Babe with noisy, cheerful effrontery--"sass" Sylvester called +it--and Girlie with a soft, unyielding tyranny that had the smothering +pressure of a large silk pillow. Girlie was tall and serious and +beautiful, the proud possessor of what Millings called "a perfect form." +She was inexpressibly slow and untidy, vain and ignorant and +self-absorbed. At this time her whole being was centered upon the +attentions of Jim Greely, with whom she was "keeping company." With Jim +Greely in her mind, she had looked Sheila over, thin and weary Sheila in +her shabby black dress, and had decided that here no danger threatened. +Nevertheless she did not take chances. Sheila had been in Millings a +fortnight and had not met the admirable Jim. Her attempt that morning to +send the note to Dickie by Jim was exactly the action that led to the +painful splitting of her shell. + +She had seen from her window Sylvester's departure after breakfast. There +was something in his grim, angular figure, moving carefully over the icy +pavement in the direction of the hotel, that gave her a pang for Dickie. +She was sure that Hudson was going to be very disagreeable in spite of +her attempt to soften his anger. And she was sorry that Dickie, with his +odd, wistful, friendly face and his eyes so wide and youthful and +apologetic for their visions, should think that she was angry or +disgusted. She wrote her letter in a little glow of rescue, and was proud +of the tact of that reference to his "fall down the steps"--for she +reasoned that the self-esteem of any boy of nineteen must suffer +poignantly over the memory of being knocked down by his father before the +eyes of a strange girl. She wrote her note and ran down the stairs, then +stopped to wonder how she could get it promptly to Dickie. It was +intended as a poultice to be applied after the "bawling-out," and she +could not very well take it to him herself. She knew that he worked in +the hotel, and the hotel was just around the corner. All that was needed +was a messenger. + +She was standing, pink of cheek and vague of eye, fingering her apron +like a cottage child and nibbling at the corner of her envelope, the +light from a window on the stairs falling on the jewel-like polish of her +hair, when Girlie opened the door of the "parlor" and came out into the +hall. Girlie saw her and half-closed the door. Her lazy eyes, as +reflective and receptive and inexpressive as small meadow pools under a +summer sky, rested upon Sheila. In the parlor a pleasant baritone voice +was singing, + +"Treat me nice, Miss Mandy Jane, + Treat me nice. + Don't you know I'se not to blame, + Lovers all act just the same, + Treat me nice..." + +Girlie's fingers tightened on the doorknob. + +"What do you want, Sheila?" she asked, and into the slow, gentle tones of +her voice something had crept, something sinuous and subtle, something +that slid into the world with Lilith for the eternal torment of earth's +daughters. + +"I want to send this note to your brother," said Sheila with the +simplicity of the aristocrat. "Is that Mr. Greely? Is he going past +the hotel?" + +She took a step toward Jim, but Girlie held out her soft long hand. + +"Give it to me. I'll ask him." + +Sheila surrendered the note. + +"You'd better get back to the dishes," said Girlie over her shoulder. +"Momma's kind of rushed this morning. She's helping Babe with her party +dress. I wouldn't 'a' put in my time writing notes to Dickie to-day if +I'd 'a' been you. Sort of risky." + +She slid in through the jealous door and Sheila hurried along the hall to +the kitchen where there was an angry clash and clack of crockery. + +The kitchen was furnished almost entirely with blue-flowered oilcloth; +the tables were covered with it, the floor was covered with it, the +shelves were draped in it. Cold struck up through the shining, clammy +surface underfoot so that while Sheila's face burned from the heat of the +stove her feet were icy. The back door was warped and let in a current of +frosty air over its sill, a draught that circled her ankles like cold +metal. On the table in the middle of the room, "Momma" had placed an +enormous tin dish-pan piled high with dirty dishes, over which she was +pouring the contents of the kettle. Steam rose in clouds, half-veiling +her big, fierce face which, seen through holes in the vapor, was like +that of a handsome, vulgar witch. + +Through the steam she shot at Sheila a cruel look. "Aren't you planning +to do any work to-day, Sheila?" she asked in her voice of harsh, +monotonous accents. "Here it's nine o'clock and I ain't been able to do a +stroke to Babe's dress. I dunno what you was designed for in this +house--an ornament on the parlor mantel, I guess." + +Sheila's heart suffered one of the terrible swift enlargements of angry +youth. It seemed to fill her chest and stop her breath, forcing water +into her eyes. She could not speak, went quickly up and took the kettle +from "Momma's" red hand. + +The table at which dish-washing was done, was inconveniently high. When +the big dishpan with its piled dishes topped it, Sheila's arms and back +were strained over her work. She usually pulled up a box on which she +stood, but now she went to work blindly, her teeth clenched, her flexible +red lips set close to cover them. The Celtic fire of her Irish blood gave +her eyes a sort of phosphorescent glitter. "Momma" looked at her. + +"Don't show temper!" she said. "What were you doin'? Upstairs work?" + +"I was writing a letter," said Sheila in a low voice, beginning to wash +the plates and shrinking at the pain of scalding water. + +"Hmp! Writing letters at this hour! One of your friends back East? I +thought it was about time somebody was looking you up. What do your +acquaintance think of you comin' West with Sylly?" + +Now that she was at liberty to put a "stroke" of work; on Babe's dress, +"Momma" seemed in no particular hurry to do so. She stood in the middle +of the kitchen wrapping her great bony arms in her checked apron and +staring at Sheila. Her eyes were like Girlie's turned to stone, as blank +and blind as living eyes can be. + +Sheila did not answer. She was white and her hands shook. + +"Hmp!" said "Momma" again. "We aren't goin' to talk about our +acquaintance, are we? Well, some folks' acquaintance don't bear talkin' +about; they're either too fine or they ain't the kind that gets into +decent conversation." She walked away. + +Sheila did her work, holding her anger and her misery away from her, +refusing to look at them, to analyze their cause. It was a very busy day. +The help Babe usually gave, and "Momma's" more effectual assistance, were +not to be had. Sheila cleaned up the kitchen, swept the dining-room, set +the table and cooked the supper. Her exquisite French omelette and savory +baked tomatoes were reviled. The West knows no cooking but its own, and, +like all victims of uneducated taste, it prefers the familiar bad to the +unfamiliar good. + +"You've spoiled a whole can of tomatoes," said Babe. + +Sylvester laughed good-humoredly: "Oh, well, Miss Sheila, you'll learn!" +This, to Sheila, whose omelette had been taught her by Mimi Lolotte and +whose baked tomatoes, delicately flavored with onion, were something to +dream about. And she had toasted the bread golden brown and buttered it, +and she had made a delectable vegetable soup! She had never before been +asked to cook a meal at Number 18 Cottonwood Avenue and she was eager to +please Sylvester. His comment, "You'll learn," fairly took her breath. +She would not sit down with them at the table, but hurried back into the +kitchen, put her scorched cheek against some cold linoleum, and cried. + +By the time dinner was over and more dishes ready to be washed, the +cook's wounded pride was under control. Her few tears had left no +marks on her face. Babe, helping her, did not even know that there had +been a shower. + +Babe was excited; her chewing was more energetic even than usual. It +smacked audibly. + +"Say, Sheila, wot'll you wear to-night?" she yelled above the clatter. + +"Wear?" repeated Sheila. + +"To the dance, you silly! What did you think I meant--to bed?" + +Sheila's tired pallor deepened a little. "I am not going to the dance." + +"Not going?" Babe put down a plate. "What do you mean? Of course you're +going! You've gotta go. Say--Momma, Pap, Girlie"--she ran, at a sort of +sliding gallop across the oilcloth through the swinging door into the +dining-room--"will you listen to this? Sheila says she's not going to +the dance!" + +"Well," said "Momma" audibly, "she'd better. I'm agoin' to put out the +fires, and the house'll be about 12 below." + +Sylvester murmured, "Oh, we must change that." + +And Girlie said nothing. + +"Well," vociferated Babe. "I call it too mean for words. I've just set my +heart on her meeting some of the folks and getting to know Millings. +She's been here a whole two weeks and she hasn't met a single fellow but +Dickie, and he don't count, and she hasn't even got friendly with any of +the girls. And I wanted her to see one of our real swell affairs. +Why--just for the credit of Millings, she's gotta go." + +"Why fuss her about it, if she don't want to?" Girlie's soft voice was +poured like oil on the troubled billows of Babe's outburst. + +"I'll see to her," Sylvester's chair scraped the floor as he rose. "I +know how to manage girls. Trust Poppa!" + +He pushed through the door, followed by Babe. Sheila looked up at him +helplessly. She had her box under her feet, and so was not entirely +hidden by the dishpan. She drew up her head and faced him. + +"Mr. Hudson," she began--"please! I can't go to a dance. You know +I can't--" + +"Nonsense!" said Pap. "In the bright lexicon of youth there's no such +word as 'can't.' Say, girl, you can and you must. I won't have Babe +crying her eyes out and myself the most unpopular man in Millings. Say, +leave your dishes and go up and put on your best duds." + +"That's talking," commented Babe. + +In the dining-room "Momma" said, "Hmp!" and Girlie was silent. + +Sheila looked at her protector. "But, you see, Mr. Hudson, I--I--it was +only a month ago--" She made a gesture with her hands to show him her +black dress, and her lips trembled. + +Pap walked round to her and patted her shoulder. "I know," he said. "I +savvy. I get you, little girl. But, say, it won't do. You've got to begin +to live again and brighten up. You're only seventeen and that's no age +for mourning, no, nor moping. You must learn to forget, at least, that +is"--for he saw the horrified pain of her eyes--"that is, to be happy +again. Yes'm. Happiness--that's got to be your middle name. Now, Miss +Sheila, as a favor to me!" + +Sheila put up both her hands and pushed his from her shoulder. She ran +from him past Babe into the dining-room, where, as she would have sped +by, "Momma" caught her by the arm. + +"If you're not aimin' to please _him_," said "Momma" harshly, "wot are +you here for?" + +Sheila looked at her unseeingly, pulled herself away, and went upstairs +on wings. In her room the tumult, held down all through the ugly, +cluttered, drudging day, broke out and had its violent course. She flew +about the room or tossed on the bed, sobbing and whispering to herself. +Her wound bled freely for the first time since it had been given her by +death. She called to her father, and her heart writhed in the grim +talons of its loneliness. That was her first agony and then came the +lesser stings of "Momma's" insults, and at last, a fear. An +incomprehensible fear. She began to doubt the wisdom of her Western +venture. She began to be terrified at her situation. All about her lay a +frozen world, a wilderness, so many thousand miles from anything that +she and her father had ever known. And in her pocket there was no penny +for rescue or escape. Over her life brooded powerfully Sylvester Hudson, +with his sallow face and gentle, contemplative eyes. He had brought her +to his home. Surely that was an honorable and generous deed. He had +given her over to the care and protection of his wife and daughters. But +why didn't Mrs. Hudson like it? Why did she tighten her lips and pull +her nostrils when she looked at her helper? And what was the sinister, +inner meaning of those two speeches ... about the purpose of her being +in the house at all? "An ornament on the parlor mantel" ... "aiming to +please him...." Of the existence of a sinister, inner meaning, "Momma's" +voice and look left no doubt. + +Something was wrong. Something was hideously wrong. And to whom might she +go for help or for advice? As though to answer her question came a +foot-step on the stair. It was a slow, not very heavy step. It came to +her door and there followed a sharp but gentle rap. + +"Who is it?" asked Sheila. And suddenly she felt very weak. + +"It's Pap. Open your door, girl." + +She hesitated. Her head seemed to go round. Then she obeyed his +gentle request. + +Pap walked into the room. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +ARTISTS + + +Pap closed the door carefully behind him before he looked at Sheila. At +once his face changed to one of deep concern. + +"Why, girl! What's happened to you? You got no call to feel like that!" + +He went over to her and took her limp hand. She half turned away. He +patted the hand. + +"Why, girl! This isn't very pleasant for me. I aimed to make you happy +when I brought you out to Millings. I kind of wanted to work myself into +your Poppa's place, kind of meant to make it up to you some way. I aimed +to give you a home. 'Home, sweet home, there's no place like home'--that +was my motto. And here you are, all pale around the gills and tears all +over your face--and, say, there's a regular pool there on your pillow. +Now, now--" he clicked with his tongue. "You're a bad girl, a regular +bad, ungrateful girl, hanged if you aren't! You know what I'd do to you +if you were as young as you are little and foolish? Smack you--good and +plenty. But I'm not agoin' to do it, no, ma'am. Don't pull your hand +away. Smacking's not in my line. I never smacked my own children in their +lives, except Dickie. There was no other way with him. He was ornery. +You come and set down here in the big chair and I'll pull up the little +one and we'll talk things over. Put your trust in me, Miss Sheila. I'm +all heart. I wasn't called 'Pap' for nothing. You know what I am? I'm +your guardian. Yes'm. And you just got to make up your mind to cast your +care upon me, as the hymn says. Nary worry must you keep to yourself. +Come on now, kid, out with it. Get it off your chest." + +Sheila had let him put her into the big creaking leather chair. She sat +with a handkerchief clenched in both her hands, upon which he, drawing up +the other chair, now placed one of his. She kept her head down, for she +was ashamed of the pale, stained, and distorted little face which she +could not yet control. + +"Now, then, girl ... Well, if you won't talk to me, I'll just light up +and wait. I'm a patient man, I am. Don't hurry yourself any." + +He withdrew his hand and took out a cigar. In a moment he was sitting on +the middle of his spine, his long legs sprawled half across the room, his +hands in his pockets, his head on the chair-back so that his chin pointed +up to the ceiling. Smoke rose from him as from a volcano. + +Sheila presently laughed uncertainly. + +"That's better," he mumbled around his cigar. + +"I've had a dreadful day," said Sheila. + +"You won't have any more of them, my dear," Sylvester promised quietly. + +She looked at him with faint hope. + +"Yes'm, dish-washing's dead." + +"But what can I do, then?" + +Hudson nodded his head slowly, or, rather, he sawed the air up and down +with his chin. He was still looking at the ceiling so that Sheila could +see only the triangle beneath his jaw and the dark, stringy neck above +his collar. + +"I've got a job for you, girl--a real one." + +He pulled out his cigar and sat up. "You remember what I told you the +other night?" + +"About my being a--a--beacon?" Sheila's voice was delicately tinged with +mockery. So was her doubtful smile. + +"Yes'm," he said seriously. "Well, that's it." + +"What does a beacon do?" she asked. + +"It burns. It shines. It looks bright. It wears the neatest little black +dress with a frilly apron and deep frilly cuffs. Say, do you recollect +something else I told you?" + +"I remember everything you told me." + +"Well, ma'am, I remember everything you told _me_. Somebody said she +was grateful. Somebody said she'd do anything for Pap. Somebody +said--'Try me.'" + +"I meant it, Mr. Hudson. I did mean it." + +"Do you mean it now?" + +"Yes. I--I owe you so much. You're always so very kind to me. And I +behave very badly. I was hateful to you this evening. And, when you came +to my door, just now, I was--I was _scared_." + +Pap opened his eyes at her, held his cigar away from him and laughed. +The laugh was both bitter and amused. + +"Scared of Pap Hudson? _You_ scared? But, look-a-here, girl, what've I +done to deserve that?" + +He sat forward, rested his chin in his hand, supported by an elbow on his +crossed knees and fixed her with gentle and reproachful eyes. + +"Honest, you kind of make me feel bad, Miss Sheila." + +"I am dreadfully sorry. It was horrid of me. I only told you because I +wanted you to know that I'm not worth helping. I don't deserve you to be +so kind to me. I--I must be disgustingly suspicious." + +"Well!" Sylvester sighed. "Very few folks get me. I'm kind of +mis-understood. I'm a real lonesome sort of man. But, honest, Miss +Sheila, I thought you were my friend. I don't mind telling you, you've +hurt my feelings. That shot kind of got me. It's stuck into me." + +"I'm horrid!" Sheila's eyes were wounded with remorse. + +"Oh, well, I'm not expecting understanding any more." + +"Oh, but I do--I do understand!" she said eagerly and she put her hand +shyly on his arm. "I think I do understand you. I'm very grateful. I'm +very fond of you." + +"Ah!" said Sylvester softly. "That's a good hearing!" He lifted his arm +with Sheila's hand on it and touched it with his lips. "You got me plumb +stirred up," he said with a certain huskiness. "Well!" She took away her +hand and he made a great show of returning to common sense. "I reckon we +are a pretty good pair of friends, after all. But you mustn't be scared +of me, Miss Sheila. That does hurt. Let's forget you told me that." + +"Yes--please!" + +"Well, then--to get back to business. Do you recollect a story I +told you?" + +"A story? Oh, yes--about an Englishman--?" + +"Yes, ma'am. That Englishman put his foot on the rail and stuck his glass +in his eye and set his tumbler down empty. And he looked round that bar +of mine, Miss Sheila. You savvy, he'd been all over the globe, that +feller, and I should say his ex-perience of bars was--some--and he said, +'Hudson, it's all but perfect. It only needs one thing.'" + +This time Sheila did not ask. She waited. + +"'And that's something we have in our country,' said he." Hudson cleared +his throat. He also moistened his lips. He was very apparently excited. +He leaned even farther forward, tilting on the front legs of his chair +and thrusting his face close to Sheila's "'_A pretty barmaid_!' said he." + +There was a profound silence in the small room. The runners of a sleigh +scraped the icy street below, its horses' hoofs cracked noisily. The +music of a fiddle sounded in the distance. Babe's voice humming a waltz +tune rose from the second story. + +"A barmaid?" asked Sheila breathlessly. She got up from her chair and +walked over to the window. The moon was already high. Over there, +beckoning, stood her mountain and her star. It was all so shining and +pure and still. + +"That's what you want me to be--your barmaid?" + +"Yes'm," said Sylvester humbly. "Don't make up your mind in a hurry, Miss +Sheila. Wait till I tell you more about it. It's--it's a kind of dream of +mine. I think it'd come close to breaking me up if you turned down the +proposition. The Aura's not an ordin-ar-y bar and I'm not an ordin-ar-y +man, and, say, Miss Sheila, you're not an ordin-ar-y girl." + +"Is that why you want me to work in your saloon?" said Sheila, staring +at the star. + +"Yes'm. That's why. Let me tell you that I've searched this continent for +a girl to fit my ideal. That's what it is, girl--my ideal. That bar of +mine has got to be perfect. It's near to perfect now. I want when that +Englishman comes back to Millings to hear him say, 'It's perfect' ... no +'all but,' you notice. Why, miss, I could 'a' got a hundred ordin-ar-y +girls, lookers too. The world's full of lookers." + +"Why didn't you offer your--'job' to Babe or Girlie?" + +Sylvester laughed. "Well, girl, as a matter of fact, I did." + +"You did?" Sheila turned back and faced him. There was plenty of color +in her cheeks now. Her narrow eyes were widely opened. Astonishingly +large and clear they were, when she so opened them. + +"Yes'm." Sylvester glanced aside for an instant. + +"And what did they say?" + +"They balked," Sylvester admitted calmly. "They're fine girls, Miss +Sheila. And they're lookers. But they just aren't quite fine enough. +They're not artists, like your Poppa and like you--and like me." + +Sheila put a hand up to her cheek. Her eyes came back to their accustomed +narrowness and a look of doubt stole into her face. + +"Artists?" + +"Yes'm." Sylvester had begun to walk about. "Artists. Why, what's an +artist but a person with a dream he wants to make real? My dream's--The +Aura, girl. For three years now"--he half-shut his eyes and moved his arm +in front of him as though he were putting in the broad first lines of a +picture--"I've seen that girl there back of my bar--shining and _good_ +and fine--not the sort of a girl a man'd be lookin' for, mind you, just +_not_ that! A girl that would sort of take your breath. Say, picture it, +Sheila!" He stood by her and pointed it out as though he showed her a +view. "You're a cowboy. And you come ridin' in, bone-tired, dusty, with a +_thirst_. Well, sir, a thirst in your throat and a thirst in your heart +and a thirst in your soul. You're wantin' re-freshment. For your body +and your eyes and your mind. Well, ma'am, you tie your pony up there and +you push open those doors and you push 'em open and step plumb into +Paradise. It's cool in there--I'm picturin' a July evenin', Miss +Sheila--and it's quiet and it's shining clean. And there's a big man in +white who's servin' drinks--cold drinks with a grand smell. That's my man +Carthy. He keeps order. You bet you, he does keep it too. And beside him +stands a girl. Well, she's the kind of girl you--the cowboy--would 'a' +dreamed about, lyin' out in your blanket under the stars, if you'd 'a' +knowed enough to be able to dream about her. After you've set eyes on +her, you don't dream about any other kind of girl. And just seein' her +there so sweet and bright and dainty-like, makes a different fellow of +you. Say, goin' into that bar is like goin' into church and havin' a +jim-dandy time when you get there--which is something the churches +haven't got round to offerin' yet to my way of thinkin'. Now. I want to +ask you, Miss Sheila, if you've got red blood in your veins and a love of +adventure and a wish to see that real entertaining show we call +'life'--and mighty few females ever get a glimpse of it--and if you've +acquired a feeling of gratitude for Pap and if you've got any real +religion, or any ambition to play a part, if you're a real woman that +wants to be an in-spire-ation to men, well, ma'am, I ask you, could you +turn down a chance like that?" + +He stood away a pace and put his question with a lifted forefinger. + +Sheila's eyes were caught and held by his. Again her mind seemed to be +fastened to his will. And the blood ran quickly in her veins. Her heart +beat. She was excited, stirred. He had seen through her shell unerringly +as no one else in all her life had seen. He had mysteriously guessed that +she had the dangerous gift of adventure, that under the shyness and +uncertainty of inexperience there was no fear in her, that she was one of +those that would rather play with fire than warm herself before it. +Sheila stood there, discovered and betrayed. He had played upon her as +upon a flexible young reed: that stop, her ambition, this, her +romanticism, that, her vanity, the fourth, her gratitude, the fifth, her +idealism, the sixth, her recklessness. And there was this added urge--she +must stay here and drudge under the lash of "Momma's" tongue or she must +accept this strange, this unimaginable offer. Again she opened her eyes +wider and wider. The pupils swallowed up the misty gray. Her lips parted. + +"I'll do it," she said, narrowed her eyes and shut her mouth tight. With +such a look she might have thrown a fateful toss of dice. + +Sylvester caught her hands, pressed them up to his chest. + +"It's a promise, girl?" + +"Yes." + +"God bless you!" + +He let her go. He walked on air. He threw open the door. + +There on the threshold--stood "Momma." + +"I kind of see," she drawled, "why Sheila don't take no interest +in dancin'!" + +"You're wrong," said Sheila very clearly. "I have been persuaded. I am +going to the dance." + +Sylvester laughed aloud. "One for you, Momma!" he said. "Come on down, +old girl, while Miss Sheila gets into her party dress. Say, Aura, aren't +you goin' to give me a dance to-night?" + +His wife looked curiously at his red, excited face. She followed him in +silence down the stairs. + +Sheila stood still listening to their descending steps, then she knelt +down beside her little trunk and opened the lid. The sound of the fiddle +stole hauntingly, beseechingly, tauntingly into her consciousness. There +in the top tray of her trunk wrapped in tissue paper lay the only evening +frock she had, a filmy French dress of white tulle, a Christmas present +from her father, a breath-taking, intoxicating extravagance. She had worn +it only once. + +It was with the strangest feeling that she took it out. It seemed to her +that the Sheila that had worn that dress was dead. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +A SINGEING OF WINGS + + +All the vitality of Millings--and whatever its deficiencies the town +lacked nothing of the splendor and vigor of its youth--throbbed and +stamped and shook the walls of the Town Hall that night. To understand +that dance, it is necessary to remember that it took place on a February +night with the thermometer at zero and with the ground five feet beneath +the surface of the snow. There were men and women and children, too, who +had come on skis and in toboggans for twenty miles from distant ranches +to do honor to the wedding-anniversary of Greely and his wife. + +A room near the ballroom was reserved for babies, and here, early in the +evening, lay small bundles in helpless, more or less protesting, rows, +their needs attended to between waltzes and polkas by father or mother +according to the leisure of the parent and the nature of the need. One +infant, whose home discipline was not up to the requirements of this +event, refused to accommodate himself to loneliness and so spent the +evening being dandled, first by father, then by mother, in a chair +immediately beside the big drum. Whether the spot was chosen for the +purpose of smothering his cries or enlivening his spirits nobody cared +to inquire. Infants in the Millings and Hidden Creek communities, where +certified milk and scientific feeding were unknown, were treated rather +like family parasites to be attended to only when the irritation they +caused became acute. They were not taken very seriously. That they grew +up at all was largely due to their being turned out as soon as they could +walk into an air that buoyed the entire nervous and circulatory systems +almost above the need of any other stimulant. + +The dance began when the first guests arrived, which on this occasion was +at about six o'clock, and went on till the last guest left, at about ten +the next morning. In the meantime the Greelys' hospitality provided every +variety of refreshment. + +When Sheila reached the Town Hall, crowded between Sylvester and joyous +Babe in her turquoise blue on the front seat of the Ford, while the back +seat was occupied by Girlie in scarlet and "Momma" in purple velveteen, +the dance was well under way. The Hudsons came in upon the tumult of a +quadrille. The directions, chanted above the din, were not very exactly +heeded; there was as much confusion as there was mirth. Sheila, standing +near Girlie's elbow, felt the exhilaration which youth does feel at the +impact of explosive noise and motion, the stamping of feet, the shouting, +the loud laughter, the music, the bounding, prancing bodies: savagery in +a good humor, childhood again, but without the painful intensity of +childhood. Sheila wondered just as any _debutante_ in a city ballroom +wonders, whether she would have partners, whether she would have "a good +time." Color came into her face. She forgot everything except the +immediate prospect of flattery and rhythmic motion. + +Babe pounced upon a young man who was shouldering his way toward Girlie. + +"Say, Jim, meet Miss Arundel! Gee! I've been wanting you two to get +acquainted." + +Sheila held out her hand to Mr. James Greely, who took it with a +surprised and dazzled look. + +"Pleased to meet you," he murmured, and the dimple deepened in his ruddy +right cheek. + +He turned his blushing face to Girlie. "Gee! You look great!" he said. + +She was, in fact, very beautiful--a long, firm, round body, youthful and +strong, sheathed in a skin of cream and roses, lips that looked as though +they had been used for nothing but the tranquil eating of ripe fruit, +eyes of unfathomable serenity, and hair almost as soft and creamy as her +shoulders and her finger-tips. Her beauty was not marred to Jim Greely's +eyes by the fact that she was chewing gum. Amongst animals the only +social poise, the only true self-possession and absence of shyness is +shown by the cud-chewing cow. She is diverted from fear and soothed from +self-consciousness by having her nervous attention distracted. The +smoking man has this release, the knitting woman has it. Girlie and Babe +had it from the continual labor of their jaws. Every hope and longing and +ambition in Girlie's heart centered upon this young man now complimenting +her, but as he turned to her, she just stood there and looked up at him. +Her jaws kept on moving slightly. There was in her eyes the minimum of +human intelligence and the maximum of unconscious animal invitation--a +blank, defenseless expression of--"Here I am. Take me." As Jim Greely +expressed the look: "Girlie makes everything easy. She don't give a +fellow any discomfort like some of these skittish girls do. She's kind of +home folks at once." + +"We can't get into the quadrille now," said Jim, "but you'll give me the +next, won't you, Girlie?" + +"Sure, Jim," said the unsmiling, rosy mouth. + +Jim moved uneasily on his patent-leather feet. He shot a sidelong glance +at Sheila. + +"Say, Miss Arundel, may I have the next after ... Meet Mr. Gates," he +added spasmodically, as the hand of a gigantic friend crushed his elbow. + +Sheila looked up a yard or two of youth and accepted Mr. Gates's +invitation for "the next." + +The head at the top of the tower bent itself down to her with a +snakelike motion. + +"Us fellows," it said, "have been aiming to give you a good time +to-night." + +Sheila was relieved to find him within hearing. Her smile dawned +enchantingly. It had all the inevitability of some sweet natural event. + +"That's very good of--you fellows. I didn't know you knew that there was +such a person as--as me in Millings." + +"You bet you, we knew. Here goes the waltz. Do you want to Castle it? I +worked in a Yellowstone Park Hotel last summer, and I'm wise on dancing." + +Sheila found herself stretched ceilingwards. She must hold one arm +straight in the air, one elbow as high as she could make it go, and she +must dance on her very tip-toes. Like every girl whose life has taken her +in and out of Continental hotels, she could dance, and she had the gift +of intuitive rhythm and of yielding to her partner's intentions almost +before they were muscularly expressed. Mr. Gates felt that he was dancing +with moonlight, only the figure of speech is not his own. + +Girlie in the arms of Jim spoke to him above her rigid chin. Girlie had +the haughty manner of dancing. + +"She's not much of a looker, is she, Jim?" But the pain in her heart gave +the speech an audible edge. + +"She's not much of anything," said Jim, who had not looked like the +young man on the magazine cover for several busy years in vain. "She's +just a scrap." + +But Girlie could not be deceived. Sheila's delicate, crystalline beauty +pierced her senses like the frosty beauty of a winter star: her dress of +white mist, her slender young arms, her long, slim, romantic throat, the +finish and polish of her, every detail done lovingly as if by a master's +silver-pointed pencil, her hair so artlessly simple and shining, smooth +and rippled under the lights, the strangeness of her face! Girlie told +herself again that it was an irregular face, that the chin was not right, +that the eyes were not well-opened and lacked color, that the nose was +odd, defying classification; she knew, in spite of the rigid ignorance of +her ideals, that these things mysteriously spelled enchantment. Sheila +was as much more beautiful than anything Millings had ever seen as her +white gown was more exquisite than anything Millings had ever worn. It +was a work of art, and Sheila was, also, in some strange sense, a work of +art, something shaped and fashioned through generations, something tinted +and polished and retouched by race, something mellowed and restrained, +something bred. Girlie did not know why the white tulle frock, absolutely +plain, shamed her elaborate red satin with its exaggerated lines. But she +did know. She did not know why Sheila's subtle beauty was greater than +her obvious own. But she did know. And so great and bewildering a fear +did this knowledge give her that, for an instant, it confused her wits. + +"She's going back East soon," she said sharply. + +"Is she?" Jim's question was indifferent, but from that instant his +attention wandered. + +When he took the small, crushable silken partner into his arms for "the +next after," a one-step, he was troubled by a sense of hurry, by that +desire to make the most of his opportunity that torments the reader of a +"best-seller" from the circulating library. + +"Say, Miss Arundel," he began, looking down at the smooth, jewel-bright +head, "you haven't given Millings a square deal." + +Sheila looked at him quizzically. + +"You see," went on Jim, "it's winter now." + +"Yes, Mr. Greely. It _is_ winter." + +"And that's not our best season. When summer comes, it's awfully pretty +and it's good fun. We have all sorts of larks--us fellows and the girls. +You'd like a motor ride, wouldn't you?" + +"Not especially, thank you," said Sheila, who really at times deserved +the Western condemnation of "ornery." "I don't like motors. In fact, I +hate motors." + +Jim swallowed a nervous lump. This girl was not "home folks." She made +him feel awkward and uncouth. He tried to remember that he was Mr. James +Greely, of the Millings National Bank, and, remembering at the same time +something that the girl from Cheyenne had said about his smile, he caught +Sheila's eye deliberately and made use of his dimple. + +"What do you like?" he asked. "If you tell me what you like, I--I'll see +that you get it." + +"You're very powerful, aren't you? You sound like a fairy godmother." + +"You look like a fairy. That's just what you do look like." + +"I like horses much better than motors," said Sheila. "I thought the West +would be full of adorable little ponies. I thought you'd ride like +wizards, bucking--you know." + +"Well, I can ride. But, I guess you've been going to the movies or the +Wild West shows. This town _must_ seem kind of dead after Noo York." + +"I hate the movies," said Sheila sweetly. + +"Say, it would be easy to get a pony for you as soon as the snow goes. I +sold my horse when Dad bought me my Ford." + +"Sold him? Sold your own special horse!" + +"Well, yes, Miss Arundel. Does that make you think awfully bad of me?" + +"Yes. It does. It makes me think _awfully_ 'bad' of you. If I had a +horse, I'd--I'd tie him to my bedpost at night and feed him on +rose-leaves and tie ribbons in his mane." + +Jim laughed, delighted at her childishness. It brought back something of +his own assurance. + +"I don't think Pap Hudson would quite stand for that, would he? Seems to +me as if--" + +But here his partner stopped short, turned against his arm, and her face +shone with a sudden friendly sweetness of surprise. "There's Dickie!" + +She left Jim, she slipped across the floor. Dickie limped toward her. His +face was white. + +"Dickie! I'm so glad you came. Somehow I didn't expect you to be here. +But you're lame! Then you can't dance. What a shame. After Mr. Greely and +I have finished this, could you sit one out with me?" + +"Yes'm," whispered Dickie. + +He was not as inexpressive as it might seem however. His face, a rather +startling face here in this crowded, boisterous room, a face that seemed +to have come in out of the night bringing with it a quality of eternal +childhood, of quaint, half-forgotten dreams--his face was very +expressive. So much so, that Sheila, embarrassed, went back almost +abruptly to Jim. Her smile was left to bewilder Dickie. He began to +describe it to himself. And this was the first time a woman had stirred +that mysterious trouble in his brain. + +"It's not like a smile at all," thought Dickie, the dancing crowd +invisible to him; "it's like something--it's--what is it? It's as if the +wind blew it into her face and blew it out again. It doesn't come from +anywhere, it doesn't seem to be going anywhere, at least not anywhere a +fellow knows ..." Here he was rudely joggled by a passing elbow and the +pain of his ankle brought a sharp "Damn!" out of him. He found a niche to +lean in, and he watched Sheila and Jim. He found himself not quite so +overwhelmed as usual by admiration of his friend. His mood was even very +faintly critical. But, as the dance came to an end, Dickie fell a prey to +base anxiety. How would "Poppa" take it if he, Dickie, should be seen +sitting out a dance with Miss Arundel? Dickie was profoundly afraid of +his father. It was a fear that he had never been allowed the leisure to +outgrow. Sylvester with torture of hand and foot and tongue had fostered +it. And Dickie's childhood had lingered painfully upon him. He could not +outgrow all sorts of feelings that other fellows seemed to shed with +their short trousers. He was afraid of his father, physically and +morally; his very nerves quivered under the look of the small brown eyes. + +Nevertheless, as Sheila thanked Jim for her waltz, her elbow was touched +by a cold finger. + +"Here I am," said Dickie. He had a demure and startled look. "Let's sit +it out in the room between the babies and the dancin'-room--two kinds of +a b-a-w-l, ain't it? But I guess we can hear ourselves speak in there. +There's a sort of a bench, kind of a hard one..." + +Sheila followed and found herself presently in a half-dark place under a +row of dangling coats. An iron stove near by glowed with red sides and a +round red mouth. It gave a flush to Dickie's pale face. Sheila thought +she had never seen such a wistful and untidy lad. + +Yet, poor Dickie at the moment appeared to himself rather a dashing and +heroic figure. He had certainly shown courage and had done his deed with +jauntiness. Besides, he had on his only good suit of dark-blue serge, +very thin serge. It was one that he had bought second-hand from Jim, and +he was sure, therefore, of its perfection. He thought, too, that he had +mastered, by the stern use of a wet brush, a cowlick which usually +disgraced the crown of his head. He hadn't. It had long ago risen to its +wispish height. + +"Jim dances fine, don't he?" Dickie said. "I kind of wish I liked to +dance. Seems like athletic stunts don't appeal to me some way." + +"Would you call dancing an athletic stunt?" Sheila leaned back against a +coat that smelled strongly of hay and tobacco and caught up her knees in +her two hands so that the small white slippers pointed daintily, clear of +the floor. + +Dickie looked at them. It seemed to him suddenly that a giant's hand had +laid itself upon his heart and turned it backwards as a pilot turns his +wheel to change the course of a ship. The contrary movement made him +catch his breath. He wanted to put the two white silken feet against his +breast, to button them inside his coat, to keep them in his care. + +"Ain't it, though?" he managed to say. "Ain't it an athletic stunt?" + +"I've always heard it called an accomplishment." + +"God!" said Dickie gently. "I'd 'a' never thought of that. I do like +ski-ing, though. Have you tried it, Miss Arundel?" + +"No. If I call you Dickie, you might call me Sheila, I think." + +Dickie lifted his eyes from the feet. "Sheila," he said. + +He was curiously eloquent. Again Sheila felt the confusion that had sent +her abruptly back to Jim. She smoothed out the tulle on her knee. + +"I think I'd love to ski. Is it awfully hard to learn?" + +"No, ma'am. It's just dandy. Especially on a moonlight night, like night +before last. And if you'd 'a' had skis on you wouldn't 'a' broke through. +You go along so quiet and easy, pushing yourself a little with your pole. +There's a kind of a swing to it--" + +He stood up and threw his light, thin body gracefully into the skier's +pose. "See? You slide on one foot, then on the other. It's as easy as +dreaming, and as still." + +"It's like a gondola--" suggested Sheila. + +Dickie put his head on one side and Sheila explained. She also sang a +snatch of a Gondel-lied to show him the motion. + +"Yes'm," said Dickie. "It's like that. It kind of has a--has a--" + +"Rhythm?" + +"I guess that's the word. So's riding. I like to do the things that +have that." + +"Well, then, you ought to like dancing." + +"Yes'm. Maybe I would if it wasn't for havin' to pull a girl round about +with me. It kind of takes my mind off the pleasure." + +Sheila laughed. Then, "Did you get my note?" she asked. + +"Yes'm." Her laughter had embarrassed him, and he had suddenly a +hunted look. + +"And are you going to be my friend?" + +The sliding of feet on a floor none too smooth, the music, the wailing of +a baby accompanied Dickie's silence. He was very silent and sat very +still, his hands hanging between his knees, his head bent. He stared at +Sheila's feet. His face, what she could see of it, was, even beyond the +help of firelight, pale. + +"Why, Dickie, I believe you're going to say No!" + +"Some fellows would say Yes," Dickie answered. "But I sort of promised +not to be your friend. Poppa said I'd kind of disgust you. And I figure +that I would--" + +Sheila hesitated. + +"You mean because you--you--?" + +"Yes'm." + +"Can't you stop?" + +He shook his head and gave her a tormented look. + +"Oh, Dickie! Of course you can! At your age!" + +"Seems like it means more to me than anything else." + +"Dickie! Dickie!" + +"Yes'm. It kind of takes the awful edge off things." + +"What _do_ you mean? I don't understand." + +"Things are so sort of--sharp to me. I mean, I don't know if I can tell +you. I feel like I had to put something between me and--and things. Oh, +damn! I can't make you see--" + +"No," said Sheila, distressed. + +"It's always that-a-way," Dickie went on. "I mean, everything's kind +of--too much. I used to run miles when I was a kid. And sometimes now +when I can get out and walk or ski, the feeling goes. But other +times--well, ma'am, whiskey sort of takes the edge off and lets something +kind of slack down that gets sort of screwed up. Oh, I don't know ..." + +"Did you ever go to a doctor about it?" + +Dickie looked up at her and smiled. It was the sweetest smile--so patient +of this misunderstanding of hers. "No, ma'am." + +"Then you don't care to be my friend enough to--to try--" + +"I wouldn't be a good friend to you," said Dickie. And he spoke now +almost sullenly. "Because I wouldn't want you to have any other friends. +I hate it to see you with any other fellow." + +"How absurd!" + +"Maybe it is absurd. I guess it seems awful foolish to you." He moved his +cracked patent-leather pump in a sort of pattern on the floor. Again he +looked up, this time with a freakish, an almost elfin flicker of his +extravagant eyelashes. "There's something I could be real well," he said. +"Only, I guess Poppa's got there ahead of me. I could be a dandy guardian +to you--Sheila." + +Again Sheila laughed. But the ringing of her silver coins was not quite +true. There was a false note. She shut her eyes involuntarily. She was +remembering that instant an hour or two before when Sylvester's look had +held hers to his will. The thought of what she had promised crushed down +upon her consciousness with the smothering, sudden weight of its reality. +She could not tell Dickie. She could not--though this she did not +admit--bear that he should know. + +"Very well," she said, in a hard and weary voice. "Be my guardian. That +ought to sober any one. I think I shall need as many guardians as +possible. And--here comes your father. I have this dance with him." + +Dickie got hurriedly to his feet. "Oh, gosh!" said he. He was obviously +and vividly a victim of panic. Sheila's small and very expressive face +showed a little gleam of amused contempt. "My guardian!" she seemed to +mock. To shorten the embarrassment of the moment she stepped quickly into +the elder Hudson's arm. He took her hand and began to pump it up and +down, keeping time to the music and counting audibly. "One, two, three." +To Dickie he gave neither a word nor look. + +Sheila lifted her chin so that she could smile at Dickie over Pap's +shoulder. It was an indulgent and forgiving smile, but, meeting Dickie's +look, it went out. + +The boy's face was scarlet, his body rigid, his lips tight. The eyes with +which he had overcome her smile were the hard eyes of a man. Sheila's +contempt had fallen upon him like a flame. In a few dreadful minutes as +he stood there it burnt up a part of his childishness. + +Sheila went on, dancing like a mist in Hudson's arms. She knew that she +had done something to Dickie. But she did not know what it was that she +had done.... + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE BEACON LIGHT + + +Out of the Wyoming Bad Lands--orange, turquoise-green, and murky blue, of +outlandish ridges, of streaked rock, of sudden, twisted canons, a country +like a dream of the far side of the moon--rode Cosme Hilliard in a +choking cloud of alkali dust. He rode down Crazy Woman's Hill toward the +sagebrush flat, where, in a half-circle of cloudless, snow-streaked +mountains, lay the town of Millings on its rapid glacier river. + +Hilliard's black hair was powdered with dust; his olive face was gray; +dust lay thick in the folds of his neck-handkerchief; his pony matched +the gray-white road and plodded wearily, coughing and tossing his head in +misery from the nose-flies, the horse-flies, the mosquitoes, a swarm of +small, tormenting presences. His rider seemed to be charmed into +patience, and yet his aquiline face was not the face of a patient man. It +was young in a keen, hard fashion; the mouth and eyes were those of a +Spanish-American mother, golden eyes and a mouth originally beautiful, +soft, and cruel, which had been tightened and straightened by a man's +will and experience. It had been used so often for careless, humorous +smiling that the cruelty had been almost worked out of it. Almost, not +altogether. His mother's blood kept its talons on him. He was Latin and +dangerous to look at, for all the big white Anglo-Saxon teeth, the slow, +slack, Western American carriage, the guarded and amused expression of +the golden eyes. Here was a bundle of racial contradictions, not yet +welded, not yet attuned. Perhaps the one consistent, the one solvent, +expression was that of alert restlessness. Cosme Hilliard was not happy, +was not content, but he was eternally entertained. He was not uplifted by +the hopeful illusions proper to his age, but he loved adventure. It was a +bitter face, bitter and impatient and unschooled. It seemed to laugh, to +expect the worst from life, and not to care greatly if the worst should +come. But for such minor matters of dust and thirst and weariness, he had +patience. Physically the young man was hard and well-schooled. He rode +like a cowboy and carried a cowboy's rope tied to his saddle. And the +rope looked as though it had been used. + +Millings, that seemed so close below there through the clear, high +atmosphere, was far to reach. The sun had slipped down like a thin, +bright coin back of an iron rock before the traveler rode into the town. +His pony shied wearily at an automobile and tried to make up his mind to +buck, but a light pressure of the spur and a smiling word was enough to +change his mind. + +"Don't be a fool, Dusty! You know it's not worth the trouble. Remember +that fifty miles you've come to-day!" + +The occupants of the motor snapped a camera and hummed away. They had no +prevision of being stuck halfway up Crazy Woman's Hill with no water +within fifteen miles, or they wouldn't have exclaimed so gayly at the +beauty and picturesqueness of the tired cowboy. + +"He looks like a movie hero, doesn't he?" said a girl. + +"No, ma'am," protested the Western driver, who had been a chauffeur only +for a fortnight and knew considerably less about the insides of his Ford +than he did about the insides of Hilliard's cow-pony. "He ain't no show. +He's the real thing. Seems like you dudes got things kinder twisted. +Things ain't like shows. Shows is sometimes like things." + +"The real thing" certainly behaved as the real thing would. He rode +straight to the nearest saloon and swung out of his saddle. He licked the +dust off his lips, looked wistfully at the swinging door, and turned back +to his pony. + +"You first, Dusty--damn you!" and led the stumbling beast into the yard +of The Aura. In an hour or more he came back. He had dined at the hotel +and he had bathed. His naturally vivid coloring glowed under the +street-light. He was shaved and brushed and sleek. He pushed quickly +through the swinging doors of the bar and stepped into the saloon. It +was truly a famous bar--The Aura--and it deserved its fame. It shone +bright and cool and polished. There was a cheerful clink of glasses, a +subdued, comfortable sound of talk. Men drank at the bar, and drank and +played cards at the small tables. A giant in a white apron stood to +serve the newcomer. + +Hilliard ordered his drink, sipped it leisurely, then wandered off to a +near-by table. There he stood, watching the game. Not long after, he +accepted an invitation and joined the players. From then till midnight he +was oblivious of everything but the magic squares of pasteboard, the +shifting pile of dirty silver at his elbow, the faces--vacant, clever, or +rascally--of his opponents. But at about midnight, trouble came. For some +time Hilliard had been subconsciously irritated by the divided attention +of a player opposite to him across the table. This man, with a long, thin +face, was constantly squinting past Cosme's shoulder, squinting and +leering and stretching his great full-lipped mouth into a queer +half-smile. At last, abruptly, the irritation came to consciousness and +Cosme threw an angry glance over his own shoulder. + +Beside the giant who had served him his drink a girl stood: a thin, +straight girl in black and white who held herself so still that she +seemed painted there against the mirror on the wall. Her hands rested on +her slight hips, the fine, pointed, ringless fingers white against the +black stuff of her dress. Her neck, too, was white and her face, the pure +unpowdered whiteness of childhood. Her chin was lifted, her lips laid +together, her eyes, brilliant and clear, of no definite color, looked +through her surroundings. She was very young, not more than seventeen. +The mere presence of a girl was startling enough. Barmaids are unknown to +the experience of the average cowboy. But this girl was trebly startling. +For her face was rare. It was not Western, not even American. It was a +fine-drawn, finished, Old-World face, with long, arched eyebrows, large +lids, shadowed eyes, nostrils a little pinched, a sad and tender mouth. +It was a face whose lines might have followed the pencil of +Botticelli--those little hollows in the cheeks, that slight exaggeration +of the pointed chin, that silky, rippling brown hair. There was no touch +of artifice; it was an unpainted young face; hair brushed and knotted +simply; the very carriage of the body was alien; supple, unconscious, +restrained. + +Cosme Hilliard's look lasted for a minute. Returning to his opponent it +met an ugly grimace. He flushed and the game went on. + +But the incident had roused Hilliard's antagonism. He disliked that +man with the grimacing mouth. He began to watch him. An hour or two +later Cosme's thin, dark hand shot across the table and gripped the +fellow's wrist. + +"Caught you that time, you tin-horn," he said quietly. + +Instantly, almost before the speech was out, the giant in the apron had +hurled himself across the room and gripped the cheat, who stood, a hand +arrested on its way to his pocket, snarling helplessly. But the other +players, his fellow sheep-herders, fell away from Hilliard dangerously. + +"No shootin'," said the giant harshly. "No shoot-in' in The Aura. It +ain't allowed." + +"No callin' names either," growled the prisoner. "Me and my friends would +like to settle with the youthful stranger." + +"Settle with him, then, but somewheres else. No fightin' in The Aura." + +There was an acquiescent murmur from the other table and the sheep-herder +gave in. He exchanged a look with his friends, and Carthy, seeing them +disposed to return quietly to the game, left them and took up his usual +position behind the bar. The barmaid moved a little closer to his elbow. +Hilliard noticed that her eyes had widened in her pale face. He made a +brief, contemptuous excuse to his opponents, settled his account with +them, and strolled over to the bar. From Carthy he ordered another drink. +He saw the girl's eyes studying the hand he put out for his glass and he +smiled a little to himself. When she looked up he was ready with his +golden eyes to catch her glance. Both pairs of eyes smiled. She came a +step toward him. + +"I believe I've heard of you, miss," he said. + +A delicate pink stained her face and throat and he wondered if she could +possibly be shy. + +"Some fellows I met over in the Big Horn country lately told me to look +you up if I came to Millings. They said something about Hudson's Queen. +It's the Hudson Hotel isn't it?--" + +A puzzled, rather worried look crept into her eyes, but she avoided his +question. "You were working in the Big Horn country? I hoped you were +from Hidden Creek." + +"I'm on my way there," he said. "I know that country well. You come from +over there?" + +"No." She smiled faintly. "But"--and here her breast lifted on a deep, +spasmodic sigh--"some day I'm going there." + +"It's not like any other country," he said, turning his glass in his +supple fingers. "It's wonderful. But wild and lonesome. You wouldn't be +caring for it--not for longer than a sunny day or two, I reckon." + +He used the native phrases with sure familiarity, and yet in his speaking +of them there was something unfamiliar. Evidently she was puzzled by him, +and Cosme was not sorry that he had so roused her curiosity. He was very +curious himself, so much so that he had forgotten the explosive moment of +a few short minutes back. + +The occupants of the second table pushed away their chairs and came over +to the bar. For a while the barmaid was busy, making their change, +answering their jests, bidding them good-night. It was, "Well, +good-night, Miss Arundel, and thank you." + +"See you next Saturday, Miss Arundel, if I'm alive--" + +Hilliard drummed on the counter with his fingertips and frowned. His +puzzled eyes wove a pattern of inquiry from the men to the girl and back. +One of them, a ruddy-faced, town boy, lingered. He had had a drop too +much of The Aura's hospitality. He rested rather top-heavily against the +bar and stretched out his hand. + +"Aren't you going to say me a real good-night, Miss Sheila," he besought, +and a tipsy dimple cut itself into his cheek. + +"Do go home, Jim," murmured the barmaid. "You've broken your promise +again. It's two o'clock." + +He made great ox-eyes at her, his hand still begging, its blunt fingers +curled upward like a thirsty cup. + +His face was emptied of everything but its desire. + +It was perfectly evident that "Miss Sheila" was tormented by the look, by +the eyes, by the hand, by the very presence of the boy. She pressed her +lips tight, drew her fine arched brows together, and twisted her fingers. + +"I'll go home," he asserted obstinately, "when you tell me a proper +goo'-night--not before." + +Her eyes glittered. "Shall I tell Carthy to turn you out, Jim?" + +He smiled triumphantly. "Uh," said he, "your watch-dog went out. +Dickie called him to answer the telephone. Now, will you tell me +good-night, Sheila?" + +Cosme hoped that the girl would glance at him for help, he had his long +steel muscles braced; but, after a moment's thought--"And she can think. +She's as cool as she's shy," commented the observer--she put her hand on +Jim's. He grabbed it, pressed his lips upon it. + +"Goo'-night," he said, "Goo'-night. I'll go now." He swaggered out as +though she had given him a rose. + +The barmaid put her hand beneath her apron and rubbed it. Cosme laughed a +little at the quaint action. + +"Do they give you lots of trouble, Miss Arundel?" he asked her +sympathetically. + +She looked at him. But her attitude was not so simple and friendly as it +had been. Evidently her little conflict with Jim had jarred her humor. +She looked distressed, angry. Cosme felt that, unfairly enough, she +lumped him with The Enemy. He wondered pitifully if she had given The +Enemy its name, if her experience had given her the knowledge of such +names. He had a vision of the pretty, delicate little thing standing +there night after night as though divided by the bar from prowling +beasts. And yet she was known over the whole wide, wild country as +"Hudson's Queen." Her crystal, childlike look must be one of those +extraordinary survivals, a piteous sort of accident. Cosme called himself +a sentimentalist. Spurred by this reaction against his more romantic +tendencies, he leaned forward. He too was going to ask the barmaid for a +good-night or a greeting or a good-bye. His hand was out, when he saw her +face stiffen, her lips open to an "Oh!" of warning or of fear. He wheeled +and flung up his arm against a hurricane of blows. + +His late opponents had decided to take advantage of Carthy's absence, and +inflict chastisement prompt and merciless upon the "youthful stranger." +If it had not been for that small frightened "Oh" Cosme would have been +down at once. + +With that moment's advantage he fought like a tiger, his golden eyes +ablaze. Swift and dangerous anger was one of his gifts. He was against +the wall, he was torn from it. One of his opponents staggered across the +room and fell, another crumpled up against the bar. Hilliard wheeled and +jabbed, plunged, was down, was up, bleeding and laughing. He was whirled +this way and that, the men from whom he had struck himself free recovered +themselves, closed in upon him. A blow between the eyes half stunned him, +another on his mouth silenced his laughter. The room was getting blurred. +He was forced back against the bar, fighting, but not effectively. The +snarling laughter was not his now, but that of the cheat. + +Something gave way behind him; it was as if the bar, against which he was +bent backwards, had melted to him and hardened against his foes. For an +instant he was free from blows and tearing hands. He saw that a door in +the bar had opened and shut. There was a small pressure on his arm, a +pressure which he blindly obeyed. In front of him another door opened, +and closed. He heard the shooting of a bolt. He was in the dark. The +small pressure, cold through the torn silk sleeve of his white shirt, +continued to urge him swiftly along a passage. He was allowed to rest an +instant against a wall. A light was turned on with a little click above +his head. He found himself at the end of the open hallway. Before him lay +the brilliant velvet night. + +Hilliard pressed his hands upon his eyes trying to clear his vision. He +felt sick and giddy. The little barmaid's face, all terrified and urgent +eyes, danced up and down. + +"Don't waste any time!" she said. "Get out of Millings! Where's +your pony?" + +At that he looked at her and smiled. + +"I'm not leaving Millings till to-morrow," he said uncertainly with +wounded lips. "Don't look like that, girl. I'm not much hurt, If I'm not +mistaken, your watch-dog is back and very much on his job. I reckon that +our friends will leave Millings considerably before I do." + +In fact, behind them at the end of the passage there was a sort of roar. +Carthy had returned to avenge The Aura. + +"You're sure you're not hurt? You're sure they won't try to hurt +you again?" + +He shook his head. "Not they..." He stood looking at her and the mist +slowly cleared, his vision of her steadied. "Shall I see you to-morrow?" + +She drew back from him a little. "No," she said. "I sleep all the +morning. And, afterwards, I don't see any one except a few old friends. I +go riding..." + +He puckered his eyelids inquiringly. Then, with a sudden reckless fling +of his shoulders, he put out his hand boldly and caught her small pointed +chin in his palm. He bent down his head. + +She stood there quite still and white, looking straight up into his face. +The exquisite smoothness of her little cool chin photographed itself upon +his memory. As he bent down closer to the grave and tender lips, he was +suddenly, unaccountably frightened and ashamed. His hand dropped, sought +for her small limp hand. His lips shifted from their course and went +lower, just brushing her fingers. + +"I beg your pardon," he said confusedly. He was painfully embarrassed, +stammered, "I--I wanted to thank you. Good-bye..." + +She said good-bye in the smallest sweet voice he had ever heard. It +followed his memory like some weary, pitiful little ghost. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +IN THE PUBLIC EYE + + +No sight more familiar to the corner of Main and Resident Streets than +that of Sylvester Hudson's Ford car sliding up to the curb in front of +his hotel at two o'clock in a summer afternoon. He would slip out from +under his steering-wheel, his linen duster flapping about his long legs, +and he would stalk through the rocking, meditative observers on the +piazza and through the lobby past Dickie's frozen stare, upstairs to the +door of Miss Arundel's "suite." There he was bidden to come in. A few +minutes later they would come down together, Sheila, too, passing Dickie +wordlessly, and they would hum away from Millings leaving a veil of +golden dust to smother the comments in their wake. There were days when +Sheila's pony, a gift from Jim Greely, was led up earlier than the hour +of Hudson's arrival, on which days Sheila, in a short skirt and a boy's +shirt and a small felt Stetson, would ride away alone toward the mountain +of her dreams. Sometimes Jim rode with her. It was not always possible to +forbid him. + +The day after Cosme Hilliard's spectacular passage was one of Hudson's +days. The pony did not appear, but Sylvester did and came down with his +prize. The lobby was crowded. Sheila threaded her way amongst the medley +of tourists, paused and deliberately drew near to the desk. At sight of +her Dickie's whiteness dyed itself scarlet. He rose and with an apparent +effort lifted his eyes to her look. + +They did not smile at each other. Sheila spoke sharply, each word a +little soft lash. + +"I want to speak to you. Will you come to my sitting-room when I +get back?" + +"Yes'm," said Dickie. It was the tone of an unwincing pride. Under the +desk, hidden from sight, his hand was a white-knuckled fist. + +Sheila passed on, trailed by Hudson, who was smiling not agreeably to +himself. Over the smile he gave his son a cruel look. It was as though an +enemy had said, "Hurts you, doesn't it?" Dickie returned the look with +level eyes. + +The rockers on the piazza stopped rocking, stopped talking, stopped +breathing, it would seem, to watch Sylvester help Sheila into his car; +not that he helped her greatly--she had an appearance of melting +through his hands and getting into her place beside his by a sort of +sleight of body. He made a series of angular movements, smiled at her, +and started the car. + +"Well, little girl," said he, "where to this afternoon?" + +When Sheila rode her pony she always rode toward The Hill. But in that +direction she had never allowed Sylvester to take her. She looked vaguely +through the wind-shield now and said, "Anywhere--that canon, the one we +came home by last week. It was so queer." + +"It'll be dern dusty, I'm afraid." + +"I don't care." Sheila wrapped her gray veil over her small hat which +fitted close about her face. "I'm getting used to the dust. Does it ever +rain around Millings? And does it ever stop blowing?" + +"We don't like Millings to-day, do we?" + +Sylvester was bending his head to peer through the gray mist of her veil. +She held herself stiffly beside him, showing the profile of a small +Sphinx. Suddenly it turned slightly, seemed to wince back. Girlie, at the +gate of Number 18 Cottonwood Avenue, had stopped to watch them pass. +Girlie did not speak. Her face looked smitten, the ripe fruit had turned +bitter upon her ruddy lips. The tranquil emptiness of her beauty had +filled itself stormily. + +Sheila did not answer Hudson's reproachful question. She leaned back, +dropped back, rather, into a tired little heap and let the country slide +by--the strange, wide, broken country with its circling mesas, its +somber grays and browns and dusty greens, its bare purple hills, rocks +and sand and golden dirt, and now and then, in the sudden valley +bottoms, swaying groves of vivid green and ribbons of emerald meadows. +The mountains shifted and opened their canons, gave a glimpse of their +beckoning and forbidding fastnesses and closed them again as though by a +whispered Sesame. + +"What was the row last night?" asked Sylvester in his voice of cracked +tenderness. "Carthy says there was a bunch of toughs. Were you scared +good and plenty? I'm sorry. It don't happen often, believe _me._ + +"I wish you could 'a' heard Carthy talkin' about you, Sheila," went on +Sylvester, his eyes, filled with uneasiness, studying her silence and her +huddled smallness, hands in the pockets of her light coat, veiled face +turned a little away, "Say, that would 'a' set you up all right! Talk +about beacons!" + +Here she flashed round on him, as though her whole body had been +electrified. "Tell me all that again," she begged in a voice that he +could not interpret except that there was in it a sound of tears. "Tell +me again about a beacon ..." + +He stammered. He was confused. But stumblingly he tried to fulfill her +demand. Here was a thirst for something, and he wanted above everything +in the world to satisfy it. Sheila listened to him with unsteady, parted +lips. He could see them through the veil. + +"You still think I am that?" she asked. + +He was eager to prove it to her. "Still think? Still think? Why, girl, I +don't hev to think. Don't the tillbox speak for itself? Don't Carthy +handle a crowd that's growing under his eyes? Don't we sell more booze in +a week now than we used to in a--" Suddenly he realized that he was on +the wrong tack. It was his first break. He drew in a sharp breath and +stopped, his face flushing deeply. + +"Yes?" questioned Sheila, melting her syllables like slivers of ice on +her tongue. "Go on." + +"Er--er, don't we draw a finer lot of fellows than we ever did before? +Don't they behave more decent and orderly? Don't they get civilization +just for looking at you, Miss Sheila?" + +"And--and booze? Jim Greely, for instance, Mr. James Greely, of the +Millings National Bank--he never used to patronize The Aura. And now he's +there every night till twelve and often later, for he won't obey me any +more. I wonder whether Mr. and Mrs. Greely are glad that you are getting +a better type of customer! Mrs. Greely almost stopped me on the street +the other day--that is, she almost got up courage to speak to me. Before +now she's cut me, just as Girlie does, just as your wife does, just as +Dickie does--" + +"Dickie cut you?" Sylvester threw back his head and laughed uneasily, and +with a strained note of alarm. "That's a good one, Miss Sheila. I kinder +fancied you did the cuttin' there." + +"Dickie hasn't spoken to me since he came to me that day when he heard +what I was going to do and tried to talk me out of doing it." + +"Yes'm. He came to me first," drawled Sylvester. + +They were both silent, busy with the amazing memory of Dickie, of his +disheveled fury, of his lashing eloquence. He had burst in upon his +family at breakfast that April morning when Millings was humming with +the news, had advanced upon his father, stood above him. + +"Is it true that you are going to make a barmaid of Sheila?" + +Sylvester, in an effort to get to his feet, had been held back by +Dickie's thin hand that shot out at him like a sword. + +"Sure it's true," Sylvester had said coolly. But he had not felt cool. He +had felt shaken and confused. The boy's entire self-forgetfulness, his +entire absence of fear, had made Hudson feel that he was talking to a +stranger, a not inconsiderable one. + +"It's true, then." Dickie had drawn a big breath. "You--you"--he seemed +to swallow an epithet--"you'll let that girl go into your filthy saloon +and make money for you by her--by her prettiness and her--her +ignorance--" + +"Say, Dickie," his father had drawled, "you goin' to run for the +legislature? Such a lot of classy words!" But anger and alarm were +rising in him. + +"You've fetched her away out here," went on Dickie, "and kinder got her +cornered and you've talked a lot of slush to her and you've--" + +Here Girlie came to the rescue. + +"Well, anyway, she's a willing victim, Dickie," Girlie had said. + +Dickie had flashed her one look. "Is she? I'll see about that. +Where's Sheila?" + +And then, there was Sheila's memory. Dickie had come upon her in a +confusion of boxes, her little trunk half-unpacked, its treasures +scattered over the chairs and floor. Sheila had lifted to him from where +she knelt a glowing and excited face. "Oh, Dickie," she had said, her +relief at the escape from Mrs. Hudson pouring music into her voice, "have +you heard?" + +He had sat down on one of the plush chairs of "the suite" as though he +felt weak. Then he had got up and had walked to and fro while she +described her dream, the beauty of her chosen mission, the glory of the +saloon whose high priestess she had become. And Dickie had listened with +the bitter and disillusioned and tender face of a father hearing the +prattle of a beloved child. + +"You honest think all that, Sheila?" he had asked her patiently. + +She had started again, standing now to face him and beginning to be angry +at his look. This boy whom she had lifted up to be her friend! + +"Say," Dickie had drawled, "Poppa's some guardian!" He had advanced upon +her as though he wanted to shake her. "You gotta give it right up, +Sheila," he had said sternly. "Sooner than immediately. It's not to go +through. Say, girl, you don't know much about bars." He had drawn a +picture for her, drawing partly upon experience, partly upon his +imagination, the gift of vivid metaphor descending upon him. He used +words that bit into her memory. Sheila had listened and then she had put +her hands over her ears. He pulled them down. He went on. Sheila's Irish +blood had boiled up into her brain. She stormed back at him. + +"It's you, it's your use of The Aura that has been its only shame, +Dickie," was the last of all the things she had said. + +At which, Dickie standing very still, had answered, "If you go there and +stand behind the bar all night with Carthy to keep hands off, I--I swear +I'll never set foot inside the place again. You ain't agoin' to be _my_ +beacon light--" + +"Well, then," said Sheila, "I shall have done one good thing at least by +being there." + +Dickie, going out, had passed a breathless Sylvester on his way in. The +two had looked at each other with a look that cut in two the tie between +them, and Sheila, running to Sylvester, had burst into tears. + + * * * * * + +The motor hummed evenly on its way. It began, with a change of tune, to +climb the graded side of one of the enormous mesas. Sheila, having lived +through again that scene with Dickie, took out a small handkerchief and +busied herself with it under her veil. She laughed shakily. + +"Perhaps a beacon does more good by warning people away than by +attracting them," she said. "Dickie has certainly kept his word. I don't +believe he's touched a drop since I've been barmaid, Mr. Hudson. I +should think you'd be proud of him." + +Sylvester was silent while they climbed the hill. He changed gears and +sounded his horn. They passed another motor on a dangerous curve. They +began to drop down again. + +"Some day," said Sylvester in a quiet voice, "I'll break every bone in +Dickie's body." He murmured something more under his breath in too low a +tone, fortunately, for Sheila's ear. From her position behind the bar, +she had become used to swearing. She had heard a strange variety of +language. But when Sylvester drew upon his experience and his fancy, the +artist in him was at work. + +"Do you suppose," asked his companion in an impersonal tone, "that it was +really a hard thing for Dickie to do--to give it up, I mean?" + +"By the look of him the last few months," snarled Sylvester, "I should +say it had taken out of him what little real feller there ever was in." + +Sheila considered this. She remembered Dickie, as he had risen behind the +desk half an hour before. She did not contradict Sylvester. She had +learned not to contradict him. But Dickie's face with its tight-knit look +of battle stood out very clear to refute the accusation of any loss of +manliness. He was still a quaint and ruffled Dickie. But he was vastly +aged. From twenty to twenty-seven, he seemed to have jumped in a few +weeks. A key had turned in the formerly open door of his spirit. The +indeterminate lips had shut hard, the long-lashed eyes had definitely put +a guard upon their dreams. He was shockingly thin and colorless, however. +Sheila dwelt painfully upon the sort of devastation she had wrought. +Girlie's face, and Dickie's, and Jim's. A grieving pressure squeezed her +heart; she lifted her chest with an effort on a stifled breath. + +"God! Sheila," said Sylvester harshly. The car wobbled a little. "Ain't +you happy, girl?" + +Sheila looked up at him. Her veil was wet against her cheeks. + +"Last night," she said unevenly, "a man was going to kiss me on my +mouth and--and he changed his mind and kissed my hand instead. He left +a smear of blood on my fingers from where those--those other men had +struck his lips. I don't know why it f-frightens me so to think about +that. But it does." + +She seemed to collapse before him into a little sobbing child. + +"And every day when I wake up," she wailed, "I t-taste whiskey on my +tongue and I--I smell cigarette smoke in my hair. And I d-dream about men +looking at me--the way Jim looks. And I can't let myself think of Father +any more. He used to hold his chin up and walk along as if he looked +above every one and everything. I don't believe he'd ever seen a barmaid +or a drunken man--not really seen them, Mr. Hudson." + +"Then he wasn't a real artist after all," Sylvester spoke slowly and +carefully. He was pale. + +"He l-loved the stars," sobbed Sheila, her broken reserve had let out a +flood; "he told me to keep looking at the stars." + +"Well, ma'am," Sylvester spoke again, "I never knowed the stars to turn +their backs on anything. Barmaids or drunks or kings--they all look about +alike to the stars, I reckon. Say, Sheila, maybe you haven't got the +pluck for real living. Maybe you're the kind of doll-baby girl that +craves sheltering. I reckon I made a big mistake." + +Sheila moved slightly as though his speech had pricked her. + +"It kind of didn't occur to me," went on Sylvester, "that you'd care a +whole lot about being ig-nored by Momma and Mr. and Mrs. Greely and +Girlie. Say, Girlie's got to take her chance same's anybody else. Why +don't you give Jim a jolt?" + +Sheila at this began to laugh. She caught her breath. She laughed and +cried together. + +Sylvester patted her shoulder. "Poor kid! You're all in. Late hours too +much for you, I reckon. Come on now--tell Pap everything. Ease off your +heart. It's wonderful what crying does for the nervous system. I laid out +on a prairie one night when I was about your age and just naturally +bawled. You'd 'a' thought I was a baby steer, hanged if you wouldn't 'a' +thought so. It's the fight scared you plumb to pieces. Carthy told me +about it and how you let the good-looking kid out by the back. I seen him +ride off toward Hidden Creek this morning. He was a real pretty boy too. +Say, Sheila, wasn't you ever kissed?" + +"No," said Sheila. "And I don't want to be." Sylvester laughed with a +little low cackle of intense pleasure and amusement. "Well, you shan't +be. No, you shan't. Nobody shall kiss Sheila!" + +His method seemed to him successful. Sheila stopped crying and stopped +laughing, dried her eyes, murmured, "I'm all right now, thank you, Mr. +Hudson," and fell into an abysmal silence. + +He talked smoothly, soothingly, skillfully, confident of his power to +manage "gels." Once in a while he saw her teeth gleam as though she +smiled. As they came back to Millings in the afterglow of a brief Western +twilight, she unfastened her veil and showed a quiet, thoughtful face. + +She thanked him, gave him her hand. "Don't come up, please, Mr. Hudson," +she said with that cool composure of which at times she was surprisingly +capable. "I shall have my dinner sent up and take a little rest before I +go to work." + +"You feel O.K.?" he asked her doubtfully. His brown eyes had an almost +doglike wistfulness. + +"Quite, thank you." Her easy, effortless smile passed across her face and +in and out of her eyes. + +Hudson stood beside his wheel tapping his teeth and staring after her. +The rockers on the veranda stopped their rocking, stopped their talking, +stopped their breathing to see Sheila pass. When she had gone, they +fastened their attention upon Sylvester. He was not aware of them. He +stood there a full three minutes under the glare of publicity. Then he +sighed and climbed into his car. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +HUDSON'S QUEEN + + +The lobby, empty of its crowd when Sheila passed through it on her way up +to her rooms, was filled by a wheezy, bullying voice. In front of the +desk a little barrel of a man with piggish eyes was disputing his bill +with Dickie. At the sound of Sheila's entrance he turned, stopped his +complaint, watched her pass, and spat into a near-by receptacle. Sheila +remembered that he had visited the bar early in the evening before, and +had guzzled his whiskey and made some wheezy attempts at gallantry. +Dickie, flushed, his hair at wild odds with composure, was going over the +bill. In the midst of his calculations the man would interrupt him with a +plump dirty forefinger pounced upon the paper. "Wassa meanin' of this +item, f'rinstance? Highway robbery, thassa meanin' of it. My wife take +breakfast in her room? I'd like to see her try it!" + +Sheila went upstairs. She took off her things, washed off the dust, and +changed into the black-and-white barmaid's costume, fastening the frilly +apron, the cuffs, the delicate fichu with mechanical care. She put on the +silk stockings and the buckled shoes and the tiny cap. Then she went into +her sitting-room, chose the most dignified chair, folded her hands in +her lap, and waited for Dickie. Waiting, she looked out through the +window and saw the glow fade from the snowy crest of The Hill. The +evening star let itself delicately down through the sweeping shadows of +the earth from some mysterious fastness of invisibility. The room was dim +when Dickie's knock made her turn her head. + +"Come in." + +He appeared, shut the door without looking at her, then came unwillingly +across the carpet and stopped at about three steps from her chair, +standing with one hand in his pocket. He had slicked down his hair with +a wet brush and changed his suit. It was the dark-blue serge he had worn +at the dance five months before. What those five months had been to +Dickie, through what abasements and exaltations, furies and despairs he +had traveled since he had looked up from Sheila's slippered feet with +his heart turned backward like a pilot's wheel, was only faintly +indicated in his face. And yet the face gave Sheila a pang. And, +unsupported by anger, he was far from formidable, a mere youth. Sheila +wondered at her long and sustained persecution of him. She smiled, her +lips, her eyes, and her heart. + +"Aren't you going to sit down, Dickie? This isn't a school examination." + +"If it was," said Dickie, with an uncertain attempt at ease, "I wouldn't +pass." He felt for a chair and got into it. He caught a knee in his hand +and looked about him. "You've made the room awful pretty, Sheila." + +She had spent some of the rather large pay she drew upon coverings of +French blue for the plush furniture, upon a dainty yellow porcelain +tea-set, upon little oddments of decoration. The wall-paper and carpet +were inoffensive, the quietest probably in Millings, so that her efforts +had met with some success. There was a lounge with cushions, there were +some little volumes, a picture of her father, a bowl of pink wild roses, +a vase of vivid cactus flowers. Some sketches in water-color--Marcus's +most happy medium--had been tacked up. A piece of tapestry decorated the +back of the chair Sheila had chosen. In the dim light it all had an air +of quiet richness. It seemed a room transplanted to Millings from some +finer soil. + +Dickie looked at the tapestry because it was the nearest he dared come to +looking at Sheila. His hands and knees shook with the terrible beating of +his heart. It was not right, thought Dickie resentfully, that any feeling +should take hold of a fellow and shake and terrify him so. He threw +himself back suddenly and folded his arms tight across his chest. + +"You wanted to see me about something?" he asked. + +"Yes. I'll give you some tea first." + +Dickie's lips fell apart. He said neither yea nor nay, but watched +dazedly her preparations, her concoctions, her advance upon him with a +yellow teacup and a wafer. He did not stand up to take it and he knew too +late that this was a blunder. He tingled with shame. + +Sheila went back to her chair and sipped from her own cup. + +"I've been angry with you for three months now, Dickie." + +"Yes'm," he said meekly. + +"That's the longest I've ever been angry with any one in my life. Once I +hated a teacher for two weeks, and it almost killed me. But what I felt +about her was--was weakness to the way I've felt about you." + +"Yes'm," again said Dickie. His tea was terribly hot and burnt his +tongue, so that tears stood in his eyes. + +"And I suppose you've been angry with me." + +"No, ma'am." + +Sheila was not particularly pleased with this gentle reply. "Why, Dickie, +you _know_ you have!" + +"No, ma'am." + +"Then why haven't you spoken to me? Why have you looked that way at me?" + +"I don't speak to folks that don't speak to me," said Dickie, lifting the +wafer as though its extreme lightness was faintly repulsive to him. + +"Well," said Sheila bitterly, "you haven't been alone in your attitude. +Very few people have been speaking to me. My only loyal friends are Mr. +Hudson and Amelia Plecks and Carthy and Jim. Jim made no promises about +being my guardian, but--" + +"But he _is_ your guardian?" Dickie drawled the question slightly. His +gift of faint irony and impersonal detachment flicked Sheila's temper as +it had always flicked his father's. + +"Jim is my friend," Sheila maintained in defiance of a still, small +voice. "He has given me a pony and has taken me riding--" + +"Yes'm, I've saw you--" Dickie's English was peculiarly fallible in +moments of emotion. Now he seemed determined to cut Sheila's description +short. "Say, Sheila, did you send for me to tell me about this lovely +friendship of yours with Jim?" + +Sheila set her cup down on the window-sill. She did not want to lose her +temper with Dickie. She brushed a wafer crumb from her knee. + +"No, Dickie, I didn't. I sent for you because, after all, though I've +been so angry with you, I've known in my heart that--that--you are a +loyal friend and that you tell the truth." + +This admission was an effort. Sheila's pride suffered to the point of +bringing a dim sound of tears into her voice.... + +Dickie did not speak. He too put down his tea-cup and his wafer side by +side on the floor near his chair. He put his elbows on his knees and bent +his head down as though he were examining his thin, locked hands. + +Sheila waited for a long minute; then she said angrily, "Aren't you glad +I think that of you?" + +"Yes'm." Dickie's voice was indistinct. + +"You don't seem glad." + +Dickie made some sort of struggle. Sheila could not quite make out its +nature. "I'm glad. I'm so glad that it kind of--hurts," he said. + +"Oh!" That at least was pleasant intelligence to a wounded pride. + +Fortified, Sheila began the real business of the interview. "You are not +an artist, Dickie," she said, "and you don't understand why your father +asked me to work at The Aura nor why I wanted to work there. It was your +entire inability to understand--" + +"Entire inability--" whispered Dickie as though he were taking down the +phrase with an intention of looking it up later. + +This confused Sheila. "Your--your entire inability," she repeated +rapidly, "your--your entire inability--" + +"Yes'm. I've got that." + +"--To understand that made me so angry that day." Sheila was glad to be +rid of that obstruction. She had planned this speech rather carefully in +the watches of the wakeful, feverish morning which had been her night. +"You seemed to be trying to pull your father and me down to some lower +spiritual level of your own." + +"Lower spiritual level," repeated Dickie. + +"Dickie, stop that, please!" + +He looked up, startled by her sharpness. "Stop what, ma'am?" + +"Saying things after me. It's insufferable." + +"Insufferable--oh, I suppose it is. You're usin' so many words, Sheila. I +kind of forgot there was so many words as you're makin' use of this +afternoon." + +"Oh, Dickie, Dickie! Can't you see how miserable I am! I am so unhappy +and--and scared, and you--you are making fun of me." + +At that, spoken in a changed and quavering key of helplessness, Dickie +hurried to her, knelt down beside her chair, and took her hands. + +"Sheila! I'll do anything!" + +His presence, his boyish, quivering touch, so withheld from anything but +boyishness, even the impulsive humility of his thin, kneeling body, were +inexpressibly soothing, inexpressibly comforting. She did not draw away +her hands. She let them cling to his. + +"Dickie, will you answer me, quite truthfully and simply, without any +explaining or softening, please, if I ask you a--a dreadful question?" + +"Yes, dear." + +"I'm not sure if it is a dreadful question, but--but I'm afraid it is." + +"Don't worry. Ask me. Surely, I'll answer you the truth without +any fixin's." + +Her hands clung a little closer. She was silent, gathering courage. He +felt her slim knees quiver. + +"What do they mean, Dickie," she whispered with a wan look, "when they +call me--'Hudson's Queen'?" + +Dickie bent from her look as though he felt a pain. He took her hands up +close to his breast. "Who told you that they called you that?" he asked +breathlessly. + +"That's what every one calls me--the men over in the Big Horn +country--they tell men that are coming to Millings to be sure to look up +'Hudson's Queen.' Do they mean the Hotel, Dickie? They _do_ mean the +Hotel, don't they, Dickie?--that I am _The_ Hudson's Queen?" + +The truth sometimes presents itself like a withering flame. Dickie got +up, put away her hands, walked up and down, then came back to her. He had +heard the epithet and he knew its meaning. He wrestled now with his +longing to keep her from such understanding, or, at least, to soften it. +She had asked for the clear truth and he had promised it to her. He stood +away because he could not trust himself to endure the wincing of her +hands and body when she heard the truth. He hoped dimly that she might +not understand it. + +"They don't mean the Hotel, Sheila," he said harshly. "They mean--Father. +You know now what they mean--?" In her stricken and bewildered eyes he +saw that she did know. "I would like to kill them," sobbed Dickie +suddenly. "I would like to kill--_him_. No, no, Sheila, don't you cry. +Don't you. It's not worth cryin' for. It's jest ignorant folks's ignorant +and stupid talk. It's not worth cryin' for." He sat down on the arm of +her chair and fairly gathered her into his arms. He rocked and patted her +shoulder and kissed her gently on her hair--all with that boyishness, +that brotherliness, that vast restraint so that she could not even guess +the strange and unimaginable pangs he suffered from his self-control. + +Before Dickie's resolution was burnt away by the young inner fire, Sheila +withdrew herself gently from his arms and got up from the chair. She +walked over to one of the two large windows--the sunset windows she +called them, in contradistinction to the one sunrise window--and stood +composing herself, her hands twisted together and lifted to the top of +the lower sash, her forehead rested on them. + +A rattle of china, a creaking step outside the door, interrupted their +tremulous silence in which who knows what mysterious currents were +passing between their young minds. + +"It's my dinner," said Sheila, and Dickie walked over mechanically and +opened the door. + +Amelia Plecks came panting into the room, set the tray down on a small +table, and looked contempt at Dickie. + +"There now, Miss Arundel," she said with breathless tenderness, "I've +pro-cured a dandy chop for you. You said you was kind of famished for a +lamb chop, and, of course, in a sheep country good mutton's real hard to +come by, and this ain't properly speaking--lamb, _but_--! Well, say, it's +just dandy meat." + +She ignored Dickie as one might ignore the presence of some obnoxious +insect in the reception-room of a queen. Her eyes were disgustedly +fascinated by his presence, but in her conversation she would not admit +this preoccupation of disgust. + +"I'll be going," said Dickie. + +Amelia nodded as one who applauds the becoming move of an inferior. + +"Here's a note for you, Miss Arundel," she said, coming over to Sheila's +post at the window, where she was trying to hide the traces of her tears. +"Well, say, who's been botherin' you?" Amelia's voice went down a long, +threatening octave to a sinister bass note, at the voicing of which she +turned to look at Dickie. + +"Good-night, Sheila," he said diffidently; and Sheila coming quickly +toward him, put out her hand. The note Amelia had handed her fell. Dickie +and Amelia both bent to pick it up. + +"No, you don't," said Amelia, snatching it and accusing him, by her tone, +of inexpressibly base intentions. "Say, Miss Arundel," in a whisper of +thrilled confidence, "_Mister Jim_! Uh?" + +"Thank you, Dickie," murmured Sheila, half-embarrassed, half-amused by +her adoring follower's innuendoes. "Thank you for everything. I shall +have to think what I can do ... Good-night." + +Dickie, his eyes forcibly held away from Jim's note, murmured, +"Good-night, ma'am," and went out, closing the door with exaggerated +gentleness. The quietness of his departure seemed to spare Sheila's +sensitiveness. + +"Ain't he a worm, though!" exclaimed Amelia, sparing nobody's +sensitiveness. + +"He's nothing of the sort," Sheila protested indignantly. "He is a dear!" + +Amelia opened her prominent eyes and pursed her lips. A reassuring light +dawned on her bewilderment. "Oh, say, dearie, I wasn't speakin' of your +Mister Jim. I was makin' reference to Dickie." + +Sheila thrust the note into her pocket and went over to the table to +light her lamp. "I know quite well that you meant Dickie," she said. +"Nobody in Millings would ever dream of comparing Mr. James Greely to a +worm, even if he came out from the ground just in time for the early bird +to peck him. I know that." + +"You're ornery to-night, dearie," announced Amelia, and with exemplary +tact she creaked and breathed herself to the door. There she had a +relapse from tactfulness, however, and planted herself to stare. "Ain't +you goin' to read your note?" + +Sheila, to be rid of her, unfolded the paper and read. It was quite +beautifully penned in green ink on violet paper. Jim had written both +wisely and too well. + +"My darling--Why not permit me to call you that when it is the simple and +sincere truth?" An astonished little voice in Sheila's brain here seemed +to counter-question mechanically "Why not, indeed?"--"I cannot think of +anything but you and how I love you. These little notes I am going to +keep a-sending you are messengers of love. You will never meet with a +more tremendous lover than me.... Be _my_ Queen," Jim had written with a +great climatic splash of ink, and he had signed himself, "Your James." + +Sheila's face was crimson when she put down the note. She stared straight +in front of her for an instant with very large eyes in this scarlet rose +of countenance and then she crumpled into mirth. She put her face into +her hands and rocked. It seemed as though a giant of laughter had caught +her about the ribs. + +Amelia stared and felt a wound. She swallowed a lump of balked sentiment +as she went out. Her idol was faintly tarnished, her heroine's stature +preceptibly diminished. The sort of Madame du Barry atmosphere with which +Sheila's image was surrounded in Amelia's fancy lost a little of its rosy +glow. The favorite of Kings, the _amorita_ of Dukes, does not rock with +laughter over scented notes from a High Desirable. + +"She ain't just quite up to it," was Amelia's comment, which she +probably could not have explained even to herself. + +Sheila presently was done with laughter. She ate a nibble of dinner as +soberly as Amelia could have wished, then sat back, her eyes closed with +a resolve to think clearly, closely, to some determination of her life. +But Jim's note, which had so roused her amusement, began to force itself +in another fashion upon her. She discovered that it was an insufferable +note. It insinuated everything, it suggested--everything. It was a +boastful messenger. It swaggered male-ishly. It threw out its chest and +smacked its lips. "See what a sad dog my master is," it said; "a regular +devil of a fellow." Sheila found her thoughts confused by anger. She +found that she was too disturbed for any clear decision. She was terribly +weary and full of dread for the long night before her. And a startled +look at her clock told her it was time now to go over to the saloon. + +She got up, went to her mirror, smoothed her rippled hair with two +strokes of a brush, readjusted her cap, and decided that, for once, a +little powder on the nose was a necessity. Carthy must not see that she +had been crying. As it was, her brilliant color was suspicious, and her +eyes, with their deep distended look of tears. She shut them, drew a +breath, put out her light, and went down the back stairs to a narrow +alley. It led from the hotel to the street that ran back of The Aura ... +the street to which she had taken young Hilliard the night before. + +The alley seemed to Sheila, as she stepped into it from the glare of the +electric-lighted hotel, a stream of cool and silvery light. Above lay a +strip of tender sky in which already the stars shook. In this high +atmosphere they were always tremulous, dancing, beating, almost leaping, +with a fullness of quick light. They seemed very near to the edges of the +alley walls, to be especially visiting it with their detached regard, +peering down for some small divine occasion for influence. Sheila prayed +to them a desperate prayer of human helplessness. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +SYLVESTER CELEBRATES + + +"Hey, you girl there! Hi! Hey!" + +These exclamations called in a resonant, deep-chested voice succeeded at +last in attracting Sheila's attention. She had lingered at the alley's +mouth, shirking her entrance into the saloon, and now she saw, halfway +down the short, wide street, a gesticulating figure. + +At first, as she obeyed the summons, she thought the summoner a man, but +on near view it proved itself a woman, of broad, massive hips and +shoulders, dressed in a man's flannel shirt and a pair of large corduroy +trousers, their legs tucked into high cowboy boots. She wore no hat, and +her hair was cut square across her neck and forehead; hair of a dark +rusty red, it was, and matched eyes like dark panes of glass before a +fire, red-brown and very bright, ruddy eyes in a square, ruddy face, +which, with its short, straight, wide-bridged nose, well-shaped lips, +square chin, and brilliant teeth, made up a striking and not unattractive +countenance. + +"I've got a horse here; won't stand," said the woman. "Will you hold +his head? Can leaking back here in my wagon, leaking all over my +other stuff." + +The horse came round the corner. He moved resolutely to meet them. He +was the boniest, small horse Sheila had ever seen--a shadow of a horse, +one-eyed, morose, embittered. The harness hung loose upon his meagerness; +the shafts stuck up like the points of a large collar on a small old man. + +"He's not running away," explained the owner superfluously. "It's just +that he can't stop. You'd think, to look at him, that stopping would +be his favorite sport. But you'd be mistaken. Go he must. He's kind of +always crazy to get there--Lord knows where--probably to the end of +his life." + +Sheila held the horse, and rubbed his nose with her small and gentle +hand. The creature drooped under the caress and let its lower lip, with a +few stiff white hairs, hang and quiver bitterly. It half-closed its one +useful eye, a pale eye of intense, colorless disillusionment. + +When the wagon stopped, a dog who was trotting under it stopped too +and lay down in the dust, panting. Sheila bent her head a little to +see the dog. She had a child's intense interest in animals. Through +the dimness she made out a big, wolfish creature with a splendid, +clean, gray coat, his pointed nose, short, pointed ears, deep, wild +eyes, and scarlet tongue, set in a circular ruff of black. His bushy +tail curled up over his back. + +"What kind of dog is that?" asked Sheila, thinking the great animal under +the wagon better fitted to pull the load than the shadowy little horse in +front of it. + +"Quarter wolf," answered the woman in her casual manner of speech, her +resonant voice falling pleasantly on the light coolness of the evening +air; "Malamute. This fellow was littered on the body of a dead man." + +Sheila had also the child's interest in tales. "Tell me about it," she +begged fervently. + +The woman stopped in her business of tying down a canvas cover over her +load and gave Sheila an amused and searching look. She held an iron spike +between her teeth, but spoke around it skillfully. + +"Arctic exploration it was. My brother was one of the party. 'T was he +brought me home Berg. Berg's mother was one of the sledge dogs. Party was +shipwrecked, starved, most of the dogs eaten, one man dead. Berg's mother +littered on the body one night. Next morning they were rescued and the +new family was saved. Otherwise I guess they'd have had a puppy stew and +Berg and his wife and family wouldn't be earning their living with me." + +"How do they earn their living?" asked Sheila, still peering at the hero +of the tale. + +"They pull my sled about winters, Hidden Creek." + +"Oh, you live in the Hidden Creek country?" + +"Yes. Got a ranch up not far from the source. Ever been over The Hill?" + +She came toward Sheila, gathered the reins into her strong, broad hands, +held them in her teeth, and began to pull on her canvas gloves. She +talked with the reins between her teeth as she had with the spike, her +enunciation triumphantly forceful and distinct. + +"Some day, I'm coming over The Hill," said Sheila, less successful with a +contraction in her throat. + +The woman made a few strides. Now she was looking shrewdly, close into +Sheila's face. + +"You're a biscuit-shooter at the hotel?" + +"No. I work in the saloon." + +"In the saloon? Oh, sure. Barmaid. I've heard of you." + +Here she put a square finger-tip under Sheila's chin and looked even +closer than before. "Not happy, are you?" she said. She moved away +abruptly. "Tired of town life. Been crying. Well, when you want to pull +out, come over to my ranch. I need a girl. I'm kind of lonesome winters. +It's a pretty place if you aren't looking for street-lamps and +talking-machines. You don't hear much more than coyotes and the river and +the pines and, if you're looking for high lights, you can sure see the +stars ..." + +She climbed up to her seat, using the hub of her wheel for a foothold, +and springing with surprising agility and strength. + +Sheila stepped aside and the horse started instantly. She made a few +hurried steps to keep up. + +"Thank you," she said, looking up into the ruddy eyes that looked down. +"I'll remember that. What is your name?" + +"Christina Blake, Miss Blake. I'll make The Hill before morning if +I'm lucky. Less dust and heat by night and the horse has loafed +since morning.... I mean that about coming to my place. Any time. +Good-bye to you." + +She smiled a smile as casual in its own way as Sheila's own. Berg, under +the wagon, trotted silently. He looked neither to right nor left. His +wild, deep-set eyes were fastened on the heels of the small horse. He +looked as though he were trotting relentlessly toward some wolfish goal +of satisfied hunger. A little cloud of dust rose up from the wheels and +stood between Sheila and the wagon. She conquered an impulse to run after +it, shut her hand tight, and walked in at the back door of the saloon. + +A teamster, with a lean, fatherly face, his mouth veiled by a +shaggy blond mustache, his eyes as blue as larkspur, smiled at her +across the bar. + +"Hullo," said he. "How's your pony?" + +Sheila had struck up one of her sudden friendships with this man, who +visited the saloon at regular intervals. This question warmed her heart. +The little pony of Jim's giving was dear. She thought of his soft eyes +and snuggling nose almost as often and as fondly as a lover thinks of the +face of his lady. + +"Tuck's splendid, Mr. Thatcher," she said, leaning her elbows on the bar +and cupping her chin in her hands. Her face was bright with its tender, +Puckish look. "He's too cute. He can take sugar out of my apron pocket. +And he'll shake hands. I'd just love you to see him. Will you be here +to-morrow afternoon?" + +"No, ma'am. I'm pullin' out about sunup. Round the time you tumble into +bed. Got to make The Hill." + +"How's your baby?" + +A shining smile rewarded her interest in the recent invalid. "Fine and +dandy. You ought to see her walk!" + +"Isn't that splendid! And how's the little boy? Is he with you?" + +"No, ma'am. I kind o' left him to mind the ranch. He's gettin' to be a +real rancher, that boy. He was sure sorry not to make Hidden Creek this +trip, though. Say, he was set on seein' you. I told him about you." + +Sheila's face flamed and her eyes smarted. Gratitude and shame possessed +her. This man, then, did not speak of her as "Hudson's Queen"--not if he +told his boy about her. She turned away to hide the flame and smart. When +she looked back, Sylvester himself stood at Thatcher's elbow. He very +rarely came into the saloon. At sight of him Sheila's heart leaped as +though it had been struck. + +"Say, Sheila," he murmured, "I'm celebratin' to-night." + +She tried to dismiss from her mind its new and ugly consciousness. She +tried to smile. The result was an expression strange enough. + +Sylvester, however, missed it. He was dressed in one of the brown +checked suits, a new one, freshly creased; there was a red wild-rose bud +in his buttonhole. The emerald gleamed on his well-kept, sallow hand. He +was sipping from his glass and had put a confidential hand on Thatcher's +shoulder. He grinned at Carthy. + +"Well, sir," he said, "nobody has in-quired as to my celebration. But I'm +not proud. I'll tell you. I'm celebratin' to-night the winnin' of a bet." + +"That's sure a deservin' cause," said Thatcher. + +"Yes, sir. Had a bet with Carthy here. Look at him blush! Carthy sure-ly +hates to be wrong. And he's mostly right in his prog-nos-ti-cations. He +sure is. You bet yer. That's why I'm so festive." + +"What'd he prognosticate?" asked Thatcher obligingly. He had moved his +shoulder away from Hudson's hand. + +Sylvester wrinkled his upper lip into its smile and looked down into his +glass. He turned his emerald. + +"Carthy prophesied that about this time a little--er--dream--of mine +would go bust," said Hudson. He lifted up his eyes pensively to Sheila, +first his eyes and then his glass. "Here's to my dream--you, girl," he +said softly. + +He drank with his eyes upon her face, drew a deep breath, and looked +about the room. + +Thatcher glanced from him to Sheila. "Goodnight to you, ma'am," he said +with gentleness. "Next time I'll bring the boy." + +"Please, please do." + +Sheila put her hand in his. He looked down at it as though something had +startled him. In fact, her touch was like a flake of snow. + +When Thatcher had gone, Sylvester leaned closer to her across the bar. He +moved his glass around in his hand and looked up at her humbly. + +"The tables kind of turned, eh?" he said. + +"What do you mean, Mr. Hudson?" Sheila, by lifting her voice, tried to +dissipate the atmosphere of confidence, of secrecy. Carthy had moved away +from them, the other occupants of the saloon were very apparently not +listening. + +"Well, ma'am," Sylvester explained, "six months ago I was kind of layin' +claim to gratitude from you, and now it's the other way round." + +"Yes," she said. "But I am still grateful." The words came, however, with +a certain unwillingness, a certain lack of spontaneity. + +"Are you, though?" He put his head on one side so that Sheila was +reminded of Dickie. For the first time a sort of shadowy resemblance +between father and son was apparent to her. "Well, you've wiped the +reckonin' off the slate by what you've done for me. You've given me my +Aura. Say, you have been my fairy godmother, all right. Talk about wishes +comin' true!" + +Again he looked about the room, and that wistfulness of the visionary +stole into his face. His eyes came back to her with an expression that +was almost beautiful. "If only that Englishman was here," he sighed. "Yes +ma'am. I'm sure celebratin' to-night!" + +It was soon very apparent that he was celebrating. For an hour he stood +every newcomer to a drink, and then he withdrew to a table in a shadowy +corner, and sitting there, tilted against the wall, he sipped from his +glass, smoked and dreamed. Hour after hour of the slow, noisy night went +by and still he sat there, watching Sheila through the smoke, seeing in +her, more and more glowingly, the body of his dream. + +It was after dawn when Sheila touched Carthy's elbow. The big Irishman +looked down at her small, drawn face. + +"Mr. Carthy," she whispered, "would it be all right if I went home now? +It's earlier than usual, but I'm so--awfully tired?" + +There was so urgent an air of secrecy in her manner that Carthy +muttered his permission out of the corner of his mouth. Sheila melted +from his side. + +The alley that had been silvery cool with dusk was now even more silvery +cool with morning twilight. Small sunrise clouds were winging over it +like golden doves. Sheila did not look at them. She ran breathless to her +door, opened it, and found herself face to face with Dickie. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE LIGHT OF DAWN + + +There was a light of dawn in the room and through the open window blew in +the keen air of daybreak. Dickie was standing quite still in the middle +of the floor. He was more neat and groomed than Sheila had ever seen him. +He looked as though he had stepped from a bath; his hair was sleek and +wet so that it was dark above the pure pallor of his face; his suit was +carefully put on; his cuffs and collar were clean. He did not have the +look of a man that has been awake all night, nor did he look as though he +had ever been asleep. His face and eyes were alight, his lips firm and +delicate with feeling. + +Before him Sheila felt old and stained. The smoke and fumes of the bar +hung about her. She was shamed by the fresh youthfulness of his slender, +eager carriage and of his eyes. + +"Dickie," she faltered, and stood against the door, drooping wearily, +"what are you doing here at this hour?" + +"What does the hour matter?" he asked impatiently. "Come over to the +window. I want you to look at this big star. I've been watching it. It's +almost gone. It's like a white bird flying straight into the sun." + +He was imperative, laid his cool hand upon hers and drew her to the +window. They stood facing the sunrise. + +"Why did you come here?" again asked Sheila. The beauty of the sky only +deepened her misery and shame. + +"Because I couldn't wait any longer than one night. It's sure been an +awful long night for me, Sheila ... Sheila--" He drew the hand he still +held close to him with a trembling touch and laid his other hand over it. +Then she felt the terrible beating of his heart, felt that he was +shaking. "Sheila, I love you." She had hidden her face against the +curtain, had turned from him. She felt nothing but weariness and shame. +She was like a leaden weight tied coldly to his throbbing youth. Her hand +under his was hot and lifeless like a scorched rose. "I want you to come +away with me from Millings. You can't keep on a-working in that saloon. +You can't a-bear to have folks saying and thinking the fool things they +do. And I can't a-bear it even if you can. I'd go loco, and kill. Sheila, +I've been thinking all night, just sitting on the edge of my bed and +thinking. Sheila, if you will marry me, I will promise you to take care +of you. I won't let you suffer any. I will die"--his voice rocked on the +word, spoken with an awful sincerity of young love--"before I let you +suffer any. If you could love me a little bit"--he stopped as though that +leaping heart had sprung up into his throat--"only a little bit, +Sheila," he whispered, "maybe--?" + +"I can't," she said. "I can't love you that way even a little bit. I +can't marry you, Dickie. I wish I could. I am so tired." + +She drew her hand away, or rather it fell from the slackening grasp of +his, and hung at her side. She looked up from the curtain to his face. It +was still alight and tender and pale. + +"You're real sure, Sheila, that you _never_ could?--that you'd rather go +on with this--?" + +She pressed all the curves and the color out of her lips, still looking +at him, and nodded her head. + +"I can't stay in Millings," Dickie said, "and work in Poppa's hotel and +watch this, Sheila--unless, some way, I can help you." + +"Then you'd better go," she said lifelessly, "because I can't see what +else there is for me to do. Oh, I shan't go on with it for very long, +of course--" + +He came an eager half-step nearer. "Then, anyway, you'll let me go away +and work, and when I've kind of got a start, you'll let me come back +and--and see if--if you feel any sort of--different from what you do now? +It wouldn't be so awful long. I'd work like--like Hell!" His thin hand +shot into a fist. + +Sheila's lassitude was startled by his word into a faint, unwilling +smile. + +"Don't laugh at me!" he cried out. + +"Oh, Dickie, my dear, I'm not laughing. I'm so tired I can hardly stand. +And truly you must go now. I'm horrid to you. I always am. And yet I do +like you so much. And you are such a dear. And I feel there's something +great about you. I should be glad for you to leave Millings. There is a +much better chance for you away from Millings. I feel years old to-day. I +think I've grown up too old all at once and missed lovely things that I +ought to have had. Dickie"--she gave a dry sort of sob--"_you_ are one of +the lovely things." + +His arms drew gently round her. "Let me kiss you, Sheila," he pleaded +with tremulous lips. "I want just to kiss you once for good-bye. I'll be +so careful. If you knowed how I feel, you'd let me." + +She lifted up her mouth like an obedient child. Then, back of Dickie, she +saw Sylvester's face. + +It was more sallow than usual; its upper lip was drawn away from the +teeth and deeply wrinkled; the eyes, half-closed, were very soft; they +looked as though there was a veil across their pensiveness. He caught +Dickie's elbow in his hand, twisted him about, thrusting a knee into his +back, and with his other long, bony hand he struck him brutally across +the face. The emerald on his finger caught the light of the rising sun +and flashed like a little stream of green fire. + +Dickie, caught unawares by superior strength, was utterly defenseless. He +writhed and struggled vainly, gasping under the blows. Sylvester forced +him across the room, still inflicting punishment. His hand made a great +cracking sound at every slap. + +Sheila hid her face from the dreadful sight. "Oh, don't, don't, don't!" +she wailed again and again. + +Then it was over. Dickie was flung out; the door was locked against him +and Sylvester came back across the floor. + +His collar stood up in a half-moon back of his ears, his hair fell across +his forehead, his face was flushed, his lip bled. He had either bitten it +himself or Dickie had struck it. But he seemed quite calm, only a little +breathless. He was neither snarling nor smiling now. He took Sheila very +gently by the wrists, drawing her hands down from her face, and he put +her arms at their full length behind her, holding them there. + +"You meet Dickie here when you're through work, dream-girl," he said +gently. "You kiss Dickie when you leave my Aura, you little beacon light. +I've kept my hands off you and my lips off you and my mind off you, +because I thought you were too fine and good for anything but my ideal. +And all this while you've been sneaking up here to Dickie and Jim and +Lord knows who else besides. Now, I am agoin' to kiss you and then you +gotta get out of Millings. Do you hear? After I've kissed you, you ain't +good enough for my purpose--not for mine." + +Gathering both her hands in one of his, he put the hard, long fingers of +his free hand back of her head, holding it from wincing or turning and +his mouth dropped upon hers and seemed to smother out her life. She +tasted whiskey and the blood from his cut lips. + +"You won't tell _me_, anyway, that lie again," he panted, keeping his +face close, staring into her wide eyes of a horrified childishness--"that +you've never been kissed." + +Again his lips fastened on her mouth. He let her go, strode to the door, +unlocked it, and went out. + +She had fallen to the floor, her head against the chair. She beat the +chair with her hands, calling softly for her father and for her God. She +reproached them both. "You told me it was a good old world," she sobbed. +"You told me it was a good old world." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +FLAMES + + +A hot, dry day followed on the cool dawn. In his room Dickie lay across +his bed. The sun blazed in at his single long window; the big flies that +had risen from the dirty yard buzzed and bumped against the upper pane +and made aimless, endless, mazy circles above and below one another in +the stifling, odorous atmosphere. Dickie lay there like an image of +Icarus, an eternal symbol of defeated youth; one could almost see about +his slenderness the trailing, shattered wings. He had wept out the first +shock of his anger and his shame; now he lay in a despairing stupor. His +bruised face burned and ached; his chest felt tight with the aching and +burning of his heart. Any suspicion of his father's interpretation of his +presence in Sheila's room was mercifully spared him, but the knowledge +that he had been brutally jerked back from her pure and patient lips, had +been ignominiously punished before her eyes and turned out like a whipped +boy--this knowledge was a dreadful torture to his pride. Sheila, to be +sure, did not love him even a little bit; she had said so. All the +longing and the tumult of his heart during these months had made no more +impression upon her than a frantic sea makes upon the little bird at the +top of the cliff. She had, he must think, hardly been aware of it. And +it was such a terrible and frantic actuality. He had fancied that it must +have beaten forever, day by day, night by night, at her consciousness. +Can a woman live near so turbulent a thing and not even guess at its +existence? Her hand against his heart had lain so limp and dead. He +hadn't hoped, of course, that she loved him the way he loved. Probably no +one else could feel what he felt and live--so Dickie in young love's +eternal fashion believed in his own miracle; but she might have loved him +a little, a very little, in time--if she hadn't seen him beaten and +shamed and cuffed out of her presence like a dog. Now there was no hope. +No hope at all. No hope. Dickie rocked his head against his arm. He had +told Sheila that he would take care of her, but he could not even defend +himself. He had told her that he would die to save her any suffering, +but, before her, he had writhed and gasped helplessly under the weight of +another man's hand, his open hand, not even a fist.... No after act of +his could efface from Sheila's memory that picture of his ignominy. She +had seen him twisted and bent and beaten and thrown away. His father had +triumphantly returned to reassure and comfort her for the insult of a +boy's impertinence. Would Sheila defend him? Would she understand? Or +would she not be justified in contemptuous laughter at his pretensions? + +Such thoughts--less like thoughts, however, than like fiery fever +fits--twisted and scorched Dickie's mind as he lay there. They burnt into +him wounds that for years throbbed slowly into scars. + +At noon the heat of his room became even more intolerable than his +thoughts. His head beat with pain. He was bathed in sweat, weak and +trembling. He dragged himself up, went to his washstand, and dipped his +wincing face into the warmish, stale water. His lips felt cracked and dry +and swollen. In the wavy mirror he saw a distorted image of his face, +with its heavy eyes, scattered hair, and the darkening marks of his +father's blows, punctuated by the scarlet scratches of the emerald. He +dried his face, loosened his collar, and, gasping for air, came out into +the narrow hall. + +The hotel was very still. He hurried through it, his face bent, and went +by the back way to the saloon. At this hour Sheila was asleep. Carthy +would be alone in The Aura and there would be few, if any, customers. +Dickie found the place cool and quiet and empty, shuttered from the sun, +the air stirred by electric fans. Carthy dozed in his chair behind the +bar. He gave Dickie his order, somnambulantly. Dickie took it off to a +dim corner and drank with the thirst of a wounded beast. + +Three or four hours later he staggered back to his room. A thunderstorm +was rumbling and flashing down from the mountains to the north. The +window was purple-black, and a storm wind blew the dirty curtains, +straight and steady, into the room. The cool wind tasted and smelt of hot +dust. Dickie felt his dazed way to the bed and steadied himself into a +sitting posture. With infinite difficulty he rolled and lighted a +cigarette, drew at it, took it out, tried to put it again between his +lips, and fell over on his back, his arm trailing over the edge of the +bed. The lighted cigarette slipped from his fingers to the ragged strip +of matting. Dickie lay there, breathing heavily and regularly in a +drunken and exhausted sleep. + +A vivid, flickering pain in his arm woke him. He thought for an instant +that he must have died and dropped straight into Hell. The wind still +blew in upon him, but it blew fire against him. Above him there was a +heavy panoply of smoke. His bedclothes were burning, his sleeve was on +fire. The boards of his floor cracked and snapped in regiments of flame. +He got up, still in a half stupor, plunged his arm into the water +pitcher, saw, with a startled oath, that the woodwork about his door was +blazing in long tongues of fire which leaped up into the rafters of the +roof. His brain began to telegraph its messages ... the hotel was on +fire. He could not imagine what had started it. He remembered Sheila. + +He ran along the passage, the roar of that wind-driven fire following +him as the draft from his window through his opened door gave a sudden +impulse to the flames, and he came to Sheila's sitting-room. He +knocked, had no answer, and burst in. He saw instantly that she had +gone. Her father's picture had been taken, her little books, her +sketches, her work-basket, her small yellow vase. Things were scattered +about. As he stood staring, a billow of black smoke rolled into the +room. He went quickly through the bedroom and the bath, calling +"Sheila" in a low, uncertain voice, returned to the sitting-room to +find the air already pungent and hot. There was a paper pinned up on +the mantel. Sheila's writing marched across it. Dickie rubbed the smoke +from his eyes and read: + +"I am going away from Millings. And I am not coming back. Amelia may have +the things I have left. I don't want them." + +This statement was addressed to no one. + +"She has gone to New York," thought Dickie. His confused mind became +possessed with the immediate purpose of following her. There was an +Eastern train in the late afternoon. Only he must have money and it +was--most of it--in his room. He dashed back. The passage was ablaze; his +room roared like the very heart of a furnace. It was no use to think of +getting in there. Well, he had something in his pocket, enough to start +him. He plunged, choking, into Sheila's sitting-room again. For some +reason this flight of hers had brought back his hope. There was to be a +beginning, a fresh start, a chance. + +He went over to the chair where Sheila had sat in the comfort, of his +arms and he touched the piece of tapestry on its back. That was his +good-bye to Millings. Then he fastened his collar, smoothed his hair, +standing close before Sheila's mirror, peering and blinking through the +smoke, and buttoned his coat painstakingly. There would be a hat +downstairs. As he turned to go he saw a little brown leather book lying +on the floor below the mantel. He picked it up. Here was something he +could take to Sheila. With an impulse of tenderness he opened it. His +eyes were caught by a stanza-- + +"The blessed damozel leaned out +From the gold bar of Heaven; +Her eyes were deeper than the depth +Of waters stilled at even; +She had three lilies in her hand, +And the stars in her hair were seven--" + +There are people, no doubt, who will not be able to believe this truthful +bit of Dickie's history. The smoke was drifting across him, the roar of +the nearing fire was in his ears, he was at a great crisis in his +affairs, his heart was hot with wounded love, and his brain hot with +whiskey and with hope. Nevertheless, he did now, under the spell of those +printed words, which did not even remotely resemble any words that he had +ever read or heard before, forget the smoke, the roar, the love, the +hope, and, standing below Sheila's mirror, he did read "The Blessed +Damozel" from end to end. And the love of those lovers, divided by all +the space between the shaken worlds, and the beauty of her tears made a +great and mystic silence of rapture about him. "O God!" Dickie said +twice as he read. He brushed away the smoke to see the last lines,--"And +wept--I heard her tears." The ecstatic pain of beauty gripped him to the +forgetfulness of all other pain or ecstasy. "O God!" + +He came to with a start, shut the book, stuck it into his pocket, and, +crooking his arm over his smarting eyes, he plunged out of the room. +Millings had become aware of its disaster. Dickie, fleeing by the back +way, leaping dangers and beating through fire, knew by the distant +commotion that the Fire Brigade, of which he was a member, was gathering +its men for the glory of their name. He saw, too, that with a wind like +this to aid the fire, there wasn't a chance for The Aura, and a queer +pang of sympathy for his father stabbed him. "It will kill Pap," thought +Dickie. Save for this pang, he ran along the road toward the station with +a light, adventurous heart. He did not know that he had started the fire +himself. The stupor of his sleep had smothered out all memory of the +cigarette he had lighted and let fall. Unwittingly Dickie had killed the +beauty of his father's dream, and now, just as unwittingly, he was about +to kill the object of his father's passion. When he looked back from the +station platform, the roof of The Aura was already in a blaze. + + + + +PART TWO + +THE STARS + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE HILL + + +Thatcher spoke to his horses, now fatherly, now masterly, now with a +professorial sarcasm: "Come on, Monkey, there's a good girl! Get out of +that, you Fox! Dern you! You call that pulling? It's my notion of layin' +off for the day." Even at its most urgent, his voice was soft, hushed by +the great loneliness of this canon up which he slowly crept. Monkey and +Fox had been plodding, foot by foot, the creaking wagon at their heels, +since dawn. It was now ten o'clock and they were just beginning to climb. +The Hill, that looked so near to the mesa above Hudson's yard, still +stood aloof. It had towered there ahead of them as they jerked and toiled +across the interminable flat in their accompanying cloud of dust. The +great circle of the world had dwarfed them to a bitter insignificance: a +team of crickets, they seemed, driven by a gnome. The hushed tone of +Thatcher's voice made unconscious tribute to this immensity. + +As they came to the opening of the canon, the high mountain-top +disappeared; the immediate foothills closed down and shut it out. The air +grew headily light. Even under the blazing July sun, it came cool to the +lungs, cool and intensely sweet. Thousands of wild flowers perfumed it +and the sun-drawn resin of a thousand firs. All the while the rushing of +water accompanied the creaking of Thatcher's progress. Not far from the +road, down there below in a tangle of pine branches, willows, and ferns, +the frost-white stream fled toward the valley with all the seeming terror +of escape. Here the team began their tugging and their panting and their +long pauses to get breath. Thatcher would push forward the wooden handle +that moved his brake, and at the sound and the grating of the wheel the +horses would stop automatically and stand with heaving sides. The wagon +shook slightly with their breathing. At such times the stream seemed to +shout in the stillness. Below, there began to be an extraordinary view of +the golden country with its orange mesas and its dark, purple rim of +mountains. Millings was a tiny circle of square pebbles, something built +up by children in their play. The awful impersonalities of sky and earth +swept away its small human importance. Thatcher's larkspur-colored eyes +absorbed serenity. They had drawn their color and their far-sighted +clearness from such long contemplations of distant horizon lines. + +Now and again, however, Thatcher would glance back and down from his high +seat at his load. It consisted, for the most part, of boxes of canned +goods, but near the front there was a sort of nest, made from bags of +Indian meal. In the middle of the nest lay another bundle of slim, +irregular outline. It was covered with a thin blanket and a piece of +sacking protected it from the sun. A large, clumsy parcel lay beside it. +Each time Thatcher looked at this portion of his load he pulled more +anxiously at his mustache. At last, when the noon sun stood straight +above the pass and he stopped to water his horses at a trough which +caught a trickle of spring water, he bent down and softly raised the +piece of sacking, suspended like a tent from one fat sack to another +above the object of his uneasiness. There, in the complete relaxation of +exhausted sleep, lay Sheila, no child more limp and innocent of aspect; +her hair damp and ringed on her smooth forehead, her lips mournful and +sweet, sedately closed, her expression at once proud and innocent and +wistful, as is the sleeping face of a little, little girl. There was that +look of a broken flower, that look of lovely death, that stops the heart +of a mother sometimes when she bends over a crib and sees damp curls in a +halo about a strange, familiar face. + +Thatcher, looking at Sheila, had some of these thoughts. A teamster is +either philosopher or clown. One cannot move, day after day, all day for +a thousand days, under a changeless, changeful sky, inch by inch, across +the surface of a changeless, changeful earth and not come very near to +some of the locked doors of the temple where clowns sleep and wise men +meditate. And Thatcher was a father, one of the wise and reasonable +fathers of the West, whose seven-year-old sons are friends and helpmates +and toward whom six-year-old daughters are moved to little acts of +motherliness. + +The sun blazed for a minute on Sheila's face. She opened her eyes, looked +vaguely from some immense distance at Thatcher, and then sat up. + +"Oh, gracious!" said Sheila, woman and sprite and adventurer again. +"Where the dickens is my hat? Did it fall out?" + +"No, ma'am," Thatcher smiled in a relieved fashion. "I put it under +the seat." + +Sheila scrambled to a perch on one of the sacks and faced the surface of +half a world. + +"Oh, Mr. Thatcher, isn't it too wonderful! How high are we? Is this the +other side? Oh, no, I can see Millings. Poor tiny, tiny Millings! It _is_ +small, isn't it? How very small it is! What air!" She shut her eyes, +drawing in the perfumed tonic. The altitude had intoxicated her. Her +heart was beating fast, her blood tingling, her brain electrified. Every +sense seemed to be sharpened. She saw and smelt and heard with abnormal +vividness. + +"The flowers are awfully bright up here, aren't they?" she said. "What's +that coral-colored bushy one?" + +"Indian paint-brush." + +"And that blue one? It _is_ blue! I don't believe I ever knew what +blueness meant before." + +"Lupine. And over yonder's monkshead. That other's larkspur, that +poisons cattle in the spring. On the other side you'll see a whole lot +more--wild hollyhock and fireweed and columbine--well, say, I learned all +them names from a dude I drove over one summer." + +"And such a sky!" said Sheila, lifting her head, "and such big pines!" +She lost herself for a minute in the azure immensity above. A vast mosque +of cloud, dome bubbles great and small, stood ahead of them, dwarfing +every human experience of height. "Mr. Thatcher, there isn't any air up +here. What is it we're trying to breathe, anyway?" + +He smiled patiently, sympathetically, and handed her a tin mug of icy +water from the little trickling spring. The bruise of Hudson's kiss ached +at the cold touch of the water and a shadow fell over her excitement. She +thanked the driver gravely. + +"What time is it now?" she asked. + +"Past noon. Better eat your sandwich." + +She took one from its wrapping pensively, but ate it with absent-minded +eagerness. Thatcher's blue eyes twinkled. + +"Seems like I recollect a lady that didn't want no food to be put +in for her." + +"I remember her, too," said Sheila, between bites, "but very, very +vaguely." + +She stood up after a third sandwich, shook crumbs from her skirt, and +stretched her arms. "What a great sleep I've had! Since six o'clock!" +She stared down at the lower world. "I've left somebody at Millings." + +"Who's that?" asked Thatcher, drawling the words a trifle as a Westerner +does when he is conscious of a double meaning. + +"Me." + +Thatcher laughed. "You're a real funny girl, Miss Arundel," he said. + +"Yes, I left one Me when I decided to go into the saloon, and now I've +left another Me. I believe people shed their skins like snakes." + +"Yes'm, I've had that notion myself. But as you get older, your skin kind +of peels off easy and gradual--you don't get them shocks when you sort of +come out all new and shiny and admirin' of yourself." + +Sheila blushed faintly and looked at him. His face was serene and empty +of intention. But she felt that she had been guilty of egotism, as indeed +she had. She asked rather meekly for her hat, and having put it on like a +shadow above her fairness, she climbed up to Thatcher's side on the +driver's seat. The hat was her felt Stetson, and, for the rest, she was +clad in her riding-clothes, the boy's shirt, the short corduroy skirt, +the high-laced boots. Her youthfulness, rather than her strange beauty, +was accentuated by this dress. She had the look of a super-delicate boy, +a sort of rose-leaf fairy prince. + +"Are we on the road?" asked Sheila presently. + +Thatcher gave way to mirth. "Don't it seem like a road to you?" + +She lurched against him, then saved herself from falling out at the other +side by a frantic clutch. + +"Is it a road?" She looked down a dizzy slope of which the horse's +foothold seemed to her the most precarious part. + +"Yes'm--all the road there is. We call it that. We're kind of po-lite to +these little efforts of the Government--kind of want to encourage 'em. +Congressmen kind of needs coaxin' and flat'ry. They're right ornery +critters. I heard an argyment atween a feller with a hoss and a feller +with a mule onct. The mule feller was kind of uppish about hosses; said +he didn't see the advantage of the critter. A mule now was steady and +easy fed and strong. Well, ma'am, the hoss feller got kind of hot after +some of this, so he says, 'Well, sir,' he says, 'there's this about it. +When you got a hoss, you got a hoss. You know what you got. He's goin' to +act like a hoss. But when you got a mule, why, you can't never tell. All +of a sudden one of these days, he's like as not to turn into a +Congressman.' Well, ma'am, that's the way we feel about Congressmen.--Ho, +there, Monkey! Keep up! I'll just get out an' hang on the wheel while we +make this corner. That'll keep us from turnin' over, I reckon." + +Sheila sat and held on with both hands. Her eyes were wide and very +bright. She held her breath till Thatcher got in again, the corner +safely made. For the next creeping, lurching mile, Sheila found that +every muscle in her body had its use in keeping her on that seat. Then +they reached the snow and matters grew definitely worse. Here, half the +road was four feet of dirty, icy drift and half of abysmal mud. They +slipped from drift to mire with awful perils and rackings of the wagon +and painful struggles of the team. Sometimes the snow softened and let +the horses in up to their necks when Thatcher plied whip and tongue with +necessary cruelty. At last there came disaster. They were making one of +those heart-stopping turns. Sheila had got out and was adding her +mosquito weight to Thatcher's on the upper side, half-walking, +half-hanging to the wagon. The outer wheels were deep in mud, the inner +wheels hung clear. The horses strained--and slipped. + +"Let go!" shouted Thatcher. + +Sheila fell back into the snow, and the wagon turned quietly over and +began to slide down the slope. Thatcher sprang to his horses' heads. For +an instant it seemed that they would be dragged over the edge. Then the +wagon stopped, and Thatcher, grim and pale, unhitched his team. He swore +fluently under his breath during this entire operation. Afterwards, he +turned to the scarlet and astounded passenger and gave her one of his +shining smiles. + +"Well, ma'am," he said, beginning to roll a cigarette, "what do you +think of that?" + +"Whatever shall we do now?" asked Sheila. She had identified herself +utterly with this team, this load, this driver. She brushed the snow from +her skirt, climbed down from the drift to the edge of the mire by +Thatcher's elbow. The team stood with hanging heads, panting and +steaming, glad of the rest and the release. + +"Well, ma'am," said Thatcher, looking down at the loyal, anxious face +with a certain tenderness, "I'm agoin' to do one of two things. I'm +agoin' to lead my team over The Hill and come back with two more horses +and a hand to help me or I'm agoin' to set here and wait for the stage." + +"How long will it be before the stage comes?" + +"Matter of four or five hours." + +"Oh, dear! Then I can't possibly overtake my--my friend, Miss Blake!" + +"No, ma'am. But you can walk on a quarter-mile; take a rest at Duff's +place top of The Hill. I can pick you up when I come by; like as not I'll +spend the night at Duff's. By the time I get my load together it'll be +along dark--Hullo!" He interrupted himself, lifting his chin. "I hear +hosses now." + +They both listened. "No wagon," said Thatcher. + +Five minutes later, a slouching horseman, cigarette in mouth, shaggy +chaps on long legs, spurred and booted and decorated with a red +neck-scarf came picturesquely into view. His pony dug sturdy feet into +the steep roadside, avoiding the mud of the road itself. The man led two +other horses, saddled, but empty of riders. He stopped and between him +and Thatcher took place one of the immensely tranquil, meditative, and +deliberate conversations of the Far West. + +Sheila's quick, Celtic nerves tormented her. At last she broke in with an +inspiration. "Couldn't I hire one of your horses?" she asked, rising from +an overturned sack of which she had made a resting-place. + +The man looked down at her with grave, considerate eyes. + +"Why, yes, ma'am. I reckon you could," he said gently. "They're right +gentle ponies," he added. + +"Are they yours?" + +"One of 'em is. The other belongs to Kearney, dude-wrangler up the +valley. But, say, if you're goin' to Rusty you c'd leave my hoss at +Lander's and I c'd get him when I come along. I am stoppin' here to help +with the load. It would cost you nothin', lady. The hoss has got to go +over to Rusty and I'd be pleased to let you ride him. You're no weight." + +"How good of you!" said Sheila. "I'll take the best care of him I know +how to take. Could I find my way? How far is it?" + +"All downhill after a half-mile, lady. You c'd make Rusty afore dark. +It's a whole lot easier on hoofs than it is on wheels. You can't miss the +road on account of it bein' the only road there is. And Lander's is the +only one hotel in Rusty. You'd best stop the night there." + +He evidently wanted to ask her her destination, but his courtesy +forbade. + +Sheila volunteered, "I am going to Miss Blake's ranch up Hidden Creek." + +A sort of flash of surprise passed across the reserved, brown, young +face. "Yes, ma'am," he said with no expression. "Well, you better leave +the rest of your trip until to-morrow." + +He slipped from his horse with an effortless ripple, untied a tawny +little pony with a thick neck, a round body, and a mild, intelligent +face, and led him to Sheila who mounted from her sack. Thatcher carefully +adjusted the stirrups, a primitive process that involved the wearisome +lacing and unlacing of leather thongs. Sheila bade him a bright and +adventurous "Good-bye." thanked the unknown owner of the horse, and +started. The pony showed some unwillingness to leave his companions, +fretted and tossed his head, and made a few attempts at a right-about +face, but Sheila dug in her small spurred heels and spoke beguilingly. At +last he settled down to sober climbing. Sheila looked back and waved her +hand. The two tall, lean men were gazing after her. They took off their +hats and waved. She felt a warmth that was almost loving for their +gracefulness and gravity and kindness. Here was another breed of man than +that produced by Millings. A few minutes later she came to the top of The +Pass and looked down into Hidden Creek. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +ADVENTURE + + +Sheila stood and drew breath. The shadow of the high peak, in the lap of +which she stood, poured itself eastward across the warm, lush, narrow +land. This was different from the hard, dull gold and alkali dust of the +Millings country: here were silvery-green miles of range, and +purple-green miles of pine forest, and lovely lighter fringes and groves +of cottonwood and aspen trees. Here and there were little dots of +ranches, visible more by their vivid oat and alfalfa fields than by their +small log cabins. Down the valley the river flickered, lifted by its +brightness above the hollow that held it, till it seemed just hung there +like a string of jewels. Beyond it the land rose slowly in noble sweeps +to the opposite ranges, two chains that sloped across each other in a +glorious confusion of heads, round and soft as velvet against the blue +sky or blunt and broken with a thundery look of extinct craters. To the +north Sheila saw a further serenity of mountains, lying low and soft on +the horizon, of another and more wistful blue. Over it all was a sort of +magical haze, soft and brilliant as though the air were a melted +sapphire. There was still blessedness such as Sheila had never felt. She +was filled with a longing to ride on and on until her spirit should pass +into the wide, tranquil, glowing spirit of the lonely land. It seemed to +her that some forgotten medicine man sat cross-legged in a hollow of the +hills, blowing, from a great peace pipe, the blue smoke of peace down and +along the hollows and the canons and the level lengths of range. In the +mighty breast of the blower there was not even a memory of trouble, only +a noble savage serenity too deep for prayer. + +She rode for a long while--no sound but her pony's hoofs--her eyes lifted +across the valley until a sudden fragrance drew her attention earthwards. +She was going through an open glade of aspens and the ground was white +with columbine, enormous flowers snowy and crisp as though freshly +starched by fairy laundresses. With a cry of delight Sheila jumped off +her horse, tied him by his reins to a tree, and began gathering flowers +with all the eager concentration of a six-year-old. And, like all the +flower-gatherers of fable from Proserpina down, she found herself the +victim of disaster. When she came back to the road with a useless, +already perishing mass of white, the pony had disappeared. Her knot had +been unfaithful. Quietly that mild-nosed, pensive-eyed, round-bodied +animal had pulled himself free and tiptoed back to join his friends. + +Sheila hurried up the road toward the summit she had so recently crossed, +till the altitude forced her to stop with no breath in her body and a +pounding redness before her eyes. She stamped her feet with vexation. +She longed to cry. She remembered confusedly, but with a certain +satisfaction, some of the things Thatcher had said to his team. An entire +and sudden lenience toward the gentle art of swearing was born in her. +She threw her columbine angrily away. She had come so far on her journey +that she could never be able to get back to Thatcher nor even to Duff's +shanty before dark. And how far down still the valley lay with that +shadow widening and lengthening across it! + +Her sudden loneliness descended upon her with an almost audible rush. +Dusk at this height--dusk with a keen smell of glaciers and wind-stung +pines--dusk with the world nine thousand feet below; and about her this +falling-away of mountain-side, where the trees seemed to slant and the +very flowers to be outrun by a mysterious sort of flight of rebel earth +toward space! The great and heady height was informed with a presence +which if not hostile was terrifyingly ignorant of man. There was some one +not far away, she felt, just above there behind the rocky ridge, just +back there in the confusion of purplish darkness streaked by pine-tree +columns, just below in the thicket of the stream--some one to meet whose +look meant death. + +Her first instinct was to keep to the road. She walked on down toward +the valley very rapidly. But going down meant meeting darkness. She +began to be unreasonably afraid of the night. She was afflicted by an +old, old childish, immemorial dread of bears. In spite of the chill, +she was very warm, her tongue dry with rapid breathing of the thin air. +She was intolerably thirsty. The sound of water called to her in a +lisping, inhuman voice. She resisted till she was ashamed of her +cowardice, stepped furtively off the track, scrambled down a slope, +parted some branches, and found herself on a rock above a little +swirling pool. On the other side a man kneeling over the water lifted a +white and startled face. + +Through the eerie green twilight up into which the pool threw a shifty +leaden brightness, the two stared at each other for a moment. Then the +man rose to his feet and smiled. Sheila noticed that he had been bathing +a bloody wrist round which he was now wrapping clumsily a handkerchief. + +"Don't be frightened," he said in a rather uncertain voice; "I'm not near +so desperate as I look. Do you want a drink? Hand me down your cup if you +have one and I'll fill it for you." + +"I'm not afraid now," Sheila quavered, and drew a big breath. "But I +was startled for a minute. I haven't any cup. I--I suppose, in a +way--I 'm lost." + +He was peering at her now, and when she took off her hat and rubbed her +damp forehead with a weary, worried gesture, he gave a little +exclamation and swung himself across the stream by a branch, and up to +her side on the rock. + +"The barmaid!" he said. "And I was coming to see you!" + +Sheila laughed in the relieved surprise of recognition. "Why, you are the +cowboy--the one that fought so--so terribly. Have you been fighting +again? Your wrist is hurt. May I tie it up for you?" + +He held out his arm silently and she tied the handkerchief--a large, +clean, coarse one--neatly about it. What with weariness and the shock of +her fright, her fingers were not very steady. He looked down at her +during the operation with a contented expression. It seemed that the +moment was filled for him with satisfaction to a complete forgetfulness +of past or present annoyances. + +"This is a big piece of luck for me," he said. "But"--with a sudden +thundery change of countenance--"you're not going over to Hidden +Creek, are you?" + +"I'm trying to go there," said Sheila; "I've been trying ever since five +o'clock this morning. But I don't seem to be getting there very fast. I +wanted to make Rusty before dark. And my pony got away from me and went +back. I know he went back because I saw the marks of his feet and he +would have gone back. Wouldn't he? Do you think I could get to Rusty on +foot to-night?" + +"No, ma'am. I know you couldn't. You could make it easy on horseback, +though." He stared meditatively above her head and then said in a tone of +resignation: "I believe I better go back myself. I'll take you." + +She had finished her bandage. She looked up at him. "Go back? But you +must have just started from there a few hours ago." + +"Well, ma'am, I didn't come very direct. I kind of shifted round. But I +can go back straight. And I'd really rather. I think I'd better. It was +all foolishness my coming over. I can put you up back of me on my horse, +if you don't mind, and we'll get to Rusty before it's lit up. I'd rather. +You don't mind riding that way, do you? You see, if I put you up and +walked, it'd take lots more time." + +"I don't mind," said Sheila, but she said it rather proudly so that +Hilliard smiled. + +"Well, ma'am, we can try it, anyway. If you go back to the road, I'll get +my horse." + +He seemed to have hidden his horse in a density of trees a mile from the +road. Sheila waited till she thought she must have dreamed her meeting +with him. He came back, looking a trifle sheepish. + +"You see," he said, "I didn't come by the road, ma'am." + +The horse was a large, bony animal with a mean eye. + +"That isn't the pony you rode when you came to Millings," said Sheila. + +He bent to examine his saddle-girth. "No, ma'am," he said gently. "I've +been riding quite a variety of horse-flesh lately. I'll get on first if +you don't mind and give you a hand up. You put your foot on mine. The +horse will stand." + +Sheila obeyed, pressing her lips tight, for she was afraid. However, his +long, supple fingers closed over her wrist like steel and she got quickly +and easily to her perch and clung nervously to him. + +"That's right. Put your arms round tight. Are you all fixed?" + +"Y--yes." + +"And comfortable?" + +"Y--yes, I think so." + +"We're off, then." + +They started on a quick, steady walk down the road. Once, Cosme loosened +the six-shooter on his hip. He whistled incessantly through his teeth. +Except for this, they were both silent. + +"Were you coming to Millings?" asked Sheila at last. She was of the world +where silence has a certain oppressive significance. She was getting used +to her peculiar physical position and found she did not have to cling so +desperately. But in a social sense she was embarrassed. He was quite +impersonal about the situation, which made matters easier for her. Now +and then she suppressed a frantic impulse to giggle. + +"Yes, ma'am. To see you," he answered. "I never rightly thanked you." She +saw the back of his neck flush and she blushed too, remembering his +quickly diverted kiss which had left a smear of blood across her +fingers. That had happened only a few days before, but they were long +days. He too must have been well occupied. There was still a bruise on +his temple. "I--I wasn't quite right in the head after those fellows had +beat me up, and I kind of wanted to show you that I am something like a +gentleman." + +"Have you been in Hidden Creek?" + +"Yes, ma'am. I was thinking of prospecting around. I meant to homestead +over there. I like the country. But when it comes to settling down I get +kind of restless. And usually I get into a mix-up that changes my +intentions. So I'd about decided to go back down Arizona way and +work.--Where are you going to stay in Hidden Creek?" he asked. "Where's +your stuff?" + +"Mr. Thatcher has it in his wagon. I'm going to Miss Blake's ranch. She +invited me." + +"Miss Blake? You mean the lady that wears pants? You don't mean it! Well, +that's right amusing." He laughed. + +Sheila stirred angrily. "I can't see why it's amusing." + +He sobered at once. "Well, ma'am, maybe it isn't. No, I reckon it isn't. +How long will you stay?" + +Sheila gave a big, sobbing sigh. "I don't know. If she likes me and if +I'm happy, I'll stay there always." She added with a queer, dazed +realization of the truth: "I've nowhere else to go." + +"Haven't you any--folks?" he asked. + +"No." + +"Got tired of Millings?" + +"Yes--very." + +"I don't blame you! It's not much of a town. You'll like Hidden Creek. +And Miss Blake's ranch is a mighty pretty place, lonesome but wonderfully +pretty. Right on a bend of the creek, 'way up the valley, close under the +mountains. But can you stand loneliness, Miss--What _is_ your name?" + +There were curious breaks in his manner of a Western cowboy, breaks that +startled Sheila like little echoes from her life abroad and in the East. +There was a quickness of voice and manner, an impatience, a hot and +nervous something, and his voice and accent suggested training. The +abrupt question, for instance, was not in the least characteristic of a +Westerner. + +"My name is Sheila Arundel. I don't know yours either." + +"Do you come from the East?" + +"Yes. From New York." He gave an infinitesimal jerk. "But I've lived +abroad nearly all my life. I think it would be politer if you would +answer my question now." + +She felt that he controlled an anxious breath. "My name is Hilliard," he +said, and he pronounced the name with a queer bitter accent as though the +taste of it was unpleasant to his tongue. "Cosme Hilliard. Don't you +think it's a--_nice_ name?" + +For half a second she was silent; then she spoke with careful +unconsciousness. "Yes. Very nice and very unusual. Hilliard is an English +name, isn't it? Where did the Cosme come from?" + +It was well done, so well that she felt a certain tightening of his body +relax and his voice sounded fuller. "That's Spanish. I've some Spanish +blood. Here's Buffin's ranch. We're getting down." + +Sheila was remembering vividly; Sylvester had come into her compartment. +She could see the rolling Nebraskan country slipping by the window of the +train. She could see his sallow fingers folding the paper so that she +could conveniently read a paragraph. She remembered his gentle, pensive +speech. "Ain't it funny, though, those things happen in the slums and +they happen in the smart set, but they don't happen near so often to just +middling folks like you and me! Don't it sound like a Tenderloin tale, +though, South American wife and American husband and her getting jealous +and up and shooting him? Money sure makes love popular. Now, if it had +been poor folks, why, they'd have hardly missed a day's work, but just +because these Hilliards have got spondulix they'll run a paragraph about +'em in the papers for a month."--Sheila began to make comparisons: a +South American wife and an American husband, and here, this young man +with the Spanish-American name and the Spanish-Saxon physique, and a +voice that showed training and faltered over the pronouncing of the +"Hilliard" as though he expected it to be too well remembered. Had there +been some mention in the paper of a son?--a son in the West?--a son under +a cloud of some sort? But--she checked her spinning of romance--this +youth was too genuine a cowboy, the way he rode, the way he moved, held +himself, his phrases, his turn of speech! With all that wealth behind him +how had he been allowed to grow up like this? No, her notion was +unreasonable, almost impossible. Although dismissed, it hung about her +mental presentment of him, however, like a rather baleful aura, not +without fascination to a seventeen-year-old imagination. So busy was she +with her fabrications that several miles of road slipped by unnoticed. +There came a strange confusion in her thoughts. It seemed to her that she +was arguing the Hilliard case with some one. Then with a horrible start +she saw that the face of her opponent was Sylvester's and she pushed it +violently away.... + +"Don't you go to sleep," said Hilliard softly, laughing a little. "You +might fall off." + +"I--I was asleep," Sheila confessed, in confusion at discovering that her +head had dropped against him. "How dark it's getting! We're in the +valley, aren't we?" + +"Yes, ma'am, we're most there." He hesitated. "Miss Arundel, I think I'd +best let you get down just before we get to Rusty." + +"Get down? Why?" + +He cleared his throat, half-turning to her. In the dusky twilight, that +was now very nearly darkness, his face was troubled and ashamed, like the +face of a boy who tries to make little of a scrape. "Well, ma'am, +yesterday, the folks in Rusty kind of lost their heads. They had a bad +case of Sherlock Holmes. I bought a horse up the valley from a chap who +was all-fired anxious to sell him, and before I knew it I was playing the +title part in a man-hunt. It seems that I was riding one of a string this +chap had rustled from several of the natives. They knew the horse and +that was enough for their nervous system. They had never set eyes on me +before and they wouldn't take my word for my blameless past. They told me +to keep my story for trial when they took me over to the court. Meanwhile +they gave me a free lodging in their pen. Miss Arundel--" Hilliard +dropped his ironic tone and spoke in a low, tense voice of child-like +horror. His face stiffened and paled. "That was awful. To be locked in. +Not to be able to get fresh breath in your lungs. Not to be able to go +where you please, when you please. I can't tell you what it's like ... I +can't stand it! I can't stand a minute of it! I was in that pen six +hours. I felt I'd go loco if I was there all night. I guess I am a kind +of fool. I broke jail early in the morning and caught up the sheriff's +horse. They got a shot or two at me, hit my wrist, but I made my getaway. +This horse is not much on looks, but he sure can get over the sagebrush. +I was coming over to see you." + +There was that in his voice when he said this that touched Sheila's +heart, profoundly. This restless, violent young adventurer, homeless, +foot-loose, without discipline or duty, had turned to her in his trouble +as instinctively as though she had been his mother. This, because she had +once served him. Something stirred in Sheila's heart. + +"And then," Hilliard went on, "I was going to get down to Arizona. But +when I heard you were coming over into Hidden Creek, it seemed like +foolishness to cut myself off from the country by running away from +nothing. Of course there are ways to prove my identity with those +fellows. It only means putting up with a few days of pen." He gave a +sigh. "But you can understand, ma'am, that this isn't just the horse that +will give you quietest entrance into Rusty and that I'm not just one of +the First Citizens." + +"But," said Sheila, "if they see you riding in with me, they certainly +won't shoot." + +He laughed admiringly. "You're game!" he said. "But, Miss Arundel, +they're not likely to do any more shooting. It's not a man riding into +Rusty that they're after. It's a man riding out of Rusty. They'll know +I'm coming to give myself up." + +"I'll just stay here," said Sheila firmly. + +"I can't let you." + +"I'm too tired to walk. I'm too sleepy. It'll be all right." + +"Then I'll walk." He pulled in his horse, but at the instant stiffened in +his saddle and wheeled about on the road. A rattle of galloping hoofs +struck the ground behind them; two riders wheeled and stopped. One drew +close and held out his hand. + +"Say, stranger, shake," he said. "We've been kickin' up the dust to beg +your pardon. We got the real rustler this mornin' shortly after you left. +I'm plumb disgusted and disheartened with young Tommins for losin' his +head an' shootin' off his gun. He's a dern fool, that kid, a regular +tenderfoot. Nothin' won't ever cure him short of growin' up. Come from +Chicago, anyway. One of them Eastern towns. I see he got you, too." + +"Winged me," smiled Hilliard. "Well, I'm right pleased I won't have to +spend another night in your pen." + +"You're entered for drinks. The sheriff stands 'em." Here he bowed to +Sheila, removing his hat. + +"This lady"--Hilliard performed the introduction--"lost her horse on The +Hill. She's aiming to stop at Rusty for to-night." + +The man who had spoken turned to his silent companion. "Ride ahead, +Shorty, why don't you?" he said indignantly, "and tell Mrs. Lander +there's a lady that'll want to sleep in Number Five." + +The other horseman, after a swift, searching look at Sheila, said +"Sure," in a very mild, almost cooing, voice and was off. It looked to +Sheila like a runaway. But the men showed no concern. + +They jogged companionably on their way. Fifteen minutes later they +crossed a bridge and pulled up before a picket fence and a gate. + +They were in Rusty. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +JOURNEY'S END + + +The social life of Rusty, already complicated by the necessity it was +under to atone for a mistake, was almost unbearably discomposed by the +arrival of a strange lady. This was no light matter, be it understood. +Hidden Creek was not a resort for ladies: and so signal an event as the +appearance of a lady, a young lady, a pretty young lady, demanded +considerable effort. But Rusty had five minutes for preparation. By the +time Hilliard rode up to Lander's gate a representative group of citizens +had gathered there. One contingent took charge of Hilliard--married men, +a little unwilling, and a few even more reluctant elders, and led him to +the bowl of reparation which was to wash away all memory of his wrongs. +The others, far the larger group, escorted Sheila up the twelve feet of +board walk to the porch of hospitality filled by the massive person of +Mrs. Lander. On that brief walk Sheila was fathered, brothered, +grandfathered, husbanded, and befriended and on the porch, all in the +person of Mrs. Lander, she was mothered, sistered, and grandmothered. Up +the stairs to Number Five she was "eased"--there is no other word to +express the process--and down again she was eased to supper, where in a +daze of fatigue she ate with surprising relish tough fried meat and +large wet potatoes, a bowl of raw canned tomatoes and a huge piece of +heavy-crusted preserved-peach pie. She also drank, with no effect upon +her drowsiness, an enormous thick cupful of strong coffee, slightly +tempered by canned milk. She sat at the foot of the long table, opposite +Mr. Lander, a fat, sly-looking man whose eyes twinkled with a look of +mysterious inner amusement, caused, probably, by astonishment at his own +respectability. He had behind him a career of unprecedented villainy, and +that he should end here at Rusty as the solid and well-considered keeper +of the roadhouse was, no doubt, a perpetual tickle to his consciousness. +Down either side of the table were silent and impressive figures busy +with their food. Courteous and quiet they were and beautifully +uninquiring, except in the matter of her supplies. The yellow lamplight +shone on brown bearded and brown clean-shaven faces, rugged and strong +and clean-cut. These bared throats and thickly thatched heads, these +faces, lighted by extraordinary, far-seeing brilliant, brooding eyes, +reminded Sheila of a master's painting of The Last Supper--so did their +coarse clothing melt into the gold-brown shadows of the room and so did +their hands and throats and faces pick themselves out in mellow lights +and darknesses. + +After the meal she dragged herself upstairs to Number Five, made scant +use of nicked basin, spoutless pitcher, and rough clean towel, blew out +her little shadeless lamp, and crept in under an immense, elephantine, +grateful weight of blankets and patchwork quilts, none too fresh, +probably, though the sheet blankets were evidently newly washed. Of +muslin sheeting there was none. The pillow was flat and musty. Sheila +cuddled into it as though it had been a mother's shoulder. That instant +she was asleep. Once in the night she woke. A dream waked her. It seemed +to her that a great white flower had blossomed in the window of her room +and that in the heart of it was Dickie's face, tender and as pale as a +petal. It drew near to her and bent over her wistfully. She held out her +arms with a piteous longing to comfort his wistfulness and woke. Her face +was wet with the mystery of dream tears. The flower dwindled to a small +white moon standing high in the upper pane of one of the uncurtained +windows. The room was full of eager mountain air. She could hear a +water-wheel turning with a soft splash in the stream below. There was no +other sound. The room smelt of snowy heights and brilliant stars. She +breathed deep and, quite as though she had breathed a narcotic, slept +suddenly again. This, before any memory of Hudson burned her +consciousness. + +The next morning she found that her journey had been carefully arranged. +Thatcher had come and gone. The responsibility for her further progress +had been shifted to the shoulders of a teamster, whose bearded face, +except for the immense humor and gallantry of his gray eyes, was +startlingly like one of Albrecht Duerer's apostles. Her bundle was in his +wagon, half of his front seat was cushioned for her. After breakfast she +was again escorted down the board walk to the gate. Mrs. Lander fastened +a huge bunch of sweet peas to her coat and kissed her cheek. Sheila bade +innumerable good-byes, expressed innumerable thanks. For Hilliard's +absence Rusty offered its apologies. They said that he had been much +entertained and, after the hurt he had suffered to his wrist, late sleep +was a necessity. Sheila understood. The bowl of reparation had been +emptied to its last atoning dregs. She mounted to the side of "Saint +Mark," she bowed and smiled, made promises, gave thanks again, and waved +herself out of Rusty at last. She had never felt so flattered and so +warmed at heart. + +"I'm agoin'," quoth Saint Mark, "right clost to Miss Blake's. If we don't +overtake her--and that hoss of hers sure travels wonderful fast, +somethin' wonderful, yes, ma'am, by God--excuse me, lady--it's sure +surprisin' the way that skinny little hoss of hers will travel--why, I +c'n take you acrost the ford. There ain't no way of gettin' into Miss +Blake's exceptin' by the ford. And then I c'n take my team back to the +road. From the ford it's a quarter-mile walk to Miss Blake's house. You +c'n cache your bundle and she'll likely get it for you in the mornin'. +We had ought to be there by sundown. Her trail from the ford's clear +enough. I'm a-takin' this lumber to the Gover'ment bridge forty mile up. +Yes, by God--excuse _me_, lady--it's agoin' to be jest a dandy bridge +until the river takes it out next spring, by God--you'll have to excuse +me again, lady." + +He seemed rather mournfully surprised by the frequent need for these +apologies. "It was my raisin', lady," he explained. "My father was a +Methody preacher. Yes'm, he sure was, by God, yes--excuse me again, lady. +He was always a-prayin'. It kinder got me into bad habits. Yes, ma'am. +Those words you learn when you're a kid they do stick in your mind. By +God, yes, they do--excuse _me_, lady. That's why I run away. I couldn't +stand so much prayin' all the time. And bein' licked when I wasn't bein' +prayed at. He sure licked me, that dern son of a--Oh, by God, lady, +you'll just hev to excuse me, please." He wiped his forehead. "I reckon I +better keep still." + +Sheila struggled, then gave way to mirth. Her companion, after a doubtful +look, relaxed into his wide, bearded smile. After that matters were on an +easy footing between them and the "excuse me, lady," was, for the most +part, left to her understanding. + +They drifted like a lurching vessel through the long crystal day. Never +before this journey into Hidden Creek had time meant anything to Sheila +but a series of incidents, occupations, or emotions; now first she +understood the Greek impersonation of the dancing hours. She had watched +the varying faces the day turns to those who fold their hands and still +their minds to watch its progress. She had seen the gradual heightening +of brilliance from dawn to noon, and then the fading-out from that high, +white-hot glare, through gold and rose and salmon and purple, to the ashy +lavenders of twilight and so into gray and the metallic, glittering +coldness of the mountain night. It was the purple hour when she said +good-bye to Saint Mark on the far side of a swift and perilous ford. She +was left standing in the shadow of a near-by mountain-side while he rode +away into the still golden expanse of valley beyond the leafy course of +the stream. Hidden Creek had narrowed and deepened. It ran past Sheila +now with a loud clapping and knocking at its cobbled bed and with an +over-current of noisy murmurs. The hurrying water was purple, with flecks +of lavender and gold. The trees on its banks were topped with emerald +fire where they caught the light of the sun. The trail to Miss Blake's +ranch ran along the river on the edge of a forest of pines. At this hour +they looked like a wall into which some magic permitted the wanderer to +walk interminably. Sheila was glad that she did not have to make use of +this wizard invitation. She "cached" her bundle, as Saint Mark had +advised, in a thicket near the stream and walked resolutely forward +along the trail. Not even when her pony had left her on The Hill had she +felt so desolate or so afraid. + +She could not understand why she was here on her way to the ranch of this +strange woman. She felt astonished by her loneliness, by her rashness, by +the dreadful lack in her life of all the usual protections. Was youth +meant so to venture itself? This was what young men had done since the +beginning of time. She thought of Hilliard. His life must have been just +such a series of disconnected experiments. Danger was in the very pattern +of such freedom. But she was a girl, _only_ a girl as the familiar phrase +expresses it--a seventeen-year-old girl. She was reminded of a pathetic +and familiar line, "A woman naturally born to fears ..." A wholesome +reaction to pride followed and, suddenly, an amusing memory of Miss +Blake, of her corduroy trousers stuffed into boots, of her broad, strong +body, her square face with its firm lips and masterful red-brown eyes; a +very heartening memory for such a moment. Here was a woman that had +adventured without fear and had quite evidently met with no disaster. + +Sheila came to a little tumbling tributary and crossed it on a log. On +the farther side the trail broadened, grew more distinct; through an +opening in tall, gray, misty cottonwoods she saw the corner of a log +house. At the same instant a dreadful tumult broke out. The sound sent +Sheila's blood in a slapping wave back upon her heart. All of her body +turned cold. She was fastened by stone feet to the ground. It was the +laughter of a mob of damned souls, an inhuman, despairing mockery of +God. It tore the quiet evening into shreds of fear. This house was a +madhouse holding revelry. No--of course, they were wolves, a pack of +wolves. Then, with a warmth of returning circulation, Sheila remembered +Miss Blake's dogs, the descendants of the wolf-dog that had littered on +the body of a dead man. Quarter-wolf, was it? These voices had no hint +of the homely barking of a watchdog, the friend of man's loneliness! But +Sheila braced her courage. Miss Blake made good use of her pack. They +pulled her sled, winters, in Hidden Creek. They must then be partly +civilized by service. If only--she smiled a desperate smile at the +uncertainty--they didn't tear her to pieces when she came out from the +shelter of the trees. There was very great courage in Sheila's short, +lonely march through the little grove of cottonwood trees. She was as +white as the mountain columbine. She walked slowly and held her head +high. She had taken up a stone for comfort. + +At the end of the trees she saw a house, a three-sided, one-storied +building of logs very pleasantly set in a circle of aspen trees, +backed by taller firs, toppling over which stood a great sharp crest +of rocky ledges, nine thousand feet high, edged with the fire of +sunset. At one side of the house eight big dogs were leaping at the +ends of their chains. They were tied to trees or to small kennels at +the foot of trees. And, God be thanked! Sheila let fall her +stone--they were _all_ tied. + +The door at the end of the nearest wing of the house opened and Miss +Blake stood on the threshold and held up her hands. At sight of her the +dogs stopped their howling instantly and cringed on their bellies or sat +yawning on their bushy haunches. Miss Blake's resonant, deep voice seemed +to pounce upon Sheila above the chatter of the stream which, running +about three sides of the glade, was now, at the silence of the dogs, +incessantly audible. + +"Well, if it isn't the little barmaid!" cried Miss Blake, and advanced, +wiping her hand on a white apron tied absurdly over the corduroy +trousers and cowboy boots. "Well, if you aren't as welcome as the +flowers in May! So you thought you'd leave the street-lamps and come +take a look at the stars?" + +They met and Sheila took the strong, square hand. She was afflicted by a +sudden dizziness. + +"That's it," she faltered; "this time I thought I'd try--the stars." + +With that she fell against Miss Blake and felt, just before she dropped +into blackness, that she had been saved by firm arms from falling to +the ground. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +BEASTS + + +The city rippled into light. It bloomed, blossom on blossom, like some +enchanted jungle under the heavy summer sky. Dickie sat on a bench in +Washington Square. He sat forward, his hands hanging between his knees, +his lips parted, and he watched the night. It seemed to him that it was +filled with the clamor of iron-throated beasts running to and fro after +their prey. The heat was a humid, solid, breathless weight--a heat +unknown to Millings. Dickie wore his threadbare blue serge suit. It felt +like a garment of lead. + +There were other people on the benches--limp and sodden outlines. Dickie +had glanced at them and had glanced away. He did not want to think that +he looked like one of these--half-crushed insects,--bruised into +immobility. A bus swept round the corner and moved with a sort of +topheavy, tipsy dignity under the white arch. It was loaded with +humanity, its top black with heads. "It ain't a crowd," thought Dickie; +"it's a swarm." His eyes followed the ragged sky-line. "Why is it so +horrible?" he asked himself--"horrible and beautiful and sort of +poisonous--it plumb scares a fellow--" A diminished moon, battered and +dim like a trodden silver coin, stood up above him. By tilting his head +he could look directly at it through an opening in the dusty, +electric-brightened boughs. The stars were pin-pricks here and there in +the dense sky. The city flaunted its easy splendor triumphantly before +their pallid insignificance. Tarnished purities, forgotten ecstasies, +burned-out inspirations--so the city shouted raucously to its faded +firmament. + +Dickie's fingers slid into his pocket. The moon had reminded him of his +one remaining dime. He might have bought a night's lodging with it, but +after one experience of such lodgings he preferred his present quarters. +In Dickie's mind there was no association of shame or ignominy with a +night spent under the sky. But fear and ignominy tainted and clung to +his memory of that other night. He had saved his dime deliberately, +going hungry rather than admit to himself that he was absolutely at the +end of his resources. To-morrow he would not especially need that dime. +He had a job. He would begin to draw pay. In his own phrasing he would +"buy him a square meal and rent him a room somewhere." Upon these two +prospects his brain fastened with a leech-like persistency. And yet +above anything he had faced in his life he dreaded the job and the room. +The inspiration of his flight, the impulse that had sped him out of +Millings like a fire-tipped arrow, that determination to find Sheila, to +rehabilitate himself in her esteem, to serve her, to make a fresh start, +had fallen from him like a dead flame. The arrow-flight was spent. He +had not found Sheila. He had no way of finding her. She was not at her +old address. Her father's friend, the Mr. Hazeldean that had brought +Sylvester to Marcus's studio, knew nothing of her. Mrs. Halligan, her +former landlady, knew nothing of her. Dickie, having summoned Mrs. +Halligan to her doorsill, had looked past her up the narrow, steep +staircase. "Did she live away up there?" he had asked. "Yes, sorr. And +'t was a climb for the poor little crayture, but there was days when +she'd come down it like a burrd to meet her Pa." Dickie had faltered, +white and empty-hearted, before the kindly Irishwoman who remembered so +vividly Sheila's downward, winged rush of welcome. For several hours +after his visit to the studio building he had wandered aimlessly about, +then his hunger had bitten at him and he had begun to look for work. It +was not difficult to find. A small restaurant displayed a need of +waiters. Dickie applied. He had often "helped out" in that capacity, as +in most others, at The Aura. He cited his experience, referred to Mr. +Hazeldean, and was engaged. The pay seemed to him sufficient to maintain +life. So much for that! Then he went to his bench and watched the day +pant itself into the night. His loneliness was a pitiful thing; his +utter lack of hope or inspiration was a terrible thing. + +But as the night went slowly by, he faced this desolation with +extraordinary fortitude. It was part of that curious detachment, that +strange gift of impersonal observation. Dickie bore no grudges against +life. His spirit had a fashion of standing away, tiptoe, on wings. It +stood so now like a presence above the miserable, half-starved body that +occupied the bench and suffered the sultriness of August and the pains of +abstinence. Dickie's wide eyes, that watched the city and found it +horrible and beautiful and frightening, were entirely empty of bitterness +and of self-pity. They had a sort of wistful patience. + +There came at last a cool little wind and under its ministration Dickie +let fall his head on his arms and slept. He was blessed by a dream: +shallow water clapping over a cobbled bed, the sharp rustle of wind-edged +aspen leaves, and two stars, tender and misty, that bent close and +smiled. He woke up and stared at the city. He got up and walked about. He +was faint now and felt chilled, although the asphalt was still soft +underfoot and smelled of hot tar. As he moved listlessly along the +pavement, a girl brushed against him, looked up, and murmured to him. She +was small and slight. His heart seemed to leap away from the contact and +then to leap almost irresistibly to meet it. He turned away and went back +quickly toward the Square. It seemed to him that he was followed. He +looked over his shoulder furtively. But the girl had disappeared and +there was no one in sight but a man who walked unsteadily. Dickie +suddenly knew why he had saved that dime. The energy of a definite +purpose came to him. He remembered a swinging door back there around a +corner, but when he reached the saloon, it was closed. Dickie had a +humiliating struggle with tears. He went back to his bench and sat there, +trembling and swearing softly to himself. He had not the strength to look +farther. He was no longer the Dickie of Millings, a creature possessed of +loneliness and vacancy and wandering fancies, he was no longer Sheila's +lover, he was a prey to strong desires. In truth, thought Dickie, seeking +even now with his deprecatory smile for likenesses and words, the city +was full of beasts, silent and stealthy and fanged. That spirit, aloof, +maintained its sweet detachment. Beneath its observation Dickie fought +with a grim, unreasoning panic that was very like the fear of a man +pursued by wolves. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +NEIGHBOR NEIGHBOR + + +Even in the shadow of after events, those first two months at Miss +Blake's ranch swam like a golden galleon through Sheila's memory. Never +had she felt such well-being of body, mind, and soul. Never had she known +such dawns and days, such dusks, such sapphire nights. Sleep came like a +highwayman to hold up an eager traveler, but came irresistibly. It caught +her up out of life as it catches up a healthy child. Never before had she +worked so heartily: out of doors in the vegetable garden; indoors in the +sunny kitchen, its windows and door open to the tonic air; never before +had she eaten so heartily. Nothing had tasted like the trout they caught +in Hidden Creek, like the juicy, sweet vegetables they picked from their +own laborious rows, like the berries they gathered in nervous +anticipation of that rival berryer, the brown bear. And Miss Blake's +casual treatment of her, half-bluff, half-mocking, her curt, good-humored +commands, her cordial bullying, were a rest to nerves more raveled than +Sheila knew from her experience in Millings. She grew rosy brown; her +hair seemed to sparkle along its crisp ripples; her little throat filled +itself out, round and firm; she walked with a spring and a swing; she +sang and whistled, no Mrs. Hudson near to scowl at her. Dish-washing was +not drudgery, cooking was a positive pleasure. Everything smelt so good. +She was always shutting her eyes to enjoy the smell of things, forgetting +to listen in order to taste thoroughly, forgetting to look in the delight +of listening to such musical silences, and forgetting even to breathe in +the rapture of sight ... Miss Blake and she put up preserves, and Sheila +had to invent jests to find some pretext for her laughter, so ridiculous +was the look of that broad square back, its hair short above the man's +flannel collar, and the apron-strings tied pertly above the very wide, +slightly worn corduroy breeches and the big boots. Sheila was always +thinking of a certain famous Puss of fairy-tale memory, and biting her +tongue to keep it from the epithet. After Hilliard gave her the black +horse and she began to explore the mountain game trails, her life seemed +as full of pleasantness as it could hold. And yet ... with just that gift +of Hilliard's, the overshadowing of her joy began. No, really before +that, with his first visit. + +That was in late September when the nights were frosty and Miss Blake had +begun to cut and stack her wood for winter, and to use it for a crackling +hearth-fire after supper. They were sitting before such a fire when +Hilliard came. + +Miss Blake sat man-fashion on the middle of her spine, her legs crossed, +a magazine in her hands, and on her blunt nose a pair of large, +black-rimmed spectacles. Her feet and hands and her cropped head, though +big for a woman's, looked absurdly small in comparison to the breadth of +her hips and shoulders. She was reading the "Popular Science Monthly." +This and the "Geographic" and "Current Events" were regularly taken by +her and most thoroughly digested. She read with keen intelligence; her +comments were as shrewd as a knife-edge. The chair she sat in was made +from elk-horns and looked like the throne of some Norse chieftain. Behind +her on the wall hung the stuffed head of a huge walrus, his tusks +gleaming, the gift of that exploring brother who seemed to be her only +living relative. There were other tokens of his wanderings, a polar-bear +skin, an ivory Eskimo spear. As a more homelike trophy Miss Blake had +hung an elk head which she herself had laid low, a very creditable shot, +though out of season. She had been short of meat. In the corner was a +pianola topped by piles of record-boxes. At her feet lay Berg, the dog, +snoring faintly and as cozy as a kitten. + +The firelight made Miss Blake's face and hair ruddier than usual; her +eyes, when she raised them for a glance at Sheila, looked as though they +were full of red sparks which might at any instant break into flame. +Sheila was wearing one of her flimsy little black frocks, recovered from +the wrinkles of its journey, and she had decorated her square-cut neck +with some yellow flowers. On these Miss Blake's eyes rested every now +and then with a sardonic gleam. + +Outside Hidden Creek told its interminable chattering tale, centuries +long, the little skinny horse cropped getting his difficult meal with +his few remaining teeth. They could hear the dogs move with a faint +rattle of chains. Sometimes there would be a distant rushing sound, a +snow-slide thousands of feet above their heads on the mountain. Above +these familiar sounds there came, at about eight o'clock that evening, +the rattle of horse's hoofs through the little stream and at the instant +broke out the hideous clamor of the dogs, a noise that never failed to +whiten Sheila's cheeks. + +Miss Blake sat up straight and snatched off her spectacles. She looked at +Sheila with a hard look. + +"Have you been sending out invitations, Sheila?" she asked. + +"No, of course not," Sheila had flushed. She could guess whose horse's +hoofs were trotting across the little clearing. + +A man's voice spoke to the dogs commandingly. Miss Blake's eyebrows came +down over her eyes. A man's step struck the porch. A man's knock rapped +sharply at the door. + +"Come in!" said Miss Blake. She spoke it like a sentry's challenge. + +The door opened and there stood Cosme Hilliard, hat in hand, his smiling +Latin mouth showing the big white Saxon teeth. + +Sheila had not before quite realized his good looks. Now, all his lithe, +long gracefulness was painted for her against a square of purple night. +The clean white silk shirt fitted his broad shoulders, the wide rider's +belt clung to his supple waist, the leather chaps were shaped to his +Greek hips and thighs. No civilized man's costume could so have revealed +and enhanced his beautiful strength. And above the long body his face +glowed with its vivid coloring, the liquid golden eyes that moved easily +under their lids, the polished black hair sleekly brushed, the red-brown +cheeks, the bright lips, flexible and curved, of his Spanish mother. + +"Who in God's name are you?" demanded Miss Blake in her deepest voice. + +"This is Mr. Hilliard," Sheila came forward. "He is the man that brought +me over The Hill, Miss Blake--after I'd lost my horse, you know." There +was some urgency in Sheila's tone, a sort of prod to courtesy. Miss Blake +settled back on her spine and recrossed her legs. + +"Well, come in," she said, "and shut the door. No use frosting us all, is +there?" She resumed her spectacles and her reading of the "Popular +Science Monthly." + +Hilliard, still smiling, bowed to her, took Sheila's hand for an instant, +then moved easily across the room and settled on his heels at one corner +of the hearth. He had been riding, it would seem, in the thin silk shirt +and had found the night air crisp. He rolled a cigarette with the hands +that had first drawn Sheila's notice as they held his glass on the bar; +gentleman's hands, clever, sensitive, carefully kept. From his +occupation, he looked up at Miss Blake audaciously. + +"You'd better make friends with me, ma'am," he said, "because we're going +to be neighbors." + +"How's that?" + +"I'm taking up my homestead right down here below you on Hidden Creek a +ways. About six miles below your ford." + +Miss Blake's face filled with dark blood. She said nothing, put up +her magazine. + +Sheila, however, exclaimed delightedly, "Taken up a homestead?" + +"Yes, ma'am." He turned his floating, glowing look to her and there it +stayed almost without deviation during the rest of his visit. "I've built +me a log house--a dandy. I had a man up from Rusty to help me. I've +bought me a cow. I'm getting my furnishings ready. That's what I've been +doing these two months." + +"And never rode up to call on us?" Sheila reproached him. + +"No, ma'am. I'll tell you the reason for that. I wasn't sure of myself." +She opened rather puzzled and astonished eyes at this, but for an instant +his look went beyond her and remembered troubling things. "You see, Miss +Arundel, I'm not used to settling down. That's something that I've had no +practice in. I'm impatient. I get tired quickly. Damn quickly. I change +my mind. It's the worst thing in me--a sort of devil-horse always thirsty +for new things. It's touch and go with him. He runs with me. You see, +I've always given him his head." His look had come back to her face and +dwelt there speaking for him a language headier than that of his tongue. +"I thought I'd tie the dern fool down to some good tough work and test +him out. Well, ma'am, he hasn't quit on me this time. I think he won't. +I've got a ball and chain round about that cloven foot." He drew at his +cigarette, half-veiling in smoke the ardor of his look. "I'd like to show +you my house, Miss Arundel. It's fine. I worked with a builder one season +when I was a lad. I've got it peeled inside. The logs shine and I've got +a fireplace twice the size of this in my living-room"--he made graceful +gestures with the hand that held the cigarette. "Yes, ma'am, a +living-room, and a kitchen, and," with a whimsical smile, "a butler's +pantry. And, oh, a great big bedroom that gets the morning sun." He +paused an instant and flushed from chin to brow, an Anglo-Saxon flush it +was, but the bold Latin eyes did not fall. "I've made some furnishings +already. And I've sent out an order for kitchen stuff." + +Here Miss Blake changed the crossing of her legs. Sheila was angry with +herself because she was consumed with the contagion of his blush. She +wished that he would not look as if he had seen the blush and was pleased +by it. She wished that his clean young strength and beauty and the ardor +of his eyes did not speak quite so eloquently. + +"I bought a little black horse about so high"--he held his hand an absurd +distance from the floor and laughed--"just the size for a little girl +and--do you know who I'm going to give him to?" + +Here Miss Blake got up, strode to the pianola, adjusted it, and sat down, +broad and solid and unabashed by absence of feminine draperies, upon the +stool. She played a comic song. + +"I don't like your _fam_ily--" + +in some such dreadful way it expressed itself-- + +"They do _not_ look good to me. +I don't think your _Unc_le John +Ever _had_ a collar on ..." + +She played it very loud. + +Hilliard stood up and came close to Sheila. + +"She's mad as a March hare," he whispered, "and she doesn't like me a +little bit. Come out while I patch up Dusty, won't you, please? It's +moonlight. I'll be going." He repeated this very loud for Miss Blake's +benefit with no apparent effect upon her enjoyment of the song. She was +rocking to its rhythm. + +Hilliard was overwhelmed suddenly by the appearance of her. He put his +hand to his mouth and bolted. Sheila, following, found him around the +corner of the house rocking and gasping with mirth. He looked at her +through tears. + +"Puss-in-Boots," he gasped, and Sheila ran to the edge of the clearing to +be safe in a mighty self-indulgence. + +There they crouched like two children till their laughter spent itself. +Hilliard was serious first. + +"You're a bad, ungrateful girl," he said weakly, "to laugh at a sweet old +lady like that." + +"Oh, I am!" Sheila took it almost seriously. "She's been wonderful to +me." + +"I bet she works you," he said jealously. + +"Oh, no. Not a bit too hard. I love it." + +"Well," he admitted, "you do look pretty fine, that's a fact. Better than +you did at Hudson's. What did you quit for?" + +Sheila was sober enough now. The moonlight let some of its silver, +uncaught by the twinkling aspen leaves, splash down on her face. It +seemed to flicker and quiver like the leaves. She shook her head. + +He looked a trifle sullen. "Oh, you won't tell me.... Funny idea, you +being a barmaid. Hudson's notion, wasn't it?" + +Sheila lifted her clear eyes. "I thought asking questions wasn't good +manners in the West." + +"Damn!" he said. "Don't you make me angry! I've got a right to ask you +questions." + +She put her hand up against the smooth white trunk of the tree near +which she stood. She seemed to grow a little taller. + +"Oh, have you? I don't think I quite understand how you got any such +right. And you like to be questioned yourself?" + +She had him there, had him rather cruelly, though he was not aware of the +weapon of her suspicion. She felt a little ashamed when she saw him +wince. He slapped his gloves against his leather chaps, looking at her +with hot, sulky eyes. + +"Oh, well... I beg your pardon.... Listen--" He flung his ill-humor aside +and was sweet and cool again like the night. "Are you going to take the +little horse?" + +"I don't know." + +His face shadowed and fell so expressively, so utterly, that she melted. + +"Oh," he stammered, half-turning from her, "I was sure. I brought him +up." + +This completed the melting process. "Of course I'll take him!" she cried. +"Where is he?" + +She inspected the beautiful little animal by the moonlight. She even let +Hilliard mount her on the shining glossy back and rode slowly about +clinging to his mane, ecstatic over the rippling movement under her. + +"He's like a rocking-chair," said Cosme. "You can ride him all day and +not feel it." He looked about the silver meadow. "Good feed here, isn't +there? I bet he'll stay. If not, I'll get him for you." + +Sheila slipped down. They left the horse to graze. + +"Yes, it's first-rate feed. Do you think Miss Blake will let me +keep him?" + +His answer was entirely lost by a sudden outbreak from the dogs. + +"Good Lord!" said Cosme, making himself heard, "what a breed! Isn't that +awful! Why does she keep the brutes? Isn't she scared they'll eat her?" + +Sheila shook her head. Presently the tumult quieted down. "They're afraid +of her," she said. "She has a dreadful whip. She likes to bully them. I +think she's rather cruel. But she does love Berg; she says he's the only +real dog in the pack." + +"Was Berg the one on the bearskin inside?" + +"Yes." + +"He's sure a beauty. But I don't like him. He has wolf eyes. See +here--you're shivering. I've kept you out here in the cold. I'll go. +Good-night. Thank you for keeping the horse. Will you come down to see my +house? I built it"--he drawled the words--"for you"--and added after a +tingling moment--"to see, ma'am." + +This experiment in words sent Sheila to the house, her hand crushed and +aching with his good-bye grasp, her heart jumping with a queer fright. + +Miss Blake stood astraddle on the hearth, her hands behind her back. + +"You better go to bed, Sheila," she said; "it's eleven o'clock and +to-morrow's wash-day." + +Her voice was pleasant enough, but its bluffness had a new edge. Sheila +found it easy to obey. She climbed up the ladder to the little gabled +loft which was her bedroom. Halfway up she paused to assert a belated +independence of spirit. "Good-night," she said, "how do you like our +neighbor?" + +Miss Blake stared up. Her lips were set tight. She made no answer. After +an instant she sauntered across the room and out of the door. The whip +with which she beat the dogs swung in her hand. A moment later a fearful +howling and yelping showed that some culprit had been chosen for condign +punishment. + +Sheila set down her candle, sat on the edge of her cot, and covered her +ears with her hands. When it was over she crept into bed. She felt, +though she chided herself for the absurdity, like a naughty child who has +been forcibly reminded of the consequences of rebellion. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +A HISTORY AND A LETTER + + +The next morning, it seemed Miss Blake's humor had completely changed. It +showed something like an apologetic softness. She patted Sheila's +shoulder when she passed the girl at work. When Hilliard next appeared, a +morning visit this time, he was bidden to share their dinner; he was even +smiled upon. + +"She's not such a bad old girl, is she?" he admitted when Sheila had been +given a half-holiday and was riding on the black horse beside Hilliard on +his Dusty across one of the mountain meadows. + +"_I_ think she's a dear," said Sheila, pink with gratitude; then, +shadowing, "If only she wouldn't beat the dogs and would give up +trapping." + +"Why in thunder shouldn't she trap?" + +"I loathe trapping. Do you remember how you felt in the pen? It's bad +enough to shoot down splendid wild things for food, but, to trap +them!--small furry things or even big furry things like bears, why, it's +cruel! It's hideously cruel! When a woman does it--" + +"Come, now, don't call _her_ a woman!" + +"Yes, she is. Think of the aprons! And she is so tidy." + +"That's not just a woman's virtue." + +"Maybe not. I'm not sure. But I've a feeling that it was Eve who first +discovered dust." + +"Very bad job if she did. Think of all the bother we've been going +through ever since." + +"There!" Sheila triumphed. "To you it's just bother. You're a man. To me +it's a form of sport.... I wonder what Miss Blake's story is." + +"You mean--?" He turned in his saddle to stare wonderingly at her. "You +don't know?" + +"No." Sheila blushed confusedly. "I--I don't know anything about her--" + +"Good Lord!" He whistled softly. "Sometimes those ventures turn out all +right." He looked dubious. "I'm glad I'm here!" + +Sheila's smile slipped sweetly across her mouth and eyes. "So am I. But," +she added after a thoughtful moment, "I don't know much about your story +either, do I?" + +"I might say something about asking questions," began Cosme with +grimness, but changed his tone quickly with a light, apologetic touch on +her arm, "but--but I won't. I ran away from school when I was fourteen +and I've been knocking around the West ever since." + +"What school?" asked Sheila. + +He did not answer for several minutes. They had come to the end of the +meadow and were mounting a slope on a narrow trail where the ponies +seemed to nose their way among the trees. Now and then Sheila had to put +out her hand to push her knee away from a threatening trunk. Below were +the vivid paintbrush flowers and the blue mountain lupine and all about +the nymph-white aspens with leaves turning to restless gold against the +sky. The horses moved quietly with a slight creaking of saddles. There +was a feeling of stealth, of mystery--that tiptoe breathless expectation +of Pan pipes.... At last Cosme turned in his saddle, rested his hand on +the cantle, and looked at Sheila from a bent face with troubled eyes. + +"It was an Eastern school," he said. "No doubt you've heard of it. It +was Groton." + +The name here in these Wyoming woods brought a picture as foreign as the +artificiality of a drawing-room. + +"Groton? You ran away?" + +"Yes, ma'am." + +Sheila's suspicions were returning forcibly. "I'll have to ask questions, +Mr. Hilliard, because it seems so strange--what you are now, and your +running away and never having been brought back to the East by--by +whoever it was that sent you to Groton." + +"I want you to ask questions," he said rather wistfully. "You have +the right." + +This forced her into something of a dilemma. She ignored it and waited, +looking away from him. He would not leave her this loophole, however. + +"Why don't you look at me?" he demanded crossly. + +She did, and smiled again. + +"You have the prettiest smile I ever saw!" he cried; then went on +quickly, "I ran away because of something that happened. I'll tell you. +My mother"--he flushed and his eyes fell--"came up to see me at school +one day. My mother was very beautiful.... I was mad about her." Curiously +enough, every trace of the Western cowboy had gone out of his voice and +manner, which were an echo of the voice and manner of the Groton +schoolboy whose experience he told. "I was proud of her--you know how a +kid is. I kind of paraded her round and showed her off to the other +fellows. No other fellow had such a beautiful mother. Then, as we were +saying good-bye, a crowd of the boys all round, I did something--trod on +her foot or something, I don't quite know what--and she lifted up her +hand and slapped me across the face." He was white at the shocking +memory. "Right there before them all, when I--I was adoring her. She had +the temper of a devil, a sudden Spanish temper--the kind I have, too--and +she never made the slightest effort to hold it down. She hit me and she +laughed as though it was funny and she got into her carriage. I cut off +to my room. I wanted to kill myself. I couldn't face any one. I wanted +never to see her again. I guess I was a queer sort of kid.... I don't +know ..." He drew a big breath, dropped back to the present and his +vivid color returned. "That's why I ran away from school, Miss Arundel." + +"And they never brought you back?" + +He laughed. "They never found me. I had quite a lot of money and I +lost myself pretty cleverly...a boy of fourteen can, you know. It's +a very common history. Well, I suppose they didn't break their necks +over me either, after the first panic. They were busy people--my +parents--remarkably busy going to the devil.... And they were eternally +hard-up. You see, my grandfather had the money--still has it--and he's +remarkably tight. I wrote to them after six years, when I was twenty. +They wrote back; at least their lawyer did. They tried, not very +sincerely, though, I think, to coax me East again... told me they'd +double my allowance if I did--they've sent me a pittance--" He shuddered +suddenly, a violent, primitive shiver. "I'm glad I didn't go," he said. + +There was a long stillness. That dreadful climax to the special +"business" of the Hilliards was relived in both their memories. But it +was something of which neither could speak. Sheila wondered if the +beautiful mother was that instant wearing the hideous prison dress. She +wished that she had read the result of the trial. She wouldn't for the +world question this pale and silent young man. The rest of their ride was +quiet and rather mournful. They rode back at sunset and Hilliard bade her +a troubled good-bye. + +She wanted to say something comforting, reassuring. She watched him +helplessly from where she stood on the porch as he walked across the +clearing to his horse. Suddenly he slapped the pocket of his chaps and +turned back. "Thunder!" he cried, "I'd forgotten the mail. A fellow left +it at the ford. A paper for Miss Blake and a letter for you." + +Sheila held out her hand. "A letter for me?" She took it. It was a +strange hand, small and rather unsteady. The envelope was fat, the +postmark Millings. Her flush of surprise ebbed. She knew whose letter it +was--Sylvester Hudson's. He had found her out. + +She did not even notice Cosme's departure. She went up to her loft, sat +down on her cot and read. + +"MY DEAR MISS SHEILA: + +"I don't rightly know how to express myself in this letter because I know +what your feelings toward Pap must be like, and they are fierce. But I +have got to try to write you a letter just the same, for there are some +things that need explaining. At first, when my hotel and my Aura were +burned down [here the writing was especially shaky] and I found that you +and Dickie had both vamoosed, I thought that you had paid me out and gone +off together. You can't blame me for that thought, Miss Sheila, for I +had found him in your room at that time of night or morning and I +couldn't help but see that he was aiming to kiss you and you were waiting +for his kiss. So I was angry and I had been drinking and I kissed you +myself, taking advantage of you in a way that no gentleman would do. But +I thought you were different from the Sheila I had brought to be my +barmaid. + +"Well, ma'am, for a while after the fire, I was pretty near crazy. I was +about loco. Then I was sick. When I got well again, a fellow who come +over from Hidden Creek told me you had gone over to be at a ranch there +and that you had come in alone. That sort of got me to thinking about you +more and more and studying you out, and I begun to see that I had made a +bad mistake. Whatsoever reason brought that damn fool Dickie to your room +that morning, it wasn't your doings, and the way you was waiting for his +kiss was more a mother's way. I have had some hard moments with myself, +Miss Sheila, and I have come to this that I have got to write and tell +you how I feel. And ask your forgiveness. You see you were something in +my life, different from anything that had ever been there. I don't +rightly know--I likely never will know--what you meant in my life. I +handled you in my heart like a flower. Before God, I had a religion for +you. And that was just why, when I thought you was bad, that it drove me +crazy. I wonder if you will understand this. You are awful young and +awful ignorant. And I have hurt your pride. You are terrible proud for +your years, Miss Sheila. I ache all over when I think that I hurt your +pretty mouth. I hope it is smiling now. I am moving out of Millings,--Me +and Momma and Babe. But Girlie is agoing to marry Jim. He run right back +to her like a little lost lamb the second you was gone. Likely, he'll +never touch liquor again. I haven't heard from Dickie. I guess he's gone +where the saloons are bigger and where you can get oysters with your +drinks. He always was a damn fool. I would dearly like to go over to +Hidden Creek and see you, but I feel like I'd better not. It would hurt +me if I got a turn-down from you like it will hurt me if you don't +answer this letter, which is a mighty poor attempt to tell you my bad +reasons for behaving like I did. I am not sorry I thrashed Dickie. He had +ought to be thrashed good and plenty. And he has sure paid me off by +burning down my Aura. That was a saloon in a million, Miss Sheila, and +the picture of you standing there back of my bar, looking so dainty and +sweet and fine in your black dress and your frills--well, ma'am, I'll +sure try to be thinking of that when I cash in. + +"Well, Miss Sheila, I wish you good fortune in whatever you do, and I +hope that if you ever need a friend you will overlook my bad break and +remember the artist that tried to put you in his big work and--failed." + +This extraordinary document was signed--"Sylvester." Sheila was left +bewildered with strange tears in her throat. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +SANCTUARY + + +There came to the restaurant where Dickie worked, a certain sallow and +irritable man, no longer in his early youth. He came daily for one of his +three meals: it might be lunch or dinner or even breakfast, Dickie was +always in haste to serve him. For some reason, the man's clever and +nervous personality intrigued his interest. And this, although his +customer never threw him a glance, scowled at a newspaper, barked out an +order, gulped his food, stuck a fair-sized tip under the edge of his +plate, and jerked himself away. + +On a certain sluggish noon hour in August, Dickie, as far as the +kitchen door with a tray balanced on his palm, realized that he had +forgotten this man's order. He hesitated to go back. "Like as not," +reasoned Dickie, "he didn't rightly know what the order was. He never +does look at his food. I'll fetch him a Spanish omelette and a salad +and a glass of iced tea. It's a whole lot better order than he'd have +thought of himself." + +Nevertheless, it was with some trepidation that he set the omelette down +before that lined and averted countenance. Its owner was screwed into his +chair as usual, eyes, with a sharp cleft between their brows, bent on his +folded newspaper, and he put his right hand blindly on the fork. But as +it pricked the contents of the plate a savory fragrance rose and the +reader looked. + +"Here, you damn fool--that's not my order," he snapped out. + +Dickie tasted a homely memory--"Dickie damn fool." He stood silent a +moment looking down with one of his quaint, impersonal looks. + +"Well, sir," then he said slowly, "it ain't your order, but you look a +whole lot more like a feller that would order Spanish omelette than like +a feller that would order Hamburger steak." + +For the first time the man turned about, flung his arm over his +chair-back, and looked up at Dickie. In fact, he stared. His thin lips, +enclosed in an ill-tempered parenthesis of double lines, twisted +themselves slightly. + +"I'll be derned!" he said. "But, look here, my man, I didn't order +Hamburger steak; I ordered chicken." + +Dickie deliberately smoothed down the cowlick on his head. He wore his +look of a seven-year-old with which he was wont to face the extremity of +Sylvester's exasperation. + +"I reckon I clean forgot your order, sir," he said. "I figured out that +you wouldn't be caring what was on your plate. This heat," he added, +"sure puts a blinder on a feller's memory." + +The man laughed shortly. "It's all right," he said. "This'll go down." + +He ate in silence. Then he glanced up again. "What are you waiting +for, anyway?" + +Dickie flushed faintly. "I was sort of wishful to see how it would go +down." + +"Oh, I don't mean that kind of waiting. I mean--why are you a waiter in +this--hash-hole?" + +Dickie meditated. "There ain't no answer to that," he said. "I don't know +why--" He added--"Why anything. It's a sort of extry word in the +dictionary--don't mean much any way you look at it." + +He gathered up the dishes. The man watched him, tilting back a little in +his chair, his eyes twinkling under brows drawn together. A moment +afterwards he left the restaurant. + +It was a few nights later when Dickie saw him again--or rather when +Dickie was again seen by him. This time Dickie was not in the restaurant. +He was at a table in a small Free Library near Greenwich Avenue, and he +was copying painstakingly with one hand from a fat volume which he held +down with the other. The strong, heavily-shaded light made a circle of +brilliance about him; his fair hair shone silvery bright, his face had a +sort of seraphic pallor. The orderer of chicken, striding away from the +desk with a hastily obtained book of reference, stopped short and stared +at him; then came close and touched the thin, shiny shoulder of the blue +serge coat. + +"This the way you take your pleasure?" he asked abruptly. + +Dickie looked up slowly, and his consciousness seemed to travel even more +slowly back from the fairy doings of a midsummer night. Under the +observant eyes bent upon it, his face changed extraordinarily from the +face of untroubled, almost immortal childhood to the face of struggling +and reserved manhood. + +"Hullo," he said with a smile of recognition. "Well--yes--not always." + +"What are you reading?" The man slipped into the chair beside Dickie, put +on his glasses, and looked at the fat book. "Poetry? Hmp! What are you +copying it for?--letter to your girl?" + +Dickie had all the Westerner's prejudice against questions, but he felt +drawn to this patron of the "hash-hole," so, though he drawled his answer +slightly, it was an honest answer. + +"It ain't my book," he said. "That's why I'm copying it." + +"Why in thunder don't you take it out, you young idiot?" + +Dickie colored. "Well, sir, I don't rightly understand the workings of +this place. I come by it on the way home and I kep' a-seein' folks goin' +in with books and comin' out with books. I figured it was a kind of +exchange proposition. I've only got one book--and that ain't rightly +mine--" the man looking at him wondered why his face flamed--"so, when I +came in, I just watched and I figured you could read here if you had the +notion to take down a book and fetch it over to the table and copy from +it and return it. So I've been doin' that." + +"Why didn't you go to the desk, youngster, and ask questions?" + +"Where I come from"--Dickie was drawling again--"folks don't deal so much +in questions as they do here." + +"Where you came from! You came from Mars! Come along to the desk and +I'll fix you up with a card and you can take an armful of poetry home +with you." + +Dickie went to the desk and signed his name. The stranger signed +his--Augustus Lorrimer. The librarian stamped a bit of cardboard and +stuck it into the fat volume. She handed it to Dickie wearily. + +"Thank _you_, ma'am," he said with such respectful fervor that she looked +up at him and smiled. + +"Now, where's your diggings," asked Lorrimer, who had taken no hints +about asking questions, "east or west?" He was a newspaper reporter. + +"Would you be carin' to walk home with me?" asked Dickie. There was a +great deal of dignity in his tone, more in his carriage. + +"Yes. I'd be caring to! Lead on, Martian!" And Lorrimer felt, after +he said that, that he was a vulgarian--a long-forgotten sensation. +"In Mars," he commented to himself, "this young man was some kind of +a prince." + +"What do you look over your shoulder that way for, Dick?" he asked aloud, +a few blocks on their way. "Scared the police will take away your book?" + +Dickie blinked at him with a startled air. "Did I? I reckon a feller +gets into queer ways when he's alone a whole lot. I get kind of feelin' +like somebody was following me in this town--so many folks goin' to and +fro does it to me most likely." + +"Yes, a fellow does get into queer ways when he's alone a whole lot," +said Lorrimer slowly. His mind went back a dozen years to his own first +winter in New York. He looked with keenness at Dickie's face. It was a +curiously charming face, he thought, but it was tight-knit with a +harried, struggling sort of look, and this in spite of its quaint +detachment. + +"Know any one in this city?" + +"No, sir, not rightly. I've made acquaintance with some of the waiters. +They've asked me to join a club. But I haven't got the cash." + +"What pay do you draw?" + +Dickie named a sum. + +"Not much, eh? But you've got your tips." + +"Yes, sir. I pay my board with my pay and live on the tips." + +"Must be uncertain kind of living! Where do you live, anyway? +What? Here?" + +They had crossed Washington Square and were entering a tall studio +building to the south and east. Dickie climbed lightly up the stairs. +Lorrimer followed with a feeling of bewilderment. On the top landing, +dimly lighted, Dickie unlocked a door and stood aside. + +"Just step in and look up," he said, "afore I light the light. You'll +see something." + +Lorrimer obeyed. A swarm of golden bees glimmered before his eyes. + +"Stars," said Dickie. "Down below you wouldn't hardly know you had 'em, +would you?" + +Lorrimer did not answer. A moment later an asthmatic gas-jet caught its +breath and he saw a bare studio room almost vacant of furniture. There +was a bed and a screen and a few chairs, one window facing an alley wall. +The stars had vanished. + +"Pretty palatial quarters for a fellow on your job," Lorrimer remarked. +"How did you happen to get here?" + +"Some--people I knowed of once lived here." Dickie's voice had taken on a +certain remoteness, and even Lorrimer knew that here questions stopped. +He accepted a chair, declined "the makings," proffered a cigarette. +During these amenities his eyes flew about the room. + +"Good Lord!" he ejaculated, "is all that stuff your copying?" + +There was a pile of loose and scattered manuscript upon the table under +the gas-jet. + +"Yes, sir," Dickie smiled. "I was plumb foolish to go to all that labor." + +Lorrimer drew near to the table and coolly looked over the papers. +Dickie watched him with rather a startled air and a flush that might +have seemed one of resentment if his eyes had not worn their +impersonal, observing look. + +"All poetry," muttered Lorrimer. "But some of it only a line--or a +word." He read aloud,--"'Close to the sun in lonely lands--' what's that +from, anyway?" + +"A poem about an eagle by a man named Alfred Tennyson. Ain't it the way a +feller feels, though, up on the top of a rocky peak?" + +"Never been on the top of a rocky peak--kind of a sky-scraper sensation, +isn't it? What's all this--'An' I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, +after my fashion'?" + +Dickie's face again flamed in spite of himself. "It's a love poem. The +feller couldn't forget. He couldn't keep himself from loving that-away +because he loved so much the other way--well, sir, you better read it for +yourself. It's a mighty real sort of a poem--if you were that sort of a +feller, I mean." + +"And this is 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' And here's a sonnet, 'It was +not like your great and gracious ways'--? Coventry Patmore. Well, young +man, you've a catholic taste." + +"I don't rightly belong to any church," said Dickie gravely. "My mother +is a Methodist." + +Lorrimer moved; abruptly away and moved abruptly back. + +"Where were you educated, Dick?" + +"I was raised in Millings"--Dickie named the Western State--"I didn't +get only to grammar school. My father needed me to work in his hotel." + +"Too bad!" sighed Lorrimer. "Well, I'll bid you good-night. And many +thanks. You've got a fine place here." Again he sighed. "I dare say--one +of these days--" + +He was absent and irritable again. Dickie accompanied him down the three +long, narrow flights and climbed back to his loneliness. He was, however, +very much excited by his adventure, excited and disturbed. He felt +restless. He walked about and whistled to himself. + +Until now he had had but one companion--the thought of Sheila. It was +extraordinary how immediate she was. During the first dreadful weeks of +his drudgery in the stifling confusions of the restaurant, when even the +memory of Sylvester's tongue-lashings faded under the acute reality of +the head waiter's sarcasms, that love of his for Sheila had fled away and +left him dull and leaden and empty of his soul. And his tiny third-story +bedroom had seemed like a coffin when he laid himself down in it and +tried to remember her. It had come to him like a mountain wind, +overwhelmingly, irresistibly, the desire to live where she lived: the +first wish he had had since he had learned that she was not to be found +by him. And the miracle had accomplished itself. Mrs. Halligan had been +instructed to get a lodger at almost any price for the long-vacant studio +room. She lowered the rent to the exact limit of Dickie's wages. She had +never bargained with so bright-eyed a hungry-looking applicant for +lodgings. And that night he lay awake under Sheila's stars. From then on +he lived always in her presence. And here in the room that had known her +he kept himself fastidious and clean. He shut out the wolf-pack of his +shrewd desires. The room was sanctuary. It was to rescue Sheila rather +than himself that Dickie fled up to the stars. So deeply, so intimately +had she become a part of him that he seemed to carry her soul in his +hands. So had the young dreamer wedded his dream. He lived with Sheila as +truly, as loyally, as though he knew that she would welcome him with one +of those downward rushes or give him Godspeed on sultry, feverish dawns +with a cool kiss. Dickie lay sometimes across his bed and drew her cheek +in trembling fancy close to his until the anguish wet his pillow with +mute tears. + +Now to this dual loneliness Lorrimer had climbed, and Dickie felt, rather +gratefully, that life had reached up to the aching unrealities of his +existence. His tight and painful life had opened like the first fold of a +fan. He built upon the promise of a friendship with this questioning, +impertinent, mocking, keenly sympathetic visitor. + +But a fortnight passed without Lorrimer's appearing at the restaurant +and, when at last he did come, Dickie, flying to his chair, was greeted +by a cold, unsmiling word, and a businesslike quotation from the menu. +He felt as though he had been struck. His face burned. In the West, a +fellow couldn't do that and get away with it! He tightened an impotent, +thin fist. He filled the order and kept his distance, and, absurdly +enough, gave Lorrimer's tip to another waiter and went without his own +dinner. For the first time in his life a sense of social inferiority, of +humiliation concerning the nature of his work, came to him. He felt the +pang of servitude, a pang unknown to the inhabitants of frontier towns. +When Sheila washed dishes for Mrs. Hudson she was "the young lady from +Noo York who helps round at Hudson's house." Dickie fought this shame +sturdily, but it seemed to cling, to have a sticky pervasiveness. Try as +he might he couldn't brush it off his mind. Nevertheless, it was on the +very heels of this embittering experience that life plucked him up from +his slough. One of the leveling public catastrophes came to Dickie's +aid--not that he knew he was a dumb prayer for aid. He knew only that +every day was harder to face than the last, that every night the stars up +there through Sheila's skylight seemed to glimmer more dully with less +inspiration on his fagged spirit. + +The sluggish monotony of the restaurant's existence was stirred that +September night by a big neighboring fire. Waiters and guests tumbled out +to the call of fire-engines and running feet. Dickie found himself +beside Lorrimer, who caught him by the elbow. + +"Keep by me, kid," he said, and there was something in his tone +that softened injury. "If you want a good look-in, I can get +through the ropes." + +He showed his card to a policeman, pulled Dickie after him, and they +found themselves in an inner circle of the inferno. Before them a tall, +hideous warehouse broke forth into a horrible beauty. It was as though a +tortured soul had burst bars. It roared and glowed and sent up petals of +smoky rose and seeds of fire against the blue-black sky. The crowds +pressed against the ropes and turned up their faces to drink in the +terror of the spectacle. + +Lorrimer had out his notebook. "Damn fires!" he said. "They bore me. Does +all this look like anything to you? That fire and those people and their +silly faces all tilted up and turned red and blue and purple--" + +He was talking to himself, and so, really, was Dickie when he made his +own statement in a queer tone of frightened awe. "They look like a flower +garden in Hell," he whispered. + +Lorrimer threw up his chin. "Say that again, will you?" he snapped out. +"Go on! Don't stop! Tell me everything that comes into your damn young +head of a wandering Martian! Fly at it! I'll take you down." + +"You mean," said Dickie, "tell you what I think this looks like?" + +"That's what I mean, do." + +Dickie smiled a queer sort of smile. He had found a listener at last. A +moment later Lorrimer's pencil was in rapid motion. And the reporter's +eyes shot little stabbing looks at Dickie's unselfconscious face. When +it was over he snapped an elastic round his notebook, returned it to his +pocket, and laid his hand on Dickie's thin, tense arm. + +"Come along with me, Dick," said Lorrimer. "You've won. I've been +fighting you and my duty to my neighbor for a fortnight. Your waiter days +are over. I've adopted you. I'm my brother's keeper all right. We'll both +go hungry now and then probably, but what's the odds! I need you. I +haven't been able to hand in a story like that for years. I'm a burnt-out +candle and you're the divine fire. I'm going to educate the life out of +you. I'm going to train you till you wish you'd died young and +ungrammatical in Millings. I may not be much good myself," he added +solemnly, "but God gave me the sense to know the real thing when I see +it. I've been fighting you, calling myself a fool for weeks. Come along, +young fellow, don't hang back, and for your credit's sake close your lips +so you won't look like a case of arrested development. First we'll say +good-bye to the hash-hole and the white apron and then I'll take you up +to your sky parlor and we'll talk things over." + +"God!" said Dickie faintly. It was a prayer for some enlightenment. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +DESERTION + + +Hilliard rode up along Hidden Creek on a frosty October morning. +Everywhere now the aspens were torches of gold, the cottonwood trees +smoky and gaunt, the ground bright with fallen leaves. He had the look of +a man who has swept his heart clean of devils...his face was keen with +his desire. He sang as he rode--sweetly an old sentimental Spanish song, +something his mother had taught him; but it was not of his mother he +thought, or only, perhaps, deep down in his subconsciousness, of that +early mother-worship, age-old and most mysterious, which now he had +translated and transferred. + +"Sweet, sweet is the jasmine flower-- +Let its stars guide thee. +Sweet is the heart of a rose... +Sweet is the thought of thee... +Deep in my heart..." + +The dogs were off coursing the woods that afternoon, and the little +clearing lay as still as a green lake under the threatening crest of the +mountain. Cosme slipped from his horse, pulled the reins over his head, +and left him to graze at will. + +Miss Blake opened the ranch-house door at his knock. She greeted him with +a sardonic smile. "I don't know whether you'll see your girl or not," +she said. "Give her time to get over her tantrums." + +Cosme turned a lightning look upon her. "Tantrums? Sheila?" + +"Oh, my friend, she has a devil of her own, that little angel-face! Make +yourself comfortable." Miss Blake pointed him to a chair. "I'll tell her +you're here." + +She went to the foot of the ladder, which rose from the middle of the +living-room floor, and called heartily, an indulgent laugh in her voice, +"You, Sheila! Better come down! Here's your beau." + +There was no answer. + +"Hear me, Sheila? Mis-ter Cos-me Hill-iard." + +This time some brief and muffled answer was returned. Miss Blake smiled +and went over to her elk-horn throne. There she sat and sewed--an +incongruous occupation it looked. + +Cosme was leaning forward, elbows on knees, his face a study of +impatience, anger, and suspicion. + +"What made her mad?" he asked bluntly. + +"O-oh! She'll get over it. She'll be down. Sheila can't resist a young +man. You'll see." + +"What did you do?" insisted the stern, crisp, un-western voice. When +Cosme was angry he reverted rapidly to type. + +"Why," drawled Miss Blake, "I crept up when she was drying her hair and I +cut it off." She laughed loudly at his fierce start. + +"Cut off her hair! What right--?" + +"No right at all, my friend, but common sense. What's the good of all +that fluffy stuff hanging about and taking hours of her time to brush +and wash and what-not. Besides"--she shot a look at him--"it's part of +the cure." + +"By the Lord," said Cosme, "I'd like you to explain." + +The woman crossed her legs calmly. She was still indulgently amused. + +"Don't lose your head, young man," she advised. "Better smoke." + +After an instant Cosme rolled and lighted a cigarette and leaned back in +his chair. His anger had settled to a sort of patient contempt. + +"I've put her into breeches, too," said Miss Blake. + +"What the devil! What do you mean? She has a will of her own, +hasn't she?" + +"Oh, yes. But you see I've got Miss Sheila just about where I want her. +She's grateful enough for her food and the roof over her head and for the +chance I'm giving her." + +"Chance?" He laughed shortly. "Chance to do all your heavy work?" + +"Why not say _honest_ work? It's something new to her." + +There was a brief, thunderous silence. Cosme's cigarette burned between +his stiff fingers. "What do you mean?" he asked, hoarse with the effort +of his self-control. + +She looked at him sharply now. "Are you Paul Carey Hilliard's son--the +son of Roxana Hilliard?" she asked. She pointed a finger at him. + +"Yes," he answered with thin lips. His eyes narrowed. His face was all +Latin, all cruel. + +"Well"--Miss Blake slid her hands reflectively back and forth on the bone +arms of her chair. She had put down her work. "I was just thinking," she +said slowly and kindly, "that the son of your mother would be rather +extra careful in choosing the mother of his sons." + +"I shall be very careful," he answered between the thin lips. "I _am_ +being careful." + +She fell back with an air of relief. "Oh," she said, as though +illuminated. "O-oh! I understand. Then it's all right. I didn't read +your game." + +His face caught fire at her apparent misunderstanding. + +"I don't read yours," he said. + +"Game? Bless you, I've no game to play. I'm giving Sheila her chance. But +I'm not going to give her a chance at the cost of your happiness. You're +too good a lad for that. I thought you were going to ask her to be your +wife. And I wasn't going to allow you to do it--blind. I was going to +advise you to come back three years from now and see her again. Maybe +this fine clean air and this life and this honest work and the training +she gets from me will make her straight. My God! Cosme Hilliard, have you +set eyes on Hudson? What kind of girl travels West from New York at +Sylvester Hudson's expense and in his company and queens it in the suite +at his hotel?" + +"Miss Blake," he muttered, "do you _know_ this?" + +The cigarette had burnt itself out. Cosme's face was no longer cruel. It +was dazed. + +She laughed shortly. "Why, of course, I know Sheila. I know her whole +history--and it's some history! She's twice the age she looks. Do you +think I'd have her here with me this way without knowing the girl? I tell +you, I want to give her a chance. I don't care if you try to test her +out. I'd like to see if two months has done anything for her. She was +real set on being a good girl when she quit Hudson. I don't _know_, but +I'm willing to bet that she'll turn you down." + +From far away up the mountain-side came the fierce baying of the dog +pack. Cosme pulled himself together and stood up. His face had an +ignorant, baffled look, the look of an unskilled and simple mind +caught in a web. + +"I reckon she--she isn't coming down," he said slowly, without lifting +his eyes from the floor. "I reckon I'll be going. I won't wait." + +He walked to the door, his steps falling without spring, and went out and +so across the porch and the clearing to his horse. + +At the sound of the closing door there came a flurry of movement in the +loft. The trap was raised. Sheila came quickly down the ladder. She was +dressed in a pair of riding-breeches and her hair was cropped like Miss +Blake's just below the ears. The quaintest rose-leaf of a Rosalind she +looked, just a wisp of grace, utterly unlike a boy. All the soft, slim +litheness with its quick turns revealed--a little figure of unconscious +sweet enchantment. But the face was flushed and tear-stained, the eyes +distressed. She stood, hands on her belt, at the foot of the ladder. + +"Why has he gone? Why didn't he wait?" + +Miss Blake turned a frank, indulgent face. But it was deeply +flushed. "Oh, shucks!" she said, "I suppose he got tired. Why didn't +you come down?" + +Sheila sent a look down her slim legs. "Oh, because I _am_ a fool. Miss +Blake--did you _really_ burn my two frocks--both of them?" Her eyes +coaxed and filled. + +"It's all they're fit for, my dear. You can make yourself new ones. You +know it's more sensible and comfortable, too, to work and ride in +breeches. I know what I'm doing, child.--I've lived this way quite a +number of years. You look real nice. I can't abide female floppery, +anyhow. What's it a sign of? Rotten slavery." She set her very even teeth +together hard as she said this. + +But Sheila was neither looking nor listening. She had heard horse's +hoofs. Her cheeks flamed. She ran to the door. She stood on the porch +and called. + +"Cosme Hilliard! Come back!" + +There was no answer. A few minutes later she came in, pale and puzzled. + +"He didn't even wave," she said. "He turned back in his saddle and stared +at me. He rode away staring at me. Miss Blake--what did you say to him? +You were talking a long time." + +"We were talking," said Miss Blake, "about dogs and how to raise 'em. And +then he up and said goodbye. Oh, Sheila, it's all right. He'll be back +when he's got over being miffed. Why, he expected you to come tumblin' +down the ladder head over heels to see him--a handsome fellow like that! +Shucks! Haven't you ever dealt with the vanity of a young male before? +It's as jumpy as a rabbit. Get to work." + +And, as though to justify Miss Blake's prophecy, just ten days later, +Hilliard did come again. It was a Sunday and Sheila had packed her +lunch and gone off on "Nigger Baby" for the day. The ostensible object +of her ride was a visit to the source of Hidden Creek. Really she was +climbing away from a hurt. She felt Hilliard's wordless departure and +prolonged absence keenly. She had not--to put it euphemistically--many +friends. Her remedy was successful. Impossible, on such a ride, to +cherish minor or major pangs. She rode into the smoky dimness of +pine-woods where the sunlight burned in flecks and out again across the +little open mountain meadows, jeweled with white and gold, blue and +coral-colored flowers, a stained-glass window scattered across the +ground. From these glades she could see the forest, an army of tall +pilgrims, very grave, going up, with long staves in their hands, to +worship at a high shrine. The rocks above were very grave, too, and +grim and still against the even blue sky. Across their purplish gray a +waterfall streaked down struck crystal by the sun. An eagle turned in +great, swinging circles. Sheila had an exquisite lifting of heart, a +sense of entire fusion, body blessed by spirit, spirit blessed by body. +She felt a distinct pleasure in the flapping of her short, sun-filled +hair against her neck, at the pony's motion between her unhampered +legs, at the moist warmth of his neck under her hand--and this physical +pleasure seemed akin to the ecstasy of prayer. + +She came at last to a difficult, narrow, canon trail, where the pony +hopped skillfully over fallen trees, until, for very weariness of his +choppy, determined efforts, she dismounted, tied him securely, and made +the rest of her climb on foot. Hidden Creek tumbled near her and its +voice swelled. All at once, round the corner of a great wall of rock, she +came upon the head. It gushed out of the mountain-side in a tumult of +life, not in a single stream, but in many frothy, writhing earth-snakes +of foam. She sat for an hour and watched this mysterious birth from the +mountain-side, watched till the pretty confusion of the water, with its +half-interpreted voices, had dizzied and dazed her to the point of +complete forgetfulness of self. She had entered into a sort of a trance, +a Nirvana ... She shook herself out of it, ate her lunch and scrambled +quickly back to "Nigger Baby." It was late afternoon when she crossed the +mountain glades. Their look had mysteriously changed. There was something +almost uncanny now about their brilliance in the sunset light, and when +she rode into the streaked darkness of the woods, they were full of +ghostly, unintelligible sounds. To rest her muscles she was riding with +her right leg thrown over the horn as though on a side saddle--a great +mass of flowers was tied in front of her. She had opened her shirt at the +neck and her head was bare. She was singing to keep up her heart. Then, +suddenly, she had no more need of singing. She saw Cosme walking toward +her up the trail. + +His face lacked all its vivid color. It was rather haggard and stern. The +devils he had swept out of his heart a fortnight earlier had, since then, +been violently entertained. He stepped out of the path and waited for +her, his hands on his hips. But, as she rode down, she saw this look +melt. The blood crept up to his cheeks, the light to his eyes. It was +like a rock taking the sun. She had smiled at him with all the usual +exquisite grace and simplicity. When she came beside him, she drew rein, +and at the same instant he put his hand on the pony's bridle. He looked +up at her dumbly, and for some reason she, too, found it impossible to +speak. She could see that he was breathing fast through parted lips and +that the lips were both cruel and sensitive. His hand slid back along +"Nigger Baby's" neck, paused, and rested on her knee. Then, suddenly, he +came a big step closer, threw both his arms, tightening with a python's +strength, about her and hid his face against her knees. + +"Sheila," he said thickly. He looked up with a sort of anguish into her +face. "Sheila, if you are not fit to be the mother of my children, you +are _sure_ fit for any man to love." + +Her soft, slim body hardened against him even before her face. They +stared at each other for a minute. + +"Let me get down," said Sheila. + +He stepped back, not quite understanding. She dropped off the horse, +dragging her flowers with her, and faced him. She did not feel small or +slender. She felt as high as a hill, although she had to look up at him +so far. Her anger had its head against the sky. + +"Why do you talk about a man's love?" she asked him with a queer sort +of patience. "I think--I hope--that you don't know anything about a +man's love, oh, the _way_ men love!" She thought with swift pain of +Jim, of Sylvester; "Oh, the _way_ they love!" And she found that, +under her breath, she was sobbing, "Dickie! Dickie!" as though her +heart had called. + +"Will you take back your horse, please?" she said, choking over these +sobs which hurt her more at the moment than he had hurt her. "I'll never +ride on him again. Don't come back here. Don't try to see me any more. I +suppose it--it--the way you love me--is because I was a barmaid, because +you heard people speak of me as 'Hudson's Queen.'" She conquered one of +the sobs. "I thought that after you'd looked into my face so hard that +night and stopped yourself from--from--my lips, that you had understood." +She shook her head from side to side so violently, so childishly, that +the short hair lashed across her eyes. "No one ever will understand!" She +ran away from him and cried under her breath, "Dickie! Dickie!" + +She ran straight into the living-room and stopped in the middle of the +floor. Her arms were full of the flowers she had pulled down from "Nigger +Baby's" neck. + +"What did you want to bring in all that truck--?" Miss Blake began, +rising from the pianola, then stopped. "What's the matter with you?" she +asked. "Did your young man find you? I sent him up the trail." Her red +eyes sparkled. + +"He insulted me!" gasped Sheila. "He dared to insult me!" She was +dramatic with her helpless young rage. "He said I wasn't fit to--to be +the mother of his children. And"--she laughed angrily, handling behind +Cosme's back the weapon that she had been too merciful to use--"and _his_ +mother is a murderess, found guilty of murder--and of worse!" + +A sort of ripple of sound behind made her turn. + +Cosme had followed her, was standing in the open door, and had heard her +speech. The weapon had struck home, and she saw how it had poisoned all +his blood. + +He vanished without a word. Sheila turned back to Miss Blake a paler +face. She let fall all her flowers. + +"Now he'll never come back," she said. + +She climbed up the ladder to her loft. + +There she sat for an hour, listening to the silence. Her mind busied +itself with trivial memories. She thought of Amelia Plecks.... It would +have comforted her to hear that knock and the rattle of her dinner tray. +The little sitting-room at Hudson's Hotel, with its bit of tapestry and +its yellow tea-set and its vases filled with flowers, seemed to her +memory as elaborate and artificial as the boudoir of a French princess. +Farther than Millings had seemed from her old life did this dark little +gabled attic seem from Millings. What was to be the end of this strange +wandering, this withdrawing of herself farther and farther into the +lonely places! She longed for the noise of Babe's hearty, irrepressible +voice with its smack of chewing, of her step coming up the stairs to that +little bedroom under Hudson's gaudy roof. Could it be possible that she +was homesick for Millings? For the bar with its lights and its visitors +and its big-aproned guardian? Her lids were actually smarting with tears +at the recollection of Carthy's big Irish face.... He had been such a +good, faithful watch-dog. Were men always like that--either watch-dogs +or wolves? The simile brought her back to Hidden Creek. It grew darker +and darker, a heavy darkness; the night had a new soft weight. There +began to be a sort of whisper in the stillness--not the motion of pines, +for there was no wind. Perhaps it was more a sensation than a sound, of +innumerable soft numb fingers working against the silence ... Sheila got +up, shivering, lighted her candle, and went over to the small, four-paned +window under the eaves. She pressed her face against it and started back. +Things were flying toward her. She opened the sash and a whirling scarf +of stars flung itself into the room. It was snowing. The night was blind +with snow. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +WORK AND A SONG + + +On the studio skylight the misty autumn rain fell that night, as the snow +fell against Sheila's window-panes, with a light tapping. Below it Dickie +worked. He had very little leisure now for stars or dreams. For the first +time in his neglected and mismanaged life he knew the pleasure of +congenial work; and this, although Lorrimer worked him like a slave. He +dragged him over the city and set his picture-painting faculty to labor +in dark corners. Dickie, every sense keen and clean, was not allowed to +flinch. No, his freshness was his value. And the power that was in him, +driven with whip and spur, throve and grew and fairly took the bit in its +teeth and ran away with its trainer. + +"Look here, my lad," Lorrimer had said that morning, "you keep on laying +hands on the English language the way you've been doing lately and I'll +have to get a job for you on the staff. Then my plagiarism that has been +paying us both so well comes to an end. I won't have the face to edit +stuff like this much longer." Lorrimer did not realize in his amazement +that Dickie's mind had always busied itself with this exciting and +nerve-racking matter of choosing words. From his childhood, in the face +of ridicule and outrage, he had fumbled with the tools of Lorrimer's +trade. No wonder that now knowledge and practice, and the sort of +intensive training he was under, magically fitted all the jumbled odds +and ends into place. Dickie had stopped looking over his shoulder. The +pursuing pack, the stealthy-footed beasts of the city, had dropped +utterly from his flying imagination. There was only one that remained +faithful--that craving for beauty--half-god, half-beast. Against him +Dickie still pressed his door shut. Lorrimer's gift of work had not +quieted the leader of the pack. But it had brought Dickie something that +was nearly happiness. The very look of him had changed; he looked driven +rather than harried, keen rather than harassed, eager instead of vague, +hungry rather than wistful. Only, sometimes, Dickie's brain would +suddenly turn blank and blind from sheer exhaustion. This happened to him +now. The printed lines he was studying lost all their meaning. He put his +forehead on his hands. Then he heard that eerie, light tapping above him +on the skylight. But he was too tired to look up. + +It was on that very afternoon when Sheila rode down the trail with her +flowers tied before her on the saddle, singing to keep up her heart. It +was that very afternoon when she had cried out half-consciously for +"Dickie--Dickie--Dickie"--and now it was, as though the cry had traveled, +that a memory of her leapt upon his mind; a memory of Sheila singing. +She had come into the chocolate-colored lobby from one of her rides with +Jim Greely. She had held a handful of cactus flowers. She had stopped +over there by one of the windows to put them in a glass. And to show +Dickie, a prisoner at his desk, that she did not consider his +presence--it was during the period of their estrangement--she had sung +softly as a girl sings when she knows herself to be alone: a little +tender, sad chanting song, that seemed made to fit her mouth. The pain +her singing had given him that afternoon had cut a picture of her on +Dickie's brain. Just because he had tried so hard not to look at her. Now +it jumped out at him against his closed, wet lids. The very motions of +her mouth came back, the positive dear curve of her chin, the +throat there slim against the light. Hard work had driven her +image a little from his mind lately; it returned now to revenge +his self-absorption--returned with a song. + +Dickie got up and wandered about the room. He tried to hum the air, but +his throat contracted. He tried to whistle, but his lips turned stiff. He +bent over his book--no use, she still sang. All night he was tormented by +that chanting, hurting song. He sobbed with the hurt of it. He tossed +about on his bed. He could not but remember how little she had loved him. +All at once there came to him a mysterious and beautiful release. It +seemed that the cool spirit, detached, winged, drew him to itself or +became itself entirely possessed of him. He was taken out of his pain +and yet he understood it. And he began suddenly, easily, to put it into +words. The misery was ecstasy, the hurt was inspiration, the song sang +sweetly as though it had been sung to soothe and not to make him suffer. + +"Oh, little song you sang to me"-- + +Ah, yes, at heart she had been singing to him-- + +"A hundred, hundred days ago, + Oh, little song, whose melody + Walks in my heart and stumbles so; + I cannot bear the level nights, + And all the days are over-long, + And all the hours from dark to dark + Turn to a little song ..." + +Dickie, not knowing how he got there, was at his table again. He was +writing. He was happy beyond any conception he had ever had of happiness. +That there was agony in his happiness only intensified it. The leader of +the wolf-pack, beast with a god's face, the noblest of man's desires, +that passionate and humble craving for beauty, had him by the throat. + +So it was that Dickie wrote his first poem. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +WINTER + + +Winter snapped at Hidden Creek as a wolf snaps, but held its grip as a +bulldog holds his. There came a few November days when all the air and +sky and tree-tops were filled with summer again, but the snow that had +poured itself down so steadily in that October storm did not give way. It +sank a trifle at noon and covered itself at night with a glare of ice. It +was impossible to go anywhere except on snow-shoes. Sheila quickly +learned the trick and plodded with bent knees, limber ankles, and +wide-apart feet through the winter miracle of the woods. It was another +revelation of pure beauty, but her heart was too sore to hold the +splendor as it had held the gentler beauty of summer and autumn. Besides, +little by little she was aware of a vague, encompassing uneasiness. Since +the winter jaws had snapped them in, setting its teeth between them and +all other life, Miss Blake had subtly and gradually changed. It was as +though her stature had increased, her color deepened. Sometimes to Sheila +that square, strong body seemed to fill the world. She was more and more +masterful, quicker with her orders, charier of her smiles, shorter of +speech and temper. Her eyes seemed to grow redder, the sparks closer to +flame, as though the intense cold fanned them. + +Once they harnessed the dogs to the sled and rode down the country for +the mail. The trip they made together. Sheila sat wrapped in furs in +front of the broad figure of her companion, who stood at the back of the +sledge, used a long whip, and shouted to the dogs by name in her great +musical voice of which the mountain echo made fine use. They sped close +to the frozen whiteness of the world, streaked down the slopes, and were +drawn soundlessly through the columned vistas of the woods. Here, there, +and everywhere were tracks, of coyotes, fox, rabbit, martin, and the +little pointed patteran of winter birds, yet they saw nothing living. +"What's got the elk and moose this season?" muttered Miss Blake. Nothing +stirred except the soft plop of shaken snow or the little flurry of +drifting flakes. These frost-flakes lay two inches deep on the surface of +the snow, dry and distinct all day in the cold so that they could be +blown apart at a breath. Miss Blake was cheerful on this journey. She +sang songs, she told brief stories of other sled trips. At the +post-office an old, lonely man delivered them some parcels and a vast +bagful of magazines. There was a brief passage of arms between him and +Miss Blake. She accused him of withholding a box of cartridges, and would +not be content till she had poked about his office in dark corners. She +came out swearing at the failure of her search. "I needed that shot," +she said. "My supply is short. I made sure it'd be here to-day." There +were no letters for either of them, and Sheila felt again that queer +shiver of her loneliness. But, on the whole, it was a wonderful day, and, +under a world of most amazing stars, the small, valiant ranch-house, with +its glowing stove and its hot mess of supper, felt like home.... Not long +after that came the first stroke of fate. + +The little old horse left them and, though they shoed patiently for miles +following his track, it was only to find his bones gnawed clean by +coyotes or by wolves. Sheila's tears froze to her lashes, but Miss +Blake's face went a little pale. She said nothing, and in her steps +Sheila plodded home in silence. That evening Miss Blake laid hands on +her.... They had washed up their dishes. Sheila was putting a log on the +fire. It rolled out of her grasp to the bearskin rug and struck Miss +Blake's foot. Before Sheila could even say her quick "I'm sorry," the +woman had come at her with a sort of spring, had gripped her by the +shoulders, had shaken her with ferocity, and let her go. Sheila fell +back, her own hands raised to her bruised shoulders, her eyes +phosphorescent in a pale face. + +"Miss Blake, how dare you touch me!" + +The woman kicked back the log, turned a red face, and laughed. + +"Dare! You little silly! What's to scare me of you?" + +An awful conviction of helplessness depressed Sheila's heart, but she +kept her eyes leveled on Miss Blake's. + +"Do you suppose I will stay here with you one hour, if you treat me +like this?" + +That brought another laugh. But Miss Blake was evidently trying to make +light of her outbreak. "Scared you, didn't I?" she said. "I guess you +never got much training, eh!" + +"I am not a dog," said Sheila shortly. + +"Well, if you aren't"--Miss Blake returned to her chair and took up a +magazine. She put the spectacles on her nose with shaking hands. "You're +my girl, aren't you? You can't expect to get nothing but petting from +me, Sheila." + +If she had not been icy with rage, Sheila might have smiled at this. "I +don't know what you mean, Miss Blake, by my being your girl. I work for +you, to be sure. I know that. But I know, too, that you will have to +apologize to me for this." + +Miss Blake swung one leg across the other and stared above her glasses. + +"Apologize to _you_!" + +"Yes. I will allow nobody to touch me." + +"Shucks! Go tell that to the marines! You've never been touched, have +you? Sweet sixteen!" + +Hudson's kiss again scorched Sheila's mouth and her whole body burned. +Miss Blake watched that fire consume her, and again she laughed. + +"I'm waiting for you to apologize," said Sheila again, this time between +small set teeth. + +"Well, my girl, wait. That'll cool you off." + +Sheila stood and felt the violent beating of her heart. A log in the wall +snapped from the bitter frost. + +"Miss Blake," she said presently, a pitiful young quaver in her voice, +"if you don't beg my pardon I'll go to-morrow." + +Miss Blake flung her book down with a gesture of impatience. "Oh, quit +your nonsense, Sheila!" she said. "What's a shaking! You know you can't +get out of here. It'd take you a week to get anywhere at all except into +a frozen supper for the coyotes. Your beau's left the country--Madder +told me at the post-office. Make the best of it, Sheila. Lucky if you +don't get worse than that before spring. You'll get used to me in time, +get broken in and learn my ways. I'm not half bad, but I've got to be +obeyed. I've got to be master. That's me. What do you think I've come +'way out here to the wilderness for, if not because I can't stand +anything less than being master? Here I've got my place and my dogs and a +world that don't talk back. And now I've got you for company and to do my +work. You've got to fall into line, Sheila, right in the ranks. Once, +some one out there in the world"--she made a gesture, dropped her chin on +her big chest, and looked out under her short, dense, rust-colored +eyelashes--"tried to break _me_. I won't tell you what he got. That's +where I quit the ways of women--yes, ma'am, and the ways of men." She +stood up and walked over to the window and looked out. The dogs were +sleeping in their kennels, but a chain rattled. "I've broke the +wolf-pack. You've seen them wriggle on their bellies for me, haven't you? +Well, my girl, do you think I can't break you?" She wheeled back and +stood with her hands on her hips. It was at that moment that she seemed +to fill the world. Her ruddy eyes glowed like blood. They were not quite +sane. That was it. Sheila went suddenly weak. They were not _quite_ +sane--those red eyes filled with sparks. + +The girl stepped back and sat down in her chair. She bent forward, +pressed her hands flat together, palm to palm between her knees, and +stared fixedly down at them. She made no secret of her desperate +preoccupation. + +Miss Blake's face softened a little at this withdrawal. She came back to +her place and resumed her spectacles. + +"I'll tell you why I'm snappy," she said presently. "I'm scared." + +This startled Sheila into a look. Miss Blake was moistening her lips. +"That horse--you know--the coyotes got him. I guess he went down and they +fell upon him. Well, he was to feed the dogs with until I could get my +winter meat." + +"What do you mean?" + +"That's what I buy 'em for. Little old horses, for a couple of bits, +and work 'em out and shoot 'em for dog-feed. Well, Sheila, when they're +fed, they're dogs. But when they're starved--they're wolves ... And I +can't think what's come to the elk this year. To-morrow I'll take out my +little old gun." + +To-morrow and the next day and the next she took her gun and strapped on +her shoes and went out for all day long into the cold. Each time she came +back more exhausted and more fierce. Sheila would have her supper ready +and waiting sometimes for hours. + +"The dogs have scared 'em off," said Miss Blake. "That must be the +truth." She let the pack hunt for itself at night, and they came back +sometimes with bloody jaws. But the prey must have been small, for they +were not satisfied. They grew more and more gaunt and wolfish. They would +howl for hours, wailing and yelping in ragged cadence to the stars. +Table-scraps and brews of Indian meal vanished and left their bellies +almost as empty as before. + +"And," said Miss Blake, "we got to eat, ourselves." + +"Hadn't we better go down to the post-office or to Rusty?" Sheila asked +nervously. + +Miss Blake snapped at her. "Harness that team now? As much as your life +is worth, Sheila! And we can't make it on foot. We'd drop in our tracks +and freeze. If it comes to the worst we may have to try it, but--oh, I'll +get something to-morrow." + +But to-morrow brought no better luck. During the hunting the dogs were +left on their chains, and Sheila, through the lonely hours, would watch +them through the window and could almost see the wolfishness grow in +their deep, wild eyes. She would try to talk to them, pat them, coax them +into doggy-ness. But day by day they responded more unwillingly. All but +Berg: Berg stayed with her in the house, lay on her feet, leaned against +her knee. He shared her meals. He was beginning to swing his heart from +Miss Blake to her, and this was the second cause for strife. + +Since that one outbreak, Sheila had gone carefully. She was dignified, +aloof, very still. She obeyed and slaved as she had never done in the +summer days. The dread of physical violence hung on her brain like a +cloud. She encouraged Berg's affection, and wondered, if it came to a +struggle, whether he would side with her. She was given the opportunity +to put this matter to the test. + +Miss Blake was very late that night. It was midnight, a stark midnight of +stars and biting cold, when Berg stood up from his sleep and barked his +low, short bark of welcome. Outside the other dogs broke into their +clamor, drowning all other sound, and in the midst of it the door flew +rudely open. Miss Blake stood and clung to the side of the door. Her face +was bluish-white. She put out her hand toward Sheila, clutching the air. +Sheila ran over to her. + +"You're hurt?" + +"Twisted my blamed ankle. God!" She hobbled over, a heavy arm round +Sheila, to her chair and sat there while the girl gave her some brandy, +removed the snowshoes, and cut away the boot from a swollen and +discolored leg. + +"That's the end of my hunting," grunted the patient, who bore the agony +of rubbing and bathing stoically. "And, I reckon, I couldn't have stood +much more." She clenched her hand in Berg's mane. "God! Those dogs! I'll +have to shoot them--next." Sheila looked up to her with a sort of +horrified hope. There was then a way out from that fear. + +"I'd rather die, I think," said the woman hoarsely. "I love those dogs." +Sheila looked up into a tender and quivering face--the face of a mother. +"They mean something to me--those brutes. I guess I kind of centered my +heart on 'em--out here alone. I raised 'em up, from puppies, all but Berg +and the mother. They were the cutest little fellows. I remember when +Wreck got porcupine quills in his nose and came to me and lay on his back +and whined to me. It was as if he said, 'Help me, momma.' Sure it was. +And he pretty near died. Oh, damn! If I have to shoot 'em I might just as +well shoot myself and be done with it...Thanks, Sheila. I'll eat my +supper here and then you can help me to bed. When my ankle's all well, we +can have a try for the post-office, perhaps." She leaned back and drew +Berg roughly up against her. She caressed him. He made little soft, +throaty sounds of tenderness. + +Sheila came back with a tray and, as she came, Berg pulled himself away +from his mistress and went wagging over to greet her. + +"Come here!" snapped Miss Blake. Berg hesitated, cuddled close to Sheila, +and kept step beside her. + +Miss Blake's eyes went red. "Come here!" she said again. Berg did not +cringe or hasten. He reached Miss Blake's chair at the same instant as +Sheila, not a moment earlier. + +Miss Blake pulled herself up. The tray went shattering to the floor. She +hobbled over to the fire, white with the anguish, took down the whip from +its nail. At that Berg cringed and whined. The woman fell upon him with +her terrible lash. She held herself with one hand on the mantel-shelf, +while with the other she scored the howling victim. His fur came off his +back under the dreadful, knife-edge blows. + +"Oh, stop!" cried Sheila. "Stop! You're killing him!" She ran over and +caught Miss Blake's arm. + +"Damn you!" said the woman fiercely. She stood breathing fast. Sweat +of pain and rage and exertion stood out on her face. "Do _you_ want +that whip?" + +She half-turned, lifting her lash, and at that, with a snarl, Berg +crouched himself and bared his teeth. + +Miss Blake started and stared at him. Suddenly she gave in. Pain and +anger twisted her spirit. + +"You'd turn my Berg against me!" she choked, and fell heavily down on the +rug in a dead faint. + +When she came to she was grim and silent. She got herself with scant +help to bed, her big bed in the corner of the living-room, and for a week +she was kept there with fever and much pain. Berg lay beside her or +followed Sheila about her work, and the woman watched them both with +ruddy eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE PACK + + +In January a wind blew steadily from the east and snow came as if to +bury them alive. The cabin turned to a cave, a small square of warmth +under a mountain of impenetrable white; one door and one window only, +opening to a space of sun. Against the others the blank white lids of +winter pressed. Sheila shoveled this space out sometimes twice a day. +The dog kennels were moved into it, and stood against the side of a +snow-bank eight feet high, up which, when they were unchained, the +gaunt, wolfish animals leapt in a loosely formed pack, the great mother, +Brenda, at their head, and padded off into the silent woods in their +hungry search for food. + +But, one day, they refused to go. Miss Blake, her whip in her hand, +limped out. The snow had stopped. The day was still and bright again +above the snowy firs, the mountain scraped against the blue sky like a +cliff of broken ice. The dogs had crept out of their houses and were +squatted or huddled in the sun. As she came out they rose and strained at +their tethers. One of them whined. Brenda, the mother, bared her teeth. +One by one, as they were freed, they slunk close to Miss Blake, looking +up into her face. They crowded close at her heels as she went back to the +house. She had to push the door to in their very jaws and they pressed +against it, their heads hung low, sniffing the odor of food. Presently a +long-drawn, hideous howling rose from them. Time and again Miss Blake +drove them away with lash and voice. Time and again they came back. They +scratched at the threshold, whimpered, and whined. + +Sheila and Miss Blake gave them what food they would have eaten +themselves that day. It served only to excite their restlessness, to hold +them there at the crack of the door, snuffling and slobbering. The outer +circle slept, the inner watched. Then they would shift, like sentries. +They had a horrible sort of system. Most of that dreadful afternoon Miss +Blake paced the floor, trying to strengthen her ankle for the trip to the +post-office. At sunset, when the small snow-banked room was nearly dark, +she stopped, threw up her head, and looked at Sheila. The girl was +sitting on the lowest step of the ladder washing some dried apples. Her +face had thinned to a silvery wedge between the thick square masses of +her hair. There was a haunted look in her clear eyes. The soft mouth had +tightened. + +"How in God's name," said Miss Blake, "shall I get 'em on their +chains again?" + +Sheila stopped her work, and her lips fell helplessly apart. She looked +up at the older woman and shook her head. + +Miss Blake's fear snapped into a sort of frenzy. She gritted her teeth +and stamped. "You simpleton!" she said. "You never have a notion in +your head." + +Sheila stood up quickly. Something told her that she had better be on her +feet. She kept very still. "You will know better than I could what to do +about the dogs," she said quietly. "They'll go back on their chains for +you, I should think. They're afraid of you." + +"Aren't you?" Miss Blake asked roughly. + +"No. Of course not." + +"You little liar! You're scared half out of your wits. You're scared of +the whole thing--scared of the snow, scared of the cold, scared of the +dogs, and scared sick of me. Come, now. Tell me the truth." + +It was almost her old bluff, bullying tone, but back of it was a +disorder of stretched nerves. Sheila weighed her words and tried to +weigh her thoughts. + +"I don't think I am afraid, Miss Blake. Why should I be afraid of the +dogs, if you aren't? And why should I be afraid of you? You have been +good to me. You are a good woman." + +At this Miss Blake threw back her head and laughed. She was terribly like +one of the dogs howling. There was something wild and wolfish in her +broad neck and in the sound she made. And she snapped back into silence +with wolfish suddenness. + +"If you're not scared, then," she scoffed, "go and chain up the dogs +yourself." + +For an instant Sheila quite calmly balanced the danger out of doors +against the danger within. + +"I think," she said--and managed one of her drifting smiles--"I think I +am a great deal more afraid of the dogs than I am of you, Miss Blake." + +The woman studied her for a minute in silence, then she walked over to +her elk-horn throne and sat down on it. + +She leaned back in a royal way and spread her dark broad hands across the +arms. + +"Well," she said coolly, "did you hear what I said? Go out and chain up +the dogs!" + +Sheila held herself like a slim little cavalier. "If I go out," she said +coolly, "I will not take a whip. I'll take a gun." + +"And shoot my dogs?" + +"Miss Blake, what else is left for us to do? We can't let them claw down +the door and tear us into bits, can we?" + +"You'd shoot my dogs?" + +"You said yourself that we might have to shoot them." + +Miss Blake gave her a stealthy and cunning look. "Take my gun, then"--her +voice rose to a key that was both crafty and triumphant--"and much good +it will do you! There's shot enough to kill one if you are a first-rate +shot. I lost what was left of my ammunition the day I hurt my ankle. The +new stuff is down at the post-office by now, I guess." + +The long silence was filled by the shifting of the dog-watch outside the +door. + +"We must chain them up at any cost," said Sheila. Her lips were dry and +felt cold to her tongue. + +"Go out and do it, then." The mistress of the house leaned back and +crossed her ankles. + +"Miss Blake, be reasonable. You have a great deal of control over the +dogs and I have none. I _am_ afraid of them and they will know it. +Animals always know when you're afraid..." Again she managed a smile. +"I shall begin to think you are a coward," she said. + +At that Miss Blake stood up from her chair. Her face was red with a +violent rush of blood and the sparks in her eyes seemed to have broken +into flame. + +"Very good, Miss," she said brutally. "I'll go out and chain 'em up and +then I'll come back and thrash you to a frazzle. Then you'll know how to +obey my orders next time." + +She caught up her whip, swung it in her hand, and strode to the door. + +"And mind you, Sheila, you won't be able to hide yourself from me. Nor +make a getaway. I'll lock this door outside and winter's locked the +other. You wait. You'll see what you'll get for calling me a coward. Your +friend Berg's gone off on a long hunt ... he's left his friends outside +there and he's left you.... Understand?" + +She shouted roughly to the dogs, snapped her whip, threw open the door, +and stepped out boldly. She shut the door behind her and shot a bolt. It +creaked as though it had grown rusty with disuse. + +In the stillness--for, except for a quick shuffling of paws, there was no +sound at first--Sheila chose her weapon of defense. She took down from +its place the Eskimo ivory spear, and, holding it short in her hand, she +put herself behind the great elk-horn chair. Her Celtic blood was +pounding gloriously now. She was not afraid; though if there had been +time to notice it, she would have confessed to an abysmal sense of horror +and despair. And again she wondered at her own loneliness and youth and +the astounding danger that she faced. Yes, it was more astonishment than +any other emotion that possessed her consciousness. The horror was below +the threshold practicing its part. + +Then anger, astonishment, horror itself were suddenly thrown out of her. +She was left like an empty vessel waiting to be filled with fear. Miss +Blake had cried aloud, "Help, Sheila! Help!" This was followed by a +dreadful screaming. Sheila dropped her spear and leapt to the door. On +it, outside, Miss Blake beat and screamed, "Open, for God's sake!" + +Sheila shouted in as dreadful a key. "On your side--the bolt! Miss +Blake--the bolt!" + +Fingers clawed at the bolt, but it would not slip. Through all the +horrible sounds the woman made, Sheila could hear the snarling and +leaping and snapping of the dogs. She dashed to the small, tight window, +broke a pane with her fist, and thrust out her arm. She meant to reach +the bolt, but what she saw took the warm life out of her. Miss Blake had +gone down under the whirling, slobbering pack. The screaming had stopped. +In that one awful look the poor child saw that no human help could save. +She dropped down on the floor and lay there moaning, her hands pressed +over her ears.... + +So she lay, shuddering and gasping, the great part of the night. At last +the intense cold drove her to the fire. She heaped up the logs high and +hung close above them. Her very heart was cold. Liquid ice moved +sluggishly along her veins. The morning brought no comfort or courage to +her, only a freshening of horror and of fear. The dogs had gone, and all +the winter world lay still about the house. + +She was shaken by a regular pulse of nervous sobbing. But, driven by a +sort of restlessness, she made herself coffee and forced some food down +her contracted throat. Then she put on her coat, took down Miss Blake's +six-shooter and cartridge belt, and saw, with a slight relaxing of the +cramp about her heart, that there were four shots in the chamber. Four +shots and eight dogs, but--at least--she could save herself from _that_ +death! She strapped the gun round her slim hips, filled her pockets with +supplies--a box of dried raisins, some hard bread, a cake of chocolate, +some matches--pulled her cap down over her ears, and took her snowshoes +from the wall. With closed eyes she put her arm out through the broken +pane, and, after a short struggle, slipped the rusty bolt. Then she went +over to the door and, leaning against it, prayed. Even with the +mysterious strength she drew from that sense of kinship with a superhuman +Power, it was a long time before she could force herself to open. At +last, with a big gasp, she flung the door wide, skirted the house, her +hands against the logs, her eyes shut, ran across the open space, +scrambled up the drift, tied on her snowshoes, and fled away under the +snow-laden pines. There moved in all the wilderness that day no more +hunted and fearful a thing. + +The fresh snow sunk a little under her webs, but she was a featherweight +of girlhood, and made quicker and easier progress than would have been +possible to any one else but a child. And her fear gave her both strength +and speed. Sometimes she looked back over her shoulder; always she +strained her ears for the pad of following feet. It was a day of rainbows +and of diamond spray, where the sun struck the shaken snow sifted from +overweighted branches. Sheila remembered well enough the route to the +post-office. It meant miles of weary plodding, but she thought that she +could do it before night. If not, she would travel by starlight and the +wan reflection of the snow. There was no darkness in these clear, keen +nights. She would not tell herself what gave her strength such impetus. +She thought resolutely of the post-office, of the old, friendly man, of +his stove, of his chairs and his picture of the President, of his gun +laid across two nails against his kitchen wall--all this, not more than +eighteen miles away! And she thought of Hilliard, too; of his young +strength and the bold young glitter of his eyes. + +She stopped for a minute at noon to drink some water from Hidden Creek +and to eat a bite or so of bread. She was pulling on her gloves again +when a distant baying first reached her ears. She turned faint, seemed to +stand in a mist; then, with her teeth set defiantly, she started again, +faster and steadier, her body bent forward, her head turned back. Before +her now lay a great stretch of undulating, unbroken white. At its farther +edge the line of blue-black pines began again. She strained her steps to +reach this shelter. The baying had been very faint and far away--it might +have been sounded for some other hunting. She would make the woods, take +off her webs, climb up into a tree and, perhaps, attracted by those four +shots--no, three, she must save one--some trapper, some unimaginable +wanderer in the winter forest, would come to her and rescue her before +the end. So her mind twisted itself with hope. But, an hour later, with +the pines not very far away, the baying rose so close behind that it +stopped her heart. Twenty minutes had passed when above a rise of ground +she saw the shaggy, trotting black-gray body of Brenda, the leader of the +pack. She was running slowly, her nose close to the snow, casting a +little right and left over the tracks. Sheila counted eight--Berg, then, +had joined them. She thought that she could distinguish him in the rear. +It was now late afternoon, and the sun slanted driving back the shadows +of the nearing trees, of Sheila, of the dogs. It all seemed +fantastic--the weird beauty of the scene, the weird horror of it. Sheila +reckoned the distance before her, reckoned the speed of the dogs. She +knew now that there was no hope. Ahead of her rose a sharp, sudden +slope--she could never make it. There came to her quite suddenly, like a +gift, a complete release from fear. She stopped and wheeled. It seemed +that the brutes had not yet seen her. They were nose down at the scent. +One by one they vanished in a little dip of ground, one by one they +reappeared, two yards away. Sheila pulled out her gun, deliberately aimed +and fired. + +A spurt of snow showed that she had aimed short. But the loud, sudden +report made Brenda swerve. All the dogs stopped and slunk together +circling, their haunches lowered. Wreck squatted, threw up his head, and +howled. Sheila spoke to them, clear and loud, her young voice ringing out +into that loneliness. + +"You Berg! Good dog! Come here." + +One of the shaggy animals moved toward her timidly, looking back, +pausing. Brenda snarled. + +"Berg, come here, boy!" + +Sheila patted her knee. At this the big dog whined, cringed, and began +to swarm up the slope toward her on his belly. His eyes shifted, the +struggle of his mind was pitifully visible--pack-law, pack-power, the +wolf-heart and the wolf-belly, and against them that queer hunger for the +love and the touch of man. Sheila could not tell if it were hunger or +loyalty that was creeping up to her in the body of the beast. She kept +her gun leveled on him. When he had come to within two feet of her, he +paused. Then, from behind him rose the starved baying of his brothers. +Sheila looked up. They were bounding toward her, all wolf these--but more +dangerous after their taste of human blood than wolves--to the bristling +hair along their backs and the bared fangs. Again she fired. This time +she struck Wreck's paw. He lifted it and howled. She fired again. Brenda +snapped sideways at her shoulder, but was not checked. There was one shot +left. Sheila knew how it must be used. Quickly she turned the muzzle up +toward her own head. + +Then behind her came a sharp, loud explosion. Brenda leapt high into +the air and fell at Sheila's feet. At that first rifle-shot, Berg fled +with shadow swiftness through the trees. For the rest, it was as though +a magic wall had stopped them, as though, at a certain point, they fell +upon death. Crack, crack, crack--one after another, they came up, +leapt, and dropped, choking and bleeding on the snow. At the end Sheila +turned blindly. A yard behind her and slightly above her there under +the pines stood Hilliard, very pale, his gun tucked under his arm, the +smoking muzzle lowered. Weakly she felt her way up toward him, groping +with her hands. + +He slid down noiselessly on his long skis and she stood clinging to his +arm, looking up dumbly into his strained face. + +"I heard your shots," he said breathlessly. "You're within a hundred +yards of my house.... For months I've been trying to make up my mind to +come to you. God forgive me, Sheila, for not coming before!" + +Swinging his gun on its strap across his shoulder, he lifted her in his +arms, and, like a child, she was carried through the silence of the +woods, all barred with blood-red glimmers from a setting sun. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE GOOD OLD WORLD AGAIN + + +Hilliard carried Sheila into the house that he had built for her and laid +her down in that big bedroom that "got the morning sun." For a while it +seemed to him that she would never open her eyes again, and when she did +regain consciousness she was so prostrate with her long fear and the +shock of Miss Blake's death that she lay there too weak to smile or +speak, too weak almost to breathe. Hilliard turned nurse, a puzzled, +anxious nurse. He would sit up in his living-room half the night, and +when sleep overpowered his anxiety he would fall prone on the elk-hide +rug before his fire. + +At last Sheila pulled herself up and crept about the house. She spent +a day in the big log chair before Hilliard's hearth, looking very wan, +shrinking from speech, her soft mouth gray and drawn. + +"Aren't you ever going to smile for me again?" he asked her, after a long +half-hour during which he had stood as still as stone, his arm along the +pine mantelshelf, looking at her from the shelter of a propping hand. + +She lifted her face to him and made a pitiful effort enough. But it +brought tears. They ran down her cheeks, and she leaned back and closed +her lids, but the crystal drops forced themselves out, clung to her +lashes, and fell down on her clenched hands. Hilliard went over to her +and took the small, cold hands in both of his. + +"Tell me about what happened, Sheila," he begged her. "It will help." + +Word by difficult word, he still holding fast to her hands, she sobbed +and gasped out her story, to which he listened with a whitening face. He +gripped her hands tighter, then, toward the end, he rose with a sharp +oath, lit his cigarette, paced to and fro. + +"God!" he said at the last. "And she told you I had gone from the +country! The devil! I can't help saying it, Sheila--she tortured you. She +deserved what God sent her." + +"Oh, no!"--Sheila rocked to and fro--"no one could deserve such dreadful +terror and pain. She--she wasn't sane. I was--foolish to trust her ... I +am so foolish--I think I must be too young or too stupid for--for all +this. I thought the world would be a much safer place." She looked up +again, and speech had given her tormented nerves relief, for her eyes +were much more like her own, clear and young again. "Mr. Hilliard--what +shall I do with my life, I wonder? I've lost my faith and trustingness. +I'm horribly afraid." + +He stood before her and spoke in a gentle and reasonable tone. "I'll tell +you the answer to that, ma'am," he said. "I've thought that all out +while I've been taking care of you." + +She waited anxiously with parted lips. + +"Well, ma'am, you see--it's like this. I'm plumb ashamed of myself +through and through for the way I have acted toward you. I was a fool to +listen to that dern lunatic. She told me--lies about you." + +"Miss Blake did?" + +"Yes, ma'am." His face crimsoned under her look. + +Sheila closed her eyes and frowned. A faint pink stole up into her face. +She lifted her lids again and he saw the brightness of anger. "And, of +course, you took her lies for the truth?" + +"Oh, damn! Now you're mad with me and you won't listen to my plan!" + +He was so childish in this outbreak that Sheila was moved to dim +amusement. "I'm too beaten to be angry at anything," she said. "Just tell +me your plan." + +"No," he said sullenly. "I'll wait. I'm scared to tell you now!" + +She did not urge him, and it was not till the next morning that he spoke +about his plan. She had got out to her chair again and had made a +pretense of eating an ill-cooked mess of canned stuff which he had +brought to her on a tray. It was after he had taken this breakfast away +that he broke out as though his excitement had forced a lock. + +"I'm going down to Rusty to-day," he said. His eyes were shining. He +looked at her boldly enough now. + +"And take me?" Sheila half-started up. "And take me?" + +"No, ma'am. You're to stay here safe and snug." She dropped back. "I'll +leave everything handy for you. There's enough food here for an army +and enough fuel.... You're as safe here as though you were at the foot +of God's throne. Don't look like that, girl. I can't take you. You're +not strong enough to make the journey in this cold, even on a sled. And +we can't"--his voice sunk and his eyes fell--"we can't go on like this, +I reckon." + +"N-no." Sheila's forehead was puckered. Her fingers trembled on the arms +of her chair. "N-no...." Then, with a sort of quaver, she added, "Oh, why +can't we go on like this?--till the snow goes and I can travel with you!" + +"Because," he said roughly, "we can't. You take my word for it." After a +pause he went on in his former decisive tone. "I'll be back in two or +three days. I'll fetch the parson." + +Sheila sat up straight. + +His eyes held hers. "Yes, ma'am. The parson. I'm going to marry +you, Sheila." + +She repeated this like a lesson. "You are going to marry me...." + +"Yes, ma'am. You'll have three days to think it over. If you don't want +to marry me when the parson comes, why, you can just go back to Rusty +with him." He laughed a little, came over to her, put a hand on each arm +of her chair, and bent down. She shrank back before him. His eyes had the +glitter of a hawk's, and his red and beautiful lips were soft and eager +and--again--a little cruel. + +"No," he said, "I won't kiss you till I come back--not even for good-bye. +Then you'll know how I feel about you. You'll know that I believe that +you're a good girl and, Sheila"--here he seemed to melt and falter +before her: he slipped down with one of his graceful Latin movements and +hid his forehead on her knees--"Sheila, my _darling_--that I know you are +fit--oh, so much more than fit--to be the mother of my children ..." + +In half an hour, during which they were both profoundly silent, he came +to her again. He was ready for his journey. She was sitting far back in +her chair, her slim legs stretched out. She raised inscrutable eyes +wide to his. + +"Good-bye," he said softly. "It's hard to leave you. Good-bye." + +She said good-bye even more softly with no change in her look. And he +went out, looking at her over his shoulder till the last second. She +heard the voice of his skis, hissing across the hard crust of the snow. +She sat there stiff and still till the great, wordless silence settled +down again. Then she started up from her chair, ran across to the window, +and saw that he was indeed gone. She came storming back and threw +herself down upon the hide. She cried like a deserted child. + +"Oh, Cosme, I'm afraid to be alone! I'm afraid! Why did I let you go? +Come back! Oh, please come back!" + + * * * * * + +It was late that night when Hilliard reached Rusty, traveling with all +his young strength across the easy, polished surface of the world. He was +dog-tired. He went first to the saloon. Then to the post-office. To his +astonishment he found a letter. It was postmarked New York and he +recognized the small, cramped hand of the family lawyer. He took the +letter up to his bedroom in the Lander Hotel and sat on the bed, turning +the square envelope about in his hands. At last, he opened it. + +"MY DEAR COSME [the lawyer had written ... he had known Hilliard as a +child], It is my strong hope that this letter will reach you promptly and +safely at the address you sent me. Your grandfather's death, on the +fifteenth instant, leaves you, as you are no doubt aware, heir to his +fortune, reckoned at about thirty millions. If you will wire on receipt +of this and follow wire in person as soon as convenient, it will greatly +facilitate arrangements. It is extremely important that you should come +at once. Every day makes things more complicated ... in the management +of the estate. I remain, with congratulations, + +"Sincerely your friend, ..." + +The young man sat there, dazed. + +He had always known about those millions; the expectation of them had +always vaguely dazzled his imagination, tampered more than he was aware +with the sincerity of his feelings, with the reality of his life; but now +the shower of gold had fallen all about him and his fancy stretched its +eyes to take in the immediate glitter. + +Why, thought Hilliard, this turns life upside down ... I can begin to +live ... I can go East. He saw that the world and its gifts were as truly +his as though he were a fairy prince. A sort of confusion of highly +colored pictures danced through his quick and ignorant brain. The blood +pounded in his ears. He got up and prowled about the little room. It was +oppressively small. He felt caged. The widest prairie would have given +him scant elbow-room. He was planning his trip to the East when the +thought of Sheila first struck him like a cold wave ... or rather it was +as if the wave of his selfish excitement had crashed against the wave of +his desire for her. All was foam and confusion in his spirit. He was +quite incapable of self-sacrifice--a virtue in which his free life and +his temperament had given him little training. It was simply a war of +impulses. His instinct was to give up nothing--to keep hold of every +gift. He wanted, as he had never in his life wanted anything before, to +have his fling. He wanted his birthright of experience. He had cut +himself off from all the gentle ways of his inheritance and lived like a +very Ishmael through no fault of his own. Now, it seemed to him that +before he settled down to the soberness of marriage, he must take one +hasty, heady, compensating draft of life, of the sort of life he might +have had. He would go East, go at once; he would fling himself into a +tumultuous bath of pleasure, and then he would come back to Sheila and +lay a great gift of gold at her feet. He thought over his plans, +reconstructing them. He got pen and ink and wrote a letter to Sheila. He +wrote badly--a schoolboy's inexpressive letter. But he told his story and +his astounding news and drew a vivid enough picture of the havoc it had +wrought in his simplicity. He used a lover's language, but his letter was +as cold and lumpish as a golden ingot. And yet the writer was not cold. +He was throbbing and distraught, confused and overthrown, a boy of +fourteen beside himself at the prospect of a holiday ... It was a stolen +holiday, to be sure, a sort of truancy from manliness, but none the less +intoxicating for that. Cosme's Latin nature was on top; Saxon loyalty and +conscience overthrown. He was an egoist to his finger-tips that night. He +did not sleep a wink, did not even try, but lay on his back across the +bed, hands locked over his hair while "visions of sugar plums danced +through his head." In the morning he went down and made his arrangements +for Sheila, a little less complete, perhaps, than he had intended, for he +met a worthy citizen of Rusty starting up the country with a sled to +visit his traps and to him he gave the letter and confided his +perplexities. It was a hasty interview, for the stage was about to start. + +"My wife will sure take your girl and welcome; don't even have to ask +her," the kind-eyed old fellow assured Hilliard. "We'll be glad to have +her for a couple of months. She'll like the kids. It'll be home for her. +Yes, sir"--he patted the excited traveler on the shoulder--"you pile +into the stage and don't you worry any. I'll be up at your place before +night and bring the lady down on my sled. Yes, sir. Pile in and don't +you worry any." + +Cosme wrung his hand, avoided his clear eye, and climbed up beside the +driver on the stage. He did not look after the trapper. He stared +ahead beyond the horses to the high white hill against a low and heavy +sky of clouds. + +"There's a big snowstorm a comin' down," growled the driver. "Lucky if we +make The Hill to-day. A reg'lar oldtimer it's agoin' to be. And +cold--ugh!" + +Cosme hardly heard this speech. The gray world was a golden ball for him +to spin at his will. Midas had touched the snow. The sleigh started with +a jerk and a jingle. In a moment it was running lightly with a crisp, +cutting noise. Cosme's thoughts outran it, leaping toward their gaudy +goal ... a journey out to life and a journey back to love--no wonder his +golden eyes shone and his cheeks flushed. + +"You look almighty glad to be going out of here," the driver made +comment. + +Hilliard laughed an explosive and excited laugh. "No almighty gladder +than I shall be to be coming back again," he prophesied. + +But to prophesy is a mistake. One should leave the future humbly on the +knees of the gods. That night, when Hilliard was lying wakeful in his +berth listening to the click of rails, the old trapper lay under the +driving snow. But he was not wakeful. He slept with no visions of gold or +love, a frozen and untroubled sleep. He had caught his foot in a trap, +and the blizzard had found him there and had taken mercy on his pain. +They did not find his body until spring, and then Cosme's letter to +Sheila lay wet and withered in his pocket. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +LONELINESS + + +The first misery of loneliness takes the form of a restless inability to +concentrate. It is as if the victim wanted to escape from himself. After +Cosme's departure Sheila prowled about the silent cabin, began this bit +of work and that, dropped it, found herself staring vaguely, listening, +waiting, and nervously shook herself into activity again. She tried to +whistle, but it seemed like somebody else's music and frightened her +ears. At dusk she fastened sacking across the uncurtained windows, +lighted both Cosme's lamps, bringing the second from her bedroom, and +heaped up a dancing and jubilant fire upon the hearth. In the midst of +this illumination she sat, very stiff and still, in the angular +elk-hide-covered chair, and knitted her hands together on her knee. Her +mind was now intensely active; memories, thoughts, plans, fancies racing +fast and furious like screen pictures across her brain. And they seemed +to describe themselves in loud whispers. She had difficulty in keeping +these voices from taking possession of her tongue. + +"I don't want to talk to myself," she murmured, and glanced over +her shoulder. + +A man has need of his fellows for a shield. Man is man's shelter from +all the storm of unanswered questions. Where am I? What am I? Why am +I?--No reply. No reassuring double to take away the ghost-sense of self, +that unseen, intangible aura of personality in which each of us moves as +in a cloud. In the souls of some there is an ever-present Man God who +will forever save them from this supreme experience. Sheila's religion, +vague, conventional, childish, faltered away from her soul. Except for +her fire, which had a sort of sympathy of life and warmth and motion, she +was unutterably alone. And she was beginning to suffer from the second +misery of solitude--a sense of being many personalities instead of one. +She seemed to be entertaining a little crowd of confused and +argumentative Sheilas. To silence them she fixed her mind on her +immediate problem. + +She tried to draw Hilliard close to her heart. She had an honest hunger +for his warm and graceful beauty, for his young strength, but this +natural hunger continually shocked her. She tried not to remember the +smoothness of his neck as her half-conscious hands had slipped away from +it that afternoon when he raised her from the snow. It seemed to her that +her desire for him was centered somewhere in her body. Her mind remained +cool, detached, critical, even hostile. She disliked the manner of his +wooing--not that there should have been any insult to the pride of a +nameless little adventurer, Hudson's barmaid, a waif, in being told that +she was a "good girl" and fit to be the mother of this young man's +children. But Sheila knew instinctively that these things could not be +said, could not even be thought of by such a man as Marcus Arundel. She +remembered his words about her mother.... Sheila wanted with a great +longing to be loved like that, to be so spoken of, so exquisitely +entreated. A phrase in Hudson's letter came to her mind, "I handled you +in my heart like a flower" ... Unconsciously she pressed her hand against +her lips, remembered the taste of whiskey and of blood. If only it had +been Dickie's lips that had first touched her own. Blinding tears fell. +The memory of Dickie's comfort, of Dickie's tremulous restraint, had a +strange poignancy.... Why was he so different from all the rest? So much +more like her father? What was there in this pale little hotel clerk who +drank too much that lifted him out and up into a sort of radiance? Her +memory of Dickie was always white--the whiteness of that moonlight of +their first, of that dawn of their last, meeting. He had had no chance in +his short, unhappy, and restricted life--not half the chance that young +Hilliard's life had given him--to learn such delicate appreciations, such +tenderness, such reserves. Where had he got his delightful, gentle +whimsicalities, that sweet, impersonal detachment that refused to yield +to stupid angers and disgusts? He was like--in Dickie's own fashion she +fumbled for a simile. But there was no word. She thought of a star, that +morning star he had drawn her over to look at from the window of her +sitting-room. Perhaps the artist in Sylvester had expressed itself in +this son he so despised; perhaps Dickie was, after all, Hudson's great +work ... All sorts of meanings and symbols pelted Sheila's brain as she +sat there, exciting and fevering her nerves. + +In three days Hilliard would be coming back. His warm youth would +again fill the house, pour itself over her heart. After the silence, +his voice would be terribly persuasive, after the loneliness, his eager, +golden eyes would be terribly compelling! He was going to "fetch the +parson" ... Sheila actually wrung her hands. Only three days for this +decision and, without a decision, that awful, helpless wandering, those +dangers, those rash confidences of hers. "O God, where are you? Why don't +you help me now?" That was Sheila's prayer. It gave her little comfort, +but she did fall asleep from the mental exhaustion to which it brought at +least the relief of expression. + +When she woke, she found the world a horrible confusion of storm. It +could hardly be called morning--a heavy, flying darkness of drift, a wind +filled with icy edges that stung the face and cut the eyes, a wind with +the voice of a driven saw. The little cabin was caught in the whirling +heart of a snow spout twenty feet high. The firs bent and groaned. There +is a storm-fear, one of the inherited instinctive fears. Sheila's little +face looked out of the whipped windows with a pinched and shrinking +stare. She went from window to hearth, looking and listening, all day. A +drift was blown in under the door and hardly melted for all the blazing +fire. That night she couldn't go to bed. She wrapped herself in blankets +and curled herself up in the chair, nodding and starting in the circle of +the firelight. + +For three terrible days the world was lost in snow. Before the end of +that time Sheila was talking to herself and glad of the sound of her own +hurried little voice. Then, like God, came a beautiful stillness and the +sun. She opened the door on the fourth morning and saw, above the fresh, +soft, ascending dazzle of the drift, a sky that laughed in azure, the +green, snow-laden firs, a white and purple peak. She spread out her hands +to feel the sun and found it warm. She held it like a friendly hand. She +forced herself that day to shovel, to sweep, even to eat. Perhaps Cosme +would be back before night. He and the parson would have waited for the +storm to be over before they made their start. She believed in her own +excuses for five uneasy days, and then she believed in the worst of all +her fears. She had a hundred to choose from--Cosme's desertion, Cosme's +death.... One day she spent walking to and fro with her nails driven into +her palms. + + * * * * * + +Late that night the white world dipped into the still influence of a full +white moon. Before Hilliard's cabin the great firs caught the light with +a deepening flush of green, their shadows fell in even lavender tracery +delicate and soft across the snow, across the drifted roof. The smoke +from the half-buried chimney turned to a moving silver plume across the +blue of the winter night sky--intense and warm as though it reflected an +August lake. + +The door of the cabin opened with a sharp thrust and Sheila stepped +out. She walked quickly through the firs and stood on the edge of the +open range-land, beyond and below which began the dark ridge of the +primeval woods. She stood perfectly still and lifted her face to the +sky. For all the blaze of the moon the greater stars danced in +radiance. Their constellations sloped nobly across her dazzled vision. +She had come very close to madness, and now her brain was dumb and +dark as though it had been shut into a blank-walled cell. She stood +with her hands hanging. She had no will nor wish to pray. The knowledge +had come to her that if she went out and looked this winter Pan in the +face, her brain would snap, either to life or death. It would burst its +prison ... She stared, wide-eyed, dry-eyed, through the immense cold +height of air up at the stars. + +All at once a door flew open in her soul and she knew God ... no visible +presence and yet an enveloping reality, the God of the savage earth, of +the immense sky, of the stars, the God unsullied and untempted by man's +worship, no God that she had ever known, had ever dreamed of, had ever +prayed to before. She did not pray to Him now. She let her soul stand +open till it was filled as were the stars and the earth with light.... + +The next day Sheila found her voice and sang at her work. She gave +herself an overwhelming task of cleaning and scrubbing. She was on her +knees like a charwoman, sniffing the strong reek of suds, when there came +a knocking at her door. She leapt up with pounding heart. But the +knocking was more like a scraping and it was followed by a low whine. For +a second Sheila's head filled with a fog of terror and then came a homely +little begging bark, just the throaty, snuffling sob of a homeless puppy. +Sheila took Cosme's six-shooter, saw that it was loaded, and, standing in +the shelter of the door, she slowly opened it. A few moments later the +gun lay a yard away on the soapy, steaming floor and Berg was held tight +in her arms. His ecstasy of greeting was no greater than her ecstasy of +welcome. She cried and laughed and hugged and kissed him. That night, +after a mighty supper, he slept on her bed across her feet. Two or three +times she woke and reached her hand down to caress his rough thick coat. +The warmth of his body mounted from her feet to her heart. She thought +that he had been sent to her by that new God. As for Berg, he had found +his God again, the taming touch of a small human hand. + + * * * * * + +It was in May, one morning in May--she had long ago lost count of her +days--when Sheila stepped across her sill and saw the ground. Just a +patch it was, no bigger than a tablecloth, but it made her catch her +breath. She knelt down and ran her hands across it, sifted some gravel +through her fingers. How strange and various and colorful were the atoms +of stone, rare as jewels to her eyes so long used to the white and violet +monotony of snow. Beyond the gravel, at the very edge of the drift, a +slender crescent of green startled her eyes and--yes--there were a dozen +valorous little golden flowers, as flat and round as fairy doubloons. + +Attracted by her cry, Berg came out, threw up his nose, and snuffed. +Spring spoke loudly to his nostrils. There was sap, rabbits were +about--all of it no news to him. Sheila sat down on the sill and hugged +him close. The sun was warm on his back, on her hands, on the boards +beneath her. + +"May--May--May--" she whispered, and up in the firs quite suddenly, as +though he had thrown reserve to the four winds, a bluebird repeated her +"May--May--May" on three notes, high, low, and high again, a little +musical stumble of delight. It had begun again--that whistling-away of +winter fear and winter hopelessness. + +The birds sang and built and the May flies crept up through the snow and +spun silver in the air for a brief dazzle of life. + +The sun was so warm that Berg and Sheila dozed on their doorsill. They +did little else, these days, but dream and doze and wait. + +The snow melted from underneath, sinking with audible groans of +collapse and running off across the frozen ground to swell Hidden +Creek. The river roared into a yellow flood, tripped its trees, sliced +at its banks. Sheila snowshoed down twice a day to look at it. It was a +sufficient barrier, she thought, between her and the world. And now, +she had attained to the savage joy of loneliness. She dreaded change. +Above all she dreaded Hilliard. That warmth of his beauty had faded +utterly from her senses. It seemed as faint as a fresco on a +long-buried wall. Intrusion must bring anxiety and pain, it might bring +fear. She had had long communion with her stars and the God whose name +they signaled. She, with her dog friend under her hand, had come to +something very like content. + +The roar of Hidden Creek swelled and swelled. After the snow had shrunk +into patches here and there under the pines and against hilly slopes, +there was still the melting of the mountain glaciers. + +"Nobody can possibly cross!" Sheila exulted. "A man would have to risk +his life." And it was in one of those very moments of her savage +self-congratulation when there came the sound of nearing hoofs. + +She was sitting on her threshold, watching the slow darkness, a +sifting-down of ashes through the still air. It was so very still that +the little new moon hung there above the firs like faint music. Silver +and gray, and silver and green, and violet--Sheila named the delicacies +of dappled light. The stars had begun to shake little shivers of radiance +through the firs. They were softer than the winter stars--their keenness +melted by the warm blue of the air. Sheila sat and held her knees and +smiled. The distant, increasing tumult of the river, so part of the +silence that it seemed no sound at all, lulled her--Then--above it--the +beat of horse's hoofs. + +At first she just sat empty of sensation except for the shock of those +faint thuds of sound. Then her heart began to beat to bursting; with +dread, with a suffocation of suspense. She got up, quiet as a thief. The +horse stopped. There came a step, rapid and eager. She fled like a +furtive shadow into the house, fell on her knees there by the hearth, and +hid her face against the big hide-covered chair. Her eyes were full of +cold tears. Her finger-tips were ice. She was shaking--shuddering, +rather--from head to foot. The steps had come close, had struck the +threshold. There they stopped. After a pause, which her pulses filled +with shaken rhythm, her name was spoken--So long it had been since she +had heard it that it fell on her ear like a foreign speech. + +"Sheila! Sheila!" + +She lifted her head sharply. It was not Hilliard's voice. + +"Sheila--" There was such an agony of fear in the softly spoken +syllables, there was such a weight of dread on the breath of the speaker, +that, for very pity, Sheila forgot herself. She got up from the floor and +moved dazedly to meet the figure on the threshold. It was dimly outlined +against the violet evening light. Sheila came up quite close and put her +hands on the tense, hanging arms. They caught her. Then she sobbed and +laughed aloud, calling out in her astonishment again and again, softly, +incredulously-- + +"_You_, Dickie? Oh, Dickie, Dickie, it's--_you_?" + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +SHEILA AND THE STARS + + +Hilliard's first messenger had been hindered by death. Several times it +seemed that his second messenger would suffer the same grim prevention. +But this second messenger was young and set like steel to his purpose. He +left the railroad at Millings, hired a horse, crossed the great plain +above the town and braved the Pass, dangerous with overbalanced weights +of melting snow. There, on the lonely Hill, he had his first encounter +with that Arch-Hinderer. A snow-slide caught him and he left his horse +buried, struggling out himself from the cold smother like a maimed insect +to lie for hours by the road till breath and life came back to him. He +got himself on foot to the nearest ranch, and there he hired a fresh +horse and reached Rusty, at the end of the third day. + +Rusty was overshadowed by a tragedy. The body of the trapper, Hilliard's +first messenger, had been found under the melting snow, a few days +before, and to the white-faced young stranger was given that stained and +withered letter in which Hilliard had excused and explained his +desertion. + +Nothing, at Rusty, had been heard of Sheila. No one knew even that she +had ever left Miss Blake's ranch--the history of such lonely places is a +sealed book from snowfall until spring. Their tragedies are as dumb as +the tragedies of animal life. No one had ever connected Sheila's name +with Hilliard's. No one knew of his plans for her. The trapper had set +off without delay, not even going back to his house, some little distance +outside of Rusty, to tell his wife that he would be bringing home a +lodger with him. There was, to be sure, at the office a small bundle of +letters all in the same hand addressed to Miss Arundel. They had to wait, +perforce, till the snow-bound country was released. + +"It's not likely even now," sly and twinkling Lander of the hotel told +Dickie, "that you can make it to Miss Blake's place. No, sir, nor to +Hilliard's neither. Hidden Creek's up. She's sure some flood this time of +the year. It's as much as your life's good for, stranger." + +But Dickie merely smiled and got for himself a horse that was "good in +deep water." And he rode away from Rusty without looking back. + +He rode along a lush, wet land of roaring streams, and, on the bank of +Hidden Creek, there was a roaring that drowned even the beating of his +heart. The flood straddled across his path like Apollyon. + +A dozen times the horse refused the ford--at last with a desperate toss +of his head he made a plunge for it. Almost at once he was swept from the +cobbled bed. He swam sturdily, but the current whirled him down like a +straw--Dickie slipped from the saddle on the upper side so that the +water pressed him close to the horse, and, even when they both went +under, he held to the animal with hands like iron. This saved his life. +Five blind, black, gasping minutes later, the horse pulled him up on the +farther bank and they stood trembling together, dazed by life and the +warmth of the air. + +It was growing dark. The heavy shadow of the mountain fell across them +and across the swollen yellow river they had just escaped. There began to +be a dappling light--the faint shining of that slim young moon. She was +just a silver curl there above the edge of the hill. In an hour she would +set. Her brightness was as shy and subtle as the brightness of a smile. +The messenger pulled his trembling body to the wet saddle and, looking +about for landmarks that had been described to him, he found the faint +trail to Hilliard's ranch. Presently he made out the low building under +its firs. He dropped down, freed the good swimmer and turned him loose, +then moved rapidly across the little clearing. It was all so still. +Hidden Creek alone made a threatening tumult. Dickie stopped before he +came to the door. He stood with his hands clenched at his sides and his +chin lifted. He seemed to be speaking to the sky. Then he stumbled to the +door and called, + +"Sheila--" + +She seemed to rise up from the floor and stand before him and put her +hands on his arms. + +A sort of insanity of joy, of childish excitement came upon Sheila when +she had recognized her visitor. She flitted about the room, she laughed, +she talked half-wildly--it had been such a long silence--in broken, +ejaculatory sentences. It was Dickie's dumbness, as he leaned against the +door, looking at her, that sobered her at last. She came close to him +again and saw that he was shivering and that streams of water were +running from his clothes to the floor. + +"Why, Dickie! How wet you are!"--Again she put her hands on his arms--he +was indeed drenched. She looked up into his face. It was gray and drawn +in the uncertain light. + +"That dreadful river! How did you cross it!" + +Dickie smiled. + +"It would have taken more than a river to stop me," he said in his old, +half-demure, half-ironical fashion. And that was all Sheila ever heard of +that brief epic of his journey. He drew away from her now and went over +to the fire. + +"Dickie"--she followed him--"tell me how you came here. How you +knew where I was. Wait--I'll get you some of Cosme's clothes--and a +cup of tea." + +This time, exhausted as he was, Dickie did not fail to stand up to take +the cup she brought him. He shook his head at the dry clothes. He didn't +want Hilliard's things, thank you; he was drying out nicely by the fire. +He wasn't a bit cold. He sat and drank the tea, leaning forward, his +elbows on his knees. He was, after all, just the same, she decided--only +more so. His Dickie-ness had increased a hundredfold. There was still +that quaint look of having come in from the fairy doings of a midsummer +night. Only, now that his color had come back and the light of her lamp +shone on him, he had a firmer and more vital look. His sickly pallor had +gone, and the blue marks under his eyes--the eyes were fuller, deeper, +more brilliant. He was steadier, firmer. He had definitely shed the +pitifulness of his childhood. And Sheila did not remember that his mouth +had so sweet a firm line from sensitive end to end of the lips. + +Her impatience was driving her heart faster at every beat. + +"You _must_, please, tell me everything now, Dickie," she pleaded, +sitting on the arm of Hilliard's second chair. Her cheeks burned; her +hair, grown to an awkward length, had come loose from a ribbon and fallen +about her face and shoulders. She had made herself a frock of +orange-colored cotton stuff--something that Hilliard had bought for +curtains. It was a startling color enough, but it could not dim her gypsy +beauty of wild dark hair and browned skin with which the misty and +spiritual eyes and the slightly straightened and saddened lips made +exquisite disharmony. + +Dickie looked up at her a minute. He put down his cup and got to his +feet. He went to stand by the shelf, half-turned from her. + +"Tell me, at least," she begged in a cracked key of suspense, "do you +know anything about--_Hilliard_?" + +At that Dickie was vividly a victim of remorse. + +"Oh--Sheila--damn! I _am_ a beast. Of course--he's all right. Only, you +see, he's been hurt and is in the hospital. That's why I came." + +"You?--Hilliard?--Dickie. I can't really understand." She pushed back her +hair with the same gesture she had used in the studio when Sylvester +Hudson's offer of "a job" had set her brain whirling. + +"No, of course. You wouldn't." Dickie spoke slowly again, looking at the +rug. "I went East--" + +"But--Hilliard?" + +He looked up at her and flashed a queer, pained sort of smile. "I am +coming to him, Sheila. I've got to tell you _some_ about myself before I +get around to him or else you wouldn't savvy--" + +"Oh." She couldn't meet the look that went with the queer smile, for it +was even queerer and more pained, and was, somehow, too old a look for +Dickie. So she said, "Oh," again, childishly, and waited, staring at +her fingers. + +"I went to New York because I thought I'd find you there, Sheila. Pap's +hotel was on fire." + +"Did you really burn it down, Dickie?" + +He started violently. "_I_ burned it down? Good Lord! No. What made you +think such a thing?" + +"Never mind. Your father thought so." + +Dickie's face flushed. "I suppose he would." He thought it over, then +shrugged his shoulders. "I didn't. I don't know how it started ... I went +to New York and to that place you used to live in--the garret. I had the +address from the man who took Pap there." + +"The studio? _Our_ studio?--_You_ there, Dickie?" + +"Yes, ma'am. I lived there. I thought, at first, you might +come ... Well"--Dickie hurried as though he wanted to pass quickly over +this necessary history of his own experience--"I got a job at a hotel." +He smiled faintly. "I was a waiter. One night I went to look at a fire. +It was a big fire. I was trying to think out what it was like--you know +the way I always did. It used to drive Pap loco--I must have been talking +to myself. Anyway, there was a fellow standing near me with a notebook +and a pencil and he spoke up suddenly--kind of sharp, and said: 'Say that +again, will you?'--He was a newspaper reporter, Sheila ... That's how I +got into the job. But I'm only telling you because--" + +Sheila hit the rung of her chair with an impatient foot. "Oh, Dickie! How +silly you are! As if I weren't _dying_ to hear all about it. How did you +get 'into the job'? What job?" + +"Reporting," said Dickie. He was troubled by this urgency of hers. He +began to stammer a little. "Of course, the--the fellow helped me a lot. +He got me on the staff. He went round with me. He--he took down what I +said and later he--he kind of edited my copy before I handed it in. +He--he was almighty good to me. And I--I worked awfully hard. Like Hell. +Night classes when I wasn't on night duty, and books. Then, Sheila, I +began to get kind of crazy over words." His eyes kindled. And his face. +He straightened. He forgot himself, whatever it was that weighed upon +him. "Aren't they wonderful? They're like polished stones--each one a +different shape and color and feel. You fit 'em this way and that and +turn 'em and--all at once, they shine and sing. God! I never knowed what +was the matter with me till I began to work with words--and that _is_ +work. Sheila! Lord! How you hate them, and love them, and curse them, and +worship them. I used to think I wanted _whiskey_." He laughed scorn at +that old desire; then came to self-consciousness again and was +shamefaced--"I guess you think I am plumb out of my head," he apologized. +"You see, it was because I was a--a reporter, Sheila, that I happened to +be there when Hilliard was hurt. I was coming home from the night courts. +It was downtown. At a street-corner there was a crowd. Somebody told me; +'Young Hilliard's car ran into a milk cart; turned turtle. He's hurt.' +Well, of course, I knew it'd be a good story--all that about Hilliard and +his millions and his coming from the West to get his inheritance--it had +just come out a couple of months before...." + +"His millions?" repeated Sheila. She slipped off the arm of her chair +without turning her wide look from Dickie and sat down with an air of +deliberate sobriety. "His inheritance?" she repeated. + +"Yes, ma'am. That's what took him East. He had news at Rusty. He wrote +you a letter and sent it by a man who was to fetch you to Rusty. You were +to stay there with his wife till Hilliard would be coming back for you. +But, Sheila, the man was caught in a trap and buried by a blizzard. They +found him only about a week ago--with Hilliard's letter in his pocket." +Dickie fumbled in his own steaming coat. "Here it is. I've got it." + +"Don't give it to me yet," she said. "Go on." + +"Well," Dickie turned the shriveled and stained paper lightly in restless +fingers. "That morning in New York I got up close to the car and had my +notebook out. Hilliard was waiting for the ambulance. His ribs were +smashed and his arm broken. He was conscious. He was laughing and talking +and smoking cigarettes. I asked him some questions and he took a notion +to question _me_. 'You're from the West,' he said; and when I told him +'Millings,' he kind of gasped and sat up. That turned him faint. But when +they were carrying him off, he got a-holt of my hand and whispered, 'Come +see me at the hospital.' I was willing enough--I went. And they took me +to him--private room. And a nice-looking nurse. And flowers. He has lots +of friends in New York--Hilliard, you bet you--" It was irony again and +Sheila stirred nervously. That changed his tone. He moved abruptly and +came and sat down near her, locking his hands and bending his head to +study them in the old way. "He found out who I was and he told me about +you, Sheila, and, because he was too much hurt to travel or even to +write, he asked me to go out and carry a message for him. Nothing would +have kept me from going, anyway," Dickie added quaintly. "When I learned +what had been happening and how you were left and no letters coming from +Rusty to answer his--well, sir, I could hardly sit still to hear about +all that, Sheila. But, anyway--" Dickie moved his hands. They sought the +arms of his chair and the fingers tightened. He looked past Sheila. "He +told me then how it was with you and him. That you were planning to be +married. And I promised to find you and tell you what he said." + +"What did he say?" + +Dickie spoke carefully, using his strange gift. With every word his +face grew a trifle whiter, but that had no effect upon his eloquence. +He painted a vivid and touching picture of the shattered and wistful +youth. He repeated the shaken words of remorse and love. "I want her to +come East and marry me. I love her. Tell her I love her. Tell her I can +give her everything she wants in all the world. Tell her to come--" And +far more skillfully than ever Hilliard himself could have done, Dickie +pleaded the intoxication of that sudden shower of gold, the +bewildering change in the young waif's life, the necessity he was under +to go and see and touch the miracle. There was a long silence after +Dickie had delivered himself of the burden of his promise. The fire +leapt and crackled on Hilliard's forsaken hearth. It threw shadows and +gleams across Dickie's thin, exhausted face and Sheila's inscrutably +thoughtful one. + +She held out her hand. + +"Give me the letters now, Dickie." + +He handed her the bundle that had accumulated in Rusty and the little +withered one taken from the body of the trapper. Sheila took them and +held them on her knee. She pressed both her hands against her eyes; then, +leaning toward the fire, she read the letters, beginning with that one +that had spent so many months under the dumb snow. + +Berg, who had investigated Dickie, leaned against her knee while she +read, his eyes fixed upon her. She read and laid the pile by on the table +behind her. She sat for a long while, elbows on the arms of her chair, +fingers laced beneath her chin. She seemed to be looking at the fire, but +she was watching Dickie through her eyelashes. There was no ease in his +attitude. He had his arms folded, his hands gripped the damp sleeves of +his coat. When she spoke, he jumped as though she had fired a gun. + +"It is not true, Dickie, that things were--were that way between Cosme +and me ... We had not settled to be married ..." She paused and saw that +he forced himself to sit quiet. "Do you really think," she said, "that +the man that wrote those letters, loves me?" Dickie was silent. He would +not meet her look. "So you promised Hilliard that you would take me back +to marry him?" There was an edge to her voice. + +Dickie's face burned cruelly. "No," he said with shortness. "I was going +to take you to the train and then come back here. I am going to take up +this claim of Hilliard's--he's through with it. He likes the East. You +see, Sheila, he's got the whole world to play with. It's quite true." He +said this gravely, insistently. "He can give you everything--" + +"And you?" + +Dickie stared at her with parted lips. He seemed afraid to breathe lest +he startle away some hesitant hope. "I?" he whispered. + +"I mean--_you_ don't like the East?--You will give up your work?" + +"Oh--" He dropped back. The hope had flown and he was able to breathe +again, though breathing seemed to hurt. "Yes, ma'am. I'll give up +newspaper reporting. I don't like New York." + +"But, Dickie--your--words? I'd like to see something you've written." + +Dickie's hand went to an inner pocket. + +"I wanted you to see this, Sheila," His eyes were lowered to hide a +flaming pride. "My _poems_." + +Sheila felt a shock of dread. Dickie's _poems_! She was afraid to read +them. She could not help but think of his life at Millings, of that +sordid hotel lobby ... Newspaper stories--yes--that was imaginable. +But--poetry? Sheila had been brought up on verse. There was hardly a +beautiful line that had not sung itself into the fabric of her brain. + +"Poems?" she repeated, just a trifle blankly; then, seeing the hurt in +his face, about the sensitive and delicate lips, she put out a quick, +penitent hand. "Let me see them--at once!" + +He handed a few folded papers to her. They were damp. He put his face +down to his hands and looked at the floor as though he could not bear to +watch her face. Sheila saw that he was shaking. It meant so much to him, +then--? She unfolded the papers shrinkingly and read. As she read, the +blood rushed to her checks for shame. She ought never to have doubted +him. Never after the first look into his face, never after hearing him +speak of the "cold, white flame" of an unforgotten winter night. Dickie's +words, so greatly loved and groped for, so tirelessly pursued in the face +of his world's scorn and injury, came to him, when they did come, on +wings. In the four short poems, there was not a word outside of his inner +experience, and yet she felt that those words had blown through him +mysteriously on a wind--the wind that fans such flame-- + +"Oh, little song you sang to me +A hundred, hundred days ago, +Oh, little song whose melody +Walks in my heart and stumbles so; +I cannot bear the level nights, +And all the days are over-long, +And all the hours from dark to dark +Turn to a little song--" + +"Like the beat of the falling rain, +Until there seems no roof at all, +And my heart is washed with pain--" + +"Why is a woman's throat a bird, +White in the thicket of the years?--" + +Sheila suddenly thrust back the leaves at him, hid her face and fell to +crying bitterly. Dickie let fall his poems; he hovered over her, utterly +bewildered, utterly distressed. + +"Sheila--h-how could they possibly hurt you so? It was your song--your +song--Are you angry with me--? I couldn't help it. It kept singing in +me--It--it hurt." + +She thrust his hand away. + +"Don't be kind to me! Oh--I am ashamed! I've treated you _so_! And--and +snubbed you. And--and condescended to you, Dickie. And shamed you. +You--! And you can write such lines--and you are great--you will be very +great--a poet! Dickie, why couldn't I see? Father would have seen. Don't +touch me, please! I can't bear it. Oh, my dear, you must have been +through such long, long misery--there in Millings, behind that desk--all +stifled and cramped and shut in. And when I came, I might have helped +you. I might have understood ... But I hurt you more." + +"Please don't, Sheila--it isn't true. Oh,--_damn_ my poems!" + +This made her laugh a little, and she got up and dried her eyes and sat +before him like a humbled child. It was quite terrible for Dickie. His +face was drawn with the discomfort of it. He moved about the room, +miserable and restless. + +Sheila recovered herself and looked up at him with a sort of wan +resolution. + +"And you will stay here and work the ranch and write, Dickie?" + +"Yes, ma'am." He managed a smile. "If you think a fellow can push a +plough and write poetry with the same hand." + +"It's been done before. And--and you will send me back to Hilliard +and--the good old world?" + +Dickie's artificial smile left him. He stood, white and stiff, looking +down at her. He tried to speak and put his hand to his throat. + +"And I must leave you here," Sheila went on softly, "with my stars?" + +She got up and walked over to the door and stood, half-turned from him, +her fingers playing with the latch. + +Dickie found part of his voice. + +"What do you mean, Sheila, about your stars?" + +"You told me," she said carefully, "that you would go and work and then +come back--But, I suppose--" + +That was as far as she got. Dickie flung himself across the room. A chair +crashed. He had his arms about her. He was shaking. That pale and tender +light was in his face. The whiteness of a full moon, the whiteness of a +dawn seemed to fall over Sheila. + +"He--he can give you everything--" Dickie said shakily. + +"I've been waiting"--she said--"I didn't know it until lately. But I've +been waiting, so long now, for--for--" She closed her eyes and lifted her +soft sad mouth. It was no longer patient. + +That night Dickie and Berg lay together on the hide before the fire, +wrapped in a blanket. Dickie did not sleep. He looked through the +uncurtained, horizontal window, at the stars. + +"You've got everything else, Hilliard," he muttered. "You've got the +whole world to play with. After all, it was your own choice. I told you +how it was with me. I promised I'd play fair. I did play fair." He sighed +deeply and turned with his head on his arm and looked toward the door of +the inner room. "It's like sleeping just outside the gate of Heaven, +Berg," he said. "I never thought I'd get as close as that--" He listened +to the roar of Hidden Creek. "It won't be long, old fellow, before we +take her down to Rusty and bring her back." Tears stood on Dickie's +eye-lashes. "Then we'll walk straight into Heaven." He played with the +dog's rough mane. "She'll keep on looking at the stars," he murmured. +"But I'll keep on looking at her--_Sheila_." + +But Sheila, having made her choice, had shut her eyes to the world and to +the stars and slept like a good and happy child. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIDDEN CREEK*** + + +******* This file should be named 10978.txt or 10978.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/9/7/10978 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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